001The school board meeting for November the eighth, 2022 is called to order. At this time, we are going to ask Reverend Alethia Winston, Pastor of the Ward Temple, African Methodist Episcopal Church here in Bradenton, if she would lead us in our invocation. Let us pray. Good and loving God, who is our source of love and life. Bless us today with your kindness and your compassion as we pray for the school board members and the students of Manatee County. It is a privilege. It is a privilege and honor to pray for the ones who are the caretakers of our children and our students. It all begins in this room with decisions that will change, enhance, promote, and strengthen our students for a lifetime. Give us insight to plan. Give us confidence for new possibilities. Give us
002wisdom to make the right decisions, create a spirit of guidance and grace for the advancement of our children and our students. Thank you for this opportunity. It's in your holy name that I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Wanna take a moment of personal privilege and thank Reverend Winston who was a student of mine in the seminary course for that wonderful invocation. Thank you. Let us stand pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and two Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Item number four on our agenda is for informational purposes only. We have three of them leaves for November the eighth, 2022, the year to date, financial statements through September 30th,
0032022, and the year to date charter school financial statement summary through September 30th, 2022. We now move to item number five, the approval of the agenda. The chair has found good cause to amend the agenda to include all items listed under agenda amendments on the November 8th, 2022. Agenda updated November the fourth, 2022, and posted on the district website www.manateeschools.net. At this time, the chair will entertain item number four under item five on the approval of the agenda listed as approval of the agenda. So moved. I'll second. It's been moved and properly seconded that the agenda with the amendments as announced, be approved. You've heard the motion. And second, is there any unreadiness? Reverend Golden? I have a, a motion, I would, we can talk about it later if this motion passes, but I'd like
004to make a motion to remove item 15 from consent and move it down to items pulled from consent further down the agenda. Okay. There is an unreadiness calling for item 15 to be removed from the consent. Item 15 is approval of appointments, change of assignments, promotions, reappointments, reassignments, resignations, retirements, suspensions, terminations, and transfers. Is there any more specificity that you would like to give to the motion before we Yeah, I think obviously I don't wanna get into it cuz we can do that later. But just for why I'm doing this, obviously our, our Mr. Barran, our, our Deputy Super finance, his resignation is on this document. And I would, before we let him go, like for the board to consider future options, I'll just leave it at that. So that's, that's why I'd like to
005pull it for sharing a few thoughts later in the Meeting. All right. Mr, is there any more expansion that any of the board members would want to have on Mr. Kennedy's request? I'll second it. All right. It's been moved and seconded. That item number 15 be removed from the consent agenda at least specifically to entertain considerations of, I wanna make sure I use your words alternative to this resignation. He, this is just a resignation. Perfect. Well said. Yeah, so it's alternatives to his resignation And Reverend Golden fairness, I'm not even sure if Mr. Barran even has any interest in what I'm gonna say. So I I do wanna, I at least wanna talk about it among the Board. I understand that. So we've had a motion on the second, the UN readiness, it's expressed by
006the vice chair. I Don't have it on readiness, it's just my understanding. If it's a consent item and a board member wishes to pull it, I don't think it needs a motion. I think it's just a consent item that can get pulled. I don't think that needs a motion. I think after the agenda is published and printed, that any change to that agenda except from the chair is something that does need to come before the entire board. And so at this point, unless there's any other unreadiness to what board member Kennedy is asking at this time, the chair will entertain a vote with respect to that particular motion. And I will start with myself. The chair votes no. Yes, Yes, yes, Yes, yes. All right. That item is pulled from the agenda and it obviously
007then becomes a part of our new business agenda with, with no superintendent's recommendation because the recommendation of the superintendent was that it be included in the consent agenda and that that it be approved as a consent matter. Okay. Having pulled that from the consent agenda, we now entertain the motion with respect to the approval of the agenda less. Item 15. Alright. Oh, moved. I'm so sorry. I Think I already had motion for that. Okay. Mine was the motion to amend. Right. Okay. So there's, there's a motion that the motion that she made was to approve the consent agenda. Well, to which included Well, to improve the whole agenda, Which included, which included 15 as I said. And now what we have is a motion that passed that excluded 15. So we still have before us
008an agenda item to approve the agenda as amended, which now excludes 15. Okay. You wanna do It that way? I think that's, I think that's the prop. Am I wrong, attorney? You're Correct. Thank you very much. The chair will now entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended and as And i I app. I made that motion. All right. All right. So it's been moved and seconded that the agenda as amended and as will not be considered. Is there any unreadiness with respect to that motion? Hearing none. That chair will call the question. All in favor of approval of the agenda. Item number five as amended. That will be known by sign of Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, hearing none the I have it. The motion passes unanimously. We will now move to item
009six, which has one item under it, approval of the minutes of the October 25th, 22 exempt shade meeting and the October 25th regular meeting that comes to us with a recommendation from the superintendent. Yes, I recommend the approval of the minutes from exempt shade meeting October 25th, 2022, and the board meeting on October 25th, 2022. It's almost, I'll Second it's been moved and seconded that there'll be an approval of the minutes as recommended by the superintendent. You heard the motion in second. Is there any unreadiness hearing none, The chair will call the question. All those in favor of approval of items six on our agenda. That'll be known by the time of I All opposed here? None the, I have it the most in passage unanimously, we now move to recognitions. We have two Farm
010City Week and Holocaust Education Week. Both of those will be under the EGS of Mr. Mike. Barbara. Thank you Mr. Board Chair. Board members. Superintendent Saunders. Go ahead y'all. You'd like to come down here while we're getting set up here. I'd just like to say to Reverend Golden and Mr. Kennedy, thank you for your service to the school district, our schools and community. So Farm City Week, have you been around the district at all for any length of time? You know, this is an annual celebration. We always welcome it because people who move here usually don't know, but Manatee County has a rich and honored history in agriculture, and so we like to celebrate that during Farm City weekend. To tell us a little bit more, we have Dr. Paul Ganser, he's our Executive Director
011of Adult Career and Technical Education. So thank you Mike, Reverend Golden. And Mr. Kennedy, we also would like to thank you for your service to our community, our schools, and to our, all of our students. And we thank you for your support of adult career and technical education in our county. So we appreciate you and, and we look forward to working with the board for the rest of the time as well too. So thank you. Good morning chairman, Board superintendents, hunters, and staff today. We have a great pleasure of standing before you this morning to receive the 2022 Farm City Week Proclamation. Farm City Week was conceived by Qantas International more than 65 years ago to promote the interaction between city folk and the farming and ranching community. This year we celebrate Manatee Farm City
012Week with the theme Farm City Week salutes Bradenton Kiwanis. While there are many people in the quantities that could be highlighted as being instrumental in creating the foundation for a rich agriculture environment that we enjoy, Man County today, this year the committee Club chose to highlight the role that the Bradenton Kiwanis Club has had in the the agriculture community. There are many organizations in Manatee County that play an integral part in the community, but there is a very short list that has had the significant impact that the Bradenton Qantas Club has had for the last 100 years. This year, the Farm City Week Committee wanted to take this time to recognize the critical role that the Bradenton Qantas Club has had in the preserving and recognizing the world of agriculture, community and Manatee County. At
013this time, I'd like to introduce our assistant director for Career and Technical Education, Ms. Kelly Kennedy. Dr. Gmer, Good morning everyone. It's my privilege to be joined today by Peg Haynes, the Food Access Coordinator for the Bradenton Public Market. She's gonna tell you a little bit more about the market in just a few minutes, formally known as the Downtown Farmer's Market, in case you're wondering what the public market is. Well, I don't have to tell you the importance of agriculture to this community. You know that I always take the opportunity to do so. Mane County enjoys a rich agricultural history, and I can say, I can't say thank you enough to this board for supporting and encouraging our programs along the way. We'll be asking you for that support again in a little bit, a
