School Board Meeting August 25, 2021

001All right, good evening, everybody. This is our regular meeting of August 24th, 2021. welcome everybody who is in the room and, oh, we’ve got a, we’ve got a celebrity signing. Welcome Senator Galvano has joined us. thank you, sir. we’ll get through the invocation and pledge of allegiance and we’ll get rolling. So if you could please join me, Roman golden is not here yet. We do have a quorum present of three members. So we’ll get started. If you could just please join me for a moment of silence to start meeting. Thank you. Thanks very much. If you could please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, board members, welcome Mr. Choate and, superintendent Saunders. yeah, we’re underway, with the, the school year

002and with it, we have, recognitions and, proud, the same name to bring a recognition for the finance department of the school district Amanti county. And we have a good amount of members here. Would you guys stand up Working with, the school board, superintendent Saunders and our leadership team and with the support of our community, the district finance department has helped establish a record of stability that includes improved ratings from global credit rating agencies and a steadily growing fund balance that exceeds state requirements. In addition, the association of school business officials recently awarded the districts finance department with its international certificate of excellence and financial reporting for the school district of Manatee county’s fiscal year 2020 comprehensive annual financial report. The association of school business officials stated that the award is a Testament to the Manatee

003districts, finance departments, commitment to transparency, and a high quality financial reporting. So, we had a couple key members of the finance department team that can’t be with us tonight. Tim Barger on the associate of business and finance, Tammy Taylor, director of finance, or both, not with us this evening, but the members that we do have here, we have Amber bank, us a budget analyst, and Britt could y’all raise your hand when, okay. And now I like them to come up here and I’ll get a photo of them with you guys in the background. So This will be on social media. Okay. board members and community, that’s going to bring us to, approval of the agenda, board members. I have one item I’d like to move, because I think it’s what, most of our public comment

004and most of based on the volume of our email, lately, and that is our new business, item, no superintendent recommendation, item number five, which is the board review and discussion of current data on school-based spread of COVID-19 infections and determination on extension of our existing emergency mask rule, board members, what I’d like to do, or what I will do with my, my leeway is the chair. I’m going to move that item, new business, number five, up to, I’m going to put it between approval of the consent agenda and before public comments. Okay. So that’s one we are going to make. Are there any other, amendments for the agenda before we approve? Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Chair. We’re gonna discuss it before public comment. Okay. And act on it before public comments. Yeah. Yes. These are,

005these are, I believe the two items that are going to that probably most people are here for public women. Right. So if we put them together, But if we hear public comment first, we have the opportunity to listen to the public and to take that into consideration. Here’s what I was thinking is that if we put it before a public comment, I believe, I don’t know, whatever. I’ve just concealed list of names. I don’t know what everyone has signed up for it, but I believe that a lot of people that have signed up for public comment would like to comment on that item so we can get to the item. We can hear those comments, we can discuss it. And then whomever is left. After that item for general public comment, they can then speak.

006So we will not take a vote until after public comment. What I’m getting it. Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. That’s what I was worried. Okay. All right. Anything else? All right. That’s what, all those, Madam clerk, you have, you have the straight word. I’m moving that between consent and public comment. Okay. all those, oh, sorry. Let me read my statement. the chair has found a good cost to amend the agenda, to include all items listed under agenda amendments on the August 24th, 21 agenda updated. well, frankly updated just now August 24th, 2021. And, posted to the district website, Manatee schools.net actually before what I just said tonight, our previous update was Friday, August 20th, 2021. Okay. We’ve put a motion to a secondary proof. Okay. I will. Yep. Okay. Thank you, Mr.. okay, so

007we’ve got a motion to approve the agenda as amended. All those in favor, please say, aye, press your green button. Motion passes. Mrs. Messenger, Mrs. Messenger, I believe is on zoom. I am you, are, was that your voice? I just heard say yes. Yep. Okay. Not, not the darkness I should say, but I, I heard a voice out of somewhere. So motion passes five to zero. Thank you, Mrs. Messenger. next up is, we have two items for reports and presentations. Mr. Barbara is going to, take a lead on our first one, which is our all access pass, which is our, which is our student library card initiative. That’s fine. All right. This is a really exciting initiative, not just for the school district, but really for our community at large, and to get us started

008on, letting you know exactly what this is. I have Dr. Sheila happened. She’s coordinator for the campaign for grade level reading and volunteer programs. Good evening, superintendent Saunders in board members. My name is Dr. Sheila and I am the campaign for grade level reading coordinator for Manatee county schools. The campaign for grade level reading is a collaborative effort by foundations not-for-profits business leaders, government agencies, states, and communities across the nation to ensure that more children succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. The campaign focuses on an important predictor of school success in high school graduation grade level reading by the end of third grade research shows that proficiency in reading by the end of third grade, enables students to shift from learning to read, to reading, to learn and

009to master more complex subject matters. Superintendent Saunders issued a call to action and challenged our community to collaborate efforts and to eliminate barriers for families for two years dedicated staff from the school district of Manatee county and the Manatee county public library have been collaborating. And we have developed a two generational approach to reduce barriers, to ensure that families have the necessary support and access to resources to be successful. It is our pleasure to introduce you to the all access pass. The all access pass will allow every student enrolled any Manatee county public school with their parent’s permission, access to public library resources and with a student’s identification number in pen, this initiative will empower families with resources so that they can help their children to achieve reading proficiency. We hope that you enjoy the

010coming soon, all access pass video that we will show to you now Soon, it will be easier than ever for Manatee county public school students to access resources at county public libraries, the Manatee county public libraries, and the school district of Manatee county present the all access pass, the all access pass, give students the ability to access the public libraries, vast resources using their student identification and pin with their parent or Guardian’s permission. All K through 12 public school students are automatically enrolled. The all access pass is coming soon. So make sure to follow Manatee libraries and the school district’s Facebook pages for updates, Please welcome Elizabeth Partridge library services manager with Manatee county libraries could evening I’m Elizabeth Partridge. Like she said, library services manager for Manatee county and good evening superintendent Saunders and

011board members. Thank you for having us here. last year I began my position with the library system. I was new to Florida, new to the community, and I quickly learned that the library and the schools had so much to offer, and we were doing their best to reach families wherever they are through partnerships and supporting each other. However, there was an opportunity to do more. I met Dr. Hellman and learned that the library system in the school district had been trying to remove barriers to access for kids. For years, we were determined to make this happen. Sheila, Tammy parrot our assistant library services manager, Dr. Robin Thompson. And I sat down to plot out a way to make this happen. Fortunately, Tammy and I had already established similar data sharing agreements in other communities and

012could apply this to our new situation. We work together with our legal departments for months to create a dare data sharing agreement that will allow children in the school district to have immediate access to library, material, and resources, using their ID number as their public library card number, removing many barriers with the all access pass, as it was described, the all access pass will provide access to physical and digital resources and will be a powerful tool available to kids, parents, and teachers to help students learn and grow. We are very excited to continue this amazing partnership and look forward to welcoming all Manatee county students into our libraries. Thank you very much. Any questions, Elizabeth? I have one real quick. The libraries are back open as of yesterday, correct? They are open as of yesterday

013and today. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Kennedy, we have treats for you. Yes. We are also going to be rolling this out publicly after September 9th. and so they don’t actually get to access things until then, but we are starting our outreach and awareness campaign now. So you can wear your lanyards proudly to let people know it’s on its way. And so Elizabeth does the student do they, they’ll just, they can come into the library with their, their school ID. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the biggest benefit is that they can access all of the online digital resources from home with their ID card number and they don’t have to come in and get a physical library card to be able. Oh, that’s great. Yeah. Yeah. Pleasure working on it. We thank you and your team. Thank you.

014Good night. Looking forward to it. thank you, Sheila, as well, to you and Dr. Thompson and superintendent Saunders for your leadership on this. Thank you. next up is Mrs. Messenger, remotely, to report on, her last visit with the greater Florida consortium of school boards. So Ms. Messenger, I’ll turn it over to you. Oh yeah. Thank you. yeah. So on Thursday and Friday, the greater consortium of school boards met, to really set and create our legislative platform. and I just want to highlight that that consortium includes Pinellas Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte call here, Monroe, St. Lucy Marion, Palm beach, Broward, and Miami date. And, just some facts that this consortium actually consists of 39% of all of the students in the state of Florida and 53% of the property tax base, and 48% of the senators and

015representatives in the Florida legislature. So there’s that, that’s, it’s a big encompassing area, with a lot of students. and so we did lay out our legislative platform. the president, is from Charlotte county, Bob Seger. He did send that out to the board. we, we need to add to our agenda for our next meeting, and review it. And if we want to strike any piece of that, we can, anything that struck out of that legislative platform is struck for the entire consorti any, cause it must be unanimously approved by every school board in order for it to be part of the consortium’s platform. but some of the other topics that we did talk about, we talked about, obviously masks that’s the hot topic. and I know that, at the last meeting, Mrs. Foreman had asked about

016how the different counties, compared. So there are 11 counties in that consortium. and as of I believe today, and it continues to change. So forgive me, but as of today, there were four that are completely optional. There are four that are mandated without an opt-out and there are three that are mandated with an opt out. So it really ran the gamut of how that worked. Now we know that we don’t know if the legislature will honor that or how they will work with that, but that was what the state board of education, request was. there was also talk about how that there was a bill that got put into place. And I think we brought it up in the last time we met about partisan races for school board, and even more interesting as part

017of that consortium is, Sarasota county, which is Shirley Brown. And Shirley Brown talked about how, when she was in the legislature, how it was partisan races and kind of talked about the positives and negatives of that, it could, it could very much change how our elections would be done. one of the other things that talk that was discussed was the federal money, I think, is the third pack, the three, and how Florida is still needing to submit to the federal, to the government for, guidelines and how it’s going to be spent a plan, that was due at the end of may. Great. Thank you, Mrs. Messenger, for members, any questions for Mrs. Mr. If I can answer that. It didn’t sound as if that was Sir. Okay. All right. Thanks Mrs. Master, next step, we’re

018going to get into, our action items. We’re going to start with our action items. superintendents honors for approval of the minutes, please. Yes, I’ll recommend the approval of the minutes from special meeting August 9th, 2021, regular meeting August 11th, 2021 school board workshop, August 13th, 2021. And the emergency meeting August 16th, 2021. Thank you, Mr. Choke, any phone like the second? That’s a good, I got a quiet group up here tonight. What’s going on? I’ve I’ve got, I’ve got some I’ll I’ll second to go ahead, Mrs. Form. Okay, thank you. on the minutes for August 13th, board workshop, item number four, school board internal auditor update. I would like to see added, that Mr. Griffel stated that the district I’ll I’ll get all of these to you, Amanda, that the district does not have a

019policy to prohibit incurring an expense prior to the board’s approval board member foreman requested that a policy be drafted for discussion by the board. And then, the second one would be the minutes from the August 16th meeting, page five. I want to change to board member form and inquired about the 8 24 21 meeting and suggested a separate one item meeting two. And these are the changes, the words to consider extending the mass mandate beyond 8 25, 20 21. I don’t remember exactly what it says, but, This is forming that what you said that was the second one you just mentioned was the August 16th meeting. Yes. Page five, page five is public. I, I have no objection. I’m just curious where you are. That’s all. Oh yeah, right. I’m sorry. Well I’m looking at

020the rain minutes too. Let me get it right here. You’re right. I’m looking, I was looking at the 11th, not the 16th. I see where you are board member form and inquired about the August 24th, 21 meeting and suggested a separate one item meeting for reconsideration of the motion. Yeah. And I, I don’t want reconsideration of the motion. It was a meeting to extension Center extension. Okay. Any other changes? Yep. That’s It. Okay. Yes. I would recommend the approval of the consent agenda for August 24th, 2021. Richard. You’re a mover button please. Oh, we have a second. All right. So I can find Mr. Choke all those in favor of reply, approval of consent. please say, aye. Aye, aye. Green button motion passes five to zero. Okay. That’s going to bring us to the item

021that I, moved, which is our board review And discussion. If you could please silence your devices. Thanks very much. board review and discussion of current data on school-based spread of COVID-19 infections and determination on extension of existing emergency mask rule. I do want to just get this out now. this is kind of has become my, my usual, warning and plea for decorum. folks during this section, during public comment, during board discussion, you’re going to hear things that you disagree with. everybody who has signed up to do so, will have a chance to speak and be heard on how you feel on these things. And, I would expect this board and everybody in this room to show you respect while you, share your thoughts. And I would ask that you all do the same, if anybody,

022breaks the quorum or interrupts the meeting or a public speaker, this is your warning. So statutorily after you’ve been warned, I can ask that you be removed. I obviously don’t want to have to do that, but everyone in the room has now been so worn. So please let’s be respectful of each other. Yes, I can. I sure can. So, let’s keep that in mind and we’ll go forward. this is no superintendent. This is, this is ours. but superintendent centers, I’m sure. I’ll, I’ll defer to you to take the lead on this one. Yes. The board wanted to discuss, data that we’ve had in place, dealing with COVID this school year and, you know, some changes in the dashboard and so forth. And many things have been put in place since we’ve last Matt. It does

023take a little bit of time with 50,000 students, but I do think we’ve finally now got our footing with the changes this year. It’s not exactly as we were last year. So we have had to constantly reevaluate with the health department on how we can best control the spread. So, I do have some data. I have Mr. Chapman available to come and speak, to give you that information, to answer questions. And we can also put the items up, I believe, electronically on the dashboard as well. Public comment statements? No, we can, we can get to it when we do, public comment. I think, most everybody in the room does notice the roles. Mr. Driscoll, are you, are you here, Mr. Driscoll? Are you on the phone? If so, please press star six on mute. Okay.

024Mr. Jolena and, Okay. So this has to do with the reports from the charter schools in the 19 schools, right. It’s part of that report. That’s in here that I read today, and I wish I had him here under the, the financial reports for the, charter schools, Charters. When about 50 pages of that. Oh my God. You got, you got three minutes. Go ahead. So is it a, is it on the consent or not, or is it open book? All right. If it’s not all right. So let’s talk about, Is the 1.1 million on the mental health in here? Yes. Okay. So I looked over that contract bunch of Lena for the record. I looked over that contract and I’m kind of confused if, if the mental health services are actually going at the schools

025or are they have to go to center Centerstone. And then I reviewed the 13 names. They look like they were interns. And I would like to know what their qualifications would be if we’re forking out one point, $1 million on that, if anybody can bring some clarity to that, at some point in time, I would appreciate that. the other thing is, is, is surplus property. you’ve got some camera gear there. I know the county, when they do surplus property and computers, they have a list of non-profits lined up and they’re entitled to do that. It’s better than going to east grant. And Doug and I had talked about it. So hopefully we can move in that direction on the policy, but you’ve got a couple of cameras there that, are worth 15, 20 grand. And

026yeah, they’re old 2005, maybe they outlasted their depreciation doesn’t mean they don’t work. And for us to scrap them is really concerning to me. When, when I had asked that maybe we could donate that to my, not to the church because we have no streaming there. So I just think there could be a better way of getting rid of surplus property is to recycle it through the community rather than, you know, doing it that way. So that’s a policy, you know, last year, you guys, you guys scrap the million dollar printer, right? Million dollars for printer, and almost took up a room. I went on their website the next week and they resold that printer for $49,000. We didn’t get no trade in how that’s, that’s bad governance. That’s that that’s not looking out for

027the best of our money. So, you know, the mental health, where’s the million dollars going to, again, I talked to the sheriff, I have no idea why his group is not at the table. His SRQ officers are at each and every school. And my, and our conversation was Andrew with him. Was that his big concern where the mental health of the middle schools and why isn’t he in any of these conversations? You guys never invite them. Why it’s our money? We’re paying him. If they can get something out of this 1.1 million and coordinate the efforts of the Sr officers that are already in those schools. Why would you not do that? I don’t get it. It’s it’s, it’s like the voter registration. Why aren’t you guys mimicking the county? I don’t get it. This

028double dipping and pain for different surveys and impact fees. You all get on the same page, because at the end of the day, you got three, three real estate taxes on me. The county’s got a half a dozen and we’re paying for stuff twice. We shouldn’t do it. The voting redistricting and impact fees should all be under the same umbrella. We will get you answers to those questions. Public comment, Ms. Griffin, you’re up next? Andrew Griffin, Florida activists, Manatee county. So, I’m going to keep this short and sweet on consent. I agree a hundred percent with what Mr. Glenn Gelina has said related to the minutes. I just want to make sure that the August 16th does reflect, Mary’s comments, that she was, willing to go all in on the mask mandate if that was

029not put in there. Okay. Thanks very much. so we’ll do one last call for Mr. Mr. Driscoll, Mr. Driscoll, if you’re online, please press star six. that concludes public comment on consent. again to our speakers, I apologize that I skipped over you, Mr. Doug, we recommend you revolt again after the public comment. Okay. Sure. Do we need to do a motion to rescind or like what’s the proper way to put this in Robert’s rules? No, I wouldn’t just, I would just, have, have another vote on it. Okay. you bet. All right. let’s do that again and again, to the public. I apologize for that oversight on my part. can we get a motion to approve consent please? in a second, I think I seconded it last time. I’ll second it again. All right. That’s all

030good. all those in favor, please say, aye. Aye. Aye. Turbo time motion passes five to zero superintendents honors. I apologize for that. Again, you have the floor. No problem. We were just about to bring up Mr. Chapman, so he could go over as well as answer any questions that you may have on not only the data that we have to date, but also, some changes that have even just recently be been made with our local health department. we are fortunate, as Ms messenger stated, we work side by side with them. They are really the health experts. We are not, but you know, this health situation is impacting our schools. So we’re very fortunate to have a very good partnership with them. And we really do seek their guidance in, in ways to mitigate and ways

031to adjust as we’re going through the school year. So I would like Mr. Chapman to also express some of those changes that have been put in place just recently. Okay, great. Mr. Chapman, we’ll start with you. Hang on one second. Yes. Before he begins his presentation, I want a little clarity on the, the language that we have here in the new business. No superintendent recommendation. Yeah. This says board review and discussion of current data on school-based spread of COVID-19 and infections and, and determination on extension of existing emergency mask route. And, the question that I’m asking is at the end of his presentation and at the end of all of the remarks will Al discussion then center on a determination on the extension of the existing emergency mask rule only, or are we going to

032review our policy all over again, relative to masks? Thank you for the clarification, because I also thought that we had had a discussion about the elementary school survey data in the context of a mandate opt out, whatever it is with respect to elementary schools. And as I understand that, we’re about to get data that has been collected with respect to the opt-out, all schools. And I’m wondering why we are not going to discuss under the heading of this matter, the survey data that was specifically Collected, but elementary schools, and you don’t have any problem with your breaking out the determination of the extension of existing emergency mask room. That’s that is one of the things that I think the attorneys said we could do here today, but I have a problem with is why are

033we separating the board discussion of the elementary school survey data from the board review and discussion of current data on school? They spread of COVID-19 infections since they both relate to the student bodies of all of our schools in Manatee county. Okay. The question was, do you prefer this is a preferential and always has been from the day I first uttered it. And we have yet to hear any information that has been gathered relative to the preference of any parents let alone elementary school parents, but I limited it to elementary school parents because we have no protection, at least from any health officials that I know of that protect elementary school or children under 11 from this virus. And so I’m wondering why we, once again, seem to be just not willing to discuss that

034situation in the context of the COVID 19 infections, that this, this is not something that’s done abstract. I am simply wanting us to have a total discussion and hear total comments. I, I know that we going to hear all of these comments. I don’t know that that makes a difference or that they should make a difference between elementary school children and higher than elementary school children. I don’t know why we all, we going to limit the public comment that comes in into what you’re saying to exclude any comments from parents who have an idea about the elementary school complications or implications of COVID-19. And I understand that, but you said that we would also have the opportunity to make any motion that we wanted to make sure. And part of any motion that I am

035inclined to be supportive of must involve a consideration of the elementary school children. And I’m concerned about that data being present before I take any vote. Okay. Well that’s if we can certainly take it down that road, if we’d like to. Okay. So is that to say that we will hear data, from four and five before we get into a determination on the extension of the existing emergency mass school, or is that another modification of, I don’t, I don’t see a problem with it. Mr. Died. You see, if, if we were to roll the survey data into this item, is that, is that a, is that a problem, but absolutely not. I think it’s related. you probably should do a, agenda amendment just to combine four and five before we begin. Yes. Just to clean

036up the agenda because even though we’ve already approved it, you approved five. Yeah. I think you can amend what you’ve, what you’ve already done to vote, to move item four of new business in with five oh, moved as stated by the board attorney. Okay. Do we have a second? I’ll second. Okay. Second by Mrs. Foreman. Any, comments? Alright. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. We’re gonna bring it all in together. Mr. Chairman. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, I, I, let me put it this way, you know, as we, planned over the summer, and as you begin to get closer, closer to that first day of school, and you know, you meet with the department of health and you, and you meet as a team and, you know, the,

037this is now the 11th day. I think those first, what nine days, were, trying to handle, and, handle the, the, the main priorities of the first nine days of school, and those priorities being, making sure that as this COVID surge, we’re seeing in the community as a whole and Manatee county, that those numbers and those, that surge, you know, we, we see a little bit of reflection in, in our COVID positive numbers here in the schools. So that’s something that I think there’s probably not a school district in Florida that really, yeah, you can talk about it, but until that first day comes and you start to handle it on the ground, that’s when priorities and systems and methods and everything we talked about is right in your face and ready to go. So what

038I’m talking about is, you know, our main priority every day at every school to make sure that as students arrive on campus, that, you know, hopefully again, no student is arriving sick, on campus. but those who are exhibiting symptoms are sick or sent to the clinic and sent home next priority is to, make sure that any child who’s identified as being COVID positive through their parent or through the department of health, those children are then isolated and obviously sent home. those are two main priorities every day. So in those first nine days, when you’ve got a hundred plus cases every day, you know, at your doorstep, you can imagine dealing with that. And then also dealing with, obviously, you know, the other hundreds of other kids who’ve got to get to class, you’ve got to

