School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 9-14-21

001this is the business meeting for the school district of indian river county on tuesday september 14 2021. the we have the pledge of allegiance to the flag is next and the pledge of allegiance will be led by the vero beach high school's air force junior rotc detachment 043 under the direction of wade e dews chief master sergeant retired u.s air force and dean rosdell retired major u.s air force and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all my face forward thank you [Applause] all right the um the first order of business is adoption of the orders of the day uh are there any items from the consent agenda that would be like to move up to action uh dr moore mr chair i have two

002items first uh item 7d is to pool that was the item to for care here uh we're still in the process of working that so we requested to pull that item and then to move um item 5a to action all right do i have a motion dr dr schiff do we have a second second dr jones um and now can i have a motion to approve the orders of the day the amended yes ma'am may i ask the question superintendent is that going to be one item because you handed us two different things no no that's one item the the it is what i'm the actual motion as well as the backup of the plan okay all right so i have a motion to approve the amended orders of the day dr jones uh second

003second second uh dr mrs rosario thank you all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 and we're now going on we have a series of presentations so i'm going to turn it over to dr moore uh thank you mr chair we do have um three presentations this evening as you mentioned um we just celebrated patriots day over the weekend um 9 11 we will be doing a proclamation but prior to that we have two presentations which will be made by our public information officer miss maddox thank you everyone for being here tonight um i feel a little bit like i'm on a stage up here a little awkward but we appreciate you coming happy to see you all we have a few presentations tonight and our first one is a short video on how

004our district recognized 9 11. we know that it was on a saturday we were recognizing all week because the kids who are in school now they're only learning about it in history books it's very important to keep that memory alive and for them to understand why we recognize and honor the victims on the 20th anniversary of september 11th our district paused to remember the victims and the families impacted by this tragic act of terrorism on our country in honor of patriot day schools held ceremonies paused for moments of silence wore patriotic colors in honor of those who lost their lives and learned about the heroes who prevented more lives from being lost we will continue to recognize this day each year throughout our district to keep the memory of the victims alive and highlight a

005time when our country stood in solidarity in defense of our freedoms in memory in honor of the victims and their families on september 11th we will never forget [Music] our next presentation is to recognize our steam designated schools uh miss perez are you in the in here there she is this is miss verizon she is our coordinator of steam in our district and she will be taking over the rest of the presentation with mr heiser come on good evening my name is april perez and i'm the steam coordinator for the school district renee river county two years ago the curriculum and instruction department began to develop a process to recognize schools for their efforts with steam education steam education fosters creativity and innovative thinking interdisciplinary steam learning experiences promote inquiry technology integration and authentic project-based

006learning that's connected to the real world in the steam classroom partnerships reach beyond the walls of the school to include higher education and community organizations through our research and feedback from other school districts different states local school leaders teachers our steam advisory committee community members we developed a rubric and guidelines for our first ever steam designation last year we had nine schools participate in the steam school designation process the process required schools to develop a school steam plan that focused on the areas of professional development for teachers technology integration extended learning opportunities we take a look at science and math achievement data and the main focus what was hap was what was happening in the classroom with the student learning experiences our team conducted walkthroughs in school visits to provide feedback on how the schools

007could improve steam integration the year-long process concluded with the analyzation of science and math data from the state assessment scores that came in just here early in july pat heiser and i are beyond proud to announce the steam designation schools for the 20-20-21 school year and so the schools are in the other room we have our bronze level award winners dodger town gifford middle glendale vero beach high school we have our silver level award winners beachland pelican island rosewood in stormgrove and we have our gold level award winner osceola magnet so if all of those schools will come up here and receive their award we'll take a picture we appreciate the school leaders and teachers for embarking on this journey we look forward to this next school year we had nine schools participate this year

008and we are excited that 11 schools are embarking upon this journey for next year so congratulations to our steam designation schools for the 2021 school [Applause] year two and three one more one two three [Laughter] thank you and just as um thank you just as the the principals and district team leave board this is the additional work that's being done by staff and district level to ensure the steam programs in our district are top notch so rather than just saying you are a steam program this is an internal view of district staff working with principals to create a set of criteria to determine uh the level of implementation so to set a standard is one thing but to continue to work create a rubric to ensure what we're marketing truly is happening in schools is

009such a innovative process and so happy for the leadership under mr myers uh in mr meyer's area to create this rubric community input was involved so what april has done in the creation of this rubric and mr houser really is outstanding work to ensure that providing top quality programming within our district so outstanding work thank you and for our final presentation tonight we have mrs pamela dampier she will be coming up here she's our assistant superintendent of street strategic planning and support services and they are recognizing schools who are excelling in positive behavior interventions i'd like to also welcome mrs dowdell she's our prevention intervention specialist who's very instrumental in making sure that all of this work was moved forward good evening we're excited to celebrate 17 schools who have been recognized by the florida

010pbis project as a pbis model school for the 2020-21 school year positive behavior interventions and support pbis is a school-wide framework that according to according to a national research enhances student quality of life and reduces problem behaviors by establishing this framework we are developing skills making changes to the school environment acknowledging appropriate behavior and using data to identify supports for our students the schools who have earned this distinction are being recognized for their resilience and implementing a school-wide pbis framework that intentionally and positively impacted students in all three instructional models transitional virtual and brick and martyr this award is titled the resilience award due to the resiliency of the schools during the past year's challenges it is indicative of their commitment to the effective implementation of pbis and to provide positive and equitable outcomes for

011all students mrs doddell and i are proud to recognize the following schools for being recognized for achieving pbis model school stacks beechuan elementary rachel finnegan and the pbis coach is mrs irish for the 2021 school year citrus citrus elementary kim garcia and rachel swallow is the pbis coach dodger town elementary mrs aretha vernette miss racine oh okay and rayna ingram fellsmear elementary mr ramon echeverra and jennifer adelton and amy annie arse and we also have additional members amanda libby and jessica mountain liberty magnet school ms takisha harris and pamela ash is the pbis coach [Applause] osceola magnet mr chadwick bacon and miss mrs chris allison ellison as the pbis coach [Applause] pelican island elementary felice bagley and rachel williams as the pbis coach [Applause] rosewood rosewood magnet school mr adam falst and megan nespor as

012the pbis coach treasure coast elementary we have mr scott simpson and landis stanfield as the pbis coach vero beach elementary lindsey matheny and the pbis coaches rebecca business [Applause] gifford middle school tasha jones and quinton morgan as the pbis coach [Applause] oslo middle school mr eddie robinson and rhonda spivey as the pbis coach sebastian river middle school todd racine and mr harvey lee as the pbis coach storm grove middle school ann bieber and lisa maguire as the pbis coach sebastian river high school mr chris christopher cummings uh james teamer timmer robert riskin kevin van bremer and jacqueline pasche as the pbis coach i know our alternative center for education mr darielle brown and winford smith pbis coach [Applause] wabaso school mr christopher colstad and susan warlow [Applause] congratulations again to all 17 schools great job

013panoramic [Music] there you go you knew that in selfie mode [Applause] [Music] okay so so once again as principles leave for the for the benefit of the board in the audience uh pbis is a above and beyond initiative in order to ensure that we're providing environments where students feel welcomed they feel embraced um and rather moving directly to a punishment problem-solving with children to help them identify the appropriate behaviors that lead to success really working and connecting with children so when they walk into our schools each and every single day they feel warmed in a break embraced that's not a district initiative that is a criteria set forth by the state so them receiving that recognition truly is an acknowledgement of the hard work that they do our final presentation which will require a vote

014comes in the form of a proclamation and over the course of the last several weeks we've been preparing for patriots day working with the school site principals who are probably all going out to dinner now in terms of the activities that will be taking place the how they are going to ensure at their particular school sites age-appropriate activities are taking place uh i've had the opportunity to do a a number of radio interviews uh i know miss rosario and mr meyer and ms garcia uh principal at citrus all did a interview on that particular uh for one of the tv stations one of which is i'm sure it's here today um on how it impacted their particular lives uh all had very powerful impactful stories on the 10th i had the opportunity to attend a

015few events started my day at sebastian river high school in which they did a ceremony where they rang a bell at the appropriate times when those planes crashed and it was a very very powerful moment that took place and i've had a few conversations forward uh and speaking uh with board member rosario i felt it was appropriate to bring forward a a proclamation to capture this district's belief in this district's stance on the activities that we endorse moving forward as it relates to um 9 11 patriots day so with that i'll turn it over to ms rosario for the reading of the proclamation thank you very much um dr moore so i'm excited to read this proclamation i think it is long overdue for this district to formally um adopt a a proclamation such as

016this one in honor of september 11 so i will read proclamation honoring patriot day september 11 2001 whereas on september 11 2001 this country experienced tremendous tragedy and loss of life in new york virginia and pennsylvania when four flights were hijacked by terrorists and whereas first responders in new york and virginia responded to the attacks at the world trade center the pentagon and at the plane crash site in an open field in pennsylvania despite the imminent danger resulting in many first responders selflessly becoming injured or losing their lives in the process and whereas the events of that day are etched into our hearts and memories as well as the effects it has on the lives of thousands both in the aftermath and now and whereas the outcome of such a shocking tragedy was a was

017a country that immediately united demonstrating the essence of this country's strength and endurance and whereas at 8 46 a.m american airlines flight 11 was flown into the north tower of the world trade center in manhattan new york i promised i wouldn't do this and at 9 03 a.m united airlines flight 175 was flown into the south tower of the world trade center in manhattan new york at 9 37 a.m american airlines flight 77 was flown into the west side of the pentagon in arlington virginia at 10 03 a.m united airlines flight 993 crashed in a field in shanksville pennsylvania now therefore be it proclaimed by the school board of indian river county florida that we honor september 11th as patriot day we'll teach our students age-appropriate standards driven lessons regarding the events that occurred on

018september 11 2001 will hold a moment of silence at each time above when possible and conduct patriot day activities in all schools to ensure our students will never forget adopted this 14th day of september 2021 thank you good job um and now we would need a motion to uh approve this proclamation as read a second um all in favor aye aye motion carries five zero [Applause] mr chair the that concludes the presentations uh during the order of the operations of the day i did move uh item 5a to action i don't know if it was the intent of the board to hear that item immediately following presentations or not but since it wasn't discussed if that is the will of the board i think you would need to modify the orders of the day and

019then you can hear that item now one one and this is really a question for my colleagues in the audience we've got requests to speak my assumption is that the vast majority of those want to speak to this action item with the permission of my colleagues the people who are here to speak to something other than and in recognition of their time maybe we invite those who are who are here not to speak to action item 5a but otherwise so that they can say and and move on because i'm afraid that if i'm correct the vast majority of these people are going to speak to action item and that means someone would be left to the end so i'm i'm asking for your counsel yes ma'am normally i'd say um you know you can ask

020the people that signed up but we we put a i'm not sure if it's policy but we put a procedure in place for our citizen input that says it's time stamped when you show up then you speak at that time first second third fourth i think to be fair to that we have to continue with that we i don't know if backing it up right now is the right thing to do in addition i might add that i believe on those forms citizens are able to indicate whether they want to speak to a particular item so it would already be virtually none of these have they just choose to speak there's no indication to speak to an action item okay so then there isn't all right we will we will go in the order in

021which they're time stamped i apologize to those who are down in the pile that are here to speak to something else so before i call names let me read the guidelines for citizen input according to school board policy zero one six nine dot one each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minute duration persons will be recognized in the order in which the requests were received the time shall start when the speaker is at the podium and the school board attorney will be the official timekeeper you will hear a beep at the end of your three minutes persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of a business meeting during citizen input as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to

022each such agenda item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on the order of business persons may only speak once about any given item only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers during the meeting please refrain from clapping or outbirths of any sort so that we can proceed with dignity and with the quorum by not infringing on any individual's amendment rights and i would just like to add to that this whole subject that item 5a covers which is the mask mandate there's strong feelings on both sides and i'm asking people you're here to speak your peace please don't clap please don't boo please be respectful of different points of view you'll all have your opportunity because i

023don't want to have to have anybody who's not comporting themselves in a dignified manner removed and we we really would appreciate your cooperation because it'll be a long night otherwise board members may or may not address any citizen input statement at the end of the citizen input comments and as i said earlier as board members we listen to citizens without interruptions and citizens are asked to give board members the same respect and ask for florida statute 1001-372 the presiding officer of any district school board may order the removal from a public meeting held by the district school board of any person interfering with the expeditious or orderly process of such meeting provided such officer first issues a warning that continued interference with the orderly process of the meeting will result in removal and i trust

024that that that will not be an issue tonight so i guess the first item and you're all aware of obviously which is item and i'll read it is the review of the need for face covering requirements set to expire september 15 2021 which is tomorrow so i will begin and i apologize if if i am mispronounced sometimes that people don't want to have to read my writing but the first speaker this evening is is harley uh rings do you want to say the one on deck in london oh excuse good idea and on deck is chris allen where's the podium oh back there did i start okay i'm here to speak on behalf of every student in the school district of indian river county i feel like whenever we talk about this pandemic we often

025talk about the adults but i would like to bring the kids into the equation i know kids that were quarantined so much that they have gotten to maybe three weeks of the six weeks they've been in school i know kids who are immunocompromised if they caught this disease they could die i knew kids who can't get the vaccine maybe it's age maybe it's a condition maybe it's because their parents won't let them these aren't adults these are teenagers these are children who could be ripped away from a chance at living these are our future and people would let them die because they can't be bothered to wear a piece of cloth over their face all over the country people are being quarantined a few weeks ago my history class was half empty because so many

026kids were in quarantine just today so many kids miss the fsa do the quarantines that there were seven kids out of the 20-something kids in my english class that were able to show up there are schools that are closing because they're running out of staff to run them i want to get back to normal just as much as everyone else here but you can't have normal like this not by pretending the pandemic will go away on its own you want to know why the black death stopped killing people it's because it killed so many people that it ran out of people to spread to we are running out of hospital beds we are running out of oxygen we are running out of options and you know what i've been told time and time again that

027i've been such an adult i've been so much hurt during this pandemic i'm not even 16. i'm not old enough to drink i'm not old enough to smoke not old enough to vote not old enough to give my blood and yeah i'm somehow just i'm somehow old enough to give my life i am begging the school board to keep this masked mandate in place for the safety of the students i'm begging parents and kids to wear these masks to listen to the mandates and to get your vaccines if you're able and i'm begging everyone listening right now to do your jobs and protect the future generation we are your future if we die what you have left you won't live forever so please keep these mass mandates in place thank you next speaker chris allen

028on deck jay cramer hi i wanted to say thank you to mr rosario and mrs berenborg from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of our group we just want to thank you for voting for parental rights and for choosing to not break the law my name is chris allen and i'm the co-founder of we the people indian river county and the vice chair for months for liberty indian river florida miss schiff peggy jones and brian barefoot you brought shane to this county you have trampled over our parental rights the parental bill of rights has not given the school board any additional rights to our children but laid out our fundamental inalienable rights these are rights that have been proven time and time again mr moore you recommend that the school board act as

029a parent to my child and to make facial coverings mandatory for them at school to top it off according to vero news you told ray mcnulty that you've been you'd be willing to recommend which doctors are best suited to evaluate my child you who do you think you are you were brought to this county to be best by children but what you recommend is for the board to take away my parental rights that's not up to you he's my child i'm here to say that i do not consent the board and the superintendent do not now or ever have rights to my child's medical decisions if you agree with me sign our petition we are trying to get governor desantis to remove mars chef peggy jones and brian barefoot including david moore and um because

030you you just decided to break the law and think that you're the parent of my child and mr burnforth to answer your questions you ask what kind of food we're eating our family chooses organic you ask about my intelligence i have a degree in aerospace engineering and i've worked as a mechanical engineer since then you ask um when you stop catering to parents that come here well guess what the parents here represent students there's grandparents here who have grandchildren in the school we are the parents um you know you're threatening that you um want to leave the board that's completely up to you but we're staying we're going to keep coming and we're going to keep speaking up for parental rights thanks thank you next speaker jay kramer on deck nicole campanelli members of the

031board uh quite frankly i can't say that i'm really envious of your position uh we really do appreciate your service um this is uh quite a show we've got going on i certainly hope you guys will uh make a good decision on this issue however we did have a a meeting of the republican executive committee on september 8 2021 whereas the majority of the members present voted to uh one century brian barefoot and asked that he act in a manner compliant with executive order 21-175 and emergency rule 64-der 21-12 and 2. make an objection and call on a school district of indian river county to prohibit limiting or conditioning the parental ability to opt out of face coverings or mask mandates in the school district of indian river county these are the the wishes of

032the republican executive committee and quite frankly guys please uh do your best to solve this issue and i know no matter what you do you're not going to be in favor of everybody that is here tonight but anyway god bless and please make a good decision for the children thank you very much uh mr kramer before you leave would you explain to me what centering me means that would be a definition to the membership of the rec as i am here on behalf of the rec if you would like the next meeting i will ask them of that question because i'm not a member of the rec i find it difficult to think that you could censor me do i get a plaque or a something if now that i'm censored i mean i've ought

033to get something the censoring happens to be something that happens all over but if you'd like me to take those questions back to the membership for further definition we can do that mr barefoot protocol and policy we do not uh engage in conversation with citizens until after all citizens [Applause] mrs rosario i'm the chair and i have the privilege of being able to make an exception to what we normally do and under the circumstances that's what i did so i understand that next speaker is nicole one we have to make campanelli and on deck is samantha fowler sorry good evening i am reading this on behalf of a concerned indian river county citizen let's first play this emotional heartbreaking video it's approximately 22 seconds [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] [Music] brian mara peggy and david may

034ask you a question how do you sleep at night knowing that you are restricting the breathing of children every hour every minute every second of every day while they're in school this is child abuse enforced by the same people who are supposed to be protecting our children do schools have the legal authority to impose a suffocating medical device on our children and teachers not according to title 3 of the u.s civil rights act 36.208 which states in determining whether an individual poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others a public accommodation must make an individualized assessment based on reasonable judgment that relies on current medical knowledge or the best available objective evidence current medical knowledge and scientific evidence tells us that mass don't work and that's according to osha cdc and the