014few months down the road when we will be bringing forth the request for the board to support curriculum frameworks that we are working on with the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, the Florida Farm Bureau, Florida Ag, and the classroom and other school districts along with the Florida Department of Education, as we are going to be presenting the curriculum frameworks for elementary agriculture. So we're very excited about this project. It has been a grassroots effort over the last year, and it's still continuing. It takes a lot longer than one might think to put together curriculum frameworks, but we have been an integral part of that process because of our first elementary ag program out at Myakka City. We currently are teaching ag in five of our high schools and six of our middle schools
015and of course our one elementary school. And we hope that with the advent of having the curriculum frameworks available, that state level, that those elementary ag programs will continue to expand. It's rare to find a district where ag programs are being added, but Manatee is absolutely the exception to that. I would also like to add my thanks to Reverend Golden, to Mr. Kennedy for your undying support of our career and technical programs and for being available to come and see what we're doing and encourage our students because it has absolutely been a very valuable thing for our students. So thank you again. We will miss you. We are also exceptional in Manatee County when it comes to the contribution that this county makes to agriculture. In general, the market value of agriculture production production in
016Manatee County is ranked second in the state and more than with more than 750 farms, and more than 90% of those farms are family owned. Agriculture is always evolving, growing, changing, and will continue to innovate, automate, and grow more food on less land than ever before. Those are the things that our students are learning how to do in their agriculture classes, along with leadership, public speaking and teamwork. Our community and our students are very fortunate to have the support of the Bradenton Kiwanis Club. When it comes to agriculture. The club's support can be seen as far back as the forties. The club funded the expansion of the four H Center in the seventies and supported the opening of the Manatee County Agricultural Museum in the early two thousands. It supports current day. It supports each
017of our middle and high school ag programs through monetary awards each year. And each FFA chapter recognizes a student with the Kiwanis Leadership Award every year as well. Our celebration of Farm City Week as a direct result of the role that Kiwanis has played in its support and has supported financially by the club during Farm City Week. We will recognize the Agriculturalist of the Year at the Kiwanis luncheon next Tuesday. That one's a secret, so I can't really talk about it. We will induct Mr. Chen into the Ag Hall of Fame tomorrow. You may know that name if you've driven through parish, because Chin Road is named after him. He was a, a very prominent agriculturalist in our community for many, many years, and we will host about a thousand third graders at the fairgrounds
018next Thursday for our Ag Venture Day. This day exposes our third graders to various aspects of agriculture and helps them understand where their food comes from by teaching them about bees, watersheds, forest fires, tomato growing, and my personal favorite, how to make butter. You may also want to visit the Bradman Public Market on November 12th when they will be celebrating Farm City Week with members of the four H and ffa. PE Hays is gonna tell you a little bit more about the market and say a few words. Good morning. Good morning. On behalf of the Bradenton Public Market and realized Bradenton, I want to express our appreciation for the four H and FFA students who have been participating in the celebration of Farm City Week for seven or so years. And I'd also like to
019give a special shout out to the four H Youth Leadership Council and to Palmetto High FFA and their teacher, their ag teacher, Julie Tillett, for participating every single year since we've been involved This year, they're being joined by the parish community high ffa, and we're looking forward to having them at our rapidly expanding market that now features more than 30 food vendors and more than 90 vendors overall. So come on out on Saturday and see 'em. Thank you. Thanks P. All this and more is funded, at least in part by the Bradenton Gus Club during the last few weeks. Our students have written essays and given speeches as part of the Farm City Week festivities, and our students would be here today, but they're in class, so we thought that would probably be better for
020them to stay there. However, they'll be recognized at the Ag Hall of Fame luncheon tomorrow. We're also excited again this year to offer the farm tours to the public, despite the devastation that Hurricane Ian has had on some of our rural communities this year. Farm City Week is November 7th through the 19th. Now, normally this is where I would introduce Mr. Garrison, but as a nurseryman, he's working today. So I know you dis you're disappointed that he's not here today to share his wit and wisdom, but Mr. Garrison would want me to remind you to thank a farmer for the food that we eat. And he would also say, never speak poorly about a farmer with your mouth full of food. Thank you. You have a proclamation. Thank you, Mr. Barbara. It has been task
021to me to read the proclamation for Farm City Week 2022, whereas the First Farm City Week celebrations were established by Kawanas International. And whereas Mattee County Farm City Week was first sponsored by the Bradenton Kawanas Club in 1955. And whereas the 2022 Farm City Week honors the Bradenton Quins Club in celebration of their 100th anniversary with appreciation of the club's sponsorship and support of agriculture. And whereas the Bradenton Quins Club began recognizing the Agriculturalist of the year in 1967 to recognize individual contributions and to bring attention to the diversity of the agriculture industry. And whereas the Bradenton Kawanas Club has been instrumental in the establishment of the four H Education Center, the Manatee County Agricultural Museum, the Master Gardeners Heart Cultural Learning Center, and other brick and mortar projects. And whereas the Bradenton Kawanas Club
022has sponsored leadership and citizenship programs involving four H Future Farmers of America and Farm Bureau programs targeting Manatee County youth. And whereas the purpose of Farm City Week is to educate the community about the diversity of agriculture production in Manatee. And whereas the Manatee County Farm City Week invites the community to join in celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Bradenton Quins Club. And its many contributions to making Manatee County one of the best communities to live, work, and play. And Whereas Farm City Week and the agriculture community are thankful for the 100 years of service and support provided by the Bradenton Quins Club and urges the public to celebrate agriculture in Manatee County, while appreciating the contributions the Bradenton Quins Club has made to agriculture education in our community. Now therefore, be it proclaimed by
023the school board of Manatee County that November 7th through November 19th shall be known, designated and set aside as Farm City Week adopted with a quo present and voting this eighth day of November, 2022 by the school board of Manatee County, Manatee County, Florida, Reverend James T. Golden Chair, since as Sand's Superintendent. Thank You. Thank you Reverend Golden. And also in front of you, board members are your annual Farm City Week mugs. This year they're potted with long leaf lettuce, so good luck in keeping those alive. I was gonna say, she told me that she was gonna check on me to see if this plant was still alive later. And I was like, Don't do that. I'm terrible at plants, but I kill Everything. Mr. Barbara, before we go forward with the second notion, I'm
024sorry, did you, did you wanna make a comment Mr. Kennedy? Real quick, I just wanna say a couple things. Number one, thanks to to all of you for the kind words, this is Reverend Golden and i's last meeting. And by the way, happy birthday Reverend Golden. Thank You, Mr. Kennedy. It's Reverend Gold's birthday today. Thank You Very much for telling everybody That I didn't tell him how old you were. I just said it was your birthday. Oh, Okay. I'm sorry. You're Right. You're, But no, I did wanna thank you for that and just give a kind of a, I'm, I'm at the, the farmer's market now public market near, I live five minutes away, so I'm at the, I'm at the market every Saturday morning. Excuse me. So I just wanna take this moment to
025thank Janet. I show who's, who's retiring from realized Bradenton. They've been a integral partner in the market. So I wanna thank her for her many years of helping the city of Bradenton. And since Mr. Garon is not here, I'm gonna do it for him. But I'm just gonna ask the room, do you know what is Manatee County's number one crop? Is it still Kelly? As far as I know, what, What's It's tomatoes? Oh, I thought it was cucumbers. I thought it was, Oh, you know what? Well, he's Not here. It may have changed since last year. I don't know. Maybe is it, I always Thought it's tomatoes, mades, haters, and cucumbers. So we're, We'll have to invite Him back. We'll, we'll get him back. But anyway, thank you both. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. That's it.
