School Board Business Meeting and Presentations 5_30 p.m. 3-13-23

001is that out of respect for everyone please silence all electronic devices at this time I would like to call the meeting to order the time is 5 30 PM I would like to recognize the superintendent for a series of awards and presentations thank you madam chair we do have a number of acknowledgments as we highlight the great things that happen here in the school district of Indian River County on a daily basis and to start that highlight I'll turn it over to our public information officer Ms Maddox thank you Dr Moore tonight we have some students here with us who received State science fair bids and we are here tonight to recognize them along with Education Foundation if I could have Miss Heidi Leone please come up to the podium with me she's going to

002recognize each student and present them with a plaque that is conveniently wrapped in bubble wrap in a box because it's glass and very breakable but there's a beautiful plaque in there trust us good evening thank you all for having us here tonight and most importantly for honoring these wonderful students my name is Heidi Leone I'm the executive director of the Education Foundation and so thrilled to be a part of this program I wanted to thank the school board for this opportunity to recognize these creative students who have received a bid for the science fair for the state science fair the Education Foundation is really proud to have been a part of this event since 1992. we've provided the critical funding and support to the school district and more true Partners on this in this event

003we this year we have given out close to 250 thousand dollars in scholarships to these students uh that's just the secondary level one person I wanted to do a special thank you to tonight um it's a little off what is usually done I think is a school board member Terry berenborg she really shows up for the students and I wanted to say thank you not only does she judge at both the elementary and the secondary level she also gave out a special award and she also shows up for the award ceremony thank you very much Terry [Applause] I'd like to also thank the backbone of this science fair it's the team from the school district of Indian River County led by Pat Hauser Lisa presti and April Perez [Applause] I'd like to thank our sponsors

004the LJ Foundation public supermarket Charities extant Aerospace Georgie Warren Harbor Branch oceanographic Institute Foundation the dong family Einstein Brothers Bagels Tom Dalia Sam's Club Susan Taylor the Wall family and Jeremiah's Italian Ice and now let's get to it these 19 students most of whom are here tonight Saint Ed's is on spring break but these 19 students have received bids to go to the State Fair it will be in Lakeland in a couple weeks Elizabeth the shower who is also here will be sponsored by the Ed Foundation to attend the international science fair in May thank you if you all would come forward as we call your name please and we will Mr Heiser will pass out the awards and we also have some of the award checks for those of you who received Awards not

005everybody did but most of you received awards at the state science fair excuse me the regional science fair and Mr Seymour will be passing those out tonight Addison logman and yellow Kelly [Applause] Ariana Bolton Avi Johnson Cesar datto Slattery Elizabeth the shower [Applause] Gianna D'Elia [Applause] Gianna dykes Harper Hall Jack Curley Jackson Wiese [Applause] Jay Sullivan Jordan shear Kaylee Webster Nicholas Rummel and Kaplan Samantha mclerne Sienna Malone and Uma christafolli [Applause] thank you all you'd stay up here for a picture that would be great [Laughter] one two and three perfect parents stay for your parents all right thank you very much let's give them another round of applause and just as the science team lead I just want to acknowledge the the efforts I know we acknowledge Ms baremore but to the entire team over

006the last year we've been been very intentional of increasing enrollment our secondary participation has increased by 20 which is something we're extremely proud of matter of fact we've had to divide the event uh we moved it from the Middle School Gifford Middle School when I first got here to just last year having divided at the high school on two separate weekends because of the Volume last month we had our secondary students participate in the Science Fair competition where the judges go through obviously Miss barenborg is qualified to be a judge me not so much and so much of our community is out there forming and working as judge it's very very impressive to see while the same time that judging was taking place in the gym on the opposite side of the campus was the

007elementary students in competition uh robot races and all kinds of different events using what they've learned in classroom um it was a really really exciting day last weekend we had the elementary schools uh and once again packed so significant uh Improvement and expected continued growth of what we're doing around this work so I just want to acknowledge the team their heart effort uh the Ed foundation for your continued support to grow this initiative we truly appreciate it thank you foreign appreciate the fact that we divided it and I hope to see the amount of projects grow next year and I wish I could be at the awards tomorrow night but I'm going to Tallahassee when she said that I felt bad but I'm going to be going up to Tallahassee on behalf of the board

008tomorrow so thank you okay so we are excited for the second month now to have our shining star awards we are recognizing a student involved in extracurricular activities and someone from our Safety and Security Spotlight so we're going to start out with a student and I am going to ask um the person who nominated this student Miss Courtney in any of the special Area Teachers from Fellsmere to come up to the podium because she wrote a beautiful nomination letter and I don't want to take away from that because I know she has a few words to say hello good evening my name is Cherise Courtney I have the privilege of being the music teacher at felsmere elementary my second year in a row um before I announced the student I would like to say thank

009you to Dr Jones for attending our first annual Noche de Encanto last week and also thank you to the board for recognizing the Arts and education okay so this was a very difficult choice for the specialist teachers at Fellsmere Elementary because we have so many amazing Fine Arts students I recommend a Gabriel Pena a fifth grader for this award and recognition Gabriel has been involved in the music Club both this year and last year he has attended nearly every single concert in every single rehearsal at the beginning of this year he was gifted with a trumpet by the Fellsmere Police Department he has taken it upon himself because I have very limited trumpet knowledge so himself and also help from his older brother from the Sebastian River High School jazz band to learn how to

010play this instrument so any song that he can possibly play on he will go home and learn the notes all on his own and come prepared and ready to play if there is a song that he cannot play on trumpet he will volunteer or beg to sing or play the drums or play guitar he's also learning piano and a lot of it he does at home on his own time um I can count on Gabriel for any role that I need him to fill in to fill in any of our concerts or anything that I need him to help out with additionally he was also recommended by his other special Area Teachers who all have agreed that Gabriel works hard in every subject and also by his academic teachers as well so this is why

011we at felsmere elementary have recommended Gabriel Pena to receive this award thank you if he had his trumpet I'm sure he would play it though right congratulations [Applause] and here you go all right ready and all right let's get family Mr E um support Courtney congratulations [Applause] and for our Safety and Security Spotlight I'd like to ask Mr Eric Seymour and Mr John teskey to come to the podium please uh okay Mr teskey we have a script and we've been asked to follow the script but thank you again it's our pleasure to recognize individuals that on a daily basis protect our schools love our children and make sure that children go home safe nominated by Mr Chris Cummings Lori Anderson by far is our shining star she leads our team of great security monitors with

012scheduling post assignments ensuring all areas have adequate coverage providing planning for on-campus events during the school day and after school and many other items that we as administrators may not even think of she is student centered and maintains a positive mindset in the most challenging situations and I will mention one of those situations we had a big scare and sometimes we do we call it a scare but there was a situation where just imagine of all of the doors at a particular place or school you lose the keys and you don't know who might have those keys because they're all electronic and or either there's one particular key that may open each and every door so for days we walked looked called researched did all of our background checks checked cameras got law enforcement involved

013and guess what this one person was able to solve that mystery force by finding that key this one person saved us taxpayers thousands of dollars this one person took pressure off of us our department law enforcement because this involved protecting teachers staff students alike this one person took the time to go out and make sure that that campus was protected and I believe that this person on each and every day if there was an opportunity she would be a shining star Mr teskey yes yes I I agree wholeheartedly and support everything that you're doing at Sebastian High School just a quick story it's probably about September time frame and uh I'm known for creeping around campuses and cruising around in my car and I pull in unannounced because I like to test the protocols and

014the safety procedures at all the schools so I pulled into Sebastian High School pulled in near the ROTC Department around back making my checks and uh you know driving around and I look at my rearview mirror and I'm getting pulled over by a golf cart I said did I just get lit up by a golf cart I I think I did I actually pulled over and Lori pulled up alongside of me and I rolled my window down and I said do you want my license and registration she takes her job very seriously and I knew at that point we had a keeper there and she epitomized his Safety and Security at shark Nation so from all of us we thank you Lori for everything that you're doing come on up [Applause] foreign [Applause] I had

015the pleasure of I'm recommending Lori Anderson for our first safety person many years ago the only one we had on campus and from day one the professionalism the commitment to safety commitment to students and staff was unbelievable so thank you very much for what you do every day thank you foreign so it's finally time for the gala recap video and if you don't understand why I'm so excited about that it's because last board meeting it was time but I introduced The Wrong video so this is a recap of our Gala that we had back in January on January 20th and we had our winner Ashley Banger our teacher of the year and our employee of the year Liz Geoffrey so this will take you back a couple months and just show you a highlight of

016that night and how amazing it was [Music] thank you [Music] thank you Doc Jones our employee of the year is Liz Geoffrey I am just so proud to represent my school and to hear my name announce this the person to represent the whole district is just a dream come true my team is fabulous um as good as is with us now going on our third year and she lets me be me and Ms Norwood came to us this is her second year our counselor our coaches our teachers they're just all amazing and they've given me so much love and support and everything I do at the school our teacher cheechlessly banger [Applause] to represent the entire school district and all the teachers within it means everything I grew up in this District I watched teachers

017change lives in this district and I am looking forward to helping make that change for others first thought that went into my head when I was announced the teacher of the year for the school district was I hope I made my mom and dad proud after that all of the people in the audience that helped support me and helped me grow as a student first and then an educator here in the district I hope I made them proud as well [Music] Madam chair that is a very unique event in most districts they have a very formal event where they introduce their their teacher of the year and their employee of the year I breached the subject of trying to switch it into one of those formal events and I was quickly put in my place

018to say that we have to keep this tradition and when you see that video it is a day of celebrating public education the impact that our teachers and our employees have in our system so every year you could see yourself in a different outfit that was my my version of the 20s but what a great celebration and great Representatives both for employee and teacher of the year and thank you to Mid Florida who sponsors our Gala every year they give us over ten thousand dollars so just a shout out to them they they really truly make it possible so last but certainly not least we have our casual for a cause presentation if you're not familiar with casual for a cause each month our students teachers and staff members in exchange for a donation they

019have a designated day where they can dress down and those donations go to a an organization that's on our casual for a cause calendar and last month it was this source and we have Tony zorbaugh the executive director and Tony is Beverly here are you by yourself well welcome Johnny we're so happy to have you if you please come to the podium and our students teachers and staff members raised 2406 dollars for the source [Applause] hi again I'm Johnny Roscoe I'm the development director at the source Tony wishes he could be here but I'm more fortunate than he is tonight so um so we're a 27 year old non-profit organization in in Vero Beach and a lot has changed over those 27 years but the one thing that hasn't changed is who we're doing the

020work that we're doing it for and it's the you know the poor and less fortunate in our community and so it only felt right for me to share tonight's news with them and ask them how they felt about it and they were just the one thing that they had to say was thank you um thank you to all the students they were just blown away by this gesture so [Music] [Applause] thank you and that concludes presentations okay this will conclude our presentation the time is 5 54. we will start again just so we can get some people in and out at 605 PM for our business meeting thank you 605. all this meaning to order the time is 603 PM out of respect for everyone please silence all electronic devices at this time I would

021like to present the Sebastian River High School Navy Junior ROTC under the direction of a lieutenant commander James Landis and Master Sergeant Michael Hussey for the Pledge of Allegiance and colors please stand oh right breathe in post right ladies and gentlemen he's wondering for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of the world which it stands one nation under God an indivisible with liberty and justice for all house right post opposed colors and salute right two post Arch right face over March I [Applause] thank you very much Sebastian River High School okay board members now we are on the adoption of the orders of the day are there any items board members you wish to move from consent to action yes ma'am