035new england journal of medicine just to name a few the cdc says that they have no scientific evidence that masks work yes the cdc tells us this look it up so what is this really about control money we the people know the truth and we the people will keep fighting until every single one of you tyrannical abusive and unlawful restrictions are gone and i'll play it again because i have time [Applause] [Music] is thank you next speaker is samantha fowler on deck john karafi is samantha fowler here right here [Music] good evening my name is samantha fowler and i have two children in indian river county school district two mr barefoot and the members of the board you say that you are bombarded with emails from parents that that want all kids to wear masks

036well who are these parents where are these parents are these alleged emails from actual parents of the school district these board meetings are the platform for us to voice our opinion and you expect us just to take your word that you've received hundreds of emails from these parents do they even attend our school i'm here in front of you mr barefoot and mara shift last time you both said that you receive all these emails mara you actually said last time that you've received five emails from parents that was at home because they were here but never once did you even look at any of us that's here standing in front of you my husband was on shift the last meeting and my kids actually are sitting out there in the front because i don't have

037anybody taking care of them and today he's on shift as well and they're out there i don't even know why we're here because i know how exactly how every single one of you are going to vote you're going to keep this mandate you care more about emails and every single individual that actually come here and speak for our kids freedom your if your mask works why should my child be we're all we're asking for is an option you mask the kids from kindergarten through eighth grade what about the teenagers why not the teenagers oh but they can get the vaccine oh so the teenagers get a choice to do something for their life but my kindergartener and k through 8 does not get a choice they have to be plastered that's not right how where

038you say that the parents can choose yeah the high schools are allowed to choose they're allowed to choose for a vaccine they're allowed to choose to take it or not to take it but what about my child what about my child that's supposed to see half of you are not even looking at me you're probably on your phone i'm allowed to stand here and voice my opinion and you're supposed to sit here and listen to me i went to every single school district you said last time oh we'll go get the hope scholarship you can go to a different school you know what i called brevard county indian river county and i called saint lucie county every single public school or private school is full full i try to get the hope scholarship yeah okay

039but i don't have the option to keep my kids home so they go every day because that's my that's my do because if i don't send my kids to school dcf takes them away thank you fowler next speaker john karapi on deck donald baldwin all right the next speaker is donald baldwin on deck cody holcomb [Music] donald baldwin i am a citizen of indian river county i have a heart condition i'm on meds and my meds are adjusted they're delicate every little thing conditions my meds how much i breathe what i eat my exercise how high i go up in the mountains [Music] if if anybody has a heart attack or a stroke cardiac arrest and the person's heart stops breathing uh uh beating the person the brain is not fed oxygen and a lot

040in a lot of cases these patients end in as invalids but my point is is that we have young children growing children their brains are growing their heads their bodies and they are being denied air hour after hour after hour it may be a little bit but we are harming their health their mental health [Music] we are damaging their intellectual ability to learn just that little minute amount of air over a period of time we're damaging them [Music] and then what i want to add on is that i do find masks around the schools the masks are going into the [Music] canals they go out into the lagoon and they are killing the manatees and if they're not killing the manatees they're killing other sea life the masks are getting out there they pollute the

041the waters and they are destroying our environment thank you [Music] thank you mr baldwin next speaker cody holcomb on deck chrislyn orea good evening thank you for the time to speak tonight i'm a resident of indian river county my wife and i recently when these mandates came down and they went from optional to mandatory we pulled our five-year-old son out of school here he now attends ica in fort pierce ica has a rule they don't let politics play a hand in our children's education they're very strict about and it goes both ways at ica it goes both ways mask and anti-mask another thing i want to tell you guys i've noticed a lot of our individuality amongst our youth slipping away we're going towards the age of conformity now i don't need to pull a

042history book out and tell you guys and gals what happens when an entire nation and entire world goes towards conformity and strays away from individuality suddenly this whole the betterment for the country thing gets out of hand we know where this goes i'm sick of it as a parent i'm sick of it as an indian river county resident my wife and i we very very staunchly staunchly believe in our heart of hearts in individuality you want to wear a mask wear a mask you don't want to wear a mask don't wear a mask now sounds pretty simple to me but apparently here we are in our second school board meeting having the same discussion so apparently it's not that easy we need to focus on the children our school board our teachers faculty staff principals

043directors of schools y'all need to quit playing politics focus on the education of our children they're going to be the future leaders our children are going to be sitting in your seats up there how do you want them to act what kind of educational background do you want them to have if they're going to take your place and educate the next generation you want them to worry about a piece of cloth over their face and whether somebody likes them for that or dislikes them for it or do you want them to get a proper education i'll end my speech with this i implore you guys up there in gals please please don't let politics play a hand in my son everyone here's children's education we're all sick of it thank you mr holcomb next next

044speaker is chrislyn orea and on deck john m dides hi my name is chrislyn dioria and i decided to show up this evening basically to help any other parent that didn't have the ability to show up this evening because they have children in their home with them i have many issues with the man the mandating of masks in our school system for our children [Music] according to the national school boards association public education exists to serve the following purposes and that's to prepare students for college in the workforce and to build our citizens we all of us all adults in this room were once students that attended these very same schools and prior to the word of covid approximately 36 000 people annually would get the flu and die that was something that happened every

045year prior to covid i'm sorry and there was an annual flu vaccine for that at the time too but we were given an option if you wanted to get the flu vaccine or if you didn't want to get the flu vaccine people weren't ridiculed for not getting the flu vaccine so why are people being ridiculed now that don't get the covet vaccine i know we're talking about masks but children children were sometimes even sent to school sick back in the day and parents themselves went to work sick it was a well-known fact that the cold and flu season mimics the typical school year we all know that children were sent to school sick and we also know most employees went to work sick rather than calling out and nobody ever quarantined after being out sick

046this all was normal before covid we had children sick they went to school sick parents went to school sick not saying it's right but that's the world we lived in prior to this nobody wore a mask nobody said oh you were out sick yesterday you have to put a mask on your face when you come back or you have to quarantine before you come back masking med mandate is wrong for so many reasons there are effective medical masks but they aren't the ones that the average person wears i don't see an effective mask on a person that's wearing a mask i mean the typical mask that people wear bought at cvs walgreens it's a piece of a cloth mask yes there's medical masks to protect you but not the mask that we're wearing they're not

047clean they're not fit and the purpose of wearing them is so somebody can say oh i feel better i feel better because there's a piece of cloth in front of my face that's not it i'm sorry i have so much i'm going to run out of time i also know that there's a parent's bill of rights and that was signed into law to protect parents rights to make decisions regarding masking of their children related to covid there's plenty of laws out there right now that protect the people the parents that do not want their children wearing masks thank you thank you very much next speaker john and ampitis on deck jennifer pippen hello ladies and gentlemen the board my name is john amditis owner ramdish transport here in individual where i pay my taxes i

048come also representing my wife captola adidas um i want to let you know that you know it's only been a handful last couple handful of years i've delved into finding out how my taxes are used okay you're supposed to be educational professionals aren't you that's what you're supposed to be doing here are you are you children professionals also i suggest you get your own those people get to rule their own children you're supposed to teach reading writing and arithmetic and history that's what you're supposed to do you know what you guys are like to me i own a business i send you all out with a boat but you have a copy of my checkbook right and at the end of the week instead of delivering a boat you didn't deliver the boat but you

049go to my bank and take a check stop taking my money and doing what you want with it i'm done next speaker is jennifer pippen on deck lamar nother giacomo good evening my name is jennifer pippen i am the chairman for moms for liberty of indian river florida stephen would you go back behind the people on youtube and the speakers in the other room cannot see would you go back please behind the time please [Music] since the illegal vote at the last school board meeting i've received the following emails texts and private messages from people who didn't trust the board enough to ask them these questions hello jen you don't know me but our principal sent out an email today that masking children is a law now who do i call on this because that's

050not true i don't feel like the school district is capable of making any laws and the fact they discriminated against my daughter and segregated her into a room completely by herself because of not masking of my child is completely outrageous i'm in tears who do i call my daughter was so scared to go to class today by herself in fear that she would have another mask to wear when she had an exemption who do i call hey jennifer i want to reach out and let you know that kids with medical exemptions at the elementary level are being treated horribly they are placed at a table by themselves in the back of the room and my daughter was told she could not participate in any group work or complete any assigned computer tasks it breaks my

051heart to see her treated like this and she said two other students in her class are treated the same way one went home crying yesterday hello mrs pippin can you send me the information on the hope scholarship please my son came home today with his name and sharpie on his mask and he has a headache from the fumes of this sharpie he's not going back to school for the school district anymore jennifer my daughter is eight she's quarantined for 10 days with a stomachache they will only let her go back to school with a negative covid test she's not sick my husband thought she had breakfast with him this morning and it was a miscommunication of who gave the child breakfast what do i do hello jen i saw your video on facebook my son

052has been on antibiotics because of masking since the second day of school i need a medical exemption for him please what doctor can i take him to from the list that you said hey jen i heard you on the radio who do i call if my child's teacher asks the entire class to raise their hand if they've been vaccinated and they are being now separated by vaccination status hey jen you used to work with my dad at the hospital before he quit my daughter's pediatrician will only write a medical exemption if my daughter is on oxygen and he will not write it for her and she has a previous cancer diagnosis who in town will write an exemption for my daughter jen i saw your video on facebook my son's pcp said a doctor in

053orlando will give him a medical exemption for his sensory processing disorder can you recommend someone locally pleased so i don't have to miss work i'm finishing up thank you well many try to imitate us insult us and slander us moms for liberty indian river and we the people will continue to seek medical information for every parent your time is up thank you the next next speaker is lamar nother giacomo on deck nathan swigart thank you very much somebody raised the question about whether or not we have kids in the in the public school system here i've got three grandchildren in the public school system and i've also got a son who's who attends college here so i have a vested interest in what is going on september 1st new york post more children have been

054victims of gun violence in chicago this year than have died from covid in the entire country according to police in the cdc the cdc reported that 214 children 17 years and under have died from covet nationwide this year compared to 261 chicago kids who have been victims of gunfire in chicago according to police statistics more children have been fatally shot on the streets of chicago than have died from kovid kova 19 in the state of illinois in 2019 19 florida children died from influenza and pneumonia we did not require masking or shut down schools in 2018 20 children died from influenza and pneumonia and in 2017 27 florida children died from the flu uh the last at last check well now it's up to 17 i think 17 kids the summary uh 17 children under

055the ages under the age of 17 have died from covid that's the summary of the entire covid pandemic why are we requiring masks of our children governor desantis issued an executive order saying that parents have the right to choose whether or not to mask their children and you have violated that order although you claim that you could not violate the legislature's order to teach certain elements of critical race theory now you think that you can violate the governor's executive orders and our parental rights the parental rights bill was passed by aaron grall and signed into law by governor desantis and you are also violating the parental rights bill that was just passed regarding covid and unnecessary deaths ivermectin has been used safely by millions of people worldwide since the 1970s dr richard bartlett a 28-year

056texas physician discovered by accident that nebulized mudesinide which has been in use for decades is the perfect treatment for covid because it stops inflammation in the lungs and has virtually no side effects i used it with my children when they were young for chronic group and it works great no side effects so according to the cdc medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the u.s since 2004. so america has one of the most sophisticated and expensive health care systems but represents more than half of the covet deaths in the world what is going on in our hospitals it's the hospital protocols that are killing people rem death severe universal drug that's been recommended by dr fauci despite its classification as an investigational drug so hospitals can use experimental treatments but individuals can't

057there's something wrong that we have more than half of the covet deaths in the world thank you next speaker nathan sweegard on deck carrie deluca all right my name is nathan swigert both of my boys go to imagine school where they uh obey the executive order of ron desantis um hypocrisy is expecting these parents out here to obey a mandate why you guys disregard an executive order when covet hit in march of 2021 i told my wife i said this agenda is going to be far greater than any virus planned or not it's been a global power grab for corrupt politicians all across this world but you gotta admit the propaganda is very beautiful and i'm gonna explain what i mean by that the term asymptomatic spreader convincing healthy people to act sick i don't

058fall for that i'm not stupid munchausen syndrome by proxy is a psychological disorder where someone pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of illness in themselves the main intention is to assume the sick role so that they are the center of attention well the people doing this are sick and unfortunately tonight you are the center of attention i would rather be home with my family watching 80 sitcoms like who's the boss then try to make you realize that you are operating a munchausen syndrome experiment on children viral theatrics obsessive hand washing you know i i changed my life none i went to the gym i st you say stay inside went outside i've noticed that when everybody floats downstream the best thing to do is do what the masses aren't doing swim upstream i

059never bought hand sani basically i have not let these nut job politicians mock me and embarrass me i'm tired of seeing it done to these children and just watch the tv when fauci goes to a baseball game we're not allowed to go last year and he's sitting there with his family and friends with no mask on well we're not allowed to go it's called it's mocking us college football games every weekend they're mocking us but mike these kids have to sit in school with a mask on while they jam pack these stadiums viral theatrics the 911 ceremony before the cameras came on obama all the other politicians no mask on the cameras come on mask come on i don't fall for it you guys might i don't the mocking and brainwashing of the masses yes

060there is a virus going around but children are grossly unaffected [Music] and you timed it perfectly with implementing it you timed it right at the peak knowing that it would decline so that all the goofball masses would understand the master doing it nope you timed it perfectly it's called manipulation these kids deserve to breathe freely thank you mr swigert next speaker is carrie deluca on deck lynn shepard carrie deluca good evening my name is carrie deluca i'm a parent of a child that attends school in india county i'm here today to let you know the psychological and physical impact your forced mass mandate has had on my child on friday august 27th my daughter came home from school upset and in tears being informed of the school district's mass mandate she asked me mommy what

061did i do wrong to deserve to wear a mask why do they lie to us and not just start the school year off with mask if this was their intent the entire time on monday august 30th i sent her to school with a compliant face covering in the form of a face shield when entering the classroom she was handed a face mask by her teacher and asked to put it on my child politely declined and was segregated from her classmates to a table to the back of the room on tuesday august 3rd we returned to 31st we returned to school and complied with the opt out with a medical exemption my my daughter was crying and physically upset that she when she entered her classroom she was so afraid that she was going to be

062forced to wear a mask even with the exemption my daughter requested that she be accompanied to her class by an administrator in fear that that would happen to her in the classroom she continued to be segregated she was restricted from all group learning activities she was even told that she could not use the in-room computers that our taxpayer dollars pay for because they were not six feet apart and she would infect other classmates and their loved ones that is what her teacher told her dr moore mr barefoot dr jones and dr shift where is the inclusivity in how my daughter was treated we have been asked to teach our kids to be inclusive and not make fun of others for wearing a mask no matter what side you stand on masks or no masks our

063children deserve to be treated equally i stand here united with other parents and community members and we say no more we will no longer allow our children to be discriminated against psychologically and physically abused by adults who claim to be working for the best interest and health of our children thank you mr luca the next speaker is is lynn shepherd on deck aaron andrews [Music] all right thank you for allowing me an opportunity to speak tonight uh my name is lynn shepherd i am a parent of of two kids uh a five-year-old and a three-year-old uh we've just recently obviously got involved in the school the school system didn't expect the first two three weeks of school to go this way i'm a product of palm beach county schools and i had a relatively positive

064experience as a youngster so i was hoping to afford that to my children before this issue came up two weeks ago [Music] the i wanted to comment that i own a business here actually multiple businesses in in the in the uh in the in the treasure coast area we've been here for eight years just moved to vero two years ago i would hope that the treasure coast is trying to attract other young professionals like myself looking to raise a family my wife and i moved here from california she previously left venezuela trying to get away from the oppression of different of the the communist government there and and i left california for similar reasons to come here um i appreciate that the board is in very much a very lose-lose situation on this subject with

065masks right it's not black and white like many topics are so i just wanted to offer my appreciation for the difficulty of of the subject but i wanted you for a second to put yourself in in the shoes of my five-year-old going to kindergarten three weeks ago for the first time in a place he's not familiar with with people he's not familiar with adults and children everything foreign and to just walk into that environment as a five-year-old wearing a mat everybody wearing masks you can't see anything eyes don't talk you can't you can't see anything and it's extremely intimidating so for that age bracket at least that's what i'm speaking on i wanted to you know not support renewing the mass mandate if possible um you know if if the board can support parental rights

066on this subject and then launch a pr campaign to wear masks right i can support that i think that's common sense but parents should still have the right to choose i can't say that enough times and and lastly the last thing i'd like to say is that this last election cycle we my wife and i were fortunate enough to vote for this governor who's standing up on this subject and many other constitutional issues and we supported his we support his political agenda his his vision for florida and then for the board to overrule his ruling you've just abolished my vote that i voted for to represent me in in tallahassee thank you thank you mr shepherd next speaker is aaron andrews on deck david hastings hello i'm erin andrews i actually just moved here a

067year ago and i've actually been very pleased with the schools so far and people give florida probably a bad rap for their education system and i'm from massachusetts where it's one of the better educations and i have to be honest i'm actually pretty pleased with how the education's been i think it's actually been pretty great i also moved here to get rid of to get out of what massachusetts is doing pretty much removing all the rights and so i'm here tonight because i desperately love my children i think that is a reason that every person is in this room here tonight because we desperately love our children right that's not an argument i'm not here to argue the efficacy or or relevance of masks i am here because my children are too young to understand

068what is happening and too powerless to do anything about it excuse me i am here since the day of the conception the well-being of my children has been my utmost concern i think this is the feeling every parent in this room can relate to whatever their stance on masks may be i am here because i believe that if you give someone an inch especially people in power and in government they will take a mile it was just two weeks to slow the spread right remember that well here we are almost exactly 18 months to the day and inch after inch foot after foot mile after mile every has been taken to give you an example my five-year-old daughter who has a valid medical exemption for masking came out of school on september 9th with wearing

