001everyone if you would please all stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all once again good evening everyone as superintendent of schools it is my duty and honor to preside over the special meeting for board reorganization as secretary of the board as stipulated in florida statutes first we will have the oath ceremony which will include our newly elected district 2 school board member alexandria ayala and re-elected school board members barbara mcquinn in district 1 and frank barbieri in district 5. following the oath ceremony they will each have an opportunity to make comments we will then move to the organizational portion of the meeting which will include
002the selection of the school board chair and vice chair once the voting is complete i will turn the meeting over to the board chair who will then preside over the remaining of the meeting we are happy to have two judges here today for the swearing-in ceremony the honorable kathleen kroll from the juvenile division of the 15th judicial circuit will swear in ms mcquinn and mr barbieri and the honorable ashley zuckerman from the trial division of the 15th judicial circuit will swear in miss ayala a huge welcome and thank you to you both well our three board members please proceed to the front of the dice where you will join judges kroll and zuckerman when you are ready you may proceed we're going to do one at a time so who wants to go first all
003right you'll raise your right hand please repeat after me i do solemnly swear i do solemnly swear that i will support protect and defend that i will support protect and defend the constitution and government of the united states the constitution and government of the united states and of the state of florida and of the state of florida that i am duly qualified to hold office under the constitution of the state and that i will well and faithfully perform and that i will well and faithfully perform the duties of palm beach county school board member the duties of palm beach county school board member on which i am now about to enter on which i am now about to enter so help me god so help me god congratulations [Applause] raise your right hand i do
004solemnly swear i do solemnly swear that i will support protect and defend and will protect support protect and defend the constitution and government of the united states constitution and government of the united states and of the state of florida and of the state of florida that i am duly qualified to hold office that i'm duly qualified to hold office under the constitution of the state under the constitution of the state and that i will well and faithfully perform that i will well and faithfully perform the duties of palm beach county school board member the duties of palm beach county school board member on which i am now about to enter which i'm now about to enter so help me god so help me god congratulations raise your right hand and repeat after me i do
005solemnly swear or affirm i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support protect and defend the constitution that i will support protect and defend the constitution and government of the united states and of the state of florida and government of the united states and of the state of florida that i am duly qualified to hold office that i am duly qualified to hold office under the constitution of the state and that i will well and faithful faithfully perform the duties and that i will well and faithfully perform the duties of palm beach county school board member of palm beach county school board member on which i am now about to enter so help me god so help me god congratulations [Applause] if you wouldn't mind please join me in giving out thanks again to
006judge kathleen kroll and judge ashley zuckerman for joining us today [Applause] i will now invite each of the newly sworn in board members to make their individual comments we will start with district one school board member barbara mcquinn thank you so much judge kroll that was still gives you the this has been a difficult year for everyone in palm beach county our nation the world those who know me well know that i love a challenge and probably because of that i feel so very privileged to continue to serve as a member of this school board and i'm very excited about the work that we have to do thank you at this time we'll have ms alexandria ayala speak good afternoon everyone i would first like to congratulate my colleagues board member frank barbieri and board
007member barbara mcquinn on your re-election thank you to the entire board for your leadership and to dr fenoy as well as the district staff i am truly humbled and excited to be a member of this body and to be serving with each of you as the next board member to have the honor of representing district 2. i would like to also extend my sincerest gratitude and best wishes to board member chuck shaw for his decades of leadership commitment to education and his tireless advocacy for our students in our schools thank you mr shaw today is a very special day for me for my family and for our community palm beach county is a special place to call home and our schools are the bedrock of that special community i am the proud product of the
008very schools this ford works diligently to represent being a palm beach county public school graduate is a badge of honor that i wear proudly and it's an experience that has defined my career and a perspective i hope to bring to this board as we look towards the future today i am grateful to join the rest of my colleagues in the mission of providing a quality equitable and safe education for our students while supporting the teachers and staff who keep our schools running over the last few years i have spoken to many families and students i have heard from our teachers faculty and district staff i have heard from our taxpayers and business owners and while clipping 19 has presented its own often new set of challenges on top of the day-to-day demands of running a
009school district it's true that our schools here in palm beach county are not immune to the hardships facing our community i view the challenges currently facing our schools as opportunities to improve to innovate and to ensure that we're providing the best possible education for our students are leaders of not only tomorrow but of today right now i am committed to working collaboratively with each of my colleagues on this dais and the community at large to address the student achievement gap in our schools to support our teachers and district staff now more than ever to preserve and protect our fine arts and career and choice programs to protect our precious tax dollars and manage our budget appropriately and to ensure transparency and accountability in district decision making i'm here to learn to listen and to work
010diligently to make a difference together i know we will continue building on the tremendous promise of success that is the palm beach county school district i am just you know so full of gratitude today brimming with it and while i could say a million thank yous up here i want to recognize some special individuals uh to judge zuckerman for taking time out to be here today and celebrate in this such wonderful and important day with me thank you i your i've always admired you and today's no different uh the biggest thank you is of course reserved for my mom kelly who is sitting here with us today for her love her faith that she instilled in me at an early age and her support throughout this entire journey i am here today because of her
011sacrifices her strength and her love it means the world to have my uncle nelson and my aunt iris here with me today sharing in this moment that none of us could have ever imagined but that our entire family has all worked so hard for thank you to my partner rob for being my rock really a source of constant encouragement fortitude and light through everything thank you to our classroom teachers association for putting their trust in me during this process i see president justin katz sitting here with us today i will continue to be an advocate for those who are on the front lines of our classrooms day in and day out and know that you can count on me and to the teachers who reached out to me individually to congratulate me on today thank
012you so much thank you to our service employees and our district staff for all you do to keep our schools operating and top rated i greatly appreciate your support and just know i have your back thank you to the business community the community organizations and elected leaders for your constant support and council gracias and a very special thank you to the voters of district 2 without whom today would not have been possible they put their trust and faith in me and our shared vision for our schools i do not take this responsibility lightly and you have my commitment to always give you my 200 percent last but certainly not least i want to take a moment to briefly address the history we have all made together i am incredibly honored and proud to say i
013am the very first latina elected to the palm beach county school board this victory is shared with every single member of our community and i couldn't be more humbled and excited that we have achieved this milestone together here in palm beach county today the work only begins i understand the depth and weight of the position that we all hold and the trust placed in this body to see our schools in the right direction never forgetting that what's best for our children need to always be at the forefront of every single decision that we make i am here to serve you and to be your voice my door will always be open and i recognize that the best days are still ahead of us but only if we work together i am committed to the work
014of this cause and i am ready to get to work for district 2 and for palm beach county thank you so much and at this time representing district five mr frank by being here thank you mr superintendent first of all thank you judge kroll for taking the time to come here today very much appreciate i know you have a very busy schedule so thank you for making the time for us um i want to thank my wife rita you know there's days especially over the last seven months you know she supported me i've been on the board now for 12 years this will be the 12th year and uh there are days when i don't see her i'm gone in the morning i come up here and sometimes i don't get home until after she's
015already in bed or i spend the evenings answering hundreds of emails and reading emails and phone calls and she puts up with all of that so i want to thank her for her constant support helping me get through all of the uh all of the duties that i that i have as a school board member i also want to thank the voters in district 5 for re-electing me again this will be the third time um i appreciate the trust they put in me and i hopefully will uh will show them that their trust is well placed over the next four years you know when i first got on the school board back in 2008 everybody thought that i would spend four years on the school board and then go to as they put it something
016bigger and better i don't think there's anything bigger and better than being on a school board where you can change the lives of children i mean what can be bigger and better than changing the future making something making a difference for the life of a child that otherwise would be doomed to failure if not giving them a great education and making sure that they have all the tools they need to be successful adults so in my opinion there is nothing bigger and better than this i had never had any intention of using this as a stepping stone to go anywhere else because the only thing you could do is step down from being on the palm beach county school board so i want to thank again thank all of you for your support especially the
017administration i know sometimes i'm a little difficult to get along with sometimes my passion gets a little uh heated um my wife told me i should probably sit on my hands when that starts because it probably would calm me down that italian temper sometimes comes through so for those of you that have that i might have offended over the years i've tried to apologize when i do that and hopefully you'll forgive me knowing that i'm just passionate about what i do here on the school board and and again i thank all of you for your support thank you mr superintendent if you don't mind with everyone please join me in recognizing our new school board team [Applause] mrs bass will you please call the roll district one barbara mcquinn district two alexandria ayala here district
018three karen brill here district four erica whitfield here district five frank barbieri here district six marcia andrews here district 7 deborah robinson here we will now move to the organizational portion of this meeting by calling the nom by calling for nominations for school board chair and vice chair the floor is now open for nominations for school board chair i see miss brielle thank you i would like to nominate mr barbieri to continue as our board chair are there any other nominations seeing none as there is only one person nominated in this race instead of doing a roll call vote i will call the question all those in favor of nominee frank barbieri as your board chair opposed seeing none the vote is unanimous congratulations mr barbieri [Applause] the floor is now open for nominations for
019school board vice chair um i see miss andrews [Music] dr deborah robertson any other nominations miss karen brill miss karen burrow any other nominations seeing none the school board vice chair are now closed nominations for the school board of our chair are now closed the nominations are dr deborah robertson and mrs karen braille each school board member will cast one vote for their choice of school board vice chair the clerk will now conduct the roll call vote and following will tally the votes district one barbara mcquinn how do you vote karen brill district two alexandria ayala how do you vote karen bro district three karen brill how do you vote karen brill [Music] district four erica whitfield how do you vote karen bro district five frank barbieri how do you vote at this point i
020i'll vote for karen brill since she already has four of the votes and i nominated her district six marcia andrews how do you vote dr deborah robinson district seven deborah robinson how do you vote i'll vote for myself and move to make it unanimous it's unanimous yes the winner for um the board vice chair karen grill i'm pleased to announce that that karen brill will be the board vice chairman for the upcoming year at this time i turn over the remaining of the meeting over to our chairman mr frank barbieri thank you mr superintendent board members i recommend the board approve the proposed list of dates for the 2021 regular board meeting good motion how much am i mrs andrews seconded by mrs miss ayala any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 board
021members i didn't take the opportunity thank you all for your trust that you put me as the board share i appreciate that next item i recommend the board authorize the board chair and superintendent to complete and execute the documents required by florida statute 1001 0.371 relating to this reorganization meeting including a copy of the unadopted minutes of this meeting and to forward and file them with the florida department of education motion by ms brill second by mrs andrews any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 board members i recommend the board review and approve the list of school board committee assignments for 2021 um and i also will take two motions the first one is that one i recommend the board review and approve the list of school board committee assignments for 2021. you
022all have a copy of those so the board clerk has suggested that we that we go down the list and if there are changes we vote on those changes so let's go down the list together the first item the first one is american association of caregiving group youth uh miss mcquinn had that and mrs andrews was the alternate are there any changes miss mcquinn yes simply because i'm picking up some other duties and i am at opposite ends of the county i do have to say though that um in resigning from that board of aacy what an incredible incredible group of board members and what they do for our children who serve family members or people who live in their homes who are unable to care for themselves it's a great great group so i'm
023hoping that someone else will step up and take that seat ms brill thank you and since i was actually a caregiving youth and actually raised my my brothers when they were young um i'm going to step up if nobody else wants it all right nobody else wants it miss brill will be down mrs andrews you were the backup do you wish to stay as a backup on that i'd like to give that up to someone new that might want to learn about that dr robinson so if the criteria is having better care given giving youth then i qualify so i'll be the backup okay dr rob as soon as the back up on that we'll vote on the list after we're all done with with all of them is that okay with the board clerk
024okay audit committee i'm i'm down there i've served on that for 12 years i'd like to stay unless anybody has any objection um mrs whitfield is the backup you want to stay as a backup mr with them okay center for creative education board of directors mrs mcquinn is the assigned board member for that no um wow that was very loud sorry um the um i've i served on it most recently but that has been cancelled um since last year um when they wanted to go down the route of having a charter school you remember that was that um email i sent to you guys so the whole thing just needs to be taken off um because none of us can serve on that capacity right now okay so that committee has removed board clerk from
025from the list children's services council dr robinson you've been on that you wish to stay honest yes and there's no alternates allowed on that so it'll stay that way communities and schools mrs andrews you were okay did we need a backup on that mrs andrews no nope community alliance miss brill you were listed on that i'm happy to stay with that but um we there the timing is not right so we'll get an update we had switched for a little while and it switched back now to morning so we'll get clear guidance all right i know miss ayala obviously you're not on any of these so speak up if you find something there you would like to discuss with the other board member that might be already on there construction oversight review committee i've served
026on that one for 12 years also i'd like to stay unless anybody has any objection and the backup on that is is dr robinson okay dr robinson council of great city schools mrs andrews dr robinson's backup criminal justice commission mrs andrews this is whitfield cultural council of cultural council board of directors mrs mcquinn stay you want a backup no it's an ex official position anyway and frankly most of their meetings conflict with our meetings so let's just keep it just like it is okay the institute for cultural advancement same you need a backup on that one or is that an ex official position also miss mcqueen could use it i'm sorry could you use a backup on that one okay i know i'm way down here you're asking me what if you need a backup
027on the institute for cultural advancement no okay early learning coalition in palm beach county i'd like to stay if i can mrs andrews you're the backup but if someone would like to have it you know i would be interested in serving you said allie you'd like to be the backup on that yes thank you mrs anders messiah this is mr barbieri i'm sorry yes ma'am if we can i'm sorry to go out of order but if we can just back up a bit because i looked through to see where mr shaw has been serving and there really isn't anything much here for for our newest school board member would you be interested in serving on the community alliance you want to go back and see the dates because i just don't see any openings other
028than so are you suggesting that you'll pull off of that mistake i would pull off if she would like to do you like to be on the community alliance sure uh i think the next one was commission criminal justice commission did i already do that one it said foundation i'm sorry we're on education foundation education foundation i'll stay on that wait i would love to make a plea to get it one year ms brill i would really like to do it one year i've been kind of waiting patiently for five years well i'd like to stay on it for now only because as you all know i work and it fits in with my schedule if i'm giving up the community alliance it's just easier for me because my my schedule's a little bit more
029limited okay all right well think about me for one year at least i would really like to do it i'm i'm just i'm i'm hoping one day i can get it family's first at palm beach county mrs mcqueen i'd like to remain on that board is there room for a backup in case you can't make it are you the only one that's allowed to be no backup okay the federal relations network this is andrews backup is ms brill yes miss brill are you saying yes okay it's hard to see you through three panes of plastic here so um i gotcha finance committee ms mcquinn yes i'd love to stay on that it may i take this moment to also i don't think we've had so much on our agendas before that i have been invited