039get to the cafeteria of, you know, actually got to run a school. so, to handle those a hundred cases and do it safely. And it makes sure that we keep students and staff safe as we, as we get those cases off of campus. And then also then identify if any children have been exposed and then, you know, follow with those quarantines. and to do that, you know, with the team we have, is, you know, in the first nine days, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a difficult situation when you’re handling those kinds of numbers. So when you’re, when you’re dealing with your main priorities of making sure that sick children are being sent home, that COVID positive, children are being isolated, sent home, those being exposed and quarantined under new rules that we have that

040we just learned, what two days before school started, the department of education gave us the new rules of engagement when it came to when it comes to exposures and, and quarantine. So to train staff, to get all that information out to schools. So as I’m painting this picture, what I’m telling you is that the over those nine days to, to put up our dashboard, to report, you know, you know, quarantines during a process, that’s all new is, is maybe, you know, fourth or fifth priority when those first couple of priorities is to make sure that campuses are safe, students are safe and we’re making sure the kids are being sent home. So we’re now on the 11th day, right? We’re organized, we’re, we’re now reporting quarantines we’re reporting cases. and we’re going to do that

041as we continue. So, you know, that’s, that’s kind of what, what took place. And I think, you know, sometimes when, when the surge happens, you have to lead by saying, here are our priorities, here’s what we’re going to do right away. These are the main things we’ve got to need to do. And then some of these other things we’ll, we’ll get to eventually. So, that’s where we are on the 11th day. So, but that doesn’t mean that, you know, let’s remember communication was always sent to parents. those parents were always notified. The school communities and campuses were notified. Again, that’s one of those priorities that comes before we eventually get to updating the dashboard. but now we’re at a point now where we can update that dashboard daily with very accurate, transparent numbers. And I

042should caution too. You know, when you’re dealing with, you know, in some days 150 cases, sixty, seventy, a hundred seventy cases, you know, it’s going to take a day or two to finally get those correct numbers to the dashboard, because remember, you’ve got to go through the whole process, getting the children off of campus, getting the department of health involved, to do contact, tracing, contacting those parents, figuring out, you know, as you’re quarantining 50, 60 children, you’ve got to figure out vaccination status. And whether they’ve had COVID before, whether they have symptoms explained to parents the four day quarantine seven day quarantine, that those are all the priorities that need to happen first, then get all that data, put it into our system, get it to the, to our district operation center, the dish opera

043operation center, sorting that data, then reporting it and then eventually getting on the dashboard. So that’s why there’s a little bit delay here. And that happened in the meeting last year, too. But, you know, once we probably get into the third week, it will, it will pick up and become faster, but, but are, but remember, those were the, one of those priorities in between. There is we got to make sure that we’re always communicating to parents and to the school community. And that is that it’s very important so that parents can hear in a connected, there was a case in my child’s classroom. I didn’t get a call about my child being exposed. So, so I know that it didn’t affect my child, but the case I know now was in my classroom as a

044parent, I can make a decision, right. Maybe I keep my child home. Maybe I send them in with a mask, you know, all kinds of decisions, but we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re making, we’re making sure that, that communication and that transparency is there and it’s happening that day. Mr. Chapman, you’ve given us an excellent, review, data as it relates to COVID-19. Do we devote these kinds of resources and this much attention to measles rubella, the flu, strep throat? Well, I, I understand your question. I think we, we, we do, and we would, if, if we saw, an outbreak or, or, you know, the numbers, what we would, we would see, I mean, obviously our, our nursing staff, our medical teams, if they saw an outbreak of one of those, illnesses or issues, you know,

045we have a board policy on that that, you know, we would act on that. So, so yes, if, if, if we saw numbers like we’re, we’re seeing now, Okay, so what’s driving your decisions and what’s driving your perspective is the number of people that are impacted the number of children. So the other diseases, and the other day there is that occur. They are nowhere near this level, Right. Which is also a reflection of what’s going on in Manatee county and across the state of Florida. So, any of the other communicable diseases, I think that’s how we describe our policy. Are any of them, based on the health, authorities, as deadly as this is potentially, I, I don’t know if I’m capable of answering that question. You might have to ask the department of health, but,

046but you know, in the beginning of school, every year, we see, you know, strep throat and different things that happen as kids come together. but, but that, that answer I’d, you know, I’d have to defer to the department of health, But it is fair to say you haven’t had any data that has been furnished to you, that those kinds of communicable diseases are spreading as rapidly as rapidly. And as vibrantly as this COVID-19 is, As of right now, I, I don’t believe that that’s the case, right. I just want to make sure we’re not overly focusing on this as opposed to some other problems that our children may be having. And we are missing that There. And that’s what our clinic staff and our nurses do. A great job of is making sure. And that’s

047what they’re trained in is making sure if they do see other, issues and, and illnesses or diseases in their school, that’s, that’s reported. And we work with the department of health, and it’s one of the issues why, the, you know, many of our nurses work for the department of health and, and, because we work so closely with, with the department Question, that’s true. I hate to put you on the spot, but it has to be yes or no. We spoke about some numbers, especially in this day 11. So, for students who were gone for COVID quarantine reasons are now back in school, are we working on trying to get those numbers posted in the dashboard so that we can see a real snapshot of, Hey, yes, we may have had a hundred kids 10 days

048ago out, but those hundred are now back. Yeah. yeah, so I’m, I’m currently working with, with our data and it teams to, to make our dashboard more active, than, than static. you know, to your point to the daily quarantines, if the number’s 300, it’s 300 quarantines that day, but as soon as the next day happens, uh that’s that, that number changes, you know, up down. So, it’s not really a static number for very long, so yes, I’m working to make those numbers a little more active, a little more alive. Sure. Should we know, you know, as you were saying that the quarantine numbers are static, do we, and, and you have every day new kids going into quarantine kids coming out. do we know on any given day today would be a good day to

049know, how many students in total are out either in quarantine or isolated. I could get you that number using our, you know, focused system because we use, you know, attendance codes for all of this, but, for the district operations center, when it comes to COVID, that’s not something that we’re, we’re, we’re looking at in each, each, school, you know, is tracking that, that data when it comes to attendance and, and who’s out on which quarantine and, and who’s out on, you know, COVID and all of that. If you ever go to a school, I don’t know, they probably can’t share that data because it’s HIPAA, but, but, you know, they have very, well organized, you know, spreadsheets and data charts that show, you know, when each child is coming back and, and how many kids

050are out and so on and so forth. And then also that’s in our, student focused system as well. Well, I’m hearing an emails from, from, from parents that there are classes that are half of the kids are gone. the, I think that’s very important data, for the board in, in our decision-making for us to know how many on a given day or out, one of our districts to the north, they have an item on their dashboard. It’s just one box. And it says, it’s identified as a number affected, and that would include students and staff who are quarantined and isolated, and they have that number and then have a number for the total population and in their percentage. And, I mean, that, that is what we, that is our quarantine number. That’s that’s on our

051dashboard is so, so yesterday I think it was 411, so that’s 411 plus the one, the positive cases. Those were the ones who were sent home. Yes. On that day. That’s my point is that we, you know, on that day, I want to know about the kids that were sent home last Friday that are still out, you know, and, you know, total number, We can work on that system, but remember, that’s, that’s a very, D you know, to do that across 49 schools, you know, each school is handling that, on a very detailed, But there, you got 411 here. Let’s say, let’s say the next day we’ve got 500. All right. So you got 911. The only number you’re missing is who went home, who went back to school, right. And, and the school should

052be able to provide you that, all right. I will, I will try to develop this, a system it’s similar to what Mr. Joe was saying. It’s similar to, to an active number of, of, of on today, how many kids are out today for a COVID related issue is something I can, I can work on. I think that That’s, that’s what I’m headed. Yeah. Just remember. And I know, you know, this, but just for the public, remember there’s many more variables this year than last year, you know, we’ve got, you know, on any given day. Yes. You’re sending kids home, Cho students home, but on that day, you’ve got students testing back. You’ve got students, you know, who are coming back on their fifth day or their eighth day or their 10th day or a day

053in between, because they could be testing out of being COVID positive. So that number is even, even if I provided that number right now within an hour, that number is going to keep changing. So I, I’m just, just telling you that this is, it’s a very fluid number. as we, as we deal with the many variables and ways to come back to school, that department of education laid out, laid out for us. If I asked you how many were in quarantine today, or in isolation today in total, could you estimate what that is? Are we talking about 1,005 thousand? I, I would have to look at, I would have to look at the data. I would have to look at the data because I don’t, there is a number I don’t have that readily available,

054but, but remember the school is, I don’t want to appear, like we don’t know the number. Every school knows what child is coming back every day. I mean, that, that’s something that, that is in constant communication with parents and, and, and school administration is, is when their student body and the fluctuation of the student body, But they are reporting it to the administration. Right? Yeah. They’re reporting every case. And how many children are being quarantined, whether what child is on, what day of quarantine or what quarantine they’re under, is it, that’s not, what’s going to the, okay. I don’t want To belabor this. You, you understand the w the number I’m looking for and I got you. I understand. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. ladies in the back, I don’t want to have to

055remove anybody from the room. So if you could keep your conversations to a whisper place, superintendent Sanders very quick, I’m just passing on some, some questions. And these are for the benefit of the community and our employees. how often are you communicating with principals about changes and updates to protocols Two days a week? but some, some times more than twice a week, the last update we had was last night, we’ll have another update tomorrow. and it will be, it was like that last year until we feel that all proper systems are in place and everything is as kind of rolling out as it should be. So when we feel that, either changes are coming to us from department of education or department of health, then we of course schedule a call to make sure that

056everybody’s on the same page. In addition, offset teams out to schools this week, just to make sure that we’re being compliant with the expectations and to assist those that may need some help, to get their systems in place individually at schools. I know we’ve had, you know, a lot of plastic DeShields sent out and so forth. So we’re verifying and make sure that they’ve got everything that they need. We’ve also expressed. And this is one of the things that I think Mr. Chapman may be. Speaking of lunch was always a big concern. remember last year we started with 50% capacity. We’re at a hundred percent. We’re, we’re over our enrollment from last year. And I’ll talk about that later tonight. So, we are coming up with different methods that they can spread kids out at

057lunch. Cause we know you can’t be masked if you’re eating so, we’re using courtyards in other areas. We want to limit classrooms because we really don’t want those to get dirty, from instructional usage. But we’re, we’re looking to see the deeds and then we’re modifying suggestions. our director of food service is providing picnic tables and other tables. If people need to use courtyards or other awning areas for additional tables, just to spread kids out. So we do have frequent conversations and I would expect we will continue to have that until labor day, usually after labor day, like anything things tend to get in a rhythm. We tend to have enough protocols and systems in places from the changes. And that’s what we’re expecting now. So multiple times a week, we will be continuing and they’re

058virtual meetings, at the end of the day. Okay. another quick nuts and bolts question. how do we account for in our student information system? do, do we have a separate for, a student who was out as a positive case versus a student who’s out as a quarantine or are they all categorized together? And I think that’s part of the problem that I’ll talk about of why he’s having a difficult time answering both of the board members questions. Last year, we had identified some different, had different codes that we use to determine if they were out excuse positive, or quarantined, et cetera. This year, the state gave us a code that we’re supposed to use because really the codes are set by the state for attendance. And they’ve given us a cue code, but it can

059only be used if they’re out in receiving live instruction with the teacher. In most cases, that that is not occurring because if you have just isolated individuals and a class or half a class, the teacher is still teaching in their classroom. They cannot instruct those children at home. So we do have some that if a whole classroom is being quarantined, the teacher in is also quarantined at home. They are able to deliver instruction. So the teacher is not marked absent and the children are not marked absent. So, we do have that code right now. It’s very difficult as our system is set up to distinguish between an excused absence for a broke my arm. And I need to go to the doctor versus I’m out because I’m, COVID positive or I’m out because I’m on

060quarantine, they’re all excused, but that’s it. It’s very difficult to distinguish that. So we will have to go back and figure out how we can decipher between the regular student that’s out for any attendance reason, and those that are out for these purposes. Okay. Reverend golden has let to speak. I have a question I was going to get to, and you just touched on it. At what point do we decide to quarantine an entire classroom? Well, those are one of the things of changes that we, just derived out with the department of health and, and the number is three on either that day or consecutive days. And, and there’ll be sent home on a seven day quarantine for, for Not a four-day and you’d come back in. So that, that is the thing. And Ms.

061Messenger, when, when we’re done also, she’s saying, don’t forget, messenger has a question, but that is the issue. Last year for person was out on quarantine. It was 10 days, well started with 14, then it went to 10. You couldn’t test back in. It was 10 days. It was easy to manage a know if they’re out. That that’s what it is. Now. It can be four, it can be seven, it could be 10. So we will come up with a method in a system, but it’s not as simple as it was last year. And the volume of numbers are different too, but that is something that we will definitely work on so that we can see the rolling coming in and coming out because you could be out and you can get a negative test.

062You can come back in, even though we may have said you’re out for, for 10 days. So it may not be 10 days. You can come back at day five. So the rules changed this year And it would have been nice if we had those roles within more than a week of school starting, Right? Because we could have had many different systems and methods programmed and in place. So that is part of the issue was trying to adjust to the changes that happened this year compared to last year. I know people felt so much better about last year it’s apples to oranges. There, there were so many factors that were different than what we’re facing this year. And we are getting a handle of it. There’s no doubt about it. And we’ve adjusted and adapted

063and we’re feeling better. I can tell you we’re feeling better today than we did day one of school. But, the issue is the variant was different. The rules were different and we have twice as many children in the building and we’re grateful for that. That’s where they need to be. We just need them all safe and secure as well. Okay. Thank you. Superintendent Sanders, Reverend golden and then Mrs. Messenger, I’m going to come to you after Reverend golden. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, I’m probably not looking at this the right way, but I, I really need some clarity here in Manatee county schools. Is there a standard bright red line that prevents you from coming into the school and that is applicable in every school? So we have that. Yes. When you get inside the

064school, do we have the same standards in each school to determine who must now leave the school? Yes, it’s so, so it’s not like if I go to this school, there’s some wiggle room about whether I can stay or not, or if I go over here, but so the same standard to get in. And once I get in the same standard to send me home. Right. Okay. Then are there different standards in different schools to let me back in or do I go back to that bright red line to let me in, to begin with? Because I keep hearing, well, we can send you home for 10 days. We can send you home for seven, or we can send you home for five days. That’s a health issue and a health question, but you still

065got to come back in through that same door that we put you out. Is there a different standard that we use to let people back in who have been sick? Then we let all of the other children in that come in every day. Yes, sir. It is. If you’re COVID positive, it’s 10 days. So, unless you can, receive a negative test in time, but if you’re positive, we’re not seeing any or getting a negative test. So if you’ve got a COVID positive test is 10 days. So that’s a sick case. If you’re quarantined the state of Florida or the local health department, the state department of health came up with different protocols to limit your quarantine time. It used to be 10, but if you’ve been vaccinated or had COVID or you test negative in

066the quarantine, but that standard applies to every school, every child, if your standard sick, just Johnny’s home sick. Cause he had a runny nose because we send everybody home now with a runny nose or anything. they are able to come back in with a note from their parent, if it’s just a standard illness, those same rules apply as they did before. And then that is turned into the attendance clerk as well. You’ve given me four examples of different ways that you can come back in the door. And they’re the same for every school. That that’s my point. They’re the same for every school. And all of them require that you be well correct? That is correct. So we don’t let any children back in who have been out because they’re sick. If they still are

067sick. Am I correct about that? I will tell you that the first week of school, first couple of days of school, what we experienced that there were children and adults that came into the buildings that probably should not have. And when we had further discussions, it’s the first day of school. We don’t want our child to miss. We don’t want to miss it the first day of school. And it took us two days to figure that that was a problem. And we had a meeting and put in protocols, everybody’s checked now immediately when they walked in the door, the expectation was the same as last year. No one comes to work or attend school ill, but that is not what happened. So we had to shore that up and that we did see some of

068that the very beginning of the school year. Yeah. Can I answer that? Does that sound like a good question? for me to answer, but We’re spending a lot of time up here trying to deal with things that we can’t control. We can’t control parents who are going to send their children to school sick, no matter what we can’t control, how long children stay out sick. The environment that we’re trying to deal with here is what do we do with a child that comes to the door that is sick. We send them home and we don’t let them back in the door until they’re no longer sick. So whether they are sick for five days, 10 days, three days, whatever, whoever determines their sick from where they got a broken arm, they don’t get back in.

069So we’re trying to protect the environment and the children in that environment. I just want to be clear children then, and the staff, absolutely. In that environment, once you get inside that door, you ought to be able to be safe and we’ve walked there, have done everything we need to do to keep you from bringing something in there. And so I, I, I thought maybe I’m missing something here in terms of, well, what do we do if, and what do we do then? And what, what’s the difference between 5, 7, 3 days? The bottom line is when you walk out the door sick, you stay out until you’re. Well, okay. And Reverend, we have these, these are our, these are our working charts. So this is up wherever you go to any school, this is

070in our offices and clinics. And these are all the decision trees and all this. Yeah. I’m sorry. I thought I read Mr. Received those. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Well, they were updated this week. One speaker at a time please, one speaker at a time they were updated this week, when we got some new modifications from the state and the state department just lightly, but they predominantly look like that. Okay. So, so the bottom line is we are changing as quickly as we know, we need to change what we do to let you in. You said the first day we let you in on your word. Now we, now we use one of those things that they used to use right out here. They put it up to your head and everything. All right. So we

071are trying to adapt to an ever changing. Just like the virus itself has changed. Now we on Delta 75, I guess. I don’t know. But the bottom line is that we are changing as it changes. And that’s what I meant by the first nine days was making sure our priorities, those are our priorities and that now we’re finally getting to, okay, let’s, let’s start to now organize the data in the right way and make sure that we’re as transparent as we can on our dashboard and so on and so forth. But our priority was to make sure that we’ve got systems in place to make sure that those sick kids and the COVID positive kids are sent home and don’t have an impact on our campus. Thank you. Now, what about the vaccines for the

072children? Who is that? That shouldn’t sound like Ms. Messenger. It was not. I missed the message over the floor and then Mrs. Warren. Oh, okay. Thank you. I had a few questions. I want to go back to the school codes question. I now understand better, cause I have her constituted teachers that they feel like they’re not getting as much information. and now I kind of understand why is there a way that we can utilize focus, to better inform our teachers, create a different kind of code, like what we had last year. I believe Mr. Chapman, we will go back and look and, and see the new code that was provided and how we can disseminate the data. So we will definitely go back and work on that and with the health department, in conjunction and,

073and trying to make those adjustments. Absolutely. Okay. I had another question and it was about, confirmed cases then the number that you could out is that number coming directly from the health department in when a positive test or does that have anything to do with have a parent report said, or I guess I want to make sure how is that number derived? Yeah, very good question. Mrs. Investor. So, the schools are, are, are learning, of, of positive test results, through, through mostly the parents and then confirmed with the department of health. There are some cases where the department of health will come and say, you know, is, is Kevin Chapman at Braden river high school today? because he shouldn’t be because he’s positive, you know, and then we, and then we checked, but, the, these

074are, and, and, and, and for the most part it’s, it’s it’s, you got to remember if, the testing sites in Manatee county, when you get a rapid result, you know, you know, within the hour, and PCR test, you know, most likely in two days or perhaps three days. so we, you know, obviously have a policy that students and staff need to stay home and away from work and school when they’re waiting on a test result, for obvious reasons. Yes, we’ve. We, we follow all guidance from the department of health. So, Dr. Betsy and her team provides us that guidance on acceptable, COVID tests. we have them listed on our website and at all our schools, and we accept those tests and those tests results, whether negative or positive, a, a positive, rapid, or a positive

075PCR is your positive and negative, either way. So, that we depend upon the guidance and the advice of the department of health. And that’s what we follow when it comes to the test results. Okay. I have another question. and it’s about, and I had emailed this and you didn’t give me an answer, but I just want to put this out there for the board to hear them for the public to hear. And it was about testing at schools. One of the things that I’ve heard from parents is that, you know, their child has been quarantined. They don’t really want to go stand in a line with people that presumably could be sick, to get the test. and, and I do that, you know, if their child is healthy, they don’t want to go stand in

076the line for several hours with people that could not be. and so one of the questions I had asked you, was, is there a possibility, oh, and the other concern was from employees or employees that, could get tested, at our clinics if they have our insurance, but if employees don’t have our insurance, they can not go get tested, without paying $70, which is a big expense for an employee. and so my other question was about offering testing at our schools, either for employees or for students, of course, I would expect the parent to be there if that is going to take place. but that might give a parent that wants their child back in school. And the child is healthy, an opportunity to get them tested in a safer environment than at the testing site

077waiting hours, or, so I guess my question is, is there any plans to offer some sort of testing for employees or students at our school? Yeah. Very, very good questions. so let me answer a couple of them. so first, in cooperation with, MCR health and our two MCR health clinics, one located at Manatee elementary and one on the campus of Southeast high school, staff, can, receive, a COVID, PCR rapid test at either of those locations by making an appointment. Yes, you’re correct that if you’re on our, insurance plan, that cost is covered by the insurance plan. but MCR health also accepts, other, insurance plans. and if your, one of your plans is one of those that they accept, obviously that cost is covered. and then yes, you’re correct. there is a cost, to those tests

078because it is a, rapid PCR test. It’s a rapid antigen test. If we had Dr. Hopes here, he’d probably be corrected me on this terminology, but, what the difference is, is, is, think of it as a PCR test, but rapid. And if you go to many of you who have been to an urgent care, to get tested, that’s that $150 test that you take there. that’s the rapid PCR antigen test for $150. That’s the same test that MCR off is offering for $70 at those two clinics where again, our insurance covers it or some other plans may cover it. and yes, Mrs. Messenger, I have a meeting, the superintendents medical advisory group, is meeting tomorrow, where this topic will be discussed with Dr. Bensi and the leading physicians in the county. so that we can,