022Miss Rosario 7e and what is the name of that one please Mr sorry the approval of the amendment for Legal Services agreement thank you eight a the approval of personnel recommendations okay 9A which is the approval to set the public hearing for the code of conduct right and I'd like to add to discussion citizen input thank you any other board members okay I'd like to call for a motion to adopt the adoption of the orders of the day emotion so moved Mr barefoot a second Miss berenborg a vote please all in favor say aye aye all opposed carries 5-0 okay Dr Moore time for the superintendent's report thank you madam chair hot off the presses I would like to share some data and some updates with our school board and our community we'll pull the

023slide up and that's there it is this is our district update and this first slide that you see here is the i-Ready diagnostic this is our second diagnostic we're taking it later in the year because of the progress monitoring and I'm sharing today the ELA language arts progress monitoring as you can see from a systems perspective we're at about 92 almost 92 percent done middle schools at 89 94.1 we're still in the window of testing but as you can see Ela typically goes first followed by math we'll finish math in the upcoming days so before I talk about the data itself I want to talk about the process on how we use this data this data will be used over the course of this week to disaggregate what we have done successful where are the

024opportunities to re-teach and then how do we coordinate the action moving forward so when we turn from spring break we have a clearly defined plan for each and every single student in the five weeks we have leading up to the actual assessment so this is data it is just not informative in terms of providing information as to where we sit within our community it informs instruction it is a tool that we use to shift interventions to provide additional interventions it is tools that we use to disaggregate the impact of instruction during planning times in order to determine where do we shift or modify we have a very clear expectation and the expectation is unwavering that expectation last year led to a State ranking Improvement of 16 State rankings that is the highest rate of improvement

025with one District small District matching that Improvement the expectation that I have is to continue to have the most Improvement across the state and many will say Dr Moore don't don't over promise ladies and gentlemen that's not over promising based on what we're doing in our schools the focus that we have on data and the kinds of conversations we have around that data that should be the collective expectation a conversation that I had three years prior uh three years ago over almost three and a half now uh one of the questions I wanted to answer is why does Miami have a Ela score that six percentage points higher than Indian River County that makes no sense it should not be the reality we should be we being Indian River County six percentage points higher than

026Miami Miami no offense Miami but that's just the truth and when you use an expectation that is unwavering and you're able to evaluate the impact that we're having on the lives of children on a daily basis uh you see us continuing to move an extremely positive direction so when you look at this data as a whole what you're looking at is the i-Ready assessment comparing uh the end-of-year diagnostic compared to the end of diagnostic last school year so if you look at our elementary schools there's a couple things that I want to point out in 2122 the third grade took that assessment in eight weeks from now so they took it at the end of the school year for um after they took the FSA assessment for possible promotion so there was eight additional weeks

027for third graders in this data set and typically each week of instruction uh your level of students scoring three or above ultimately increases so when you look at our Elementary in 2122 including the additional eight weeks of instruction for our third graders you see uh and this year we were at 63 percent uh I'm sorry last year we were at 63 percent and this year we are at 67.2 percent which is an increase of 4.2 percent so we know that's even going to be high higher when we if the third graders took the assessment at the same exact time so we are really really proud of what we're seeing in our elementary schools once again the expectation is to continue to improve we want to see significant Improvement when you look at our middle schools

028uh and what we realize in looking at our middle schools the students in their most informative years third grade fourth grade fifth grade those are now our sixth graders the impact that the pandemic has had on them academically both in reading and math is where we're seeing significant significant opportunities uh to continue to improve instruction so even with the impacts of the pandemic when we look at where our middle school students were this year to last year you see a slight uptick of 0.4 percent and you need to keep in mind when you look at the percent of students that were three or above in this school year in comparison to last school year it's about two percentage points higher or higher last year compared to this year so you have a students who didn't

029perform as well as the the previous set of students the year before and they're still outpacing them so we're proud of that number once again this is kind of where we are as a whole we're to about 2.3 percentage points higher than we were at this same time last year uh with significant opportunities to continue to use this instruction to drive as soon as we have math over the 90 percent I'll come back at our upcoming board member um and make sure we provide an update to the board I also wanted to speak through attendance so we are just going to complete our third nine weeks meaning that we will be three quarters of the way through the school year it has been something we have been Unapologetic about in terms of improving student attendance

030and when you look at elementary school last year it was 92.5 right now we're at 93.3 over the course of the first three nine weeks high school over a percentage Point Improvement as well as Middle School at 0.7 percent Improvement altogether 0.8 so when you look at just that point eight percent that's over 1100 hours of additional instruction that's being provided on a daily basis it is significant when we have an expectation that students are in school and they're provided uh meaningful instructional on a daily basis you in fact well see improvements by the simple fact students are in school I also kind of wanted to dig a little bit deeper in the data and when you look at the 95 percent which we Define as being adequate attendance 95 or above um uh severe

031is 90 to 95 percent some people would say oh 90 is not severe yes it is and then chronic 90 90 or below and what you see in this slide is you dig into this data we are growing the green and when I say growing the green at this time last year only 40 percent of our students had 95 percent or above or this year 45 five percent of our students are at 45 percent and then you look at the yellow you say it stays the same but you keep in mind we moved that five percent of up to the green and you look at the red we've also Shrunk the red in terms of chronic meaning students who have who are not in school uh 90 or above and this is a system-wide approach

032that we look at extracurricular activities participation in sports teams uh teachers uh upholding the expectations around uh credits being issued in school it is a a whole District approach and we as a community need to continue to have the conversation around uh attendance because it is something that a school site or a school system should embrace and the expectation created for students in a school should translate into the world of work or into the world of college and you need to create behaviors for our students that lead to success below 95 percent attendance isn't a behavior that would ultimately lead to success in the world of work so we want to continue to see improvements in this particular area I also wanted to highlight our fortify app and our students have made it abundantly clear

033in our community in our school Community when you're going to do something fellow students that is inappropriate that revolves around violence or possibly bringing a weapon to school you are going to be it told on for lack a better way of saying it this app is being used to ensure that our community expectation in our classrooms is in fact protected and it is non-negotiable that environment teaching and learning the impact that we want to have on students will not happen unless students stand up for those environments in their schools and I can tell you on a daily basis our students understand that expectation we have been pushing this information all year long and we're seeing absolute outstanding use of this tool that allows us to get to children to provide the needed intervention or Consequences

034whatever the two may be so we need to continue to inform our students in our community this is the opportunity to have an anonymous way of reporting something that may lead to harm to self or to others and we can provide the appropriate intervention in real time these apps these these notifications come to pretty much everyone sitting down here Mr Bass Mr Seymour um my myself Mr teskey the assigned principles it is a massive massive share of information that it gets us the information and our students are putting other students on on notice when you want to disrupt or jeopardize the safety of this environment we're going to let somebody know because it is absolutely unacceptable and we appreciate and acknowledge those students who are sharing and upholding that expectation I want to take it

035a little step further we understand students having a a system to Anonymous anonymously report incident so we can get that response this is on our website so if you looked here and you see that red circle this is how you would access this information and I know it's small on the screen but if you were able to click on um that that says contact you be able to contact us the first two is name and email address the statement above it basically says if you would like to be contacted you you can fill out but not required name and email address and you put the subject as well as who you would like to contact and it gives you district office it gives you the respective cabinet members it gives you myself in which that

036information is provided directly to me so communication is key this is a system to either fill out your name ask questions in order to get answers or do it Anonymous anonymously to get that information to us and if we're collectively to uphold this expectation this is yet another system that we have in place in order to communicate in order to ensure we have every opportunity to look at the reality in our schools at absolutely every level to provide the highest level of intervention and the highest level of accountability that all of our children rightfully deserve and Adam share that as my presentation for this evening thank you Dr Moore board members questions Miss Rosario thank you um Dr Moore we have uh new standards and we also have a the Florida assessment of student thinking

037which is the new um the fast assessment that has been given to the students to students it started in August of this year I believe they were given two tests the one in August and then one mid-year that fast test or that fast assessment is supposed to be used as the diagnostic to drive instruction and then at the end of the year use in a similar fashion to last year's um the old annual exam to see where their progress is how does that align with iready and why aren't we using that as a diagnostic instead of I ready because the lack of information that's being provided doesn't allow us to drive or identify opportunities to improve it simply just gives us a score it doesn't tell us uh the specifics is where the deficit is

038good teaching and learning as you know is differentiated the state is working on that so we want to address the deficit just not a score so if I am not reading at grade level is it fluency is it comprehension I need to know where to fill in the void this data provides that so it is 100 aligned to the new standards and as the State of Florida grows that we'll have those conversations around it but this is what we use to ensure that we're making the most informed decisions to improve the quality of instruction to improve the outcomes for kids I our legislative priorities the the Department of Education will enhance what is being shared with the schools in terms of the data from the fast assessments so I appreciate the explanation there a concern

039though that I have heard and I'd like for you to if you don't know it now that's fine if you can bring it back to us that the concern is that the I ready doesn't align with the fast so we might be looking at results that are actually going to come out or turn out to be completely different than what the State assessment will will monitor you know so I'm just concerned about the alignment of both of those as we look at these numbers these numbers might be higher or lower depending on whatever the fast assessment would provide for us is 100 aligned in terms of looking at the standards you are correct there may be a variance of outcome because when a student receives a score right um that is the particular score now

040what is a level one two three or four I'm sorry what is your actual school grade those parameters May shift so when you're looking at overall school grades uh the state hasn't set that that's why they're going to tell school grades you may not get that until November or December of next year but we will have their students score and as the state moves forward it will provide additional data that we could manipulate in a way that helps us inform our decision making process as it relates to instruction well one of the uh one of the concerns also and there's nothing we can do about it because it is what it is in terms of being a baseline year for the for the fast test one of the um I guess the amendments to the

041rule for us that has been already approved by the State Department of Education uh not the state the federal department of education is that the um because we have new benchmarks and because we have this new assessment that we will have an absence of learning gains in this Baseline year so I don't know how that will eventually affect school grades or student grades moving forward hopefully it won't but do you have any input on as far as the learning gains are concerned so just a to provide additional information Ms Rosario is is correct they will not have learning gains so if you looked at an elementary school they make .700 points um this year's school grade is only going to be based on 300 points so 100 points per category so the reading gains and

042the math gains in the lowest 25 percent gains in reading and math will not be part of the equation there are schools in our County and across the state um that do absolutely tremendous work their A and B schools but they demonstrate significant growth meaning all students you can't control where a student is when they walk into a school on day one but you definitely can influence where they walk out on day 180. so this year because it is a baseline year you can't compare growth from one year to the next if you don't have two years to compare this is Year One so when Mr Rosario was is stating there may be concern for school grades the answer is 100 yeah of of course because there are schools that um are C schools and

043B schools um that earned that right to call themselves C and B schools based on their growth so you look at Pelican Island which is a small school you look at Sebastian which is a small school Sebastian is a b School but when you look at their learning gains in lowest 25 percent across the board that's why they're a b that's why they're a b um so there may be shifts in school grades next school year um because we're not going to have the opportunity to highlight the growth for students so if only 50 percent of the students are at a level three four or five unless we move the other 50 to three four and five there's no way to capture points or growth for them so it is a proceed with caution and

044deep understanding when you're looking at school grades next year and to be honest with you we're going to start the school year without school grades as they're going to be norming um that process and then why why just only present the ELA and not the math as well so if I would not want to present to anybody or even look at myself data until it is complete so we're at about 45 50 which is absolutely fine because we're in the window um but it would not be appropriately appropriate for me to share data that could drastically change in a public format when the other 50 so it can go up significantly or can go down uh significantly depending on which set of students have took that test so they're still taking it yes they're still