030to represent our board on the florida palm board and i'll bring a report back to you soon i'm very comfortable not taking over for mr shaw certainly because he's been there for about 10 years but leanne evans will be guiding me through that so i just want to throw in there that i will be i actually have joined that and dr fenoy has already welcomed me to the group so thank you florida school labor relations services fsba florida school labor relations services board of directors mr shaw had that one go ahead i would be interested in serving on the fsba labor relations well i i wasn't sure since mr shaw was that and the fsba board of directors that is a role i would very much like to take on so i don't know if
031they are i noticed the legislative committee is different so um knowing that i'm totally fine well i just want to make sure that you know that i've been mr shaw's backup and it's now time for me to step up on the board of directors i've been to back up for him for years so i really am ready to step into this role i've been to all the meetings and i'm not interested in not being able to participate at that level so as we're fighting over mr shaw's position i'm totally fine with that i'm just ready to move forward with some things so i noticed that miss andrews is on the legislative committee and i don't know if we can bargain with that or going back to i would love locally to do i don't know
032if it was the criminal justice commission or one of those okay i have one to give to you mrs mcqueen and i'm happy that you want to do one it's no longer called the legislative committee and miss brill has been working with me uh on that with the florida school boards for a long time it's called the advocacy committee i've been working diligently this year with them but uh i'm certainly willing to give that one up to you so that you can get involved and learned and move forward so notice how well we have worked that out to be win-win and that's great because then miss andrews will be coaching me on what i need to do for that piece too are we good thank you okay so just let me make sure i understand
033for the board clerk so florida school labor relations services board of directors which one have you decided you're taking that that is um [Music] i wouldn't say it right ayala she has that and then miss andrews is fsab the fsba board of directors may i be the alternate okay and then the advocacy committee fsba advocates me that's miss mcquinn yes and the backup is currently miss brill was the backup behind mrs andrews miss bro you want to keep that yes glades career ready in this round table i don't think there's anybody but you mrs andrews i'm the superstar mrs whitfield you're the back up on that i'm happy to be yes stay well now if miss whitfield wanted um i don't mean a break by any stretch of the imagination it's just that if if
034she's picking up other things i'm also very willing to serve as an alternate on that i'm sorry mr mcqueen i know i couldn't understand what you said yeah that's fine um yes thank you just for a minute miss whitfield just said that she is okay with my taking that alternate position for the glades career readiness round table that's very clear i've never gone because miss andrews is so dedicated she does a great job thank you but barbara i'll give you a chance to go i really will i'm excited for it thank you now we have the hispanic education coalition of palm beach county and i wonder who should probably take that i definitely will give that one up to our new board member thank you very much ms ayala's got that and the backup was
035dr robinson want to stay there historical society of palm beach county board of governors dr robinson and mrs whitfield i'm happy to give that up you're happy to give it up happy to give it up i would be interested yes i always interested anybody else so we need a backup we need an alternate backup i'm sorry i can stay the backup stay the backup miss whitfield homeless advisory board i'm happy to stay there mrs whitfield was the one she wants to stay miss mcqueen you had to back up on that yes intergovernmental coordination program mr shaw was primary ms whitfield was secondary i've never been but i'm happy to go i don't know they do still meet uh anna yeski coordinates and i'm familiar so i'd be happy to step in okay so and so
036that leaves mrs whitfield you want to still be the backup sure the independent referendum oversight committee is miss brill and then mrs andrews with the backup yes ms burrell i'd love to come to a meeting when you're not there so let me know actually you everybody's still welcome right now we're doing it virtually but you know as long as they know in advance board members can participate just like with audit committee okay so that'll stay that same than brill and andrews okay independent sales surtax oversight committee ms brill and miss andrews are also the first and same day if um uh mrs ayala would like that i would be willing to give her an opportunity for one for one of these this is for iraq i suck i suck sure i'll step in okay juvenile
037justice commission mrs andrews as the primary mrs whitfield is the backup it's so great to go there i love it i've been there for a while but you learn so much but i will give it up if somebody just has to take it away from me i'll be dragging but i'll take it up what do you think judge crawl should we love mrs anderson and mrs whitfield is the backup to be mm-hmm okay pine jog board of directors mr shaw had that i'm interested in that one sayala would like that i don't know if there should be a backup on that or not doesn't say funny doesn't say we need a backup school health advisory council ms brill and mrs whitfield had those dr robinson i'd be interested in serving on shaq if uh miss
038brielle is willing to give it up i can't hear you i said i would be willing to serve on shaq if you're willing to give it up um i like serving there but i'm willing to to share just let me know when you can't go and i'll go with your backup but yes you can have it so dr robinson wants that miss brill you'll be the backup mrs whitfield was the original backup are you okay with it yeah i'm fine i'm good okay technology advisory committee miss mcquinn take stock and children miss andrews and miss whitfield yes i'm a mentor uh i love it i've been on it a long time but if someone just truly wants to learn it's a great organization i'd like to stay so if i don't see anybody uh i'd
039i'll keep it you like to keep it i'll keep it absolutely miss whitfield you were the backup yeah i'm fine i can stay a backup or somebody else can have it i would like it treasure coast work group miss mcquinn that's up at your end yes and i believe that mr crawford is not going to do that anymore um but we can wait and check so yes keep me on that treasure coast regional planning council ms woodfield that you were appointed by the governor today yeah a few years ago but i haven't it hasn't uh i haven't been on it in a couple years now i feel like we should take it off and just if i ever get um through the appointment process again um it's pretty difficult to do so um i haven't
040been on since uh there was governor scott so unfortunately it's been a while so i think we should just take it off completely which one is it treasure coast regional planning council should we check with the governor's office and see if he wants to appoint somebody from the school board they really wanted somebody from palm beach for a long time um so if he's willing to point you would you we wanted to stay oh yeah i would but it's like every year it's just very low on their priority list to put that superintendent could you have mr tierney check with the governor's office and see if they would reappoint miss whitfield to the treasure coast regional planning council yes sir we'll be glad to do that mcquinn has the backup on that i don't know
041if the governor points a backup on that or is that the way it works he does he doesn't but he actually might like her more than me i think he might actually like her more than me as a person on there as our one republican representative so well i'm happy to do it though if they'll take me knowing that i live north county i remember i wanted to do that before so if i can i'd love to whatever is involved with that all right so and and then i'm hearing ms ayala so maybe as the alternative i should be the alternative sure or whatever you guys think it's an appointed position i believe it's appointed it is appointed so you have to go through a whole application process which i've done before but then when
042the government changed it took me off and then i never got back on again so i'm i'm happy to try again it's usually during session that they decide whether or not to appoint so if miss uh mcquinn wants to try i really do think you'd be more successful than i've been okay so so it's changed a little bit dr uh dr fanoya when he contacts the governor's office it would be mrs mcquinn that we'd like him to appoint to that uh mr chairman please make a note of that and we'll communicate with him we'll take care of that mr chairman miss ayala uh miss bruhl would like to take over the community alliance so i'd like to seed my role there and let her take over i was going to bring that up afterwards since
043since miss aiella has taken on a lot of the committees i'll take back the community alliance gladly okay so you're taking back community alliance and missile is coming back off got it the urban league of palm beach county dr robinson that should just be removed sorry that should just be removed removed oh the value adjustment board i've been serving i'm currently serving as the vice chair of the value adjustment board i'd like to stay there there is once once a year there's a meeting that lasts like five minutes it takes me 45 minutes to get up there to county commission and 45 minutes to get back so i'd like to have somebody that's an alternate that would be able to go to that one meeting a year that takes five minutes i think i usually
044am the one who goes i'm happy to do it and the last committee is the wellness promotion task force it was miss whitfield and then mrs andrews is the backup i'm happy to be there still i used to work in that group so you know i'm very familiar with it but if somebody else really wants to go they can and i always work with uh miss whitfield and we work on a lot of them together so i can be a part of that with her so i'm sorry mrs anders i i guess i just got over yours are you saying that you want to stay as a backup i will yes absolutely okay so we went through them all does anybody want to make any changes before we take a vote i just have one
045question yes ma'am or the value adjustment board do we need a second alternate we can have a second alternate because sometimes the miss if mrs whitfield can't make it i know mr shaw would go sometimes in miss woodfield so would you like to gladly throw my name in for second alternate in the event you can't attend okay all right so we've got them all out anybody want to make any changes so we need a motion to approve it chairman before you uh make that motion we're going to add greater florida i'm sorry yes the greater florida consortium oh i did actually speak to mr shaw about that today i would love to do that if that's okay i don't see any other hand so that's so the fourth greater florida consortium will be mrs whitfield
046and is that everybody for the uh is there a backup for that because i think we all are part of the greater florida consortium yeah i think we are it's just to have one person be the person who goes okay i'll be the backup well and just so you know it's everybody does vote but you would have the opportunity to become president because they rotate so that's why you need an appointee oh okay so miss brill will be the back up behind mrs whitfield no it's miss andrews right here andrews okay board clerk we have them all now we need a motion to approve them as we went through them motioned by mrs whitfield second by miss ayala any discussion all in favor all opposed motion carries 7-0 we recommend the board approve storm it
047norm as the business community representative the value adjustment for the value adjusting board has five members two county commissioners one school board member one member of the public that represents the business community and one member of the public that just represents citizens at large mr norm norm has served as well long before i got on the value adjustment board he was this uh this board's appointee to the to that uh it's a statutory guided committee and it requires the five members so if we take a motion to keep mister he he does a great job he shows up at all the meetings motion by ms bruhl i mean sorry by mrs mcquinn second by mrs whitfield all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 mrs bass would you notify the value adjustment board that we've reappointed
048mr norm for that position and that looks like the last item did we do the organization documents we did those okay all right at this point we can take a motion to adjourn this meeting motioned by mrs whitfield seconded by miss brill all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 the next meeting will start at five o'clock it's an advertised meeting at 5 p.m so we'll take a break until 5 pm i like to call the meeting of the school board of palm beach county to order at 504 p.m did the clerk take the roll please district one barbara mcquinn here district two alexandria ayala here district three karen brill here district four erica whitfield here district five frank barbieri here district six marcia andrews here district seven deborah robinson here we have quorum all seven
049board members are present the board has just completed its annual reorganization meeting where three board members were sworn in alexandria allah barbara mcqueen and myself congratulations to the news to the new school board member in district two alexandria ayala and to barbara mcquinn in district one it was beginning her second term the board will now participate in the regular board meeting viewers and listeners can access the meeting today by either watching on comcast channels two three four two three five u-verse channel 99 or by using the youtube link on our web page palm beach schools dot org we also offer a listening only option which the public can access by calling 561-357-5900 or toll-free at 1-866-930-7015 the meeting id is six one eight eight zero one one two four pound sign also joining us on
050our dice today is superintendent dr donald fennoy general counsel sean bernard inspector general theresa michael board clerk carol bass and palm beach county student council president santiago alvarez senior staff members will join us periodically as directed by the superintendent this meeting is being transcribed by a closed captioner so remember to speak at a reasonable pace will everyone please stand again for the pledge of allegiance to be led by superintendent dr donald fennoy i'd like to welcome any public speakers who are joining us in person today while your attendance here at the board office is appreciated please be mindful of important safety protocols that the district now has in place to conform with covet 19 safety guidelines please respect this cautionary warning that in the event of interference with the orderly processes of the meeting failure
051to follow the safety protocols and procedures or otherwise disruptive conduct this conduct will result in removal of the person from the meeting please abide by these protocols so palm beach county school police officers do not have to take any action we have two items have been added today for good cause item ad1 authorization to request a formal attorney general opinion regarding board and district advisor committee meetings good cause exists for adding this agenda item to request an attorney general opinion seeking to allow meetings of committees subject to the sunshine laws to be conducted by means of communications media technology during a public health emergency the governor's executive order that allowed these virtual meetings expired on october 31st 2020. the coven 19 pandemic remains a national health emergency and has recently peaked including in florida the
052public health emergency declaration in the governor's executive order issued on november 3rd 2020 continues for 60 days and the state surgeon general's order on october 23rd continues for 60 days a danger exists justifying the board's attempt to protect the health and safety of committee members staff and the public by seeking an opinion from the attorney general that these virtual meetings may occur for these sunshine committees during a pandemic the other item added for good cause is p2 personal addendum good cause exists to add this item so employees can begin in their new position as soon as possible mr superintendent are you withdrawing any items yes sir yes sir tl2 my career shines career planning system board members are you pulling any items seeing none we need a motion to prove the agenda has been modified
053motioned by mrs brill seconded by miss ayala any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 disclosures and abstentions any board members seeing none mr superintendent comments yes sir the opportunity for each of us to share board comments is one of the many ways the district communicates important information important information to our student staff parents and the community to help all of our stakeholders remain as informed as possible my team and i also share communication through direct messages sent home to students and staff our district website our mobile app weekly electronic newsletter social media in-person and virtual community updates and facebook live events every two weeks the district hosts a facebook live discussion on various topics important to our community as these are live presentations questions are encouraged and answered in real time this thursday
054the district will host its fourth facebook live of the 2020-2021 school year school police chief frank kitzerow will discuss everything from school security to the importance of students not sharing passwords to behavioral health matters spectator and visitor cover 19 protocols and the new asher program and more i encourage you to stay tuned stay informed by taking part in this discussion which takes place at 5 pm thursday on the district's facebook page and these times are rapidly evolving decision making it is especially important that the lines of communication are open and flow in two directions so that my team and i can best serve your needs i'd also like to to point out that friday november the 20th is future teachers of america day as a district we take great pride in cultivating our own talent
055through our early childhood teacher education choice program students are provided with teaching experiences on campus to prepare them for a career in education who better to teach our children than those who are already vested in our community this friday is also world children's day the purpose is promoting international togetherness awareness among children worldwide and improving children's welfare a time to celebrate and a time to demand action for child's rights it is also homeless and hunger awareness month as we go into the thanksgiving break and are certainly thankful for the many blessings we each have in our lives let's take the time to remember that this is a difficult time for many across our county who struggle with homelessness and hunger today at the district's 97 grab and go feeding sites the food service team distributed
056six days worth of free meals this thursday we will distribute another six days worth of meals at these sites plus recipients will each receive a 10 pound box of produce extra meals are being provided this week as those school food distribution sites will not be open next week you can always get the latest information on food distribution by visiting palm beach schools.org feeding sites i want to wish you wish all of our families a happy and healthy thanksgiving holiday and now it gives me great pleasure to introduce dr elena alonzo if you could come to the podium please director of the palm beach county health department we are so appreciative to have her join us today to share a few updates from the health department dr alonzo do you want me to talk without the
057mask or can you hear me with the mask okay i talk pretty loud when i have to thank you very much for inviting me uh dr fennoy thank you it's my pleasure to be here with you um i'm just going to give i got the chance to talk to the board of county commissioners today and i gave them the updates of what's going on here in palm beach county as well as what's going on nationally i'm not going to bore you with all the slides and the numbers i'm just going to tell you that at this point there are 48 states that are having increasing numbers of covid which is quite alarming some of them are in very bad shape in terms of hospital surge because it is spread to so many states they are
058not able to recruit nurses and doctors for their hospitals new york had the advantage that when they were recruiting they were recruiting from states that were basically with having no problems and so they had lots of help from different states to help out now because it's occurring at all the states at the same time it's very difficult they're running out of supplies some staff have been on the fifth 24 hours or 12 hour shifts so they're very tired they're exhausted um so it's it's not pretty it's not a pretty picture that the country's looking at right now uh florida we are seeing that our numbers have stayed very steady in terms of our county numbers dave county has the most numbers followed by broward and followed by palm beach and then the other two metro
