001away from my kids let's just not even give them the opportunity end quote wow when is the last time this board looked at the organizational chart at the top it says students parents and community that means all students parents and the very community that you stated you did not want to give the opportunity to review and revise this you as a board have lost your way what happened to the mission statement of providing a world-class education to all of the children in your district equity is not equality equity is critical race theory equity is one of the many executive orders signed by joe biden you cannot bring politics into the schools you have been playing politics with our children for far too long and we won't allow it to continue equity is a leftist attempt
002to indoctrinate the children in hopes that when they are older they will have adopted leftist ideology this is about control it's sick and you will divide these innocent children in the process if you push this through and i decide to keep my children in the school district which is highly unlikely i want you to know that our home base is so strong and through communication and leading by example my children will love everyone and base their decisions on character always but it is so sad that you are willing to divide these children and create a hostile environment over politics is honestly sickening if equity was equality you wouldn't be calling out any race but you are and it's not so here we all are in opposition of your radical intent and indoctrination thank you hi
003this is shakira norville i am a student at west boca raton high school i am making this call to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barbery our district representative to keep the equity statement as written it is important to dismantle structures of white advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to succeed this statement is not to offend white people but to identify that all our systems in this country were meant to advantage rights and just advances to people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i'm hoping that we can put these words to action to ensure equity
004for all thank you hi this is kadena views i'm a student at westville duluthon high school um i wanted to make this call to encourage the school board as well as our district representative to keep the equity statements written i understand that there's a bit of a uprising and trouble between some parents who had problems with the statement white uh dismantling structures of white advantage in um in our equity statement but i think that this should be kept in our sd statement the statement does not offend white people but rather it identifies that our systems in this country have been meant to advantage white you look at history and there is advantage towards white people that's just what it is and i think as the school board you guys should be willing to keep this
005mainly because you have people of color who are in your district and who are still struggling to make sure that they make their way up to the top and be as successful as possible there is so much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color and these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i think we can put all of these words and actions to ensure equity for all and on behalf of um all students of color i think that you guys definitely need to take this into deeper consideration because even though you have parents who are angry at this statement it's for the wrong reason and if people are taking it the wrong way then i think that you guys need to
006verify what you guys meant by this statement rather than just saying oh parents are mad let's change it you guys really need to explain to them and that's really it thank you bye good afternoon board members and superintendent fenoy this is lieutenant colonel jason d bolt united states air force retired subject equity and equity agenda i am severely disappointed that i cannot be there in person to rebuke you on your continued effort to inject racism into the palm beach county school district under the covert name equity despite the explicit and direct declaration to stop by governor desantis on may 20th a day after we exposed your intentions to the florida and to the rest of the nation you remain subordinate insubordinate to the governor's vision for a merit-based constitution-driven public education one private school parent
007in new york was still aghast at the equity agenda that he wrote a letter to push back to his private school his words are very powerful and have influenced us all we as parents have no longer any confidence that you will guide our children in quality education you will not help them in healthy development or critical thinking or instill responsibility into becoming a civic minded adult you heard my speech loud and clear on me 19th as you tried to muzzle me i exposed your socialist roots to the nation we are mobilizing daily we will defeat you in the florida legislature or on election day in 2022 and beyond collectively you are all degenerate of the mind impervious to reason and hungry to be government-led power we the people have drawn the red line and you
008will not cross we will not allow you to destroy the god-created minds of our children we will not allow you to make them trolls to bow to the knee of an orwellian government we will never stop our fight against your equity plan and god is the ultimate judge make no mistake the people of america the people of florida and the people of palm beach county in our school district will win the day in the end hi my name is kristen cox and i'm co-founder of thrive collective a community asset development firm supporting wealth and power building in marginalized communities i am also a parent of students in district 5 schools and reside in district 4. i'm appalled at our two representatives for folding under the pressure of allowed few for the efforts that are necessary
009to repair and uplift so many dismantling structures of wide advantage is dismantling systemic racism and will benefit all of us including white people what is very obvious in this display of white advantage is proof of how the education system has played a role in our lack of knowledge of race and racism in this country who built it why and who it was to benefit what is also clear by your reconsideration of the statement the equity statement is that we cannot depend on you or the education system alone through securities and equity the people must organize collectively to create interdependent supports serving severing our dependence on you to save us as i'm sorry settling our dependence on you to save us while this message is to demand that you keep the equity statement you have constructed
010intact as is the fact is that these are just words not action not a plan just worry schools populated by children of color in this district have been neglected and left behind our children are exposed to filth and mold under qualified teachers racist teachers a lack access to resources for supplies and classes and programs that will help them grow and thrive in the same school district that is building new schools and white neighborhoods and where students have access and choices fix or more specialty academy maybe instead of writing equity statements you will need to do an equity analysis and you need to share that information with the students and parents in this district so that they can see what inequity looks like maybe then we can come together and do something about it hi this
011is brenda goodguard i'm a student at west boca raton high school i am making this call to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barbieri our district representative to keep the equity statement as for end it is important to dismantle structures of right advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to succeed the statement is not to offend white people but to identify that all our systems in this country were meant to advantage whites and disadvantage people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i am hopeful that we can put these words into action to ensure equity for all
012thank you for your time good afternoon my name is ernestine holliday i'm a resident of delray beach florida i have raised my children they have grown up in the palm beach county school system my grandchildren and now my great-grandchildren are attending schools please support the equity law as it is written we would appreciate that thank you my name is louis barrett and i am a resident gallery um district 7 for deborah robinson and i want to share my views as relates to the meeting that's being held today i'm starting at 12 and um i have full support now i'm calling with full support of the equity statement as as it is currently written i understand that there are some challenges in um voices of different opinions that one can have that remove being a descendant
013of slaves that have um through blood sweat and tears built this country and have sacrificed a lot with their lives i find it important that that it remains the the education that allows for individuals to be aware of our challenges our struggle and what life privilege has meant over the years in order to prevent history from being repeated it is necessary that history should be taught as it occurred and so i wish that the equity statement that has been included in the um documents um for the county remain as is and i look forward to you're your of support uh with all the divorces that are are calling in and looking to be present at the meeting as relates to the equity statement being currently um um as it is currently written to stay that
014way without any abridgement or assessment thank you again willie fanson glory beach 561-901-5145 hi there my name is andrea traynor i am the parent of two children in the palm beach county school district either preschooler and a middle schooler i would like to leave a comment today addressing the equity statement and the ruckus that it has caused throughout certain communities i do not agree that the statement should be changed due to the opinions of as mr barbari called it the eye of the beholder that is not how mission statements that were discussed that were voted on that facilitators and all sorts of uh people come together to craft um it is not then up to the eye of the beholder to take what they will from it mr barbieri made um comments about the board
015um having completed racial equity training and therefore you know putting them on this uh level of understanding that in his opinion that the rest of the public was not up to but once again we have the worldwide internet at our fingertips any person that took issue with the word equity versus equality has the opportunity to then research for themselves the difference between those two terms mr barbieri mentioned that parents were calling board members marxists and communists so certainly if they're able to research what those terms mean they can do the same and apply that level of research and knowledge to understand why the term dismantling systems of white advances why using equity versus equality are so critical and i applaud the school district for the great lengths that you went to to craft and approve
016this this statement as it was mentioned these were bold statements i believe mr barbieri called them incendiary statements i do not believe that they are incendiary in intention they were bold in intention and i would really encourage the board to stick with that bold statement and really um you know stand by you're convicted we've elected you to do just that so please do not cave under the pressure of those that are not willing to do the work thank you good morning school board members my name is martha caballo i'm here to comment on the brd1 equity statement as a hispanic woman who immigrated to this country i was fibroglassic and i received the district new mission vision and equity statement all of these statements uh permeate with the latest marxist words of equity bias discrimination
017dismantling system of oppression inequity racial equity historical historically marginalized systematic oppression life advantage redistribution resources all these words are rooted in critical race theory based on core remarks i believe and i strongly object to teaching this to our children i was blessed to come to this country as a young child from nicaragua this country provided me with an amazing opportunity to succeed i was given an equal opportunity to succeed i know the difference between equality and equity equity sounds nice everybody having the same outcome however those are the words every communist totalitarian chains are used to gain power all over the world these are the words incentivising the communist organizations in nicaragua use detained power now everybody has equity and that we are all poor and oppressed and i've had to clean our country i
018oppose you teaching our kids and our teachers that our country has structured rooted in quite a banner that must be dismantled the united states is the greatest country in the world because to provide us all with so many freedoms and equal opportunities if it were not so why do you think we have millions of people from all over the world who put their lives on the line for a chance to live here there is always room for improvement in everything but the district needs to come on this from a place of gratefulness gratefulness for what we have and the desire to make it better not from a place of hate with a desire to just mental as additions continue on this path my family will be forced to remove our four children from the school