026That's it. Thanks. Okay, Adam, Vice chair, before we go forward, I want to apologize to you because after the presentation by Mr. Barbara began, we were given the list of public comment speakers and the list of public comment speakers has one speaker listed on the consent agenda, which we have already moved beyond. And that's not a beg your pardon? We have not gone to the consent agenda yet. We are. Oh, okay. That's, that's the adoption of the agenda. Yeah, I apologize. Okay. All right. Right now we can go forward. I didn't wanna overlook anybody. That's All right. Appreciate it. Our second recognition today is for Holocaust Education Week 2022. Holocaust Education Week in Florida is held annually the second week in November, which coincides with the anniversary of Crystal Knot, November 9th through 10th, 1938,
027a major turning point in the persecution of European Jews by the Nazi regime. This year, Holocaust Education Week in Florida is held November 7th through 11th 2022. We are gonna go ahead at this time and we are gonna read the proclamation for Charlie or Yeah, sure. Yeah. Thanks Mike. I'm honored to read this proclamation for Holocaust Education Week 2022. I do, before I do the proclamation, I just wanna share it with everybody. If it can be seen for our teachers are a bit of watching the Jewish Federation of Sarasota Manatee has made this educator's guide available. I appreciate the copy you left for all of us, especially in a time kinda this day. We're in now on sadly, antisemitism and Holocaust. Denialism is making a comeback, sadly. So this education piece is more important than
028ever right now. So I appreciate the work you all are doing under the proclamation. This is Holocaust Education Week 2022, whereas the Holocaust was the state sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, in which 6 million Jews were murdered. And whereas we also comm commemorate other victims of the Nazi regime who suffered grievous suppression and death under Nazi tyranny. And whereas the history of the Holocaust offers an opportunity to reflect on the moral responsibilities of individual societies and governments. And whereas we should always remember the terrible events of the show and remain vigilant against hatred, persecution, and tyranny, and actively rededicate ourselves to the principles of individual freedom in a just society. And whereas Holocaust Education Week as part of Florida's educational instruction of
029historical events provides Floridians with a valuable opportunity to remember the victims of the Holocaust, as well as to to reflect on the need to respect all peoples. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the School Board of Manatee County, that the week of November 7th through 11th 2022 shall be known, designated and set aside as Holocaust Education Week adopted with a quorum present voting on this eighth day of November, 2022. Signed by Reverend Golden, our chair and superintendent Cynthia Saunders. Thanks very much. Here to make some remarks. We have Betty Zaret from the Jewish Federation of Sarasota Manor. Thank you very much, and good morning, Reverend Superintendent and all members of the Board I, we thank you so very much for welcoming us to your chamber and to allow us to share a few words with
030you today. I'm Betty Zat and I am responsible for the Holocaust Education Initiative for the Jewish Federation of Sarasota Manatee. And our goal is, and actually we're committed, I should say, to being one of the Centers of Excellence for Holocaust Education in Sarasota and Manatee Counties by providing a robust series of programs that educate, commemorate, and support all members of the community, and especially the teachers and students. Each year we sponsor two commemorative events to honor the memory of both Crystal Kn the Night of Broken Glass in November, which we, so we recognize just two days ago and International Holocaust, remember and stay in January. But every day and throughout the year, we are absolutely committed to working in partnership with the school districts to be able to provide the resources, the tools, the information
031necessary to enable our teachers to be able to not only fulfill their mandated requirements by the state of teaching Holocaust education, but by really imparting the urgent need to not only recognize the truth and the history of the Holocaust, but the lessons of the Holocaust as well, so that our children can learn to become upstanders and to resist and reject all forms of hatred going forward. We are immensely grateful to you for supporting this initiative to work in partnership with us and to recognize the importance of Holocaust education. We, for Holocaust Education Week, have made an a special effort to enhance our, our programming for the teachers by offering a robust online resource or teacher resource center that where they can download, download, age appropriate videos, lesson plans, all sorts of bibliographies, filmography, all vetted
032through the state and the the commissioner's task force on Holocaust education. We also provide, as Mr. Kennedy said, the Holocaust Education Week, excuse me, Teachers guide, I beg your pardon, in which defines for the teachers specifically, I call it a one stop shop, where they can go and learn about what their, the rules and regulations are, what the new standards that are going to be employed in the districts starting in the school year of 2023. And also in the guide, and I encourage you to look at them, are 10 stories that were written by high school students after having interviewed Holocaust survivors. And these students have written articles and testimonies of these Holocaust survivors, those who bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust. And lastly, I just wanna mention that we have had in
033instilled, I guess over maybe more than 10 years now, a very comprehensive Holocaust Speakers bureau, whereby Holocaust survivors are offered the opportunity to go into schools and speak to children. And since 2014, over 15,000 students have had the life changing opportunity to hear a, a Holocaust survivor speak. And so, and I have to say that we are now sadly, at the point where many of these Holocaust survivors are at the end of their lives. And we are nurturing and training, if you will, second generation survivors to share the stories of their parents to students so that we can keep them, their memories alive. So again, I wanna thank you for your support and we hope that each year we can work in increasingly partnership with each and every one of you so that not only
034we can memorialize the Holocaust, but we can also ensure that everyone learns the lessons of the Holocaust. So thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to introduce real quick, Katie Wald, she's our coordinator of social studies, K through 12 curriculum instruction. And then also we have Andrew SL here. He's with the Florida Holocaust Museum, and he's gonna have a few remark. And Good morning everyone. My name is Andrew Sl and I am the manager of outreach programs at the Florida Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Petersburg. Our mission statement is to honor the memory of millions of innocent men, women, and children who suffered or died in the Holocaust. Our museum is dedicated to teaching the members of all races and cultures the inherent worth and dignity of human life in order to
035prevent future genocides. The FH M's education department is extremely proud to have developed a close working relationship with Manatee School District over the years. This partnership includes support and advancement of teaching about the Holocaust and as many K to 12 manatee classrooms as possible. We believe that there are many reasons why teaching students about the Holocaust is essential. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC it provides students with the understanding that the Holocaust was a watershed event, not just in the 20th century, but in the history of humanity. It teaches them that the Holocaust was not an accident, but rather that it occurred because of choices made by individuals, organizations, and governments. It shows them that democratic institutions are not automatically sustained, but that they must be appreciated, nurtured, and protected,
036and it helps them understand the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping. We at the museum hope to continue to strengthen our partnership with Manatee School District and in doing so, continue the ever important mission of Holocaust education for all students. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, of course. Thanks. Thank you very much, Mr. Thank you. Thank you for those verifying presentations. At this time, we'll move to item number eight on the agenda reports and presentations. We have one, a construction update from Joe Rinaldi. Good morning. Good Morning. You're all doing well. We got an exciting project that we're gonna be presenting this morning. The Southeast High School edition is a science and an art edition that we're doing there. And it's not only providing state of the art instructional spaces and science and art,
037but it's also creating a courtyard and it's kind of redoing the central core of the campus as well. So from that standpoint, we think that it's gonna be an all-encompassing project at this point. Right now we have completed design and you is up for approval for the construction phase of the work as well. I'd like to recognize the district team. Bill Horton was director of construction, oversaw, John Williams was project director, and a critical part was Miss Ginger Collins, who was the principal at Southeast High School. As well. Our consultant team consisted of tandem construction and row architects. They were our consultants on this project. I will first turn it over to Rick Rowe. We'll kind of go through the design and then Mr. Peter Hayes will give you an oversight of the construction and
038the schedule that we have in place right now. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Rowe. Good morning. Morning, Mr. Board and Superintendent Saunders. We are honored to be here to collaborate with Manatee County Schools and your excellent staff on the design of this project. I wanted to, lemme see, how do I advance this by hitting the button, right? Do I, Okay, there we go. Talk to you a little bit just about our approach to the site and how we have located the building. As, as Joe mentioned, we felt it really important to kind of put the building in the, in the core of the campus. You see circled in orange here, the original building nine that is, was existing when we started the project. The first phase of the project
039is to, Next slide. Wait, here we go. For the arrow, keys arrow, Sorry. That Outta the way first. Let me see here. You have no idea how good you make. Oh my gosh. You let the younger people do all this. I'm so Happy to see you. Okay, one. Okay. We're really glad that Mr. Wag Too. I got it. I got it. Okay. Okay. The first phase is to remove the southern half of building, and we are kind of preserving the existing science labs that all need to be in operation throughout the construction of our new building. And our new building is pictured to the bottom new building nine. It's a 24,000 square foot two story state of the art science lab and art lab. And it's oriented ideally from solar standpoint, east west, with as
040long as access. East west, there's two main entries to the, to the building. One from the northwest, from the main kind of campus entry and one from the southeast, which is where the student parking lot is. We've recreated the, the, the, the checkerboard pattern that existed at the old entry to building nine off the student parking lot. And then also to kind of preserve the tradition of the seminals, the drum circle to the, to the north of our new building. Making way for future building location to the top of the screen. And I'm let my partner Angela Henshaw talk to you a little bit more about the, the actual building. Good morning. As Rick mentioned, this is a, a replacement for the facilities that really have, have become quite antiquated here on the southeast campus.