059counties hillsborough and orange which much lower numbers i don't want to bore you with numbers but just to say that our numbers have been steady we were doing very very good our numbers were coming down we had a plan to open slowly that plan got sidebar when everything opened all at one time we were down to a two percent positivity rate which now everybody knows that the daily positivity is the number that really tells you the amount of virus that you have in your community the goal of five which now is no longer dr alonso's goal but all the uh the cdc and everybody recognizes that number as the number that indicates that you have control of the virus in your community we had been down below that number for several days and we were
060very proud of it we were doing a really good job those numbers have all increased in the past three weeks significantly i expect that they will continue to increase because of the holidays because it's now flu season we will have people going out flying out of palm beach county into those 46 states that are having very high covered numbers they're going to be going through airports they're going to be in contact with tsa and they're going to probably come back home or get positive on the way back from their vacations we're also going to have a lot of people coming down to florida florida remains one of the destinations for all these 46 states to get away from the cove and come to florida and relax and be able to go out and hang out
061by the beach that's going to create a problem that's going to bring the numbers up in palm beach county and throughout south florida and through the rest of florida the panhandle of florida which at one time had had no cases at all now the cases there are increasing if you take a look at the um i hope you all take advantage of the floridahealth.gov covid dashboard which shows you now a map that it shows by rate by population and what you see are orange and dark orange colors and you see dade in the very dark they have a rate of about six percent or um per hundred thousand six thousand per hundred thousand and this is a very good number because it compares then the different communities the different counties by their population it's not
062the same to have a county like palm beach with 1.5 million people have 30 000 cases versus a tiny little county that only has a thousand or 800 people in it to have that same number right so it's much more it's much harder for these little counties to have large numbers and so what we're seeing is across the top of florida that they hadn't even been aware of the virus now those counties are struggling now what's one of the things along those counties is that they're very poor county they have a lot of underserved people they have very little access to health care to maternity care so it's not unusual that we're seeing this virus go to those communities of the underserved and so we have to pay close attention to that so what does
063that mean for your school in my opinion the only tool that we have now at our disposal is the very first one that i mentioned at the very first meeting when i what i explained what a pandemic was and i explained what the virus was we have to use these things face coverings we have to maintain six foot distancing we have to wash your hands use sanitizers when you touch things assume that you're touching the virus when you see someone assume that that person is positive a lot of people are asymptomatic this is very similar to aids in the early start of the aids epidemic people used to think that they could tell who had aids by looking at them you couldn't so when you had sex with somebody with hiv you usually caught it
064because you thought you were safe and you weren't so this is very similar same thing same um you know discrimination and and fear very very similar to the hiv epidemic so we have to use our mass we have to use our distancing now the other part is the close contact areas and we talk about the three c's that means don't go into crowded places so if you are shopping and that day there's a sale going on and everybody's rushing to aisle five forget the sale stay away from mile five so stay away from crowds the second thing is not to go into enclosed areas with poor circulation so what happened with the football team i think these are the football guys right how many raise your hand oh you got half of the team here
065and they want to play right yeah okay i got you um what happened they they were uh inside the bus for quite a while they got some rain and so they had the opportunity to spread the virus not everybody got it those people that maintained their mass by the way they were very um helpful they were very cooperative the parents were very cooperative and our contact tracers thank you very much for that it's very important because of the information they gave us we were able to quarantine 62 of the players five of those quarantine players became positive if we had let them stay in the schools those people would have spread it inside the school so even though you had an event that was unfortunate we were able to contain it and not spread it
066to the school that's what contact tracing does so we're going to keep working as hard as we can to make sure that we continue to do that the other important thing is that parents if you're listening or you're watching this please if you are asked to be in quarantine that means your children have to be in quarantine they should not go to school for the same reason that we quarantined those 62 kids that made it possible for us to contain it and not spread in the school right now you have had no secondary cases what that means is the cases of people that are positive are being are becoming positive outside of school teachers students they're coming from the outside with the virus to school and so by doing contact tracing we can eliminate we
067can contain that and you can continue doing your classes and your programs that you're doing so the bottom line is yes we're going to be faced with a lot of new cases now coming into thanksgiving i was hoping we could hold off until december but i think by the end of thanksgiving we're going to see very high numbers and what's going to make people do something the one thing that they will pay attention to is when the hospitals get into hospital search which is what happened last time so when the hospital starts saying hey we need to put up a unit because we can't hold them anymore and our icu beds are full we've already seen them increasing their numbers and having more people coming to the hospital the other thing is that because these
068young folks are getting the covet and not the adults and the elderly they're recuperating just fine they look very healthy today um and they are not getting sick they're not going to the hospital and of course they're not dying so that's very important so that's keeping our death rate down also it's called practicing medicine and we practice so we got the hang of it we got the hang of how to treat these patients we're treating them better we're keeping them off the ventilators and they're not dying so that's a good thing practice makes perfect in medicine we have more tools now we have the rendezvous we have the quartus uh the steroids that we can use we have some new medicines being developed and then finally the good news is that now we're going to
069have several vaccines available pfizer came out with the first one now it's interesting because all this information that has come out from pfizer and now morderno is information that they're giving to their stockholders their stocks are going through the roof so this is information being given it is not the usual way that we get information about vaccines usually it's published in a journal with fda approval and so we haven't gotten that yet and we will but for right now we know that pfizer had a 90 percent efficacy which is fantastic in a vaccine morderno came and beat them they said they have 94.5 efficacy with their vaccine and so those were those are things that will be tested and the fda will go through that and we'll see what those numbers are but that doesn't
070mean we're out of the woods yet because now they have to go into production once they get the fda approval they have to go into production of the vaccine and this vaccine and and there's four other ones that are also all doing the same thing is a new revolutionary way of doing vaccines they're going to use a messenger rna a little piece of information that's going to go into your body and make it look like it's the spikes that are around the coronavirus is called corona because of the little spikes around it it's going to make your body think that those little spikes are coming in and it's going to make you make antibodies against them with this message that's on that messenger rna this is a revolution in in terms of vaccines this has
071never been done this way and it brings a lot of anticipation of what other vaccines will be able to be had as a result of this maybe even for hiv or some of the other vaccines that we have not been able to create so it's very very exciting from the scientific for us the vaccine is going to have to be produced in enough quantity and it's going to be divvied up through the federal government to the different states and it's going to be the elderly first healthcare workers and first responders so i do not expect that we're going to get sufficient vaccine to take care of everybody at one time that's impossible when you start producing it'll slowly be divvied out probably to the areas that have the worst need so we will be getting
072that for the general public probably by april they'll be making enough that that's the anticipation by some of the people from the cdc that are saying that probably around april we'll start seeing mass distribution to the general public but it's very important that we obviously use the vaccine first on those people that are in most need the elderly nursing homes the military will probably get the vaccine first responders and health care workers so that's what's in the horizon in the meantime the tool that we have to implement what you have to implement at the schools is making sure that everybody continues to wear their masks maintain their distance and follow all the other hygiene rules your school has been doing really wonderful we have not had secondary cases the new cases i have distributed you
073can look on the florida dashboard and you see the age distribution is that 15 to 44 year old and the information that we're getting is that they're becoming positive at parties large gatherings nightclubs bars and restaurants and it's usually when they're drinking because when you drink you can't drink with your mask on so you have to take off your mask and that's when you get in close proximity with people and that's where the group of 15 go and one is positive all 15 catch it because they're all in close contact with each other so avoid crowded spaces closed in areas and areas where you can't maintain the distancing okay do you want me to take questions or what's your process here unless the board has questions mr phil thank you so much um i did
074would like to ask one quick question i've had some concerns about our current dashboard that have brought up with staff and we've been looking at a way to better represent the data currently our dashboard shows cumulative totals and so one of the thoughts that i had was how can we split that up to be more representative of what's really going on the schools in the moment so right now if you are positive in august in november that number is still counted as a positive case and that's obviously not not true so i would love some guidance from um you know the department of health if you can share with us how we could better talk about um schools in and the number of cases that we truly do have we did the same thing we
075had exactly the same problem and at first it was great because we could see where the the areas were had more you know we could look at the zip codes and see which zip codes we were having problems at and then eventually everything turned red you remember all palm beach county was red all miami was red so that's not useful to you anymore what you need to know is probably monthly the new cases so you can have your cumulative and then say for the week of we do the census tracts for example for the cases now and so we have our um our analyst give us the cases by census tracts and then we plot that by color and less than five cases we don't put anything because it's too easy to then identify people
076but if we have you know and we haven't colored like between 5 to 14 cases is one color and so more than 60 then becomes a darker color so you could do something like that or just simply put the numbers by week or by month so that you can get an idea of what the new cases are that will help you to know what's going on and what school what's happening mrs andrews and thank you dr alonzo for being here i want to thank all of the teachers uh the parents the staff that sent us the emails because they were worried that we may be closing down our schools and as we see the cases uh increasing in palm beach county as we look across the country we we know that we're in a different
077phase now as you've just said and one of the things i've shared with um dr fennoy and mr tyranny is that we're reading too we're listening listening to dr fauci you're our doctor though right here in palm beach county so we want to see you and i know that you're having uh videos with with the superintendent but when we're having a board meeting especially now that we're going home for thanksgiving we don't know what's going to happen within the next week or so and we need you to come back because i think when parents are talking to the board we're not the medical experts you are not the superintendent you are and you're our dr fauci and i would like to make sure that you're on our list so as we look at ourselves and
078we see that the cases are increasing that you will make yourself available i see you at the county commission and i learn a lot and we need you right here because uh with the largest employer in palm beach county with almost 200 000 students and we're doing okay right now we still have to stay diligent uh and getting it done to keep everybody safe we need you in front of us as much as possible so dr pinoy i'm hoping through dr uh mr tyranny that we can make sure that we have uh especially when we're having a major board meeting for the monthly board meeting we get some updates because we are in a pandemic and we need to hear from our medical expert that's not a problem i'm working 24 hours a day no
079problem dr alanzano i talked last night and she's we ms tierney's on it we'll take care of that any other questions for dr lonzo dr robinson it's not really a question i was just itching a little bit so with the comparison to hiv i know what you were saying like we both lived through that and how it changed our practices so with universal precautions and assuming everybody had hiv to protect yourself and and then the changes with h1n1 that changed our practice too we stopped shaking hands and so forth and this is going to be a pivotal point in medicine too in terms of how we change our practice so i know where you were coming from but i just want to make it clear when she did that comparison the transmission's not the same
080so just in case there's anybody who thought that maybe she was saying that the transmission of this virus is similar to that of hiv i just want to be crystal clear it's not this is respiratory hiv is body secretions in blood and so i just don't want any confusion because like that's why we're doing six feet in a mask thank you very good point i'll remember to say that next time i make that comparison okay all right well thank you um thank you dr glad to help out we'll talk again next week at this time i would like to have a deputy superintendent keith oswald come forward and introduce some of our new principals who've been newly assigned this year mr oswald thank you dr fenoy and good afternoon board members we've had a number
081of new leaders have been running our schools for some time and due to covid and those challenges we haven't been able to give them a proper time to introduce themselves to you but now that we've kind of got this down here in the boardroom again we want to have them have the opportunity to say hello to you all so first that started back off in july and i should say that these three leaders knew exactly what they were getting themselves into when they applied for these principalships you know leading during the most challenging time i think that any of us have seen in education through covid so first starting back in july the end of july at poinciana elementary please give a warm welcome for tonya mcdowell [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so i tried to keep
082it a secret and somehow it got out so my teachers are here to support me good evening can you hear me can i i don't i don't want to touch the mic okay thank you good evening good evening chairman barbieri board members superintendent fenoy and distinguished guests i would like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today thank you superintendent dr fenoy and deputy superintendent mr oswald for entrusting poinciana stem elementary to me during such a difficult time this moment would not be possible without the support and mentorship of my former principal mr james thomas at lc swain middle school in green acres thank you to my regional superintendent dr peta lakota for your unwavering support over the last few years thank you to mr jeff pegg my instructional superintendent for being my
083mentor leading with kindness and setting a stellar example every single day and i would be remiss if i did not mention the phenomenal women of palm beach county that have taken me under their wings and provided mentorship and guidance to me over the years thank you to miss rose backus who hired me into the district as a learning team facilitator and she just recently retired thank you to ms duan moore ross and dr matthew shoemaker for giving me the opportunity to serve as a literacy specialist in the phenomenal glades and to many of the principals that have wrapped their arms around me answered my questions and instilled in me the importance of leading learning communities within your schools miss adrian howard ms bernadette standish mr rachel thomas miss jeanine robinson miss jill robinson my south
084area principal mentor who during covet is also mentoring a new principal ms shantay king dr lori ryaphel dr monique mcteer and miss millen is it it is imperative that on this special day i thank my parents who as jamaican immigrants came to this country in the 1980s for greater opportunities thank you for encouraging me supporting me and pushing me to work hard and reach for the stars your strength and fearlessness inspire me every day and i'm honored to make you proud to my family that are here today my husband james and my three children roman and zion who are students at my school to trinity my adopted baby girl thank you for your constant support patience your prayers and words of encouragement i love you and in closing to my new school family the point
085sienna pandas while this school year may have started differently than before my goals as the new principal remain the same first to honor the history of the school from the early 1900s as one of the first teachers of the school miss blanche gertman worked at the school when it was known as boynton colored elementary i'd like to create a collaborative and equitable environment where students can learn and grow by providing all students with high quality instruction whether they are brick and mortar or virtual learners to cultivate a positive climate while creating a sense of pride and belonging for all students parents and community members to my board member dr deborah robinson i look forward to getting to know you and working with you in the future and finally to my instruction to all of the
086instructional leaders of tomorrow and all as your principal i am here to support you and thank you to my dedicated teachers and staff my assistant principal dr valcourt and the hard-working students at poinciana elementary in boynton beach i am honored to serve as your principal go pandas and have a pandarific day thank you [Music] [Applause] congratulations principal mcdowell and our next leader coming out from the glades dr sander moreau oliver leading pioneer park elementary school good evening i'm bonsoir board members dr fennoy mr oswal i'd like to thank dr mcteer and mrs moore and the entire glazed community for this opportunity to lead such an amazing school filled with hard-working teachers and staff and the most wonderful students and families you will ever meet i'm from haiti and came to this country at the age
087of nine i have a great support system that i'd like to think including my amazing children they can tell you stories about all the times that mama had to take on three or four jobs when she was single my wonderful new husband well he's not you anymore for the past about eight years my beautiful and strong mom my nieces and nephews whom i call my second set of children my wonderful siblings for always being there and believing in me i know that my dad my brother and my grandma who helped raise me and who are no longer with us are smiling down on me i'd also like to thank my friends and my school family you have always stood by me i am very proud to work in the glaze community and appreciate all of