069a mask tearfully telling me that she's scared not to wear this mask because she's in fear of viruses or germs i have never given my daughter a reason not to trust me the simple fact is that my husband and i make decisions for her in situations where she cannot understand all the variables we use our brains our hearts and most importantly our intuition when making these decisions they are not made lightly now that thoughtful and deliberate decision making was undermined by a teacher who could not pick my daughter out of a crowd she took an opportunity not only to make a medical decision for my child but to instill fear and distrust of her mother and father and her this is not only wildly unacceptable and unethical it's criminal i want to ask you seriously

070where does it end when does this end the instant we decide to let anyone other than parents make medical decisions for our children we have lost them we lose those rights entirely this is setting a precedent that will not be easily overturned maybe you agree with masks but you don't agree with the next mandate too bad you've already lost that light we gave them the power to make the decisions for our children so i'm not here to argue the efficacy or relevance of masks i'm here to advocate for our freedom of choice and bodily autonomy and the rights of parents to do whatever is in their minds hearts and intuition tells them to do with their own children i am here trying to make everyone in this room see that if you give them an

071inch they will always always take a mile please do not take away my right as a parent i beg you thank you miss andrews next speaker is david hastings on deck mcdaniel hello my name is david hastings my wife works as a teacher at oslo middle school and i'm going to voice a different opinion on the view on the mass mandate than you will hear tonight i'm here to speak in support of a very much underrepresented group of people during public comments the teachers and staff at every school in the district i get tired of hearing the same words being spewed meeting after meeting yes code is not very lethal to kids but people seem to forget the fact that while the kids may recover they can pass it to other people even in their

072own household who may not be so lucky but i digress since school has started we have seen more coveted positive cases all over the district and at levels much higher than seen last year clearly something needed to be done to stem the tide across the district and i applauded your decision three weeks ago to put the mass mandate in place as you felt it was the right thing to do for the district over the last six months all i have heard from the public is that the mass issue in school begins and ends with parental rights in my opinion masking in schools is many variables that play into it not just parental rights the big additional variable in this is the right for teachers to have a safe working environment and yes i do understand

073these two issues are sometimes opposing yet they are very interconnected my question to the board is this when does a parent's right to mask or not mask their child supersedes my wife's right to a safe working environment those two issues collide at some point and is not up for me or anyone else speaking tonight to determine where those two issues intersect it is up to you the five elect excuse me the elected school board members i implore you to make a decision that is best for all parties involved not just parents not just teachers not just students not whichever the group yells and screams allowed us but the district as a whole thank you mr hastings next speaker mark mcdaniel on dec kelly farnham [Music] hi i am a student here in vera beach and

074i just want to say i am so proud and happy that you guys chose the right decision and to mandate masks you listen to doctors and scientists not facebook and i'm asking once again please keep the masks in case you haven't heard the state of florida has verified 2448 sorry corona deaths this week not this month this week four of them were children and two of those children are now ventilated sorry mask if masks can save children from this fate they are worth more than just a little discomfort and we appreciate all that you do and thank you for caring for children's health and doing your your best to make sure they're safe and happy you are doing more than most parents would be doing by mandating masks thank you thank you miss mcdaniel next

075speaker kelly farnham on deck cindy gibbs good evening dr moore in school board i know you guys had a very long day i will see you bless you was listening most of the afternoon thank you for your patience this evening listening to all of us i did not come here tonight to raise my voice or to make any demands after a year and a half of this i am not here to try to change anyone's mind i've done no internet research in preparation but now i'm pretty confident that we all know how to use google and we have discovered for ourselves that you can find proof of essentially anything online i did however verify one thing with my daughter before coming seeing as she just last year successfully completed her civics course here in the

076district and it turns out that we the people does actually include all of us so i came here tonight to simply thank you in person for making the tough choices for fighting the hard fight and for casting the difficult votes which ultimately serve to best protect all of us our rules of society are in place for the protection of all of our citizens we don't allow drunk driving because it endangers everyone else on the roads we don't let our restaurants serve rotten fish because someone might get sick we wouldn't let a few students carry guns in schools because someone else could get hurt no one feels that regulations like these are any kind of infringement on any of our fundamental rights any personal rights that we may have come with a responsibility to others and

077our children should be learning that as you listen to the members of our community who have come here tonight and who have sent you emails and yes those are all real people please do not mistake the civility of some residents for a lack of passion we care just as deeply as anyone else but we may choose to convey ourselves a little more quietly many who would like to speak to you in person are simply unable to take the physical risk of being here but please know that overall our community is not nearly as divided as it may seem at the end of the day the best possible outcome for our community as a whole is for as many of our students and staff to be at school and at work in person safely learning and

078interacting and we the people appreciate you doing everything you do to ensure that reality even when it requires masks thank you for your time thank you miss farnam next speaker is cindy gibbs and on deck is bernie grawl good evening i'll keep it short i just want to thank you so much for caring enough about our children to help them make the right decisions at school when sometimes they can't make them themselves my older daughter is vaccinated she can go to school without a mask she's choosing she wants to wear one she's in high school my 11 year old i think was protected by getting covered she had to quarantine for a little while because several people according to the phone call were near her and i feel like she was protected i'm ultimately grateful

079for that i'm sorry there's so many people yelling at you i fully understand that you are here to support everyone not just someone and i thank you very very much for your hard work thank you gibbs next speaker is bernie grahl on deck uh mary ann bender thank you very much my name is bernie groll and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight before i came here today i had had an article called tallahassee report is dated september 14 2021. the style that of that report says cdc downplayed scientific finding that masking children are not effective in schools the analysis of that report was recently published by by a cdc control on a large-scale study of cv transmission in u.s schools that found little scientific support for mask in schools this is

080a cdc report now listen to this more troubling the analysis found that cdc failed to mention in the summary of the study the findings that indicated little support for some of the most common covet mitigation measures in school including mass students now this is a study that was performed in georgia and included 196 schools 90 000 students and took place from november sixteenth to december eleventh the study according to the cdc was the first of its kind to compare covet 19 incidents in schools with certain mitigation measures in place to other schools without those measures the study found this is important too this is in the the summary of the findings of the study the study found that masking then unvaccinate vaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with the lower

081incidence of virus in schools now what did i just get through saying i have no clue listen to this what was not included in the summary was the finding that many of the most common mitigation measures in schools were not effective these measures included discussing hybrid models classroom barriers hepa filters and requiring student mask this is a study done by cdc it went on the analysis without any further say that a year ago masks are not the end of the world so why not just wear one it says but the world has changed there are real downsides to masking children for this long with no known end date and without clear upside it continues as they are not aware of any studies that show conclusive that kids wearing masks in schools has an effect on

082their own morbidity or mortality or on the hospitalization or death rate in the community around them now you want to try and find this article don't go on google you have to go to yahoo because google will not give it to you because they've locked it okay now according to the infection rate am i out of time ready real quickly i apologize 0-19 the infectious survival rate for children is 99.9973 [Music] percent i have a lot more too but in conclusion 100 000 people were at the university of michigan last weekend watching a football game with no mask on you folks up here have opted out to wear or not to wear masks why cannot our children thank you next speaker marianne bender on deck ryan blade good evening dr moore and board members i

083would like to start by saying thank you dr moore for being straightforward at last month's board meeting in regards to the data on covet cases and how that directly affects the district's ability to keep our schools open and thank you to the board members for voting based on the data and not politics or emotion my daughter is an access point student at vero beach high school she has a weak immune system she wears a mask every day to school but she needs those around her to also wear a mask to school she needs to be at school school is where her peers are schools where she can receive all the services that she needs she's happiest at school i have two children at stormgrove they are so happy to be back at school last year

084was tough academically and socially i now have two grandchildren at citrus elementary they are in kindergarten and first grade it is my understanding that district employees have been in the classroom covering for teachers who are sick or in quarantine i appreciate everyone who has stepped out of their box to help our children and my experience with our families school choices i cannot say how happy i am with the teachers and the staff who've shown empathy and helpfulness in this unprecedented time although i'm here as a pro math parent i don't like it i wish that my kids and my grandkids teachers could see their smiles they have great smiles i wish the teachers were able to read their facial expressions my granddaughter can say a lot in a facial expression i wish my kids could

085see their teachers faces they spend more time with their teachers on a day-to-day basis than i do last year we began school with just about half of our students returning to traditional learning we started the school year with a mask mandate at that time our covid rate was seven percent this year we sent all our students back with no mass mandate with a covid rate of 10 percent in our county i would say that didn't go extremely well but you have the power to fix that you have the power to give sdrc staff and students the best chances at continuing to participate in traditional learning and the best chances for a healthy environment by voting pro mask again tonight this is for all our staff teachers and students the cdc recommends indoor masking for all

086students staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status i consider myself to be a conservative republican and i support mask wearing but today i have no political agenda my only agenda is that our schools stay open that's where our kids are meant to be in the best learning environment possible let us not mistake inconvenience with oppression thank you for your time thank you very much miss pender next speaker ryan blade on deck mary zerber serbie [Music] hello my name is ryan blade i'm president of the city of sebastian a member of we the people in the river county i had some other stuff i was going to speak on tonight but there's a couple things i've gone on during this meeting that i finally addressed it's a little odd to me that

087the camera angle is not on a fixed wide shot of the school board yet around this time last year you had the camera angles showing this very podium this very spot where you can see the people speaking they had that before now it's gone it's just a little odd to me and looks like a repression of expression maybe there's a reason why you guys did this i don't know what your thought process was on that and as for the form and public input forms we used to be able to drop them off in advance for some people that were running a little late and i actually asked a friend of mine i'm gonna acknowledge him to my own personal risk i am good friends the owner of poll.com pmyb2 i consider him to be one

088of the highest stories on free speech in the united states i asked him about the forms he said the forms themselves are actually an issue people not being not allowed to speak because they arrive late is a free speech issue nowhere does it say you have to arrive on time in the first amendment of the united states constitution it's really something to sit and think about and just so it's clear no all the users of poll i do not reflect my views so i can make that clear they do not they don't reflect pmy2's views and as far as i'm concerned even it's you know more liberal counterpart reddit it doesn't reflect the view you know obviously don't all the users on that side don't share all the same views either i will say that

089the masking mandate you've heard a lot from the parents in here and specifically that audio nicole campanelli played it reminded me when i was 12 years old post-operative get two surgeries in a row where i had od'd on morphine and i had used a crash cart narcan on me before i woke up when i woke up i had an epidural that fell on my back i was screaming and crying so much at 12 years old that i was in so much pain i couldn't even feel pain and as far as i'm concerned yeah parents need to be able to make that decision because believe me between me having gone accutane the surgeries i got i don't think i should have been the one to make that decision my mother it was she was probably the

090better one out of anybody to make that decision because one of the sponsors i could have gotten they could have just straight straightened my spine there was a very high chance we can paralyze that procedure so there's no way i've no masking mandates no vaccination mandates those specific things need to go and this is a smaller issue by the way i'm going to address my last thing these socially distanced chairs the city of sebastian doesn't do it the county commission does not have social distance seating it'd be really nice if we got rid of the socially distance seating which two local governing bodies do not have socially distance seating i would hope the school board really takes the time to look at that and you've had many people even myself coming here and say the

091masking does not work please stop mandating the masks it'll be more worth your while if you stop mandating it and stop basically traumatizing kids thank you thank you mr blade next speaker mary serbi and on deck crystal mcintyre well i guess uh mrs irby oh okay all right so uh miss mcintyre i honestly didn't really come here to say anything in particular just to kind of break up the monotony maybe give you guys a break a little bit i don't have any fancy titles behind my name or anything like that just a mom someone said today time is money so i won't waste your time i actually agree with something miss berenborg said earlier today we cannot keep doing this i'm so over the mask fighting and the politics ready for the teachers to get

092back to teaching and not fighting and not being you know referees in the classroom between the parents and the administrators we voted you guys in as a majority we're here to trust you we trust you to make these decisions for us i don't see why anything should change now thank you for everything that you're doing and take these couple minutes to yourself [Laughter] that may be a world record for short and concise next speaker is diana chandler on deck michael marsh hi i am here on behalf of my two kids who attend the school district of indian river county and i'm here because the florida parental bill of rights and the emergency order that was set forth by governor desantis supports us they support the parents and you guys do not the four of you

093you guys have decided to make masked mandates in our put mass mandates in our districts and you guys have decided to politicize masks that's exactly what you've done you made it political you sit here and you say that you follow what the cdc says right that's what you guys go to to determine the requirements for the district dr moore you're not going to look at me what do you please i'm speaking stop allowing politics to dictate your decisions and the pro-mass hysteria to cloud your judgment if we want to talk about science let's talk about science let's talk about what uh the cdc actually says the cdc studied 90 000 uh cases or not looked at 90 000 elementary students in 169 georgia schools from november 16th to december 11th they also found that there

094are no statistical difference in covid in those schools so then why mask our kids why muzzle our kids they also the john hopkins uh school um university also studied 48 000 cases of code covet among healthy kids 48 000 cases zero deaths among healthy kids and we want to mask kids are petri dishes they are meant to have germs they are that's that's how they build their immunity and it goes the same with kovid masks are not medical devices this is a political statement and the fact that you're using our children to drive this forward says a lot about the types of people that you are because you are not putting the well-being of my child's mental and emotional health you're not thinking about that if you want to mandate math mandated on adults why

095on the kids why mandate it on the kids because they're defenseless you've heard what the teachers are doing to these kids how they're singling them out that is not okay and it's time to stop and we are not gonna stop we're gonna continue to fight it whether it's today that you guys decide against it or in two weeks or four weeks we will be here and we are not going to give up thank you next speaker is michael marsh on deck susan aquary [Music] good good evening speaking of breaking up the monotony can you imagine day in and day out having to listen to being yelled at screamed told you're incompetent how in the world our mission here is stronger together right every time that these people come in here and i want to be

096specific good old pippin the we the people nonsense they come in here and talk to a board and yell at you we want dr moore removed mr barefoot dr jones doctor what's up the doctor dr schiff sorry i can't keep up with you there and every single time you just get to sit there well you know what no matter how you feel about me i'm here for you tonight okay because these demons and that's what they are they came in here and told us about critical race theory how blacks and brown should feel okay who gets to speak for a race jennifer pippen doesn't of them do tiffany justice like you're scared now you're terroristic out there don't let me laugh okay so i'm here tonight to compliment the job that's being done by my

097superintendent okay dr moore the rest of the board members tonight begins the recall process of you miss baron board i'm a criminal you're damn right i am i went to jail for protesting when my good friend was killed by law enforcement and when alteria woods was murdered here too i was the person that shut down these streets okay you know who's in those streets black people miss rosario that's your district you told me you support both you can't support both that's a pack that's a political action committee that you and baron board both oakland support this is nonpartisan politics my kids my beautiful black children don't deserve partisan politics in my district okay so we have to worry about teachers okay that support that terrorist group that that one there created with the demon pippin

098and i have to feel good that these teachers are here for my kids and these school board members are here for my kids pippin don't speak for me okay mr mr marsh lower the rhetoric a bit sorry voices in my head from pippin my beautiful black children and all the people and i'll tell you something this is really about the kids really about the kids where's black people at tiffany couldn't make it tonight maybe next time right all right maybe next time uh that that's you're out you're out of line let's let's keep let's keep the discussion to the facts of the masks so fine not make this personal so finally and to the board so finally tonight okay i was battling and the video would get pulled by the sheriff's office okay but i

099want to put it on the record that if it was anybody else that someone put their hands on they would be leaving here in handcuffs with the sheriff's office so i want to be treated the exact same way i know most of you guys don't know what took place in conclusion okay this is nonpartisan tonight we begin the process to remove those that lied to us when you told us that you are running a nonpartisan race that's it yeah three two one drop mike i think we should all take a deep breath um next speaker susan flyer and on deck anthony stewart hey mr stewart good evening welcome uh dr moore and the board hi um my name is anthony stewart and i'm president of southern christian leadership conference and uh i'm really grateful that

100we have dr moore here to look after our children after learning last week that there were 13 black teachers in miami that caught covet 19 and died 13 black teachers in miami caught covet 19 and died now dr moore i i wanted to say something uh concerning an article i have retrieved out of the uh tc palm news and this article was written by mr lawrence griezmann i wonder is he here today uh this article was on you and it was dated december 8 2019. it says in this one paragraph he said mo we'll run into roadblocks and in river county politics can be ugly relatively petty issues can be blown out of proportion so social media or media outlets with little credibility he'll have to tackle this divisive divisiveness stemming from a 52 year

101old desegregation order i'd like to read another article that i went to the indian river county library and retrieved from the archive this says negro settlement for vero one plan of the company shows a slight wisdom it anticipates the growing need of negro workmen on farms and in town and endeavors to secure this need in the best possible manner the plan is to plant a track of land near the spirit and to a about a hundred lots and they wreck upon these gradually as the need come houses for rent to sell to worthy negroes who will settle with their families at this point hiring out in the community as needed this plan supposedly at the end he says uh a negro settlement near enough to vero for the convenience of his inhabitants and yet so

102situated as to be out of the way of possible encroachment of the town's proper will mean so much to vero's development and convenience this particular ideology has never left this ain't by no mass this is about racism they talked about how you enjoy critical ray's theory i heard him talk about chicago and the killing on the streets this is about black and white and the mass you don't have no problem when this [Music] thank you mr speaker i picked it up and everybody else pick it up we know who you are thank you thank you mr stewart uh the next speaker is uh charlie mayhew and on deck greg maxwell mr chairman and other members of the school board my name is charlie frank matthews as statewide traveled throughout the state of florida i can

103tell you you guys are blessed one way i was in school board meeting the other day and it lasted 11 30. started at six so sometimes the school boards get heated and i can tell you i recommend you strongly keep the mass on for the betterment of those who are less fortunate in the school system some people don't know how to come here and deal with the issues there are three things i want to say and i'll be quiet first of all education should have never gotten into politics whether it's in the state of florida anywhere secondly health and health care should never get in the middle part of politics and i think that when you can stay away from that we'll do very well you might in making the decision sometimes have to make