045taking it and they're not behind they're within the window um so we're fine with that I just didn't want to sit on this if I had it and was over 90 I wanted to share will you be bring us the math at the end of next month absolutely as well as our our EOC work um and then the last thing is the middle school grades here when you bring the math can we look at all of this together including the ELA as well I'd like to see a history of these scores going back to Prior years prior to the pandemic if the pandemic really was an issue then we should see a dip a bigger dip than in previous years in terms of the pattern but if it isn't then we'll be able to see

046that when we look at all of those scores but so you know a few years before the pandemic and then up until today if we can get those scores so we can compare that would be helpful so absolutely when you look at some of those results just off the top of my head the first year of the pandemic uh the first year we did not take assessments the second year we lost seven percentage points in math four five in our eocs whether it be civics or U.S history um we were able to get back four of those points last year in math and still see a a decline in comparison to where we were with some of our eocs in previous year so there is a clear clear connection with outcomes connected to the pandemic

047and you're we're on the back side of that now we're consistent instruction will allow us to continue to continuously grow to get back to where we were pre-pandemic and then in some cases ultimately exceed where we were pre-pandemic I'll provide that information I appreciate that what I meant maybe I wasn't clear what I meant is in the next presentation if you could include that information in the slides thank you Mr barefoot Miss barenborg just one thing just to remind everybody Dr Moore I've double checked with you several times on the alignment with I ready so I'm good with that but this new test um no gains no lower quartile of course new testing and looking at the alignment of what we have so with the grades coming in November or December basically what we can

048look at is how they did from test one to test two to test three is that correct that that is correct now it is still a high stakes testing because you that one result that you take on that third progress monitoring um you're not receiving any growth points or acknowledgment of growth from pm1 to pm2 to the third progress monitoring you're only receiving it in in comparison to where you were at the previous year and that is why we're not having learning gains this year thank you very much okay thank you for the report now we go to guidelines for citizen input I will read these and then we'll start calling people up thank you each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes duration person will be recognized

049in the order in which the request will received the times will start when the speaker is at the podium the school board attorney will be the official time keeper as you will see the time clock is visible to your left on the Deus you will hear a beep at the end of your three minutes may speak up to three minutes the beginning of a business meeting during citizen input is indicated on the order of business and up for three minutes to the action item agenda during the action agenda in each board member discussion item is indicated on the order of business if a consent item is moved to an action item when you come up to the podium you may speak at a time or defer to speak at the presentation of the action item

050but reminder people may only speak once about any given item time period may be extended by the presiding officer only the individual submitting the speakers form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers during the meeting please refame from clapping or outbursts of any sort so that we can proceed with dignity and with decorum by not infringing on any individual's First Amendment rights I need to remind everyone to direct all comments to the chairperson not to an individual board member or the superintendent board members may or may not address any citizen input statements at the end of Citizen input comments as board members listen to citizens without interruption citizens are asked to give board members the same respect as for Florida statute 1001 372 subsection 3 the presiding officer

051ability 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 has first issued a warning that continued interference with this orderly process of the meeting will result in removal I'll be calling two up at a time the first person will speak to the podium to speak and the second person will be in line to speak and if you have anything to give to board members or the superintendent please do so through our executive assistant Miss asplin thank you very much our first service assistant is Bob Bruner followed by Jennifer Pippen thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you this evening about something that's really close to me is a

052vocational education I am an instructor and I taught in a building trade program at Mideast career and Technology Center and it was a two-year program I taught both Juniors and seniors I would have juniors in the morning and seniors in the afternoon and when they weren't with me they were with their academic instructors and since there's four grading periods in a school year the first year we covered masonry carpentry Electric and Plumbing we covered all four of the different trade areas and I taught my students how to lay concrete block how to read blueprints how to lay out a foundation for a house and then in carpentry I taught them how to use the power tools and how to read blueprints and then electric we actually wired lights switches and receptacles and I taught them

053how to tie back into the main breaker boxes and then the the third grade the fourth grading period we did plumbing and my students learned how to cut clean and solder they learned about traps Vents and all kinds of different plumbing and their senior Year my students actually built a house at the career center and we built the house on three steel i-beams and my seniors did everything from helping me estimate the material to picking out the blueprint to uh doing all the framing the drywall the electric the plumbing and at the end of the school year we would have an open house and invite the public down and uh my program was one of the only programs at the career center that actually paid for itself because we sold the house it was a

054nice house for somebody in the community it was great for an open house for the people to come down to the career center and I had some of the highest enrollment of any program in the vocational school I had the highest retention because once we started building the house they wanted to see what it was going to look like when we finished so uh it was a really great program and I could see maybe the need for something similar to that down here I know it wouldn't be the same as building it on Three's GLI beams and moving it to a foundation because of the construction down here but School District owns a lot of different properties and I was thinking maybe you could look into something like building houses for disabled veterans you know

055the small houses for veterans that are homeless or working with Habitat for Humanity and and building houses with Habitat for Humanity tying the school back into the community with the veterans and with people who need homes or looking for homes uh I uh about ready to run out of time I practice this at home to see if I could say it all in three minutes by the way I was here earlier this morning and I'd like to thank you for putting in a long day thank you thank you so much thank you Miss Pippin and then Cindy Gibbs Miss Pippen yeah good evening my name is Jennifer Pippin and I'm the chairman of moms for Liberty Indian River Florida and one of the co-founders for We the People Indian River County and I sent you

056all last week three emails from the DeSantis book band hoax is what they called it and um I I know that you guys received it and I hope you guys had a chance to watch the first 12 minutes of the video if you did not I know some of you have very busy schedules the first 12 minutes went through library books throughout the state that are prohibited from HB 1467 hb7 and things that are you know prohibited by law and the law has been in place for a long time I know we've had that discussion but one of those 10 books are actually on the shelves in our school district which was alarming we haven't challenged it yet because we were waiting for the policy and the procedure to be updated for the committee to

057get you know trained and everything like that um but I just if you haven't got a chance to watch the video please watch it you won't be able to find it on any news outlets because they had to stop streaming their live stream because of the sexually graphic and inappropriate content again that were found from materials found in schools from across the state and across the country they actually had in their what book the books where they were removed from so um if you anybody want to do a public records request they could see that they were permanently removed from multiple districts across the state and Indian River was not named with you know one of those books just so you guys know because it had been challenged yet um and in that book band

058hoax where Governor DeSantis was um you know kind of fixing all of these myths and all of these misinformation things that were going around something happened here in Indian River County that he brought up at no time did anybody from the Department of Education his cabinet anything say that you know classroom libraries or libraries needed to be closed and I know last year one of the libraries were closed it was put in TC palm and we later found out I discussed with you guys a public records request where we found that the teachers union actually asked classroom teachers to not open up their Library so the biggest thing and the biggest reason why I wanted to send that to you guys and why it's so important is because there's so much information going around there's

059so much judgment there's so much things that are wrong that you know he took from across the state and issues from across the state and put it in this you know quick video and he also debunked the AP African-American studies as well and what he removed moved from that curriculum that is not here in Indian River County by the way that course we found out from a public records request so I thank you for your time thank you Miss Pippin Cindy Gibbs and then Mark Dr Maura ship good evening I had the absolutely delightful experience this weekend of an entire day from 7 30 in the morning until about six o'clock at night spent my entire day with kids from this school district and it was what a joy exhausting what a joy I had

060the opportunity to be a judge at our regional science fair that we heard such wonderful things about before and it reminded me of how much I liked being the science fair coordinator at Sebastian Elementary for a few years when I was teaching there and in fact my last year here in the district my third graders took first place in their science fair and it was really nice to be back to it and and I just want to share what an absolutely wonderful experience it was to be in the cafeteria at Vero Beach High School and talking to a 10 and 11 year old kids about their science fair projects and how they were inspired by things they had read because my first question is always where'd you come up with this idea and I was

061kind of expecting to hear well I saw something on YouTube or I looked at sciencebuddies.com or the way that a lot of kids who aren't very motivated will find a project but the kids that made it to Regional the one boy that I spoke to whose project was phenomenally creative uh he took it literally from a novel he's been reading and he was so excited to share that with me that something that he read inspired him to look into something that's affecting his environment and at 11 years old he's already considering what he'd like to do as an adult maybe working in Forest firefighting and that's what his project was on it was amazing what a great time to have a conversation with one of our youth and how happy he was with his education

062and then I spent six hours at Sebastian River High School because my daughter is on the track team and I hung out with all her friends and and listened to what the kids were saying and then later that evening my husband and I have this trick we like to make sure that all the neighborhoods kids know that they can come hang out at our house because we stay in the house and they hang out on the patio and then we get to hear all the dirt and um it's good because we know what's going on we know who's in trouble we know whose families might need help and it's important to us that our kids are connected to their community all the bad news that we hear around here all the time I wanted to

063bring a little bit of sunshine because most of the kids I know are in really great shape they're really connected they have good relationships with their teachers and their families and I think it's important that the rest of our community is aware that not everybody is showing up to school in trouble it's it's the rare exception it's easy to attach ourselves to the bad news it travels quickly but there are so many of our youth in our community that are living a good life and they are going to save us all because they're the ones that get along with each other and they're not bothered by all of the static thank you for your time tonight thank you Miss Gibbs Dr ship and then Julia White good evening well I'm not going to be as

064nice as Cindy um I'm going to speak a little bit um to a couple of issues that came up in the superintendent's Workshop this afternoon specifically the code of conduct and the racial Equity policy I want to be clear that when we talk about the code of conduct what's the goal right the goal of the code of conduct is to create safe School environments is to keep our kids safe when we talk about replacing evidence-based proven strategies with things like zero tolerance I want to be clear and understand where we're getting our information from because I've been doing this work a long time and what I'm clear is that there's no evidence suggesting that Zero Tolerance discipline produces positive outcomes to the contrary and if you can provide me with documented research evidence Empirical research

065evidence that says that Zero Tolerance produces safer schools I'd be delighted to see that I haven't seen it what I have seen is for example a report from the U.S Secret Service analysis of plots against schools called a birding averting targeted School violence and what they say is that targeted violence is present preventable when communities identify warning signs and intervene school should intervene with students when their behavior before their behavior warrants legal consequences students were most often motivated to plan a school attack because of grievances with classmates students are best positioned to identify and Report concerning behaviors displayed by their classmates evidenced by the fortify presentation in the superintendent's report removing a student from school does not eliminate the risk they might pose to themselves or others in fact five plotters meaning students in the

066or people who caused harm in schools were recent former students who had left school with within one academic year as they had been expelled enrolled in other schools graduated or dropped attending classes this indicates that simply removing a student from the school without appropriate supports may not necessarily remove the risk of harm they propose they pose to themselves or others I could go on about this but I'm short on time I want to be clear in this that you can't simultaneously rage about reducing and responding to rampant bullying on the one hand and then systematically and systemically remove the supports that are put in place to teach children empathy respect self-regulation compassion cooperation we need to actually figure out how to do that and maintain those supports in our schools if in fact what we're

067looking to produce is safer schools lastly to the racial Equity policy say thank you Dr Jones for putting in place a new policy that addresses what was clearly left out I reviewed the policies that were said to Encompass all of the things that were going to be removed in the racial Equity policy and they didn't they don't address a lot of them so thank you to the board for agreeing to review that I'm concerned however that some board members actually acknowledge that this was not an issue of significant importance to them despite having been aware that these was important language to our community thank you very much Julia white and then Anthony Brown good evening um this afternoon while watching the superintendent's Workshop I saw a library that I'm very familiar with as a former