041The building consists of 10 science labs, five on each floor and, and two art labs. The science labs are in green, they're all state of the art. And while they're clustered together, for example, biology labs are clustered together with shared storage. Chemistry labs are clustered together with shared storage. They're all designed to be very, very flexible. So that as needs change, if there are, there's a greater need for more biology or more physics or more environmental science. These labs will be flexible for decades to come. The first floor art lab is the practical art lab that will be two dimensional and three dimensional art paintings, sculpture, et cetera. On the second floor, the art lab there is, is digital art. So that has all the facilities and amenities for computers for every student to create
042digital art. The only real difference in, in the science labs from a functionality perspective is the chemistry labs are, are equipped with, with fume hoods for chemicals and all the storage required for those types of, of spaces. And also on the second floor is the teacher planning space that allows the teachers to, to work and, and gather and, and get away from the students over the course of the day. The mechanical and electrical are, are, are all stacked with the elevator core and the, the center at the top on, on your screen. But really it's a very efficient, effective building. We've worked hard to try and get the, the students of Mandy County really good, good value for the dollar in this building as well as good function in all of the spaces. So here
043shows a rendering of the, the campus entry that Rick mentioned, which would be from the, from the northwest. So along this is an existing kind of northwest pedestrian spine that you see on the right hand side of the screen approaching the building. And this is after the, the remainder of, of the kind of antiquated build, existing building nine has been removed. This will be the view that that students get from this new green space that will also be at the heart of campus that they do not currently have. And this is the approach from the parking from the southeast. So as students are parking, as students are arriving on campus, this is the view they'll see of, of the new facility. Again, very welcoming materials and colors are in keeping with the rest of the
044campus to blend with the school and really become part of the school as it is in the heart of campus. So I'll turn it over to Peter Hayes of Tandem Construction. Be, before we go further, I I want to ask you a question. Certainly Yes ma'am. About contamination, accidental contamination. Yes sir. Design of this building going to allow for the minimum exposure throughout the whole building. Absolutely. There, there's very specific mechanical and ventilation systems, especially in the chemistry labs. Yes, yes. So all of that is, is ventilated out. So the, if if in the event that there were any kind of chemical spill, it's automatically vented out of the space and does not connect with the rest of the mechanical systems in the other spaces. But How about The rest on a day to day
045basis? The rest of the campus, That's What I'm really Oh, yes. It's Right in the middle of the campus. Yes. And the chemistry labs are located on the, on the second floor so that the venting can happen straight out through the roof if necessary. So that's, that's kind of as, as distant as it can be from the rest of the, the students. All right. Right. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Certainly. Thank you. Thank you Angela. Good morning. My name is Peter Hayes. I'm the president of Tandem Construction. I want to say good morning to all the commissioners, to Superintendent Saunders and everybody present today. It's a great day from my perspective because we're about to move into the phase that I actually am here for, which is construction. But over the last eight months I've
046been working very closely with Mr. Horton, Mr. Williams and, and Principal Collins, as well as the architectural team engineers and, and basically in a, a very supportive group of professionals that, that the district has as a resource. It's a great group and it's made my job that much better along the way. In terms of my report to you, basically we've been through since March of this year, three D two different s in advance of today. Those other GMPs had to do with, first of all, the preparation of the area that we're gonna build this new building, essentially removing and relocating portables on site and preparing infrastructure in order to allow for this project to proceed efficiently this December and to complete next December 23, 2, 2023 and long short, we also had to go through
047an early procurement phase, which just was approved recently. And that was due to long lead items that we had to procure in order to keep this project sequentially built in, in time. I know you've been going through that on I'm sure other projects along the way. And honestly, as I made note of it, the problems every day occur and we're constantly faced with new issues as we go forward. So it's really elevated our team's attention to all details. Nothing is left aside at this point in time because you don't know where it's coming from next, but I feel we have a very good strong grip on things. All the, all the issues that we're aware of at this point have been addressed and have been included in that early procurement. And now we are at
048the final stage, which is gmp. I'm, I'm pleased to report that the construction budget of $14,055,000, We, we are now at a 13 million, 2 46, so roughly $800,000 under the construction budget as we sit here today. And I don't know if there's any questions about that, but you know, I'm, I'm pleased to report as far as the schedule is concerned today, we're expecting to have approval on construction activities with the notice to proceed tomorrow and ready to start work on Thursday of this week, just when the rain comes. So, you know, the, the project will be completed December 15th, 2023 and there will be a pause. We, we thought pretty carefully, we, you know, most projects don't pause once you start construction, you finish. But all things considered building nine north, I call it,
049which is the existing science building is in the heart of the campus. And so we talked together as a team and came to the conclusion that the best effort would be to pause until June of 24 and then tear this building down, which is somewhat invasive in the, in the day of a student or a teacher or any visitor. So we'll be, we'll be pausing from January, essentially till June. And in June we will take the building down and as you saw earlier, there'll be a restoration project with sidewalks and, and grass and other improvements that will finish the, the project. So all told August of, of 2024, I keep getting older. August of 2024 is the scheduled date for delivery of the project, final completion. And so very excited about the opportunity and looking
050forward to a, a great project together. Everyone, I said two questions real quick. You alluded to it on the previous slide, but I'm just curious where we are with, or whereas the industry with supply chain issues, obviously coming outta the pandemic, it was a, it was a very serious issue. And just from your perspective, are, are supply supply chain issues getting, getting better? Are they the same? Is it getting worse with some products? What, You know, I, I'd say in most portions of the industry, we've seen improvements across the board. The one category that I think seems to linger and become very unpredictable is electrical components. You know, gear, transformers, you know, CT cabinets. So you, you name it. There seems to be an incredibly long lead time item, you know, for us. And it
051creates a bit of a challenge. What it, what, what I feel like at this point in time is we just look at projects now and say everything's a problem and let, and then we delve deeper into it. We can't take anything for granted at this point. But generally speaking, to answer your question, I think there's been a calming in most categories. We still see issues come up every day. Concrete is now an issue where concrete has been, you know, not on allocation in our region yet, but has been on the east coast for a bit of time. And so we have to be particularly careful about how we schedule work. So I, I wish it were different, but I I don't think it's as, as, let's say it's not an unknown at this point. That's
052the good news. I mean, if you have to look at the good side of things, we are aware that there is a supply chain potential problem on every project and we just have to delve deeper to make sure we understand that. And as we did on this project, look for earlier procurement if allowed in order to mitigate the problem. Okay. And then finally, if you could just go back to the beginning, if we could take a look one more, look at the final, at the final state of the site. What's Sure. The, the site plan. The Site. Yep. There it is. Okay. That's what I thought. I saw a drum circle. What a great idea. Ginger. I hope you don't mind if I crash drum circle from time to time. Yeah, it actually exists. It's
053part of building nine now. Yeah, so It's, it's, yeah, it's, that's where the building is currently sitting. Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's, we Understood the tradition and wanted to provide a place for It to continue. Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's a nice touch. That's really cool. So thank you very much. Thanks Ralph. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now when you crash the drum circle, you're not going to play the drums are you? It's a drum circle every, you bring your drum and you play your drum with everybody else. I have my district ID on Your CHS id, I'll Find my CHS Id, your vendor id. There you go. Well, I can see I've lost control of this meeting, so it's alright. Go ahead. That's It. That's it. Thank you. Okay. That
054concludes the construction update. Now we are at the consent items on the agenda and we will hear from the superintendent. I recommend the approval of the consent agenda for November 8th, 2022. I say second. All right. It's been moved and properly seconded. And as I have mentioned before, we do have one comment for the consent agenda. And at this time we will be under the ages of our vice chair. Yeah, I'm just gonna read our spiel for once and it'll be overarching for public comment that comes later. 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
055attack individual school system employees or board members. Any 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 for appropriate handling. Each speaker is allowed three minutes to address the board. Speakers must stand at the podium and not approach the dias. This is a business meeting of the school board and the public expects we conduct in an orderly, efficient, effective, and dignified manner. We request that speakers keep this in mind when making your comments. We also request that the audience keep that in mind and not demonstrate approval or disapproval of what a speaker has said by clapping or booing. The board appreciates the public's input and