019board of palm beach county i truly believe you're coming from the desire to do what is specialized students i also believe that most and not all of you were born in this country i've not had the opportunity to live abroad therefore you are not truly able to understand how wonderful this country is how much it's equal student is provided to all of us thank you for your time bye my name is cheyenne bill and i will be addressing the change of the equity statement you cannot change the word white privilege advantage change will never happen if phrases are sugarcoated changing the phrase means that you are putting the feelings of fragile people above the need for change you are putting the feelings of fragile people above the need for truly supporting and acknowledging students and
020parents of color if we are talking about changing a system that caters to a certain group of people we have to acknowledge who benefits from it and who is hurt from it we cannot expect change with such vagueness if the phrase is removed we see the statistics and we see the disparities in person we know about the systems of oppression that has yet to be dismantled any parent or student who is so worried and upset about this phrase will take the time to do their own research and teach their kids you cannot be afraid to cut off islam that perpetuate oppression by its name we have been fighting for equality for centuries there's already been moving too slow let's not move afterwards my thesis and that you deserve an education in which the truth is
021acknowledged they deserve a school board and officials who understand and explicitly state what they are trying to fix and who they are trying to help we have not been fighting for equality for this long just for the school board to change the phrase and pretend that like they do not see us or who are with what is hurting us acknowledging this does not cause division it only showcases the already existing divisions how can we fix something if we are deliberately hiding it there is unity in tree this is an education system in which we understand that there is fact and there is opinion the white advantage is a fact proven by math and social sciences if you are obsessed about it you are afraid of losing your own advantage you are only showcasing your agility
022and that is the very reason this phrase has to stay hello my name is lydia navarrete perez i am calling about the critical race theory and i want to ask you please stop it this is not healthy for our students i was i used to be a teacher and i know how the children will be impacted against this theory please stop it uh and do not try to uh harm the children there is there are thousands of parents and grandparents against disarray and please stop it don't let it let it pass my name is lydia navarrete perez hi my name is tina martinez i am not i am not approved the critical race theory to be part of the our mission vision equality stop that i am not approve the critical race theory to be
023part of our mission vision equality statement stop it please and my my name is dina martinez hi this is christopher i'm a student at westbrook um high school and i'm making this call um to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barbari our district representative to keep the equity statement as written it's important to dismantle structures of hawaii advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to succeed um so like this statement is not to offend white people at all like but to identify that our systems in this country were meant to advanced rights and disadvantaged people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color so these governments know so these that these efforts do not
024harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i'm hopeful that we can put these words into action to ensure equity for all thank you good afternoon superintendent and board members my name is minister greta britt and i am the founder of united believers of delray deep as well as a parent i am i am speaking to you today to let you know that we support the school board's equity statement as is and we are asking you to do the same i also left each of you a voice mail message the united believers is composed of clergy and faith leaders within delray beach our mission is to work together in unity to address the needs of our community and stand against unrighteousness and injustice we stand in solidarity with unify and faith
025in florida in support of the school board a palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating biases and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcome remember dr king said the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience the way he stands at times of challenge and controversy where will you stand dr king also said the time is always right to do what is right we are asking you to do the right thing and leave your equity statement as is thank you good morning members my name is juan carlos carballo and i'd like to give you my
026thoughts on the brd1 equity statement i am a hispanic male i did immigrate to this country and i am appalled by the district's new vision vision on an equity statement if you wish to destroy the future of our kids and the future of this beautiful country you're on the right track i fled a communist regime and i cannot believe that the u.s is now heading in that way i am a minority and yes my skin is dark but i have worked hard and i have succeeded this is also true for my friends and my family hard work pays off and i'm living proof of it i teach my children god's values and morals the importance of hard work the importance of learning it is our responsibility as adults to teach them and prepare our children
027for adulthood if you continue with this harmful vision i will be forced to remove my children from your schools many people are upset with you and do not agree with you but people tend to stay quiet but i'm here to tell you that you're in the wrong this way of thinking is not right thank you very much for your time take care good afternoon my name is teacher for palm beach county middle schools and elementary schools i served as a science coach and a middle school stem teacher in the charter school and english language arts was my just my previous position in the north area i wanted to call and first speak about the course failures or first and foremost talk about what equity means to me and that means that everyone should be treated
028fairly that means staff students and any employee on the campus but most mostly um we want to make sure that the course failures are accurate and from what i gathered just previously working i noticed that students were not being graded or assessed in the appropriate way reading plus and the fsqs and usa's seem to be setting them up for failure i think there needs to be more informal assessments and that could eliminate the students from going to middle school course recovery or if in fact it's necessary then they should go to course recovery and shouldn't be pushed through the system if they do not have paperwork or iep we need to increase the parent communication for testing schedules for the fsqs and usn i know that i am a parent of a first grader and
029a third grader and i do not have any knowledge of when those tests are happening in the classroom i wanted to also make sure that i touch on increasing paper trails for example cbirs the corrective behavior interventions need to happen in order to eliminate the out-of-school suspensions those paper trails need to be documented students serving detentions these things need to happen first before the referral parent conferences in my last school i wasn't able to hold parent conferences without my team in order to schedule a parent conference as a teacher i should be able to do that on my own and not have i shouldn't have to schedule a meeting with a parent with an entire team you can't coordinate schedules of all those people please take this into consideration my name is paula shaw and
030i'm leaving a message for the special meeting regarding the new equity statement i'm a parent of two children in the palm beach county schools and i agree that it's of utmost importance to ensure there's equity in our schools and community no one person is better than another and no one person should be given an advantage however by using a blanket statement that identifies one group as having an advantage over another because of how they look is the very definition of prejudice and leads to racism i want to know what structures are currently in place that are oppressing another racial group what resources will be redistributed parents and taxpayers need to be involved in the planning process and inform the changes the board plans to make it's unacceptable that rather than using this as an opportunity
031to create a statement of unity and leading by example the board singled out a group of people based on the color of their skin this type of language is racist and it's a form of bullying which has no place in our schools i appreciate this opportunity to speak and i hope that we can all be included in this process thank you hello my name is erin maggio i live in district 1 in palm beach county and i'm the parent of two children one is a middle schooler and one an elementary school student my middle schooler is an excellent student not because it comes naturally but due to her hard work and drive to do her best i believe any policy that tells her different or any child different is wrong and i won't stand for
032our schools to tell her any child otherwise i believe the public school system should teach core academics reading writing arithmetic and factual history as my children have active parents to teach them their core personal beliefs character and morals i want to say shame on the leaders of the school system as they think they can force their ideology and political beliefs on the children of this county and shame on us parents who weren't paying attention to the school board who thinks they can push these items through and by changing their wording and not their thought process we are now watching you closely and in the future thank you this is christine cagneolo jones i am an immigrant i am a child of an immigrant i am an ivy league educated doctor entrepreneur and i am a
033mother of three children in palm beach county i am also an accreditation expert and i consult for companies in south florida and i understand the need and requirement to update your mission the mission statement unanimously approved by the school board is the reason for my call today if i was your accreditation auditor i would have a significant problem with the mission statement that does not address the root cause of your problems here is what i have gathered from the data that was provided to wptv which is a news outlet in west palm beach in elementary and in middle school the discipline issues have been trending downwards for the last four years provided that there are no changes to how discipline issues are being identified in the school this is a win for the district the
034most significant reduction in discipline problems is in the cohort of black males it has trended down 2.1 percent in four years this demonstrates that if all else remains unchanged your policy to dissuade discipline issues are working after looking at your data for high school students suspension data has no trend except for in one cohort and one significant trend that i saw which was not highlighted in your analysis is for high school females in the cohort of free and reduced lunches another gain for the district your date on who failed classes in ninth grade based on race and category is not an accurate representation of student performance as it is not trended data and it occurred during a pandemic both of these kids were at home these children failing these courses has nothing to do with
035right advantage it has to do with the district mismanagement and the lack of an emergency plan which is likely an accreditation deficiency or a non-conformance other than the data provided by the news outlet i have not seen any additional data but what i can tell you is that white people as a race have no impact on how the school district interacts with black espe free and reduced lunch children white people do not impede your communication with these cohorts in fact in your data then in many instances hispanics and whites had similar metrics but the school board chose but the school board chose to isolate white people i would highly suggest that the school board go back hi my name is casey barnes i'm calling an equity workshop um i was calling with concerns about what
036you guys are trying to teach your children um especially their young children in school um you know i am white and i am very proud of it as everyone should be proud of their race um i believe that you guys are mentally hurting our children um and just flat out teaching our children racism at a young age um you know children they don't see color and you only see you know how well they play together how they treat one another you know you know good behavior from bad behavior you know by teaching them this you're teaching them to see color teaching them to be ashamed for being a different color and let's say the kids sitting next to them um by creating this program you are creating a pro a problem you know it's harmful