104that decision like the motto do unto others that sometimes can't do for themselves and it was the kind of hidden agenda the people in the community who would come here and praise you but they can't get here for various reasons either they working or just can't leave home some might be too sick to leave home the last thing i want to say you might have to stand up for what we call right secondly you might have to stand up against the governor of florida desantis and third you might have to stand up for the bullets in a community but i can tell you this the 12th school board meeting i've been to i was in one other day in lee county they had a fist fight out in the hallway i was in another one

105where they walked into the classroom of a teacher with these ties going to tie the teacher make a citizen arrest but i can tell you you do right because it's right to do right and i certainly recommend that the mass continue just looking at the situation in orlando florida the other day funeral home director saying please don't call the funeral home for a funeral i'm having 11 funerals a week i can't take any more where's the people that does not see those kinds of things that happens every day out here and don't tell me the virus and we call it the covia have a direct avenue on the rich or the poor it doesn't matter and it'd be better to protect those who not protecting themselves than to have you had two schools in indian

106river county in my travel you had one with beach and elementary and another was fesmel you had to close those schools can you imagine you didn't have a rule about mass or taking the shots and eventually the parents in this community might just have to file a lawsuit against another parent they just might have to get to that thank you mr matthew next speaker is greg maxwell on deck jillian havocost good evening members of the school board i'm here tonight to discuss a disturbing medical trend sweeping schools across the nation that trend is coveted vaccines being administered to our children during school hours i believe mandatory coveted vaccinations are harmful to our children at large and should be left to the discretion of parents whether you support the vaccine or not here are the facts

107according to the director of the cdc covid vaccinations do not prevent the spread of the virus instead the only protection of covid vaccination grants is a reduction in symptoms for those in poor health with multiple comorbidities a covered vaccination may save your life and a healthy child there may be no little to no difference in symptoms of the vaccine in addition the mortality rate of children who contract covet is astonishingly low according to the cdc as of september 9 the out of the total deaths attributed to covid children ages 0 to 17 account for six 0.0006 percent of those deaths these numbers may be all well and good but one of my major concerns with these vaccinations are how they interact with the body the vaccines produced by pfizer moderna use mdr mrna technology a

108novel technology never before used in vaccinations to put it simply this technology modifies your genetic material to begin producing the spike proteins necessary to combat covet all other vaccinations such as the polios measles mumps rubella vaccines use time tested and proven method of exposing your body to an inactive form of the virus another strike against mr mrna technology is the rise of myocarditis or heart inflammation in young men and women who have received the vaccination this is a potentially fatal condition that can cause the heart to shut down due to rapid inflammation of the heart muscle and those who do survive myocarditis can lead to long-term heart damage and reduce reduced lifespan the university of california has stated that the risk of myocarditis in young healthy men and women who receive the vaccine is greater

109than any complication experienced from contracted coven my other concern with these vaccines are lack of any long-term rigorous clinical studies as of now all vaccines on the market are still under the emergency use authorization act long-term clinical studies have not concluded for any coveted vaccines for our children who we hope will lead long fulfilling lives well into their 80s and 90s they stand the most to lose from long-term complications there are already reports that despite proteins produced from the mrna coveted vaccines accumulate in the brain and reproductive tissues should we mandate mrna covered vaccines in our children we are potentially compromising their long-term health for the sake of the largest science experiment known to man despite all this evidence i believe it is the parents who should make the final decision regarding vaccinating their children

110against covin all parents should discuss the issue with their family consult their health care providers and make their own judgment call requiring or even distributing the covet vaccine during school hours will drive more parents towards alternatives such as homeschooling or private school i implore the school board to stay out of this very personal health decision and let the parents do what they do best parent thank you for your time thank you next speaker is uh chilean evacost and on deck is marcus valoria hello mr rogers said we live in a world in which we need to share responsibility it's easy to say it's not my child not my community not my world not my problem then there are those who see the need and respond i consider those people my heroes i wanted to use

111my time this evening to just say thank you to dr moore and the board for responding thank you for continuing to show your commitment to do best by our students and staff across the district i can imagine that this is a thankless job especially for the past year and a half and you continue to make the hard decisions even in the face of opposition we appreciate you and support you thank you thank you very much next speaker marcos valoria on deck david duffy hi i just want to congratulate everybody here because this is a big decision and you're letting everybody speak i do support everything you're doing so far i'm four mask mandates i really think you guys are heroes are making hard decisions and it's very i'm proud of you guys for that because

112sometimes it's hard with the opposition and everything everybody has rights everybody has the right to take care of their kids but when those rights also affect other kids that's when becomes a problem i think that uh basically your rights including your parental rights comes with responsibilities and you lose those rights when they start violating the rights of others especially when it poses threats to health and well-being of others do you have the right to get your kids sick yes you do but when you bring him to a school and they spread that sickness to other kids who could potentially spread it to parents and potentially kill people i don't think you have the right to do that so while you're at home you can take off your mask while you're at home you have whatever

113rights you want as long as you're isolated but when you pose a threat to other people that's when you need to uh you know be respectful and some people here think they're patriots some people think here they're religious or christians or whatever well so far uh to be patriot means to sacrifice for your fellow american to be religious means to love everybody as yourself and to sacrifice even for your enemy so i think wearing a mask is respectful to other people is sacrificing for the other i think that's patriotic i think also [Music] as we know labor weekend came on the virus spread a lot in the community because of labor day weekend and with the mass mandates you have successfully kept that down and if not improved the infections mass work to prevent transmission

114of the infection it may not work completely to get the infection but it does to transmit it so i'm really proud and support you thank you for everything you do thank you mr valoria next speaker is david duffy and on deck kevin roland i remember your two hours uh is uh do we know if mr duffy's here how you all doing tonight i'm not going to come up here and scream and yell and say you know try to throw facts or anything like that just asking for some choice of the parents whether you think the masks work or they don't you know whatever everybody wants to fight there's people out there wishing death on other people it's ridiculous just quit fighting let everybody make their own decision and just keep going there's no reason to

115sit here and fight i mean you got what 40 something people out here that want to talk another 50 people sitting out there screaming and yelling got people wanting to fight all over the place there's no reason for it so tired of getting told what to do by everybody getting harassed out in the street over it there's just no reason for it i mean us as americans we get choice we got freedoms there's no reason why that needs to be taken away it's just simple let the kids be kids you said earlier in one of the meetings or whatever i was watching that uh the schools ain't doing that good right now why don't we work on that we're gonna sit here for weeks on end fighting about masks there's no reason for it just

116let it be if you want to wear a mask wear a mask you want to wear two wear too you don't want to wear one don't wear one everybody's different ain't no reason to put a blanket on everybody just let it go just give the parents their rights you want to wear one wear one if not don't wear one teach them that's what they're in school for you all have a good night thank you thank you mr duffy uh next speaker is kevin roland on deck sandy campanella hello everyone my name is kevin roland let me take this off too tall for this podium my name is kevin roland i'm an attorney i practice here in vero beach i focus on divorce and family law so as you can imagine i spent a lot of

117my time resolving conflicts so that people can work together for their children and i know that the issues that affect children and parents parents rights i mean that that is a way to get people's emotions aroused i see it every day and so uh you know it's been a long 19 months or so since the school's closed last year and it's been a long night tonight so i empathize with everybody on that stage i empathize with you that you have to take into consideration a lot of different variables the law all the different interest groups in the interests of your teachers and your students and the the efficient functioning of schools and keeping schools open i empathize with you and i would i would encourage everyone listening to have the same level of empathy these

118are really hard choices these are really hard choices and i would ask i i would also say that all these people speaking tonight they didn't get the opportunity to hear what i heard at the superintendent's workshop most of them didn't this data-driven site-specific approach that the superintendent laid out to do the most with taking a very balanced approach i stand now in support of that and i would urge you whatever procedural mechanism you have to do when this comment session ends to implement that approach right now tonight because you can tweak it in a couple weeks but that approach struck me as an amazing leap forward in good faith towards something that is narrowly tailored right that implements the least restrictive means to achieve this this necessary goal that you guys have which is keeping

119everybody safe and balancing all these interests i found that a policy uh proposal an incredibly balanced approach that could be tweaked over time i heard a lot of suggestions from the board members about different things that could be done delegate that authority you hired this guy to lead us through tough times he led us through reopening the schools last year and he's on the ground with his leadership team and he's in the best position to implement these changes now give him that authority tonight don't wait if you wait and you take an all or nothing approach you send you risk sending a political message to everybody and i would tell everybody on both sides of this issue what i tell all of my clients you want to take an all or nothing approach careful you

120might just get what you ask for thank you mr roland next speaker sandy campanella and next speaker after that is johnny blaine jennings good evening i'm sandy campiglia i'm a resident of indian river county co-founder of the real we the people of indian river county and a member of moms for liberty i have sent you all an email that you have so kindly ignored so i will ask you here publicly to kindly reply as i reiterate my email before i do that let me remind you of my son's medical condition october of 2020 after eight weeks of masking my seven-year-old son had the worst breath to the point of it waking me up out of a dead sleep one morning he came downstairs after waking up and told me his mouth hurt um you all

121have seen the pictures i called the dentist i brought him in for an er visit the dentist explained to me that he had mask mouth i was confused i had no idea what she was talking about what is mask mouth she hands me two pieces of paperwork front and front and back um explaining what it is how to avoid it and she said not to put him back in a mask until the infection cleared he was on medicated mouthwash for two solid weeks and the struggles uh back and forth with the school board and the principal i finally got him out of a mask well it's an infection in the mouth directly relating to masking inflammation of his gums thrush on his tongue an abscess underneath his tongue when you wear a mask your mouth

122breathing breathing your saliva dries up your saliva is what kills bacteria in your mouth this was explained to me by his dentist so his condition was directly related to masking he got an exemption the school lost it or they misplaced it yet he didn't wear one from october 2020 on so on august 29th eve before your mandate madness resumed i made sure that i emailed the principal to clear up the confusion because dr moore said exemptions carried over the school said he needed to renew the principal honored his exemption i picked my son up on monday the 30th to find out he was fine that he was forced into a mask he was visibly upset he was confused i told him in the morning under no circumstances was he to put a mask on his

123face do you have any idea what this does to a child so he demands that he will not return to school until his teacher came back uh he i was confused i didn't know she was gone he wanted he said she was sick he wanted to check on her so we sent her a message in the dojo asked her how she was feeling i jokingly told her my son refuses to turn to school return until you come back she tells me i'm so happy to return tomorrow i tested positive for kova ten days ago my symptoms have been manageable so can somebody please explain to me why i was never notified why not one of the 17 parents in the class were notified that a teacher tested positive it wasn't her fault she did what

124she was supposed to you all hit it the department of health hit it so we pick and choose when we notify parents we pick and choose when to quarantine our children don't get me wrong i don't agree with quarantining healthy children i can promise you this month i will not quarantine my son at your or the department of health recommendation i am letting you know in advance if he's sick i will keep him home and we won't beg you anymore we're not going to comply we've begged you for 13 months now it is our decision we have the parental rights bill and moving forward we will not comply thank you we're going to take a 10 minute break we've been here for a long time today we will reconvene at uh we'll make it 8

12510 7 minutes convened the meeting at 8 10. thank you everybody for giving us a few minutes break and perhaps you as well we have um looks like six more citizen inputs and then we will proceed with the agenda and the next speaker is johnny blaine jennings if and in on deck is sarah gorman no thanks thank you good evening my name is jay blaine jennings and uh mr superintendent members of the school board ladies and gentlemen i'm not here because i'm angry and i'm in no political party persuasion per se i'm here because of the uh it's an interesting issue when i was waiting in the lobby i saw a couple of things caught my eye one sign said children are our future stronger together let us choose and i thought about this issue

126is not one size fits all and i just want to remind the uh the board that this is a life and death issue so the question becomes with the masking since one size does not fit old and in the lobby i saw people who are angry there's a spirit of division in this country and the some people are happy with that and i heard people in the lobby cursing each other angry so i'm thinking as intelligent as we are with this life and death issue can't we come together and resolve an issue everyone doesn't want to wear the mask and there are people who do so how do you satisfy the people because after all the children are the children of the parents so the question is in my mind what do the parents want

127for their children in each of the districts each of you i think represent a district so it behooves you then to find out what the people want in their district have you met with them have you spoken to them have you taken a survey or poll to find out what the people think should happen to their children you have that authority so i encourage you to go back to the drawing board find out what the people want that way with this life and death issue it's not your decision it's their decision these are their children and i leave you with this if you would revisit the issue and find out solutions to the questions as they may arise from the people and then let's try to make this school district one district under god indivisible

128with liberty and justice for all of the children thank you thank you mr jennings uh next speaker is uh sarah gorman on dec uh joni kennedy good evening members of the board i just got off of a 10-hour shift so i didn't write anything but i am a mother i also work with aerosol sprays all day long so i've had to take board exams for ppe i've watched people out here that do not know how to properly wear masks i've watched you touch your face multiple times walking away while i'm speaking placing your hands on your mask and then touching your desk passing candy back and forth that's cross contamination um you're sending kids with level one masks which does not prevent them from getting coveted they have markers i have messaged you multiple times

129i have called you because my five-year-old son has come home with level one surgical mask that i don't want him to wear because it's full of dirt food and bacteria that he is constantly breathing in all day masked mouth is a real thing we see it in the dental office all the time and to constantly have kids wearing a mask breathing in that same bacteria not having them change it out is unacceptable parents should have a choice it should be up to god and the parents what happens with your child should not be up to you if somebody needs to wear a mask or not if you want to wear a mask that's fine but you also need to wear it properly wearing it down below your nose touching your face while you have your

130mask on and touching other things is not okay you're cross-contaminating and it's making it worse because you're spreading more bacteria and that is all thank you thank you mr foreman next speaker joni kennedy on deck kevin browning [Music] i just want everyone to realize how much time we have wasted with this comical issue where we could be focused on greater issues for our kids are we allowed to ask you guys questions okay um i just want if i could ask the question i would ask if you guys have had the flu before ever in your life i would also ask if you have had covid this whole time and i would also ask you if you if you have kids and if you would want them to wear a mask instead of hearing good morning

131or how are you when my kids walk into school all they hear is pull up your mask where is your mask instead of studying their spelling words and study for math they're studying for a covid test that was a joke what you focus on is what you get the main thing that kids are focused on in school these days is if they're gonna get sick that's all they hear adults talk about whether it's for a mask or not for a mask all they hear is mask mask mask be safe be safe instead of having fun laughing with their friends they can't even play tag at recess because they can't touch someone like this is just ridiculous it makes me so sad for kids everyone says social distance that is the last thing that we should

132be doing maybe a little physical distance but social distancing is not what we need it's the furthest thing we need kids need to be socially closed as well as everyone it doesn't matter if you want to wear a mask or not it's your choice kids are able to make their own choices please let them choose please let us choose directed at barefoot our kids want bare faces dr moore no more mass please thank you very much um next speaker is kevin browning and following mr browning is steve jones well i know you have a hard decision to make you always do so i'd like to start by thanking you for your work mr chairman barefoot mr superintendent mrs rosario dr schiff and mrs behrenborg thank you dr jones you know i love you he did

133a lot of hard work for kids all the over the years as the school year drew to an end last year we grew a little happy to see the possibility of mass going away but who could have known that this delta variant could be so contagious and dangerous with so many people filling hospitals and getting sick especially children with two well-loved teachers in our very own district dying 13 teachers in miami dying i must say that i'm grateful and happy that you've tried to do the right thing to protect everyone i have family members that teach in this district and i have children in this district as well as many friends and old colleagues in all areas of the system bus drivers teacher assistants principals directors all over so once again i want to thank

134you for doing the right thing to keep them all safe please continue to keep kids in mind thank you mr browning uh steve jones is up next and then tiffany justice it's largely assumed that face masks are safe for children to wear for long periods such as during school but no risk assessment has been carried out proof that they cause harm to children as evidenced by germany's first registry recording the experience of children wearing masks using data on 25 000 children 24 health issues were reported that were associated with wearing masks that fell into the categories of physical psychological and behavioral issues recorded symptoms include irritability headache difficulty concentrating less happiness reluctance to go to school melees impaired learning drowsiness or fatigue they also found 29 percent reported feeling short of breath 26 percent being

135dizzy 17 where i'm willing to move or play hundreds more experienced accelerated respiration tightness in the chest weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness dr jim meehan an ophthalmologist and preventative medicine specialist editor of the medical journal ocular immunology and inflammation also conducted an evidence-based scientific analysis on mask which shows that not only should healthy people not be wearing masks but they could be harmed as a result means suggest that the notion of mask wearing defies common sense and reason he compiled 17 ways that mass can cause harm mass adversely affect respiratory physiological and function mass lower oxygen levels in the blood mask raise carbon monoxide dioxide rather levels in the blood covid enters cells more easily when arterial oxygen levels decline which means wearing a mass could increase cova-19 severity masks trap exhaled virus in

136the mouth in the mask increasing viral infectious load and increasing disease severity covett becomes more dangerous when blood oxygen levels decline the first randomized controlled trial of more than 6 000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of masks against covent infection found they did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection mass guidance before the became politicized 25 2020 uk health authorities published guidance discouraging the use of masks even for health care workers in residential care facilities due to the fact that they don't prevent viral spread february 29 2020 surgeon general jerome adams said quote seriously people stop buying masks they are not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus march 30 2020 the executive director of the world health organization's health emergency program stated quote there is no specific evidence to suggest that

137the wearing a mask by mass population has any particular benefit dr fauci february 20 20 email the typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not effective in keeping out a virus which is small enough to pass through the material i do not recommend you wear a mask and again in march 2020 he said people should not be walking around with masks because it's not providing the protection that people think thank you thank you very much next speaker and the last speaker tiffany justice thank you very much good evening board superintendent moore this is diagresta earlier today during a workshop i heard a district employee say that is the intention of the parents coming and speaking at these board meetings to destroy public education i do not believe this is true what i hear are