056will 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 comments section. Before you begin speaking, please provide any handouts to the agency clerk. Please identify yourself by only your full name. For the record, you have no more than three minutes to speak. Please stop speaking when the bell rings. Florida law requires all citizens to conduct themselves in an orderly fashion at public meetings. Any individual who interferes with the expeditious or orderly process of a school board meeting will be subject to removal from the meeting. Pursuant to Florida statutes. At the discretion of the chair, orderly fashion is deemed as at a minimum, no profanity, no vulgar language, no discourteous, disrespectful or disparaging conduct. And with that, our consent agenda
057speaker is Mr. Julina. Mr. Julina call on down. And this is only on the consent agenda. A I gave you the wrong first page cause that's on my other one that so I can get Comments Would be appreciative for the record. Glenn gi. So building nines, it's great. We're saving money. I, I guess my first question would be, are we putting any of that money towards renewable solar panels on the thousands of square roofs that's gonna be there. Just a question. I don't think any of our schools have any renewable, and that's a shame. So let's, let's go on to number 18. Okay. A lot of pages I went through, and by the way, not even Evelyn Wood can get through 300, 833 pages of documents that I had to read before coming here and
058have only three minutes to talk on all the consent. The giants. That's nuts. You know, that's a disservice to the public. We have important things to say on a lot of agenda items. And you short sheet us time and time again, no call-ins, you gotta show up and you only get three minutes on 833 pages. Unbelievable. All right, number 18. So again, I look through all the documents and lo and behold, we're at building six again. Norm, Norm, you know, we're building sixes. We went through this at Wakeland, nobody, no site plan. They don't tell us $165,000 four cubicles, right? What size are they? Are they 10 by 10 cubicles? Are they a hundred by a hundred cubicles? Again, no information to the public. And how did you come up with that price? Did you
059do cost and materials? Did you do square feet? Because if the cubicles are 10 by 10 and you're doing 400 and you're spending 106, that's $4,000 a square foot. I think the public needs to know that you either do it by square foot or you do time and materials. So obviously they came to $165,000 on one of these items, right? On the four cubicles. But they tell us zero about the measurements, the scope of the work, and what is involved in that cost. But they come here asking for 165,000 and you don't even know. Do you know where, Do you know where building six is? Anybody know where building six is? It's with area 51 over in the Wakeland building like it was last time. Unbelievable. We're gonna move on. Item number 26. $3 million
060you're gonna use for painting contracting, right? Are you gonna buy the paint $3 million to use the best practices that the county does? Because what they do is they buy the materials because their tax exempt, right? And then we just pay for the labor that doesn't have the sales tax on. But if you put the paint and the labor, you pay sales tax on all of that, that comes about $210,000. It's insane that you do not buy the materials, pass the 7% onto the cost to the savings of the project instead of letting them go out there and get hammered on 7%. Thank you Mr. Gi for both. Thank you. That concludes public comment on the consent agenda. Thank you very much. Madam Vice chair. At this time, the chair will entertain a, a vote
061to approve the 32 items that are on the consent agenda. Agenda that the superintendent has recommended. We approve. And that has been moved and seconded. Is there any other unreadiness on the part of the board? Hearing none, the chair will call a question. All those in favor of approval of the 32 items listed now on the consent agenda. Let it be known by sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Right. All opposed have the same sign. Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. At this time, we're going to close out regular meeting and open the public hearing for the board to hear public comments regarding the proposed strategic plan and answer questions related there too. The public hearing is now open and, and we are now prepared to hear comments in the public hearing. I have one
062name. Okay. Adam Bash here. Yeah, but it is a public hearing, so if they didn't sign up, they're still welcome to come. But we do have one person that has signed up. So we will start with Mr. Julina on the strategic plan. And then if anyone else would like to come up and speak about our strategic plan, you're more than welcome to because it's a public hearing. I got you Mr. Nelson. I'll put you on the list For the record. Glenn gi, Manatee County, taxpayer, voter and citizen of this county. I didn't go over a lot of, I didn't have time to go over a lot of it because I was too busy doing some other stuff. So the strategic plan, I guess my question would be geared towards the libraries because I have a
063real problem understanding the mechanism of how the books get in the library. And they're not under the Department of Education. I've been informed that they get in the library through the librarian and the principal with no oversight, no oversight whatsoever. So this book has been in the libraries for five years. It's, it borders on porn and I'll get to it later. We have librarians that go off the reservation and do their own agenda. So if they thought this, this was, this is was an appropriate book for freshmen, for 13, 14 year olds, boys and girls, to take this book back in the classroom and discuss oral sex and everything else, all the other garbage that's in this book, Mr. J, those people need to be removed. Our policy says we are not gonna use vulgar
064language. It's in here. It's not in our schools. You're aware of that. I'm not gonna argue with You. It's been in there for five years. I'm making You aware of our policy. It's been in there, there for five years. It's like running a red leg. Oh, I didn't pay that ticket. Well, it's gonna come back and bite you. Anyways. This book has been in there for five years, and by the way, you told me it was gone. You've given me no proof, zero proof that this book has been removed so that that whole system with the library needs to be 86. They have no, you, you guys, you have no clue what's in those libraries and who's doing all the heavy lifting. You don't have an advisory board, you don't have a vetting team until
065the parents fi finally found out about the garbage that's in there. And I've got three other books I'm gonna show up later. That's equally as bad to this. So there has to be a vetting process. There are state laws that obviously these librarians and principals are not following. They're not following state statutes. And that could be a problem down the road. I'm not happy about the libraries. They're, they're too independent. You know, if you have a lesbian or gay bisexual library, I know what they're gonna be ordering and it's not appropriate age appropriate for our kids. We need to have guidelines set in place that said, here's what you can order and if you do order, it should be vetted by the public and not by just the librarian, the principal, That whole, that, that
066whole mechanism needs to be scrapped. Mr. Nelson, come on down. Okay, I can still make it to the podium. I'm Norm Nelson. I'm just gonna give you my remarks. I've been here 10 years. This is the third strategic plan. Let me know you if, first of all, and I can commend Mr. Chapman in the job that they're doing. It's a beautiful document and you moved up front the mission and what your vision is and a lot of outcomes, what takes it. One of the things that shows me, hey, what goes on in school? What has to go on? But this is an opening. The other two, especially the first one was a waste of time. Glossy. This looks like it's glossy, it's how it's implemented, how it's implemented by you people and following it up
067on the outcomes if you do that. But I think just really my own experience of having people working poor me all over the state of Minnesota and have to make decisions about the business on a day to day basis. If they have that mission and what your vision is, they can always relate back to, Hey, what should I do on this occasion? But the whole key is you monitoring the outcomes and look at them. Don't wait five years to come up with none of us. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Nelson. Like I said, this is a public hearing. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on our strategic plan? All right. Seeing no other interest, Chairman, I'll turn it back to you. Thank You very much. There's no other public comment. I guess
068the question that I will now move to is whether or not we will have comment from any of the board members. We'll start with the vice chair. Oh, you want me to have that comment now? Sure. For me, I agree with Mr. Nelson. When I first joined the board six years ago, the strategic plan, I remember grading our former superintendent on it and it sat on a shelf. It was never used. It was not guidance. And that frustrated me. And I remember marking that superintendent low because of that. Because if you didn't believe in that strategic plan, then work to create a new one. But you can't just leave that thing there and not move forward. So I'm with you on that a hundred percent. I agree with you. It, it should be the mechanism
069that we used as a common language to move forward to make it clear like these are our goals. And I think that you can see that with the one that we had made, that was our one previous one before this, that was meant to be short term to kind of set things up. I think we have, I think, set that common language and now hopefully this will help us move forward in a positive way. And it, and what's also really important is that you can look at our board work and see how each item is tied to our strategic plan. And that's huge. That's really important to understand. Like this is where your money is going and it's driven by our, a vision for our students. That's the goal. So I'm with you. I agree
070with you 100% talking about the libraries. I, I will, I would like to ask the superintendent to respond to that comment about the laws that are in place, the policies that are in place, the regulations that are in place, the public committee that happens, and that's how that's occurring. All of those different things. I'd like to have the superintendent respond to those comments. But speaking specifically about this, I I, I agree with you and, and you know, I've been sitting here with you for six years, so I do understand. I appreciate you. Thank you. Okay, Madam Superintendent, would you please respond to the vice chair's Concerns? Absolutely. As we know, there's new statutory language this year. So the conversation about the specific law written specifically in the strategic plan, it's not listed in that frame.