088the amazing support from district leadership all the principals who have reached out as well as board member mrs andrews for your support over all the years that i've known you a special thanks to my mentor and the first person to encourage me to go into leadership dr janiece culver and for her continued friendship and support over the years i hope that i'm making her very proud i love my job i hope to continue motivating supporting our students and staff in this journey it's a very difficult time right now and at my school we focus a lot on the social emotional side for our students and for our teachers and staff so i'd like to thank you again for selecting me as principal of the wonderful pioneer park i am honored i'm humbled but most of
089all grateful and thankful merci beaucoup good night congratulations principal oliver and our last school pierce hammock elementary our most recent approved principal miss katie kristinger [Applause] hello good evening thank you for having me here it is such an honor to become the new principal of pure samick elementary school i want to thank you for the opportunity and i want to give a special thanks to my husband sean my son dylan my parents and all the people that have helped me along the way starting with dr long miss bishop dr lee dr ian eddy nicole daly and dr fenoy and mr oswald thank you for believing in me i feel so privileged to be a product of palm beach county schools to have this opportunity to give back to a district that has given so much
090to me my goal at pierce hammock is to create lifelong learners to help all students become global thinkers and become and reach their fullest potential i'm so excited to have this opportunity in the past week and a half i've been working with pierce hammock and i've been welcomed and i have to tell you i have had so much support with the leadership here at the district and not including my area superintendent miss bishop but also the fellow principals who have reached out to me on their own to make sure that i'm supported i will not let anyone down and i'm looking forward to continue to lead this school and be a part of such a wonderful district thank you for this amazing opportunity congratulations again to all of our principals and we'll be back again
091next month with another principal vacancy mr chairman that's concludes my comments at this time thank you mr superintendent board comments ms mcquinn no thanks miss ayala none thank you that's brill do i get their time okay well i just wanted to say that with thanksgiving right around the corner i want to share some feel-good events with you tonight first as i have done in previous years i participated in reading for the record at manatee elementary school this year was a little different i read to vpk virtually yes i said vpk and virtually and those adorable little munchkins were so attentive i could not believe how focused they were i have no doubt that we are creating a generation of technology wizards i also want to give a big shout out to deborah tendrich whose eat
092better feel live better non-profit organization through their teachers giving is giving teachers turkeys for thanksgiving at some of our delray beach schools as ms tendrich has said teachers inspire the smallest hearts to grow big enough to change the world thank you teachers and finally in march of this past year right before we close due to covid19 cobra the coalition of boynton west residential associations of which i am a proud delegate donated its second buddy bench to one of our schools this time it was it went to hidden oaks elementary school and so yesterday author of be a buddy not a bully loverly sheridan joined principal sherry bremekamp assistant principal chris schroeder president of cobra beth rappaport and me for an inspiring recognition of cobra and the school's buddy ambassador program i'll let you see for
093yourselves mark could you please roll it good morning boys and girls my name is lovely sheridan and i am the author of the book called be a buddy not a bully and he looked at jesse and kim he said you guys are really cool can we be friends and kids said you know sure i love making new friends i really just want to continue to promote the importance of kindness and to treat others the way you like to be treated and to create a culture of kindness in schools when i call the buddy up i want you to give a big round of applause because it's an honor to be a body ambassador it's really nice to have the community involved and i think it really helps the parents also see that wow my child
094really is a buddy and not a bully i just have to take a moment to thank cobra the coalition of boynton west residential associations they do so much for our schools their education committee providing support providing school supplies here we have the second buddy bench the buddy bench is not just any bench it is a very special bench cobra has been around for 40 years we are a quality of life organization and we firmly believe that supporting education in our area is really integral to quality of life let me tell you they are not just sponsors who sponsored the bench they are dedicated to creating safe spaces we have to provide children the tools that they need to thrive to be the best version of themselves and a lot of times it is just simple
095stories like these and examples like this and rewarding them thank you and so i just wanted to say it was just really wonderful to see something more normal these days even though we were social distancing and again to see how the community steps up in all of these efforts to help support our students so thank you thank you everyone we have a lot to be thankful for i hope everybody has a very happy thanksgiving thank you thank you miss pearl mrs whitfield thank you so much i wanted to talk briefly about a project also going on in delray right now that i just think is so special and wonderful and i wanted to say a huge thank you to the city and to the chamber for their work they have dedicated bus shelters throughout the
096city and actually taken time out to thank our schools and recognize our teachers through their bus bench program and i just think it is so special that they are putting the advertisement to really recognize the work that's going on in our schools right now and the dedication of our teachers i think it's a wonderful thing when you take time out to thank people and so i really appreciate that del rey the city and the chamber are both taking time out through their efforts there to recognize our schools and they're doing specific ones for each school which i think is really special and the other thing i wanted to mention is the work being done around hunger in our community especially as thanksgiving is coming up and this is something that's always been near and dear
097to my heart and um i a couple of things i wanted to mention first our school food service department is so beyond amazing i wish you all could realize like i do how they move mountains every day and it is just so heartening to see people care for children and families in this way they have really struggled a lot during this last few months with children not being in school and so we are not able to feed the levels of children that we normally do so before school ended in march that year we had already served 29 million meals and since then the meals that we have served have been under 5 million so it's if you look at the numbers we're not quite getting to the number of children we have so our school
098food service department has been thinking outside the box and just going above and beyond trying to get food into these families homes and i mean i i really am looking forward to this being public knowledge the way that everybody uh can see what's been going on and hopefully in january it'll even be more but i wanted to put a huge thank you out there for all the dedicated workers in our school food service department who have come in even during covid during our worst times and made sure that children were fed two other groups really stood out to me in this thanksgiving season as miss brill mentioned deborah hendrich from eat better live better is giving out turkeys to the teachers and then today i had an opportunity to work with florida crystals and robert
099norvell who donates um food every year to students in west palm beach and then even one lake worth school um to and on palm beach as well at palm beach public they just get donations from the community in the most grassroots way possible to make sure that our children have food at this time of year and it just it makes me so happy to see the community pull together to make sure we feed everyone we can this year is particularly difficult for so many of our families and so i just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who puts their time and effort and their funds behind these projects making sure that we are feeding our families it is the most important thing that i think we can be doing right now is
100taking care of each other and i just want to say a huge thank you and a big huge thank you to all of our teachers our staff members everyone here who has been so dedicated this year i i want to remind everyone that this district really has not had a vacation no one has taken time off and um it's because of you and because of the work that you do and that you have continued to do during all this time that we are in such a good place and i know it can be a challenging place but compared to the rest of the country we are really rocking it and i just want to say a huge thank you to all of our staff members and happy thanksgiving and please please please be safe we
101want to get through this time and then hopefully get into christmas and not have any challenges come up that are even worse so i just want to say everyone happy thanksgiving and thank you so much thank you miss whitfield mrs andrews thank you and good afternoon to everyone yes we are in the thanksgiving season giving thanks i want to thank the students the teachers the parents the principals the district staff you're doing a terrific job with brick and mortar and remote learning for our children we are in a pandemic as we know even though we are making it through we are in a pandemic some of us have been sick in isolation some of us have passed away our prayers go out to all of our district family who has been suffering i'd like to
102take a moment of personal privilege uh mr bobby area and to the superintendent because i'm looking out in the audience and i see my children out here from palm beach central and the coach and i want them to stand up so i can say something personal to them today the football team you are out here stand up everybody from palm beach central the coaches the teachers the staff who who are with you today you've been through a lot and i'm so proud of you some of your classmates and your football team are in isolation getting well you have done the job of being an athlete i am so proud of you being academic as well as athletic they both go together i visited your school just yesterday to meet with your principal and you have
103a superstar principal in mr h cohn you have superstar coaches i'm talking to your region superintendent because i want you to know that we hear you we hear that you want to play football we hear that you want to do well academically and i'm listening to your coaches and your parents who will be speaking here tonight and who have been speaking to the district and i promise you as your board member i'm going to be working closely with the superintendent and the district administration to make sure that you're taken care of scholarships are on the line for you to go to college we want to make sure you don't miss a beat we want to make sure you have the films to present yourself to recruiters when they come to palm beach county you're what
104palm beach county is great about and it is about our students our teachers our staff and our coaches so you're sitting through all of this tonight but my love pours out to you to tell you hold on help is on the way to take care of some of these problems you're thinking about now for your football future and for the questions that you need us to answer to make sure that you're safe and that you get an opportunity to play so thank you so much for being here tonight and i wanted everybody to recognize you because you're utmost important you're awesome and you're fantastic let's give them a big hand palm beach central thank you uh team but i want to tell you when i visited your school on yesterday and i talked to your
105principal and i walked to the cafeteria and i walked the halls with the principal and i saw the students eating lunch they were separated they were wearing their masks i saw six uh foot diff uh dividers where people were i saw them really doing everything that they were told to do and i was so proud because you are from a proud heritage your school palm beach central and i want you to know uh to tell the team that's in isolation we're praying this whole school board is praying this whole school district is praying for them to get well so they can get back on the field and i want your coaches to know your voices are heard you're the ones on the line every day with our children and your voices are heard your principal
106told me yesterday he showed me all of your names all of the students who had made it back those that were in isolation and he said we're going to take care of the students this is the principal the region superintendent everybody said it to me i will be following you up to see what's going on as we move through this process but we're working hard to take care of all of you to take care of everyone thank you for wearing your face man thank you for having your six feet distances your hand washing the testing contract tracing your isolation staying away from crowds i saw that when i was at palm beach central on yesterday and i talk not just to palm beach central but for all of the schools here in palm beach county
107i'm talking to all of the students the teachers the staff the principals i thank you because as we go through this thanksgiving you're going home for a while you've got to remember everything that you did here in the schools to stay safe to stay apart to wear your masks to do the things that's going to keep you safe when you go home for thanksgiving and when you come back we're going to be waiting on you whether you're doing remote or whether you're doing brick and mortar we're going to be here for you and it truly is about our schools our students so as we take this thanksgiving break remember safety measures remember to stay safe and remember we love you and even though you read about all the things happening around the world we're in
108a in a tough place all over the country and the world but you belong to us right here in our family students teachers staff schools all of you it's all about making sure that you're safe and i want you to have a wonderful thanksgiving and we're going to keep all these safety measures within our heart within our reach so that we can be safe thank you thank you mr senator dr robinson thank you so um i'm going to continue with my newly established uh practice of um that is the wrong slide okay let's see okay that's it yay okay so um [Music] so i decided what a month and a half or so ago that i needed especially as we talk about working towards equity um that i would start showing data i get consumed
109by data and uh and i want to thank mr howard and his team because um they listen to me as i um focus on data and work through data and analyze data and talk about data and try to figure out what it tells us to do and so today i'm just going to show you some high level english language arts data you recall that last month i showed kindergarten readiness and just as in kindergarten readiness we will see throughout this data that poverty is a predictor of underperformance when we look at race and ethnicity we are undereducating everyone so let me be crystal clear so my gap that i look at is not between black and white it's not between hispanic and white my gap is between proficiency percentages and 100 percent and so i
110am not pleased with what i see for the student groups that are performing at the best um and clearly disappointed in how some of the other students are performing so you'll see that when we look at race and ethnicity we are under undereducating everyone but our failure to educate is most severe for black students followed by hispanic students and this is third grade english language arts and let's see if i can make this thing work so you will see i'm skipping some of the data um the board has handouts of the and the superintendent have the handouts of the data that i'm focusing on here um which as i said is ela so here we have eighth grade english language arts the performance is more or less the same as third grade you'll see the
111same pattern poverty predicting worse outcomes girls do better than boys whites do better than hispanics who do better than blacks in our school district but this is almost a universal pattern and we need um to see that and we need to consider the reasons why as we move forward um with our strategic plan that is as i understand going to have equity in ever every pillar so here we go with 10th grade english language arts where every group except white males who are not on free and reduced lunch dropped some right white meals not on free and reduced lunch improve just a little bit when compared to the previous um the 8th grade ela and now for the grand finale so what do we talk about we talk about graduation right and so here we
112are so this is fiscal year 2019 we don't have 2020 yet so there's startling progress here right if you look at this and compare this to 10th grade english language arts eighth grade english language arts third grade english language arts there's startling progress we went from ela proficiencies in 10th grade in the 50s to the highest 84 for white students to a 79 to 97 percent graduation rate for white students for hispanic students we went from the 30s to 75 percent for 10th grade ela to a graduation rate of 78 to 95 and for black students we went from a 10th grade english language arts proficiency and this is level 3 and above that we're calling proficiency we went from proficiency in 10th grade for black students from 23 to 62 to a graduation rate
113of 78 to 91 so what does this tell us right i know it means that we are doing outstanding job we put in a lot of resources to get kids over that graduation benchmark right but it concerns me it really concerns me that we have not sufficiently taught students to read but we get them across the graduation mark right so i don't know how we go from 30 something percent proficiency in reading to the 70 80 percentile rate for graduation right i'm just saying we need to look at this and so um and i think that since we know that reading is fundamental right like we know this right and so i think that we need to ponder this as we consider our strategic plan what are the skills talents and experiences that we want
114our graduates to have i know that i want them to be able to read and to comprehend what they read so we get them across this this this threshold called graduation but can they read the way we want them to i think the 10th grade ela data tells us no we need to look at that and so i'm going to ask that we each consider what that means so as we have conversations moving forward about our strategic plan that we don't forget this this humongous jump from 10th grade english language arts proficiency to graduation thank you thank you dr robinson the only comment i have is is we have the memoriam we have as the public knows we usually recognize those employees who have passed away so we have one on our agenda this evening
115henry pollock he was an assistant principal hi at high vocational wellington high school born september 18 1970 passed away october 7th 2020. we could have a moment of silence for mr polk and his family thank you everyone the next item on our agenda is our student government report palm beach county student council president santiago alvarez you're up good evening everyone thank you i would like to first start by congratulating alexandra ayala on your election for being the first latina elected to the school board thank you additionally i would like to congratulate miss karen bro on your new role as vice chairperson to the school board and mr frank barbieri on your re-appointment to the chair of the school board i wish you all the best of luck in your terms over the past few weeks
116the county council has continued to work towards embracing the changes and making this year as exciting as possible student governments across the county have continued to host virtual spirit weeks awareness days such as hispanic heritage celebration events and veterans day related events and planned events to celebrate our student success additionally student leaders have continued to stay active on school-run social media accounts that inform students on everything from school information to election registration and voting information the senior class executive boards are continuing to plan and organize special events that follow cdc guidelines for the senior class palm beach central high school who hosted our second virtual county council meeting with 27 schools in attendance and over 200 students attending and the meeting was a true success once again on behalf of the entire county executive board