079come up with a plan of attack on this. the department of health has already offered us or the school district, their mobile, vaccination and testing, vehicle bus, if you will. So again, working with the medical advisory group, MCR health, the health department, we’re going to be providing what you just said, a 10 more testing opportunities, more vaccination opportunities, as quickly as we can put them together. and the superintendent, also, put in an incident, incentivized vaccinations, where if any employee is fully vaccinated, they get a, a one flex day, to use, during, the year til the end of June. So, that, is obviously an incentive to, to get vaccinated. So, we are working very hard to, you know, provide, more testing opportunities and more vaccination opportunities for our students and staff. I have a question real

080quick. I’m sorry, Mrs. Messenger one second. Okay. Okay. I’m not in the room to be able to elbow you, or thirst. I understand. I ha I just wanted to clarify something that Mr. Chapman said, so that it’s very clear, Mr. Chapman, you are not, advocating to mandate vaccines. You are just saying you want them available to anyone that is interested that is eligible under, correct. Absolutely. And, and also, that is a parental issue and a parental choice to have their child vaccinated and, and a parent or legal guardian must be present with any child who gets vaccinated, who is 18 and under. and that, that is a, I think that’s even a federal rule. So, again, that is a parental choice in a, in a parental, option. Okay. Thank you. And just one last thing,

081Mr. Chair, if you don’t mind. Yes, sir. Mr. Chapman, you sent us an article, today, I think it was in the Boston Herald and it cited, studies and research from USF and USF, I believe, I think were the two university cited. And it was talking about kind of what Mr. Kennedy had brought up, at a previous meeting about this wave, that we’re in right now with the virus. and how both of those, universities predicted that really, I think today was the peak and that we would start to see you down to her, which I actually think was also reflected in Mr. Kennedy’s graphs that he had presented from, I think, another source. And he can say what that is. I’m not sure. and so I guess my question to you is, there’s, I know that

082there are some people that really keep a close eye on that percent positive rate. and there’s some that don’t fully support believe in it, I guess, because they feel like it’s not a huge pool of people that are getting tested. can you speak to, what is the percent positive rate for the last seven days and how has that changed? And also, can you speak to how many people have been tested, in this past seven days, just to, discuss or understand what those numbers are really looking like for us and Manatee county? I think you then maybe Kelly has that from, that I sent with those numbers. So we’ll pull that up, but, Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Bensi from the department of health sends us those, that data, those data points every day. let me just

083talk quickly about that. so you have as a university of Florida chart that a graph that, chair Kennedy had put up at the previous meeting, university of Florida, university of south Florida, both concluded on two separate studies, independent of each other, that, that peak in Florida, would be reached either this week or next week, and, something like 30,000 cases a day. and then because of herd immunity, because of, more and more people getting vaccinated, that eventually, by the mid to late September, both studies concluded again separately and independent of each other. That, by the end of September, we would be back to, where we were in may, we’re a 5% or 3% positivity rate, in local and local areas. So something positive to talk about, but, I know that the seven day, positivity rate in

084Manatee county has actually dropped 2%, in the last day or two, it’s now down to 17%. it was, you know, as we all know up in the twenties. and I think, I don’t know if we’re finding it, but, I, I, so I don’t know the number of, tested, but we do know more and more people are getting tested every day. and as more and more people get tested, the positivity rate, like I just said is as, as gone down a little bit. So, so somewhat of a sign, but, you know, obviously we can all agree. 17% is high, As long as Ms. Messenger asked the question and Kelly, if you could, could you bring up that the slide with the USF modeling, age? this is from DOH today. I appreciate them getting this to me

085late afternoon. These are numbers from August 16th, August 23rd, from ages one through 11. the positivity rate was 18%. And remember, and I’ve made this mistake before. That doesn’t mean that 18% of one through 11 year olds are COVID positive. It just means those that have tested 18 are positive. an age 12 through nine, the positivity rate is 16%. And I think we’re, I think we broke 60%. I think it’s 62%. I could be wrong. So, hesitant on that number, but 62% of Manatee county is vaccinated. now I know Ms. Foreman is probably, I think you’re already probably looking at what’s the vaccination rate of those 18 and under, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s that number again, the department of health would have, we’d have to ask my email. Okay, good. Okay. I

086got that today too. all right, Mrs. Messenger or anything else? Oh, by the way, Mrs. Messenger, we have up on the screen. She is south Florida found the same concluded the same, Yeah. In fact, board members, have I cut for one second during the, the case of the parents versus the governor yesterday? One of the plaintiff’s, witnesses was a doctor. I think his name is mash from the university of south Florida. He stayed, he, he gave the same information independently of the university of Florida. So that, that same curve was his, his projection as well. Okay. Reverend golden, Mrs. Messenger, were you finished? Yes, I’m good. Thank you. Robert Golden and then Mrs. Foreman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. in previous meetings, we have heard that the highest rates of positivity in Manatee county are in

087zip codes, 3, 4, 2 0 8 and three to 7 71. And I’m just wondering if your medical advisory committee, is going to weigh in on how to, deal with the disproportionate, numbers of cases that arise in those two zip codes and not just, in terms of students and staff, but what I’d really like to know is if there’s an appetite to try to help the community cope with the disproportionate number of black and brown people that are impacted by this, by this virus. Yeah, I will, I will raise that issue and ask that tomorrow in the, in the medical advisory group, and also in teams and zoom meetings. And I participate in with county officials, health officials, that topic does obviously come up very, very often, and there are many efforts to try to,

088help, lower those lower those numbers. So there, there is an effort, but again, I, I wouldn’t be the one to It’s. All right. I’d like to maybe put this out to my colleagues on the board, whether there is an appetite to open up some of our schools, particularly in those zip codes, to make it more accessible, to, particularly black and brown people, poverty, who might find it difficult to get any other place to be tested. And certainly don’t have the $70, because they don’t belong to any kind of health plan. So, that, that is something that is of concern to me. And I would like to, hope last summer, I’m paralleling this to what we did when we opened the five schools when they closed. And we had ha what, wifi hotspots that allow people

089to come to churches in the community. And I’m not so sure that that would be the same way we could approach this, but I’m just wondering since we already have nurses at schools, if people in the neighborhoods in that area could get to those schools and consider being tested and, or vaccinated, and that, I don’t know what the impediment to that is, or if there’s any liability that precludes that from happening. But I do know, as a matter of fact, that in Manatee county, those two zip codes are disproportionately impacted. So, Well, maybe I’ll take that and take it to our group tomorrow. Tomorrow’s meeting and ask Dr., to maybe tell an for me and the county officials who were on, what those efforts have been and currently are, and I’ll, and I’ll report back

090to the board, perhaps what those efforts are. And then from there, maybe we can figure out how we as a school district could, could, could help in those efforts. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ms. Foreman, and then board members, just so we have a target, I’d like to be done with this item at seven, so we can start a public comment, but that’s just the target and, and mine’s quick. I want to follow up on something that, the superintendent said and Reverend golden, asked about in his questioning. you said that if a child has the runny nose, okay, they have to go home, but they can come back the next day with a parent note. Doctor’s note, her parents know if they have no symptoms, they cannot be back, at school,

091with any symptoms of illness. Okay. So they had that runny nose still the next day. They can’t come back. Okay. And there’s no COVID related issue. Right, right. It’s just the runny nose illness. Right. Okay. And that same applies to our staff. Well, no, but let me, let me answer this way. So remember we have in our approved list of, of COVID tests. So, so if there’s an at-home test or whatever, they’re all approved by department of health and the department of health helps us verify test results. when it comes to contact tracing, I let me put it this way. Many, many of our cases pop COVID COVID positive cases. And I think that maybe go to what Reverend Golan was maybe suggesting before, you know it, when you’re even in this setting right now,

092you know, no one is sneezing. No, one’s coughing, no one’s showing signs of fever, chills, you know, those type things behind us, but in two days from now, right, we could find out that two people in this room were tested positive that day. So today’s Tuesday. So say Thursday, somebody behind me. He says, Kevin, I tested today. Cause I woke up with a fever. I went to get a test I’m positive. Okay. Well that means 48 hours from when either symptoms started or from when you got tested, if you’re asymptomatic, you were infectious. So that means someone was, was here infectious. So Mo lot, many of our cases in our schools is really, that’s how it’s evolving. So, so, you know, you don’t think about it as well. Geez, couldn’t you just find that COVID

093positive child in the class and send them home? Well, we don’t sometimes know that that child was positive until a day or two after they were already in that classroom. And quite frankly, it’s not really anybody’s fault if you will, because that child went to school fine. There was no symptoms. They feel fine. And two days later they woke up and had a fever or congestion or whatever it is. So, and again, for the most part now, now that we’re on our 11th day, most parents are keeping those sick children home and getting them tested. I think parents are doing a very good job of that. And we want to keep encouraging that obviously, because we don’t want you to send your sick child to school. but as we, then, then they test that day.

094We find out they’re positive. so then we’re tracing where they were the last 48 hours. So I know that’s a long answer to your question, but so as parents call in and say, Kevin wasn’t at school today, meaning me. because, he woke up with a fever, because of everything that’s going, you know, you hear from a parent, since everything is going on, I wanted to get him tested. So I either called the doctor, went to urgent care, waited online, whatever it was got tested. I’m hearing from parents that they are, their child is being quarantined, but they were exposed days earlier. Right. You know, that it was, they were slow to be notified. are we notifying the entire class that there is a COVID positive child in the class? As soon as we know there

095was a COVID positive case in that classroom, a connected is sent out. you know, well, first of all, go back to what I just said, right? The first thing to do is contact trace and get any children who might’ve been exposed out of the classroom and then deal with that. and then that evening, connected is sent out to the, to the rest of the parents in that classroom whose children weren’t affected because they weren’t directly exposed to notify them of that. There was a positive case in that classroom. but if you weren’t separately notified, then your child wasn’t deemed directly exposed. And that goes to what I said, whatever, how long ago, an hour ago, that, that then that parent can decide, you know, keep their child home or what, you know, whatever Are getting

096faster now, are we getting better at, It’s not, it’s not really an issue of, of, of something that we’re doing wrong. It’s, it’s just the timing of when we know there’s a positive case in that classroom. The example I gave you is, is the most common example is we’re not knowing of a positive case until that child is being kept home because they woke up sick, which is exactly what we need a parent to do. They then take them, test it again, exactly what we need a parent to do. And then they call the school with the test result again, exactly what we need them to do. And again, it wasn’t their fault for sending their child in the last two days, because there was no symptoms exhibited by that child. So those two, so

097those two days because of the CDC and the DOH rules, you have to then contact trays 48 hours back from when, from when symptoms started or when the test result. And so that’s when a parent says, and that’s understood, you know, that’s when a parent says, but I need, but my child’s been in there, you know? And so those days then count towards the quarantine because if those children are symptom free, they’ve already, let’s say in that example, they’re on their third day since being directly exposed to that, COVID positive, then they’re only out more day and they can come back the fifth day if they’re symptom free and test negative. So again, That story that I heard that just, yes, yes, yes. And again, this is because these are new DOE rules. We just

098learned them. You know, that’s where I go back to my beginning. This that’s a lot of training, a lot of information that needs to go to ours, flow to our schools to get trained within two days of starting school, then to parents and to communicate all of this, that’s why we’re on our 11th day, as the superintendent said, saying, okay, we got this where we’re, we’re making adjustments, we’re doing all the things, you know, keep improving and keep adjusting because now we, you know, can see the data and, and react. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, that’s, a great thing. And then also, I just wanted to reiterate with the superintendent, did you get last night with our principals? And again, on that point of always improving and adjusting and saying, saying vigilant and agile is,

099you know, when we see, three or more, positive cases happening in a classroom and in one day or, or consecutive days, that class is going home, on a seven day quarantine, not on a four day quarantine, but a seven day quarantine. And really that helps that helps everybody because you can send the whole class, for seven days, they can come back on the eighth day without testing, that the teacher can then teach that whole class as a whole, instead of piecemealing where you got some kids in class, some kids on quarantines, you don’t know if they’re coming back and four days and six days and seven days. So, I think for the, for the time being, until we see these numbers go down, that’s a great way to stop, and, and help help this surge

100a little bit. So again, that’s just an example. and also the example of, you know, working with our lunch periods and cafeterias to find ways to, spread out a little bit more, when they’re, when the children are masculine eating. and, we’re just gonna keep mitigating and keep improving and adjusting as we, as we go until we can get to the end of September and the university of Florida and the USF, or hopefully, right. And I can come back to you and say, we’re, our numbers are, are down and so on and so forth. So Mr. Chairman, I have two more quick things, and then I’d like to go through the elementary survey data. one is, this came from a teacher and I, and this is just, again, a suggestion for how we can get, we

101can get better moving forward. the teacher shared with, and the superintendent has, has seen the email as well, that when con there was, there was a case in her classroom contact tracing was done properly for all of the students that were around that child, but no one ever told the teacher. and so I think that might be a gap that we have in our, our contact tracing is focusing on, on the kids. And so, so the teacher kind of found out the next day in a roundabout way because of that. Everybody is lumped under the same heading and focus, like if the child’s not there, but the teacher’s not quite sure. Is it a quarantine? Is it a broken arm? Is it, is it a positive case? So that was just one piece of feedback

102that I wanted to share with the team. and just to let you know, teachers know that, you know, if, if you feel like you weren’t notified, we will certainly get on that. the other one too, and Kevin, if you could just real quick, this, this seems to have caught some people off guard over the past week is the difference between the three foot rule. If you’re wearing a mask and the six foot rule, if you’re not wearing a mask, or could you just remind the public, But then again, we’re following the CDC guidelines. We spoke to a Dr. Bensi yesterday, our chief safety and security, spoke to her yesterday. And, and to talk over to make sure that this was, that this was okay to do. And essentially, when, when you have a, COVID positive,

103student, who is mast, and you can then, contact trace three feet to anybody who’s also massed. and, and then if, if, if one of the other aren’t mass, then you got to go to the six feet, six feet circle. So, we just wanted to make sure that was correct. so that when it comes to contact tracing we’re, we’re obviously sending home, you know, cause obviously our goal is to keep kids in school, right. You know, that’s really where we want them to be, but when it comes to a COVID case, and we do our contact tracing, we need to send home those children who are deemed directly exposed. And so we wanted to make sure that we had that three feet rule, right. And, and the six feet rule, right. As we move forward here,

104so that we’re sending home, and quarantining, the, the, the correct children when it comes to being directly exposed, Uh we’re in golden. And then we’ll get to the survey Data. Yes. That, that, that was what I was hoping that we could get to them. You said seven o’clock we were going to end. So, can we need a few extra minutes to do that? That’s fine. Yeah. I Just wanted to give us a target so we can start hearing from You. So, I had asked about, conducting the survey amongst elementary school students and principals, and I sure would appreciate, hearing some information about that night. Yeah. I’ll kind of just do a quick overview and then let you all, kind of discuss the data. But then I think we’re pulling that up on the screen now.

105this was a, a survey we sent out to elementary, parents elementary school parents. I think it was, five days of, of, or six days of being able to fill out the survey. we had, about 4,600, parents respond. and as you can see from the screen, w with the help of, Dr. Evans, our deputy superintendent, organized the data, in a way where it’s, by each, elementary school. So the top has the district totals there. and then each school in alphabetical order is broken out, and how the parents responded. Oh yeah, that’s for sure. Sorry, my screen was up. Do we know how add the 46 34 responded? Do we know what percentage that is of total elementary is about 1918. I’m pulling up about 25%. I think there’s about 18,000 and change, elementary school students. So

106that’s about what percentage, but at 21 in four. Okay. Responded. Okay. And did we have many responses that had no preference? I noticed that this just prefer a mask only prefer no mask. There was a third category of expressing no preference. Well, the third question asked was, do you have, I’m sure I have it right. Do you have a preference, whether your student is in a mask or no mass classroom, right. Right. So do you have a preference whether your student is in a mask or no mass classroom and, 3000 said, yes. So yes, I have a preference. Whether my, my student is any or a no mass classroom, 360 said, no, I don’t have a preference. Whether my student is in a mask or no mass classroom and 1200, and some said, no preference

107to the, to the preference, trying to bring some humor. Dr. Golden. I understand it was slopping the drafted. That’s what he’s trying to say in front of all these people and let everybody know that the survey was no, I, I, no, I’m just teasing. No, but I, the author of this, I think that this is, that we finally have some indication from the parents in the community about what they would prefer. And, that is in bad by two to one, they, they prefer it to have their child in a math classroom. In addition to that, there’s another 3000, that answered that poorly drafted question, saying they have no preference, whether they are master or not master. So that’s important. Okay. That’s true. So we know that roughly 25% of the parents actually responded, we don’t

108know what the other 75% of the parents want, or we to assume that they don’t have a preference. They don’t. Does that make sense? I mean, so to me, this looks, it’s just incomplete data because I don’t know the other 25%, what I would assume if you’re applying back or you’re not replying back, you get this home, you don’t reply back. You don’t want them in a mass classroom, or you just said, I want them in a math classroom. I mean, maybe I’m reading that data wrong, but if my kids bring home something and I don’t ever report it back, that means I really didn’t care about what they brought home to get back to the school. So that’s where the numbers, I think we can pick one second folks. There can be no addressing

109the meeting from the audience. I can’t see who did that, but that’s the warning that I’m talking about. Speaking out, interrupting the meeting from the audience is grounds to have you escorted out. So please do not do that. How were they given th I know email, where they given that I know we saw a physical draft and our email where they given a physical address, Well, and they could’ve gone on focus too. Right. I believe that’s the opt-out. Okay. Okay. This was just a, a connected to all those parents. And then know, obviously they requested it paper. We would, we would have given them. Gotcha. Okay. we’re members, anything else? I’m pretty close. Pretty close to seven. Our, Our new number, and this is 1006 vaccinations higher, is 13,000 one hundred and thirty seven, twelve

110through 19 year olds in the county have been vaccinated. And that’s out of, just short of 33,000, young people in that age group. So out of 30 3012 to 19 year olds, 13,137 have been vaccinated that’s, vaccination rate of 48% For our, for our 12 to 19 year olds. And that’s up 3% from when we talked about this last week. Reasons. Okay. So that’s, that’s the idea that I’m just putting out for your consideration. I’m not making a motion, but that is the idea that is in my head. So, ward members, there’s certainly, and maybe, maybe there’s a, if there are not three votes for that, we don’t even need to talk about why I believe it’s legal, under the emergency orders. Why, why it doesn’t violate the parent bill of rights. but we’re not

111to that point yet. Reverend gold. Thank you, Mr. Chair. appreciate the idea. At least getting us focused in it know in a way, I’ve said from the beginning two things, Sorry. Point of order. Shouldn’t we have a second on it before we discuss it. No, that’s why I’m saying I’m not making a motion. I’m just, I’m just floating and that’s okay. We’re still, this is a little out of work, not out of work, but just doing it a little bit differently. I think we started out with a discussion is what we said we were going to, so I’m open to discussing anything. The thing that I’m concerned with here is that we have been locked in an ongoing battle, for some time now, not just on this issue, but on the battle for local control

112of school boards. And, I’m concerned about that. And my concern is heightened. What we are talking about is the health and safety and wellbeing of the children that we have charged over. And so, I, I, I would not like to even give the appearance of trying to pacify what I think is serious overreach, by the governor in this matter of public health. And what I, what I’m hearing you say is that we want to make this motion and we want to make it last until October. So October 1st, and we’re going to do this, under the, under the, under the, dress code. Well, I, we all read the newspapers. There are other school boards that have done that. That’s how they quote got around how they outsmarted and I’m, I’m not interested in getting around

113the governor. I’m not interested in outsmarting him. My charge here is to maintain as much local control as we love from the can and to not engage in this Tete, a Tete, we, we have several school boards that make up more than 40% of the population of the children in the state of Florida, as more than enough, but each of those sides to say grace over. So they don’t need my input in that regard. And I really hope that we could simply come to a serious discussion in Manatee county about what is in the best interest of the children in Manatee county, that the Manatee county school board can agree should be done, not withstanding what they’re doing and Duvall they, or any other place in not withstanding the coming looming crisis. That’s going to

114go through the courts and spend a lot of money that could otherwise better be spent. What do we want to do here for these children? Given what we’ve heard given the statistics? yes, only 25% of the parents in elementary school answered, but that’s 25% that did answer. I was going to overlook them because 75% didn’t answer is that, is that, is that the chance we’re willing to take is that, is that what we’re willing to try to accomplish here? That we’ll sacrifice 25% of our children to save the other 75% by saying no mask. So, I, I appreciate the sentiment. I appreciate the spirit, but I I’m, I’m afraid for a lot of different reasons. I’m going to have to stand my ground here, for the children that are not in this room. I look

115out here at all of the people here that are upset and concerned. I don’t see one black family in here, not one As I said, I don’t see one black family represented in here with children in schools, in elementary school, elementary school. Okay. One, well, look at the rest of the room, you know, I, and, and it’s okay. I do understand Mr. Chair. I know you that I know you have no control over 10 people right now. I know that that’s what they want you to do. That’s what they want you to do. And what I’m saying, what I’m saying is, regardless of whether some of the people in the room think I’m insulting to them, none of them Can we turn down the heat for one second? Can I I’ll come back to you?