037to our children in so many ways brainwashing them with this false information you know these kids are the future of our country and you are setting them up for failure teaching them division segregation to be shameful of their race of their color um you know these teachers unions the institutions you guys are making it clear that you are not here for our kids you are here for yourselves and you're holding our children hostage by these ideas that are not based on reality if you keep pushing this garbage you're only going to further wake up more parents who are going to pull their students from public schools or whatever schools that are going to go along with this i really do not believe in it you really have to hold yourself accountable for what you are
038doing to our children whether you're masking them or whether you're teaching them this is not okay it needs any to listen to us this is not right i don't agree with it um and i really hope that you guys hear us because we will not stop and you should be ashamed of yourself thank you this is reginald cox calling for the item on the agenda for regarding the palm beach school district equity statement current equity statement i am calling in support of leaving the statement as is um the chair of the north side of the set neighborhood alliance in delhi beach represent a thousand acres and 25 neighborhood associations and we are calling for this school district to leave the equity statement as is for a tremendous amount of number of reasons throughout the history
039of this country history just counting it is imperative that the school district stays on the side of social justice license and equity for all in this capacity thank you good morning everyone my name is nina lopez i'm here to comment on br d1 equity statement i categorically oppose the school district of palm beach county bringing the poor master's critical race theory ideology into our school system in addition governor descension says data cop will now be tagged in our schools and the district's latest mission vision and equity statements are practicing crt i am in this country because i had to see my communist country i know what all of these marxist words and beliefs lead to they lead to impoverishment and oppression equitably across the board the united states is a great country this is the
040reason why millions of people from all over the world want to make this country their home in everything and everywhere there is room for improvement but not for hate i could not stay idly by and let the new generation of students be proud of this country to build on structures greatest and right advantage that must be dismantled that he has historically marginalized people it has systems of oppression this country is broke and i believe that all men are created equal and as such it has become at the end of life for so many immigrants like myself i just wish you as native u.s citizens to realize how great this country truly is please do not destroy this country if you continue to go down this path i will have to remove my three children from
041the school district of bondage county the new mission addition and equity statement bring forth nothing but facial decision amongst the public enables soon and now doing that amongst our students please let us come together thank you good afternoon my name is shayna latula i have three children in the palm beach county district and i am speaking on the agenda item uh the equities statements i have found it very divisive after reading this equity statement instead of bringing unity to our county it seems that you have brought division and racist viewpoints if we if we read the definition of racism it's a belief that a race is a fundamental detriment of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race so how does dismantling structures rooted in white advantage
042not apply to the definition of racism when it is a particular rate now i also have concern about the fact that the school district wants to take ownership for the students academic mastery only a student can take ownership of their mastery along with the support from the family unit the parents siblings from the the teachers around them but i want to know what is the ownership interest in our children for our school board unless i checked our children are the parents are the owners of the children not the school board not the school district i think that um they want to develop let me say you want to develop agency and voice yet you're eliminating a whole race to be able to represent their voice i think that this entire statement needs to be eliminated
043and we need to bring some unifying language for our students and for our children thank you [Music] board members that's the end of the recorded statements mr superintendent would you like to begin yes at this time um i'll have our chief of staff mr ed tierney and catherine bill of ascension come forward um and leave the board in a review of the equity statement and other pieces and i will participate with the board as they progress mr tyranny chairman barmiury vice chairwoman mrs brill school board members dr fenoy i'm pleased to be here this evening to help facilitate equity workshop number four the purpose of which is to give the board an opportunity to discuss the equity statement and then discuss potential next steps i'm joined this evening with miss kathy villavicencio you'll see the
044agenda for this evening and our portion will go quickly the first bullet why equity and i'll remind the board that this entire process started with data analysis and that analysis during that analysis the board surfaced and was evident that there are gaps in performance among our students and the board signaled and the superintendent signaled that the next strategic plan should address those gaps and improve outcomes for all students and that was the origin of this entire process we're going to cover the timeline briefly in a slide you've seen many times before and then we're going to make sure to try to keep students centered when we talk about the pre-work phase that's in the process of winding down the strategic planning phase and the creation of the goals that will serve as the backbone of
045that plan and ultimately the execution of that strategic plan which will be designed to improve outcomes for all students slide is a recap of how this work started we started with the pre-work phase which was mission vision and equity that's a critically important portion of that phase but i'll remind the board that that that pre-work portion is designed to influence or impact organizational outcomes that should or actions that it should improve outcomes for our students so that pre-work phase including the data analysis will then lead to the planning phase and ultimately the actions taken for take that we'll take as a result of the street strategic plan we're in the process of creating and this is the timeline you've seen it many times we won't spend much time on it but i'll just call your
046attention to how much work has been done beginning with the data analysis and the root cause and culminating in the board being presented with the strategic plan in late july hello board so um today we're also just taking an opportunity to recap this work because we also know that um as mr tierney said a lot has happened and so trying to revisit that foundation i think for members of the public as well to address some of their concerns and questions that i know y'all have received as well as we've received into board office so this is an opportunity to do that so back in november you saw that puzzle piece really using this as a time to set a strong foundation for the next strategic plan i know there have been questions about instruction in
047actual classrooms but it's important to remember really this work is informing the strategic plan um and so you know we started with that root cause analysis as mr tierney said always grounded in the data um that led to you know what does equity mean in our educational system again really focused on the data not really politicizing this but using that as the motivation for focusing and trying to understand why aren't we seeing the same outcomes for every student and then that led to mission and vision revisions that were ultimately adopted by the school board on may 5th and so um you'll see there at the bottom we kind of have this um this bike analogy that we went over way back when with mary fertacus on a quality versus equity right so not the same
048bike for everyone but the bike that they need and and so you also have a copy of that just as a reminder since again we know folks have talked about defining things what does this mean what does that mean so that's just a nod to making sure we remember kind of um how we how we got to this point so everything that we do is about students right that's the mandate that we have from the governor from the department of education the students have to be at the center of everything that we do you know school board's purpose is is making sure that every student has what they need to be proficient reach certain outcomes um and you know that is also just what the what the purpose of the district is as well so
049wanting to make sure that we are just grounded in centering our students and remembering our why and so we talked a little bit about the data mr tierney and i will just very briefly go into certain um data points this is not all the data that y'all looked at for the root cause analysis you know on march 3rd our deputy superintendent our cio and our chief of performance accountability held a workshop on our current strategic plan where we are where we need to go why we might not have met you know all of our long-term outcomes at the end of this year and so um i also want to point out i know there were some comments about um the data and not everyone succeeding right but this is an a-rated district right this is
050also a designated high-performing district by the department of education by their standards so um when we disaggregate the data that's kind of where we see the inequities right so i just want to acknowledge that despite some of those disparities we see once we disaggregate that data this isn't an a-rated district by the department of education by their standards so that's important to recognize as well that's important context because i know it's easy just to kind of focus on the negative so um but with that said you know student data is supposed to be used as a flashlight to help us get better to help us improve and so um the first data point that you see is around um students in elementary school who have one or more out-of-school suspensions right so um we're again
051this is just us looking at our data and trying to understand you know what is happening right do we see any patterns or trends that we may want to dig into more right so um we do see some we do see some patterns there um in in our elementary school students and their out-of-school suspensions um you know some people had different analogies about you know a pool and the pool is so small and you know if you take some kids out of the pool then you put others in that not everyone's in the pool and i think what the board has talked about is making the pool big enough for every student not necessarily taking away from some to give to others so again just using that data to frame that if we look at
052height at middle school we see a similar pattern in terms of you know where the highest rates are i think this is also a great um data point to illustrate that we have a lot of work to do in middle school in general right for all students and so as we um look at our strategic plan as mr cheney said these are opportunities where we can kind of address these inequities that we see in the data not just for particular subgroups but also you know certain grade levels where we know hey there's something going on here when we disaggregate this data and then once again when we look at it in high school you know we still see this pattern what's going on here right why is this happening why do we see that in
053the data so again just wanting to make sure we're grounding this in the student data and revisiting really what motivated the school board to go down this path of equity this is ninth grade course failures this is one of the data points that we started on the data analysis looking when we started looking at it my opinion is you know for a principal or someone who supervises schools this is the most important data point to track because these course failures have a tremendous impact tremendously negative impact on the trajectory of an individual student and it really detracts from the culture of the school that those students attend so this is an example of data point and inequitable data points that we may or should probably look at to determine the cause and then plan to
054address through culture systems and instruction in order to minimize this impact and then i know mr fury and i were looking at some of these slides there's a lot on there and so i know someone referenced the downward trends right so we know that that's happening we know that work is being done but i think this slide in particular if we focus on uh you know 2020 which was covid we saw a huge spike right in course failures for a lot of different reasons it just kind of drilled home that those you know disparities those inequities are even bigger because of covid but again we can kind of see there's a pattern here what's going on why is this happening right how can we address that as a school system where our mandate is to