138parents that are involved in their children's education and are concerned about their well-being this is about all of us having an equal say in something really important that affects our children many of the parents speaking before you have been coming for over a year and a half i know because i sat in one of those seats and i listened to them plea with us to make masks optional i've listened as parents have articulated how the subclinical harms of masking have hurt their children to the point that they have had to seek medical exemptions it is criminal for elected officials to force parents to be complicit in the abuse of their children when we have such polarity in a community it is the point of boards to mediate between everyone as equals it is time to

139find solutions the state any of its political subdivisions any other governmental entity or any other institution may not infringe on the fundamental rights of the parent to direct the upbringing education and health care and mental health of his or her minor child minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by least restrictive means masks are not the least restrictive means available to you as educators to mitigate the spread of covid in schools we implore you to work to find solutions that are representative of all parent concerns for their children thank you thank you mr justice all right that concludes citizens comment the next item agenda is the consent agenda and if you recall we

140pulled item 5a which will be addressed separately i would like to have a motion to approve the citizens the consent agenda dr schiff dr jones um any further discussion comment call for the vote all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 the consent agenda item number 5a was pulled and i will now turn it over to the superintendent who can review this action item thank you mr chair and if you would please pull the presentation i'm going to present the item very similar today that i did this morning so as i gave the presentation this morning i'll start from the same point of reference this was a data decision a data driven decision so the intent to move the district to the requirement in which it currently under was solely based on numbers

141looking at where we were as a system how fast the spread was and what was turned out to be our inability to maintain the operation of schools 15 days later whatever the number of days is that's still the approach using data to inform the decisions in which we make to ensure that we're providing environments for our students that are safe that are comfortable and they have the opportunity to engage in meaningful instruction we can operate schools where we were and where we are now significantly different places on august 22nd the weekly count of cases for our county was 1174 the week they just closed 688 that is significantly down almost cut in half the percent positivity uh on 822 was 27.69 it went up to 29 this saturday before we implemented uh the mask requirement

142as of yesterday was 20.05 uh and now today is actually under 19. that is significantly down still higher than we would like but it is in fact significantly down and the other data points really looks at hospital emissions uh you can see that number is almost cut in half as well and then percent of beds and icus both down slightly still like to see that in a better situation but obviously we are making progress as a community as it relates to positive cases the impact that we see in our schools is not what it was three weeks ago this looks at the cases now we're drilling down to school site specific cases uh the week of august 22nd we had 331 positive cases in our schools the following week 283 and 176 just last week

143significant reduction in the spread of covet or the impact of covet in our schools now when you look at staff down to 34 down to 15. that is a variable that can't be negotiated it is a hundred percent dependent the operation of schools we need teachers we need bus drivers we need counselors we need the food to be served without them we do not have the ability to operate schools this is our new dashboard i'll go to the next slide because it's just a little bit larger and easier to explain what we have added to our dashboard is the current number of students and the current number of staffs that are out so we've been in school just going on six weeks 939 students who have had coveted throughout the school year that exceeds the

144total number of all of last school year but when you look specifically today the number of students are out the numbers only 68 significantly different this is a system where has 15 15 000 students 68 is a very small percent when you look at the total number of staff it's a hundred and eighty eight that's just right at ten percent of the total teachers and staff in this entire system the largest employer in the county over the last six week 10 percent have been coveted positive but when you look right now today only 13 and of that 13 this is a frozen picture but if you were to scroll down i believe six are actually staff at the district office so the impact at schools is also very minimal right now so this data is

145progressing and what i consider to be a very positive trend want to see this data trend continue what we're looking at is how do we stop this how do we put together a plan that informs the community once and for all what we will do when the data says it's appropriate to do so we don't have to have individuals on separate sides of the hallway or sidewalk yelling and screaming at each other getting in fights and saying completely inappropriate and unprofessional things to other people just because they think differently that's disgusting man that's not who we are as a community we're on different we may think differently but we all live in the same county and people i saw people treated in absolute disrespectful ways and i apologize that i even had to see it

146but no one should be treated that way but can we inform and have a conversation not about one or the other but both creating a plan for everyone so what we look at is creating a metrics to make decisions that are informed on data we have created a combined daily percent which is the impacted covet of schools we create that variable by looking at two different numbers the total percent of staff in a school keeping in mind staff is the driving force as to when we or when we cannot have schools open in the total percent of students in a school we combine those two numbers the sum of those two numbers to create those uh metrics that you see the combined daily percent anything over five has the highest level of mitigation strategies three

147to four the next level of mitigation strategies one to two and then obviously one so it is a progression of mitigation strategies based on the individual specific needs of a school not a blanket requirement where every school has to do something but a very specific and narrow focused a tailored focus on a particular school's reality looking at the impacted covet at that particular school so let's look at this very colorful screen here just to navigate the the presentation you see heading down is the first day of school all the way through to yesterday and then going across are each of our particular schools and some things that i'll point out there are schools up there liberty magnet school not oslo osceola elementary school not one day was it in the red not one day did

148it exceed that five percent liberty magnet school only two days in the orange sebastian river high school only one day in the red just one day total percent but yet we had the same wide sweeping mitigation strategy of the mass requirement with the medical opt out for k-8 so if there's an opportunity to apply mitigation strategies that are appropriate to individual schools versus doing it for everybody that's what we should do this is kind of a study that looks at the percent positive over the course of the school year so now the bottom runs across the screen are the days of school and you could see how fast and how impactful the co the spread of covid was you can see as a school system seven percent of our staff uh was out on a

149certain day and our students we went right up to around uh three percent and then we went down so you're seeing right now we're at one percent for both our student population and our faculty population that is a great sign we want to see that continue this looks at and draws a compelling picture as it relates to the story at beechland elementary school the red bar indicates the days in which it was closed the orange line indicates the staff who had coveted now it doesn't include the staff who was there from mr meyer's curriculum instruction team providing coverage you got coveted but it does provide the number of faculty who are assigned to the school and as you see it continued to go up after we closed the school because we ran out of staff

150in order to provide quality instruction the offset of that is look at the blue and how it continues to go down as the spread goes up it's not going up in an equal proportion to the number of students who are not going to school so parents based on this slide made decisions based on the number of students or the number of staff or what they had heard regarding what was going on not to send their most prized possession their children to school yeah i would do the same thing too but think about that for a minute from a parent's perspective or an educational leader's perspective first and foremost the adult who sends their children to school needs to have a level of security that that building is safe my child will be protected in this

151environment my child will be safe when i send them to school they did not think their children were safe and did not send them to school now you look back as we've returned back the attendance has returned back to um where where it was in a typical school year which is right around 90 to 92 percent so we're at around 89 not a great number by the way we should be around 96 95 96 in elementary schools average daily attendance we hover around 90 92. what we're looking at or what we learned from the trends is that covid moves fast covid spreads fast you're looking at attendance there are clear indications when students stop coming to school we have conditions in which we need to evaluate what i spoke to the board about this morning

152and asking them to consider is a data-driven approach which is very specific in terms of the application to school sites as well as the application of mitigation strategies based on the data it is very responsive to the realities in which we see at specific schools and is not wide in sweeping in its implementation and it ensures at each lay layer of implementation it is time limited we understand the impacts that a mask has on the quality of instruction the ability for a child to comprehend and read the social emotional impacts that it could have there's no debate about that there's no conspiracy around that those are equally valued concerns we want it to be as short i want it to be as short as it possibly has to be but looking at the appropriate metrics

153the reality of the particular school to ensure that that free and appropriate education is always available to families what this screen looks here at is the mitigation strategies that are in place if the combined number of percent of faculty in the percent of students is one percent or less it is a very straightforward mass optional requirement because that's what the data is saying that's what is relevant if it is between that one and two percent that means it's highly recommended i would recommend you wear a mask because we don't want this to get any worse we want to do our part to stop the mitigation or use this medication mitigation strategy to stop the spread when it becomes three to four percent now it would be the opt out where the parent opts out and

154then when we exceed that five percent or go above that five percent it would be uh as it is right now the requirements with the medical opt-out and in in order to move down from one color to the next after two days of being in that color so let's just play the scenario out it was red on monday it was red on tuesday on wednesday we will start the clock ticking as soon as you get back to the percents that are four or under you have to go 10 days to help mitigate the the spread of of the of the of of the virus to move back to the arch so it is time sensitive it's not an extended amount of time we don't have to wait on a board meeting to make that decision

155we have the opportunity to be informed up front we know when the end is in sight and we know where we are moving because we're monitoring it each and every single day so as we look at the data as a whole those are the mitigation strategies that we had in place i i think i've i've reviewed each of them let me just look for a second yes you move to a lower tier after two consecutive days we had that modification today we also added a modification that when you are in that red category it is a a medical opt-out and if there are pre-existing conditions that would impede uh your their pre-existing conditions you have the opportunity to contact the district in which we would facilitate conversations and dialogue to come to a conclusion on

156what the appropriate implementation of face coverings would be so in that red you have two two ways to opt out one of which is a medical opt-out you have that documentation on file uh if there are um parameters or situations that in in effect or impede your ability to get that medical note there still is the opportunity to work with the district team uh who will facilitate conversations to determine what the best appropriate pathway forward would be those were the two modifications that are now on the plan when you look at the reality right now and this goes through yesterday and tomorrow pelican ireland is pie will be in the orange this includes all schools right now we have pre-k through eight this takes us through high schools and you see both of our high

157schools are doing extremely well my prediction and making a prediction with covet is not the smartest decision but when you run this data out we'll spend the overwhelming majority of our school year in a option that is controlled by the parent and when it goes above that five percent a it's limited to that specific school and b it's taking the appropriate steps to make that as short as possible to get the spread back under control very similar to what we just finished doing that is the recommendation my record additionally my recommendation in order to operationalize this is that it begins the day after the next board meeting that allows me to communicate train principles do the appropriate notifications allow the secondary schools or high schools the opportunity to get a medical opt-out or have the

158meetings with the district team to facilitate those particular conversations this is taking absolutely every possible step that we can take to be sensitive to the reality respecting as best we can everyone's opinion while at the same time creating a pathway forward that allows us to understand in what conditions in why those conditions are being applied so it's not overarching it's not sweeping it's looking at very specific schools it will allow our principals the opportunity on a daily basis to remind the students to give them almost incentives hey guys this is where we're at we want to stay green remind them of the mitigation strategies hey guys we're armed just make sure we're doing these things if we go red two particular days let's keep those strategies in place um the only the other difference that

159i neglected to mention is when we did the opt out for parents at the opening of school years it was done in a way that was not successful it was communicated just prior to the opening of schools that we went from optional to highly recommended with the opportunity to opt out and we asked families to have that conversation between the parents and their children and if it was the family's decision to opt out to send the note and we would note it and we would honor that opt-out twenty percent total of our families made the decision to opt out when we walked schools at the close of the second or end going into that third week only 20 of our students were wearing them we will enforce the will of the parents through that opt-out

160moving forward we will enforce it based on what the parents ask us to do if they opt out fine and dandy but if you don't opt out and that medical or the um the opt out is not on file we're going to ask the student to comply with that opt out because it's not on file also faculty and staff are in my are required to wear masks when social distancing isn't possible um that is in place through the end of october through two to mlus and we will circle back and look at where we are with our faculty and staff leading into that particular time and see if that is still a necessary step for for those two bodies of of of employees so the recommendation that was updated based on the the conversation today

161was to continue uh with the current structure moving through the day following the next board meeting which is the 28th which gives me the time to operationalize the initiative uh i would report back to the board if there's any modifications or changes on the 28th and then i would over the course of time continue to bring updates to this system uh to the board to see if changes or modifications would be necessary and that is the item that's before you know all right thank you dr moore um we had a robust conversation this afternoon i would say that that all school board members asked lots of questions made suggestions um i think for example mrs rosario was the one that pointed out that something could change overnight and that was why this two day it

162had to stay in the next color for two days before it was implemented we really struggled with and and obviously each of the board members will speak to this in a minute we really struggled with this how do you deal with the exception the the the child and mrs berenberg had very specific situations where a parent could not get to a doctor or didn't have a doctor yet the child had an issue that would require would normally let's say uh get a medical opt-out or perhaps i think they're you know might have a real problem wearing a mask some sort of a phobia and that's why it was suggested to put in place call it a helpline help number or called a concierge service where instead of putting the principal in a position to decide

163the principal would direct that parent to someone at the district who could work with that parent and hopefully resolve the issue so that where a medical opt-out was not convenient or they didn't know how to go about it we could facilitate that for them trying to make it as easy as possible so i applaud the my fellow board members for taking what i think is a really uh really good mr rollins referenced that in his public comment data driven approach no emotion and it's clear that each of these schools have a different set of circumstances and this gives the principles an opportunity and the district to oversee the data and if a change is required then it will be put in place so having said that i i will i'm sure that each of you

164has something they would like to say does somebody want to start nobody wants to start dr schiff how about you sure what i appreciate about this strategy is that it is as data driven as i think as possible but this is this is now the third time that i've seen it and each time it becomes both clearer to me and i understand the depth of it i increasingly understand the depth of it so i acknowledge the the degree to which the superintendent is trying to drive us by data and not by emotion and not by uh opinion in effect that this is driven by data and this is driven by data as determined by public health um we had a robust conversation about it this afternoon as you mentioned this is mr barefoot so at

165nine o'clock at night i'm not going to repeat everything that i or anybody else said this afternoon i invite anybody to watch that workshop thank you mr roland for watching that um but i think this is as good a strategy as it's going to get at the moment um i appreciate that it may take a couple of weeks to get everyone up to speed on understanding it on understanding the implementation on informing parents and families and with the addition as we discussed this afternoon of for those who for one reason or another cannot get to a doctor or there's some impediment to that we as the district will create strategies for how to work with them so that they can um keep both their child and the rest of our community as safe as possible

166um so for that i think we're now we're at a point where we are you're not asking us to clarify you're not asking us to approve this tonight you are i thought we were approving it on the 28th no it's action protection okay so we've moved it to action with the amendments we're not waiting until the 29 the 20. okay got it all right um i support it i think it's a good plan i think it's a good plan i would have liked if we could have implemented sooner and i understand the need of a district and of 15 000 kids um closer to 17 18 000 when we include charters who are not subject to this policy but our fifteen thousand plus our nearly two thousand faculty and staff or above two thousand faculty

167and staff that it takes a while till everybody is familiar with exactly how this will be implemented and i understand the need for two weeks to do that so that's it so i i may have more later but for the moment that's it all right going down the road mrs rosario thank you dr moore for the tiered mitigation strategies i see that you added the implementation of temperature checks when uh there are when we're in the red so i appreciate you adding that what i do not see are the wellness checks in the orange that was not added there was a we talked about that earlier today oh sorry through the chat the the wellness checks um oh my i don't have the the updated one in front of me i have it right here

168do you need to see it just for just for a second so i would just add the wellness checks in the orange which is what we all agreed on earlier today which i don't i don't have i don't have a problem doing that yeah so i know that's what we talked about earlier all right so it's just as we approve i can correct um the other thing is um i i mentioned today and for the public who didn't hear the earlier um uh session i i highly suggest that you watch it and that you um take in all of the comments that were that were stated i do agree as well as some of my as all of the board members here that this is certainly the most data that we have received in terms

169of being able to understand how kovid affects each school it's something that i've been asking for for a while because i wanted to be able to say and justify the reason why this district decided to vote to mandate masks for k through eight um at the previous meeting when that was uh voted on we weren't able to see that information we only relied on what was given to us uh verbally but we weren't able to actually see it and it certainly wasn't um available in the uh dashboard unless you actually scroll through this the schools and count everyone and it's it's quite tedious to do that that said what was provided here in terms of data is um is appreciated so i i do understand um that we do have schools something that i've been

170mentioning quite often that have not been and thank you for reiterating that today that have not been affected um by covid in in the red sort of sort of peak areas where they were high and i didn't think that we needed a mask mandate for all i don't believe that we should have students receiving instruction in the same way and i don't know that and i know that we shouldn't have uh mask mandate one for all um so this actually makes sense so that individual schools can make that decision based on what is actually happening at the ground level at those schools now that said i still have a very serious issue with the medical opt-out portion or the the the medical reasons in the red area in the highest tier there when schools reach

171five percent or more uh the first bullet reads face coverings required for students with revised parent opt out for medical reasons i've said this over and over again i mean if i could cut this in half and vote for green yellow or orange i would definitely do that i would vote for red if it weren't for that top bullet but i can't support that because the executive order does not require medical opt out the department of health rule does not require a medical opt-out that is supported by richard conkerin the department of education um addressed uh dr moore in an email and mr barefoot asking for a response as to why this district with members voting 3-2 under the superintendent's recommendation mandated masks with a medical opt-out when that was not supported by either the

172order or the rule and it certainly just is not supported by the parental rights bill so i because of that i'm still firmly standing on my decision to to not support this for that one particular reason i wish the board would have come to some other decision earlier today so that i could stand in unison with you all on this but i just i just can't because we we're still in violation of again executive order the department of health rule the uh commissioner richard concoran's mandate and the uh parental rights bill i just can't we are not above the law we cannot have a mask mandate now let me just share this i'm not against masks i've said this before and i'll say it over and over again i'm not against masks i'm against the

173mandate of it i'm against anyone mandating it for children when we are not the sole uh caretakers of every single child medically emotionally and psychologically that is the that is the sole responsibility of the parent and the guardian that is not the sole responsibility of the school district or at least not this board some people are saying well you know you you don't have your rights or your rights are taken away from you when it infringes on the rights of others well that works vice versa too if you're mandating the mass then it infringes on the rights of those parents who don't want it so we have this quandary here and it's quite unfortunate i never have said that the virus is not real i do believe that we do have a virus people are