071However, we know that all new statutes have to be implemented and so forth. This is one that the state will be given very clear guidance in January, but all districts are supposed to have procedures and protocol in place for vetting and any concerned books. I will tell you, we do have a committee, Dr. Breslin, as well as Mr. Chapman, who are in the room, had that committee. And we do have specific guidance. We have made some modifications because again, this is very new without any protocol yet established from the state. And we will be bringing that to the board of this procedure in, in December to, to vote on. But that's with what we know today. Please note that there could be changes that come at after January's rule that we may have to modify,
072but I'd like to bring Mr. Chapman up right now so he can tell you exactly what the procedure he as well as Dr. Breslin can come forward so they can tell you what our procedure is. If there's a concern, that book is already pulled and only available for parent per permission until it's properly vetted. But they can come and give you exact details of the procedures. Thank you, Madame Superintendent, for inviting Mr. Chapman and Dr. Breslin down. But I think the public needs to also know that before they make that presentation in this forum, you have met with each of the members of this board, and we are aware of what the process is that is acceptable under the current status of the law. And we are aware of that. I don't think that there's
073anybody up here that does not know what it is. And so we welcome this opportunity to clarify what the law is, not what we wish it were, not what we'd like for it to be based on our own personal proclivities, but we all abound to act under the law. So I I, I don't want to hear anybody's opinion right now. We've already heard that that's what you get in public comment. But what I would like for clarification for the public is what is the, what is the law say? Are we clear about that? Yes, sir. All right. Thank you very much, Please. Good morning. Thank you all. And Mr. Chapman is here with me as well. And so in response to the house Bill 1467 that went into effect this July, July 1st, 2022, we
074got together informed our district committee to review both existing books and the process for selecting new materials. The law states that media specialist must select books used in our schools, in our school libraries. In addition to that, principals oversee the process. And so in building on that, we've been holding our meetings and reviewing books that citizens parents have submitted if they have a concern on an existing book. Through that process, we read the books go through, determine if they violate anything related to current statutes, and read for both appropriate for age, appropriate for readability and placement in our media centers. Ultimately, we decided as a, as a committee with, of course, help from our district leaders that we would allow parent consent for certain items. And so this allows what I believe, and, and I'm
075not an attorney, but I believe the intent is allowing parents choice in what their children have on their school campuses. And so adding that parent consent for some of the more mature books found at the secondary high school level in particular, has been a favorable path. Those books are not on a regular shelf, but instead kept where they would have to go through the media specialist, receive parent consent before they're allowed to read or check out that item. Dr. Be, I don't mean to cut you off, but what you said a moment ago was to give parents an opportunity to review what is on the campus. And that's not exactly right. What it does is that it gives parents the opportunity to make sure that their children are not exposed to anything they don't want
076to on that campus. There is no veto ability for parents to say, this book or that book should not be present. The veto authority is that my child will not see that book. Correct. All right. Now, in weeding through the process, there are some books that we examine to determine if they belong in a school library. Principals have the ability to remove a book if they so wish out of their school library, and they can exercise that in the committee. If we found a, a book to not have any merit academically where we felt that it, it didn't need to be in our school library, we have made some decisions to take that book out of a library. But parent consent, again, is a favorable option if we're able to give the parents the choice
077in what their child can or cannot read. Still working through the process, getting state guidance as we move along. Our district media specialist, Lori Pick, was at a state meeting in Tallahassee this past week. And so as we develop more and more guidance, we will redevelop the process, bring it forth to the superintendent and the board for approval. It, it is a work in progress. We want the best choice and tool for our schools to continue to build robust libraries that meet the needs of our students, the interest level of our students, the academic needs. And so we just ask patients as we go through the process so we end up with a sound policy that we can present to you. All right. Any questions, Dr. Breslin? Any? Yes, Ms. Foreman? I'm sorry. Sister Foreman,
078I apologize. No, I don't apologize. You're my sister. I like that. Go ahead. Yeah, I want to, Could you please address the catalog online? How? Yes, ma'am. Yes. And so all parents community members can view the catalog online, and if you go to our district website, look under curriculum, go to library materials, you'll find the live catalog. It's, it's what is existing in our schools right now. You can search all media centers at the same time and find anything that is existing in our media center as of today. Additionally, on that, when a, a media specialist does have an item that has a parent consent label, when they click on that, it will pop up parent consent as another reminder that there's a process before a child can be handed that book. All right, Mr.
079I'm sorry, will you, I just wanna Make sure. Yeah, well, I, I would that the book that Mr. GI referenced, is that available? Is it listed in our catalog as being available? No, ma'am. It is not available in our catalog or in our media centers. Thank you. Yeah, Dr. Brelin, I just have a, if you could share your expertise with all of us. So from what it sounds like, there could have been a, i'll, I'll use the term librarian. I know it's media specialist in our job descriptions, but let's say at a school 10 years ago, a librarian ordered a book that they maybe have interested or thought had educational value. Now, later on, that person leaves the school, but that book is still sitting up on the shelves. Is there any process by which
080the current media specialist would go through the entire inventory of the, of the media center at that school to kind of vet or see if there's any books that are flagged? So they do, every year they will look at their catalog, go through in a weeding process, and they're trained in this as part of their education before they receive their certificate from the state, verifying that they're a certified media specialist. It's also in our, in our trainings with our media specialists when they come on our campus, here's how to access the destiny system. Here's how you verify your catalog, how you check your inventory, and yes, so my understanding too is that the state will eventually have a list of books that they deem as favorable for media centers and ones that perhaps they may
081not. And so that training, I hope, will be part of their training in January that they can be using that as well. So we supply our media specialists, all the resources they need to be able to do their jobs, and they've been pulling from lists. I mean, there is a, they don't, they don't go into Amazon and just pull, they work off lists that have been provided before they can purchase anything. And so really verifying that those lists are the best selections for our students is my understanding as part of the state process. Reverend Golden, if I could just make one comment about this, and, and Glen, I want, I wanna start where we have common ground, and that is that there are, there are probably, and there have been a few books identified that
082rightfully or available to students at probably not an age appropriate level. Maybe it was high school, be okay, but middle school kids, for example, should not have access to this book yet. And then, and, and we do have a process in place to identify them, to keep them behind the, behind the, the counter and so forth. But to me, and this is where I'm gonna diverge for a second, is that to me, this whole book, while they're, while in certain, a small number of examples, it, it is real. And, but sadly, a couple years ago when the public school system, public school districts got thrown into the meat grinder of politics, this is one of those outcomes. And I just wanna assure people and the parents who are listening and the community at large that
083have children in our schools, that we don't have a widespread problem in our district with books that are inappropriate for kids in our school. I think the people that want to use this as a wedge issue or something to get people fired up and agitated and out to vote, have really blown this out of proportion. And, and glad there, there are examples and I think your, your, your, your public comment is legitimate and we should weed those out. But I just wanna assure people that this is not a widespread problem. So, and, and we have district staff who is working to make sure we're in compliance with the law and we're keeping books that are not appropriate out of inappropriate age students. So, and I appreciate your efforts on all that to both You and
084Reverend Golden. I just want to interject, because Dr. Breslin made this statement, but I'm not sure that everybody called it. We do have a representative that's on, in her department that serves on the state committee. So we have the latest information coming from the state. We have a person at the table, Ms. Pick is the person. So we are following to a t what the state is expecting and moving as swiftly as their information and changes are forthcoming. All the districts are seeking guidance. If, if they have more specific information they want to convey, we will certainly put it into practice immediately. But we are as up to date as any district on the procedure and the expectation of the law. Thank you, Madam Superintendent, Madam Bash, chair, this is your discussion and all of
085this rolls out of that. So This is not my discussion. No, I, this our discussion should really focus on our strategic plan, which extends so much further than Mr. Kennedy's wedge issued comment. That I think is the say about the strategic plan, accurate statement I've heard. Because how many thousands of books do we have? How many have you actually had to review? I would love that decimal 1e-05%. I would love that statistic one day. If you have it, great. If you don't, I would love to know that number. Right? Because that's, that, that's kind of the point. I don't, I wanna address this because as a parent, I wouldn't want my child to have access to something that I wouldn't approve of. I get that. I'm a parent, I have two little girls, I have
086a four year old and a seven year old. I wouldn't want them coming home with a book that I wouldn't approve of. But you've come up with a system that really ensures parental rights so that I support that, that's what I support. But that's not what we're really here talking about. We, I would like to talk about this if we can. Cuz I, I, that's what I talk to Mr. Nelson about it. Cuz like to me, like Mr. Nelson and I, like, we get, we agree on this one, You know what I mean? We don't agree on the, some of the stuff he comes up and says, But I, we agree on this one. And I, I feel like there's just been months and months of work to get to this point. So I'm all
087for that. I just wanted to make sure that the issue about library books is addressed because there is a group that believes that it is widespread and it is not. And there is a tremendous amount of transparency in the meetings. There's a tremendous amount of transparency because the books, everyone has access to them and can review them. I, I think the district is being forthcoming with all of that. If there is something that's not okay, our, our public comment policy says, send it to the superintendent. And I have found the superintendent to be incredibly responsive. When there's ever been a book in question, it gets reviewed. And your committee has been very thorough in, in doing that. So, and that's been publicly noticed. Anyone can go read the minutes, you can go attend the meetings.