055make sure that every student is succeeding and we're not seeing course failures in the ninth grade at this rate and then in elementary school um you know our excellent accelerated math program we know has really great outcomes really sets students up so that they can take you know algebra one at a certain grade level which we know is an indicator of whether they're college ready right so we know that those accelerated math programs are a huge benefit to our district but here we can see who's enrolled at higher rates right and so again i want to stress this isn't about taking some kids out to put other kids in it's about how do we make the pool bigger right so that everyone is benefiting from this so that every kid gets what they need every
056kid gets the right bike so again this is about the kids and making sure that we're setting them up for success so again higher peaks here means that they're enrolled at higher levels doesn't tell us why right it just tells us there's a difference here why is that what's going on next two slides we're gonna look at a slightly different light and then in that these trends are generally positive so before i go too far into it we're not satisfied that the work is not done but we've generally seized a positive trend this slide is middle school student enrollment and advanced course work and we've we've talked many times mr oswald dr sheffield about masterboard analysis and the organizational focus we've had on analyzing our master board providing more access to courses providing more support
057and as we see these numbers trend up again that work is not done but as we see them trend up this this to me indicates to us that when we pick an important organizational data data point and we focus on it and we hold ourselves accountable that we are capable of moving in a positive direction and improving outcomes for students so that just highlights to me the importance of the data analysis finding the areas of growth creating a strategic plan to address the important levers that improve student lives and then holding ourselves accountable for doing that yep and pointing out everyone is increasing right you don't see one increase and then another decrease so again making the pool bigger this next slide is the high school version of the previous slide and at this point
058mr board shared the time for board discussion board members miss ayala first i want to say thanks to staff for recapping the long road that's brought us here it's been a lot of work on everyone's behalf and i'm proud of it and for reminding us that none of this was done on a whim or with any other intent other than to get our district to a point where every single child can achieve better academic outcomes like we want to see those numbers continue going up on those slides so that shows that this statement has always been and is data driven it is now politically driven and it was created to make sure that our system is better for the nearly 200 000 students that we serve but before we get into addressing the equity statement
059directly i just want to make it very clear from my perspective just how inappropriate disrespectful and insensitive i thought that any holocaust comparisons we heard today were they should have no place in this chamber careless holocaust analogies that conflate issues and attempt to demonize and intimidate targets which are us are actually just detractors from the real issues that are challenging our society and create a space where we can't even talk about them collaboratively in a thoughtful discourse so i just really needed to say that because i don't think any of us up here have been called racist marxist communist socialists so much in one day and none of us are any of those things that's probably the primes example of why we need this equity statement and this work done in this district in the
060first place because we need to educate everybody on what equity means so that's the true irony here i hope that today we can focus on what we need to do which is looking at how we can provide a clear plan on this statement for its execution how we turn words into actions that filter throughout our district for successful outcomes that come out of these words and how we can be clear and specific and intentional with our vision and avoid these disrespectful displays of people who clearly miss the point that's what i hope that we can accomplish here today thank you mrs whitfield and mrs andrews thank you first i want to thank everyone who came to speak to us today your voices are important to me the reason i do this job is because i
061believe in palm beach county i believe we have more in common than those things that divide us my goals in this job have always been to elevate this community to make sure that each person has a voice i've said many times that i want to make our schools welcoming and supportive of all our children i've been listening to your comments i've heard many themes running through these comments everyone that came here today spoke and said on some level that they wanted an equitable education they wanted to make sure that their children were loved respected and taken care of in our schools no one wants to punish or demean one group of kids i don't want to make anyone feel that we aren't respecting their children or them that was never my intention one woman said
062that we should be teaching reading writing and arithmetic i want to assure you that this equity statement was made so that we can do this when you look at our data there's a huge difference beyond between how the work we do serves black boys which is our lowest achieving group not including ese and white girls our highest achieving group someone asked why would we do this during the time of the pandemic when there's so much going on this is exactly why we're doing this work now it is because our children are suffering at levels they never have before the number of children across the board who have f's on their report card have more than doubled throughout this district in this year we're not trying to indoctrinate your children or promote one political ideology over
063another i believe political discourse among diverging views is how we get to the best decisions as leaders this work is just us trying to be honest about the deficiencies in our system doing this work is the most important thing we can do at this time when this system works for every kid all kids will do better your children will be more successful our goals are to be the best school system in the country nothing less will do because your children go here and so do mine i'd like to keep the equity statement the way it stands i believe in the work that we did if this board collectively decides that the words that we used are too harsh or they would like to change the wording i'll support that decision because what's important to me
064is that we are supporting every child the intention that we had behind the statement is what must stay that all children are educated affirmed and inspired to be the best selves i want to support uplift our children and i want to make sure that every person who comes to this school district has their best opportunity to succeed and that's it thanks mrs andrews and thank you and i want to thank everyone who came today and spoke to me as a school board member and the rest of the team here on the school board your voices are being heard we are listening to you it's truly important that we hear all signs and today i heard a lot and you know we uh started this equity journey with the consultant so i want to thank you
065uh mr tierney and miss billis wagner for your work that you've been doing but i go back to uh we hired a consultant to to help us now today it would have been a good time to have that consultant here when we had so many people talking about what did you mean when we were in those closed door meetings and we were talking and she gave us direction based on her experience because i think the school district hired her i never saw the contract but the school district hired her to come in here and help us today would have been a good day to have her here to answer some of the questions and so as we move forward for the next steps do we still have this consultant uh mrs fratakus working with us
066have we hired more consultants i really do believe the statements that we're talking about here today are words and i and the words uh cause a lot of polarizations they have caused a lot of confusion for people and and people felt that their children were being discriminated because we were talking white advantage and and this piece that we we worked on today and so that's why it would have been really wonderful to have a recap if our consultant had been here so i just want to go back are we still working with this consultant do we have more consultants working with us or will it be the school board taking it to the next level when you say the next steps we we work with mr takas on the first contract who's worked through equity
067statement with the board the board recently approved her second contract and the scope of that contract was more to work within with capacity for staff so we are still have missed for tacos on contract her focus has shifted from board as the pre-work wound down to staff capacity may uh may i request that each board member get a copy of that contract i think it's important for us because as we listened to the public today there were really concerns about how we came up with what we came up and we certainly didn't have any intent to cause harm to uh be causing decisiveness and to cause confusion and misunderstanding and for people to say that you know this was part of what we do i've been on the school board a long time and i
068truly work for academic excellence for all children and i know the actions mean more to me than the words and when we have seven words here that we're we're we're really uh concerned about uh on both sides uh one side saying we can't lose these words and the other side is saying that it's gonna cause harm to their children it makes me say that we've got to come together we've got to come together and figure out how to do this this is why i was asking where was the consultant today and so when i when i when i look at this i felt like uh we we haven't been inclusive with these words so that everybody could feel that there was something in it for everybody when we're talking about equity we're talking about each
069and every student and so that's why i was looking for the consultant today and i do believe that we must improve the performance of our underperforming children that's something that i believe in very very much and so when i say we're moving forward i just really want to make sure that we're getting that help that we need and isn't just going to be your office doing it i know we have now uh formed the new office for strategic planning so i just want to know do we have a second consultant working with us the other part is insight which is working on the strategic planning process and we talked about them a little bit nationally renowned for building equitable strategic plans throughout the country so that that's the other function that consultants are are performing
070for us right now and just for the boards um edification the um the consultant's contract is attached to the item it you know i will just add this fourth equity workshop was on the calendar since the beginning and we had always flagged that this would be the inflection point where mary is still informing the the slides for today we've had prep meetings with her i understand that she's had some one-on-one phone conversations with board members who also want to reach out to her she's absolutely available and so she has informed all of this and we keep in close context her right now she's looking at some of our processes and policies through an equitable lens because that was something that in her second contract that came to the board we talked about building that internal
071capacity and then um you know if the board decides that they would like to take this on the road and show the equity statement beyond those some of those community meetings that we had done at the end of last month then she can help inform that plan so that we can execute it so she's absolutely available to do those things she's on through june 30th um but again i think we also just want to make sure that we're building internal capacity to be able to have these conversations and support you as a board as you continue this work in whatever way shape or form you decide makes the most sense moving forward miss barbara just let me just take it to another step so i would like to see the contract of that second person
072that you say that's helping us now there's another person i haven't seen there yes and i think that's important for us because when people are looking at us today they think that we're just working in isolation in here right and we're putting together things to hurt children and that is not true when i heard that today and we've heard that for the last few weeks and this is why we've got to go back because if it takes uh if these seven words is going to uh harm what we're trying to do with the mission because of all the people who are in anxiety because they feel that we're actually talking about you know uh some other plan in mind to destroy that's not what it's all about and i felt hurt and harmed today when