116I gotta deal with this first. Give me one minute. If you could just say I will point people out directly, but if you just interrupted the meeting, can you please escort yourself out or we’ll take a recess and I’ll just have to direct the officers to take out the people. I just saw interrupt the meeting, But that’s not appropriate. This isn’t about race. Is it based on the color? We’re going to take a quick recess. So we’re off. Thank, thank you. Ma’am I appreciate your respect. I appreciate you allowing me to get it out in a respectful, Reverend golden, if you could wrap up your comments and then, we will, we’ll, we’ll get onto, if somebody else would like to make a motion about extending our current, opt out, Reverend golden, go ahead. Thank you,

117Mr. Chair, as I was saying, the issue before us, with respect to, this agenda item is whether or not we are going to extend the emergency order that we proposed last week that is set to expire tomorrow. The point that I am making is a point that is being made all over the state will all over this county, but all over the state. And that is that there’s a disproportionate number of cases that arise among black and brown people. You can’t deny that. And it’s not racist of me to bring that up. I sit here all night long and nobody else said a word about the disproportionate number of cases that arise in 3, 4, 2 0 8 and 3, 2 7 71. What would, what do you expect me to say? Nothing? And if

118it insults you that I have a mind and that I have a voice, I’m not going to apologize for that. That’s not my problem. You deal with it because I have sat here for better than two years now. And I’ve been called every name under the sun. And I’ve been described in terms in profane terms with some of your children present. And I’ve already said, I said, I’m not going to put up with that anymore. I mean, it’s just not right for you to have that air of privilege and superiority that anything I say is insulting to you or to anybody. And I’m not supposed to respond to that because I also noted that I haven’t heard one comment yet from any of the other members of the board, nobody objected to what I was

119saying. So, that’s fine. my concern was that we try to come up with something that really addresses the needs of all of the children in Manatee county, particularly the most vulnerable, the elementary school children Who have no protections, no vaccines. And you know what? I just need to say it because I try to be very direct. In my words, I said that there were no black parents in this room that had children in the elementary schools. That’s what I said. That’s what I meant. And I know that that’s true. Now, if that’s an insult to anybody who’s not black, I don’t see how that can be because I just opened the truth, Bourbon golden. The idea that I floated, which is essentially a mandate with only an opt-out for a documented medical or ESC reason,

120would, would that idea be acceptable to you if it was elementary only, No. That ideal would be acceptable to me though, if it was not hidden in the dress code, what this is, if you see an ad that people read that, read the newspaper, I read some superintendents, some play out that it was in Texas and Alex. Got it. Yeah. So I’m, I’m just saying, if we’re gonna stand up for the right thing, then we just stand up for the right thing. There’s only one right way to do, right. There are a thousand different ways to do wrong. If you just aren’t going to do the right thing. And I’m saying to you, I support wholeheartedly with all of the data that has been presented, that we need to take an action that does not

121create more legal problems for us, which is a mandate with no opt-out. And we need to do that. Unequivocably now. And we need to address when that ends in terms of the medical, I’m sorry, in terms of the health situation, when the positivity rates drop to something that’s acceptable to the department of health, but I refuse to sit here and fight for people and fight with people too. That’s not what I’m, that’s not what I’m about. I’m trying to fight for people and for their children, but I can’t fight any harder than you willing to fight. Chapman just led us through understandably so, because for us to direct the superintendent, we can’t expect overnight that everything’s going to be in place. It’s going to take time to roll that stuff out. And so that has

122now been done. That’s been done for a week. And so what I wanted to do is come in behind that and put a 30 day policy and really a five week policy, which gets us to the bottom of that significantly quickly dropping projection, which even people who are plaintiffs in the suit against the governor, acknowledge that this is the way it’s going to go in October. so I’m trying to align this motion with an easy way for administration to deal with it, administration on the school level as well, and with a very short end time. So people know, Hey look, everybody, all we’ve got to do is get through September and we’re out of this. And so that’s, that’s where I was coming from. And river golden, let me go to Mrs. Messenger and I’ll

123come back to you to see you just said something that does not square with where we’ve come from. And I, I would be, it’s very simple. Can I come, Mrs. Messenger’s been waiting. Can you just hold that thought for, until she’s done, but you replied to me, I, I want to go to Mrs. Messenger. She’s been waiting. I’ll come back to you after her Mrs. Messenger Europe. Okay. I, I just, I had a clarity, a clarification question for the chairman. cause I think I’ve heard two different things now, are you proposing to maintain the current That this is the way emergency? Are you, are you proposing to maintain the current rule, which is an opt out, but just put it in the dress code or you were proposing because what I thought I heard you

124say was something along the lines of only medical and ESE, which I think is actually different than the current rule. So I guess I want to understand, I have two questions. That’s my first question. And then I have one question after that. Okay. Or the other either way. Sorry, go ahead. I’m sorry. No, I’m just trying to understand what your proposal is. I’m just trying to, so I’m on the same page. Sure. Okay. Let me restate it real quick. and I’ll put it in plain language, a mask mandate with only opt-outs for medical documented medical or ESE, for example, an IEP through October 1st, put into a temporary, a temporary policy put into the dress code. So that’s a completely different strategy for the next five weeks than what we have. Okay. Okay. That’s what

125I thought I heard you say, but then a few minutes ago you just said you want it to just maintain the current policy, but put it, codify it into our co our code of conduct so that those are two different things. So I’m trying to understand which one we’re going towards, but I guess either way I have a question for the attorney. what we advertised to the public is a extension of the existing emergency mask rule. And what I’m hearing is proposals that wouldn’t do that. That really are creating something new. Even if it’s keeping the same rule, it’s actually changing it because it’s changing how it would be addressed in the student code of conduct. And I guess my question is are with what we advertised, which is just an extension of the existing

126mask rule. How does this proposal play into that? How does, how does that work, I guess is my question. Okay, gentlemen, this messenger, I think the question you’re raising is just has to do with notice to the public and because we’re talking about the same topic matter and changes to it, I think there was adequate notice for the public. So I think the board can propose a motion related to this topic as it pleases. So I have a question if I were a parent and I was okay with the current rule, I might not sign up for public comment. I might not even turn into this meeting because it says an existing emergency rule. And it’s just an extension. And that is what’s been advertised. I hear your point of, well, we’re just talking about

127masks either way, but that’s not what it says. It does not say we’re having a discussion about mask rules. It says an extension of the existing rule, which is what people were told we were going to talk about. So I, I have real concerns about transparency if only for that fact, because this is not saying, Hey, we might do something different. This is saying our discussion will only be the extension of the existing rule. So I have concerns about transparency. I don’t think people were properly informed if we’re going to deviate from what it says. Okay. And Mrs. Master, I, again, I just put this out as a discussion. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but I do want to allow everybody who has been lit up to speak Reverend golden. I didn’t realize these

128two already lit up. I’m going to go straight down the line. This is foreman. Mr.. Go ahead, Mr. Foreman, I would like to, hear Mr. Dice, comments On Putting it in the dress code or in the code of conduct. Does that, circumvent the parental choice Chairman? you’re operating under an emergency, so it’s an emergency rule. It’s a rule that can’t last longer than a set period of time. So where are you put it stuck? That important to me from a legal standpoint? Does that Yeah, it does. It does. And, in, in the emergency situation, the, number of days that we put on it are we limited to 90 days. Yes. Thank you. Okay, great. Mr. Shaw, Is that a question to them, Mr. Trump? I, I w th there’s going to be a huge difference

129of opinion on this, depending on who you ask. I, I, I let Mr. Nye go first. I will speak very briefly as to why I think it is legally allowable. It’s kind of on two levels, but Mr. I go first, Would you mind going first? Not at all. Not at all. first, in the parent’s bill of rights itself, which that really the, the, in my, I’m not an attorney, I’m a high school teacher. but there’s really two, there’s kind of two obstacles legally that the state has put up to this debate. The first one is in the parent’s bill of rights, and that reads, which just went into effect this summer infringement of parental rights, the stint 10, 14.03 infringement of parental rights, the state, any of its political subdivisions, any other governmental entity or

130any other institution may not infringe on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, healthcare, and mental health of his or her minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest. And that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by less restrictive means that I believe I’m adhering to the language of the parental bill of rights. You can find twenty-five people in this room who would make the opposite argument and that’s, and that’s fine because I realize this is a, you know, it’s, it’s how you read that statute. the other one is that I’m not as closely related, but the, the board of, I always confused the emergency board of education meeting and the emergency department of health meeting that happened

131within two days of each other a couple of weeks ago. But, and Mr. Dye, please, correct me if I misstate anything here, but the department of health emergency meeting, they said that students may wear masks, as long as they’re an op, as long as there is an opt-out. Now during the second emergency board of education, which just happened last week, the board of education spent three hours questioning the Alachua county superintendent and the Broward county, interim superintendent, and the Alachua county superintendent, whose name funny enough is Carly Simon. The, again, the overview history of this thing is the governor, came out with his executive order and he instructed the department of health and the department of education to, come up with specific emergency rules, which they did. And they had to comply with the parental

132bill of rights or a bill of rights, which you stated is sort of a high altitude statement of parental rights that have to be balanced with compelling state interest and, strictly construed for the least amount of, imposition on the public. the rules are more detailed. The rules get enacted by the, to tell you the more details of how to implement the governor’s executive order in the statute, with all that being the foundation, a modification of your, of your emergency rule that removes the opt-out. I, it would be my opinion that you’re running into conflict with the department of health rule, which is very specific. So I can’t come up with it any other way. That’s okay. I think if you went that direction, you would be seen at least by the governor and the various

133departments as being in conflict with their rule. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Duck And beyond just my last thing beyond the law, the rules, the numbers, you, we bring up Alachua county a lot. so I’m a numbers guy. So I went after and looked at numbers. They’ve had a mass mandate, no opt out for seven days. I’ve seen these numbers too. And so their numbers are the same as ours positivity right now, granted we have more kids about 40% more kids. So we have more cases. So where I, so that’s where to me, we bring up Alachua all the time. But if those numbers don’t match that, it’s making a difference. What w w we’re we’re we’re spinning our wheels. Yeah. Mr. Show, I had a constituent send me exactly what you’re talking about earlier today. And

134even when you take into account, the number of students, are, I don’t want to call it positivity rate, but the number of students that we have in the district that have tested positive on campus is very, we’re a little bit higher, but it’s very close to a lateral. Yeah. Oh, overall, correct. As a, as a whole, as a whole correct. Today’s numbers exact same, or excuse me, yesterday’s numbers are reporting. And actually that was this morning. So, that constituent email came to me this morning. So we didn’t, he did not have the benefit of today’s number. So it was as of yesterday. So I guess my, my, my whole point is that, for, if we’re looking at other counties, we probably shouldn’t for direction. I don’t see a, an overwhelming number to say that a

135full mass mandate no opt-out is working. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. the real issue is all we doing all we can do here in this county, to prevent more of an outbreak. And as I was trying to point out a little earlier, we were here in may and in may, we decided that we had enough information, to change of our policies that we had. And we ended a whole section of that policy, health policy, and looking at where we are in August. So, we keep flips on people back and forth. And then we keep talking about, statistics and numbers. The reality is we have truly been blessed from what we did last year, that we did not have what took place in other counties in this state last year. All I’m simply trying to get

136us to at least three to see is that we can’t do nothing. You just can’t do nothing in the face of this. And where are you if this peak doesn’t begin to subside? If we have 90 days as the attorney has said, as a maxim then I, I w I have an idea that maybe what we ought to really try to do to stay within the confines of what Mrs. Messenger has raised, let’s extend what we have done. That’s the next step. Yeah. Put for that period of time, unless extended, for the same reason we enacted it, because it’s in the best interest of the students. We don’t, we don’t need to hide behind a dress code. I, we didn’t do that when we enacted the emergency rule that got us to the 25th, we

137don’t need to do that now. And we’ve already heard from the attorney that this is not going to, violate, put us in, in the same lawsuit with all these other people. We just need to try to do what we need to do here. So that, that’s my idea. Let me, let me, I guess I will make a motion either. You can, if you’d like I’ve got something written down, just a, a motion to extend our exists, extend our existing superintendent directive to require mass with a parental opt-out through October 1st. Is that 90 days? No, it just gets us through September. We can, we will have a meeting. That’s a Friday, we’ll have a meeting on that three days before, so we can take a look at it at the meeting on, September, my calendar

138open 41. No, no, I’m not. This is the second 41 person public comment meeting that we’ve had about this. And that’s not fair to the people. If we have managed, you said 90 days is the max. Then I, I submit that we do the same thing that we did. Like we had quarterly meetings where we addressed whether or not we were going to continue the mass man, mass mandates that we had last year. And we did it all the way to the end of the year, got to the end of the year, thought we saw a silver lining behind a cloudy day and decided we were going to end that and not look at William a variant, you know, so far we haven’t had anybody to die. Thank God. And, and w w w we

139know, I don’t pretend to know anybody’s heart, but so I’ll just tell you my heart. I am not persuaded by anything that I have heard statistically, sociologically psychologically that prevents me from voting to keep this mass mandate in place right now, until we no longer are legally able to have a mass mandate. And that we do that only with an opt-out for the, for, for medical medical reasons. And this is the extension of what we have. Right? So 90 days from the initial emergency enactment a week ago, that’s my motion. Okay. Robin golden, while you were talking, I just, Friday, October 29th will take us to, with the time that it’s been in effect would take us to, would take us to 80 days. Why don’t you the attorneys or the accountant 90 days. So

140when the, when does the 90 days and, Well, I say October 29th, because we have a meeting on October 26th, so we can deal with it at the meeting on the 20th. Bingo. That’s my motion. Berman golden. Could you restate your motion? Okay. I move that, the emergency, motion that we made at last week’s meeting the last week’s emergency meeting be extended to October the 29th. that’s it. That’s what we chat. Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry. Go ahead. It’s the same motion. And that was an opt-out in that motion, so I don’t need to restate that. I don’t think, Yeah, it’s just status quo through October 29th. Okay. We’ve got a motion and a second, to speak or I’m sorry. you’re on my screen, but that’s okay. Go ahead. Okay. yeah, a few things. I find

141that very interesting information about Alachua county. And I think one of the things that we have to look at is the, basically the enforcement. we’ve had, we, we got the numbers on, you know, we have an opt out form. People have signed, you know, circled. Yes. They want their child to opt out. My understanding is that’s about 10% of the students. Okay. and I’m sure that there are more out there that want to opt out, but just haven’t done it yet. But I’m hearing from family members in the community that there may be three kids in a class of 20 that are wearing a mask. Well, that’s not 90%, you know, so obviously we’re not enforcing it. And I think that, that, so we could adopt any policy we want, if we don’t enforce it,

142you know, we’re wasting our time. So I just want to point that out. I think we need to, we can only hold the superintendent accountable, but she needs to hold the schools and the principals accountable. I don’t think any of us want the teachers to be masked police, you know? but, so, I’m just, just wanting to put that out there. Can I address that real quick? I just want to say that, like I said before, you know, we just rolled this thing out a week ago, so it’s going to take time for, for parents and students to adjust. I’ve been hearing the same things. We certainly don’t have 85% mask wearing, even though that’s the number of roughly of opt-out forms we have right now, but it will improve with time. And none of us

143want to put any more burdens on administrators or teachers, but, you know, I think your, I think your comments are valid, but I do think we have to be a little bit, you know, understanding where we as Mr. Chapman said earlier, opening schools is already difficult enough task so that, you know, we missed our, we missed our opportunity and that’s partially my fault. We missed our opportunity before school opened. So now we’re trying to, you know, we’re trying to do this a little bit late, so I think we have to be a little bit understanding of, of that, that issue. Well, I understood, I do understand that, but I just think we need to, to make sure that, you know, we have a form for any child that’s opting out and really it’s an incentive,

144there’s an incentive for parents to bring their kids to school with a mask on, because if they’re, if there’s an outbreak in their classroom, you’re going to have those kids at home having to do distance learning. that’s an incentive all by itself, you know? so the more people that are willing to give mass a chance, you know, you know, because there’s plenty of, there’s, there’s plenty of discussion on both sides of whether mass are effective or not, but if they possibly could be, and you can reduce the spread of COVID in your child’s class, please send them to school with a mask. That’s all I’m going to say on that. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. One more thing. Just wanting to let the public know. And I don’t know if I’m supposed to be saying this

145or not, but, I did have a phone conversation with someone in the governor’s office today and ask them is what we have in place. Okay. With the governor. And he said, yes. So it’s Not that, you know, so it, it confirms what Mr. Dye said. And I, you know, I think we’re not, we are following the spirit of the, of the parents’ parents’ rights. Thank you. Anybody else? Who’ve got a motion and a second, the second chairman. Oh, Mrs. Messenger. I’m sorry, go ahead. I suggested 8% because when we had talked about a policy, if you recall back in may, when we had talked about possibly changing the policy, one of the things that we had talked about was 8% was the threshold. I believe that came from the health department and it was, I

146believe it was eight. It could have been 10, I think it was eight. and so that’s why I said that percentage. So this is a health department driven suggestion from the discussions that we even begin as far back as may. That is what I’m saying. And so what I’m asking is if we were to reach that percent positive, because I think we are on a downward trend, I’m going to keep hoping that and praying for that. But if we reached that before that date, that that’s really my question to ask. Okay. Would you be willing to amend your motion to reflect that 8%? Yes. If it were reached before that date? Yes. No. No. How do you feel about that? Ms. Messenger is seven. Would that, that would only be within this, these 90 days,

147correct? Because it can’t really be extended beyond these 90 days without a formal policy coming before the board. Am I understanding that correct? Yes, that’s correct. So Whether it’s between eight and 10, I see no problem with that. I just want the flexibility. If it reaches that percentage sooner than that date, that we are able to, or allow the superintendent, cause it would be directing the superintendent. this motion is a direction to her that she’d be able to remove it at that time. And I’m fine with the seven day average. Okay. Then that’s, that’s fine with me. Okay. I don’t know what I have. I lost my second number. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, okay. You have to wake me up every night. Rebuilt. We’ve got a rebuilt motion and, in a second, to be

148clear, which is just to extend what we’re doing already with through October 29th, but allowing for the superintendent to act more quickly than the board can to remove that mandate with opt-out. If the seven day rolling average reaches 8%, let me be very clear. The seven day positivity rate reaches 8% for Manatee county. Yes, sir. Okay. That is correct. I’m telling you you’re clear this. Okay. Okay. I think, I think we’re all good. all right. Motion and a second. Anything further? Nope. All right. all those in favor, please? No, you said that we were going to allow public comment. Remember We’re, what we’re doing is extending the status quo. We’re going to get the public comment right after this. So after, after we had voted, cause that, wasn’t what you said. We just have to

149open it to public comment. Yes. I recommend that. Yeah. Okay. if anybody would like to address this, please step right up. And if you have to make a line, She self-injected herself earlier, but she did tell me that she is, on the phone, on the phone. Okay. Oh, okay. That’s perfect. Please. Star six to mute yourself back and we’ll come to you shortly. so whatever goal you want to do is go through this list and ask who would like to speak on this motion? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, because they all are here for public comment and we moved it up so that we could, we thought that we would have the majority of the people. Okay. So if I would call the role Nancy Sanders and not on that. Okay. Norma Nelson at the heat came

150and said he waived his, his time. Carol D. Young K. Okay. Denise will make Williams, Melissa. Okay. I was going to say some. Okay. W w w we’re simply trying to Decide how many people want to speak to this particular she’s on, some of them are on the phone. Okay. We’re not going to go all the way. No, we can do it this way. We just have to give them an opportunity. If you’re on the phone and listening. If you hear your name, please press star six to unmute yourself. And Mrs. Minocqua, is that you okay? Yes. This is Melissa Monica. Monica. I’m sorry. that’s fine. If I get it all the time, Okay. Elizabeth, Danny, Danny look. Yes. Do I get to talk now? Or how, how are we working on This is Monica.

151We’re going to go through the list than establish, who wants to address this topic of the mask mandate. And then we’ll, we’ll go through those comments now, and then we’ll save anybody else. Who’s general public comment for after this mask item. Okay. Okay. So let’s talk about this mask item. Okay. Put myself back on you. Thank you A little bit, Daniel. Look, I think you said you wanted to speak on the mask. Yes. Ma’am. We’re just caught in the role now. That’s okay. David Dean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Robert Michael Glasgow. Yeah. Okay. Jessica Patterson, Haley, Rheem, Joseph Molenaar. Glen javelina. Okay. Evan Reed. Charlotte caisson. Hello, Tara Tomlinson. Bill. Galvano he left? Say what? Hello. Wrinkled. Hang on one second. Okay. We’ll come back to you. Is she speaking? She is. She is. I

152assume. That’s why she hadn’t muted herself, but we were going a little too quick, Right? bill Nicole Lynch. John Lynch. Yes. Julia McLaughlin. Julie McLaughlin. Yep. Okay. We’ll come back to you. Bryce. Wilhelm, Tammy Barton. Yes. I I’m. I’m wanting to speak. Yes. Okay. Thank you for that. And we have Ms. Andrew Griffin’s name again. Okay. Catherine Burns. Catherine Burns chemist. You can start six. We’ll be back to get you. Okay. Catherine Burns. She said yes. No. She’s she has not answered. No. It’s Okay. Is it Catherine? H E R M E S. Number 30. Okay. I’m asking about Catherine. B U R E N S. Okay. Tanya Thomas. Rebecca. Macello Jennifer Weibel. I thought I heard something of Mr. Chair. Mrs. Ms. Salah, was that you please star six? We’ll be back to you,

153Jennifer. Weibel no. Okay. Tony Weibo? No. Okay. Hanse Ellington, Bridget Mendell. Catherine Hermes. Could you stop one second? There’s a little bit of a delay between voice and Reverend golden. You’re going too fast. This is Bridget Mandel. And I would like to speak in regard to the mask Star six. We’ll be back to you. Okay. Okay. Is the term, as you said? Yes. Ma’am. Okay. Garen Hoover. I’m waiting for general public comment. Okay. Robert M grass senior, Excuse me. Tony Weibo would like to say something, Okay. Dina. Subu Michelle. Lorenda Michelle Miranda. Okay. Yes. I will speak for Paula. Have you done your lunch, Mrs. Lotus? Is that you? If you’re online, please make sure you are muted If you can. Okay, Debbie Freunde that’d be fine. Okay, Rebecca. Hi. Hello? Hello? Who’s this? Yes.