174getting sick unfortunately it is it is really very very sad um but here we are and i do not want us to move forward um this board member doesn't want us to move forward with the constant back and forth as to when do we wear the mask when do we not wear the mask when do we have parents opt out on their own when do we have parents medically opt out it's just not uh it's just ridiculous and if we have to constantly be looking at the data the dashboard and figure out are we two percent are we three percent have we been five percent for one day five percent for two days uh imagine the kids imagine kids you know uh wondering you know do i have to wear the mask today or maybe

175i don't have to wear the mask today you know there are a lot of issues that are going on and i know that i have sent um dr moore several complaints um from parents uh and several of the ones that i heard today are very similar to the ones that i have submitted to him for investigation um that are inappropriate and and quite honestly uh bordering on um just intimidation for children which is absolutely unacceptable um but i i and i and i appreciate the fact that he has um quickly um uh taken care of those issues uh i but there are still issues um that persist that continue i will end with this by saying um that there have been some concerns about um me making decisions and i'm just speaking for me i

176know that there were uh comments about board members making political decisions or making decisions that were politically driven um so let me just speak about on my behalf on my behalf this board member jacqueline rosario can absolutely make a decision on my own i do not make decisions that are based on any political entity i do not make decisions that are based on my base i do not make decisions or vote in favor of organizations in favor of individuals or in favor of any community group i vote on this diocese according to the information that is presented um and what is in my dis in my view the right decision that would be and what was mentioned earlier best buy kids best buy all kids and that's what i was elected to do i do

177not mix apples and oranges i am perfectly capable of supporting different groups and different organizations without having the influence on my vote it is absolutely doable people do it all the time but being supportive of everyone does not necessarily mean that i personally did not or i ran for a school board member with other intentions because that certainly is not the case so i still support the work of the district i do believe um that we will get through this somehow and we will be stronger together but i i just cannot support this um this tiered mitigation strategy i as i mentioned um simply for the mandate of medical reasons thank you mr rosario dr jones thank you first of all dr moore thank you to you and your staff this took a lot of

178work as many people have said the data driven i think is important making decisions for our individual schools and as a former principal i would look at that say okay we're going to do this together i'm at the high school i don't want to lose any time with these students i want these students in school we are going to do this together so we have a goal in mind so that we get through the school year we have prom we have graduation and everything else one big mental health issue and i said this at the workshop today it was someone sent us a article written by a marjory stoneman douglas student and she said yeah nobody likes masks we understand that but what would really hurt us now is if we lose school time dr

179moore said earlier and this ninth grade has really not had a normal school year if you will i want that so very very much i think everyone up here would say our overall goal is to keep students and staff safe and yes it's affecting more adults than it does students but our overall goal is to keep students and staff safe i think we do need a little bit of time dr board to get information to the parents take some time to get that out and give them the information but again as a principal i know exactly what i would do with this the medical opt-out if a student needs a medical opt-out the student needs a medical opt-out and i think there were different doctors that you could see i am glad that it's not

180going on the principal shoulder they've had a rough couple years they are doing due diligence every single day to make sure that their students are getting the best instruction possible very very glad that it's going to go to 9 through 12. i mentioned this at the very beginning i voted for the k-8 because i wanted the vote to pass but you know we don't know where we're going we we'd like to predict that we will continue to decrease but when we talked about the positivity rate of the 12 or school districts who are mandating mask um we have one of the higher positivity rates a couple weeks ago was 31 i think we're down to 20 or 19 right now so that that concerns me and again um it's it's everybody working together on that

181we certainly discussed today about our parents right bill and what everybody is expected there and what we're trying to do i don't think anyone could could predict a pandemic but i as a board member think that i am supporting the state constitution when we talk about safety for students it's not like i'm just throwing in anybody's face and i and when i'm passionate about something i'm passionate about something i want this district to move forward i know we can do it together um miss berenborg mentioned at our meeting today about making sure that any parent who had an issue with getting a medical opt out and i know some principals have had some calls on that but again i like the fact that um we're going to the district office but whoever helped you with

182this i'm again i'm guessing our power bi person and a few others but um i have a feeling that um some other um districts will look at this i think you said the only other one close was lake county dr moore through the church that is correct lake county has something um almost but not nearly as good so i just just in general when we talk about safety you know that's our overall goal we talked about this today too again 40 some people spoke they're passionate both ways understood but the the people sitting up here we have a huge responsibility and um safety is number one for me thank you mrs barenborg yeah um you know dr moore we had a long conversation this afternoon about this and um you know trying to get people

183to come to the middle on this is really really difficult and first of all i applaud this plan i think uh tiered mitigation where you're looking at bicampus is important because um again i'm going to go back to the old you know in the classroom when somebody does something wrong and the teacher punishes the whole class everybody gets upset by that because it wasn't their fault same thing here we're punishing the whole class because of a campus or two having having a higher number i mean if you look there were two campuses that didn't have these high numbers and yet everybody had the same mass policy in place so go figure you know why are some campuses we all have the same policy in place why are some campuses not having the issues that other

184campuses are so when it came down to it and i looked at this very very specifically there was a a caveat something i asked for and something that i will say thank you dr schiff for bringing up i'm not against the masks for when it's needed i agree with you mrs rosario i have a problem with only a medical opt-out and i brought that up and brought that up and brought that up today because what you're doing is you're telling a parent you don't have the right to make that decision without a medical person helping you make that decision and so we've now taken the right of a parent away when we do that so what i asked for today was either getting rid of the medical reasons or adding another part to that to

185allow a parent who is got another issue of why it's so important to them that their child doesn't need to wear a mask to please have another venue for that and i believe you know we talked about an asterisk which is what i see here which is not what you showed on there i know i know because you didn't have time um but you mentioned the comment and i wrote it down when you presented that that in order for this i'm going to read it because i don't think it's been read okay for students with documented extenuating circumstances for which a medical slash idea 504 exemption cannot be obtained and who are in need of a face covering exemption please contact the district designee for district case review for a possible exemption that is not

186what i thought i was going to be agreeing to this afternoon what we talked about was that because to me that tells you again that somebody else is making the decision for the parent so when i'm what i'm going to ask for again is a parent has the right to make this decision ultimately for their child that's my true belief okay do i want a lot of kids wearing masks when there's a high level and everything sure if that's what people feel like could help but ultimately it's that parent that child so my concern again with the statement that's written here is that now if there's a district case review for a possible exemption that that's not what i think we agreed to today at least what we came to the middle on um what

187i thought we came to the middle on was there there'll be somebody at the district office that a parent can call other than having to go out and see a doctor and say hey here's the reason why i really don't want my child to wear a mask and here's why and then they can make those um just like you have a parent that comes to you with another problem they help you work it through right with the parent and that parent might have a really good reason why and it might not be a medical it might be another issue that you might not consider it's a medical so my question is who at the district office is going to decide that that is going to be a possible exemption or not you know i know

188that we're glad that that didn't get put on a principle but the principal actually knows a parent real well and knows a child real well um i understand but the concern i have now is okay so we have this ability to have this little tweak that i asked for but we still don't have that tweet what we have instead is somebody else at the district office is going to make that decision that's how i read this so i i think probably the best way for you is to tell me what what you heard because as i as i read it um needing an exemption please contact the district designee for district case review that is problem solving uh with the family to to come to a solution is the answer always going to yield in

189an exemption the answer is no it may not but if there is the problem solving to determine is it providing an additional resource is it making a connection to to a service where a family cannot afford um that was dialogue held by the the board if that doesn't capture it that would be additional dialogue by the board so you made the statement when you were presenting this to everybody just a little while ago you and i wrote it down uh you made a comment that this would be under pre-existing conditions so again here we are saying that a district person has to decide that if there's a pre-existing condition with a child okay prove it so now i can give you that exemption that that's the concern i have i i understand but i captured

190what the consensus of what i heard at the workshop if that's not the consensus then let me know see if it's something i can support so what is it that you're asking for instead is sorry um actually i i agree with mrs barenborg thank you because and i think it's the intent but i'm not sure the words i mean i read it and i didn't necessarily read the same thing that mrs barenborg but as we discussed today words matter but the intent is exactly what i thought we discussed which was a principal can refer the parent to someone at the district to discuss the situation and it may or may not have what we would call a medical component to it there may be some other issues it's talked through with the parent and and

191together and i'm going to say together i don't know that word was used earlier this afternoon the parent and whoever speaking with maybe it's a healthcare professional that a nurse is on staff at one of the schools i don't know can reach a conclusion um but i but i but i do agree that that was that that was my understanding is that we have a lot of flexibility and it would be a discussion between that parent or guardian and someone at the district mrs rosario thank you i would i would agree we earlier today we never talked about any extent uh pre-existing conditions that was never a topic of discussion it did not come up at all but what i do see here that we can remove mrs berenberg you let me know if this

192is acceptable to you for students with documented extenuating circumstances for which a medical idea 504 exemption cannot be obtained and who are in need of a face covering exemption please contact the district designee for the exemption not for a review not for someone else to decide that not just for contact the district designee for the exemption that's what i thought i was voting for tonight okay so dr moore that's remove the four district case review for a possible and remove those words yeah did you get that i hear something else because i hear from dr moore a level of responsibility of the district to ensure that we are operating in the best interests of all families of all children and that there are circumstances this is not to deny that parents have their children's best

193interests at heart and for those who said today do any of you have children in the district yeah i do yeah i do and yeah it's personal so please stop accusing me of not having that but if we take out on this for district case review and take out for a possible exemption does that satisfy your concern mrs behrenborg should i just say no it's not what you just said if we take out um for district case review and the just she she said and just the word possible for for an exemption or an exemption so i have or just district case review is fine because now you've opened it up to case by case yeah yeah that's that's right but then you still have something and then that's reviewing your distribution saying no no

194we're getting rid of the district side we're getting rid of the words district case review contract that contact the district designee and then you're saying get rid of for district case review and a possible exemption and the sentence that contact the district designate right can you read can you read exactly what you're what you're intending mrs barrenburg once again sure i'll read what i think we just came up with um for students with documented extenuating circumstances for which a medical slash idea slash 504 exemption cannot be obtained and who are in need of a face covering exemption please contact the district designee i think that's fine i can live with that i think that's fine and and that's a matter of um you know dr moore and whoever that district designee coming up with with

195you know their own process on how you interact with that parent or guardian who's making that request and everyone's going to be a little different because if it weren't black and white it would if it were black and white you'd be able to get it unless you didn't have a doctor didn't know where to go that's always a possibility i think that works but we can go ahead doc i'm just going to ask dr mora with that wording do you see any issues because the first wording i saw as you call the district you get an exemption so what is do you have any concern about that wording or mr gresta i'm sorry well i'll answer them suzanne can feel free to add in if the intent is to have the out where you can

196call in and get an exemption why have the red why have the red that's what i said if it is to problem solve with the parents to connect them to the resources so if it is a pass-through to say all you have to do is do this additional step you know it's it's you know to play on words you you can get you know we're going to run you through the ringer to get you the the exemption what i captured in the conversation this morning was an additional dialogue for the story that miss berenborg said where the student couldn't afford and had to go to the doctor and the doctor said they had to go to a series of therapy sessions in order to make a determination and i said well we have that particular

197staff and we can provide that particular resource and i also said that we we do that problem solving right off the bat and when we did it initially we allowed for that additional time are there additional circumstances in which a medical exemption would not be granted from a medical doctor or a therapist but still in the best interest of a child yes i don't think that's that's that's not you know earth-shattering information and when that becomes the case that would be the dialogue of their conversation that is an additional step to vet what that would be in some cases it's just i you know i i need a middle exemption for a b or you know i want one well you know it's you have to implement with fidelity we did not implement with fidelity

198um so as ms behrenborg just read it um i i don't think i have an issue but as we would operationalize it is problem solving with parents in the best interests of children and i yet today give me the name of the principle where those issues are happening and where students are being acted like or treated like that not on my watch not on my watch so when i when we have that information and i would dare to say not on the principal's watch either but it's connecting our families to the resources they need so we all can be in schools and not make ourselves with the news cameras sitting over there trying to get the best sound bite they can get which i probably just gave them um to put us on the news

199and make us lose respect and make us lose respect with with those who were charged to serve so as miss baronborg wrote it i i don't have an issue with that did we capture that let's go okay did um but it doesn't i just want to be transparent and that it will not yield a exemption every single time okay doctor dr moore dr moore it may not but the goal would be what's in the best interest of the child dr moore let me let me clarify two things for this okay number one we're only talking about when a school and individual school goes into red so it's not like it's going to be overwhelming let's hope again we're with the whole district because if it is overwhelming with the whole district i'm sure we'll be

200back here again oh gosh okay so now think about it that way think about you've got a couple of individual issues going on at one or two schools okay think about it that way the other thing i want you to do is think about the fact that you just said i can't support it you don't have a vote we do what what part did you see and and i i just want you to understand something that just like we're not supposed to tell you how to direct things to do with it with the district on a day-to-day basis i want to remind you that you have thrown this now into our court and when people say that we're not supposed to change words on policies and things like that that's exactly what we're supposed to

201do right now we're supposed to say what can we live with for our vote we each get one vote i want to be able to vote for this i do i want to be able to stop what's going on in our community i want us to come together and i don't know why we have to keep just taking words and hashing them you know if you can live with that let's live with that and let's see if it causes a problem down the road you know we're looking at trying to put something in place here where we can calm everything down and have a plan for when a school goes back into that red but we have now put masks on all our kids and we have two schools that have never had an issue

202we've had four that had minor issues and why did those schools not have the issues and we've had other schools with major issues i don't know because they're all having the same mass policy going on so as a scientist i'm sitting there thinking i can't work with that data i have no idea and that's because we're dealing with a virus that we don't know and everybody is sitting there saying masked work masks don't work we don't know we don't know if they work or not and but what we have to do is we have to calm the jets here and we have to come up with a plan that we can all agree with support and put five votes on it and the five votes that i want to see is what we can live

203with so we're not taking away a right of a parent to make that medical decision for their child and right now that's what this says and so what i'm asking for is yeah take those words off get to the just district designee period whoever that is and it doesn't have to be a nurse by the way because if it's a nurse now we got that other issue going on again what i'm saying is that's going to happen when you have one or two schools in the red again dr moore if we go back to a lot of schools in the red bring it back to us bring it back to us when it's a problem let me let me just clarify k through eight medical exemptions are already in the high schools are the ones

204that do not have them um the time to wait to submit an exemption uh isn't when you are in red it's going into the next two weeks so the decisions are already made and we're not being reactionary so the intent of what the conversation or point is is to facilitate the dialogue to determine how we can best meet the needs of the child not a play on onwards just simply looking at the the simple criterias that are in place and giving every opportunity to work with the family and the child to determine what is in the best interest of that child that's how i take it and if it is you know if that's the the will of the parent in the will of the individuals who who serve that work the solution's going to

205be positive it's going to be positive it may take hours to to get to but i i've never seen that where it it wasn't and we you need to treat the mitigations fact the factors the criteria with the highest level of respect if you put a plan in place you need to follow the plan that's been created so as we create a plan i i i don't want to give the perception that you know all you have to do is is go to this committee and they'll give you one going to the the committee is to problem solve those very unique situations where the resources isn't there or there is in fact something that may not be medical that impedes the ability of the child to focus in school i get it i i don't

206see as you have voiced it as it being any issue to implement i honestly don't so you can live with the statement um and put contact the district designate period well what's the first part of that sentence the whole thing that you had written i didn't change anything else all we did was just get rid of those last couple words right and they would they will facilitate the conversation and figure out if we have an issue where a parent feels like that control was taken out of their hands and they can come to a board member and we can talk to you and we can deal with that name the time that i haven't brought a solution that that's right that's my point okay so if that's the case i can support this here's here's

207the next part of this because um we've got two issues here that you brought forward one is to continue for two more weeks with what we've got in place what i'm going to ask is that and i know it's hard to do this overnight can this possibly be done by monday very very honestly um i do not want to do that to principals i do not want to do that to assistant principals i do not want to do that to teachers no no here's what i'm asking for no no no what i'm asking for is instead of us going immediately to green yellow orange and red okay be instead of going two weeks of just like we've been doing or two weeks of going right or immediately going right to this let's let's meet in

208the middle on that too okay what i'm asking for now is let's just go to red on here for the next week or two however long you think it's going to take to put this into place with that exact thing that we just talked about how is that different that's that's the same exact thing that we're doing now that's what we're doing now right except for well except for the medical reason part no medical reasons no it's still the same thing it right now we have what's the plan which is supposed to uh expire tomorrow today the k through eight is expiring today right tomorrow tomorrow so right now we have a mass mandate in place with a medical reason to be to expire tomorrow that's the same exact thing as what is in the

209red right here except for with the asterisk that i just talked about that's what i'm asking for that's not gonna that's that's the only thing that needs to be it's just for two weeks it's already doing that no if we're gonna do it we're not gonna do any mask mandate right now we are under if we were going to um move forward for the next two weeks or there's supposed to be this wait period then all of the schools should go to depending again if we continue with the red then those schools who have no issues are still going to have a mass mandate it defeats the purpose of individualizing each school and giving each school the opportunity to make the decision according to where that school is look at osceola magnet osceola magnet has

210had zeros ones twos one zero zero one two and yet we're going to ask them for the next two weeks to continue the mask mandate on those children the same thing with some of these other schools um dodger town dodger town is the same thing who's the other one liberty magnet school liberty magnus school they haven't had any issues some of the other ones even let's just look at we did osceola magnet right oslo oslo middle school same thing over the last several days it's been when they were orange last three two one one one one why are we going to mandate for the next two weeks those schools and those children to wear masks when they don't need to they're not in the red yes sir barefoot all right dr jones at our workshop

211today dr moore suggested two more weeks or in that three days this week five days next week um probably going through that monday i'm sorry um i really really think our schools need time to prepare for this i really think we need to get the information out to our parents so they know where we're going um the data information that he gave us today i think we were all in agreement on it's it's a focus for where we need to go with individual schools but we just can't say tomorrow you don't have to do this the next day you don't have to do this keep it like it is what he suggested at the workshop and i didn't hear any discussion at that time that we move into it when it's time that we are