068Sebastian River High School student and it was nice to see that it might be brought up to today's standards and it was just lovely to to look through those illustrations and I really do hope that project comes to fruition uh I spoke earlier this year about the Citrus Bowl and the much needed improvements there um and it's really nice to hear that they're going to get the turf this year um I live right next door to Glendale Elementary and the parent Loop project that is working there's no traffic stopped on 8th Street and the new cafeteria that went in there are just amazing uh so kudos to actually getting those projects done um and there's a nice big development that's going in right next to Glendale Elementary so that is going to affect traffic in

069that area and there's possibly another one going in across the street from it so future thought um but the reason I'm talking about these projects is that uh there there seems to be a loss of projects and what I mean by that is when my son was a first grader the parent loop as well as the cafeteria was supposed to be worked on that summer he's a senior uh so time has has lapsed uh the Citrus Bowl for example when we did the home side which was a much needed renovation due to deterioration there was talks about doing the away side in the field at the following year a couple years down the road and I believe that was supposed to be done this summer and now we're having a pull finding to do the

070turf and it this goes on and on I know that the lights and the packs at both Sebastian River High School and spear Beach High School were supposed to be replaced with LED lights don't know where that project stands doesn't seem to be happening I know Dr Jones mentioned the seats in the Sebastian River High School pack I have seen those seats they are awful and they've been there since the school was built so why why am I talking about all this I had a thought had an idea don't know if it'll ever come to fruition but I think we need to leverage our community maybe do some crowdsourcing what would be really nice to see is a page a landing page where you can see these projects have the restricted accounts may be available

071so people can make donations straight to those accounts to fund things that they have the heart to fund so I'll yield the rest of my time but thank you for all your work thank you for putting in long days and look forward to seeing these projects come to fruition thank you thank you Julia white thank you Anthony Brown and then Kevin Browning good evening racial Equity policy a great black man once said man does not care much for man that does not care for himself we're here because we care and the equity the racial Equity policy that you did in 2020 is an awesome document I've been on the equity committees one two and three I'm on the workshop committee for the d-cig and I have not seen a document come out of this District

072as powerful and definitive as the original policy but I I'm hurt by the fact that we've weaponized words within that document Equity diversity and inclusion when I was searched we did the uh Pledge of Allegiance when I was in the military Vietnam era we thought that's what we were fighting for Equity diversity and inclusion but as I stand before you today it's eroded it's gone we now are looking at you defining to us how we perceive it some people say is that systemic racism is not in Indian River County School District well 55 years with a desegregation order still standing on you I beg to differ people talk about religious some of the most atrocious atrocities ever done against African-Americans were done from churches so this policy I would love for you to stay because

073it's definitive but if it's going to go Dr Jones has did an awesome job but I also believe that it could be even better I refuse to allow you to Define me without me being at the table if we accept what Dr Jones has it has to be that we are at the table that we are part of what's going on that is done right do not Define me without me being at the table thank you thank you Mr Brown Kevin Browning and then Edward Spencer woman chair Dr Moore superintendent board members awesome presentations tonight I like with a carpenter guy I shouldn't call him the carpenter guy but what he talked about I bought a shed from Vero Beach High School about 23 years ago for fifteen hundred dollars and it's still standing so

074they do some good work and it should be something we should have I'd like to thank you board for your efforts at unity and I believe that I and many Indian River County residents would be elated when the board can get back to the business of student safety facilities like the lady mentioned a few minutes ago uh proper wages for employees school grades closing the achievement Gap and setting goals to be the number one performing District in the state now let me apologize right now for uh what you may hear me say but we do want to be the most uh the the top performing District in the state state but what we heard last week was kind of offensive and appalling I'm a person of faith and I don't want equity in this town

075and we don't need a racial Equity policy or an equity policy now that kind of reminded me of a few things but more specifically there was this movie called Django in the movie the slaver said to the black man did not give you my last apple as if he did him a favor that is just sickening and so wrong it's ridiculous so I invite you right now if you have those feelings please take off your hood show us who you are and I'll tell you who the rest of us are in here we're brothers and sisters of Indian River County of all faiths Races and walks of life who intend to stand together for all kids we need the policy that says we support each and every child in this district and that includes with

076racial Equity equality and everything else that might bother you in the middle of the night there are so many positive things going on please let's protect all children and get to the business of making this District number one and like Mr Brown said everybody needs a seat at the table thank you thank you Mr Browning and our last speaker on this part of Citizen input is Edward Spencer good afternoon oh it's first time up here uh I'm a local Pastor part of the pastor Association for the NAACP I have a preschool that's over in Gifford and what I know this is It's always decision made about us without us so I'm here to ask if you're going to make a decision about us make sure one of us is at the table so you can

077understand us so we end the decision without us wouldn't be prevalent to us or for us thank you board members any responses from citizen input Miss berenborg sure Mr Bruner vocational Ed where's Mr Brenner did he leave um I was really impressed by his program that he had because when I first came on the board I asked why we didn't have carpentry and all this other stuff when you look around and you see the trees being plowed down and houses going up why aren't we doing that um you know there have been some things brought to attention about how that has changed and how different um construction companies bring on their employees and things like that but he makes a good point we need to look back at that um Julia White oh um thank

078you for speaking the library is going to be really a fun place you know I was excited that they could eat in the library so I think kids will want to go there and hang out and and do things you know that they need to do to improve meet his groups and things like that it's great the LED lights in the parking lots have been a concern I know hopefully the superintendent will address that the seats I took pictures of it and texted it to him he knows late at night he got all these pictures and he went what's this and I said we need to talk about this but he has assured me that's on his radar immediately so I was happy to hear that um and all of the the rest of you

079that spoke very passionately about different things that we need to see in view I appreciate that very much we don't make decisions appear lightly we need input we need people to come and talk feel free to pick up the phone call call us or make an appointment or let us know where to show up and speak to people so we appreciate that thank you thank you Mr barefoot well I wish I wish that program that that he covered all the trades was available when I went to school and probably chosen one of those and not some of the other things they've done over the years it was impressive and I have to say in Indian River County the programs that we do have focused on the trades are excellent it's just a matter of of

080having more young people take advantage of some of the opportunities that are presented I can remember listening to a lot of discussion around the welding program a friend of mine's a general manager of Mullinax Ford and he talks to me about eight or nine young people that work in the act two afternoons a week and then come in on Saturdays and work alongside Master mechanics and he would tell you that these kids after a couple of years can get a job in in the service department of any Automotive dealer in Indian River County so there are opportunities out there whether or not we we push them hard enough or encourage kids we probably don't but what we have is pretty good and whether they could be better things can always be better the other thing

081that I thought was interesting and this might be an idea and maybe we do it to some degree somebody suggested on the website that we put some of the some of the facilities related projects on the website maybe in a the district website in a separate category and offer the opportunities to provide funding ten dollars fifteen doesn't matter restrict it to a specific project that is of interest to you and or your families I thought that was a very good idea and it's it's your money I mean it is the taxpayers money that are funding these facilities it's a separate budget and uh if we can keep people appraised of the status of many of these projects I think that would be great so thank you for your suggestions um I I think that um

082Mrs berenborg and uh uh Mr Barefoot and I are probably all going to say the same thing on the same topics um the idea of construction and carpentry we had a construction uh program here that was removed just a few years ago and we were told at the time that there wasn't a need for it and and therefore it was removed but clearly there is an interest in it and clearly there is support from the board um so I would love to have a further conversation with Dr Moore and the board on how we can um somehow revisit including um somewhere in our school district carpentry and construction as a vocational uh and Tech program the Treasure Coast Builders Association has shared an interest in partnering with us on that um certainly the ideas of

083building uh vet veterans affordable housing and Habitat for Humanity some of those ideas that were shared tonight are amazing ideas and I think that we should definitely look into that Miss White I love the crowdsourcing idea love it I don't know if it's if we can do it Mr Fagan is is will definitely guide us in that direction I don't you know obviously talk with um the superintendent and the board but I love that idea we have so many special projects that need to be addressed and it really is um a great starting point at least for us I love the idea of a landing page so sorry I didn't come up with it first but it's fantastic so kudos to you for sharing that with us hopefully that'll guide our future conversations in that

084and I'm going to shoot this over to Dr Moore for him to address there were some concerns that I heard that we have removed systems and programs from our student code of conduct eliminating correction and compassion or care for students well-being I did not see that at all can you please address that Dr Moore sorry so I would prefer to have a number of comments I wouldn't make it at the end including absolutely perfect when we're all done thank you Dr paska anything right at this point I think I'm reverberating what most people have said but um I definitely want to look over and see what we can do to support the trade schools and increase enrollment in that I I don't think your mic is working yeah there we go all right testing there

085we go it's working now um no I was just saying that I definitely want to support the trade schools locally and try to improve enrollment in them and hopefully scholarships as well and as far as I'm aware there was a number of things said about the code of conduct policy no Services were being removed there's really uh so there was a lot of I think miscommunication uh that I heard but look forward to your response okay Miss baremore has one more thing and then I'll wrap it up before Dr Moore yeah he did my Plumbing too and and having just had a lot several plumbers at my house man those kids could really make a good living coming out of school so we need to look at Plumbing too please um just a few things

086the citizen input tonight thank you very much we appreciate the respect that you show we used to have one of those at our High School in Illinois where they came in and the house was built and then it would be for sale in the community it was a great thing actually St Petersburg High School just did their whole football field through the alumni band and football paid for because they were so interested in making sure that was continued at that time we heard a lot about racial Equity policy tonight and obviously if you look at the agenda I was the one who brought up a another policy in case that out of the one is repealed but just for the public to know currently the school district in the River County racial Equity policy is

087in the public hearing window with the action to repeal on April 24th understanding and listening to the community we serve I have concerns regarding the removal of this policy without having a policy of substantive meaning and value to replace it with if you watch a workshop today we had a good discussion on this it was a good discussion where what a board should do and they give input and where do we go with this and it was a four to one to say go ahead and move forward I knew when this policy was put forward that it was not the answer we had very little time to do this because we needed to get that on the agenda one week ahead of time there was just two weeks before between meetings this time they're in

088this revision phase I will work with Dr safdi on looking at fellow board members input and welcoming feedback from students parents Guardians and community members and Dr Moore I think it's very very important that we really want to have a commitment to this District in its mission that we listen to all all of our people in this community if you look at the Deus right in front of you it says transforming education to inspire and Empower all students to maximize their full potential so while I look at this with Dr shafty and looking at feedback I will do just that I will listen thank you madam chair and I just kind of want to make a a few remarks following a what board member said is and equally as important what our community said when

089you look at our CTE programs unfortunately the gentleman left I would love to have staff talk to him and I will have staff Miss Emerson follow up with them we go through a process every three or four years in which you look at all of the Career Technical education programs that are being offered and we must validate to the state before they give us money is it a high-wage high skilled job they will not fund programs they will not give us the money for programs in which once you complete the program there's no job for them to receive we just finished CTE month and one of the things that I've said all throughout CT month CTE month is one of the best kept secrets in this county is CTE programming we have nursing we have

090welding we have culinary we have technology we have biotech Aerospace Automotive business management digital design digital video tech drafting marketing management web design we're adding HVAC practical nursing so we're looking at can we ensure when our students receive these programs they can in fact walk into a high skill High wage job so as we go through this and we just finished it two years ago we'll do it again in the coming year or the upcoming year we'll continue to look at programming in order to ensure we are offering those programs doesn't keep us from not offering electives but then the funding comes straight from the general fund versus the Perkins funding so it is something that we continue to look at but the expansion of what we've done in CTE over the course of the