117i would like to thank the school board for allowing us to use these chambers to host our meeting these meetings truly allow for students across the county to share ideas and projects relating to the work we do as student governments in this meeting we discussed and voted on multiple resolutions but the following resolution was passed this resolution was written by seminole ridge high school it is a resolution to remove the words sexually suggestive from the school board policy 5.182 dress code submitted by seminole ridge high school on november 26 2020 whereas currently the school board policy section 5.182 article 5 reads clothing that is sexually suggestive or revealing examples include but is not limited to clothing with ex exposes mid-drift exposes one's undergarments having plunging necklines muscle tops backless clothing and other con and are
118constructed of see-through materials and whereas the phrase sexually suggestive is defined in the cambridge english dictionary as often used to describe something that makes people think about sex and whereas including this phrase over sexualizes students in an environment where they are trying to receive an education and whereas dress code should focus on appropriateness of clothing deemed by certain guidelines not based on sexual clothing and is and whereas including sexually suggestive work requires administrators and staff to take to make a judgment on what they determined to be sexual and whereas making a judgment as an as an adult regarding a minor is an area of concern putting both the students and administrators in an uncomfortable position and whereas generalizing revealing clothing as sexual may harm a student's self-esteem as the school is supposed to be a
119welcoming environment and free from judgment and whereas the school board policy is written for all schools in the district including elementary middle elementary and middle schools and all students especially minors should not be associated with an aspect of the word sexual and whereas other policies including miami-dade and broward do not include the phrase sexually suggestive in their county dress code policies and whereas the current palm beach county school board policy includes many examples of what would be deemed out of dress code thereby negating the need for the phrase sexually suggestive in determining appropriateness of clothing therefore be it resolved that the palm beach county school board policy be changed to exclude the phrase sexually suggested from article 5 section 5.182 in regards to dress code the student councils of palm beach county believe that as
120a district this needs to be looked at and changed i would love to follow up with someone regarding this resolution and express our further concerns apart from my county council work i was informed by the office of the chief of staff at the district that the school board participated in a workshop around equity mission and vision and this and a strategic plan this workshop shared a plan with the board around defining the concept of equity prior to embarking on the development of the new strategic plan in january of as the student representative i would be very interested to work along with the other school board members in building and creating this vision of racial equity i have already began reading through the material provided at this workshop and look forward to sharing my thoughts on
121this topic as always i would like to thank the board for your continued efforts to better our education in making our students your first priority i hope everyone has a safe happy and healthy thanksgiving thank you everyone thank you mr president ms brill thank you and i would like to ask legal to take a look at the policy and send it back to all of us and see if you can make those changes as recommended by the student government microphone absolutely i took note and i will be working with the superintendent and his team on that i'd also like to share with the school board um on one late evening when i was leaving um our school board representative and his team looked very comfortable in your seats uh working it was very when i
122walked in the door i said did i miss a meeting they were handling themselves so they're doing a very very good job of conducting themselves in a professional manner with other roberts rules of order so congratulations and great use of our facilities after hours thank you dr robinson can i just ask a clarifying point um so is it the phrase um sexually suggestive that's offensive or does that does it include the descriptors so the resolution um at the end it is the resolution is just to exclude the phrase sexually suggestive from the article thank you mrs andrews thank you as we begin our equity workshops uh maybe this is through mr barbara to the superintendent how are we going to make sure our student council will actually get information so that they can actually uh
123weigh in has that already been worked into the process i have a suggestion mrs andrews if the board members don't have an issue with it we can ask mr alvarez to come to the workshop and participate with us i mean he is a student representative to us mr alvarez if you would like to do that though i don't see any objection from the board members superintendent you have an issue that my only issue would be whether or not he has classes okay i'm not going to excuse him for school to come to a workshop well miss barbara just as a follow-up mrs andrews we do want him to have mean of meaningful input and so i would like to make sure that he's aware of what we're talking about as it relates because we're talking
124about our students we're talking about adults too but we're really talking about what we do for our students so i really want to make sure that he gets this information that we're actually talking about that he gets a chance to talk to the consultant that's why i wondered how is he related to what we're doing so that he can have a meaningful input i'll answer that so the chief of staff office has already worked with with the team and so we will continue the process that he's got all the information all the information that you received he and his team have received that and so the chief of staff is committed to continue that relationship okay and mr alvarez if you can get excused from a class when we're having that workshop by your teacher
125or principal you're welcome to join us thank you this is mrs brill thank you and just further into what mrs andrews was discussing i did look watch the the webinar and it was very it was very clear that it's very important that we get stakeholders get students involved get parents involved so i know we're going to make a a deeper dive into making sure the community is a part because it's the people impacted um once we we sit down to start taking that dive that we need to hear from so thank you dr robinson so as i said at the previous meeting just to follow up on mrs brill's point all the equity work will tell you it is the the people that are most negatively impacted by your current policies and practices that you
126must make sure you hear from and so while i really look forward to the input from mr alvarez i also want to make sure that we are reaching out to the young people who are opinion leaders on their campus but may not be manifest in teacher pleasing behavior all right thank you dr robinson all right if there's no more discussion mr alvarez all right um the next item on the agenda is the district diversity equity committee uh prince uh president charlene postal sermon post good evening board chair dr fenoy board members and everyone in their respective places on behalf of the ddec congratulations to all principals acknowledged this evening i can't help to say go pandas because i'm a proud panda uh my pointy hannah okay i'll stop um also welcome board member alexandra ah
127yeah ali yeah yeah welcome back miss gwen chair um mr barbarian and congrats um to the vice chair position ms bruhl the ddc met on october 22nd 2020 val zoom last month the committee reported before you about the lack of funding for the racial equity institute an update for that for the record funding was secured since the last report thank you miss millen the committee received presentations on equity teams and equity liaisons by manager of equity and access keisha starks that will be formed throughout the district we look forward to hearing more about this program um we do know that there are two schools involved and because it has not been made publicly known we'll keep those schools um on the hush in addition ms starks share the culturally responsive teaching course and culturally responsive
128leadership courses both courses are offered to instructional staff and leaders you can contact ms carlene millen for more information about those respectively our next ddec meeting is november 19th at 9 00 a.m in thurber a and b uh ddec do express great concerns regarding the governor's failure to extend the orders to allow virtual meetings so we have had several members that will not attend the future meetings including tomorrow's meeting due to the increase of covet cases or whatever you can do board members we have sent some letters to our governor but whatever you can do to help continue to work of the ddec ensure that all voices are at the table would be greatly appreciated happy thanksgiving to all be well and the last last thing that i would like to add is the equity
129worksheet workshop that you all had on that tuesday we would like to have more meaningful conversations from the ddec we did me missed that first meeting and i'll take accountability for that but we would like to attend the workshop and um participate in that conversation up and forefront have a great thanksgiving and thank you thank you same to you we have elected officials and delegates we have two that are present and the other ones are recorded president katz from classroom teachers association and president gorillas from the education foundation good evening everyone first and foremost i wanted to congratulate the new and uh well newly elected officials both re-elected and uh first time thank you very much for your service i look forward to working with you to get to the point and i've spoken to
130reached out to as many of you as possible i'm here to to try to implore you um to break the logjam that is the current salary negotiations with cta um it's clear i think to both sides on the negotiations team that we are rapidly approaching a potential impasse situation that no one wants uh to go down because that obviously is not desirable to anyone i would urge you to to look at the the content i've sent you to watch the recorded video from the last session that took place on friday because i think it gives a a fair and honest perspective from both sides um and and to simply do the right right thing i think right now um the issue that our side has and i think that the cta has with with the
131district is that um it is difficult to do the right thing now because the right thing oftentimes is not what you want to do we are in a weird situation in in the world and it is comfortable not to make tough decisions that you don't want to make but might be right i can talk from firsthand experience as the cta president that if i took the position that when teachers didn't want to do something we would have rejected it and refused to do it you would not have had a distance learning mou in august it was more comprehensive than any distance learning mou in the state of florida you would not have had a phase 2 mou that incorporated simultaneous teaching which you know nobody likes you would not have recorded lessons if not for
132us doing things that we did not want to do but we acknowledged should be done for the greater good should be done for the students should be done for the district and right now you are faced with the decision to allocate some funds which were already intended to be used for raises prior to covid to give a nominal raise to teachers specifically the veterans who are marginalized by the state legislation that is giving 15 and 16 raises to people that are not even hired yet but is giving a 1.7 raise to teachers who have worked for you for 30 or 40 years the the basic gist of the request and again the video explains everything and shows both sides is the state has provided 1.7 for veteran teachers we are asking for a guaranteed 1.8
133percent extra to bring them up to three and a half percent and that 1.8 percent does not apply to the entire bargaining unit because almost 5 000 teachers are covered by the state money they would be excluded so we're asking for 1.8 percent for a fraction of the bargaining unit the veteran teachers who are marginalized by that state law you can pay for that raise the 1.8 percent out of less money than attrition savings from employee turnover in the bargaining unit saves you from last year to this year that is a fact now again going back to my original point i'm not asking you to like this i'm not asking you to want this i'm not asking for you to be comfortable with this but if you can acknowledge that the facts are the facts
134the money is available and the expenditure of these funds while you might not want to do it they will not lead to financial harm for the district they will not collapse the safety and financial security of the district what they will do is take your words your praise of teachers all of you superintendents school board members staff your praise is great but praise does not pay the bills praise does not make people feel appreciated in the face of action that might contradict that praise so what we're trying to do again is avoid impasse which seems likely by your own team's admission at the last negotiation session and get a 1.8 percent raise for a fraction of the teachers that is equivalent to like a 1.2 raise for the entire bargaining unit it is a deal
135you will save four million dollars in attrition savings because we're not even asking you to spend all of it so again uh i just i think that right now it is easy to do the easy thing but the easy thing is not the right thing it is always the right time to do the right thing and these teachers are looking to you to make sure that they don't have to go to impasse and they don't have to spend months and months waiting for a raise that they could have gotten back in august if things had been agreed to at that time so again i thank you for your time please watch the one hour session that was recorded last friday it will educate you thank you thank you president katz president gorillas thank you good
136evening superintendent dr fenoy members of the school board and i too want to add my congratulations to those who have been expressed earlier on all of you for stepping up to serve remember ayala it's nice to have you on board i look forward to working with you as we move into the future chairman barbieri vice chairman brill who by the way serves on the education foundation board it's uh nice to have you on board and congratulations in your elected roles tonight dr fennoy you said something earlier that i found interesting that this these are opportunities to share our story with the public most people associate the education foundation with you know awarding grants and red apple supplies that's actually the fruit of what we do what we actually do is connect we connect the wider
137community to the world of education and tonight i want to share with you some of those connections i would like to say before i jump into that what an honor it is chairman barbieri and dr fenoy to work with your team there's a group of people who sit back here who don't get a lot of love in the public and you know starting with the education network and claudia shea and jordan andrew kate and julia and the whole team at communication in the education network who constantly help us get our story out chief kitzerow and the entire security system here mike burke and heather caneus on the finance side who has the ungodly work of coming up with the budget every year wanda paul keith oswell and someone i've come to just love over the
138last couple of months of a project we're working on mark howard and dr adam miller i don't think you realize how hard these people work behind the scenes we connect the public to them dr robinson you correctly pointed out the importance of reading this is literacy month and your education foundation has ramped up a literacy program for which we're raising funds and here's some of those connections the jewish federation of palm beach county's volunteer center has donated 2 500 books some going to royal palm school the other to a school to be named later roots and wings and ted hoskinsons one of our our collaborative partners has donated 7 000 books to red apple supply every teacher who comes will be getting a book bundle of 25 books most of you are aware second program
139we've been working on helping the digital inclusion campaign that really mark howard and dr adam miller have spearheaded some of the community partners who have stepped up the stiles nicholson foundation for one hundred thousand dollars the walton family for one hundred thousand dollars the pew fund for one hundred thousand dollars i can happily announce it's public now that the frederick deluca foundation is in for one hundred thousand dollars the miami dolphins are in for one hundred thousand dollars florida crystals lost tree village all of these community partners connecting to the world of education and so chairman barbara that's really what we do yeah we award grants yes we run red apple supply but ultimately we bring these amazing business partners and we just connect them to these people who do incredible work day in and
140day out the final little announcement i can finally share i was bursting last month but was sworn to secrecy one of our great community partners is bank of america they are as devoted to public education as anyone we know bank of america awards annually a neighborhood builder grant they select a non-profit in our community they award them a two-year grant of one hundred thousand dollars as well as special leadership training for two leaders within the organization i can happily tell you that this year the education foundation was named as the neighborhood builder and we want to thank bank of america for the trust they're giving us we will be using their grant to continue our transformation of red apple supply it's red apple supply online and on the move as the coronavirus continues to affect
141us almost all of our red apple supplies are being delivered now teachers are able to get online and place their order and we're doing everything with contactless delivery so your education foundation continues to transition with the help of these amazing community partners thank you to all of you who make the work magic and thank you to our community partners we are your education foundation thank you mr president thanks for everything you do for us board members we have one two three four five six recorded messages um so with the i.t department plays those six from the elected officials and delegates who are on our list good evening school board members and staff this is laura feldman i am talking to you as president of palm beach county council of pta's ptsa so i want to
142begin my statement tonight with letting you know that florida pta has sent a letter to the governor and also to the florida board of education and i'm going to read parts of this letter to everyone the florida parent teacher association appreciates and supports how the florida department of education emergency order 2020-06 made possible locally developed innovative learning models for successful safe openings of schools in all our districts and it goes on to say while innovative models and safety protocols continue to be adjusted by superintendents school boards and local health officials florida pta asks to continue the emergency order to the spring semester with consideration of the following parental choice should not be restricted nor schools financially penalized for parents who wish to continue virtual or hybrid for virtual instruction schools should continue to be held
143harmless from any budget cuts this school year due to the fluctuation of enrollment numbers and type of instruction the state should review the number of required assessments and limit them only to those required for graduation or promotion and come into complete compliance with the minimum requirements of the federal every student succeeds act of the elementary and student education statutes also assessment should be held should be helpful to meeting the needs of our students and families and regarded appropriately in the current environment while state required assessments are scheduled for 2021 use of those results should hold students teachers schools and school districts harmless from any penalty or reclassification the waivers granted in 2020 should be continued for the rest of the 2020-2021 school year any required assessment assessment results should enable districts to determine the level