212ready to do it mr barefoot what is there to implement when we mandated masks when the board collective three two vote mandated masks two weeks ago that was implemented within days parents were not given an opportunity to call a doctor even and make an appointment with enough time to get a medical opt-out letter days the what we discussed earlier and understood and everybody was on the same page that all of these bullet points have been in place within our safe schools plan from the beginning of the school year the only thing that has been added are the temperature checks that i can understand if needs to plan because we have to buy the thermometers and establish who's going to stand at what exit or entrance and take the temperature checks if you are in the

213red other than that there is nothing new in here to implement that needs to be planned no i'm not at the ground level you are right you're the operational uh ceo of of the district the day-to-day operations but honestly truly none of this is new right now everybody is in the red until tomorrow so decreasing that one medical opt out so that parents can opt out in the orange and the yellow and the green for the schools that are appropriate to their individual numbers i think is appropriate i think that can be done on monday but you're also adding in this the whole level of the high schools the high schools i'm talking k through eight right now correct but they're talking about the mandate the mandate was k through eight correct but you're also

214asking for this policy to be implemented sooner rather than later without considering that we've got five thousand kids in two different high schools and a number of employees and management and administrative decisions that have to be made about those high schools who have not yet had to do any of this well we could certainly talk about them too if they need an extra week then go for the extra week but technically they're the same thing they're these mitigating strategies are still the same thing for them too the only thing is that we're not mandating them to wear the masks but they're still mitigating strategies for those schools as well so in the end really makes no difference so given what you just said let's hear from the person who's actually charged with making these decisions

215about the administrative you know with all due respect we make the policy we set the provision we set the protocols and it's his job to do what this board votes on and it's our job to trust the person we put in the place to tell us what needs to be done to help us achieve the best outcome that we can we do trust him to do the work otherwise we wouldn't have hired him so why don't we let him speak we certainly will and he's been speaking but at this point all board members were giving their input to this particular item can i ask one question before because it is a question of dr moore that i think will help me a little bit um my recall's not very good right now it's so late

216um dr moore when we put the mask policy in place and i say we because i was sitting on the board even though i didn't vote for it i we did it so when we did that how many days leeway did we give the schools to put this policy into place the following monday okay so the following monday so why can't we do that this time with this policy what is different about changing it than what we did last time through the chair i think i think what is different is where we currently are and what we have learned in the past the high schools are right now in a situation where they have those mitigation strategies do not exist right this is not a one communication for everyone in the county as you mentioned

217it is the explanation of the variation of the specific tiers it is affording the time to communicate it there is still the creation of the dashboard that would be put up in order to inform the communities regarding the school communities where they specifically are so mitigation strategies currently in place through through k k through eight we need to operationalize the initiative so uploading the dashboard sending home the communications making sure everyone understands what the procedures are and they have a level of comfort with what what they specifically are and then for the high schools to have that particular time so doing it in three or four days is one thing uh but doing it effectively without disrupting the operation is is something different so so man suggests that to my fellow board members since it's

218affecting the k-8 schools with what we have currently um why couldn't we move uh the koa k-38 schools because if you look at the i don't have that can you put the color-coded thing back up so we have all but one school right now right pelican islands only one that's in red is that correct that's unless something happens between now and you know tomorrow yes that is though so so my suggestion would be then for our k-8 schools to move to this plan on monday yeah and leave the high schools where they are right now and then when you feel like we can move everybody to this because it sounds like we're going to have to do some more education for the high schools right because let me ask you this question if between now

219and the next school board meeting all of a sudden the high schools go red that could happen right you don't have that plan in place now what you have in place right now is we have agreed that um we're not doing that for the high schools so it could go the other way on you too you see what i'm saying yeah so what if what if we look at the k to eight is moving this to monday making it happen on monday and then our high schools when you can put that plan into place our high schools move to this too would that work can i go ahead and then i want to what do you anticipate to be so part of it is making people aware of the system we've now been talking about

220it all day long so we're gaining a bit of facility with it a bit of familiarity with this but no but if people are watching they've seen it but we haven't studied it we haven't put it up we haven't informed people what do you anticipate would be the difference between implementing monday or implementing a week from monday in terms of people's familiarity and facility to implement with fidelity as you mentioned this afternoon through the chair the appropriate amount of time to inform and have the conversations with the 50 percent of people who strongly advocate for wearing masks even when we were in that particular green so there is a response in conversations with principals and with teachers uh immediately moving to this is not going to make everybody happy they're you know the emails that

221mr barefoot was re referring to that we're receiving um we need to inform them as to why we believe this data-driven approach is is the best thing and that takes time in individual conversations versus one wide sweeping mandate it's over and here you go you do this you know they feel a certain way in respect and irreverence of how they feel taking that additional time to have those conversations does two things a it gives us the time and attention to address that reality b as we would move through as it was proposed you grow the data set to reinforce the validity of implementing this particular program so it is just being responsive to the other 50 and i i will tell you this from the principal's perspective um we are in a good place in

222terms of what we're implementing right now so the the folks on the front line um are not informed to the point where they need to be did we do it three weeks ago because it was an emergency because of the red absolutely and did that drain your principles and drain your teachers it was responding to an emergency we're not in an emergency we don't have to ring that that bell so hard so fast we can take the time now to do it quickly i i agree do it the the week the week after but there is a data program that needs to be created um i i just think in terms of the 15 000 students that are in the schools this is the decision that the board made the the board made we will

223be implementing maybe not if we're going to move it up do it the the the monday before that at least gives me a week to inform and communicate to to move to it and give the data set time to grow mr barefoot i'm going to am i ever going to get to say anything you guys have been having a wonderful conversation and i was almost falling asleep um first of all um it's it's obviously complicated in the other hand sometimes we make things more complicated than they need to be there's absolutely no reason that you obviously you've got to bring the high schools up to speed there's only two of them but there's 5 000 kids or more a lot of parents and i think that having choosing monday the 20 whatever the date is

224the 27th to implement for the high schools rather than waiting until wednesday i mean i'm not sure what the difference is and if we show up here on the tuesday after and implemented when all hell's breaking loose we can quickly make an adjustment i think i think the point here is the folks that want mask optional most of the people most of them are sitting here would like this to happen yesterday the people that want mass continued in fact as we've all read they should also include the high school why is the high school exempted are not going to be happy until they understand exactly what this mitigation strategy is i think that's the that's the population in the district that needs to to be educated the faster you implement this the the happier those

225that want mass optional are going to be the people that are concerned about mass optional and the spread of a disease are the ones that are going to really get concerned if we don't communicate with them in a you know whether it's you you start doing a daily video a facebook you know whatever communications methods you come up with it will maximize exposure so i mean i get it the last thing i want to have happen is that for the last x number of meetings we've had the people like most of you that don't want masks the next meetings we end up with the people that do want mass because all of a sudden they feel like this new mask optional thing and they get all in a tizzy and everybody's right you can't please

226everybody but but i personally think that um we we really need to and and maybe yet another option is the starting tomorrow the schools that are all yellow pick there's five or six or seven of them let them start tomorrow or monday you know thank you i don't mean tomorrow i mean monday next month and the ones that still still have issues plus the high school you've got time you got time to work i mean that that sort of uh you know we keep coming up with different options we're going to have so many choose a b c and d and which one who knows which one's right but it just seems to me that we have to we're forgetting about those parents that have advocated keep masks on keep our kids safe by rushing

227it so that dr moore and the principals involved have the opportunity to really explain to folks in the same manner that the folks sitting here tonight have had the opportunity to hear the give and take and i think that's only fair to those folks if it made sense i'm just speaking for myself if it made sense to starting next monday to have four or five whatever the number of schools you continue to fill in the blanks for the rest of the week and if those three or four schools that have that are all green and yellow continue that's wonderful then have this go into effect for them next monday but that would be yet another compromise you might say it's hard though to make start pretty soon the exception becomes a rule and that's hard

228to manage dr jones you know we talked about this at the workshop and we seem pretty together on this especially when we talked about the medical in a district office person working with us but this is a really good plan because it's data driven and i want to do it right we can say oh monday we can say tuesday or whatever it may be this is going to take a lot of work through communication to our parents communications to our staff support staff teachers everyone we've got to do it right um and who knows in in a couple weeks we could have more red because obviously we're fighting a war with something we can't see in a virus but i just don't want to jump to anything and not get it right for parents you

229might have someone in elementary you might have someone in middle you might have a high school okay what do i do here what do i do there let's do it right with the communication we have a great communications department public relations getting the information out in many ways that we can do it now but i just say caution you to do it right yes ma'am um i i understand what your point of that i do want to do this right and i want to be fair to all parents that are obviously divided on this the issue is that last time we said this was temporary it was going to be two weeks can i talk yeah i know it was thank you i understand that i didn't vote for it but i'm gonna tell you

230this um we talked about it being temporary because we were under this issue right and now we're looking at the other side of this issue and so last time when we said this we gave those parents that didn't want the masks right that were sending kids to school with out masks or optional masks at the beginning of school because that's how we started now what we did is we said whoop we're starting this on monday so you say let's go ahead and and take our time and and educate parents but did we take our time and educate parents that time so so so my concern is i don't think we are disagreeing as to what to do now with this plan i think we've all agreed that what we just hashed out on this plan

231can work for us and i and i applaud my fellow board members and i applaud um dr moore and your team for coming up with this it's innovative thank you um will it work because we're looking at individual schools yes we're getting picayune i i get that here here's the reason why i think i'm still having an issue with this and that is because court order or not we got a court order and there's a stay right now and if and if we aren't considering the fact that some parents are concerned about the fact that their rights are being taken away but yet we're saying to the other parents your rights are more important than your rights either side either side or pick insides so what i what i think we can do with this

232and again i don't think it's as hard to undo it as we did it before is to make it on like you said i agree monday i can live with monday because that gives us a couple of days to educate everybody and say school by school what's going to happen and our high schools take a little longer we got more kids in the high school right now the high schools don't have this mandate so i do know though that there are parents that want this if the high schools go to red and i get that i totally get that for those parents too so why can't we move to k-8 starting monday leave the high schools where they are dr moore how long do you think it will take for the high schools for you

233to educate them on this plan and get into place on on the date that you put put here you put tuesday be the 29th the 29th that was wednesday this week we did we implemented the day after the next board meeting but it could be that through the chair i i think if what i'm hearing is the following uh less than a week monday for the k-8s and the 29th for the the high schools i think that is very very very tight but but i think we we can get it done and i'm just looking at by school well by school but at the same time part of the desire was to start every school in an optional space so that may not be the case so we're looking at this it may not be

234the case but but testing the model over the course of 10 days would have been a really smart thing okay so i'm i'm going to move to the vote and i'm going to ask for us to vote for this tiered mitigation strategies plan with the um with the exception that we made at the bottom for the asterisks to be put in place for k-8 schools starting on monday and for our high schools to start on september 29th i called for the vote before somebody seconds the vote just just and i'm glad i don't have to implement this but if i did i think i would spend my time between now and monday with the k-8 schools that have that have had the most red the most orange because that's the way that's where the uh

235the the potential change and you don't know what the next few days are going to bring could be the greatest because the schools that have been green and yellow almost the whole time or very little red maybe some orange not much going to change for them except all of a sudden mass become optional because they're you know the profile of of the infections in those schools have been consistently uh below red it's by some degree but that's part of your in the team's decision on how you communicate with whom and what priorities and the time that you need to maybe to work with individual schools given their current situation or where they've been but you've also got to have the flexibility that if something and i i don't think it's going to happen but you

236never know between now and friday um i don't think it is possible but one of these schools could end up all of a sudden you know a problem crops up but you know nothing's perfect in life if it you know i've run enough businesses in my career to tell you that every decision you can't anticipate every unintended consequence as hard as you try you just have to be nimble enough entrepreneurial enough that when something goes against what you thought was going to happen or the assumptions that you made in order to reach the decision you're able to adjust and i think what we need to do is i mean i i i can support what what mr burke has said what we need to do is make sure that you know that you've got we've

237given you the authority that if something happens where whatever we vote on if this is what we approve what you just proposed you've got the ability to act quickly we can't we can't we can't unless we can we can't have phone meetings people are all over the place [Music] i don't know whether we can we could i mean i'd be comfortable with but i don't know about everybody else just to have the flexibility to react on the fly if necessary mr behrenborg mrs uh i missed her mr uh barefoot mrs behrenberg called i did call second okay thank you that means so now are we at discussion no now we're voting we just discussed i didn't finish discussing i called for the vote roberts rules it needs a second i seconded it i second it

238did you second the motion or did you suck at her calling for the vote i second the motion okay we have a second on the motion but we now have a second motion for mrs barenborg to call the question and stop discussion my second need to vote on that motion what are we voting on we're voting on stopping stop discussion yes i vote yes it's 9 58 let's stop the discussion no no yes i don't want to stop discussion but i'm ready to vote yes well to make a decision you got a yes or no stop discussion no i i vote if somebody has something i vote no if somebody else wants to make one more comment then make it and then we'll have the vote okay is that robert's rules mrs uh d agresta

239yes yes the motion to stop discussion fails for lack of a majority that's fine you say no i did say no to stopping the discussion not that not the first motion okay not that i want to prolong this but go ahead i have a question for dr moore um because the first time we rolled this out the problem was that we were under a state of emergency so we did it quickly we know we didn't do it well it wasn't implemented with fidelity that's what we were trying to avoid this time by moving to implement on monday that in effect gives you three days right it gives you wednesday thursday and friday to get all the information out assuming that things don't happen over the weekend presumably so that means you've got three days is

240that sufficient or would it make a difference to you if it was a full week and you had a couple of days next week would that make a difference or would it be worse because it was midweek the recommendation that i made the the item that i put forth and as it as i make it it turns into uh it goes over to the board my recommendation was to implement the day following uh which gave me full two full weeks maintaining the things that were done to fully operationalize to fully implement the the design um that was the recommendation that i made i'm calling the question so i haven't already did that no you called according to robert's rules when you call the question discussions ended correct you need a second i'll second it well

241that's time we've already oh we've already done that doc wants to say something last time when the question was called you asked if you could complete it and and you were no that's because i was in mid-sentence you weren't in mid-century i was waiting till miss um dr schiff responded um i think this is tight i understand um you know even with labor day you know maybe some other things will hit one thing i said when we started this a long time ago if the data the information the coveted results changes um it's you know easier to to continue with what we're doing now for these next two weeks i'm just saying that from the labor day perspective i just you know i just think we're kind of jumping here a little bit 29 for

242the high school that might be enough time um hopefully they stay out of the red sebastian's been doing a great job vero pretty good right now but um i i just still think a concern a little jump in the gun to get everything ready to go that's my thought well there's you know every time you walk outside there's risk every decision you make there's many times there's no certainty or guarantee so unless anybody has anything further to say i will call the question all in favor of the motion i wait wait wait i got confused i'm sorry can we just have a review of what that motion the motion was her original it's the original motion with the change to the wording on the ask earth plus k through 8 starts monday k through 8

243starts monday even though it's tight high schools wednesday the 29th there's a medical i mean we're looking at the metacult and if there is an issue with getting the medical they go to the district exactly yeah so there's a medical okay that's that that's what yeah we kept the word medical at the top that's what the motion was that's the motion that was second that's what we're voting on so once again all those in favor of that motion signify by saying i i i no no no can i ask mrs rosario why did you just change i agree with everything except the medical no we have the word this is rosario remember the medical is still in there what what you added was an option for some parents to come to the district office and

244have a discussion with someone right that's still a violation of the executive rule that is still a violation to to mandate a medical opt-out is still a violation of the law i am not in favor of that remove the medical and i will vote in favor of the entire plan okay can can i make a comment first of all can i can i you know if you all remember mrs the aggressor gave us an interpretation of the law and in that interpretation as well as executive order you indicated that we were not in violation i've heard people say that we're breaking the law would you be kind enough to refresh our member in memory at least mine as to uh and i think you read you may have read from something uh exactly the the

245recommendation you you gave which was why dr moore you know pursued the path that he chose i i'll i'll try to it's been a couple of weeks since we talked about that at warming but but i'll try to synthesize what we previously discussed the the governor's executive order doesn't order the school board to do anything it orders two state agencies to go through emergency rulemaking and those state agencies have done that so to the extent that someone is telling you that you're in violation of the governor's executive order that is simply incorrect because the governor's executive order doesn't speak to school boards at all it speaks to state agencies going through rulemaking the department of health did adopt a rule with regard to covid 19 strategies and one sentence in that rule provides that a

246school board may have a mask requirement for students as long as there's a parental opt-out and i'm paraphrasing because i don't have the rule in front of me but that's a paraphrase that rule does not give any indication of what that opt-out process is it's just simply an opt-out there is one interpretation that the opt out means it's unfettered unconditional a parent or guardian has the sole right to to make that choice there is another equal interpretation that a school board as it does for every other process with parents and students has the right to establish reasonable basis for that opt-out a process a form however you want to implement it and that's what this district has done you have developed and it was approved a meeting or so ago a process for a parental

247opt-out and that parental opt-out is conditioned on a medical from a physician or psychologist psychiatrist physician assistant so in my opinion since the rule does not say the opt out is unconditional unfettered then you have the right on recommendations from your superintendent to determine how you will operate this district and the examples that i located in other rules from the department of health or other statutes covering the department of health when the department of health passed a statute and rule making with regard to other types of vaccinations that students are required to have in order to start school here in the state of florida there's a very detailed form that the department of health used to say if a parent wished to opt out or ask for an exemption from these vaccinations here is the

248form from the department of health that you now use to process this exemption to this department of health rule so that's not the process the department of health followed there's no rule there's no process there's no criteria and so school boards are filling in that gap and coming up with their own criteria so to the extent that someone is saying that you're absolutely in violation of the department of health rule i think that's subject to interpretation and no court has ruled on it we are waiting for a court to rule on it there are at this moment i think eight different legal challenges filed in various courts in front of various judges for that one that question so we're hoping that someone will issue a ruling soon so that we know how to interpret that