091last three years is one of the things that I celebrate the the most and you you all know as Emerson doesn't um let any grass grow under her feet it's really looking at programmings and expanding programming to meet the needs of of all students the seating um in terms of Sebastian River we we are in the process of having that corrected uh the board coming up over the summer will look at its capital plan and what we will approve which is a absolutely wonderful opportunity to see how we make magic happen with the dollars The Limited dollars that we have from the state to maintain campuses and one of the things we probably should do is go on a field trip and look at the quality of buildings that we currently have um and this

092is I don't take any credit for this because it would be wrong for me to do so um but the quality of our campuses the upkeep of our campuses is really above reproach it it really honestly is we need to maximize technology we do need to have a process in place and I think we do and we obviously can expand upon to listen to the community on how we are using those funds to create world-class facilities to produce world-class instruction uh so just very proud of the work that we've been able to do uh Mr Bass in partnership with his team and Mr Fagan are doing some extremely Innovative efficient things to give to our students things they've never had and we will continue to do that as we get as we get ready to

093bring our next Capital plan to the budget and I would include everyone to be involved the code of conduct is going to be presented tonight um but let me say this the day that it doesn't provide opportunities for us to meet with students and provide interventions for them is the day I'm out it's just not um how I was raised and this code of conduct may not have specific programs listed but by no means or no measure are we walking away from the opportunities to connect with children help them understand the consequences of their behaviors and help them identify which behaviors lead to success we will not walk away from that not on my watch we will make sure what we're doing in our schools in terms of helping and supporting students is in fact

094allowing them to understand this is the maladaptive behavior that was present I understand what I did and then I'm provided the appropriate level support in time to replace that maladaptive Behavior with an appropriate behavior that's just what we're called to do for me the purpose the impact the power of what public education which is part of my leadership story you've heard me tell a hundred times uh was coming to that realization what groups of adults could do in a school in a school in which every single student had been expelled but when the adults were unwavering in their belief that I'm going to connect and build a relationship because I believe this student can turn his life around uh powerful things happened my observation of those adults changed the trajectory of my life that is

095all I'm called to do is to replicate that kind of environment for a total school system that's what we need to be about um I'm completely echoing some of the things that have been said but the board creates policy and the board should be listening and is listening to its community in the creation of policy um so as the board referenced today there are opportunities to continue to problem solve I know uh I will work with board to bring back something uh and for it to be considered um but let me be abundantly clear the policy that's up for repeal um there are things in it in which will cause additional consequences for this school system if we don't take uh the appropriate measures that was my recommendation two weeks ago it still holds true

096in terms of being my recommendation but would encourage us to engage in the conversation if there are opportunities to create something that allows us to be responsive to our community then that's the work that we need to do as hard as it may be and if we can get to that particular Point um that would be a good thing so those are my remarks Madam chair thank you very much any other remarks for members members plummy Plumbing okay our next item is approval of consent agended items as amended I would like to call for a motion to approve the consent agenda items as amended I'll second okay Miss Rosario second miss berenberg any discretion a vote on approval consent agenda items as Amanda all in favor aye aye opposed okay vote carries five zero I'm

097Madam chair yes I'd just like to acknowledge the grant donors that we received several grants that we just approved St John's Water Management grant for Gifford Middle School Fellsmere Frog Festival donated to Sebastian River High School and to Fellsmere Elementary School Chick-fil-A wait just a minute thank you I didn't know they were all good now we'll hold for just a minute so everyone can clear who wishes to clear hopefully it stopped raining yeah unless you mentioned Chick-fil-A everybody headed to Chick-fil-A yes she told him to go to Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A had a micro grant that they gave to Sebastian River High School that's political it's holy chicken uh Citrus PTA donated Mid Coast Tire Service donated to Citrus uh Kate O'Neill one of our media Specialists donated to her own school and it was recognized because

098it was a significant amount of money um Jay McLaughlin for Beachland Beachland PTA Grand Harbor donated for health services so I mentioned that because all of these different groups are donating to our schools and our schools are benefiting and so I just wanted to make sure we read it into the record so thank you thank you Miss baronborg and thank you to all the donations and thank you to our two grand people that are working hard on our grants okay at this time we are on items pulled from consent to action there are any items that were movements into action I will recognize the board member who pulled the item to review after the item has been presented I will then call for a motion all right the first one is seven e and that

099was Miss Rosario on amended the information on the amendment of Legal Services and just to remind I do have a couple people talking on Code of Conduct but that is not until 9 A.M I will try not to forget okay we need it first in a second for this item it's I'm sorry my fault go ahead Mr sorry the floor is yours um so I pulled this item number one because it's not a consent item it's not a regular routine item that should be on consent um in addition I pulled it because I um do not believe that we were that this board member was given enough information uh backup was not provided in order to justify um paying a hundred thousand dollars more supposedly is there something did I miss something I don't no

100ma'am go ahead okay uh paying a hundred thousand dollars more um for uh legal services not that it's not important not that it's not needed but that this board member was not provided with the information to make uh the best decision possible at this time so therefore um I pulled this from consent so that we can well Madam chair as I have the floor I make a motion to move to postpone the question um to the next meeting April 24th okay is there a second to that motion okay motion fails not having a second okay our next one is eight a on Personnel right so Madam chair are you still point of order I'm sorry go ahead you still have to vote on this I'm sorry on action item okay so all in favor would

101you repeat your motion Please Mr bizario no refilled emotions main motion it's on there so do we have emotions to approve as it is listed on our consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve second any discussion yes go ahead um yes I wasn't given back up by information but we all meet with the superintendent um mine's Monday morning that was one of the first things I asked him about because a hundred thousand dollars raise a red flag when he explained it to us and said we've paid more than that in the past because we do it for piecemeal lots of different law firms and this is um the one Law Firm that's going to be able to handle it all and I understood that and that's why he had to bring the item to

102us I said okay it's um semantics so I get it um so I was fine with it because I did get that information so thank you any other discussion yeah I'll just oh you can go first you can go first well Mr Barefoot go ahead I was just going to say that just because we were authorizing it doesn't mean it's going to be spent right it's there if needed and uh if if something crops up in a uh where time is of the essence um can't call it necessarily a special board meeting for every item and if there's not enough money left in the original budget this hundred thousand dollars will provide the administration the opportunity to address that thing in a timely fashion hopefully we won't need to spend it but it's there if

103needed Dr paska yeah at first glance it almost appears like we're giving them a raise however clearly uh this is not only for salary at work but it's also for litigation we've essentially used up the amount of Finance we expected to have around for litigation we so if there's any additional amount needed we're going to have to approve something like this so I I support it thank you any other discussion okay all in favor then of approving of the Amendments for legal service agreement say aye aye no anyone opposed no okay motion carries four to one to to move forward with that manager yes ma'am yes just a point of order the items that have been pulled from consent I I would like the opportunity to have staff or myself present the items um there

104are individuals who may be tuning in for the first time um so all the way board member pulls them uh for discussion which is absolutely the way of doing it um for the benefit or full understanding for our community I would really appreciate the opportunity to have the item presented just as it was during workshop and then be able to ask any questions or respond to any concerns that may be there okay so you're saying after Miss Rosario who pulls the next item you would like to present yes this is Ultimate is my recommendation this is my item that now belongs to the board um so I think it needs to be presented and then discussed got it thank you sir I'm sorry all right our next item that was pulled was a a Personnel

105recommendations Miss Rosario the floor is yours thank you there is a Personnel recommendation that was presented to us today of a new position again this is uh not a consent agenda this is not routine this new position I'm going to give it over to um Dr Moore so he can explain but this new position um uh well there's history behind it so I'll let him explain this position so thank you Ms Rosario Mr Bass can you present the item please or through the chair um this is actually a position that's already in place uh we have a retirement of an individual who's worked for the district for 48 years and the change that we've made on this job description was raising the pay as the Pro-Tech level from a pay grade C to a pay

106grade B which would start the base about five thousand dollars more currently the individual is there due to all the years of experience has out ranged the ranged on his salary and so this would put it in line with the other individuals this new person that we hire and also give us the opportunity to attract someone with the skill set that we need all right any discussion or questions from the board yeah I just wanted to mention if I may that on the actual board docs on the actual description usually there is a red line and then so that wasn't there which is one of the reasons why I brought it forward when I questioned about it because it doesn't seem like there was anything here that was New or Old in terms of the

107red line or the green adding it in I apologize for that is oversight on the format we sent you thank you any other discussion board members okay we need emotion Mr Zara do you want to make a motion on this I make a motion to approve the amended Personnel recommendations second all in favor any discussion I'm sorry we had discussion can I ask questions Amendment it's listed on our board docs as amended Personnel recommendations oh gotcha so I maybe were further depending okay got it nothing further okay all in favor approving the Personnel recommendation stated in 8A all right you want to pose okay five zero thank you Mr Zario and Dr Moore all right our next one we do have a couple of people will wish to speak about 9A the code of conduct

108so we'll do citizen input at this time first person is Jennifer Pippen good evening again I was on the code of conduct committee and I attended and participated in all three of the meetings the first meeting my group and I we had a high school principal the second meeting we had a middle school principal and then the third meeting we had District staff so it was really great for us to get the input from different entities when we were making recommendations and changes to the code of conduct from what we saw and we suggested to follow the laws to not have any more restorative justice restorative circles restorative practices or social emotional learning and we changed all of those to conflict resolution per the new state statute so a lot of the changes that you

109see in the code of conduct where it's marked off it's following the state statutes and again in talking to you know the middle school principals and the high school principals and the District staff aligning that you'll see a lot of those changes in the code of conduct and I also wanted to speak about the Guardian program that was launched after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland after named after one of its victims the program submits wanted to have a state law that required an armed person to guard every public and charter school in the state that can be District police local police security contractors or under the program a school Guardian in order to become a school Guardian one needs to pass a psychological and drug screening and complete 144 hours of the trading so

110by law it's required to have the school resource officers or the guardian program but it doesn't mean that we can't have both so after the recent events at Vero Beach High School and the problems that we've had throughout the county actually throughout the state for you know the the long period of time it may be something that we could look into and that kind of goes into the code of conduct and also um you know with the 14 million dollars that we have have allocated for the district for mental health you know maybe we can look into Deans or getting some more of these Guardians because right now we have safety but it may help the school resource officers and I hope you did you know speak to Milo Thornton and some of the school

111resource officers here in this room today or that are on campuses to see if the guardianship program would be something that would be you know worth looking into to add to the code of conduct for more safety for our students you know I know metal detectors have been brought up as well I don't remember much discussion in the past three years that I've been coming to school board meetings that being discussed so you know maybe not with this code of conduct but in the future that's something that could be discussed again with the recent events and you know guns brought to school multiple times this past school year that may be beneficial and finally with the dress code I said keep it simple kind of made a joke about it the Four B's no boobs

112no belly no but no boxers and that's easy for a dress code so thank you thank you Miss Pippen next speaker is Tammy bogert good evening first I want to begin after reviewing the draft of the new code of conduct I want to thank the superintendent student advisory council members I was thrilled with what I was reading especially changes to the bullying policy however there were a couple of things that I wanted to bring to your attention um so that may this policy may be changed or tweaked just a bit specifically the wording says all reports of bullying will be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated in a timely manner with parents that I'm talking to I have friends who have children who are being bullied in school right now and I'll give you an example

113A friend of mine has a child in Middle School who was videotaped when he was in the bathroom that video was then shared on Snapchat the school administrators did nothing this was going on for a year needless to say after it was shared on Snapchat to a wide array of students his they made his life miserable and it has taken a year for her to finally get and for him to finally get this taken seriously so my first thought is can there be a means or a vehicle where parents can escalate a concern when it's not being heard by the school administration secondly I'm I noticed that our means for filling out a form if we made it a little easier maybe students our parents would feel more comfortable feeling out forms and submitting them