088Public comment is there too. I mean, people can come and watch. So I, I don't wanna harp on it because this is our big thing. This is where we're going and to me, this is what matters. This is where we're going, this is what we should focus on. Not the, I don't, and I don't have a better word to describe it, not the sparkly thing in the corner that is drawing some attention away from what, where we're really trying to go, which is, which is this. So Thank you. Sorry. That's quite alright. As I was saying, what this began as was the vice chair providing her first remark to not just the strategic plan, but I believe also the comment that was made with respect to library books. And at this point we were asked
089to come forward and explain what our system is, what the process is, and what is allowed by law. Those are my preparatory remarks. And my question is, is there any other expansion or explanation that is desired by the vice chair with respect to the two things that have been raised? Okay. Did the superintendent invited Mr. Chapman up? Is there any more that he would add to what Dr. Breslin has already said with respect to library books or with respect to the strategic plan? I have one comment I would like to say about the strategic plan. It is our roadmap, but I believe Ms. Foreman did indicate a concern on some of the metrics. And remember we had stated in the last workshop that all of that is not defined as of yet by the state.
090So the only thing I would like to make noted, because I am hoping that we get this approved today, is that we will need to have a workshop probably in the spring, late spring when session is finished, so that we can go back and amend to place the appropriate metrics once it has been defined. And there could be other legislation that happens that we need to also amend and place in there. So I would just like to note that we would like to revisit this in late spring as a workshop, but if we do need to amend slight changes because of, of that information or the information deemed by the board at that time, that we have it finally approved by July. So that at the beginning of the school year, it's very clear what
091the expectation is. Again, it's not gonna be a complete reboot, but we will need to come back probably in the spring and revisit some of those legislative changes with terms of academic metrics that will be defined at that time. Madam Superintendent, did I understand you to say that you were wanting to have this approved today? Yes, sir. Where on the agenda are we supposed to consider that or Is that right after your discussion of the, the public hearing? I will make a recommendation For that. I see. Okay. So there will be a recommendation relative to the discussion that we are having relative to the strategic plan. Yes, sir. Okay. So let's, let's take this opportunity to ask first and foremost if there are any other concerns or any other recommendations or any other comments relative
092to the public comment that was made about library books? None from Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Foreman? None from Ms. Foreman. Mr. Cho, You're asking any With respect to the public comment that was made about library books? He's be making some more, isn't he? I'd like to move on from it. Okay. I can address my concerns Later on. All right. And I, because We, we need to get, I mean, this is this, Right? I I I have none. I do have one question. Does anybody know in all of the years that Earl, me and the dying girl was in the libraries, how many times that book was checked out? I could, I could pull the circulation report, but I I did look for this year and it had not been checked out this year, but It whole
093year I might have to go back. So we've spent 30 minutes talking about a book that ain't nobody checked out, is that right? No one's checked it out this year. Yes, sir. All right. Right. Which is really, really indicative of what you all have been saying about the importance of this in terms of how we deal with it. So we are dealing with it already. Yes, sir. Cause there's some other books I'd like to know. Has anybody checked out Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer? Has that, has that been up for discussion about whether or not that language in those books or appropriate that has not been submitted? No, sir. Nobody's even submitted that. No, sir. Nobody's even brought that up. No, sir. And I've read both of those books and I find on every other
094page language that is absolutely offensive. All right. Do you have any, we've already talked about the library books. Okay. Is there any other comment that you want to make with respect to the plan? Okay, Mr. Kennedy, is there any other thing that you want to talk about with respect to the strategic plan? Very quickly. This won't take long. I just want to, I just want Point out Thank you, Dr. President, Dr. Present to those, when you get a copy in your hands or when you look it up online that go to page eight and nine, and this is kind of the framework of the whole plan. Is that fair to say, Mr. Chapman? Sure. And there are really, obviously our, our prime goal is teaching and learning, but we can't do that unless we are
095financially stable and, you know, they're, they're both equally competing, but, but the ready to grow section talks about, you know, competitive salaries. Our employee retention, Sorry, lemme take Glenn. Energy efficiency is on page nine. This is a central tenant of our, of our about to be hopefully approved strategic plan leadership development, our continuing our financial position, which we are in a fantastic financial position. And obviously that that improves everything. It helps us stabilize and, and carry out the teaching and learning pieces, school readiness, or excuse me, school security. So, you know, we, our, our prime goal is to make sure kids are in an environment which is secure and they feel safe and they feel appreciated and there's a quality teacher in front of their, in front of them. But yeah. Mr. Chapman, I just
096want to, I know you did a lot of work in multiple edits, meeting with different community groups, Mr. Edwards, same. Same to you. I know you were integral in that, in that work too. And I really, you know, that the title of the strategic plan is ready 2026. So I would ask our freshmen, our high school freshmen, like this is their, this is for their graduation. They, they will be graduating with this plan when we'll look back and I know the, I know the next board is gonna be checking in along the way, but when these freshmen are seniors, you know, they can look back and say, did we, what did we, what did we do right? And where did we fall short? So that's my, that's kinda my long term project for our freshmen
097is hold us to account. But I know our, our community will do that in general. So, no, I I think it's really, I think it's well done. It's a lot, but it's doable. This is a big district with 7,000 employees and all of us pulling in the same direction, we can, we can get this done. So that's all I had. I just thank you, sir, About this Ms. Foreman. We have had multiple workshops on this, multiple revisions discussions, and I really appreciate all that went into it and the thought, and, you know, everybody's efforts on it to follow up on what the superintendent said about the metrics, you know, because as Mr. Nelson said, we can have this wonderful document, and if we don't have definable goals and benchmarks and regular analysis of how, how
098we're progressing on it, then it, then it becomes useless. So what you were saying though, about next spring, am I too, because every page, or almost every page in here says strategic plan, progress, strategic plan tracking for each goal, strategy and metric will be updated regularly at, and then it gives the website, you know, where we can, where we can keep an eye on it, that public can keep an eye on it. Are we, are you saying that we're not going to start posting performance until spring? No, ma'am. That's not what I'm saying at all. Okay. We're, we're, hopefully it'll be approved today. As a matter of fact, you will see a presentation in my academic update today of our first progress, more monitoring data that we had from the state. So you will have
099data, there will be updates, but what I'm saying is we will need to go back and redefine how we're going to use the metric when the state changes the grade calculation system. And we won't know that till after the legislative session. So we, we will use what we have today because that's all the information we do have. But when the state redefines school grade calculations, we do need to go back and update it according to that new rule. So we won't have that until then. Our recommendation is we will workshop that legislative language, make recommendations to amend, and then make sure it's approved in the summertime with those changes so that everybody understands the expectation when the school year starts. Thank you Mr. First. Thank you Mr. Chapman. Mr. Evers. You guys did a fantastic
100job. And we have looked at this over course of, of months and months and months. And to Mr. Nelson's point, I completely agree, this doesn't sit on a shelf and collect dust. We've gotta, we've and I talked about this several a couple months ago, and we came back from our, our group in the Florida Consortium Group. And in my opinion, this strategic plan, every decision that we make up here as a board should be with this in mind. And, and this has our students, our teachers, our staff, et cetera. And, and what the future hold. Every decision that we make should have this strategic plan in mind. And so I appreciate your, your work and I'm ready to get it going. I'm ready to see it in action. And, and we absolutely need to come