073i heard people feeling like we were trying to get their children and here we are the school board we many of us have been here it's our responsibility to make sure that every child is successful not just with this equity statement but with actions to make a difference uh in the lives of each and every boy and girl and we don't want to hurt anybody that's why i think people need to know the full picture of who's been working with the board and how we got here and we have to revise and do some things to make it better so we can come together so much division in the country now we have to come together on behalf of all the wonderful students and families that we have here in the palm beach county school
074district so we can move with this equity work we don't want to have pushback from parents and others because they feel like we're not all on the same page that's why i just really wanted to take a minute for people to know that apparently you have a second consultant the first consultant has been working with us we've all been trying to work through these pieces but it's obvious from all this time that we've spent today that there's a lot of misunderstanding there's a lot of hurt people feel their children are being uh not uh taken care of by the school board of palm beach county so we've got to own that and figure out what to do and i think we have to come together and just to elaborate on what mr truney said we
075do not have a contract with insight it they're providing their services for free based on the tsl grant that human resources department secured and i know we shared that back in january when we were going over critical structures strategic plan but we'll share more information they were actually going to be here today but since we postponed that workshop they're going to try and join us virtually next week but we will do a better job of making sure everybody understands who's supporting us in this work and i think it's for the board and for the community to know that we're all working together because right now there is a feeling out there that we're not working on the betterment for every child and that's what we're talking about we know where our faults are based on
076where we need to move to move our children to success but we know that we have parents and we have children for this whole palm beach county and this equity means for every child to move them to a level of success thank you before there's a response from staff i think mr barbary were you recognizing me next i'm i'm sorry miss brill was right ahead of you missing okay this is mcqueen did you want to respond no sorry mrs okay miss brill then miss mcqueen and mrs whitfield thank you and first of all i want to thank you so much for bringing us the data again because it's good to be talking about student achievement that's what we're here for and to make sure that all students succeed i will make one comment on the
077data um i've repeatedly asked for this and i don't know what the problem is but i've been asked by the community the haitian community specifically they would like to see their the data broken out for the haitian community and i brought this up at each time we've had the data so if there's a reason why we can't do that if you could please share it so that i can share it back i would appreciate it so i have to first of all thank everybody that came regardless of what your perspective was it's very clear that what i brought up last week the speaker's illustrated and the emails have illustrated the divisiveness and polarization that is caused by some of the words in our equity statement no one group should be made to feel less than
078any other or disenfranchised now some of the people wanted just to remove the words that i had suggested the last time the dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and just that sentence others suggested the whole paragraph i personally don't think you know i that we need to dissect the whole statement um i think that it's as i said last week by removing the reference to white advantage we still make a very strong statement um but i just want to say that equity is not just about race right we've talked about it we've talked about all the other groups it's about reaching all those students as mrs andrews said about working together the whole goal my vision was that we would have a statement that would bring everybody together so we could talk about making sure
079that every student is able to be successful i mean that's what we're all about um i do want to close my comments with sharing something that um one of the people that wrote to us had stated at the end of her email sherry delaney from belle glade ended her message to the board and i cut and pasted this out to read it she said when considering equity please consider carefully how your words and actions can negatively impact children and staff in your schools please find a balance that does not create a divide and cause harm please consider that in your efforts to create equity are you then punishing one race and causing division and i thought that was very profound so i wanted to share that and that's the end of my comments for the
080moment that's mr mcquinn first of all i do appreciate all of your work thank you and that was not intended to be a reprimand i just wanted to get my voice in there so forgive me if that sounded like one it wasn't i am not going to address the equity statement right now what i want to address is mary fratakus she did not impose herself on us we invited her and she's been more than generous with her time at no time did miss fratakus try to lead our thinking sometimes she tried to slow us down in our thinking she did quiz us down a few times about whether we should socialize this before we voted on it and please remember this is not a policy this is a statement that we can amend but i
081personally did not want to socialize at first because for me virtual media i had two people two people contact me about why i didn't have a virtual meeting one was a principal who was worried about my health another was a community member and he and i've had several um conversations by phone and email i know that my community does not work best virtually and i will be following up with school specific conversations about how we move forward but i really feel very strongly about for defending mary fortakus thank you mrs whitfield i just had a question for mrs andrews because she kept saying seven words and i wanted to know which seven words okay okay so i just want to make sure i was on the same page so she's talking about dismantling structures rooted
082in white and vantage and go ahead mrs andrews i just want to say to miss mcqueen i think uh mary patakis came in here and worked with us i'm just talking about like today when we had so much discussion it would have been wonderful to have her here as a resource people were talking to us and they were saying that they felt like we may have been having an ulterior motive for what we were doing and that's not true for any of us and i thought today would have been a great day since she has been our consultant been working with us that she could have been here to kind of share some some viewpoints as to some of the things that she had talked to us about because we did spend a lot of
083time and all the time that we spent i really didn't feel that we would be hurting people the way i heard that hurt today and i heard many people say they supported it but when we haven't be we're not coming together as one for the benefit of the children then it causes me to take notice and i just thought she would have been helpful to us to have her here today to give some comments because people do learn and that's what we did we learned from her that's why we hired her as a consultant the superintendent did and we heard her and she worked with us over the weeks and we came up with these words we know that action is going to be needed a lot of work has to be done to help
084many of the children here in palm beach county but today would have been a good day to have her that's why i just want to know when we are moving forward and we're talking through a lot of these issues if we have the resources there so people will know the board is uh being guided and working together with folks who've had some experiences maybe that we haven't had thank you and to follow up on mrs andrews i i think it's only fair to say that you know that the board um we didn't ask for her to be here today in hindsight maybe it would have been great to have her here so she could have she's probably listening anyway so she could have helped us with with what we have to do here today but
085um we all you know we you know we didn't ask you to do that and you know again and follow up on mrs anders it would have been great to have her today but she's she you know it's not your fault she's not here we didn't ask for we didn't ask for it again in hindsight it would have been great if we would have but we didn't so dr robinson thank you well i did ask for mary for tacos to be here today i was told that she was unavailable but um and i do think because we're kind of in our almost in our infancy as a board in addressing this particular difficult topic um that we could have benefited from her experience as part of our our dialogue but so i have a few
086comments that may seem a bit disjointed but i'm going to say them anyway so first off one of my favorite quotes is you must learn to look for yourself hear for yourself and think for yourself or you will find yourself loving your enemies and hating your friends and i think that that is a point because there's been so much misinformation uh this is psychological term called transference where emotions and the organizing system of the patient is attributed to the therapist and this applies in many areas right in this case in my mind i i just i'm concerned each time somebody brings up the nazis and and we've been called nazis but some of what i see going on is similar to what i learned about the rise of hitler and it's frightening and so i'm
087really good if we can if we disagree on on the facts um i hate when there's disagreement around misinformation um or misunderstanding and so maybe part of it and maybe that's what miss fritakas was trying to tell us when she asked about socializing it is that we need to talk to people more so that they understand because there's clearly there were a lot of things said there was nowhere near what i was talking about right or what i thought that we as a collective we were talking about i hope that we don't allow people to divide us we as a board have looked at data we've looked at our processes we've had these workshops with lots of discussion and i thought that as a collective we accepted the need to change our system to address
088the needs of the least of us not to the exclusion of anyone else right and that's why i kept talking about this portrait of a graduate where is it we're trying to go what's what is the minimum and i want to be clear minimum in terms of success that we want for each of our graduates and any child who surpasses that god bless them i applaud them right but i think that we have to set some expectations and then we figure out how we work towards that and we do look at each child each and every child and when i did my little town hall media i said and and i mean this with all my heart one of the things that i was most proud of in our statements is that we change from
089talking about all children to each child because that's that's when we really when we really make progress and guess what it doesn't matter what the child looks like right but our statistics tell us that our system tends to not developed the human capital capital in certain children right and so i think that's what that was about i don't need to go back into into history or even into things i mean some of our the obstacles in our system have changed over time but the data's nowhere near as good as we want and guess what and i've said this from this dice we're not doing a good enough job teaching white children right so we just need to do better if we focus on the needs of those with fewest blessings we will address the needs
090of all children and that's what i thought we were talking about now i want to just address a couple of things that just bugged me out with the misinformation teaching any race of children that they are not good that's not part of anything that we've talked about or that i imagined i can't imagine anybody on this diocese would accept anything like that teaching children that this country is bad no guess what i'm trying to make this country live up to its promise right so yes we want every child to have a chance at the american dream right and no we're not going to either explicitly what what i'm hoping we end is the implicit messages to some children that you can't succeed and we're not talking about i'm not talking about teaching any of this