114anonymously right now there's not even a fillable form online if there was a fillable form with that they could fill out and then just click submit and it would go straight to the school or possibly a hotline Martin County has a hotline and it's really simple parents or students call their school and they just punch in there's a basically a separate voicemail box to report anonymously report bullying incidents they call the school punch in like pound 188 and they're able to leave a message anonymously just a means to make it a little bit easier for these incidents to be reported um as of now you either have to take it to the administration or you have to put it in a Dropbox which the reality is somebody can see you there's cameras everywhere so just

115a means to make it a little bit easier for parents to submit these bullying forms to schools thank you so much thank you very much all right Miss Rosario this is your item 9A code of conduct thank you I pull this again because it is um as I mentioned it is not um a regular routine item I would like to just begin with the anonymous what Miss Bogart mentioned this is something that I have been requesting for months and I was told it was very simple and easy and we are months and months later and I still have we still have not received information as to whether this Anonymous reporting system has been created or not Dr Moore so if anyone wants to go back and watch my presentation and pay attention to it I

116did highlight that information in which you can report anonymously on the device in which I just covered so I did in fact just give a presentation on that in addition I also want to say um four to five which is also part of that presentation is a Anonymous reporting Abbott is on every device in our school district that is in the hands of children there are posters plastered throughout the school can't speak specifically as to what's happening in Martin County but students are using that application in ways in which they've never used it before we had a concern reported today about a student who possibly um was on you know could was it sick or was on drugs or or something that allowed us to go through problem solve and say is there any additional

117support for for having that um so we do have that in that form in the presentation that I gave this afternoon you go to contact us you click on that you have the opportunity it clearly says if you would you know if you want to be an honest man you only if you want if you don't want to be contacted you don't have to fill out the name and the email address you can just fill out um the concern that you have and you can link it to any specific office including myself which gives me the opportunity to look on a daily basis or whenever I receive them uh it is a way to communicate directly with me whether it be through email for a return call or anonymous anonymous anonymously we also have in

118terms of follow-up Mr Seymour's office for those of you who don't know Mr Seymour he is Relentless he is calling parents on Saturday uh he was doing that this Saturday he does not go home on Friday unless he's cleared his his mail meaning he's returned and and advocated for the appropriate level of support for for all children and all families in our system so that's just a little additional information I felt is appropriate yeah thank you for that um and I do apologize because I heard fortify I didn't hear everything that you just mentioned right now so maybe it was a quick little mention but it's you certainly took much more time to explain it now so I appreciate that so good so now we have an anonymous reporting system and now we have fortify

119um let's see um if people will put it to action and what happens from there um so good thank you at this point um Madam chair I'd like to turn it over again back to Dr Moore to introduce I guess Miss Sam Pierre for the presentation of the code of conduct thank you Miss Rosario through the chair since the item was pulled I think the best the most appropriate response is to present it as it uh should appropriately be presented and that is um under the leadership of Miss dampier and team through the chair this evening I will provide an overview of recommended revisions for the 2023-24 code of student conduct uh based on the presentation this morning I'll provide a brief overview stakeholder feedback is important to us and as so we provided numerous

120opportunities to get feedback feedback from our various stakeholders on the four Focus areas which we knew that our cell phones bullying vaping and discipline expectations we conducted three Community feedback sessions to solicit feedback from our community uh also we had over 40 55 students participate and give feedback during the superintendent student advisory Council as well as we solicited feedback from our principals as well as our Union president and during board briefings I reviewed the recommended changes with each board board member and ask for additional feedback the summary of changes throughout the code of conduct we refine to increase clarity we also amended behaviors and corrective Innovation interventions this was to make sure that it was aligned with some of the changes that you will see and hear about today and to ensure consistency of expectations

121and procedures specific guidelines for bullying cell phones and vaping are not outlined specifically in our student code of conduct I just want to reiterate that we will continue we started this out we've been doing it for a couple of years now but we will make sure that we reiterate school-wide expectations of student behaviors as well as character education is going to be continued to be taught throughout the year for our students and we'll be highlighting the focus of the month and teaching that expectation through our school counselors as well as promoting that information through our social media and our Pio officer bullying guidelines we added a statement of no tolerance for bullying in the dish in the school district of Indian River County also all reports will be taken seriously and we went over all

122of this information and reviewed this uh these new expectations with our principal also a plan must be in place to protect the victim we wanted to make sure that the victim felt like they were going to be protected during and after the investigation administrative School staff students and bus drivers are trained on bullying every year that's a part of our beginning of the year procedures we create videos we also do onboarding for our students and I think board members asked um earlier today do you know what about the students who come in within the middle of the Year there are videos that is a process where the students when they log on to focus they have to go through they must they can't even log on they have to go through all of the procedures

123for bullying and we'll make sure as far as as far as the expectations that is added as a process as well the Boolean investigation timeline that administrators must adhere to for all reports and bullying we included that now that timeline now in the student code of conduct principals are trained on that there are State guidelines as far as the timeline got behind so I used to having it uh there there are expectations that we have to any incident or uh reporter bullion we must uh make contact with the parents within 24 hours and there's a guideline that investigations must be conducted within 10 days by 10 days and from Days 11 to 15 outcome letters must be sent home to the parents of the victim and the perpetrator as well as the Hope Scholarship we

124must give parents whether it's substantiated or non-substantiated a copy of the Hope Scholarship outline so they can take advantage of that if they would like to we also have new cell phone guidelines and this was important to have consistency throughout the district we wanted to make sure to ensure a positive learning environment that is free from distractions grades K-8 cell phones should be out of sight and Silence from the time they enter campus until the end of the school day grades three nine through 12. we have cell phones must be on silent during school hours and out of sight during class time and for Unique situations uh in classrooms they may be used for activities and prior approval from the principal from the teacher must be adhered to we have what we call a progression

125of discipline here for the minor uh misuse of cell phone misuse and office discipline referral will be submitted for all offenses with consequences assigned such as and they're very through each level of detention Aspire all toss or out of school suspension we really wanted to send a message about our major cell phone violations that are considered serious offenses will not be tolerated such as recording fights cyber bullying recording transmitting and sending images of students or staff without consent that's very important that we uh the students are taught that that will not be tolerated an office discipline referral will be submitted with an automatic 10-day suspension automatic as well as any illegal activities we'll report it will be reported to law enforcement and all of this information will be a part of the training for all

126of our stakeholders in the school so it's not just we're just going to give this information and not train and review the expectations of the correct expectations in the in the school and SRD will be assigned full-time to help the schools with cyber investigations or any other areas that they need for the 2023-24 school year new vaping guidelines were added with specific consequences for tobacco and drug use of course we had this in our code of conduct we started with the law we wanted to reiterate that and make sure that was pointed out for our tobacco we have a progression of corrective interventions that were added each corrective intervention that's outlined includes a referral to law enforcement where they give civil citation a civil citation where our students can will be referred to SAC which

127is the substance awareness Council where the parents participate in an orientation as well as students actually participate in several modules and they get a certificate of completion we really want to make sure that it's not repeated that we have some of interventions in place to ensure that our students are getting the help that and assistance that they need four are more serious drug use we have offenses students are assigned out of school suspension with a referral to law enforcement we really want to make sure that along with consequences that we also provide some assistance for our families as well as some supports and interventions for our students so that's the goal we want to make sure our screen tightened up with our consequences we will make sure that students are trained as well as our

128administrators all of our stakeholders and that will be our next steps our next steps will be to update the code of conduct training for all stakeholders and then we will update our policies we have two policies which are wireless communication device as well as bullying and harassment those two policies will come forward for us with recommended changes to the board we also are going to align with uh we want to make sure that they're aligned with the recommended changes for uh the 22 2020 20 23 24 school year are there any questions thank you sorry go ahead just to summarize Thank you Pam for Miss dampier for doing that uh for the second time today we truly appreciate it uh the item that's in front of you board is to send this um out so

129we can have it for public hearing on an upcoming school board meeting um this does in fact allow us to have a code of conduct that keeps the flexibility of school sites to provide appropriate level of interventions and services of support to children while at the same time at its most severe level those disruptions that are violating the law that we're clearly defining the appropriate steps in order to ensure everyone understands the expectation within our schools so it has been a long process to create a community standard as I'm calling it associated with our code of conduct but I think that is what we have in front of us right now okay thank you we've heard from Dr Moore and Miss dampier board members questions or discussion before we have a motion Ms barenborg sure

130um I'd like to bring up three things first of all I was going to pull the item too because I think this is a major thing that we really should have as action instead of um consent as far as metal detectors we haven't discussed them here on the diocese Safety and Security meetings that are in the shade for good reason and so I'm not going to say anything about it but just know that we have those meetings we just recently had one we're going to be upbeing it to four a year I think through the chair three in this first year given the timing in which you decide to have them okay so because I think that's important that board members are discussing Safety and Security a lot not just once a year um cell

131phone policy vaping bullying thank you thank you thank you um I am getting lots of good feedback this week from teachers Thanking us for this cell phone policy change and some of them wish we'd be a little stronger with it in the high school that's why I said what I said today in the workshop but we'll see how this goes and hopefully we'll start to see some changes because I think part of our bullying problem I know part of our bullying problem is the phones absolutely and uh anyway I I thank you for listening to everybody that gave input on this and I sat with a principal at one of the times that you met and I heard that it works at one of the schools when you crack down so if it can work

132at one school it can work at the other schools thank you Mr Barefoot I think nothing dad Dr posca um I'll just say I definitely support the changes being made to the code of conduct you know I think it's an excellent start and obviously when we uh roll out a new policy things don't just end there there's a continuous process of improvement and listening to feedback and ultimately there may be more changes that need to be made in the future and if we don't make any that's certainly evidence of failure but I think this is a great first step and a big Improvement that's going to help our kids to be safer and have a much better learning environment for not only the students but also the teachers and the rest of the staff um

133just to add a couple things Madam chair yes may I oh yes go ahead I was I was going to let you into in with it okay go ahead that's fine okay that's fine um since you pulled it I thought that would be appropriate you know when we look at anything that's new the one thing that I did say is that we have to be here to support our teachers and our principals because when you put in new policy it's tough at the beginning but then if you're there and you hit it that first week I think we can do it it's just making sure that everyone understands what the expectations are and that we are there to support them everyone has a right to come on every school campus and have a safe learning

134environment and I said at the very beginning we're not talking about doing certain programs for major disruptions you know fighting drugs disrupting the school campus it just cannot happen at our schools so I just attended one of the meetings but I listened to the parents and the principals and some teachers at that meeting and this was good work this was good work and I just want the schools to know that we are here for them I want the parents to know that we are here for them the community to know that we are here for them and that we will do our best every day make sure our students are safe it's Rosario thank you um there are thank you Mrs dampier and your team for working really hard on making these changes I also

135received good feedback from a lot of people a lot of teachers actually said that all of this is really good but if what I've mentioned earlier we can have all the policies in the world and the procedures in the world but if it's not followed through and if there is no consistent support it will be useless so we really need to make sure that everything that is in here is actually adhered to earlier today I encourage anyone who has not heard uh watched the earlier Workshop to watch the earlier Workshop because we talked a little bit more in depth about some of these specific items one of the things that we discussed was the word recidivism on page 27 that was requested to be removed and replaced but I don't see that here so excited