154Sorry. I think two people are talking About this is Hans Ellington. I couldn’t unmute earlier. Okay. Mr. Ellington, would you like to speak about the mask mandate? Yes, please. Thank you. Could you please star six to mute yourself? We will come back to you. Yep. Thank you. And there we go. There’s another voice on the phone. Yes. This would that be friends? Yes. Yes. Okay. We’ll be up at star six. We’ll be back to you. Thank you. All right, Rebecca D. Okay. Okay. Laura Anastasia. Angela Anderson. Okay. Rodney Jones and Betty roads. Right. What, what we’re trying to do right now is, roads and see who wants to speak on the, the math? Yeah, Come up. Okay. All right, Mr. Chair, as near, as I can look at, from what we have, we have quite

155a number of those that want to speak with respect to this issue. So can I read the public comment section for everybody? This is public comment. It’s your meeting. Alright, thank you. Public comment is not an open forum to discuss matters, unrelated to education, to support or oppose candidates for public office, or to engage in commercial speech, attempting to sell a service or product to the school board or public. Also public comment is not a forum to attack individual school system employees or board members, and its such complaints should be submitted in writing to the superintendent for appropriate handling. Finally, this is not a forum for addressing issues involving individual students because of privacy concerns, such issues should be submitted in writing to the superintendent appropriate handling. Each speaker is allowed three minutes to address

156the board. Speakers must stand at the podium and not approach the dyes. This is a business meeting of the school board and the public expects that we conducted in an orderly, efficient, effective, and dignified manner. We requested speakers. Keep this in mind when making your comments. We also request that the audience keep that in mind and not approval or disapproval of what a speaker has said by clapping a bullet. The board appreciates the public’s input and will listen attentively, consider each comment and usually will not respond. Enter into debate or answer questions during comments on agenda items or during the public comment section. Before you begin speaking, please provide any handouts to the agency clerk. Please identify yourself only by your full name for the record. You have no more than three minutes to speak.

157Please stop speaking. When the bell rings, Florida law requires all citizens to conduct themselves in an order that passionate public meetings, any individual who feels with the empathy is with the expeditious orderly process of a school board meeting will be subject to removal from the meeting pursuant to section 1 0 0 1 3 7 2 0.3 Florida statutes at the direction of the chair. Orderly fashion is deemed as at a minim no profanity, no vocal language, no discourteous disrupt disrespectful or disparaging conduct at this time. Melissa monarchy followed by Elizabeth, Danny luck and David Laura Dean, Mrs. Monica, please press star six to unmute. This is Monica star six. Okay. We’ll keep going. We’ll come back to her. Elizabeth Daniel, look, Daniel look. And, David Dean. You’re going to be next after her please. And

158Elizabeth, before we start, folks, I really do want to express my appreciation. This has been, for the most part, a very good and orderly and respectful meeting. You are going to hear fine. I’ve know you’re sick of hearing this. You are going to hear things you disagree with during public comment, please refrain from commenting or clapping or booing or, speaking out. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. You have three minutes. Ma’am I think, guess either one of these mixes on good, good evening. I’m Elizabeth Danny luck, the mother of three children that attend Manatee county schools. I’m here today to voice my concerns over last week’s emergency meeting regarding mask mandates and the board’s proposal to extend it. While I understand that there was an opt out provision, I still find it alarming that our school

159board members have decided to make medical decisions for us. The parents, we as Americans have a constitution and a bill of rights that outlines and protects these God-given rights. Prior to this mask mandate parents of our school district already had a personal choice of freedom. We had the choice to send our children to school with, or without a mask. There was no mandate that stipulated you could not wear a mask. Our rights were being upheld that the choice was up to us. Our freedom as parents to make medical choices for our children does not lie in the hands of the government. This is what separates a constitutional Republic from a tyrannical government. The fact that this mandate mandating is even occurring. She concerned every American, no matter what your party affiliation or not. Maybe in

160addition, I was outraged by the voicemail received that our home explaining the mask mandates that also included encouragement for students to get the experimental biologic gene therapy, which has been labeled and touted as a vaccine, according to the children’s health defense.org, the FDA did not approve this therapy for children. Ages 12 through 15. It is still under emergency use authorization. My children are not ferrets and will not be used for a clinical trial. We, the people and parents need to wake up to this medical tyranny and realize that 45% of the FDA’s funding comes from big pharma. FDA approval does not mean something is safe. It only means more money can be made from it. I advise parents to go to the vaccine adverse event, reporting system website, theirs, and do your due diligence and

161researching the number of adverse events and deaths from this gene therapy. If big government and our school boards even consider promoting the illegal mandating of this experimental therapy for students and staff and staff, then we will know that you do not have any interest at all in our children’s education, but instead in medical tyranny in the past year, the fear-mongering propaganda and censorship has been repulsive in not including dissenting scientific and medical opinions and data on masks, gene therapy and PCR tests. I pray our nation school boards are not compromised with pushing political agendas with coercions bullying and bribery. I pray you and your hearts and souls. Think about this. Thank you very much, please. Thank you. And that our American freedom, God bless you all. That was her. That was Elizabeth. Thank you. Ma’am

162urban golden era, Jeremy Kenny’s Melissa monarchies summaries. I couldn’t get myself on you. Okay, Mrs. Monica, go ahead. And then, Mrs. Monica, go ahead. You have three minutes. I’m sorry. Okay. Thank you very much. hello, My name’s Melissa monarchy, as you all can tell. I am a mom of an eighth grader at Mona Jay middle school. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and also, it was a give and take touch and go for a little bit on how we were going to, move forward with this current math apology. So I current, I thank you for continuing the gold standard within the state of Florida to give parents the choice on if they want to send their children into schools with math or without a math, and also with the policy

163only being in place for a week. To me, there’s just not enough data, to really decide things moving forward. And I really appreciate this Messenger’s, discussion on talking about state of transparency, because this was some of the conversations were not part of the public record, ahead of time. Another question is where’s the data store that the public can actually access the data broken down by race per, reverence comments on positivity rates within the black and brown population. What is, because what I’m seeing on the website is not consistent on a day to day basis, which is what I’m currently starting to track. And I think everybody, email probably around three 30 today on the world of meters, map of cases for us as well as death in Florida, the, we, we hit the peak and

164starting to come down and I would really have you guys take a look at that on a day-to-day basis. It was a quick email as I was on my way to Virginia, where I am right now. I just take a look at the data. The data continues to go down. I appreciate that we’re extending this to October 29th, and I think you will see as the data is showing, but again, it’s data. so just to finish up, I appreciate that we are going to keep the mask policy with the opt-out for the parents, until the October 29th, where we will continue to have these conversations with parents and with the board on how to proceed further. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. next we have David Lori Dean followed by Robert Michael Cresco and

165Jessica Patterson. Good evening. My name’s Dave Dean. I have four children in our schools. I’m going to skip songs and water, my prayer pairs stuff after the presentations. I want to thank the superintendent and all S all school employees for trying to deal with an impossible situation. When you only got the rules two days before school starts, you’re doing a heck of a job, and I understand there’s going to be some stumbling, but be that as may. I blame the governor. he’s putting you in a tough spot. his, agencies have greatly reduced the types of deep, detailed COVID information that the public receives, just to make, the spread and the consequences, easy to ignore. but something was said at the last meeting that I have to respond to. I said, so to say the governor’s,

166flawed executive order in his agency, heads implementation guidance has tied your hands and you have no choice, but to obey them, I believe it’s just a cop out. What if he consulted some crack pot? I doctor like ran Paul in his order, said the goal is to reach herd immunity. And so instead of quarantining discovered cases, you must now have the infected kids cough in each other’s students face every other student’s face. Would you obey that order to, of course not, not when it would lead to immediate massive and needless sickness, hospitalizations, and death, our students and their families. Well, this current order leads to the same result, only slightly slower. And, and as I pointed out, one of his examples is, is the Florida FDA guidance includes a quarantine exception, automatic exception for vaccinating

167students, but the Delta variant has demonstrated it does in fact, the vaccinated and they can affect others as well. And, and, and one of my boys was a contact last this week and the school said, oh, you can just come back tomorrow. I said, no, I’m going to take him down to the test site and we’re going to get him tested. And if he comes in negative, then I’m going to bring him back because he could still have been infected. So that’s a flaw. The governor’s people put in there. he’s using obsolete science, obsolete and junk science from last year instead of what the heck’s going on with Delta today. and that’s why the CDC guidelines are more stringent. They’re keeping up with what the heck is really happening. I appreciate the board, to poll

168the public school safety and health decisions being made based solely on the latest medical science and local conditions and not our governor’s overreaching dictates. and I’m hoping that you’ll stand up for our kids and ex and extend this max midnights a few months, so that our kids can get vaccinated. Thank you. Okay. Ready to go. Before we continue. Mr. Greco, bef before he come up, come on up, just named On the back row with your, with your son. I don’t know where you are on the list, but I just wanted to offer you the opportunity to come up if it’s a school night. So if you’ve got to get him home, you’re good. Okay. Sure. Mr. Cresco, go ahead. You have three. Okay. My name’s Robert Michael Greco senior, and I’m a Christian conservative. And,

169I like to say something here. Matthew 1914, Jesus said suffer little children. Not forbid than not to come unto me for such as the kingdom of heaven. Jesus Christ loves children. He loves all of us. We’re all his children. Us, you may roll his children, black, brown, white, yellow, purple orange, don’t matter. And about that statement about, white privilege, I, I would like to, be able to Sue the companies that I went to get jobs with the, when hire me, they hired the best person for that job. Some men were black, some women were brown. Some it’s the best person for the job. And I, I grew up in Philadelphia and I grew up with black, brown, yellow. We were all together. We’re all friends. We went to the same school. We played football and

170baseball with each other. It didn’t matter. Some of us went in the service together, but it didn’t matter. We’re all God’s children. Why do we have to have all this confrontation between everybody? The hatred where where’s the will is hatred. Let me get back on the mask. Okay. There’s a place in Cleveland called the clinic Cleveland clinic. They’ve done extensive tests on these mask and no reporting. These masks is not very good. It’s pretty low. It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. And they’ve come out with this report. Cleveland clinic is well-known and the last speaker, the he bowel at the, at the foot of Fowchee, what always up and downs do this. Don’t do this, do that, which is going on. And he says about our governor being stupid. my comment about that

171is I have a different opinion. Instead of other people, we voted them in, but getting my point about these children, their children, they’re, they’re growing. They need oxidation in their bloodstream, blood pumped up to their, through their lungs, their heart, into their brain. So they can think their muscles so that he can be active and run. Their children are in different stages of growth. What is the, this is the short term we’re talking about making them wear these masks. What’s the long-term effect on our children. Does anybody know? Of course they dumped. It’s like the nuclear seal. I worked in that for 35 years. They didn’t have no term answer to anything. Everything short term. Thank you, Mr. Briscoe. Okay. Good night. Good night, Jessica Pattison is on the phone. Mrs. Patterson, please press star

172six. Can you hear me? Yes. Ma’am go ahead. You have three minutes. Great. My name is Jessica Patterson, P a T T E R S O N. I just wanted to note that Laura Anastasia is also on the phone, because you skipped, you did skip over her good evening. superintendent Sanders sent out a letter to all of her administrators on August 22nd, two days ago, she said our campuses are full and teaching and learning is taking place every day. Yes, we have on presented presidented number of positive cases. First two weeks of school, which amount to 2% of students and staff, which means 98% are engaged. This is a thousand students and staff that are positive. Plus all those that are in quarantine, which no, which no one can seem to tell us how many

173are in quarantine. The district doesn’t know our schools will not share it with that. I have asked them multiple occasions, how many we have in quarantine? How many cases do we have each day? They will not share that with us. No mention of keeping our children safe from COVID. This was her letter. If you look at pastoral superintendent Browning, he says the district is drowning and COVID cases. We are doing our best, but it’s like a sinking ship and we’re bailing it out with a symbol. Now this is transparency. This is leadership. The parental opt-out issue is big. It is then an issue is because the lack of leadership, the lack of leadership from our superintendent who sent it, sent out an opt in, opt out, which was not a mandate. And also from our

174school administrators, it all depends on what type of school is going to be and how many people are going to be wearing that. Our administrators that have encouraged math, are much higher in math wearing or administrators that are anti math, where they attach the form to the email or tell them that you need to call us and tell us if you need to opt in or opt out, this is an issue. Why can’t our schools give us the number of cases. I just want to know this lack of transparency gives us no trust. We had two students that tested positive in my class. We had one. Hi, thank you very much. Glenn javelina, Evan Reed, and Charlotte caisson in that order For the record, Glen Giblin, first of all, I want to thank Gina messenger

175for pointing out that, you’re absolutely right. Changing this to the mandatory dress code without proper notice. In addition out of the scope and jurisdiction of this meeting, had you given that notice, Charlie, you didn’t need a stadium to fill up for the folks that wanted to come in here. So we will not get sucker punched by, by these, these motions that are not on the agenda. And again, thank you, Jean. I don’t know how that one slipped by me, but you nailed it. And what do we have here? Then we have the attorney that says, oh, it’s okay. It’s within your scope. He’s been wrong so many times before on this. And this time is no different. And not only in this, but in sunshine laws as well. Nobody, no black families here did I

176heard what about the billions and billions of televisions audience that the elected official from district five has ready black families out there, perhaps we don’t want to count them. So, this is word it wrong. It should be opt in, not opt out as far as I’m concerned. You know, when you, when you send a child home, because you know, if they fart, that’s part of the COVID syndrome. So send them home. It is it’s true. I, it was someone’s at the BOC T seat today and pointed it out. I didn’t know that. when you, when you quarantee home classes, you don’t even think about the single parent that’s out there working their butt off and gets a call. Hey, you gotta come and get your kid. We’re going to quarantine him for 10 days. And

177by the way, you probably won’t have a job when get back, because you got to tell your boss, I need 10 days off. Cause the school quarantined my child and I’m out of luck. You don’t, you make it as difficult as possible when you put a parent in that situation. It’s self-destructs, we’ve got tough time just trying to make a rent, holding a job. And now you’re going to tell a parent, you got to opt out for 10 days of work. It’s unbelievable. You know, our chiller chiller county, that’s one county. Give me the data on the other 65 counties. We barely got the data on this county. It’s unbelievable that you take one county and that’s your story pole. And I heard something about October 29th, right? 29th. I heard, but I didn’t hear

178it was never corrected by the attorney either. What year? It could be 2050. You don’t even put the year in. We can’t trust you with the little details. I’m going to trust you with the big ones, Evan Reed, I’m at Evan Reed. And I’d like to say, good evening, superintendent Sanders and the board. And first of all, Mr. Kennedy, I want to say that a student, as someone who worked in the ER, your idea is brilliant. And I think it is a great way to protect students and all these families that are sitting here in this room. I had a speech written, but I’ve decided that I kind of want to go a little off script after listening to some of the things that have been said tonight, especially regarding the health of children in

179the school, my fellow students who are also in the school, you know, physicians have stood up here and you know, miss messenger shooed, one of them away. the science is clear masks work. people are dying. I I’ve watched people come up here. They talk about their freedom. They talk about this. You have no freedom. When there is an incision made down your neck and a tube is placed in it. These are the things I have watched. You can make your noises. You can make your things. This is the reality. People are dying. And like Reverend golden said is predominantly or not. Predominantly black and brown families make up a big part of it and denying it. It’s just sick. I mean, you can be disgusted by the idea that white people, aren’t the only ones

180affected by this and you can’t claim white privilege. But the thing is that it’s an entire community. It does not matter if you’re a Republican. It does not matter if you are a Democrat does not matter. If you’re black, white, gay, straight, vaccinated, or unvaccinated, you will get sick. You need to wear a mask. It is clear. The science is telling us we need to wear a mask. And you know, the opt in and the opt out is way too easy. Everyone that I saw at school not wearing a mask is still not wearing a mask. I know Mr. Kennedy, you said that it’s only been a couple of days, but it’s, it’s not working. I mean, I think the idea of putting it in the dress code and ensuring that everyone is safe is

181a good idea. I mean, people, they have come up here, they have talked about their freedom. You have no freedom when you are on a ventilator, you have no freedom and you were unconscious. Just get the vaccine, get vaccinated. I mean, get, wear a mask. It’s not hard. I do it from seven 30 to two 30. It is not hard. It is not hard. And you know, it’s, it’s the right thing to do. I mean, I imagine most of you who come up here and are against the masks are also pro-life. And I want to say that if you’re pro-life wear a mask, get vaccinated 628,000 people have died in the three minutes that I will be speaking. Each second represents 3,500 lives, 3,500 lives. Every second I’m speaking represents an American that has died

182in this country. If you care about this country, wear a mask and get vaccinated. It’s not that hard. It’s the right thing to do. If you’re patriotic care about your fellow Americans care about your children, protect them. I’ve watched children come into the ICU and they’re sick. It’s it’s just, it’s it’s sickening. It’s really all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Charlotte. Charlotte caisson is ready. Hi, my name is Charlotte caisson. Manatee county has successfully transformed our schools into prisons for our children during spring break of 2020. When the whole world shut down for two weeks to flatten the curve and our kids were forced to finish out the school year online, my son’s school became a prison. Freedom elementary has become freedom correctional. Some of you may have not noticed, but I

183did the 200 yards of brand new chain link fences around your children’s schools. With large aluminum gates to lock us out. The school board has labeled me as non-essential. The principals have become wardens denying access. Even when we’ve shown our IDs breaking laws, to keep us out. The school board has gone rogue and continues to defy not only the governor’s orders, but laws that have been put in place to protect us parents and to give us our power back. The board is filled with persons attempting to convince you that their policy is law making policies for children that they do not have. The schools are filled with cowardice principals and teachers who became cowards over threats of unemployment by you. The school board, we, the parents are far from cowards. We will, you will hear

184us. You do hear us, but you’ve turned your backs on us. You’ve shown us that you do not care because you’ve turned your cameras on our backs. You’ve shown how far the corruption goes and we will not stand for it any longer. And we do not have to wait until you are voted out in the next election. We are ending this today. Freedom is not optional. It is our foundation. This is not your building. These are not your schools. We own them. And that is why everything that you do is public record. We will not comply with your tyrannical policies and your total disregard of the constitution and our rights as free citizens of the United States of America. Inmate number 4 1 5 7 9 1 9 3 5 2 will not comply and

185neither will his mother Please. Don’t John Lynch, Julio Loughlin, and Tammy Barton Going off script as well. good evening. I’m John Lynch. I’m not a believer or not an anti masker. More of a freedom of choice advocate. I don’t know why you guys are pushing so hard to put something on your face that doesn’t work. There’s multiple mass protocols. We use them in my job, that wouldn’t work for Saul dust, let alone a virus, little research and maybe teach you that maybe, you know, sometimes it would appear that you’re knowing that you lying about the benefits or just naive to the facts and mess around representing them. if you’re doing so on purpose, it’s disgusting. if you’re doing it because you’re naive, that’s just plain ignorant. the only mask that somewhat effective is in 95

186mask, the surgical mask it’s falls more under a droplet protocol. So you’re more likely to carry around COVID on your face, touch it, breathing in and out, share with others than you are to protect yourself from it. Good evening. Ms. McLaughlin, please press star six on mute. Hello? Yep. Go ahead. Ma’am you have three minutes. Thank you. good evening board members. My name is Julia McLaughlin. I have two young children in Manatee county schools. I was going to ask you to get rid of the mandate or at the very, very least agree to follow the law of the state of Florida and the parental bill of rights to keep decisions about the health and wellbeing of children in the hands of parents was actually quite astounded that during the meeting there were members who were

187suggesting they would approve getting rid of the opt-out all together. I think that’s shameful as an adult who was supposed to be making good decisions in regard to children, to allude to the fact that you would be okay with breaking Florida. Law is astounding. To be honest, you’re supposed to lead by example. How can you expect anyone to follow a mandate? If you yourself will not abide by a law? Sounds a little bit hypocritical with me. I will not do it to all the reasons of why universal masking does not work. And it’s more harmful than beneficial because you guys already know you’ve heard it a thousand times. What I will say is this, and it can’t be denied last year. Schools that had masked mandates had almost equally the same results as those who

188didn’t hardly much difference at all. Amass mandate does nothing to keep schools from having COVID-19 cases, nothing master, not. This virus is here to stay. We need to learn to look at what actually works such as preventative measures, like taking vitamin C D zinc, eating better, getting enough sleep and protecting the most vulnerable population, which doesn’t really include children, unless they already have severe health issues. according to the CDC, 335 children in 18 months have died with COVID. And one thing they don’t tell you is how many of those children had severe health problems or comorbidities. It’s very important information. It matters, and yet they don’t report it, but they will report incorrect information on Florida cases. And then it has to be fixed. The CDC has lost a lot of its credibility. And yet

189that is part of what it’s used to make. Some of these decisions get rid of the mandate or keep the opt-out. Those are the two choices, unless you want to be considered lawbreakers to essentially promote the do, as I say, but not as I do mentality. Thank you very much. Okay, Tammy Barkin, I think she was on the phone. Mrs. Barton, please press star six to unmute. This is Barbara. Can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead. You’re three minutes. Yes, Tammy Barton. Yes. Ma’am just, just a few things, that I wanted to say. I was, very, very disappointed, that a, another mandate option was raised tonight, given what Ms. Messenger said. And I so appreciate her bringing that up because I was thinking the exact same thing, that that was not what was covered on

190the agenda. And that’s very misleading, not at all transparent. And actually, I think it’s quite slimy to be honest, but, also, wanted to say that as far as the opt-out people not turning in their forms and Mary wanting to legalize that, the kids showing up without masks, that is their opt-out. I, you know, this form thing is just it’s too much. and as far as the numbers, you know, from the, the COVID dashboard from today, 141 right now equals to a 0.29% that are positive and 807, which I believe is quarantine. I don’t know the COVID dashboard is so confusing is at 1.6, 4%. So you were actually talking about taking away parental rights for something that’s very, very minuscule. again, wanted to say thanks to Gina for always being on top of things. The

191question that I did have is all these PCR tests. how many cycles are those being run at? I would love to have that information. And, as far as, you know, if you want to do a bunch of testing of a couple, people have already said it, test vitamin D levels. I mean, that’s gonna really help, you know, and help people supplement that so that they don’t get sick to begin with. And I appreciated what Glen had to say. I am one of those single parents and if my son had to come home and I had to be home for seven days, I would be in big financial trouble. So that needs to be considered when you set all of these policies. The last thing that I questioned that I had was on the survey results.