091stuff to children it's the adults whose minds i hope we change we were all grew up in systems that affirm certain people and deny the realities of others right and adults now we carry that with us we carry the biases that we learn many speakers said children don't have these biases i agree and learn them though and we don't change the adults in our system and that's what i'm hoping to change one of the um a teacher emailed and said it's essential that we educate not indoctrinate our children absolutely absolutely and somebody said was this act keep this accusation we keep trying they keep saying that we won't teach children critical race theory no but as one of the speakers said i want to teach them critical thinking exactly and how to find the facts
092for yourself because there's so much misinformation out there for children and adults you can run down any rabbit hole and be absolutely certain you're correct and so one of the things we have to do is teach young people how to verify what they think is facts right so that the next generation doesn't operate on so much misinformation somebody said we're teaching black and brown children to be victims no i hope to work to make sure that they're not victims and that um we're teaching children to see children by race no we want the adults to stop treating children based on whichever kind of ism is in the forefront of their brain at the moment that and there's many isms but this country was founded on racial bias okay and that's just the truth i'm i
093just i want us to stop that and i think it is we can we can save this country in the next generation by making sure that the adults free their minds and stop operating out of their own implicit or explicit bias and that's what i that's what i thought we were saying in our equity statement mission and vision thank you so let me add my two cents i guess um the definition of equity is on the district's homepage and i'll just remind everybody what it says it says equity means each student regardless of race ethnicity poverty disability language status undocumented status religious affiliation gender identity and sexual orientation will have access to the opportunities resources and support they need to imagine nurture and achieve their dreams i believe removing barriers that many children face is
094the core mission of this entire board i believe the idea of an equity statement was to follow that definition and get the entire school district behind the critical work that needs to be done equity to me is removing those barriers standing in the path of a child's success and distributing and i want to clarify one word that we definitely need to change distributing not redistributing which kind of connotes taking from one child and giving to another district resources whether they be staff programs or funding to ensure every child no matter their race ethnicity and all those other all those other obstacles that might be in a child's way are removed so that the child receives the education that they deserve an education which allows each child to attain or achieve their highest personal potential not
095every kid is going to come out the same we can't do that it's not a possibility but we need to remove the barriers that don't allow any child or restrict any child from reaching the highest potential that child has within him or her it's obvious that when children come to us they're not equal you know the framers of the constitution said all men are created equal well that's not true we all know it some kids are born with cognitive difficulties some kids are born with other issues and and even if they're born perfectly the same as the baby in the next bassinet when they get to us things have changed right a poor child who may be white black or hispanic and can't read when that child enrolls in our school through no fault of
096his or her own needs additional resources to help that child get up to speed so he or she can move forward with his or her education with the taxpayers of this county support our schools who support our schools not want us to provide additional reading support to a child simply because the other children are reading on grade level are not being provided the same support providing those additional resources removes barriers for that child to a meaningful education that is an example of equity as opposed to equality a child comes to us suffering from cognitive impairment that child is far behind his peers due to his disability without additional resources provided to that child which his peers don't need educating the child will be a failure with the taxpayers who support our school say that providing
097that child with additional help without giving that same equal help to his peers who do not need that help is that wrong that is equity not equality that dictates the need to give additional support to that child just ask our teachers they get 20 kids in their classroom do they treat every child exactly the same and just give them the same lesson plans or do they give special attention to some children in the classroom that need special attention that's equity that's not equality quality would be you all got the same homework assignment you all come back tomorrow take the test and we don't care whether you get a's b c's or d's you're all being treated the same that's not that's not what we do in the schools that's not what we but our mission
098is the taxpayers don't want us to treat every child equal they want to make sure that every child gets the resources that they provided with their vote those tax dollars we allocate those tax dollars to make sure that no matter where the child stands when they get to us we can make sure that they get what they need to get them up there where they need to go and and for for you know for a profitable and successful future we live in a challenging times with more focus on what divides us than what unites us i mean it's obvious the country is at a place where in my 71 years i i i've never seen anything like this in my life even back in the 60s when there was all the turmoil then it seems
099like that was nothing i'm walking the park compared to what we what we're dealing with today we are tasked with educating our children anything that inhibits us from that task is mission creep the intent in approving an equity statement should be about bringing forth unity not the division and polarization that was unintended consequence of our current statement due only to the words that we chose if there's more discussion about the words we use than the reading scores the math scores and the graduation rates of our children the process has totally failed it is clear at this point that we are that situation the words have become the issue that's all the public is focusing on is the words they've totally missed out on our mission which is to provide a quality education to all children
100and give them the resources that they need from the tax dollars that they provided to make sure those kids are successful yeah the issues of race and equity are profound they deeply impact our community but our job first and foremost is to create a safe healthy space or where we can teach the next generation to read write add and ultimately be prepared to enter college or the workforce with the knowledge and skill set they need to succeed we can clearly see that after today's meeting if we don't do something to take away the words that cause all the distrust we're not going to be able to move forward i mean we're going to have them constantly come to the meetings blasting us we're thinking that we're on some some some mission to to change the
101you know change the you know whatever in this country to change us from a democracy to uh to a socialistic state i mean i haven't seen any of that we've never had any discussions with staff to come here and tell us what they're i mean i certainly would recognize if staff was telling us hey we're going to change uh how we teach this to something that i would find profoundly uh untenable which is you know socialistic tendencies and and trying to uh to indoctrinate children on something that their parents don't feel is appropriate for them and as dr robinson said i think was you dr robinson the issue is not the kids here it's trying to get the adults to understand what our mission is and and have and they need to understand that you
102know when we talk about equity we're not talking about critical race theory we're talking about allocating resources in a way that every child gets what they need in order to succeed mr superintendent yeah i just wanted to take a moment i think listening to the board and obviously the community what i find interesting about my reality is superintendent on the board i've been in a year and a half you know coveted uh i've sat at this dice and been called hitler in a nazi by a bunch of black people i've been called a racist by a bunch of white people um you know and it's very interesting to me you know i'm a proud son of a man who spent 22 years in the u.s military i grew up on military bases my entire life
103um and so the idea of socialism and communism to me is just insulting you know my dad almost died in wars and as a young child i had to witness that and so but i'll say this the words yes they're polarizing let me tell you something and we don't put actions in place to deal with the data that we have been looking at for many many years before i got here and now that i'm here and the old strategic plan is expiring we have a new one ahead of us but the data is not lying the date is not polarized the data the data is not political the data is absolutely truthful and so our goal i think what has been missed and we can do an analysis of what was missed and why people
104are so polarized around us but here's the hard truth we have students that are disabled we have students that are black we have students that are poor we have students of any demographic that you can imagine that have not been fully served by the school district and again and we don't know all the reasons and that's why we need to dig deep into that but our end goal is what the the old mission and vision was every kid every single kid and i think but we also have to acknowledge we have to acknowledge that every parent can't advocate and part of our role as as a board as staff is to figure out what each child needs to be successful we're in a moment in time whether you like it or hate it we are
105starting to get resources to begin to address this in a way that we don't have to take anything from anyone in all my years in education 22 years i've said this one phrase and people who know me well know this they call it a phenolism we have to raise the floor and the ceiling simultaneously and with that floor though we have to accelerate it so i'm not ever gonna say my son's a gifted kid and he didn't we didn't we didn't pay someone a psychologist to do that he did that on his own he didn't do it because of me because i'm not that smart his mother is very very smart but i will say this y'all we have to raise the floor in the ceiling simultaneously but we have to accelerate that bottom and
106so i think we're just at a moment in time only thing i ask is that at some point we have to create the plan execute that plan and monitor their plan i think mr barbara and everyone else is right we're talking about adult issues we're not talking about kid issues y'all and so we've got to be brave and bold with our own teams and then truthfully we've got to work with the community on this we can't you know over the years we put so much on public education that sometimes we don't ever get to talk about educating we talk about everything else now we have to embrace that because that's just the moment in time that we're in so the mental health work you know the new work uh mr oswald is going to be
107doing with equity and all these pieces these are necessary these are things that this board asks us to do things that i believe in now we still have to figure it all out we still have to build these teams but we we can't do this without a plan we cannot do this work without a significant plan based on all the data that we're looking at today because the data is not political the data is just facts listen quinn sorry um so dr robin said i don't want this to get lost i you know i say this with with all respect but usually she says things with a lot of words and this was said with so few words i don't want us to lose this this isn't about what we're teaching the kids this is
108about this is for adults and you know we've had a five-year strategic plan this all started why do we have an equity statement we we have to do our strategic plan well all the data knows and i'm referring specifically to black students right now we know that they significantly a large majority underperform our white students well five years of grandiose plans haven't made that much better so what are we going to do differently that's where all this started so please don't lose this this isn't about bringing this to our kids thank you miss ayala and mrs whitfield thank you um wanted to touch back to the mary for talking situation um i believe her second contract was passed unanimously on consent on may 5th if i'm recalling so the contract is there available for all
109of us to see and we all knew she wouldn't be here today as well but today more importantly we heard from other elected officials partner organizations community organizations community leaders parents faith leaders that represent the fabric of palm beach county and many of those folks asked us to stand by our words and not retreat right now i have 225 emails and counting in my inbox over the last week that is requesting to keep the statement as it is that's from parents that's from retired teachers that's from teachers currently working in our district that's from students and i'm going to go through the list of organizations that i've heard from including that united way of palm beach county the palm health foundation compass community center the anti-defamation league primetime palm beach county the guatemalan maya center