249rule at the moment it's not but interpreted by a court to the extent that someone is claiming that the school board is in violation of the parental bill of rights and that's the language i think dr schiff read it i think others have read the language earlier today there is language in that bill that clearly says yes parents have lots of rights with regard to students but again it's not unfettered rights and as long as we have followed the statutory language that anything that we are doing any policies that we are putting in place any requirements that we're putting on students meet the requirements of that statute then we are not in violation of the statute or the law if you will so you know to the extent that's you know what we're talking about

250here tonight it it there has been no court ruling that has said what school boards are doing with regard to students and masks and medical opt-outs no court has said that's a violation of anything all right everybody wants to speak at once i do please may i know what mrs behrenberg will let you yeah i had my hand up believe it or not before that um a couple of things uh mrs rosario this is why i can live with it i couldn't live with it before because it said medical right the reason why i can live with it now hear me out i'm hearing you okay the medical part of it only comes under red so it's only when an individual school is in red for three days is it doctor moore two two two

251okay so two days into red now we got the issue of we gotta go to red okay so now the one issue i had was that medical only and so now we've put that asterisk in place for that particular problem for when it's just an individual school going into red only that is why i can live with it i'm trying to get us all here to come together on something otherwise we're going to revert back to two more weeks of this and and argue at the next board meeting okay may i respond the florida with all due respect mrs diagrasta and i absolutely respect your um your work without um without question and your uh opinions the florida governor's executive order right in front of me section three states the florida commissioner of education shall

252pursue all legal means available to ensure school districts adhere to florida law including but not limited to withholding state funds from non-compliant school boards violating any rules or actions taken pursue into section one now this is telling us you said before that this is saying that the executive order does not require school boards to do anything this indeed tells us that we are required to follow the rules of the agencies in section one so when i go to section one section one reads i hereby direct the florida department of health and florida department of education to work together that's on for them to immediately execute rules pursuant to section 120.54 florida statutes and take additional agency action necessary and of course it says a do not violate floridians constitutional freedoms b do not violate the

253parents right under florida law to make health decisions uh health care decisions for their minor children and see protect children with disabilities or health conditions who would be harmed by certain protocols such as face mask requirements so as far as i'm concerned this executive order very clearly states that it's our responsibility to make sure that we are obeying to what has been written in here in collaboration with the department of health and that rule that came out on april 27th the superintendent and mr barefoot received a letter from richard conkerin and the first paragraph very clearly this letter is sent to express my grave concern regarding the district's response to the recently adopted emergency rule 64 der 21-12 from the florida department of health this rule issued on august 6 2021 by the florida surgeon

254general dr scott rivkes explicitly requires that any mandated mass policy imposed by a district or school must allow for a parent or legal guardian of that student to opt out the student from wearing a face covering or mask that was a quote end quote the emergency rule does not require parents to submit medical documentation in order to opt out the letter goes on but i'll stop there so mrs berenberg i absolutely appreciate you trying to get you know this to to pass i get it but this is why i'm saying no so can i make a motion we're clear that mrs rosario is not in favor of this in any form we're really clear about that i'd like to move that we um adopt this with the la to implement properly in the in the

255two weeks is the superintendent recommended with the change in language as on the new document okay can can i ask to bifurcate the vote then there isn't a second ask anything well i was going to second that yeah i went up oh now we have a second now i want to bifurcate the vote in other words we have two different issues here we have the issue of agreeing on this which you said it sounds like we have four people that agree to this okay now we have this other issue that i can't live with for two weeks that's why i was this is rosario that's why i was so hoping it won't hold on i'm not done talking i'm not done talking so mrs rosario that's why i i was so hoping that even though

256you agreed to it uh ten minutes ago i don't know what just happened i didn't agree to it 10 minutes ago i agreed to help change some of the language in here to make it a little bit easier because i know that i'm going to lose the vote but i'm not agreeing to this tier process and i already told doc we did change the language then why did you agree to change your language if you weren't going to vote for it anyway because it's still going to be helpful to the children to allow for the wellness checks to allow for the temperature checks you're still adding mitigation strategies am i supposed to just withdraw my entire responsibility to the district just because i don't agree with the entirety of it i said i agree with

257everything up until the red okay so i actually agree with everything up until that very first bullet remove that me too move that in first that first bullet that's very important to me for all the reasons why i just read i i understand that and i have discussed this with an attorney i have discussed this with some people that are very in the know on this law and the concerns about it and i'm going to tell you that giving us that out that i just asked for with the district as a need period will allow us to not be in a situation that we might go into with now we've got people in big trouble i get it i get it okay i'm sorry but i'm saying no i'm not voting for mandated medical matters

258okay then i'm asking for a bifurcation of the vote i understand that doc jones wait a minute we had a motion on the floor before and you wanted to speak so i believe second yeah okay yeah well we had another motion before so so my point is this i'm i don't want to vote for both of these together i want us to move on at some point and i would love for us to bifurcate the vote which means to divide it if that's what i need to clarify i can do that so we vote on this first we vote on this second in order to do that though these two things are tied together no no they're not well wait wait separating high school and elementary yeah no i get that but but this one

259is the timing the timing is contingent on implementing this plan right now so the issue we're having is the timing of it no what i'm saying is no let me let me clarify what i'm asking with the bifurcation i'm asking us to vote on this plan i'm not saying the time when to put it in place i'm voting on this plan okay that we all agree that this plan needs to go into place the second part of the vote is time is what are we going to do for the next two weeks that's the difference between the two this one we want to put in place you're agreeing that two weeks is good okay i want to put it in place i can support that this one is the concern that we have is when

260to put it in place correct okay so i'd like to bifurcate the vote so now you've got to withdraw your oh it's a motion to amend yep i'll i'll amend the vote i'll second so what are we voting on first i asked for the um tiered mitigation strategies with the um with the changes the changes the the the vote would be with regard to the amendment whether the board is willing to bifurcate the issue okay and have two separate votes right the uh you're you're voting on the procedural issue of whether you're going to pull the issue apart into two pieces and vote on it separately that's that's the issue in front of the board for a vote so we need a vote on that i call the question all in favor aye aye opposed

261no okay so that vote is 3-2 okay in favor of adopting the mitigation 4-1 mitigation strategy she agreed to buy for kate now now we vote on the timing of no no no no [Music] we're voting on the tiered mitigation strategy as amended there i i think i think i called the question but we need a motion just i'm making a motion to vote on the tiered mitigation strategy as amended in our long discussion i'll second it all in favor aye aye no no no you oh okay but that's what are you saying to me no that's three two three two okay sorry okay so the the the and tiered you're rejecting this as amended you're rejecting this it's 10 20. i i just i just think they should be voted on together i know

262the bifurcation was out there and i already wrote this okay i understand that thank you very much i just think that um you know at the workshop when we talked about this and i thought we were all moving forward to give dr moore the of the plan and the timing to talk about 29th for k-8 and 9-12 so that's how i feel okay so we've passed we've we've now approved this correct we have now we're talking about timing so there's that we need to put a motion i move we implement this in two weeks as proposed by the superintendent second that wasn't what was over i i i moved that we implement this on wednesday september 29th as recommended by the superintendent can i ask can i ask a question of procedure you forgot k8

263yeah okay i have a question procedure um to our attorney when i brought this up i don't know how long ago um i asked for this to take place on monday for k-8 and on uh in two weeks for high school did we ever vote on that you're having a vote um yes no that's what i'm saying yes there was a vote on it and it failed two to three okay i just want to make sure for the record people understand wait wait wait wait we didn't no i don't think no we didn't we don't think so what failed was were both of these items together not this separately right but that was the last vote and it failed right so we can propose another vote yes based on timing so that's what i just

264said you have one you have a special so right and you you have you're proposing that we go to the original recommendation correct implementing for everybody on the 29th right that's your and does that motion have a second yes i'd like to amend the motion please i can do that i know but i just i think i didn't hear what mr barefoot was i want i want to make sure that dr jones rec seconded dr schiff's motion yes i'd like to amend the motion how would you like to amend the motion i'd like to put a second second second she hasn't made that she hasn't made the motion yet okay i'd like to amend the motion to be um k-8s start on monday and high school starts on the 29th second all right now we're

265voting on the amended motion correct correct on on whether to amend the motion so you're whether to amend the you're only voting on the amendment and depending upon if it passes or fails you would then vote on the main motion don't you love robert's rules no i'm sorry did i say that i think we're going to rename it cassandra's rules or something witch um all right all in favor of the amended motion aye aye no aye no aye i voted i sorry i'm in favor of of the amendment of the amended of the amendment to amend right now let's go back to what the hell we're voting yeah call them now you need to vote on the main motion and the vain motion was dr schiff's motion no no so it's k-8 um implements the

266tiered approach on monday the 9 12. all right all in favor of that motion hi i any opposed opposed no no all right the vote carries three to two so just to summarize because i'm confused and i don't know what anybody else is confused this is where this is what we've just approved the timing of the mitigation strategy with all the tweaks that have have taken place here was approved and it goes into effect for k through eight on monday and it goes into effect in the high schools on wednesday the 29th of september is that mike correct and that's what i think i voted for i think we finally come to the middle sort of on this i appreciate the fact that we were able to do that i appreciate this mitigation tiered strategy

267is it something that mrs rosario and i wanted in the beginning know is this what you guys wanted in the beginning the three of you yes i think we were able to somehow come up with something i think that can work for our district now if we have a problem where it all goes back to red i think we're back to this again and i can live with that actually um you know in hindsight this is probably the best decision and i understand my opinion i understand it's putting a lot of pressure on the district to get people up to speed between now and next monday but it was as somebody pointed out the same amount of time that was given when we put it in place the first time all right so let's and

268i hope somebody's keeping track of who made the motions in the seconds because i've lost track uh mrs asplin yeah you got it when did you say you were going out of town it's almost tomorrow counting down yeah all right uh and i and i and i apologize but i completely lost track of all the motions uh the next item on the agenda is the report from the superintendent and i think you've probably had enough tonight dr moore but i just want to apologize to my my team the volume of work that um will be done um the item as approved will be implemented the way um it was approved um i cannot thank my team enough for bending over backwards to to make things happen in this school system and as a challenging as

269this will be i assure the board that will be implemented with the highest level of fidelity my team who worked endlessly to put this together dr jacobs the the entire team uh in putting this together um just outstanding work absolutely have to thank my wife who has uh supported me over the last two weeks in ways i cannot thank her enough for not easy not not easy at all so looking forward to putting the the plan into place in order to implement and we'll provide updates to the board as the item prescribed and i just as a follow-on to that i mean i i think that we all owe you first of all i think that the people in the room tonight recognize the amount of work that went into this and it is as

270objective as you're ever going to get and as somebody pointed out it takes emotion out of it and it's based on data like a lot of decisions that get made we've all had to make them there's always risk that the implementation go doesn't go as smoothly as we hoped and it's from my standpoint if for some reason it doesn't get done and the man you're you're a bit of a perfectionist which is one of the things we love about you if they don't if it doesn't happen in exactly the way you would have liked and you think would have could have happened if it took had a little longer we'll excuse because it's not i know you'll do the best you can your team will do the best you can and if it turns out

271that there's a few blips along the way that's the price to be paid to get the decisions made and uh it's still in the long run in the best interest of the the two points of view when it comes to mask it's about as good a compromise as we're going to find so so thank you and just thank you and thank the people in the audience and the officers for hanging around this long but i think we were in the best place we were ever going to get member matters i think that's the only thing left correct yes i do have a couple go ahead all right dr jones you you why don't you go first um again dr moore and district staff thank you so much for this data i can't imagine how challenging

272this was and i appreciate it and i know the work that's being done um football games have been to vero going to sebastian next week it helps me remember what we do as a board member when we see students and parents and community members out supporting our teams fellsver city and planning had a great it was a zoom meeting and they talked about the children's trust and how the united way is basically going around to all of our areas um preparing everyone because there will be a vote on that next year so i'm excited about that working with mcann with the 10 years that they have been working with us and we're going to do a proclamation here at the school board probably in in october i did attend the 9 11 event at sebastian

273river high school very well done thank you to their rotc the administration the band the fire department police everyone who was there is very powerful i reviewed today with the board the fsba state and federal platforms and we'll get more specific wording on that hopefully very soon we're taking part in the esc parent advisory tomorrow thank you to ms dan pierre miss mori for really pushing this forward i think that that it's very very important thank you this is rosario thank you um i want to share that the executive roundtable of indian river county is hosting the four-person scramble in partnership with indian river county school district on saturday october 30th so i think it's very important for those who are interested to support both the executive roundtable and the district magnet and school choice

274um applications are open what i couldn't find is the date when that closes dr moore do you know off the top of your head monday monday no i have no clue mr meyer i just wanted to remind parents as i i thought that the date was slowly approaching us for the cut off so magnet and school choice applications are currently open so just look for that date in which it will close whenever that comes up it's still on the website so that's all that's why i'm bringing it up um the next thing is um something that i know was mentioned prior and i just want to kind of get ahead of it with the community is the mathematics instructional materials committee the information is on our website for the committee member responsibilities and the timeline

275i know last spring with the um language arts curriculum adoption period there were concerns from many community members that said they didn't know um what the information was or how to join a committee or what the timeline was so i just wanted to once again provide the opportunity for anyone in the community who is interested to take a look at that information on the um um on the website and that's it okay um dr schiff uh just two things um one i was requested to and proposed to the executive roundtable to continue their sponsorship and support of the superintendent's art gallery which i believe was started by mrs justice um and they very generously agreed to support the superintendent's uh art i forgot the exact title and it's late and i'm tired but it's the

276art gallery and something else that's going to be held at the vero beach museum of art on november 4th is it's as it's currently scheduled um and thank you to the executive round table if any of you are still up and watching the other thing i'm sorry on monday i also participated in a meeting with the central florida school board coalition i don't know if any of you were there i can't always see on the screen but it was um [Music] presentations from several lawmakers with some feedback and q a to board members which was informative and um really productive and i'm not going to belabor it here because it's late and we're tired but it was interesting there's probably more but i might i can't think of it anymore and this is very important

277thank you um dr moore thank you for you and your staff for this hard work putting it together but also the hard work you're going to put forward between now and monday and i appreciate that there was a sense of urgency on my part for lots of reasons and i appreciate the fact that we're doing what our best job we can to try to come to the middle on this so i know we can't come to the middle on this and i know people have said to me please stop trying to come to the middle on this but i'm going to tell you our community is so divided and it's time that we heal and so i appreciate the fact that we've got some sort of plan to go forward that we won't keep coming

278to these meetings all the time and talking about masks and we're going to start talking about education and student performance and academics so with that being said the executive roundtable tournament i will say i've worked on that for months now with mr seymour we are in absolute need of volunteers so those of you that have said you want to volunteer for something that's what we need and we need prizes and we need sponsors and and it's for kids it's for kids at hope it's for us to heal so please help with that contact the superintendent or eric if you can help with that the tc council of local governments meeting i went last week and um great presentation but also i brought up the concern that mr hart has been bringing up and that is

279the concern that we have for kids that are homeless in our community with the rent situation going on and the judge is now cracking down on that we saw all of a sudden a lot of kids getting homeless quickly and so i know that there have been some moves to try to slow that up a little which is helpful so that parents can get some things in place um like it or not whatever the parents decision is or or their ability to pay or not it doesn't matter to a child and so we need to think about our kids in that respect and so there were some things i brought it up and there were some other community members from martin county and from okeechobee and from our county that gave me some really good

280ideas that i'm going to be sharing with mr hart so anyway think about that as is what our homeless kids in in the situation they're in i attended more zonian planning meetings and the building continues and continues and continues i don't know when it's going to stop um but we're going to have this explosion continue for a while i think because they're looking at five years from now that's what those meetings do is we look out for five years from now and that's what the planning is for five years from now they're still looking at building so just an fyi in that it was nice to see tonight schools being honored it was nice to see the steam designation it was nice to see pbis we're getting back to some sort of normalcy it was

281nice to see schools being honored and i appreciate that that's what we're here for we're here for kids we're here for that honor um let's focus on that thank you um then in wrapping up um mpo didn't have a meeting city of vero beach planning canceled their meeting in the new river shores most of the conversation was an update on the federal lawsuit that shores has filed against the city of vero bridge over the water issue the i think we discussed this at least i did when i decided to run it was really to focus on academic academic achievements and on and on and on and i hope that we can really do the best job we can in supporting dr moore and his team the principals the teachers on uh seeing to it if

282we i mean you when you took this position your goal was to have this district be in the top ten the last time as i said earlier if i'm wrong i apologize that the last i saw we ranked 37th out of 67th i don't know anybody that would find that acceptable and in many respects when you consider the profile of this community and on a broad basis i don't want to say it's embarrassing but it's certainly less than satisfactory so i hope that that the the energy the same energy that's been put into dealing with this mask issue not that it's going away can be put into how we can really improve the outcomes and i'm not sure what the ramifications of this decision to eliminate testing i don't know how you measure if what's

283the old saying if you can measure it you can accomplish it when you can't measure it how do you know so we're going to maybe have to come up with our dr moore and his team come up with our own internal method of measuring progress not against others but at least so we know within our own community that we're making progress at elementary middle and in the high school so that should be at the top of the priority list not that it never was it just hasn't been able to have the time spent on it as we've had to spend on many of these other things so there's really nothing else to discuss as far as i'm concerned unless uh and uh again mrs d agresta you know congratulations on your pending retirement thank you

284uh thank you all for all you've done for us but you're not quite through with us yet you'll be around but um we'll miss you thank you [Laughter] just i'm just you know he's warming up in case we get kate well there will be plenty of times you know the the the bloody mary's and the vodka tonics we can have later meeting adjourned at 10 38. you