192and maybe I heard them wrong. So I apologize if I did, but 3000 had a preference, but thirty six hundred and fifty five Answered. I just think that that was a little bit strange. It’s only 3000 answered. And the fact that only 25% actually sent something back. It says a lot to me, it says that the rest of them either didn’t care or don’t want masks. So I appreciate, that you have not tried to take over this mandate and make it something that it shouldn’t be. It should always be parental choice. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew Griffin, Tanya Thomas, and Rebecca must fella in that order, Ms. Griffin, please press star six to unmute. Please. Miss ma I’m sorry. He’s the one that was providing you information and could not answer very simple questions. She

193should have had the information for Ms. Monarchy. she spoke, she hit the nail on the head out of all these quarantines, how many people are actually getting sick. and in, in quarantine, that means the quarantines are absolute waste of time and only doing that to sh cause problems with our attendance at the school. So you guys can inflate and, and propagate all this. This BS contact tracing is it gets asked for exasperating the issue because they are getting back to the people so late, because they’re there, they just can’t do anything. They’re not doing this stuff properly. And that positivity rate, you have 807 students that are out. That’s a 0.016 to the popular school population. You keep trying to attach the community, positivity rate. And many of the people in this community don’t have

194kids in the school system. Aren’t around kids in the school systems do not affect the kids in the school system. And you guys just don’t care. My suggestion would be the school board needs to start providing in 95 and kn 95 math to the employee that want to use them and the children that want to use them. So they’re better protected because that garbage you guys got on your face does not work. We know that, any other illness of Mr. Chapman said, Mr. Goldman asked it or golden ass Chatman, what other illnesses do you do this for? You haven’t done it for any of them. There’s not been one time that you, that we had the flu season. And we had, contact tracers trying to find people and get them kicked out of school under

195a quarantine. So this is all garbage. And then, rubber and glue, excuse me, Reverend golden of the governor. What do you think you guys are doing? You guys don’t think any of this is government overreach yet we’re attacking our governor for protecting our rights. So this is nonsense. I’m sorry guys, but you guys need a bot follow the law. Don’t violate the law and do the math mandates with opt-out. The opt-out as the attorney di said, is the child coming to school without the mask, they do not need to sign a form. And then furthermore, a submittal school decided to tell people they had to mass because their opt out wasn’t approved. There has never been anything from this board that said anybody has to go through an approval process. So that is garbage. So

196I want all those things corrected. I don’t care how long it lasts. As long as the parents have the right to choose. Tanya Thomas. Hi there. Tanya Thomas, I used to think that public speaking was my biggest fear. And then all of a sudden I woke up and the Twilight zone, a 20, 21. Okay. We all know that mass don’t work. What you’re wearing on your face right now is a Petri dish. And that is entry level biology, okay? Children that are wearing mass. It’s the equivalent of putting a wet rag on their face and making them breathe in all day. It’s disgusting. Just in case you don’t believe me. I did send you all email today with 30 scientific articles stating how masks don’t work. I was wondering, have you all heard of the

197term projection, anybody projection, it’s a psychological term. Let me give you the definition. Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal or object. That term is mostly commonly used to describe defensive projection, attributing to one’s own unacceptable urges or fears onto another. All of the masks keys. You are projecting your fear onto the children, the school board, the teachers, the admins, and even the past are projecting your own fears onto our children. Children are virtually unaffected by this virus. This is child abuse. You are abusing them with your projection of fear because you can’t deal with your own fears. Therefore making our children also fearful. You are also abusing them by making them wear Petri dishes on their faces for 35 hours a week. If this was about a virus,

198we would all be wearing full respirators, or we wouldn’t be in this room at all. This is not just about the mask. This is just a first step and a very long battle because we see what’s coming down. The pipeline. Many of us here, many of us watching, we see what’s coming down the pipeline first, this masks, then it’s CRT. Then it’s LGBTQ. Then it’s your transgender agenda. And finally, for the grand finale we know is coming, you guys are going to try to mandate the shot. Okay? We know it’s coming. That’s why we’re standing up right now. And we’re letting you know it’s not going to happen because I tell you something. I am praying for all you all to get on the right side of Jesus and get on the right side of

199our children. Because I honestly don’t know who some of you work for. It’s not for us and it’s not for our children. And I like to say one more thing. It will be over my dead body before anybody comes near my child with one of those experimental shots. Thank you. And God bless. Okay. Tony Weibo. Hello, Rebecca Masella was next. Oh, I’m sorry. Hello? Can anybody Hear me, Mrs. Masella No. D I thought someone called Paris Tomlinson. Hello? This is miss. Oh yeah. Mrs. Tomlinson, go ahead. We, we passed you over earlier. Go ahead. You have three minutes. Number 15. Okay. Thank you. This is Tomlinson. Go ahead. You have three minutes. Silence, please. Turn the TV down. This is Tomlinson. This is Tomlinson. We cannot hear you, Mrs. Tomlinson, please press star six. Again.

200We’re going to go. Let’s keep moving. We’ll come back to her. When she comes back. Mrs. Michelle, please press star six to unmute. This is Mr. Seller right there. Yes, Ma’am go ahead. Do you have three minutes? Okay. Thank you. I’d first, like to just start off with, saying I am Rebecca Masella, I’m a mother of two in the Manatee county schools. I’m a registered nurse for over 10 years. So I’d first like to start with this. There’s a story about people on a boat, a good, a guy decides to dig through the floor of his cabin, waterflow then and other passengers. Well, they got mad, but what does it matter? Right? Because it’s his own cabin. The guy argues. So why should it matter? Well, because personal choices only go so Far when we’re

201on the same boat. Everyone is affected. I heard, Reverend golden earlier, talk about the best interest of children. So I want to know how, when these children are losing family members and bringing this virus home to family members that are more vulnerable or causing parents to lose wages, because they have to take days out of work or stressing parents out about how they’re going to make ends meet because of those lost wages and days, how, abuse is not increasing. And, and the days out and the learning losses are not increasing. And now our staff are going out because of the increased loss. And just speaking to what I have seen, I have not seen anything and improve with this mandate. I wish Mr. Kennedy, that there were more of you. I for one would take

202great comfort and knowing that somebody is looking out for our children without a price tag, you may or not be aware, but the dashboard that I was looking at today, shows 196 student positive and 30 staff positive today. The total was 2 26 at these numbers are accurate for a grand total of the confirmed cases for the first 11 days of school. That’s 1190 1,190 last year for all year from day one to the final. Our district reported 1,119. We’ve surpassed the entire last school year and 11 date. I heard Ms. Sanders earlier say that last year was apples and we’re comparing it to oranges. And I agree with that, but I only agree with that because we use math and math work as a nurse of over 10 years, I would not be standing

203here if math did not work and protects me. And I want to just tell a personal story about my two kids. I have an eight year old, who’s been vocal about a worry bug and her tummy. And that’s how she describes her anxiety. She feels it when she’s around other so many others that aren’t math and that’s profound. And then my son who returned off a quarantine, wasn’t drinking his beverage in the classroom for over a week. And it wasn’t until that I spoke to the teacher that we finally figured it out, what was going on. And he was afraid he was going to catch COVID from his classroom. So now his basic needs of drinking are not being met because he is afraid my kids have a right to be protected. And the voucher

204that says, Thank you, Tony libel, Hance, Ellington, Bridget Mendell in that order. Great. You can hear me. Yes. Mr. Rob, go ahead. You have three minutes. Sure. So sir, I wanted to commend the board for helping to protect kids. It’s tough getting right to the point. I think eat more teeth than the mass mandates, enforced with fines and penalties for anybody that’s out there, because we’re worried about the effect of masks. Look no further than Asian countries. They’ve worn masks for decades, and they have some of the best students in the world. Look at doctors. They wear them all day and they still perform excellent. On the other side, not wearing a mask for longterm. Recovery hurts. Kids hurts. Our economy leads to even more people not to be able to work something that’s been

205brought up multiple times on this call. The virus is costing $9 trillion in accounting. This is not like another coal. This is not a freedom thing. If I choose the freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road, there are consequences beyond myself. Should I be allowed to drink and drive? Because I’m in the pursuit of freedom. Clearly not hold people accountable for their actions had penalties to the mandate. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes, I’m so sorry. My call must have dropped And it’s okay, go ahead. You have three minutes. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you so much. All right. The first thing I wanted to say was that a lot of people have brought up quarantines and what a hardship they are. And I just wanted to point out

206that, you know, the way to have less corn answer is to have less COVID and less COVID exposure. So I don’t know, they’re kind of making our point for us, but, you know, masks are a good way of doing that. So that would definitely help people out with not having to quarantine as much. I also wanted to share this. So I have a nine year old. She has always been in the Manatee county school system last year. We chose to homeschool him rather than send him in person. And then this year, knowing that Manatee county schools would not be requiring masks, we decided to send him to a private school in Sarasota, for which we received a generous scholarship from the school. This school requires masks and takes their children’s safety very seriously. And because

207my son has no siblings close in age, about six months ago, we began allowing him to have play dates with one family who takes the same precautions that we do. This friend attends the same private school with my son. My son had his first day of school last Monday. He was absolutely beaming and so full of happiness and energy. When he got home by Monday evening, we got a call that he had been exposed to COVID, but here’s the thing. He wasn’t exposed in his school. He was exposed to via his friend’s brother who contracted COVID at his Manatee county public school, a school that doesn’t require masks. This child contracted COVID from a COVID positive classmate who was not wearing a mask. Despite the fact that my, my son’s friend’s brother was wearing a

208mask. So my son got one whole day of school. And before having to stay home and quarantine due to the impact that these unmasked Manatee county schools are having on the whole community, even parents who make every effort and sacrifice possible to protect their children can not adequately do so. As long as there are so many who refuse to do their part, I’m telling you this to illustrate how the decisions we make have a ripple effect in our community. These schools do not exist in a vacuum. And the impact of the higher high number of hospitalizations are going to impact the children of some of you here today, fighting so hard not to protect our kids in our community because when your child has suspected Or falls and incur the head injury or any number

209of other things, you’re going to struggle to find a hospital to take them. That is the reality that we are facing right now, ask them. I asked the board to make the safety of our children and our community, their priority, and to not be intimidated by those who think that they can get what they want by acting like on-hands uncivilized bullies. So I thank you for your efforts that you’ve made so far. And I just want to encourage you to keep going. Thank you. Okay. Hanse Ellington. He was on the phone. Mr. Ellington, please press star six to unmute. Yeah, we can hear you. You have three minutes. Great. Thank you. my name’s Sandra Ellington and I’m a parent of a Manatee county student. And, I just wanted to, ask the board to reconsider making

210a mass mandate with medical. Opt-out only, the scientific consensus is quite clear that universal mass-produced transmission and wearing a mask, is a personal health, decision, but it’s also a public health issue. So it not only protects the wear, but it protects those around the wear. And, a couple of other things that came up during the meeting. So in my everyday job, I work with statistics and modeling all the time. And, I am hopeful that this model that we’ve got with cases is showing a decline starting soon. but, I will point out it’s a lot easier to model the past than predict the future. And if we put a universal mass mandate in, in place, we can improve that predicted curve and, and lessen that impact going forward. And then the other thing is working with

211survey data. So that 25% response rate that you guys got, that’s actually really good. most surveys have a lower response rate than that. and then when you’ve got those non responses, I think the proper way to interpret those is most likely those folks did not have a preference. So some of them probably didn’t respond because they didn’t get it, or it didn’t have enough time, but most of those didn’t have a preference. So we’re still looking at two to one in terms of preference for a mask in school. And finally, I’ll just say, I think the decision comes down to the state saying that we, that you, the board can’t protect the students in the school to the best of your ability. And you have to ask yourself, are you done that then respond well,

212rules or rules? Or are you going to say, no, we are going to do the, of our ability to protect our students and implement a temporary universal mask mandate only with a medical opt-out. So please reconsider. Thank you. Thank you, Bridget. Menedale Mrs. McDowell, please press star six to unmute. This is mental, please. Press star six. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. You have three minutes. Hi, this is Bridget Mendell. Can hear me? Yes, we can go ahead. Okay. Wonderful. number one, I want to say Mary is right. Principals are not mandating mask. That is not happening. And it’s happening right here in my neighborhood at Lakewood ranch. Nobody wears masks and it’s not encouraged, nor is it required. buses on math not happening. I know for a fact that my Lakewood ranch buses

213are, are, they’re supposed to hold 55 high school students there. Some of them are carrying up to 90 students at a time nobody’s wearing a mask. It’s a, it’s a metal tube moving Petri dish. another break concern is, somebody said, nobody’s dying. You want to make a bet? I go, I know for a fact, there are students high school students in this county whose parents have died. I know two people at parish high school whose fathers have died. so people are dying just because it’s not kid doesn’t mean that, that this isn’t affecting our whole community. Also. I’m highly concerned that, Mrs. Saunders only meets with principals. He only hears from principals two times a week. That’s the only time she can gather them all up to find out what the numbers are that Mr.

214Chapman says that are just too difficult for him to, to wrangle up. Even though the principals have them, Please address the board members of staff. Okay. Well, I know, I know, I would like for you, Mary is right Hillsborough and Pinellas county have amazing dashboards. They make our dashboard look like a kindergartner made it it’s embarrassing. There is no reason why we can’t contract with the person who made the Hillsborough Pinellas, dashboards and soup them up because we look like we are technology, disabled here in Manatee county also is Sarasota county and Pasco county have given up using, the department of health to do all their contract tracing because the reality is, and it is here too. The da DOH cannot keep up with the amount of contract tracing that takes place. You cannot tell

215me that the DOH is properly doing contract tracing for the, for the county’s largest employer. In this county, we have 50, you know, 53,000 students. So we all know that that’s a joke. The DOH is not doing proper contact tracing. So you all, probably more than likely you’re going to have to do it in house. I had heard at one time you had hired just two people to contract rates. I don’t even know if those people exist, but the bottom line is you are not making sure that this community has all the data. They need to make the right decisions by their children. And you need to take a darn good look at Hillsborough with 250 schools and 206,000 people. And you can read their dashboard in five minutes and figure out the numbers that

216you need to do to determine whether or not your kid should go to school. So we got to step up our game here because our dashboard is an embarrassment. Thank you very much and have a nice night. And these principals better start mandating these masks and doing, as they’re told and meeting with them two times. Thank you. in this order, Kathryn Hermes, Dina Sabu, Michelle Miranda. Okay. Hi, my name is Kathryn Hermes. we just moved here from New Jersey and I want you to know first off that, someone called Liotta Walker is a Saint. I have found moving here, getting my kids enrolled, and this whole process was people return phone calls. They talk to you, they send you emails. They were awesome. Hermes. If you’re praising staff, it’s okay. To Other side of that,

217just don’t okay. If it’s criticism, please don’t use any names upstairs. Nope, I won’t. your communications platforms are extremely confusing. I actually lost the opt-out form. I couldn’t figure out where it was. I couldn’t find it on the website. I couldn’t find it on the Lakewood ranch wig. Whoops. I couldn’t find it. I saw it go by on an email. I never saw it again. So, I haven’t, I, I have found that a little difficult, also, with respect to your three feet and your six feet, pointlessness it’s, it’s kind of pointless in your school buses right now. My son says again, out in Lakewood ranch, which the lady said, there’s three kids sitting on every two seater. The buses are way overcrowded. So if they’re already there, I mean, three feet in a classroom seems

218kind of pointless at that point. But, so I think you need a few more school buses. So on the CDC website. And I can certainly leave this for you. they they’re basically, they have data that says, unfortunately, face masks don’t work in addition. and I, I wish they did. I wish people didn’t get sick and I wish we could mandate our way out of all kinds of diseases, but unfortunately viruses are going to virus. okay. I have also here a list of medical literature, which I will just go through a few of them. The use of surgical face masks. This was started in 2009 to reduce the incidents of the common cold among healthcare workers in Japan and 95. masked healthcare workers were significantly. I can leave these for you. Thank you very much. I

219believe, I believe I was skipped. What’s your name? Ma’am Jennifer. Weibel Jennifer Weibo number 26. Yes, sir. You’re three minutes. Okay. Before I begin, I would like my comments to serve as an official complaint to the board. I am not someone who speaks out often. However, because I fiercely love my children tonight. I will express my concern today. I was notified that my child, who is a middle schooler, who is not eligible for the vaccine, and we only care about the elementary school children. I was notified that she was directly exposed to a child that has tested positive for COVID-19. That may begin with the statement that I do understand a parent’s right to not have their child where I’m at. And I do understand that parents have the right to not vaccinate their child,

220but just like those parents, I, to have rights, I have the constitutional right to send my daughter to school, to receive a proper education in a safe environment. I have the right to protect my child. Like the parents who feel that they are protecting their child by demanding no math. But today my child’s education was affected by someone else’s actions. My child like many is not yet eligible for the vaccine. My question is what can be put in place to protect my child. While in school, last year, we were able to complete a successful school year by putting other protective measures in place to ensure child safety. We use plastic barriers between desks and eating in the lunch room table. We sat children six feet apart. We assured many hand-washing times throughout the day we

221checked temperatures. We did not allow extra guests in the school, which I have seen already happen in my child’s school. We even controlled the number of kids in a classroom, and we did not share supplies all along while wearing masks. I can’t help, but notice that we cater to the parents that would like to act out of wearing masks, but where is the opt in for me? We have the supplies and the ability to protect our children the same as we did last year. But for some reason, we’re choosing not to protect them. Why? If my child ends up being one of the few gasping for breath and an ICU hospital bed, I know who is to blame. It is careless and unfair to lower the expectations and keeping all children in our school space.

222We’ve given this some thought tonight, as you lay your head down on your pillow, can you rest knowing that you did not do all that you could to keep innocent children safe? And for those parents who are wondering what to do as a single parent, when you have to call out sick for 10 days, it’s easy just having a kid wear a mask. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Dina. let’s talk about quickly. When parents call in and say, I’m a nurse and we wear masks and they don’t hurt anybody and they are effective and they work again. We have provided you endless amounts of data and 95 mask do work. If that’s the case, put them on the kids, but don’t ever expect me to put a blue mask that I know is

223not effective or a piece of cloth over my child’s face to keep them healthy, because I don’t agree with it. And there’s no data supporting that. It will keep them healthy. I kept my child out of school last year and homeschooled because I didn’t want him in a classroom full of masks. I am not okay with propagating the fear agenda that these masks are representing. So for the parents that are calling and saying, protect my child, you have the option. Just like I do. I kept my child out all last year. If you’re so concerned about your child, keep them home this year. Let’s, you know, exercise that option. It’s frustrating. And when we come here and we’re looking forward to talking about, what’s going to happen with an extension of a policy that you’ve

224already put in place, and then Charlie, you something completely off the wall. That is not what we were prepared to hear it. Doesn’t foster trust and it isn’t transparent. And it excites anger and emotion from parents. We want to work with you. We have been here trying to work with you, but at the end of the day, we don’t have to ask your permission for how we are going to parent and keep our children safe. I do a lot of things that have been mentioned earlier, w zinc vitamin D fresh air, sunshine, vitamin C. There are ways that we can get around this. If you choose to. I think that as long as we continue to have our choice, that’s what all we’re asking for. but one of the things I was concerned about was

225listening to how you were interpreting the survey results. When we did this survey before, when it was about masking last year, when you got the data back and it showed that the majority of the parents didn’t want the mask, you immediately went to critiquing that study and that survey and saying, well, wait a minute. We found out that parents re went in and did it more than one time. We pulled this data out. We pull this data and you chipped it away to get it to be what you wanted it to be. You manipulated the data and today, because it has ended up the way you wanted it to, I didn’t hear one person say, were there, did we put in place that parents didn’t get to do this repeatedly? Was that monitored this year?

226Cause it was last time. So that data standing the way that you want it to, because you got the results you wanted, but at the end of the day, no answer is an answer in the bulk of the community. Didn’t respond because they’re okay with what we’re doing right now because you’re honoring our choice. Thank you, Ms. Field Miranda, Mrs. Miranda. Yep. Go ahead. You have three minutes. Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, ma’am go ahead. Okay. Hi, my name is Michelle Miranda and I want to first, thank you. Also welcome me, my family and I to Florida specifically here in Manatee county, as we sought refuge from New York to come here, where there is freedom of choice, unity and respect. While from what I understand, the current opt-out mandate is being extended. And

227I appreciate that compromise. I’m going to address the issues of mass squaring. My son was two and a half in COVID hit. He was in a private school. At that time, I chose to continue his schooling and with hesitation, have him continue to wear them out or have them to start wearing I’m wearing a mask. He would say to me that he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t like it. He would pull it down. He would chew it all day long. When I would pick him up from school, he had a rash around his nose, mouth and cheeks, and the masks were always downright disgusting. Can you imagine what are on these masks? There have been studies that show what exactly can live on these masks. One of which comes recently from a laboratory at the university

228of Florida, who, who a small sample of face masks and reveal the existence of 11 pathogens. That includes bacteria causing dyspareunia pneumonia. Meningitis five of the six masks were contaminated with parasites, fungi, and bacteria. One mask was found to contain a virus that caused a fatal systemic disease in cattle and deer. Other passes pathogens that cause ulcers, acne and strep throat were detected as well of the six face masks, three were surgical tuber cotton, and one Polly Gator. The controls for the study include unused fast face masks and a t-shirt worn at school. There was a peer review study done by Stanford university that demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that mat face masks have absolutely zero chance of preventing the spread of COVID-19. But no one heard about it, even though it was posted on

229a branch of the national Institute of health website, no media outlet, put it out there. The study found quote unquote, that data suggests that both medical and nonmedical face masks are ineffective of viral and infectious diseases such as SARS cov two. And COVID-19 I have written, I have a written list of 47 studies confirming a master useless and preventing COVID infection. Have a second list of studies confirming a negative health effects caused by frequent mask wearing, especially for young children. There are also 46 studies in the NIH, 26 other studies on the website stating long-term mask wearing has negative impacts on the wear. I’m not here to dispute the virus. I’m here to point out how damaging those masks are and how they will cause long-term issues for our children. I respect the choice of

230parents who feel compelled to mask their children because they’re afraid of COVID 19 and its variants, but I too should have a choice as a parent to not mass my child because I fear disparate pneumonia, meningitis and parasites, fungi, and bacteria from masking all day as the emotional and mental effects it has on children. My son may not be in public school right now, but I’m here to stand up for his future. And for the current students, freedom to breathe, it should be my choice as a parent, without having to opt out of anything. My question to you is will you be liable for the health issues that will and have resulted? Thank you very much. Okay. Debbie, Freunde Debbie, if you’re online, please press star six to unmute. Okay. And then I have, Betty

231Rhodes. Hi. Oh, hi. This is Debbie. Yes. Go ahead. And, and you have three minutes. Hi. Okay. what Sarasota did is they brought in an infectious disease expert from Sarasota Memorial hospital and listened to his expert advice. I’m curious why, Manatee county school board has not done that. Why we haven’t listened to any experts, why we haven’t brought experts in to speak to you. I know two weeks ago you brought one in due to a technicality. You, removed him from the podium and you never invited him back under, like to even talk today. Why are we listening to Kevin Chapman? Why are we listening to the parents? We need to listen to the experts, Dr. Weiss, his office, pediatric office in Sarasota, that they weren’t even going to find medical opt-outs, which their soda has.