110community partners families first of palm beach county the coalition for black student achievement the palm beach county human rights council organizing against racism pbc alliance healthier neighbors a national association of social workers representative was here today various clergy a state legislator university professors including two from fau students parents and even a student petition from the national honor society president and atlantic high school named daryl asking for the racism and the discrimination in his school to end okay so now is not the time in my opinion to go back and forth on word and we've invested over 20 hours already doing that now is the time to work on what the superintendent just said how are we as the district leaders who are tasked with the work mary for talk has guided us through we are
111the district leaders not her her being here today wouldn't have made a decision moving forward on what we're gonna do how we're gonna instruct our team to do the job of equity what does that mean to us we have to hold firm in what our values are we need to focus on defining the goal of what this means to us and share that with our educational leaders in our schools to make sure that they can have clarity on the task of executing the vision as well as to all the concerned parents all over the county who are here today expressing their confusion and their anger and their frustration over what we release without a plan so that's that's the reality and frankly we owe that to our educators to have give them the tools to
112be successful at this we can't give them a losing proposition and expect it to succeed and we can't back up when we have some little resistance right right out of the gate statement isn't even a month old and we're getting pushback which we knew we would get at the workshop we all said we know this is going to be hard we have to do the hard work now of committing to what we said what we all agreed to what we all approved on consent on may 5th without hesitation or discussion and give our system the roadmap and the tools to make sure that we can increase the academic outcomes we all want to see increase for every single student we serve i firmly stand with the statement as it is mrs whitfield and miss brill
113and sanders i just wanted to talk really briefly about the disunity in the community um i i am very frustrated and saddened by it and by the people who believe that we are trying to hurt their children as well i think this is a real impact of the pandemic i think the fact that we haven't had a chance to talk to people the way that we used to meet with people see each other be eye-to-eye you know go to meetings um so i think that you know going forward when we decide to do anything i really think we should make an effort to socialize it and trying to get the word out to communities is really important because i i don't want anyone to think in our community that we don't hear them or that
114their voice is not heard and important to us um because this is one of the things that i like most about this board is because we are a non-partisan organization who really is there for all the children in the community it makes me very happy to be on the side of looking out for children and children or just who they are and we're going to help them so i don't want anyone in the community to think that we don't hear them and i think that hopefully as we go forward in our post-pandemic life things will start getting better and we can have better communication but i would like us in the future to make sure that we bring everything out to the community um i think we've learned that the community will come find us
115if we don't so we need to make sure that we bring things to them first thanks ms brew thank you so i have to disagree with ms ayela because words matter and the words in our equity statement are it's that's a separate issue to the work that we have ahead changing the words are not going to change the direction that we take we know what we need to do we know that we have to provide the resources to make sure that all of our children succeed something that i fought for for many years it's still it's we're a lot better than we were with our students with disabilities but we're not there yet we still have a lot of work to do but it was very clear it's not just people that came to us
116supporting the words the way they are there were many people that were saying that they did not support the words they were that as they are we've made it clear that we want the words that are in our statement yes we need to socialize it but we they have to be words people understand and i still remember i had a phone call this week from one parent who called me up who has four children in the schools and she said to me i have two children that are biracial she said i'm white she said i don't want my middle school student coming home and telling me that i had an advantage over him you know those are the things that these words bring they bring up in people's minds no matter what you do and
117so you need to understand that it is dividing the community it is polarizing the words on our equity statement don't change i do like what mr barbieri said in the second paragraph at the end saying um sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources taking out the redistributing and make it distributing i think that that's a very good change to have but there is absolutely no change in our intent and our interaction by removing the words dismantling structures rooted in white advantage because those are the words that are a trigger and i want this community to embrace the work that we're doing but you know absolutely we have not been discussing critical race theory we are talking about bringing up and providing the resources to all students so that they can be successful in
118school and in life beyond and this is critical work but to have a statement that divides and hurts so many people i did have one parent that called me crying asking me where her white advantage was and those are the things that and yes it is an adult problem but it is but if we put this out the way it is it's dividing it's not uniting let's all work together to incr improve student achievement without offending misleading or dividing or polarizing or disenfranchising or making any one group feel less than any other group mrs andrews then dr robinson and thank you and i just want to say you know i work really hard in district 6 and it's truly not about me but one of my areas is an area that we've been working on
119for years since i was elected to the board and i recognize the shortcomings that we have faced within this school district i know that best of all because i'm in my car out there on the ground and i've been on this school board a long time so when i hear somebody saying that we got to stick with it when i hear parents that i heard today and i've heard over the last week really disgusted about just our message when we look at our equity definition and our equity statement it's beautiful except for that those seven words that i was talking about we don't want this to go down because we we have to stick with something if we lose one parent it's too many parents we want all of the parents to work with us
120to help us with all of these children that we're talking about we need to help it is going to be our responsibility as a board it's been our responsibility as a board to do what we needed to do to bring these children up and and i've been working all of you have been working at it and working at it hard but when we have this kind of divisiveness that i saw in here tonight and i saw a little bit of it last week and it's out there we've got to find a way to stop that and to get back on track it's about the action i know about action and getting things done in my years on the school board i've taken a lot of action to make a difference for the quality of life
121and education for many children and you all have too and so we know about action this this this is words right now and it's and we can do better than that we we don't have to say you know it's a group out there that's out there saying bad things and and they're screaming and hollering they're they're doing that for their children and they truly believe dr robinson what they're saying so truly it is about helping the adults come around but when you when you don't try to come together to help them with that because we didn't go out there with them to get their opinion on the front end i mean we were all in those meetings and we didn't do that but guess what i've learned something from sitting here that we should have
122done that piece and gone out there to do the socialization with them we would have got more information and we would have known hey move back a little bit but we did not do that but we're here up in here today and it really truly is about each child every child i don't care what color you are we want them to be successful and i say that every day that i come in here and wherever i go is that what we want is to make sure that they're successful and every parent wants what success means to their individual child so when they come in here and talk about the critical race theory and all these things that you all are talking about that we heard today that's not what we're talking about but until we
123can reach out and bond and educate them and let them know what we're truly all about then we're going to miss some kids and we can't afford to miss anybody miss whitfield i hear you when you say that it is the mold right now here in palm beach county that's not good because of all of this misinformation and confusion we've got to make sure that we can dial it down a little bit and get back on track so that we can do all these beautiful things that we have written here in our equity definition and equity statement so we can move forward and we want to bring every parent along we don't want to leave any behind and we surely don't want to leave any students behind dr it's a roberts conversation i mean it's
124as if we weren't leaving some people behind or disenfranchising some parents or having some parents being upset before right and that's born out in statistics so what i have gotten for years and years and years is unhappy parents not all black or brown but probably the majority right um and so like what we have to do is what's right not necessarily was popular what would you do if you went to your doctor and your doctor said well what do you want me to give you how do you want me to treat you for that condition i kind of think you'd be disappointed i kind of think you might want their professional expertise to weigh in maybe be a thought partner with you and talk about the pros and cons you know and and i don't
125think it's just gonna about these seven words if it's seven words right is something underlying that and i think you know many of us may recognize that uh but the point of the matter is we did all agree to it to these words we workshopped them i think twice um and then it was on the agenda in the workshop i remember i specifically asked are you good with this because there will be some pushback now you know everybody can change their mind and each one of us has a vote i would suggest um if it's not out of order i'm gonna make a motion to close the workshop so we can get to the meeting and be done with this because nothing's going to change with all this talk that we're doing superintendent do you
126have anything else for us for the workshop no sir we didn't have anything else all right dr roberts made a motion to adjourn the workshop said we have a second motion by mrs whitfield long favor pose motion carry 7-0 now call the special meeting the board to order are there any disclosures or extensions for this meeting seeing none we have any agenda item speakers none so the only item on here is brd1 i recommend the board discuss and as desired take action to modify amend or repeal the equity statement adopted by the board on may 5th 2021 motioned by ms brill seconded by mrs mcquinn discussion miss bruh thank you so i'm going to suggest a change in the language in the second paragraph um with one change as i mentioned before the the word
127that mr barbieri suggested so that the second paragraph would read achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic impression the school district of palm beach county is committed to transforming our system by hearing and elevated underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources to provide equitable outcomes so that's the removal of the seven words plus removing the re in front of the word distributing mrs andrews concur with ms brill on that i do believe this will help us to move forward to bring the community together to bring all the children and their families together and yes we all said this is what we wanted but guess what we've learned and i have to repeat every day is a learning process you can't