144of need and resources funding and instructional time to catch all up to 2019 levels and beyond over the next one to two years the state should give districts flexibility in the use of state federal and local dollars to provide for increased instructional time to state standards time for example the length of the school day so that the students can bring any decision schools or knowledge to state standards and close the achievement gap thank you we also ask for the increased transparency and empower stakeholders through timely reporting thank you very much good evening to school board members and superintendent dr fernand i am joaquin in my community outreach role for our labor union called the international association of machinists and aerospace workers or locally known as i am sugar i am pleased to be here with
145you today to celebrate history in making i'm a constituent of school board member andrews that includes the glaze region and i am here to show support for from our glazed community our hispanic community and our union community we are proud of newly seated school board member ayala as she is the first female elected into the 10th largest school district in the nation this is history as someone who grew up in the glades and my children attended in school the fair and landslide election of mr yala is changing the narrative of an underrepresented ethnic group by being beginning to receive representation she gives many of us here hope to work in a climate of respect and fairness to what is important to our educators and students thank you joaquin asana delegation dr joaquin garcia chair of
146the hispanic education coalition of palm beach county good afternoon members of the board i'm dr joaquin garcia chairman of the hispanic education coalition of palm beach county today is a great day of celebrations the hispanic community of this district will be represented in the school board by one of our own new board member alexandra ayala smart professional dedicated and passionate she has the support of the hispanic community she brings to the board the perspective of multiple hispanics that for many years have felt abandoned and without a voice she also provides a bridge to a new generation and has a unique understanding of how education must adapt to meet the needs of changing environment changing economic economic factors and changing demographics the hispanic community thanks all board members who have provided unwavering support to the hispanic
147community in the past particular appreciation goes to mrs marcia andrews who has served as our liaison to the board and has been an advocate advocate for all students and to mr barbieri who has been attentive to the needs of hispanics today of the hispanic community and committee committed to equity we hope that all board members continue this work and partner with mrs ayala in solving the many issues that challenge our community the board will now have a partner in the fight for equity and representation of all children without leaving the stories and the needs of his family students and the hispanic community behind i also want to extend my congratulations to re-elected board members barbara mcqueen and chairman barbieri you have our appreciation and support in the difficult work you do the hispanic education coalition
148which is to extend a hand of partnership to all board members in continuing the sacred work of helping all students reach their full potential and become a productive member of this great community thank you good afternoon this is dr carlos diaz chair elect of the hispanic education coalition and professor emeritus at florida atlantic university uh first i want to say that i am sorry i cannot attend today's meeting in person so i'm leaving my voicemail i want to say individually and on behalf of the hispanic education coalition i would like to congratulate alexandria ayala as the first elected latina member of the palm beach county school board we're very proud of you and we look forward to working with you and all the members of the school board to continue to improve education for all
149the students in the school district of palm beach county thank you good afternoon my name is jacqueline callaway and i am speaking on behalf of the coalition for black student achievement the impact of covet 19 on the african-american community has been considerable but its adverse impact on the education of black children has been devastating it is undeniable that even before covert 19 black children suffered academically as a result of an inadequate and inequitable education in this district the impact of substandard instruction and attentiveness to their emotional needs and unfortunately systemic racism has resulted in the chronic low academic achievement and under achievement by far too many of our black students for far too many decades and with far too few effective measures to reverse this reverse this trend as an organization the coalition will continue
150to focus our attention on the intersectionality of systemic racism and the quality of education that black students receive in palm beach county you may be really appealing the coalition's unbelieving focus on systemic racism in this district but it does exist in spite of the work of many well-meaning districts and school staff therefore it is necessary for us to do as long as racism diminishes the educational progress and emotional well-being of black students as long as it affects how our black children feel about school and as long as black parents feel disparate disparaged and have little trust that the school district cares about what happens to their children and their advocacy for their children it is within your power and your obligation to confront the insidiousness of systemic racism in the district and how it impacts
151the education and lives of children it is within your power and obligation to fearlessly confront it at all levels in this district it is the obligation of the district leadership to create a concrete road map to address this issue and to put in place clear lines of accountability the coalition sincerely credits this district for the positive steps it has already taken and is committed to continuing to take in the future however the coalition will continue to vigorously fight for black students in all aspects of their education thank you very much distinguished members of the board good day to you my name is jennifer jones i am the public relations director with the volunteer association and fund of florida a non-profit organization working right here in palm beach county i want to thank dr robinson for
152the talent services done in our community and working with us to bring our issues to the forefront the reason why we want to address the board is to remind you how important it is to keep your haitian children and haitian children families in the forefront of your mind during this pandemic we are experiencing a lot of strife in our community and we definitely need to make sure that the school board district remembers that your haitian population is a community that is in crisis and that needs to be addressed the haitian population is the largest immigrant population in palm beach county and we need a haitian dual language program in our school and we understand that epidemic is nearly difficult to make this thing happen but it is not impossible and we count on new uh
153global district to make sure that our children are not left behind it is important also for us as our community that we see more haitian representations in your staff and we're not talking about just the support staff for the custodial and the um bus attendant but in teachers and guidance counselors in accessing principles and in principles in palm beach county our children rely on that representation and the parents are trusting us as their leaders to make sure that their children are in an environment where they can grow and they can excel and we know that having more haitian representation will do that we want to make sure that our haitian families need the support that they need during this time including tutoring including the support at home with computers and laptops but also making sure
154that the children are on track because it is sometimes difficult in the haitian household to make sure that everything is conveyed virtually is retained by the child so this just highlights the importance of having motivational staff and of having a haitian dual language program in palm beach county and so we come before you as a community leader as an organization to remind you of the importance of caring for our children and our haitian families and to promote this haitian dual language program as well as more haitian organizations in yes especially in administration thank you board members we have no agenda topic speakers so moves us to the consent agenda does any board member wish to pull anything from consent seeing none we need a motion to approve the consent agenda by dr robinson seconded by
155mrs andrews any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 there is no unfinished business that takes us to new business mr superintendent 81. yes sir mr chairman under new business 81 authorization to request a formal attorney general opinion regarding board and district advisory committee meetings i recommend the board authorized as general counsel to request a formal attorney general's opinion on the question of whether the school board may adopt under its home rule authority for school purpose policies allowing sunshine meetings for board and district advisory committees and other sunshine committees where corm is required to be physically present to be conducted by means of communications media technology during a public health emergency including a pandemic and authorized the board chair superintendent and general counsel to sign the related documents motion bite motion ms ayala second
156invite dr robinson any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 c-o-m-1 mr superintendent yes sir mr chairman i recommend the board proclaiming november 9th through 13th 2020 as holocaust education week mission by miss brill second and bike this is andrews miss brill thank you and this is very timely so i am going to read this proclamation as i typically do whereas sorry my eyes have to focus whereas the florida department of education has designated the second week of november as holocaust education week holocaust education week has been set aside by the state of florida and the school district of palm beach county to remember the victims of the holocaust as well as to reflect on the need for respect for all peoples and whereas the holocaust was the state-sponsored systemic persecution and annihilation of
157european jewry by nazi germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. six million jews were murdered roma people with disabilities and polls were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial ethnic or national reasons and millions more including homosexuals jehovah's witnesses soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under nazi tyranny and whereas the history of the holocaust offers an opportunity to reflect on the moral responsibilities of individuals societies and governments and whereas the school district of palm beach county should always remember the terrible events of the holocaust and remain vigilant against hatred persecution and tyranny and whereas the school district of palm beach county should actively rededicate ourselves to the principles of individual freedom in a just society and whereas november 9 2020 through november 10 2020 marks the
15818 82nd anniversary of kristallnacht the night of broken glass and whereas during kristallnacht hundreds of synagogues in germany and austria were burned and destroyed businesses and homes were ransacked scores of innocent jews were killed and thousands of others were arrested and sent to concentration camps and whereas kristallnacht serves as a prelude to the holocaust and to systemic mass murder on a scale never before seen in the his human history and whereas the reign of nazi government marks one of the darkest periods in civilized history and whereas the commemoration of this unprecedented event reminds us all of our solemn duty to keep alive the memory of the millions who perished during the holocaust and to ensure through education and mutual respect that the acts of genocide shall never again occur now wherefore be it resolved that
159the superintendent and school board of palm beach county do hereby proclaim the week of monday november 9 2020 through friday november 13 2020 as holocaust education week in memory of the victims of the holocaust and in honor of the survivors as well as the rescuers and liberators and further proclaim that we should work to promote human dignity and confront hate whenever and wherever it occurs done this 17th day of november 2020 in west palm beach florida thank you remember is there any discussion all in favor opposed motion carry 7-0 com2 mr superintendent mr chairman i recommend the board proclaiming november 2020 as homeless child and youth awareness month wish you made my mrs andrew seconded by mrs whitfield mrs andrews thank you proclamation homeless child and youth awareness month november 2020 whereas responding to the
160increasing number of homeless families with children president ronald reagan in 1987 signed into law the mckinney-vento homeless assistance act guaranteeing equal access to a free appropriate public education to children and youth experiencing homelessness and whereas the mckinney-vento homeless assistance act requires every school district to appoint a local liaison for homeless education to ensure proper identification immediate enrollment and linkages to other educational and community services for which students experiencing homelessness are eligible and whereas every school district in the state has designated local homeless education liaison who is responsible for ensuring the homeless students educational rights are observed and whereas 4542 homeless children and youth were identified within the school district of palm beach county during your dream 2019 2020 school year and whereas the community we need to do everything we can to help stabilize and
161support families in economic distress and that includes ensuring that homeless children and youth have equal access to quality education and all of the support we can provide and whereas the mckinney-vento program of the department of safe schools school district of palm beach county works to remove barriers often encountered by students experiencing homelessness in enrolling attending and succeeding in school while increasing awareness of the issues facing homeless children and youth now therefore be it resolved by the superintendent and the school board of palm beach county do hereby proclaim november 2020 as homeless child and youth awareness month done the 17th day of november 2020 in west palm beach florida frank a barbieri junior esquire board chair dr donald e fenoy the second superintendent mrs whitfield thank you i just want to mention as this proclamation stated
1624 542 homeless students those numbers are from last year and last year compared to this year is a totally different world the children um are experiencing homelessness at higher levels than ever before and we're having a harder time finding them and getting our hands on them to keep them in school and and give them services so i hope that as we go forward with our planning for this year that we consider putting additional funds towards this program i don't i know that they're really struggling to keep up with the demand and so i think our numbers are going to be very very high this year so i just wanted to mention that as we put forward this proclamation the need is greater than ever before thank you thank you mr woodfield any other discussion this
163is andrews and i just want to say thank you for the team that truly work with our homeless students their compassion their passion working with these students and finding them the necessary services for their success we have the teams all across palm beach county take a moment to reach out to them and tell them thank you they're into all of the different neighborhoods doing all this hard work so that we can save all children those that are homeless who are in need thank you any further discussion dr robinson sorry i um i just feel the need to say this so this we do need to do this work and we do need to support homeless children and hungry children and all but it just keeps bouncing in my head we are a big influential institution
164right at some point i think that we need to use our voice to leverage this community to look at the root causes because there are reasons that children are hungry there are reasons that children and families are homeless right and so while we need to try to address the need in front of us i think that we need to to push for a much larger discussion i know the county commission has had you know work done work on homelessness but we need to to partner with whoever everybody to get to the root causes and stop just you know giving the tylenol to the guy with the brain tumor okay thank you thank you dr robinson any other discussion all in favor opposed motion carry 7-0 p2 mr superintendent yes sir mr chairman i recommend the
165board approve the personal addendum as submitted motion by mrs mrs brill seconded by miss ayala any discussion all in favor post motion carries 7-0 that takes us to board discussion items the bd1 mrs whitfield fsba governance thank you so much um i just wanted to bring this back up is something we talked about i think back in january um about having fsba come in and talk about our governance as a board and how we decide that i think for me this is an important discussion because you know there's really not much um that's more important than me than than how well this school district runs i think that we are um i think that we really need to have hard discussions with each other and and you know discuss things about how we choose chair
166and vice chair and you know what those responsibilities entail i think this is um you know something that that i think is important going forward for us so i wanted to ask my fellow board members if we could have this discussion um at our upcoming retreat i did speak to andrea messina and she would be able to send a representative she couldn't come herself so i know our staff has had a chance to have that conversation but really i think it would be good for all of us especially having a new board member and you know for my own educational purposes i would really like to understand better the ways that we can be the most effective governing board that we can be so i just wanted to ask if you all would be okay
167with adding that to the upcoming retreat mrs andrews yes mrs whitfield i think it's more than needed and the last time we actually had our training with the florida school board we had not had a break now that we have a new board member we need to have our retraining so that we can be a master board again i mean we were able to utilize the training because all of us that are in here now were part of that training but now that we have a new board member we need to take it a step further not just with the meeting that we'll have at the retreat but we need to now talk to the florida school boards association so that we can get training for our new board member so it goes to another
168level go ahead miss pearl thank you and i i think it's a great idea the only concern i have is adding it to that retreat i don't know if we should have a separate one i don't know if it's i don't want to i don't know how long it's going to take for us to do the work that we already have scheduled so i'm open to doing a second retreat if that works better i'll leave that to the superintendent and staff i just don't want us to run short on time on either discussion be because both are very critical mrs mcquinn i don't know if the retreat has been timed out yet but i do know that mrs whitfield has been trying to have this discussion for a while i'd like to see it as
169part of our retreat even if we just get started on it again i don't know if has everything been timed out yet when i talked to mr tierney today he indicated that there was room on the at the retreat to yeah mr chairman if you give me i can respond that we have built three hours for our equity conversation and we can build one more hour to start this conversation around board governance and we have been in contact with fsba and we do have that alternate that will be willing to come so is that the pleasure of the board so to follow up then i think it's important because um this is something that she's expressed that she feels strongly about and i think um there are a few things i feel strongly about too
170like how long we speak so i think we need to review a few rules just about how we handle you know protocols and and that kind of thing so thank you if we can make that happen i'd like to everybody agree with dr robinson thank you i'm in agreement i don't know what are the planned hours for the retreat though man the number of hours are the we we don't have the times as of yet but we know we was four hours with this particular edition so we're still working with the board on what works for all of your schedules so as i recall those times that we had the trainings with fsba it was like a half a day that's is my recollection off it was at least i'm gonna say three hours right