136there it goes that has been updated there was an amendment that updated that so what would the language be that we just moved the word uh we just deleted the word recidivism and it just made sense if we um it's on page 20 . so then it would read the program is designed to reduce related to behavioral infractions I think we need to in what was mentioned earlier was to say the program is designed to reduce um what did what was mentioned earlier a repeat misbehaviors yeah or something like that you can just for therapeutic and conflict resolution interventions designed to help increase student that that is what it says that was the change that was being recommended they took out uh recidivism and put in um conflict resolution we're looking at a different thing

137the second bullet on page 27. I am looking it reads the program is designed to reduce so then if that's the case it would say to reduce conflict resolution that doesn't make any sense well it makes sense where I was reading it but it was amended to as follows the program is designed to reduce repeat serious behaviors that adversely impact the educational environment related to behavioral infractions oh my God that's oh fine that's so-called just misbehaviors okay list board members want something else but okay very wordy um the other thing I wanted to mention on page 23 which we didn't talk about before and and that's fine but I just want to clarify for those who are um watching and who may this may affect them but the the information on vaping and a student

138not being able to be in possession obviously of a vaping pen or vaping device uh THC CBD marijuana this does not address medical marijuana with legal prescriptions we have a policy and obviously it's law that if you have a legal prescription for that you know that there's a process for that this does not address that the the legal prescription of medicinal for medicinal purposes that is that is correct there is a process in the parents we don't administer that no yeah I know but we have we have it in the policy in our a different policy so I just want to make sure in case anybody is listening um something else very minor that you may notice when you finalize the document the lettering in the blue is very dark um so like if you

139I'm on the same page 23 do you see the lettering in the big when you take changes off it disappears it's just the colors that's fine I mean it's very minor I just wanted to share that yeah um thank you for adding the language for the Hope Scholarship um and the cell phone use in there uh they said the inclusion of cell phones for cyber bullying and that is it so I am excited because I hope that this um really makes a difference thank you okay this time we have had the item presented by Dr Moore Miss dampier Miss Rosario this is your motion so I'll call for a motion yes ma'am I'd like to make a motion to approve the code of student conduct second all in favor aye aye aye anyone opposed motion

140carries five zero thank you can I just make a quick clarification um the motion is as is in the agenda correct to approve setting the public hearing day for April 24th I was going to correct that thank you so okay great we got a little excited sorry should I should I amend that yes please okay I'd like to make them should I amend that well is if is everybody on the same page that that's what yes the motion is and what you voted on okay I just wanted to make that clarification just to make sure that's fine thank you thank you so much all right now we go into discussion items and Ms Rosario you had one for citizen input okay give me one second let me put this away here too many things out

141sorry um while I get myself organized I put citizen input on the for discussion um because I want us to discuss this we had I know we had that was my introduction we had um we talked about this at our last meeting I don't think we spent enough time on this this was an issue that we discussed a year ago almost a year ago as well I think approximately and it really it's regarding our policy on citizen input so our policy says that we should have that anyone persons may speak up to three minutes at the beginning of the business meeting during citizen input as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action agenda item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on

142the order of business so the question here is as indicated on the order of business this happened this was a question that was raised when um Dr Schiff was on the board as well and I did agree with her that there was a citizen at the time and I wish I can remember exactly when it wasn't long ago who spoke to uh or wanted to speak to different items that were not on the printed order agenda of the orders of the day at the moment that they walked through those doors um Mrs Shattuck um said that that wasn't at the At first she said it wasn't true I mean she said that the citizen can speak to it Mrs barenborg mentioned and this is my my memory so if I if anyone remembers this better

143please refresh my memory Mrs berenborgs was the chair and she pointed to wording in our policy that actually says on the orders of the day as printed on the orders of the day or the the language that's in the policy and at that point Mrs Shattuck said um now that I see it this is fair mississ said yes as I read it now that is indeed correct as it's printed on the orders of the day so when a citizen comes to the door to fill out a citizen form they come uh they're here no later than 5 45. that is the last time that we have on our policy to receive citizen input forms at 5 45 they do not know whether a particular board member anyone here is going to add an item for

144discussion or an item for action or move a particular item although the moving really doesn't matter because they're speaking to a particular item anyway but it's really those items that are being added If an item is not printed on the agenda how can someone put that on their citizen input form and that's what's been happening and I'm I'm all for citizen comment I'm 100 in favor of hearing citizens but if we're gonna have if we're going to be consistent with one we need to be consistent with all of them so that's my first reasoning you know for bringing this up for a discussion the other reason I wanted to bring this up for discussion was because our form and our policy are pretty consistent where it says please fill out this form hold on let

145me get there I think it says one form per item that you're going to speak to now of course I can't find it but it should be on the form it says please it should say something please fill out one form one item per form one item per form which makes sense because if you are want to speak to five different items then you should fill out five different forms for a couple of reasons number one as the chair it's important for you to be able to organize who's going to speak to what item during the orders of the day as we move forward so you can kind of sort those out on your desk accordingly that way you can put them in in numerical order obviously or however way you put them to sort

146who speaks first and who doesn't and there is one item for one person at a time on the form the other reason why I think that's very important for us to be consistent with is so that the per four minutes in if later on there is a confusion and there are multiple things checked off on a form by one person and we're using that same form for the purposes of minutes we can confuse Mrs esplin for example if someone who requests for a public record of what one person spoke to Mrs Espin would then be very confused because according to the citizen input form this one person spoke to multiple items which did the person speak to first or was one item only spoken to and not the other one so those kinds of things

147are very important and if we're again if we're going to be consistent we need to be consistent with everyone so thank you um and I agree I I believe everyone should have the right to speak when he or she wishes to speak now we had to want to speak to the code of conduct 9A saying I wish to speak as an action item is printed on the action agenda but it wasn't on the action agenda when this when the it was pulled from consent to action orders of the day so after the meeting started and I think we had something like that last week and what I did add through the um approval of the superintendent because I didn't want that to happen if you want to speak at a certain time you could speak

148at citizen input then you could speak on action but if you don't know the orders are going to be pulled or changed I don't want to set anybody up for that so what I did say today and I think it's fair if a consent item is moved to an action item when you come to the podium you may speak at that time or defer to speak during the presentation of the action item and then we don't set up anybody saying well I didn't know it was going to be pulled to action I'd really like to speak then and I know we can discuss that as a board but I want everyone to be able to speak whether it's citizen input maybe they can't stay to the action item or they speak on the action item

149and that's why I told I talked with Dr Moore a little bit about that and asked if we could change it so they could speak on consent any general item make you speak on action when it comes up they just can't speak twice so I think that's pretty fair to our public and again I want people to be able to speak when they wish to speak I mean that's my feedback yeah I'm not so sure that we're talking about the same exact thing so what you're saying is that's procedure but what I'm saying is last meeting you did not do that last meeting you allowed for uh citizen to comment or check off every single box or every single letter on seven times well that's so you can fill out one form for one item

150at a time but not one form for all items seven times well because now which one of these items did the person speak to at one particular time you don't know and neither would uh that would be an inconvenience for Mrs esplin who would have to go back into the video if that were a public record and and you know spend a lot of time going through every single comment so my point is one form one time for one item per person does that make sense and it does it does make sense I'm just saying if if we're just asking our public to fill out by forms instead of putting it on the paper so I mean that's the policy though that's the policy that's what we have that's what is on here it's not

151new it's not a new request it's what we currently have in place I'm just bringing it up for discussion I mean I'm just making the comment I'm just trying to say that for our public I don't want to make it harder so maybe we need to look at the form again so that it's not hard for a public because I know it's hard for some of them to get here by 5 45 and a lot of them forget you can do it as long as you have the 24-hour notice online so they don't have to be here by 5 45 so I understand your concerned Madam chair I don't mean for us to change policy because we don't always have someone filling out seven forms or five forms in one meeting most people just fill

152out one but on the occasion that you have five or six or seven we have to acknowledge that that's not appropriate for you know at least bring it up and say you can always address the person right then and there as chair and say look in the future please only fill out one of these boxes which one do you want to speak to now and then make that notice on the form that's what I'm addressing here if we're going or if we're going to allow something like this for everyone then we're going to allow it for everyone it's either one way or the other thank you any other discussion um due to chatting we follow the policy as it is written it is logistically extremely hard to without having a form filled out for each

153item the chair regardless of who the chair is may have to go back and forth and miss a particular item so filling it out um for each and every every single item just makes the flow of the meeting and operating the meeting from a chair's perspective so much easier so I'll make sure staff as they they review those particular forms and ask clarifying questions uh to the individuals filling out the form so they know exactly when they would be called based on how they're completing that particular form okay and that that's a good point it says I wish to speak during Citizen and input fine I wish to speak to an action item is printed on the action agenda the action item is if they don't know it's being pulled from consent to action if

154they come up here like I said tonight that you could speak during consent time or you can wait and speak during the action time because that's still confusing that's right the agenda is printed um or produced a week prior to the actual meeting if a citizen would like to speak during public comment on any consent item they can fill out a form and fill out I wish to speak during the public hearing and use that time to address something that was on consent that takes place prior to you voting on consent you have an item a standing item on every agenda which is the the action item which is approval of the consent agenda so if an individual member of the community wanted to speak during public comment they could fill out the public comment

155card submit it out and then because an item is on consent they could fill out the form and say I wish to speak to the action item which is approval of consent and then you would call them and they could address all of the items that are on consent or one of the items how they spend that three minutes is up to them but they do have that opportunity as as well and they if they don't want to speak during citizen input regular they can speak then during action absolutely Mr Rosario thank you would you would you open it up to any comments from any other board members I had looked at each one Mr okay Miss bear board yeah um it's interesting because how we do citizen input is different than other school boards

156similar to some school boards um even the um the Florida House of Representatives and the Senate and the state school board have different roles they do a timer so it was interesting to watch in a committee meeting they set a timer on each item and say okay anyone wanted to speak and then after the timer goes off I don't care where you are in the order of speaking they're done and so some people get to speak some people don't um some speak people speak for a lot longer than others because of the way they do it so I don't know if that's fair I didn't feel like it was fair when I was in the room but I think at the state school board I think they do it where you have one minute yeah

157it is as many people want to speak and you get one minute to speak and it's about any item that's on that agenda so that I think is also restrictive I think that we're fair in the fact that we're saying three minutes because as you noticed from our last board meeting we didn't get out of here till uh I got home close to midnight so I think that we want to be able to hear input but we also want to be able to um um be focused and coherent during the meeting so that we can really do a good job with what citizens are telling us because I I definitely changed one of my votes last week because of Citizen input so um I think what would be good and and I did this before

158is when somebody brought me a couple of items on there and I got them right before the meeting I actually held off on the meeting a second to go ask the person are you wanting to speak to each of these because if they get pulled then you can speak to them but if they don't get pulled you can speak to them all in that three minutes and so I clarified it for that person um people don't know unless they're coordinating with a board member up here what we're going to pull that's right and sometimes you can tell the people coordinated with a board member because you can see their form then they filled out too and they knew that the item was going to be pulled so that's kind of interesting but I will say

159this maybe people do it because they think maybe a board member will pull it I don't know um and that's okay I just think that the more we can hear for how people want to talk about something I just think it's some people do it so they can get three minutes here three minutes here three minutes here I get that um I don't know if that's really helpful for us making decisions though I think we want to hear what people have to say but it it you know be concise and and to the point and tell us something that will help us with our voting I think it would be great if when we looked at the form you know I know it's hard because if you have somebody that writes several down it does

160make it hard because there was one time last year where I missed one and we had to stop and have to go back because of that so I'm not sure how to redo the form or that if the form's okay let me just finish that thought but I think that we do need to let people know that they can speak to an item and maybe they fill out the item and they if it doesn't get pulled they speak to it at the beginning if it gets pulled they can have the choice to speak when that's what I'm thinking yeah for the form thank you Mr barefoot nothing to add back to posca Ms Rosario no ma'am thank you good good input all right this time we are on board member matters and I'm going to