128be right all the time so when we sat there and we felt like this is what we wanted but we have heard we've heard from parents on both sides and we know that as a district we have to come together as one for the benefit of each child and so miss burl i i love it because i was worried about those seven words and i like mr barbieri's uh distributing because it's for every child to get what they need each individual child and when we look at our equity definition and statement everything else i think we can move out of this room tonight on a good note that everybody will be working together maybe there might be other underlying things but guess what we know now we have to get to our communities and socialize
129this and talk with them to let them know that we're all out here for every child and for those statements that they said in there they're not true and we don't mind meeting them wherever they are to talk about how we're going to move forward in this school district to make sure that we have equitable outcomes for each and every child and we want all those parents to be alone with us as we move forward i i'd like she was the second yeah she was the second you could be the second i can second that yes she's second so i just want to follow up on a couple things that were actually said at the workshop that we are now discussing too on this motion um dr robinson said that um there's something underlying those
130seven words what those seven words do is they bring that underlying whatever to the surface as long as that underlying issue is on the surface we are not going to be able to move forward and get any work done because we're going to alienate people that we need to support us we and with respect to miss ayala i appreciate the fact that there were lots of groups who supported keeping the statement the way it is but i would say to you if those those are great organizations that if some of those organizations were here today and would have heard with the disconnect from what people believe that what what the words mean and we ask them would you rather leave the words or try and try and bring the community together so everybody is working
131for the benefit of children i think that many of those organizations would have probably said let's forget the words and let's get the work on the job and get it done and if that means we have to change some of the wording but we're still looking at the children that need our resources including black children and hispanic children ese children ell children i think those organizations would probably say it's not worth the fight over words when you guys aren't going to get the work done because you're not going to get the community support that we're absolutely going to need on the strategic plan we're absolutely going to need the support of the taxpayers when we go back to them for more money if we have to do that when the referendum comes due and when
132the sales tax issue comes up we have to make sure we have community buy-in on this and at this point let's not focus on on keeping the words at the expense of losing the community support so i would hope that you all agree that we we need to modify and get get those words out of there with the understanding that taking those words out still leaves the statement basically as ms pearl said very powerful and it gets the job done mrs mcqueen and then dr robinson i am going to end up supporting um the amendment but i want to explain why because we have we've created winners and losers here there's a lot more in the winning but this sentence the first sentence of the second paragraph where we say achieving racial equity requires proactive
133and continuous investment and historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression that's a big statement so i can live with this dr robinson so just so we're clear there's there are many people who thought for a fleeting moment it was like like camelot that we were actually going to work towards what every child needs i hear us saying that even if these words get changed that's what we're still going to do okay and what they're saying to me is yeah right we'll see okay that's what they're saying so be very clear that we can't make everyone happy and those organizations that miss ayala listed represent many many voices that we never hear right and so you know it's just once again it's like we're we're choosing between adults instead of focusing on the
134needs of the children in palm beach county and so you know i mean it it is what it is you know unfortunately it you know it just kind of the more things change sometimes the more they seem to remain the same and i know that's what i'm going to be hearing over and over and over again and so i hope we prove them to be wrong and i fully expect all the people that had all that misinformation and we proved them to be wrong too if i just may follow up on dr robinson dr robinson i i understand where you're coming from and i don't think removing those words takes us out of camelot as you described it i mean if you look at the fourth paragraph it says the school district of palm beach
135county acknowledges the existence of and will eliminate systems processes and mindsets that perpetuate race ethnicity poverty disability language status undocumented status religious affiliation gender identity and sexual orientation as predictors of achievement i mean it's clear in this statement that all the other paragraphs including that one get to the heart of what we're trying to accomplish here which is to get all the resources that children need to those children the the removal of those words doesn't change that and i you know not you've been fighting you've been fighting for for for for you know marginalized children and you know and and underrepresented children your entire time in the school board and i think we've come a long way i mean this statement is something that i never would have imagined that we would get to and
136it does the trick without putting the words in there that is going to keep those people on that side of the room from coming to help us when we need their help so i would just like to you know get get this done so that we can move on and get to the strategic planning that we need to get in place we have summer school that's got to start we don't even know exactly how we're doing that we certainly need to discuss how the school year is going to open up next year and parents want to know whether all the things we got to do we've not got to that so we need to move on and get beyond filling the room with lots of people that are going to scream at us about words
137so that we can actually take action i believe you were next miss sayaland and miss brill just do we really think that changing a few words is where the divisiveness and the screaming ends do we genuinely i i just i'll put it out there into the universe because it's not gonna stop when do we stop catering to the loudest group and start doing what the organizations that we work with in conjunction to serve the most needed the most necessary population of students and the most marginalized communities in our system when do we partner with them and back them up because with all due respect they can speak for themselves and today they did they sent emails they came in and spoke they took time out to be here and make sure that communities that we
138want to see elevated in support are and these are words words are words until they become actions but words mean something to people and i've heard from my constituents every one of which reached out to me supported this so i know where i firmly stand on this i know that this is the right thing we will it'll be what it'll be i will see what the vote comes out to be on our decision moving forward but everyone who came here today and i wasn't saying the ones who disagreed with it weren't counted in my tally of emails but the majority of speakers today per my tally were in support of keeping it as it is and i had more emails in support of the statement as it is as opposed to so that's my account
139to make that clear to a board member's comment about listening to everybody i just think that we need to be very careful about remembering why did we put the words there in the first place i believed we all believed in them when we put them there missile i'm sorry miss bro thank you so first of all dr robinson i have to be positive i have to be focused on us as being the ones that are responsible to do the job i trust in my heart that what you said is not going to be true i have to believe we have reached a point where we are truly going to focus on equity on making sure that all of the resources are where they need to be and that we raise our children up and that
140and so i will say that in reading the entire equity statement those groups that's what came supporting the words the way it is they are i believe if they read it once we remove those words it's no less powerful as mr barbieri said and it's up to us it's up to the district to the superintendent to come back with curriculum we need at every single board meeting to discuss the data and to discuss student achievement at our regular board meeting it should be on our agenda we need to start talking about where our students are instead of talking about the adults so i put that out there um my original comment was to discuss the change in the verbiage so i'm now going to make a formal motion that we change the second paragraph to
141read as follows achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression the school district of palm beach county is committed to transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources to provide equitable outcomes that was an amendment to the motion on the table was there a second mrs andrews any further discussion any discussion all in favor of the motion opposed motion is approved with uh dr robinson mrs whitfield and miss ayala in opposition motion carries 4-3 i don't believe we have anything else on the agenda today mrs andrews you have a comment thank you i didn't get a chance to say this but it it's important that i say this congratulations to all of the the
142dwyer award winners last night 450 nominees 28 finalists and seven winners and i just want to call the winners names out uh all the people who uh applied worked hard for the dwyer awards uh jaina smith from gold laquandra uh golf from roland greene andrew kennedy from congress uh carla little griffith from glade central uh benjamin ford from gove elementary and mari amanda arsenio from glade central and cindy white from elbridge gayle who ray for our teachers thank you to the education of the economic council of palm beach county for always doing a great job for our teachers congratulations to all of the dwyer award participants thank you thank you mrs anders motion to miss ms bro thank you i wanted to first of all thank mrs andrews for bringing that up um and thank
143you to the economic council i thought they did a fabulous job thank you to the to the hanley foundation the the main sponsor um it was a wonderful event the one thing we didn't get accomplished today is talking about where we go from here in terms of the equity statement and so you know we talked about we want to socialize it i think we're going to need to have a discussion at a later meeting because we can't just drop the conversation or we're not going to move forward so i don't know if we want to buy a nod of heads discuss if we would like to have another workshop to to have more information um so i'm putting that out there are you talking about another workshop for the strategy so we can start moving
144on to strategic plans i would i if i may um i'm think maybe prior to having the strategic plan workshop we can just talk about what our expectations are in terms of of the equity work um if you want to have more conversations because that was on the agenda and we we really just blew it off when we closed the workshop can we yeah mr superintendent through the superintendent mr can we can we add that discussion at the beginning of the next strategic plan workshop that you all have we can and we planned on surveying the board after this workshop to kind of decide to determine what direction we want to go regarding updates on equity specifically in addition to strategic plan i think if you can also just allow us time so if we
145can send that one-on-one survey see see what's up what direction and then we can have a more informed conversation if that's okay with y'all because next week is going to be very busy and i just want to be sure we give it the time and space so just asking for that concession if not we'll make it work yeah i think we need to we need to work with the board but our agenda for next week is really really packed so i would prefer not to try to cram this in um and just kind of stick with our and then we'll figure out a way to bring it back sprill and if i may so whenever we do get to that when we start talking about the socialization let's work together also on how we meet
146with the communities i'm hopeful that we can meet in person in our communities because i had mentioned that my community really struggled with the format you know that we used and i want us to be able to go out meet with the community um and be able to to get their support because i do truly believe that the community supports this work that we're embarking on we'll bring back some ideas so thank you for the extra time okay we need a motion for all the board members to leave to adjourn so um motion by ms pearl secondly mrs anderson discussion all in favor post motion curious meeting is adjourned thank you so they're innovative they're