171now so i don't really know what's planned and i don't want to like just dip our collective toe in the water and then walk away i would be willing to extend the hours that we are in the retreat in order to accomplish that because i think it's kind of foundational for our reset when we did the master board training the last time i think it was at least four hours it was like from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon where they came down and we did so i mean i i didn't think that mrs whitfield was talking about doing the master board training at the retreat but just discussing governance in general miss bruhl well i agree with dr robinson though if we can extend the hours for the retreat you know
172and just make it a little a longer day because i i think that mrs whitfield's um discussion is very important i know that you have brought it up and i don't want it to be pushed back but at the same time i want to make sure we have adequate time and dr robinson is correct when we have had fsba come down it's been several hours so you know even if we started in the morning broke for lunch and came back and worked in the afternoon i'm fine with that i'll you know i'm happy to to block my day i'm sure everybody else is and that way we can really dive deep mr chairman if i may i would turn over to mr tierney who's organizing this to have a conversation with the board around next
173steps this was per miss whitfield's request on governance it wasn't the whole four-hour master board training that being said we could try to extend it by my understanding is there was at least one board member who had a conflict in the afternoon which also led to that compression so we'll reach out again to board the board secretaries to see if everyone's available and if they are then we'll look to extend it and maybe and if and if the board is not available i think i heard another board member mention maybe we can schedule another time specifically for board for master board training i think that's what the term you use so i think we'll start with mr tierney working with you guys to see if we can extend the existing meeting on the fourth miss
174mcqueen i'm so sorry thank you mr tierney i am the board member who had the conflict okay and i didn't think maria for all help general she's kept me pretty solid for the last four years and things are crumbling a little bit in the last month or so anyway all right my calendar is out of control i will make mine work i'll just make it happen whatever we need to do all right any further discussion all right um mr tierney you got your work cut out for you um bd2 um dr robinson thank you um so there are rumors that i just want to say this he who shall not be named in tallahassee is considering pushing all students to return to brick and mortar schools in january and that's extremely troubling to me as
175we watch the covet numbers spike and after listening to parent choice as the mantra for forced reopening of our schools in the fall so i'm very concerned and i know that we have the thanksgiving and then after the winter holidays is going to be more cases so it's going to get worse before it gets better most likely and so the concept of pushing students back into schools where they're unable to maintain social distancing just simply because we don't have enough space to do so is frightening so at this point i'm not talking about what we should decide to do i'm not i'm not talking about whether we should close schools i'm not talking about where the school should be opening what i'm saying is it should be our decision and so what i'm asking and
176we and we just authorized staff to request the attorney general opinion about sunshine meetings under you know local control kind of scenarios so i'm asking that this board director superintendent to lay the foundation for a call to action consistent with our policy 2.591 should that become necessary because things are going to move fast hopefully they won't move rapidly in the direction i'm afraid of but if it does i think that we need to call upon everyone um you know ptas ctas the you know every acronym on earth and and our parents and students right to add their voices to say in palm beach county we should decide what happens in palm beach county schools and so that's the purpose of my discussion item to request laying the foundation for a call to action should it
177become necessary mrs whitfield thank you i this is something that's been a real big concern for me as well when i was reading over our legislative priorities it's included in there as something that we said but to me it's not big enough and it's not loud enough i really do think that we are going to get to a place where um families are not going to send their children back to us if we don't have this as an option and we already are struggling with finding these children keeping these children in school we're 7 000 kids down i think that number's going to go up and then i'm very concerned about our teachers who are currently working remotely successfully and are not going to be able to do that going forward so i think i
178think we do need to put together a collective voice from the school district letting everybody know that this is something that we really need for our families here that we need for our community we have to be able to continue to offer this distance learning option and if we don't i'm very concerned for what that means for our schools so i would be supportive of a call to action mrs andrews yes i'm very uh supportive of the call to action i was very happy to see uh elena alonso here because everything is is driven by the health piece of this and uh and our teachers right now our parents students they're all concerned because of this rumor that we're going to ask everyone to come back to brick and mortar and we really need to
179have all of the the key stakeholders especially our health professionals who are leading the way looking at our numbers every single day this is why i asked dr alonzo to come back to the next board meeting in december so that she can continue to give us an update but we need to be in charge of our own lives this is local control right here this is what the school board is all about and so we need to begin to build on it as i look at this building you know i'm someone that's at risk because of my age you know and when you think about some of the people who work in this building they can't all of you can't be piled up here in this building you're still not back to work fully 100
180you're actually transitioning different days coming into work and so to even think about we're going to bring the kids and have them you know all back in school and even our staff is not there and we're talking about saving lives and you're looking at the rates of infection and you haven't seen the deaths yet because remember they lag it's coming folks you're going to see it so we need to uh direct the superintendent as well as all of our stakeholders begin to start talking about the plan of action because it is truly our local responsibility as a school board miss pearl thank you and and so as you'll recall my absolute top priority has been local control in terms of our legislative platform um and then i think i thank dr robinson for bringing this
181forward what i'd like to see staff do is prepare for that call to action now get align all of the lists of resources of the people we're going to have to hit because as dr robinson said it's going to be fast-moving the train is going to leave the station very quickly but then the other piece and i think i spoke to mr tierney about it is we have to do our own call to action but i think that we need to also leverage with miami-dade and broward because our three counties are the ones with the most impact from covid19 so i think we we structure that but at the same time in the background let's start leveraging that relationship because we have to hit hard thank you robinson thank you and that's exactly what i'm
182asking for that we lay the groundwork we start making the list of all the entities i think for our representatives on fsba you can start reaching out to to them to say listen you know maybe it's not impacting you as much as it would impact us but don't you agree would you not want local control also right because it seems to me that that phrase everybody should be able to to support right um and so and i think that maybe now what there's a florida board of education meeting tomorrow so maybe we'll hear something tomorrow but even if um they're not bad decisions being made this week i think that we could start laying the foundation the the education of our associates and our connections on why this is a bad move if they should
183try to force us back in the brick and mortar doctor i understand you've been dealing with the other superintendents in broadway to miami-dade on this very issue can you bring us up to date on that mr mcqueen had a comment mcqueen and i can see that dr fennoy is going to do this and i i hear dr robinson about everyone would understand that no the other districts don't really understand what we broward and dave have gone through so i would like we need to band together because that's what ultimately has um i think been part of our salvation through this so i just want i don't think everybody will be understanding for the greater good i think that we have to band together i would just say i mean the board members know but the
184public is not aware so um the found there are certain foundational pieces that have been said um mr bob runcie alberto cavallo and myself have sent a letter a joint letter on behalf of our three districts to the commissioner around the executive order and extending those options for south florida so that's been done on thursday we have all 67 superintendents have a meeting with commissioner corcoran through fads to talk about next steps so i will report back to the board after that meeting and i think dr robinson said they are state level board meetings that are happening this week and so we'll get that information as well i also would like to say that um on your platform you the board has put information around home rule so that's already part of the legislative platform
185but again i think the the foundations of that piece have already been set in terms of the combination of all three south florida districts okay all right so um superintendent you can put together for us to start working on the call to actions information that we'll need to get this done yeah i think what we'll start by doing is is making sure the board is fully aware of everything we've done up to this date okay and then getting your ideas around potential next steps so yes we'll do that we just keep in mind board members we are past the seven o'clock point and we spoke okay one sentence so maybe it's two i don't know so but i think that soon we need to like have a statement that says why you know home rule
186local control whatever is important to us i and i i realized that with covet we are particularly situated but those same other counties the very people who would impose this brick and mortar on us are the same people who in other circumstances talk about home rule right i'm just saying so like maybe we pull some of that but i think that we can start educating our community members and our partners on why this is important to us but not unleash them so to speak unless there's a bad move made that's my request and perhaps mr superintendent the communications division can somehow get the message out we're getting lots of emails from parents that are hearing about this and want to know what the plan is from the school board whether or not we're going to
187be closing the school so we need to get some information out there that the school board is not in favor of you know having everybody come come back in you know in january so if we can if we can get some information out so i want to make sure that um this is more of a procedural thing so i would definitely get feedback from all the board members but we're going to need i guess the chairman or vice chair to make sure that the language that we create is suitable to the board because we only have one meeting and it sounds like we probably need to get this community we definitely get this communication out before the next board meeting so we just need to talk maybe the chairman and i can talk about those
188pieces you know making sure that you have the board representation on the words that we create i think you need to share it with all of us i agree it's just making sure that whatever the final piece is the final piece yeah yeah we'll do that sandwich we gotta remember we're gonna make it quickly because uh braggart and miami-dade when they did their uh plan it was a little different from us so i'm happy to know that you're having the conversations with the superintendents from the big the big south florida counties and uh we know we've got to put it out there we don't need someone to go into some room in tallahassee somewhere and make a decision about what's going to happen here in palm beach county and i don't want to wake up
189one day to find out that the decision has already been made so dr panora as you're working with those other leaders if we have to call a special board meeting for us to kind of make to make a statement i i really i really want that to happen because i don't want anybody listening at this meeting to think that this is what i want to happen we're in real serious trouble with our health as well as this pandemic right now thank you thank you the football players those of you that have turned in cards or want to speak tonight stand up for me for a minute so i can see how many of you are there that have asked to speak so board members if you don't have any concerns about this i'd like to
190take those young men first so that they can get home they have school tomorrow so would you start coming up one at a time and state your name for the record so i can mark you off the list and we'll take you off first on the list just state your name for us watch the clock please you have three minutes to address the board hello my name is sheridan mcdonald uh i don't have much to say but i go to palm beach central i'm in my junior year and even though i might have a senior year to play i feel like i speak for most of us when i say that we need this year like to further our education and go to college that's really it where's your name again sorry sheridan mcdonald thank
191you um hello my name is keyshawn winder i'm a senior that plays with palmy central and this season is very important to all of us and but also it's for the season is important to me because it can determine my future so please give us another opportunity to play again thank you mr chairman why should i sit down there is a speaker for palm beach central on the other side as well i can't hear what you said doctor i'm sorry i'm sorry i mean doctor i just want to get the students here first hello my name is ahmad hason i'm a sophomore quarterback at palm beach central and i just wanted to say that we need this season for our futures not just because of athletics but also education high school football is what determines
192where we are in our future because it it's not all about athletics i could go to college to be an engineer or a doctor and in order for me to get there football helps pay for that and also to get to the nfl which is my dream that's all i got thank you thank you any other students all right hi my name is uh ashton smith i go to palm beach central and i mean i don't really have much to say about all this i just would really like a chance to play this my senior year and this could uh like everyone else has said determine our future thank you thank you all right i'm going to start calling on the listing yvonne odom are you here go ahead state your name for the record
193please and then watch the clock three minutes okay yvonne odom i live in delray beach florida i'm a retired school teacher i taught for over 45 years i'm here because the decision you made that you've already done concerning principle principal ladson made me sick to my stomach disappointed is an understatement because of the process you first said no then after much political oppression you changed your mind what changed and by the way i do not personally know prince molassen nor the main parent in this situation my goal is to publicly state my objection and give just a glimpse of my personal experience on examples of systematic racism actions in this district by relentless parents or uninformed administrators and our school board members whether it's intentional or unintentional the results are the same missed opportunities all
194over in 1968 my very first year as a teacher in this district a white parent removed her child from my classroom when she discovered i was black fast forward 2020 white parent had influenced the principal removed because in part in my opinion he was black it is my belief and you as a board member once again blew an opportunity of education and bowed to a relentless parent's assertion that something was not taught to her satisfaction albeit was the holocaust because if it really about the holocaust we would not be here a missed opportunity as a concerned parent she could have educated all of us how many educators over the years who had to teach african-american history through the back door how dare they request the report i have personal knowledge of that again missed opportunity
195to educate the state has mandated many things and by the way no funds to implement again in my opinion her intent was not about the holocaust which i must say is void in many educators repertoire as well as african-american history completely absent by many with no intent to implement again a missed opportunity to educate this was not about the holocaust no indeed more about an african-american male who had the audacity to say that there may be some who don't see it as a historical fact again miss opportunity to educate i'm not here to change your mind but to speak mine and even tonight with the reading of that proclamation i learned something given the same circumstances with white on white black on black would you have come up with the same conclusion may i continue
196you need to wrap it up man that wrap it up okay well i'll skip down point by point you'd rejected each judge's point that pointed out your own flaws and how you went through this process progress process i'm sorry again a missed opportunity what i'm saying finally superintendent board parents administrators teachers and students and the legislators we can clean this up so that opportunity is not lost as we embrace a rich history of diversity in this county where we can all be respected and valued maybe not in my lifetime but for the sake of my grandchildren and yours be fair thank you thank you richard giorgio then roosevelt tessono good evening to everybody go ahead state your name please roosevelt i'm one of the parents that is here and representing palm beach county football players
197from the beginning i don't know who made the decision in regard to canceling our program that was my biggest grief in the grief for every parent because what does that mean it means that all players had no chance of being seen especially the seniors meanwhile every other school in the county is on tv friday night saturday night recruiters so us we felt that our student was been punished if she wasn't all student then it was all schools so that's why we're here and we call upon mr keith oswald i call him personally he never returned my calls i left a message for um valuing my errors excuse me for not pronouncing her name she never returned my calls only person who called one of our members was uh miss karen stretched so i believe her
198last name is okay but no explanation when we request why was this decision made and by whom oh we don't know we don't know we get the bucket kid around first of all we were told that oh it was recommended by dr alonzo and the case and the numbers all we wanted was equal treatment to a school to a student especially to the seniors that it's not going to have no opportunity to get scholarships that's number one secondly it's equal treatment because we are aware of every other school that have cases guess what they were quarantined they played the next day when it come down to palm beach central we had we were told we had to be quarantined for almost a month per your statement or per your calendar even online your guidelines say
19910 days most students were quarantined for over 16 14 days now it's going on to third week but here's is what make it worse okay we were told that oh if you are allowed to return after thanksgiving so that's going to make a month of quarantine not a lot to practice but yet they want us to come back get in the playoff and play again negative disadvantage so is this not personal there is some issues i don't care i'm not here for that i'm here for them you guys talk about loving the children educating these children but somehow you're missing this group here okay why are they not part of the society of palm beach excuse me i just need one a little additional moment okay we are here because we want fair treatment if
200we did our quarantine period it's over that's negative immediately we should be back on the field and we should be allowed to make every game that we miss so that way we have equal playing time just like everybody else and be ready for whatever it is you guys cannot make your decision and unbiased or false information or personal issues with superintendent teachers or um coaches that is not a problem the kids is who you all should be thinking about and and i don't think this decision was made just it wasn't made equally fair okay so we are here demanding that we get a chance to play every single game that we missed and provided extra time to get prepared so that we could face our next opponent thank you thank you melania i'm sorry go