232So they’re saying that are effective. The person, I looked a second ago who said a mask worn effected. There are people in the COVID unit who are wearing mask 12 hours a day, several days in a row. They’ll have all of these issues that they’re speaking of you, just all I want. I don’t want you to listen to me, Tanya, Andre, whoever’s talking. I want you to listen to the experts and take their advice and listen to them. Listen to what’s happening in our county. The hospitals are full. They’re saying the hospitals are full. If we get to crack that tomorrow, we’re sitting in the ambulance until they have a bed for us. Listen to the experts. Don’t listen to anybody else. I wish you guys would reach out to the experts and find out

233what’s really going on. That’s it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Betty roads. Hi. I’m just, I think I was supposed to be after Michelle. This is Paula. A number 35 red and gold. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. And as long as you have five minutes. Hello? Hello? Yes. Go ahead. You have three minutes. We hear you. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. this is, Paula Lonna. Sorry about that. I want to thank you. And like you guys were probably, we’re all very sick about talking about this math issue that’s been going on for so long, because there are other important things that we need to talk about with the score. And I can’t wait to start getting onto some of those other things and thanks to Glenn for bringing up that 1.1 million with Centerstone, because

234I was concerned about that as well. But regarding these masks, you know, it’s, it’s very concerning. First of all, that the agenda did say that you were going to discuss the continuation of the mask mandate. And I know that a lot of parents did not get on tonight because they just expected. It was either going to be expense extended or stopped. I knew better. I knew that we were going to try to fit something else in there. And you know, you are losing the confidence of this community. As you continue to try to sneak things in during the last emergency board meeting, it took seven different wordings of your motion to finally pass it through. And now today you’re trying to sneak something else in. And like I tell my kids, if you’ve got to

235sneak something in, then you’re doing something wrong and it’s not appropriate. I think a lot of folks didn’t opt out from the email because the email did not say that the opt-out was a requirement. So people saw it and probably thought, well, I’m opting out my kids. Aren’t going to wear a mask. It wasn’t until I actually went to the forum that then it said it’s required. So the parents had read that email would not know that it was a requirement. And that’s why you see that you have a low adoption rate on that. thank you to Gina for pointing out, the deceptiveness of what was happening today. And I thank her for continuing to be a voice for us as a parent of kids in school, to keep our parental rights and our choices.

236The evidence is overwhelming. That masks do not work. and I won’t bore you with those details, but it’s also very frustrating that Reverend golden continues to act very it’s very disingenuous when he acts like he’s above the fray and he’s talking like, he’s the only one up there talking about the safety of all of the children. When all of us want strong public schools, we all want our kids to be healthy. I want every kid to be healthy, black, brown, white, I don’t care. So it’s, it’s very triggering and it’s just very, it’s just ridiculous, but he will come out and do stuff to try to trigger the audience and get a rise out of everybody hit. The racism that comes from him is, is it’s just very disconcerting, but everything that he looks goes

237to the lens of racism. So that’s a challenge. And we look forward to, to working on that as we’re looking for new board members. but this is just, this is just getting outrageous. keep the keep status quo or better yet go back to the voluntary mask, but let’s just end this. Thank you. My name is Betty Rose, but, gold. And I need to tell you, when you see me in here, I’m representing all the black family that cannot come here, but is, and I, you really demean us tonight by you making that statement. But first of all, I need to tell you all, some, and I’m not bias. Your everybody’s certain people are saying is violating the constitution, right? No, it’s not because you still got freedom of speech. You still got freedom to practice

238religion. You still got the right to assembly and you got the right to after grieve against the government. One thing I got to realize is this, your first amendment and other constitution amendment is not violate by wearing a mask that helped protect the welfare of our people. Now I’m gonna tell you a why that the judge did not dismiss that suit against the sender. See a lot of you all, don’t go back in history. I know a lot of y’all remember back in Massachusetts in 1905, although we weren’t born there, but I was very good about small pot. You know, that’s why he didn’t. They went on that same guideline, 1905. And for me, yes, I have kids here in the system. They’re not mine. They’re my grandkids. And I am going to protect them

239by wearing a mask. And that’s it. I don’t care if you see me sitting over there, I’m representing the blight, go. One thing about it. We have meetings and I bring it right out to them. Let them know what’s going on. Everything here in the school board. And that’s why they be knowing golden. And another thing everybody’s worried about the mess y’all need to think back to some years ago about those mass. And they kept it on sometime for 12 hours. And now all of a sudden, they send this violin, your constitution, right? No, it’s not. You read them as to protect those kids. And right now, every one of you all is worrying. What you’re going to get a paycheck, the federal government going to come to your rescue. You better get on board.

240Like the other counties you understand, because see, you got to realize one thing, a person can run their mouth for now. I have no kids in school to send his kids, his little Richard Carvin, the commissioner of education. He got one kid in college, but do you know his kids don’t go to a public school dude. They know they go to one of them, us state school, that’s a charter school. And then he had the nerve to say at a meeting in Fort Lauderdale or St. Pete, that he got a mother-in-law and a brother-in-law stayed in the back of the house. And those kids had to take them to what you think he had those kids on mass. So y’all better get with it. Mr. Chair. Ruben golden. I think we skipped over number 38.

241Laura Anastasia, Mr. Kennedy. This is Katie Barnes. I was also skipped. Oh, okay. Katie, since you’re on, go ahead. You have three minutes a number 23 wrinkle. Okay. Thank you. Gina first, I would like to thank you so much first. Okay. Thank you, especially again, I would also like to thank you for speaking out on the transparency. I do think it’s very shady to discuss something different than what was previously outlined in the agenda. Please stop pushing mass mandates, let parents choose. We’ve all. All we have to do is get through September 80 days, 90 days, it all kind of sounds like 15 days to slow the spread to me, which I’m pretty sure we’re in day 500 and something of that children do not belong to the school board. The parents get divorced. Does

242the judge consider granting custody? Did the board, or does he just look at the parents? You know, the mom, the dad, the people that were given that child by God, Thomas Jefferson said there was no justification for taking away an individual’s freedom and the guise of public safety. This is what you guys continually to continually try to do. No opt-out forms should be required. Not for parents, not for children, not for staff. Everyone should have the right just to show up and either wear a mask or not wear a mask. Perhaps parents don’t want to fill them out. I wouldn’t want to marry. You’ve had your way with mass for over a year. Why don’t you just give the free, give freedom a chance after all this is America, let us all choose children. Staff,

243visitors choose for themselves with no opt-out form required. And also we need someone to ask, sorry. I was looking at the agenda item on page five for the purchase praise isn’t that award purchased. It looks like the county paid either somewhere between 1400 to $1,700, to the company and then got an award service certificate. It looks like you guys are greasing the wheels for the, the millage. So maybe we could address that as well. Thanks. Thank you. Laura, Anastasia, you have three minutes? Yes. Ma’am go ahead. Yes, we can hear you. Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. My name is Laura Anastasia and I have two children and Manatee county elementary schools. Thank you board members for taking the time to listen all up until all these public comments tonight.

244And the first week of school, my children’s teacher sent me a list of rules. The rules included the type of clothes my kids could wear to school. No hats, no short shorts, mandatory sneakers. On PE days, the rules included the types of snacks I could send to school with my children, no candy, no chips, healthy snacks only. And in one of my children’s classes or as a student with a severe peanut allergy. So in that class, the rules are that no student can bring any peanut products into the classroom. The rules even included daily tasks. I would be expected to complete signing my children’s agenda nightly. So basically my kids’ school told me what my kids could wear, what my kids could eat. And even what I would spend part of my evenings doing every

245single school night. And I listened and complied, no questions asked why are math different? These pieces of cloth have been shown to be the best protection our children have against COVID for two young fascinated and potentially deadly disease that is currently running rampant through both our community and our schools. My children’s elementary school alone recorded 18 positive cases and the past two days. So why are we even questioning whether all students should be required to wear masks and it’s that very rule we should all want to follow. It could and would have an immediate impact on students’ short-term and long-term health and learning, implementing a math mandate with limited medical exemptions like Sarasota debt could finally slow the cases in direct exposures that have driven what must be more than 1000 of our students and

246teachers in quarantine in less than three weeks at the minim please stop worrying about infringing on parents of freedoms and start worrying more about protecting our kids, teachers and staff, implementing a math mandate with limited medical exemptions like Sarasota did, will reduce the number of root millages. The numbers reduced the spread and significantly mitigate the risks that our children, teachers and staff is every single day. The Florida constitution guarantees that all children in our state and I quote a uniform efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of prep, free public schools. There was nothing safe about a school that is experiencing multiple cases of COVID. Every day, there was nothing efficient about teachers teaching the half empty classrooms, and there was nothing high quality about elementary school students being handed a packet of worksheets to

247replace the four to 10 days of in-person learning that a single quarantine can take away from them. Please fix this. The current mandate is not working. My kids’ class have less than half kids with less than half students with masks. Even after that mandate, please, please be bold and pass a math mandate with limited medical exemptions tied to case numbers in our area of Sarasota and other districts have done. Please protect our children, especially those who are not old enough to stand her and advocate for themselves. Don’t wait until a child or teacher dies to take action. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, we had for the second. Yes. All right. Now the general comments, Nancy Golden. That was comment. We have a motion and a second, and that was the comments on the

248motion and the second. So we’ll get to that. So let’s vote on this. I haven’t gotten to speak yet. Who was this? Who was speaking? We’ll help Red and gold number 20. go ahead, Mrs. Wilhelm, you have three minutes. All right. well there’s been so much talk and, I don’t even know where to start because I’m rather disgusted with so many parents that, they, they just are fear-mongering and just putting their fears onto their poor children and not listening to the science. Science does not change. Science has proven years ago about math and what the Petri dishes that the other people have spoken about that I don’t have to keep going over and over again, but unless the child is changing the mask out every time they touch it, every time they move it, which

249we know is not going to happen. I have a child, I have two children that only one is in school right now. And, he was sent home during quarantine last Tuesday or whatnot. And, he was able to return. I’d really like to know how we determine these sets. He was exposed to the COVID since I can’t, you know, you can’t tell me what student it was, to come to find out, you know, they’re second graders. They can talk. They know when their friends are out of their class and one kid was out and I come to find out, I talked to that parent, the parent had, COVID not the child, the child tested negative. So I’d really like to know who he was exposed to because when the child can tell me that his friend

250told him that he’s back to school and he doesn’t have COVID. And, but my kid has been out all last week because of this. So I, I not happy about that. And I, that makes me think that the school board has taken it upon themselves or the school is just making numbers. So it appears like we have more breakouts and we are, going to, oh, rules in laws, you know, in my family, we follow the laws. Yes. We break the law by speeding. some people don’t wear their seatbelts. I like to wear my seatbelt, but I don’t wear my seatbelt out of the car. And I, I there’s just rules are made to be followed and it’s all set up. and you guys not following executive orders is not setting a precedent for our children.

251So we have to follow all these rules at school. I can’t go on to my child’s elementary school. I have to follow those rules, but the governor issues an executive order and he is your boss. And you can’t follow that. You, you go ahead and do this mandate. It’s absolutely a third and I am. But your comment is the chair. Would you make an announcement if there’s anybody else on the line that wants to speak to this before we vote? Is there anyone else on the phone who would like to address the motion, which is about extending our current mandate with a parental opt-out through October 29th? I think that’s going to do a riverboat. Alright. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Let me go on before we vote, I do want to address one thing.

252That was a common thread that ran through before we vote. please, we had a public speaker who was talking about projection, the psychological use of the word projection. So, this is a slightly different variation projection, But there is a lot of, there was a lot of public comment that is projecting your anger at me to the entire board. I am the person that brought up the idea that that is being criticized, for being a bad idea, for lack of transparency, so on and so forth. So please direct your anger where it belongs, which is at me, not at the entire board, because I floated that idea to see if anybody thought it was a good idea and no one did. So please, this is not the board trying to implement mandatory mass. It was me

253trying to do that. And nobody thought that was a good idea. So please direct your angry emails and phone calls to me and not the superintendent or my four board colleagues. Yes, please. Yeah, please forward. actually that would be a sunshine violation. So please don’t do that. You can, you can share them with me at the next publicly noticed meeting. so that said, everybody ready about we discussing any of those or no? if you’d like to, I mean, Mr. Show you’re right. I guess one of the biggest things that I heard overall was Courtney. That is not something that ups, here the board has decided on any of those quarantine rules, nor is it superintendent Saunders. It’s told us by the floor department of health, Chad Lee, or Mr. Choate. Let’s say that though, because

254this is comments should be directed about the, about the motion that we have, which is the mandate, right. Continuation of the mandate. We can do that in a minute though, after public comment, because I think that needs to be sent to let’s just wait a few minutes. okay. all those in favor of extending the status quo, which is the mandate with parental opt-out, through October 29th, please say, aye, This is messenger. Okay. chair bow tie, Mr. Chuck. No, no. Okay. Motion passes three to two. Okay. Reverend golden. I think that’s gonna bring us to, Public comment comment. Yes. Nancy T. Sanders, Carol D. Young and Denise McWilliams in that order please. Well, Mr. Nelson waved his, desire to speak with Carol D. Young Carol D. Young Carol D Okay. Denise McWilliams. Nice. Can you just

255give me one second? Is there anyone on the phone still, who is registered for general public comment? If so, please press star six and announce yourself. Andra Griffin. Okay. Bridget Mendel. Okay. Anyone else? Mendel? I heard, I got you, Mr. Medal. I got you. I got you. Hang on. Anyone else? Okay. ladies, please. Hold on. We’ll be with you in a second. I think there was one other person that had said that they sounded to speak again. Oh, that was a miss. Ms. Rhodes said she wanted to speak during general as well. Right? W we’ve got names to get through them. We’re coming. All right. Denise, Mick Williams. All right. Haley rim, Haley rim, Joseph Molenaar. Joseph Molenaar. Okay. I think you said some of the Galvanise zap. Okay. And then, Nicole Lynch, the Cole

256Lynch police she’s here. Gavin Hoover Right now. Yes. Go ahead, sir. Okay. Thank you, Charlie. I got to, first of all, I just want to ask that in the future, if you could, move public comments up to the front of the meeting. I mean this meeting obviously went in longer for other reasons, but you really should move them up to, the front of the meeting. It’s disrespectful to the public at a minim but in any event I I’m calling about, you know, the district’s finances. We know that this district practices bad management, one example is wasting 400,000 on a special election on November 7th to compel people to pay taxes. When this district continuously wastes money, people should vote no more taxes on November 2nd. And tonight you demonstrated more bad management by purchasing a

257financial award. You purchased praise. How symbolic is it that you had to purchase and wait finances for a financial award? How rich is that? It’s obvious this district is so mismanaged who in their right mind would reward bad management by voting for more taxes on November 2nd. I urge everyone to vote. No more taxes. I November 2nd. It’s the right thing to do. Thank you. Thank you. Rebecca D Rebecca D Rebecca D Angela Anderson, Angela Anderson. I believe it was Andrea Griffin and Bridget Mendell that Reverend golden, Mr. Jones is on page two. Oh, I’m sorry. Rodney Jones. So Rodney Jones, doing my normal routine, back again. I think what Glenn is going to talk about is some strange, various strange irregularities that we found with the finances. some of the irregularities, that I’ve reached

258out to the board in the district before, through public records requests while mom public records requests, please don’t make me Sue you guys for these records that are now being held. I probably got at least got about 30 records requests on behalf of the community that are directly related to fraud and conspiracy by Cynthia Saunders. And my records requests are not complete. some are as old as a year, along with requests for investigations that we’ve asked for for over a year, some as long as two years, and they have not been responded to, and it singles to be directly related to the black community, just as we’ve seen this boardroom where blacks are treated differently, even by your own admission, Mr. Kennedy, that blacks have been treated differently here. So we have a problem. In

259addition to that, there has to be a stop to the runaway train of due process issue that horizons currently right now. And I think we’re above federal mandates. That horizons is 80% minority. And I don’t know if anybody sees a problem with that, especially with Cynthia Saunders, Ms. Sondra, his track record of due process issues previously, where she fraudulently according to the state of Florida, former commissioner, Pam Stewart, you fraudulently, threw kids out of school to proudly increase the rest of the board. well, your superintendent fraudulently created, dumped kids out of school, too. Inflate. The district’s graduation rates is documented by the state of Florida. No consequence here. And that’s part of the problem. What you’re going to find is that the school district has not placed LMS financials online. I’ve asked for the records

260here, substantial records requests, and they’ve sent me everything. But what I’ve asked for, that’s a huge red flag for a corruption. Mary I’ve asked you some questions about the finances you’ve negated the answer. You said your advisory buys. You’re not the answer. I like to know who your advisor is. And not only what I know who your biases, but don’t who request it. We are asking you are directly related to corruption, and I’m going to hold you responsible when we are as a people. You deliberately sidestep that answer, because if you knew, if you responded, it would, it would, spell the end for your buddy over there. And so you ought to be ashamed of yourself, man, we voted for you because of your alleged financial stewardship that you were going to bring to the

261board and the accountability. And you haven’t done that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You really should. And all of you should. And I’m just telling you right now, every day, that goes by you get one day closer to you, to my eyes of I’ve been in the field for a long time. These are very heavy criminal allegations. That summary judgment. It represents a criminal representation of what you did to cause the damages that they’re suing for. So you can’t have behind that lawsuit. That’s our lawsuit that we filed against you. And you know, Andrew Griffin, Griffin. Yep. Go ahead. You have three minutes. this meeting, if this entire meetings not being run correctly, if there is an outburst, according to the bylaws, if there is an outburst, a warning is to be provided

262to the disruptor. And then the next outbursts, they are debris removed. A general warning is in violation of the board vial. Bylaws. When a motion is brought to the floor, it needs to be open for public comment per your own attorney. Yet you keep pushing motions without any comments. And this is again a violation. You can’t bring up 18 different motions and reword them different ways and give the public absolutely no rights to comment on those. motions. freedom of religion is a constitutional right, which Ms. Betty Rose, sales had said that we have, that is not true because under my religious freedom, I can breathe freely. Children should be able to breathe freely under religious exemption, which you guys were trying not to provide. So you you’ve got to tighten up because I’m telling you,

263you guys are violating laws. You’re violating your own bylaws with the way you are conducting this meeting. It is, it is disgusting. I was thrown out of that meeting for one outburst, a general, a general warning is in, in conflict with your bylaws. What is going on with you guys? I realize you don’t want it. The public comments. I realize you don’t want to listen to me, but it is what our rights are and you keep violating them. So when is this going to stop? When are you going to start re respecting the community? This is the problem we have with you. The lack of respect, the turning of these cameras that dismiss this, Mrs. Miss the outbursts. You guys want us to treat you with dignity, but you failed to treat us with the

264same dignity in your, your comments. You put rules upon the people that are in that meeting. When you refuse to follow the damn rules yourself, and I’m done. Thank you, Bridget. Mandale Bridget Mendel star six to unmute. Yes, this is Bridget Mendel. I suddenly we have a board member that’s interested in disproportion disproportionality of, the racial makeup of, things that, are happening in our district. I find is very, very rich because it is disproportion that ended this school district in federal court, the Tampa middle district court to be exact a case was filed on behalf of a black student and eight year old boy, who’s not been provided a public education in this county since May 3rd, the day he was kicked out of kit Tillman and banished to horizons, baby jail, Linda Montebello, and

265I, filed, on behalf of the parents. So we didn’t even need a lawyer to get to the federal court. So one of your horizons cases is now in federal court and I’ve been slandered. I’ve been lied about. I’ve been told none, none of this has ever been to court, but here we are. Finally, we have a disproportionate issue and somebody’s paying attention. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have anything to do with the kids. You banished to horizons rises is 78% minority, 65% boys, 35% girls that my friends is disproportion and a federal district judge found merit in our case, otherwise you all in the district would not have been served by us Marshall a few weeks back in addition, Linda and I advocate on behalf of a senior and manager, you’ve been trapped in horizons since last

266April, when its felony charges were dropped, the student was promised that as soon as he cleared his chairman Individual children’s issues put out on public comment like this. Okay. Okay. All right. Let me get back to what I’m trying to say. Bottom line is you are violent. You, you are in violation of disproportionality issues in, in your segregated public school here in Manatee county. That’s a violation of federal law. In addition, there’s a two tier system of justice. There’s the tier system of justice for, for a student. Who’s a college prospect football player and one who is, but the rules that child never had to go to rises, but somebody else did. So that’s something we need to look into. bottom line is I called Mr. Schrier today to try, oh, I said a name,