161start with Dr posca uh sure I attended zoning and planning last week and um things are slowing down a little bit which is kind of fun but building is continuing is just we're not getting project after project after project but I will say the projects that I saw along the line now are more affordable housing uh apartment complexes um duplexes things like that so that's and that's helpful Treasure Coast council local governments we meet every month and you're all invited of course because that one is um and Nancy puts that one out on the schedule and they meet down at St Lucie County but the Army Corps of Engineers was presenting this last one it was quite informative it was about water didn't have anything to do with education but it was informative to listen

162to and be in the room you know with lots of different city officials County officials school board members about what's happening with all the different four counties in our area that uh similar things but it's it's a good diverse group I did go to the up with poverty Community Resources event that was wonderful excellent job and it was a just a wonderful way for different Community non-profits to get their word out and connect with each other and I was I learned some things and I was able to tell them some things so it was it was great that we were able to do that and then Elementary science fair of course was this last weekend I will say this um they were short judges like crazy and I don't know if you all knew that

163was going on but I think maybe we need to do a better job in the school district of when you're short judges hey give us a call I could have probably got 10 more people for them had I known but I didn't know until I showed up that morning that they were short judges so it's just little things like that and they might not have known but there were a lot of things going on on Saturday that's why I couldn't go to the track meet but um there were a lot of things going on I get that but feel free to reach out or and have board members know that we can help you with commit getting Community people at things like that Barefoot um back a a month ago it was February 16th the

164school district had the opportunity to invite Juniors and seniors to a presentation or actually we call it a workshop for lack of a better term by the folks from Fort Ticonderoga and this came about because Kevin Gibbon who is the general manager of Quail Valley uh one of their members is vice chairman of that board and uh they were invited to come and speak to the membership at Quail Valley and he thought it might be worthwhile if we chose to participate if they were willing to come and talk to some of our students so he got a hold of me and I in turn spoke with Dr Moore and Miss Becerra so I'm going to ask her to summarize exactly what took place because it was actually a lot of fun it just what I

165might do though Fort ticon ruin you've all heard a fight for Ticonderoga what maybe people don't know besides it's the venue I mean it was a fort started by the French way back in 1700 whatever the year was a little before my time but not much but their mission is to preserve educate and provoke active discussion about the past and its importance to few to present and future Generations we Foster an ongoing dialogue surrounding citizen soldiers and Nations through America's military heritage and we've all heard stories we all what's going on in the so-called can't cancel culture that that oftentimes we're trying to cancel quote unquote certain parts of our history I think that if you sat through and I did it twice after their presentation and how they interacted with our students some of

166our staff was quite interesting and there's a terrific outcome so Mr Sir why don't you review the day and the kid number of kids and what went on and et cetera great thank you through the chair these are moments that actually make me love being an educator the evening the way we started the evening tonight celebrating students and getting to share a little bit about what our students participated in thanks to John michonis Kevin Gibbon Tabitha Gottfried and of course thank you Mr Barefoot for connecting the dots our students were it was really called a lecture series but it was a lot more than a lecture series it was immersive it was engaging our students actually became Continental soldiers I did as well and I can tell you they're better at it than I am

167um Stewart was the the man who presented this information to our students in full costume from 200 years ago and so it was very interesting but what I find most interesting is the way our students wrote about this uh thankfully the Quail Valley Charities and Kevin Gibbon offered two scholarship opportunities and our students were able to they didn't have to but they were able to write an essay in response to the day I I have a teenage child of my own and I'm not sure that I could get her to write an essay right now unless she absolutely had to so I was really pleasantly surprised the number of students who took the opportunity to write essays in response to their experience and just as a quick little I'll just read the intro of one

168of them and the two winners don't know who they are yet so hopefully they're not listening and we give it away this is a student's writing so I think this is just incredibly impressive in the busy and fast-paced environments we experience daily it is easy to lose focus on the history of the United States however it is important to reflect on how people from more than two centuries ago fought for the United States and built a strong foundation for the powerful Nation we have today this simple yet significant responsibility is something that I was reminded of when I attended the visit of a Fort Ticonderoga lecturer at Quail Valley this visit reminded me of The Bravery that the Revolutionary soldiers demonstrated as well as the fact that history is such an invaluable source of knowledge

169as it can remind us of how lucky we are to have stability in our country and warn us of potential dangers that may happen again in the future just a little intro just to give you a little taste of some of our writing that our students were able to produce based on the events of that day and we have two students that in the next two weeks will know that they are scholarship winners so thank you for helping us connect those dots it was a great experience you know the one thing that I would add is they've started lining all these kids up and they say round number is 50 kids and then some staff and then they took them they marched them outside and along the Waterfront if you've been to Quail Valley and

170as they marched it's sort of like a bunch of kids in the line they start off tightly knit and then they sort of get further and further apart so the guy stops them and he said this is the most undisciplined group of soldiers I have ever seen you've got to stay together you're a team you've got to stay tight you've got to say well from that point on there's about that much room between each of the kids as they as they walked along the Waterfront he would stop and make and point out the importance of the formations and the interaction and that they're a team et cetera et cetera so it was it was a fun exercise I'm sure none of us knew what to expect let alone having the instructor show up in full

171continental army garb but it's great to be able to do this and it's nice that we have people in the community that are involved with organizations that think about the school district and our kids when they're in the area Mario I went to steam Fest um and I was a wonderful wonderful event as always I I'm never disappointed when I go there we did not have six schools as I expected we had instead three so I'd like to just thank Rosewood Elementary Treasure Coast Elementary School and Gifford Middle School who all had a table and had a really really fantastic display for kids all Hands-On experiences throughout I will tell you that um something that ha it's kind of personal but it makes a big difference with regard to the steamfest so I go every

172year to steamfest everybody knows that I Champion it I think it's fantastic well this year um I was in the uh I didn't know what my son was doing I was following him around but there was a couple of days later he and I were talking about uh possibly going the route of um dual enrollment and so we were looking at the dual enrollment application and looking at the dual enrollment programs because as you choose that if you're going to go dual enrollment you have to choose a path right you're going to graduate with an Associates you need a major so as I'm going through the list of all the majors in Indian River State College I said which one would you want to do and then he said Surgical Science so I was like

173what like I couldn't believe that he said Surgical Science because we never talked about that well when I asked him why he said well at this last steam Fest event there was a um a gentleman there who had a life life size dummy a plastic it wasn't even plastic it was rubber it was fully rubber with what looked like real teeth I mean the thing looked amazing and it had you can see the muscles and you can see the tendons and when if you move the leg you can see the movement of the muscle and the tendons and then if you move the chest forward you can pull out the heart and they can see all the little shapes of the heart anyway so when I said you know what made you think of Surgical

174Science because we've never talked about that ever and he said well when when we went to the last steam Fest and I saw that the body was in anatomy something Anatomy he said I really like that and it was really interesting so it goes to show you it only takes one vendor one time to really make an impact on a student um and you know we'll see if if it if that's the route that he wants for the rest of his life but right now he was very intrigued with it and that's why I think it's so important for our schools to get involved in events like this why I push it so much every year is because it matters and it it it it it means something that not only are we getting out

175and about and showing a presence in the community because but also that we are influencing children and you never know if there's that one child who is going to be really impacted by something that's related obviously to stem to steam science technology engineering and math so that was a wonderful event I also want to share the work that all of Indian Rivers Indian River County students are doing as they participate in our local firefighters Fair the Indian River County students youth livestock and Horticulture shows and events are going on even right now as we speak and they are I went on Friday they're really the work is just impeccable they're it's incredible to me how they are so dedicated to taking raising pigs and chickens and goats and citrus trees and you know monitoring all

176of that and logging all of their activity and All the Monies that they make and then they auction it out and then they sell it they get you know read blue ribbons for each of their cat their livestock it's just really a wonderful opportunity for us to get out and support students in this endeavor it's no secret that everyone knows I'm a proponent of um possibly getting a vet tech or an AG program here and this is just one way for us to be able to see the impact and the interest of the students in our in our County with this particular area the other thing that I'd like to share is that I went to the Sebastian River High School I didn't stay long but I went to the Sebastian River High School um

177njrotc military ball so cute so cute I just I can't tell you how cute that was um so they're doing great stuff there they're really raising leaders Future Leaders and they're doing a great job when you talk about walking formation obviously we saw the kids here putting up doing the the flag and so it matters it means something and those students who are part of the JROTC program they are a family and they they they love what they are doing and they love what they're learning so I'm happy to share that thank you Mr Rosario and thank you for mentioning that with ROTC my former A.D Michael stusky and I worked really really hard to bring that program to Sebastian River High School years ago and I think it has many many benefits to our

178students and they are a family felsmer night of Enchantment one of the best programs I have seen next to prism and Sebastian River High School Coral sharks were there but this was an absolutely outstanding program with dinner public partners and donations director Moore felsmer is truly a community school and it is a supported 100 percent by parents and that night was absolutely outstanding you could not imagine these were Elementary students as Miss berenberg said Mr Barefoot and I miss barenberg were United against poverty with the non-profits wonderful event bringing the community together Rising a little bit with um I sent some information to the board I was invited to a United Way meeting and there were about 100 people it's called powered by purpose and they just shared again what our community is facing at

179this time we have 60 percent in Indian River County that are either poverty or Alice Alice is asset limited income constrained employee or the Working Poor then it talks about children and getting them ready for school and of course our County Commissioners are now looking at um 0.25 millage and whether we'll go forward with that with our children's services but this was a wonderful wonderful presentation Jeff pickery from the Community Foundation had a lot to say about where this where we need help and it was just really really great and I think as a school district we need to understand that about how many families are struggling um well basil inclusion walk run that was a great event held I think their last period with all of their students for inclusion every one of the

180students participated it was fun and um kudos to that staff they're always there for the students felsmere Planning and Zoning I usually am on Zoom with that but that's a great uh great meeting and Mark Mathis was talking a little bit about that at the United Way Forum but they are talking about some additions and building and I'm sure all of you see the building out there in State Road 60 so I think we'll have some impact pretty soon with that college fair was wonderful that was at the mall last week and just a reminder to our students most scholarships are due around March 15th so just know that I'm on a couple scholarship committees so watch that deadline and I see that we got a little bit more donation for the community Center as

181far as the Joe Gray's property and I know we're working toward that but thank you again to everyone who is here and put all of your input tonight we appreciate you all right the time is 8 22. Madam chair oh I'm sorry superintendent I'm sorry um I just wanted to clarify Miss Missouri we actually Vero Beach High School was also at the steam Fest and and I'm sorry Gifford I'm sorry Glendale just kind of set up shop correct uh Vero Beach High School uh Jeff Bush's class was there as was uh several art teachers as well they they yeah the art display right did the art display the art experience and we did have two schools that did show up that we did not mention that had some scheduling snafus so they they showed up

182and were unable to participate because of space all right and I also wanted to say just in next week is spring break a well-deserved spring break so I hope everyone has the opportunity to disconnect um from this from this work um a great deal of work will take place when we get back from the Break um we will not ease into spring break as I mentioned during my presentation we will be working extremely hard this week to disaggregate the data that we have to ensure the remaining time when we return prior to the last assessment is fully engaged and fully focused instruction I'm looking forward to a very positive last quarter of the school year and it's absolutely amazing that we're already getting ready to open the last quarter of the school year absolutely bizarre

183thank you madam chair thank you anyone else thank you everyone time is 8 24 meeting adjourned