201ahead mr giorgio and then lana harris please come up to the podium melania harris hi i'm richard giorgio i want to talk this evening about the controversy that has been swirling around the election of school board district 2 member alexandria ayala and the fact that mrs ayala no longer lives in the residence area she ran for and was elected to represent those of you on the board and who were recent candidates know that on june 12th of this year was the last date for candidates to qualify to run for office including to run for school board and mrs ayala properly qualified to run for the seat but barely two weeks after qualifying she and her partner purchased a 515 thousand dollar home together in delray beach in district number four no one required her to
202do that she could have bought a home in district two where she was running to be elected but she bought a home in district four halfway across palm beach county to cover up what she was doing mrs ayala purchased the home in her mother's maiden name of montalvo when i looked at mrs ayala's personnel file for palm beach county where she is employed her records say her name is alexandria marie ayala when she filed to run for election she filed as alexandria ayala everyone who saw the election saw that she had signs all over the place that said that and nothing said anything about montalvo it was a deliberate attempt to deceive voters florida statutes say that every member of the school district school board shall be a resident of the district school board residence
203area from which he or she is elected and shall maintain said residency throughout his or her term of office the mortgage agreement mrs ayala signed says the borrower shall occupy establish and use the property as the borrower's principal residence within 60 days of execution of this document and shall continue to occupy the property as the borrower's principal residence for at least one year after the date of occupancy you can't have two primary residences one in delray beach and one here she no longer meets the residency requirement for this seat i am calling on this these evening for mrs ayala to put an end to this charade and to step down and resign your position if you are not willing to do that i want to call on this board to consider asking the governor to
204intervene and investigate this matter i did see that miss ayala sent the the board a mr joy i'll wrap it right up sent you an email earlier today saying she addressed this issue however that's not the case removing your name from the deed does not remove you from the obligation under the note thank you lorna harris and steve moss good evening my name is lenya harris i'm on i'm here on behalf of palm beach central my grandson plays football for palm beach central i'm kind of piggybacking on what mr roosevelt said earlier i'm here and hoping that the kids can make up their gains and they can get back to practice as soon as possible and miss andrews i thank you for what you told the kids i'm sure they received it and we're going
205to be holding you to that okay thank you thank you mr marsh good evening my name is steve moss i'm a palm beach county resident for the last 25 years my son ben is a junior at palm beach county at palm beach central and he plays on the varsity football team tuesday november 3rd we found out that there was someone testing positive for kovid and our practice was canceled shortly after that we were told our game on november 7th vs atlantic was cancelled and it was later in the week we were told that our game november 14th verse park vista was cancelled just recently we found out that our game for this friday november 20th versus wellington will be cancelled as well so as a concerned parent i wanted to know why they would cancel
206the entire season no other school had their entire season cancelled so we started to ask some questions to see what the proper protocols were and what we could find out i reached out to a few people to see what we could find out valerie maieris who's the director of athletics she never responded to my calls i then called also keith oswald who's the superintendent he'd never responded to my calls however he forward my concerns to principal edgecombe at pogbameetcentral principal edgecombe had already spoken to me he called me and told me that they do want to play our games at palm beach central so for me mr oswald just chose not to answer my questions i then contacted also karen wetzel she is a central superintendent she called me back later that day and told
207me that the decision was not hers and she wasn't sure who made that decision but she was going to email a mr boggess who's an assistant superintendent to ask him if he could find out what was going on she asked for my email so she would copy me on her question so they would get back to me she never emailed me and never got back to me on that today around 2 45 a miss doraleen called me who said she also works alongside karen wetzel because karen was in meetings and was unable to contact me she wanted to make sure that someone got back to me and let me know that the decision to cancel the season came from the recommendation from dr alina alonso who was here today or was the director of florida
208health strange because the day before i spoke to dr alonso actually i ended up speaking to her twice that day she let me know that she did not make any such decision and she that was not her recommendation about canceling the season she did let me know that when she spoke to the board or that it was her job to similar to this evening let them know about some of the statistics that were going on the second time that i spoke to dr alonzo she actually called me guy just two more minutes you have another medic she let me know that she was in a meeting that day with dr fenoy and he told her that as long as a student wasn't under quarantine and had been released by the cdc that you would be
209able to play and go back to school brick and mortar there have been other schools that have had positive coveted cases as an example seminole ridge had to miss one game but was allowed to play just the following week palm beach central is the only school in the district to have had to lose three out of their four games the cdc says if you are released by them you are safe to play in fact dr alonso told me that the kids now have the antibodies are in actually in just fine shape so my question remains the same that no one has answered yet who has made the decision that the school at our school wasn't going to be able to play the remainder of the games and yes you had some some kids talk about
210as seniors that this is an opportunity for them and maybe their only opportunity to go to school on any kind of partial scholarship so all i'm asking for is the same rules for our school as you've made for others board member marcia andrews thank you so much for your kind words we appreciate everything you've done for us dr fenoy thank you again for your leadership and i'm certain that you all do the right thing thank you boy hashtag hello um good evening thanks for the time tonight i'm a parent of one of the palm beach central football players ahmad hasten who spoke later earlier he's only a sophomore but i'm echoing his words i'm echoing the words of the seniors they went through quarantine they were cleared they prepared physically for this season they planned
211academically and now they need the games so they can get the scholarships so i'm just asking for consideration adjustments to the decision so that they can get some more regular season games in as well as be prepared for the playoffs thank you we have one more speaker that's here then mr superintendent would you be able to have some of your staff address these parents and students that are here tonight the next speaker is edith pride miss pride would you come up to the podium you have three minutes you're here mr chairman staff is already outside okay steps outside [Music] it is pride boca raton elementary school good evening dr fenner and school board members in february of this year we all started seriously watching the following and following the news concerning the covet 19 virus
212it did not sneak up on us we watched as the numbers kept going up at no time did the district instruct teachers to give a reading running record to formally assess the students in case we had to close down considering the fact that we are educators this bothered me the primary reason being no one knew how long we could be asked to stay home away from school then on march 13th we received a call to go home and wait for the notice six months go by school begins again but now teachers don't have to deal with the subjects the summer's lie they have to deal with the new covets life and again teachers have not been instructed to assess the student on a reading running record um teachers have must have a district-wide assessment that
213informs average stakeholder that is involved with the student accuracy concerning the child's progress that is what reading wrong record provides records were incomplete all over the district assessment of upper and lower case letters beginning sounds sight words blending segmenting rhyming and most importantly reading and yet the district has not instructed teachers to do so at least the students that are rick and morty now hear this as she was shouted on the navy awards ships no i read a computer test no khan academy computer test can replace a teacher assessing a child and listening to the child read the teacher needs to listen to the fluency of the reader listen to the retelling and the comprehension of what the child has read and you still have not instructed us to do so teachers need to know
214how much a child has regressed so they will know where to start again this is become insanity wake up district i watched all summer as miss andrews kept saying how other dishes were getting things together and how we needed to get with the program we are still not with the program dr robertson gave medical info mr bobbierra and some of the ladies on the board they held up for computers in every community but miss andrews kept saying we got to get these things together we are not working fast enough unless you are in a classroom now you cannot imagine the gaps in the students learning it's as if a large number of the students were hibernating for six months never looking at a book a word a letter or a picture teachers don't even quite
215know what to do it's testing about money from the government we are testing when we should be teaching and we should not be and we should be allowing teachers to use whatever it takes material wise to educate these children this is war and we are losing it because educating students is out of the hands of the teacher and on top of that you don't want to pay us what we have earned teachers teach children not the butcher not the baker not the candice candlestick maker pay teachers what we've earned because you can't pay us what we're worth thank you i have one card i'm not sure if you spoke or not maya latney if i pronounce that correctly to the young men that are here from the football team the superintendent's instructed one of his
216staff members to go out and speak to the parents in the courtyard so they're working on your issue out there go ahead ma'am uh maya lahu i am i'm ashton smith's mom another parent from central i grew up in in west palm i was born and raised here graduated from forest hill played every sport imaginable in middle and high school and i know how important this is to these kids to be able to play these games to be able to warm up and be warm and be ready for these playoffs that they're just going to be thrown into if we can't figure out a resolution and these boys who are you know that they're depending on this game time to go to college you know and and i don't know it just breaks my heart
217that you know now in this time i get it and you know mortgages can be pushed back and so many things can be pushed back why can't a football playoff season be pushed back so these boys have a fair chance at their future and have a fair chance at not being injured at these playoff games um i just know how important it was to me i know how important it is to my son and all of all of the team members and the coaches to get a fair shot at um you know what they've worked so hard for for one two three and four years you know and um i guess i guess that's it that's all you you've heard us all and i hope you all can decide a resolution that really works for
218the boys because that's what it's all about thank you thank you this is andrew to comment i'm truly disappointed tonight i spent my day today talking to the regional office when i heard about this situation i walked palm beach central alone yesterday and i did talk to the principal and when i'm sitting in here tonight one of the things i asked dr fenoy today as well as mr attorney had anyone called these parents that were signed up to speak tonight and the answer was they did not know this is unacceptable for me as the board member sitting here representing palm beach central an excellent school a great football team for parents to come in here tonight to say that they couldn't even get a phone call answered to them when they tried to find out
219what was going on seminole ridge is my school too in district six and yes they had an issue but they did go back i want equal fairness for all of the schools and just a quick meeting a quick meeting a quick meeting outside these doors is not enough for me tonight dr fernando i have to hold you accountable and mr oswald because i want this straightened out i want people to have a chance to sit at the table and talk about these things that they said tonight somebody said they talked to dr alonso i asked for her to be here tonight because i needed to hear what she had to say about covet and i'm really disappointed that my district and palm beach central is out here having to beg for their children to play
220and we didn't respect our stakeholders the parents and i need something to happen mr barbieri through to the superintendent that somebody's going to spend some quality time and take care of these young people today it's really all about them that's why we're sitting in here tonight and i'm truly disgusted that i'm having to kind of have this kind of conversation with the leaders here and how you let the boys down let's get it straight now and give them an opportunity and too much [Applause] too much is being said from uh mrs alonso and the superintendent then why did we do something for one and we didn't do it for others and i don't want anybody adding the dog trying to make a decision tonight we when the daylight shines tomorrow i need to have a
221meeting set up so that everybody can understand what's going on and why do we do what we did so that we can give these boys an opportunity and if there's something that's really real that's different from what's happened with the other schools i need to know as the board member for district six why did it happen i'm not trying to macro manage but my role is to make sure that children have the best opportunities for success thank you all right board members we have four recorded four recorded non-agenda speakers so ask it to start playing those at this point good evening i'm palm beach county school of district and school school superintendent my name is brother carl mohammed and i'm calling as a non-agenda speaker you know after viewing the equity workshop that took place
222this past week i truly see we are still having major problems as it relates to wrangling with the word equity you know we tried from the community to introduce the school district to our big brother dr robert brown who has a book out called walking the equity taught a guide for courageously culturally courageous leadership in school communities and when we look at the problem with equity we can't fix something if we don't repair some of the damages that we've been uh that has been done particularly with the deficit model of curriculum that we have inside of our school centers on the deficit model is creating major problems and this is the biggest equity problem um that i think we need that we have and we've always worked as a community to work along with you
223guys as the school district i'm hoping that you would reach back out to us so that we can draw some conclusions to the idea of equity and one and lastly a fact check if you will you know uh with what happened with the principal in boca raton mr lesson we see that there was a lot of proclamations that this was the greatest human tragedy i would like to put up another suggestion as it relates to florida statute 100 3.428 and if you would look at the transatlantic slave trade where we are on an estimate of 50 million of our brothers and sisters on the low estimate were lost in the middle pass it's not counting the people that were here in the western hemisphere i think we need to do a real assessment of things
224that we announce and when we talk about tragedy we're going to have to look at what has happened to those of us who are the children of the slaves here in america here in the western hemisphere and i think it would help to better guide some of the conversation that had been given to our children as facts and i think we need to re revisit that and see if we can't straighten that out as well i want to thank you always for allowing me the opportunity to have a com comment but we also are planning an incarceration class on january the 16th um the weekend of the reminder became celebration we're asking everybody to focus their attention on some of the things that are needed inside the worst part of palm beach county school district
225thank you again and y'all have a blessed day hi my name is emily bayla b-a-l-l-o-f-f i'm a parent of twin second graders currently enrolled in palm beach county school district um and i have a non-agenda item topic here with over 10 000 cova cases in our state our school district and school board has a responsibility to ensure the safety amongst our students teachers and their families we cannot allow governor desantis to continue to bully by extending quote executive orders and quote without regard for the health and well-being of his constituents number one we must go back to virtual learning after thanksgiving and at the very least until winter break begins two please do not take away the distance learning platform this year if the governor decides that it should be removed school districts across the
226state must rise up and say no in the name of safety health and well-being of our students teachers and staff and their families three after winter break extend compassion and grace to all teachers who wish to teach virtually please allow them to do so without penalty please allow them to do their job in the best within the best platform that they are able to in order to continue to educate our children and keep their families and themselves safe from contracting this virus that has proven to be deadly by doing so you will most certainly be saving lives and excellent teachers from leaving the public school system all together thank you good afternoon i am dr gabriela mendes and as a parent of a student in the district and a proud member of the hispanic education
227coalition i want to welcome and congratulate the new member of the board miss alexandria alexandria ayala as a latina educator i am thrilled to have mrs ayala representing the latin families in the district the hispanic education coalition is looking forward to working with you and supporting you mr ayala in the promotion of equity and excellence for all minoritized students faculty and staff in the district best wishes of success hi good afternoon my name is lakela thompson i am a parent of a palm beach central football player and i just wanted to call and leave a comment in regards to the district's decision to cancel the rest of the regular season games this is something that i totally disagree with i don't think it's fair we were clear to not only go back to the school
228today which is the 17th we are also clear to start that practicing today we received an email saying that the games would be canceled until 11 29. i know for a fact there have been other schools that have had a similar situation and they were still allowed to play they may have missed one or two games and they were still allowed to make up their games and continue the season i don't feel like this is fair what you guys are doing to palm beach central high school there's about 20 something seniors on the team and they are really looking forward to finish the season um there are scholarships at risk like i said before the kids are ready to get back on the field they should not be treated unfairly glade central high school plagued
229them and they were not quarantined which again is not fair that all i have to say on this issue thank you board members i thought there was one more but that's the end um unless anyone else has anything we need a motion to adjourn this meeting motion by mrs whitfield second in my miss ayala any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries this meeting is adjourned thank you