267oops, I called your, those in charge of horizons to try to work out something. for this other student, I was hung up on 10 times today. I was calling with the student that I was representing. And, I just basically hung up on, I tried to serve the district with another due process complaint last week. It took me over an hour because nobody at the district office front desk wouldn’t even accept my due process complaint. I want to see those boys removed from horizons. I want them back in their schools and we will not stop finally, Linda and I will not finish, but the fact that it was, I just found it so rich tonight to hear someone on the board cried disproportion and racial discrimination yet I have stayed on message for the last four

268years that your horizons is a segregated school. Sure. That concludes the, public, comments that I have, names for. Okay. Mine too. Glen, come on. Okay. Glen, Mrs. Messenger, go ahead. I was just, it’s public comment concluded. We have one more. Okay. Now I just wanted to Ask the superintendent to answer something, but in my hallway, we’ll do it a second. Sure. Yep. I guess what I’m asking is if the approval of the adoption of categorical flexible spending resolution amending and the reduction of the total amount, that’s where I have Mr. Jim Belina’s name. I am Mr. Jolena can confirm this. This gets back to the question that Ms. Rhodes asked at the beginning, because she signed up for public comment, but then we had a new motion, which opened it up for public comment. So

269Mr. Jolena had signed up for, as many people did sign up for general public comment, but then came up to address the mask mandate. So, So he’s addressing the mass mandate plus whatever Other general public comment. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny people. You don’t vet it when somebody emails you though that’s different. It goes right up on the screen. Those are all public records, Michael legitimate. Yeah. We can move on here. I did a records request and your answer was, oh, it’s not official business. And just, just the case law that you use is so poorly stated in the course of official business. Yeah. Someone a nine to five, maybe. but you know, the you’re an elected official. So I wrote next page, please. I wrote Mr. Brosky and I said, Mr. Brosky, I request

270your assistance has matter. And a general attorney, by the way as well. So that’s backwards, not wrong one. So Mr. Brosky, the personal burner phone is not designed as my understanding that they’re in public meeting, all conversations shall be heard by the public. This personal burner phone is not designed to avoid the statutes. I believe that the response by the school district of Manatee is an error. This is case law is not pertaining to situation of an official board meeting, nor does it include minors at the fence. I request that your office weigh in on the sunshine violation. This phone call was done during official board meeting at a public has a right to hear every word that was said. I’ve also filed with the AIG next page. So let’s talk about charter schools. How

271can Manatee charter with only a $5 million budget be a million, four at a whole and Ellie Mae LMA wasn’t anywhere near this, let you let this go in the hole. Next page perish. They only have a $3 million budget and they’re a half a million dollars in the hole, but I don’t see you doing any scrutiny there. How can that be? Next page roll at 8 million, half a million in the hole. All these schools are in the hole, not anywhere near LA may, but I don’t see you doing anything to that. So help me understand How L M a is on the same level playing field as, as, as ones that are in the hole to millions of dollars. So let’s go to one more handout here. Definitely the Rutgers I’m a messenger,

272you know, they say don’t kill the messenger. You can kill me because I am, dropping off a due process complaint. And if Bridget, you’re still listening, didn’t take me an hour to get the delivered. I will tell you this, this is my neighbor. You’ve made it personal. I’ve reached out to you people before you haven’t addressed my concerns. Mitch, you’ll have a certified mail tomorrow for your signature at this school. And I’m marrying those two into the record as well. Thank you. Yep. Irvin golden. I think that concludes public comment. yes, the only other person that we have for, public comments directed at one new business item non-consent and then one new business item. No superintendent recommendation. Two, three items. Yeah. So we have comment on action items, but that’s, that’s the end of general

273public comment. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We’ll be right back. that brings us to, new business non-consent superintendents. Yes. I recommend the approval of adoption of the categorical flexible spending resolution 2021 dash 0 0 6, amending resolution 2021 dash oh two for reduction of total amount by $139,366. I’ll second. This one. And then we have two, two speakers listed for public comment. Ms. Griffin, if you’re still on the phone, you’re our first speaker, please press star six. Ms. Griffin, Griffin Out that, there, it goes, it says I’m no longer needed. I’m I signed up for everything and, and waving, this, options. So you guys can move on with business. I am listening and I will be commenting as needed. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Mr. Jolena. Okay. Thank you. All right. We have a motion

274and a second. Any, comments, partners, questions, chairman, Ms. Messenger. Yeah, I, I did ask that after public comment that the superintendent address one thing. So after this, vote, can I, can we go back to that for one minute? I apologize. I was, I was rushing. I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask the superintendent to address the comments that were made about paying for an award. Can, can she address that? Sure, of course. I’ll be glad to address it, except it’s very difficult to address because I don’t even understand the content. The award was given to our district from a financial institution, that, and I believe I just had sent it to everyone. Can’t find it right now. here it is. I’m pulling it up. yes, it’s a longstanding organization association of school, business officials. so,

275I, it’s hard to even discuss how a comment such as that could be made, but, I would like to, place it in the record so that if anyone wants to go and look at our minutes, they can see the actual award. They can look up the organization themselves. It is a little baffling. I don’t even, and I know as foreman, you were on the audit committee, do you have any idea of where such a comment would come from or how this, this is an award that they, that we’ve received since probably 2009 every year. And, I took a look when the comment was made at the, at the executive summary on the board packet and it makes no reference to that. I of, No. No. I really just wanted some clarity on that. That’s all.

276Okay. All right. Great. I just have a couple of quick notes. we had a comment about fencing around schools. That’s due to Parkland and new legislation that came out of the Florida legislature about safety and security. So that’s why they’re at all of our campuses. More fencing has gone up. It’s not, we’re not trying to create a police state or whatever was said during public comment. somebody brought up the video by Dr. Dan stock. That video has been thoroughly debunked, multiple times. And if anybody can reach out to me, if you’d like me to send you the link to that, remember I am the person who was quote unquote quite slimy, not my board colleagues, please direct your anger at me. The board is not slimy. I am. and there was a, one of our

277speakers said, we need to buy more. Buses are promised. Transportation is not a lack of buses. We have plenty. The problem is a lack of drivers and COVID keeping drivers out. I think that’s all I had. There’s also an incredible amount of disagreement on masks. And I’ll ask one more time that we respect each other’s choices, whether we choose to wear a mask or not. We don’t need to yell at each other about the merits of wearing a mask or not wearing a mask. So let’s please respect each other’s opinions, even indifference. Okay. Now I can start going on autopilot. We have four more items of new business. First up is the, sorry, I don’t mean to make light of these items. I apologize. first up is approval of revisions to the citizens, financial oversight

278committee charter. it’s going to motion in a second. and then I have a comment and then we’ll get, or we have a public comment and then I’ll have one remark to make I move that we approve the revisions to the citizen financial oversight committee charter. Okay. Second by Mr. Show, motion by Mrs. Foreman. just for the public sake on this item, we have discussed the revisions to this charter at least three times that I can think of in the past six weeks. So this, this revision to the charter has been, thoroughly gone over multiple times. So that’s why you might see a quick motion, second and vote, which we have Reverend gold. You do have one. Yeah, I was going to, yup. Yeah, I was not going to skip over her. okay. Ms. Griffin, if

279you’re there, you have signed up to comment the citizens, financial oversight committee charter. Yep. Go ahead. You have three minutes. This thing that has such a lag, Andrew Griffin Manatee county. I am going to yield my time. Okay. Thank you. Ma’am Okay. Board members, any comments on the charter? We have been over this with a fine tooth comb, a three page document. we’ve gone over that thing, like a 300 page document. Okay. all those in favor of approval of the revisions to the charter. Aye. Aye, aye. Motion passes, approval passes unanimously five to zero. Next up is approval of our internal auditor reports. Do we have a motion? I move for the approval of the internal auditor reports. I believe there are two of them, the, the construction report and the personnel audit report. To

280get there. I thought we just discussed this as a, still for financial oversight. No, this is number two, which is approval. The internal auditor reports. Yeah, I passed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Stay on, stay on line. You got two more coming. Well tell me what they are for, and I’ll let you know real quick, whether I’m going to speak on them, Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll let you guys handle the rest of your business. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. You too. Thank you. I shouldn’t move on That one. Okay. move. Okay. moved by Mrs. Messenger second by Mr. Cho. and just for the community’s sake, this seems like a small item, only $950, but, by Florida statute, any, any board member expense, like this must be approved at a, at a regular

281meeting. All right. all those in favor, please say, aye. Aye. Shareable time, motion passes five to zero. Okay. That’s going to conclude our action items for the seasoning. The, workshop item requests is, next up and, board members. What we have so far coming up for August 27th is our, legislative, wishlist to go out. And then also our final approval of millage allocations. That’s coming up this Friday, as well as capital budget. And then on the September 17th workshop, we have our ERP status and then we have a strategic plan update regarding safety and security. Also in the queue, I’ll just run a bio, just, strategic plan, recruitment and retention, charter school oversight and communication, election and district lines. redistricting is, coming up, academic school calendars for 2223, HR workshop, chain of command changes and reports,

282ESE, due process and ESE policies requested by Mrs. Foreman, request for a workshop regarding our not to exceed amounts. That’s our procurement and board approval of purchasing and contracts requested by Mrs. Messenger. And finally, oh, those last two are together. not to exceed amounts in procurement. any burning topics on anyone’s mind for a workshop we’re pretty loaded up for the next, three to four workshops, but I do want to get them in the queue if, I like to be able to discuss where we have public comment, how long things like that. So public comment in our bylaws. Yeah, sure. okay. I think that’s, I think that’s probably a good idea. I do, by the way, I have, since I became chair, I have tried to move public comment closer to the beginning. what I, what

283I did tonight, just for the boards, what I’ve been doing lately is I’ve been putting public comment right after approval of the minutes. And then the consent agenda consent agenda is usually very quick, and we may have staff in the room or in the building that are only waiting for their item on the consent agenda to pass. So instead of making them sit through public comment, I’ve been doing the consent agenda for, so to Mr. Hoover’s point, I mean, I think there’s multiple ways to do it, of course. Sure. And we’ve discussed, like, do we, do we set aside a timeframe and then divide the minutes by the number of speakers or so, we could do public comment and also maybe just general, anything else in our bylaws we want to take a second look

284at, Do we want to discuss that in a workshop or in the board training? Cause I think we’ve talked about it. Oh, that’s right. That’s a good idea too. And to be honest with you, we’re going to have a board training before we even get to that In a workshop. So that’s a good point, Mrs. Foreman. Yeah. Where we can fit it in. okay. Thank you, Mr. Chu. That’s that’s a good idea. anything else? All right. think that’s going to bring me to legal update first, and then We’re kind of coming to you next semester. Anything from legal? just a couple of things. I sent out a, email to y’all with the status of the Bray case. It was dismissed, yesterday. he has the right to amend his complaint, and all that. I anticipate that

285and I’ll let you know if and when that happens. the other things kind of pending the, impact fee updates and the, board districting. that’s moving pretty slow. basically monitoring what the county commission is doing right now. So when I want to leverage their work on that and bring it to you and then we’ll go from there. Okay. That’s all. Thank you. Yes. in the motion to dismiss the next motion would be a dismissal on the merits, if it is, Complaint, Amended complaint, excuse me, would be his second amended complaint. And I’m asking you if dismissal of that complaint would be a dismissal on the merits That wouldn’t be up to the judge, but likely yeah. Let me, let me get to my point. I am really interested in whether or not it would be dismissed

286because it was frivolous and utterly numeric, and whether we could recover attorney’s fees for that. I don’t think it’s in that posture. the, he also filed twice now for emergency injunctions, neither of which had been granted. but he’s, he’s, he’s representing himself pro se judges would be pretty reluctant to penalize a pro se litigant. Okay. I’m sorry. I thought he was represented. Nope. Nope. All right. That’s all. I’ve got Mr. Guy, operations update for Mr. Wagger. Very good. I just have a couple, the first one is just a clarification on the public comments. There was a question about surplus property. so the schools district does surplus property from time to time. If it does go on the list, it really does have a good reason to be there. we do have to list the dates

287that acquired and also the book value. we use, intact asset recovery for our it type assets that have to be disposed. A lot of those have to be disposed properly. It’s the same reason why, the county has the east grap, project, off Alina road that you take your electronics to the second or the third Saturday of each month. we also, if we have large items that have value, those get listed on a public surplus.com website, and that is the website public surplus.com. And so, when those are sold, the money does go back into the general fund. one of my items tonight, maintenance and operations, they’ve been working hard, getting schools ready. they’re nearing completion of the media centers, for some of the upgrades that we’ve had, Manatee L Myakka Nolan and Braden river high school.

288those are just, waiting some furniture, but those are looking really good. the maintenance department department partnered with, Lakewood ranch, high school Marine conservation club, environmental action committee on, a grant to, get more bottle, refill bottle fillers for our schools. So it’s good to see the schools pushing forward on some of the COVID type products. In addition, we’re also putting those in, at other schools across the county, of course, and in 16 working days, 16 working days, September 16th, we’ll have our another onsite job there at Wakeland support center. we’re in need of course of bus drivers, as you announced tonight, attendance, food service, lawn maintenance, HPAC electricians, ropers, mechanics, custodian, teachers, and aid. So look for that on September 16th, more information will be forthcoming. That’s it. Thank you. Thanks. I have a question is,

289do you have any more information about the half million dollar printer that we allowed somebody to buy for $49,000? I think. Yeah, no. And, and if that was, and we could not find that after the set of, but we’ll continue to search, but items have to be listed for what you paid for them. So if you bought a computer 15 years ago, and the cost was $3,000, 15 years ago, that’s what shows up on the, the, the board work. So sometimes when you read those, you think that’s, you know, an expensive piece of equipment, but if it’s a 10 or 15 year old piece of technology, it truly is worthless. And, that’s why we list it’s worthless, but, we do have to list the original cost. So the original cost of the printer was a

290million dollars. Like I said, we could not find that one. We look back there. Wasn’t another one in August. we looked back in July, we had one printer for $7,000 and two copiers for 5,000 each. so we will continue to research that and, and find it possible that you overlooked it. No, sir. Well, we don’t have the access to all the surplus here right now on those at the board meeting, but we will search and see, and I’ll give you a report to find out what we found. Thank you, superintendent Saunders. Thank you. And, in case you didn’t know, the Monday was our 10 day count and 10 day count is a very monumental date in a school year because that’s when we determine if the projection of enrollment that we had forecasted a long

291time ago comes out to reality. And, in this year it was very concerning because with COVID, you really aren’t certain how the impact is going to be felt in Manatee county or the state of Florida. I will tell you if you’re comparing apples to apples 10 day count last year to 10 day count this year, we’re up 1,310 students. We have exceeded 50,000 students in our public education program. First time in history, we exceeded 51. We’re not at 51, but we’ve exceeded 50. So, they are coming because this is a good place to be. We have wonderful schools. We have a lot of great things going on in spite of COVID. And I really do want to thank the parents and the guardians for believing in us, for giving, giving us some time and being

292patient. As we navigate through these uncharted waters, even though we had COVID last year, it is not the same school year. We are now having all of our students arrive back in brick and mortar. So we are making adjustments and I do feel strongly that those adjustments are now falling, getting worked out, and it will be leveled out. But with 1300 additional students, there will be new teachers. So that is partly while we have teacher open and seat opens. Now, we didn’t have very many vacancies before the first day of children arriving. We will have some vacancies now because we’ve added the teachers to make up this differential. So we will be hiring. We will be working on that. And, our HR department’s really done a tremendous job with staffing. Our biggest shortage, no doubt

293is bus drivers. It’s felt all over the state of Florida in facets beyond just public education, but they are doing everything with recruiting and job fairs to get people in. We do know that our buses are a little crowded, but we are able to make the routes. I will tell you this past week, there were some districts that had to send to parents that they would not be picking their children up. They had to take their children to school themselves because they did not have enough bus drivers. We’re not in that case, but we do have office staff in, in the transportation department that are carrying some of those routes. So we are working, we appreciate the patience and we will be making adjustments, but it isn’t a bus issue. It definitely is a staffing

294issue. And with that being said, we really have to commend our employees. They have done a yeoman’s job adjusting quickly, handling everything, thrown at them from the COVID adjustments to the extra enrollments, to just making sure the gap of learning is being addressed. And these children are back safe in our schools. So our really applaud each and every one of them, every department from food service to teachers, to principals it’s across the board, they are doing a tremendous job. And if you have the opportunity to go see them or thank them, we applaud them because we would not be here today. We would not have 50,000 students today, if it were not for our employees. Thank you. Thank you, superintendents owners. I appreciate it. I have questions. I know it’s late, but, I’m surprised, to

295know that we have so many charter schools that are in financial distress and that possibly we have, treated one charter school differently than the others. And so I, I would like to know if, any of those charter schools, are they operating without a corrective action plan? I appreciate you asking the question. Statute’s very clear. A charter school has to be in the red and three consecutive months in order for us to address some sort of action. sometimes a charter may dip into a situation one month or so, where there a problem, we reach out to them and if they’re able to correct that action immediately, it is done. So we do not have any charter schools that meet the definition of third of three consecutive months in the red. Have we had other charter schools

296that we’ve had to reach out and communicate to them to correct a problem? Absolutely. We, we have, I think Manatee charter was one example used. It is part of charter USA corporation. So, they do know that they have to subsidize that school beyond what the F T E carries for the expenses of that school. So almost every year, at least every year, since I’ve been here, they generally have to go in and take money from their corporation to make sure that they’re not in the red. So those are examples of situations like that. We do not have any that are in a deficit that meet, the, the definition that was similar to LMA. All right. Thank you very much. superintendent, It’s like a river in cold, Mrs. Messenger, you are first up tonight. Okay. I

297don’t have much to say, I really would like to just echo what the superintendent just said in that, thanking, the employees, the teachers, the cafeteria workers, the bus drivers, the temporary bus drivers that are step again. yeah, the principals, and really the district administration. And I like to think through superintendent herself, you know, this, this, I’ve spoken to parents on the phone and through email. And it’s what the district has had to do is a really hard pivot in a very short amount of time. And I think, I’m, I’m so grateful, for, the employees and, the superintendent and the leadership. So, and with that, Mr. Kennedy, I think he did a nice job tonight. I mean, it was some tough topics and, so thank you. That’s it. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Gina.

298Thank you. Mr. Chuck, and then this is for me. I will yield my time to Ms. Foreman. Ms. Ms. Foreman has nothing to say. It just it’s like, you know, thank you. You know, it was good meeting. Thank you. Okay. You bet Reverend gold. Nope. No pressure, no pressure. You don’t get to take all of their time. Yeah, but I do want to say, thank you, to the board, for, in spite of the obvious and justified, apprehensions that many of our parents displayed that we decided to move forward in faith that we made the best decision for all of the children. All of the parents, all of the staff, time will tell. I said this a year ago, time will tell whether we made the best decision. nobody has, and I can look into the

299future. So we have to deal with what we’ve got here. And I appreciate all of the input from all of my colleagues, even the ones who did not vote for the extension, that they have given us a lot of thought and a lot of concern for all of the children in the county. time will tell, I do want to also thank the chair, Thanks for having me appreciate that. yeah, we are all, our own people up here and we all have equal rights to speak or, and to be heard. And, I will always respect that, among my board colleagues and I do want to thank, I just have a few things to give out and then, and then we’ll be out. But, to my board colleagues, I think we are as a body and as

300a group of people demonstrating that you can have strong disagreements with people and, still, treat each other with respect and to be cordial. And, I really appreciate that very much about my four board colleagues, to the superintendent and the leadership team. The superintendent called me this morning said, Hey, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you’re busy. And I said, I am not even a 10th as busy as you are. So don’t ever don’t ever, I can’t even imagine what you and your team are dealing with. I have a feeling, but I really don’t know what it is. but I, I appreciate the, the stress and, th the, just everything coming at you in the way that you’ve put up with it, you and your team have all put up with it and handled it

301so well. And we’ve got a long way to go. And we keep saying, you know, one day at a time, but, but it is very much appreciated and it does, it does, it demonstrates that this community, that the school district is in very good hands. And, and that trickles down to every employee, even our, for our employees, through, through your leadership and your team’s leadership. And so finally, I just want to address the, our, our kind of student facing employees, because, you know, we, as board members hear from them, or we run into them around town, or, you know, I’m a, I’m a former employee in the district. So as Mr. Choate, so, we, you know, we just have, we have connections and friends out there and we hear from them and, and the board

302hears you and we know what you’re putting through and, and you are not, it seems impossible. And it doesn’t feel like an actual school year yet because there’s so much so many kids coming and going, and it’s just, I, as myself as a teacher, I would always like, everything’s, I’m very organized and everything’s gotta be here. And so I know for some folks like this, not, not knowing who’s going to be there and the next day, it’s very hard to plan and it can be very stressful. on top of like, oh my gosh, I’m operating I’m, I’m a school teacher. I’m a bus driver. I’m working in the cafeteria, whatever our, our employees are doing, among a, among a pandemic, which hopefully right now is peaking. So, I want to let our employees know that,

303that you are heard you’re not out there alone. if you do feel you need help reach out, we have great employee programs. We have a board that’s listening to you. We have a leadership team that is listening to you. So you are not alone out there. Please just, just remember that. And we’re going to get through this, together. And, and a few years from now, we’re gonna like, wow, it wasn’t 21, 22, just the crazier. Like we thought 2020 was bad. And then 2021 got here. So I’m hanging our folks. I know we’re only 11 days in, we got a long way to go, but, we are going to get there and we’re going to get there together. And everybody, you know, just stay support each other. And, amongst the chaos, just hang in there

304together and hang on to each other and we’re gonna get through it. So, I will see everybody on Friday for the workshop. And, again, I appreciate, my board colleagues very much for a very good meeting and to the public who joined us, for your input. Thank you as well. When you’re in the room, we are adjourned. Thank you.