101back and say, Is this working? Is this part of the plan working? If not, how do we fix? If it is, great, let's continue it. So thank y'all very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Cho chair has no comments with respect to the strategic plan at this point in time, we've had, as has been noted, several workshops on this. This has come up several times in terms of our public meetings, and I appreciate the work that, that, that's being done. We, we certainly welcome this effort on the part of the district to present to the people in the district, something that is a guideline so that we don't have to start all over every time we come into a meeting with what we should be doing. This is, this is what I hope we will
102send forth today with a positive vote that, that this is the direction in which we are going, and the on then is on the detractors to show us why this is not the direction that we decided to go in today, why we should change directions. So I appreciate your, your, your comments. All right. Is there anything else, superintendent, that you would want to bring before us now relative to the up to the strategic plan? Okay, thank you. All right. We've now had such, Well, you might want to ask if there's any additional public comments since they might not have signed up. Is there anybody else that wants to come to I believe I did. So nobody else came forward? No. All right. So we've now concluded the portion of the public hearing that allows for
103public comment. We have heard the superintendent's remarks relative to the public comments that were made, and we've heard from each of the board members. Is there any other final comment or remark that needs to be made before the chair will entertain a recommendation coming to us from the superintendent? Hearing none, Madam Superintendent, we would like to hear from you relative to the strategic plan. Yes, sir. I recommend the approval to adopt the school district of Manatee County 2022 through 2026. Strategic plan. So moved. I'll second. All right. It's been moved and properly seconded that the strategic plan for Manatee County 2022 through 2026 be adopted as recommended by the, by the superintendent. You heard the motion. And the second, is there any other unreadiness hearing none. The chair's prepared to call the question and we
104will begin with the vice chair. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you so very much. We will now close the public hearing and move and move back to the regular agenda of the, Oh, I'm sorry, I did that. Just back We both, Yeah. That, that's revok. Cause I'm sure somebody from the legal women voters will point out that I did not do it properly. So we wanna make sure that we, we get it done the right way so the public hearing is closed and we will reconvene the regular meeting. And the first item of business under the regular meeting is the approval to adopt the school district of Manatee County. 2022. 2026. Strategic plan. Madame Superintendent, your recommendation again? Absolutely. I recommend the approval to adopt the school district, Manatee County 2022 through
1052026 strategic plan. So moved again. I'll second Again. All right. And it's been moved and seconded twice now that the chair has recovered from his for Paul. All those in favor that have be known by sign of I Aye. Aye. All opposed hearing on the I have it. The motion passes in spite of the chairs for Paul. Thank you so very much. At this time, we move to item number 11, public comments and responses. And again, we'll be under the EGS of the vice chair. Okay. We have four people that have signed up. Mr. Nelson, come on down. After Mr. Nelson will be Mr. Pitts coming down. Mr. Nelson, You're gonna take a break. It's been an hour now. Oh, I'm so sorry. The attorney, Mr. Nelson. I'm so sorry. The attorney just whispered in
106my ear that it is 10 30 and we normally take a break at at 10. Give me a second. All right. I'll give you a second. You've been on the rule. You've been over the Senior conversation I had with Ms. Foreman prior to the meeting. I'd like to postpone my three minute comments until your next meeting. Okay? Oh, thank you Mr. Right. Thank you. In that case, we're in recessed, But I don't know that we are called to order. We are now at item 11 on the agenda, public comments and the preparatory language having already been given at the beginning of the meeting. Oh, I'm sorry, y'all this now this is my granddaughter calling to wish me Happy birthday. Aw, baby. I'm in the middle. I'm in the middle of, of a public meeting. Okay?
107I'm in the birthday. I know, baby. Happy. Thank you. I love you. All right, I'll call you back. Bye-bye. Okay. It's your birthday. I, I think so. I, so I've been told, so we'll see. All right. It's so sweet that she called to, Was she happy? 37th birthday. I thought that was very sweet of her To do. Yes it was. Yes, it was. I 30 Sevens a Milestone. 37 is a milestone. Yeah. Yes it is. Is that two Ls? M i l. Okay. Thank you all at this time. We will continue. Mr. Nelson waived his right to the public comment. He said he wanted, he said he wanted to talk to Ms. Foreman directly. So we, we would acknowledge that. All right, Let vice chair, Sure. We have a few more Mr. Pits after Mr.
108Pits will be Mr. Julina. And finally it'll be Mrs. Brinkley. So Mr. Pits, Mr. Pits, Clarence Pits. Come on down. Okay. Okay. See no one, I will go to Mr. Jina after Mr. Jina will be Mrs. Brinkley, I'd like to have number one put up on the Screen, Mr. Dive, if that's possible. I'm gonna do this Facebook Live. So they're seeing me instead of this wonderful camera. So I did a records request right on why my emails have been taken down. Can we move that up to the bottom please? So their answer was, I said, I just wanna know what the words are. What, what am I saying? That's so offensive to you. Up a little higher. There you go. Perfect. Thank you. So they wrote me back and they said, Oh listen, those phrases
109in words that trigger the program to stop my email, no documents for file. So you took over the whole language, language for propriety information. You guys deflect instead of correct. I, I don't understand it. You can't tell me the words that hell 9,000 is stopping my emails with. It's unbelievable. This, this kind of response to public request is unsatisfactory. Can I go to the second page please? This one, the box. So these books that I ordered, right, that are on this list in our libraries, very offensive. There's rape, there's incense, there's gang banging, there's oral sex, there's everything in these three books. And they're all on there with parental consent. Here's the problem, there's pornographic laws on the books. You don't have to wait for the new one. You're already breaking the laws now with
110the existing books that are in there that are considered pornographic, right? So those three books will be delivered by, I think I'm getting them the 14th. So I'll bring 'em to the next meeting and read some passages out of there. Again, I go back to, Can we get the third page up please? This one Who vetted these? Here's the problem. You order these books with taxpayers money and then we pay for it. And if nobody checks it out for a year, we, we wholesale it out. That pornographic material. So really your trafficking in pornography, that's what you're doing. That's what I told Miss Breslin. I was at that meeting November 3rd. I read passages out of that to the whole committee, right? And there are gonna be some more passages on this as well. So
111I just find it. Absolutely. You miss the elephant in the room. You break in the laws as it sits, the existing laws on pornography that are already there. And I hear from, from the board, Well, there's just such a little, just a sliver. This hardly have all those books. Well, just one rape in the girl's bathroom. What is that? You know, that's nothing. We'll just overlook that. That's a terrible mindset to have. It needs to be changed. I hope with the new board here, We'll fix the cameras, right? Oh, you don't even show my back. My goodness. We've come a long way. Frankly. It's really a shame that we only have three minutes that we can't address the comments about how this group has this sparkly thing going off in the corner. Okay? We have
112not said at any time that this is pervasive through the whole school's libraries. But pornography is pornography. There's not a little bit, It doesn't go in the middle of the road. And we have laws for them. I have made a letter that's going to the state committee of what we would like to see for the media center, new procedures. So we are working in tandem with everybody trying to come up with what is best. But I will send you emails of this, but I'm really saddened to see what now is being called literature in our schools. I asked at the last book committee, why do we have literature that is so depressing in nature? I was told that about five years ago, we found that students had a lot of angst. The definition of angst
113is a deep feeling. I have anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world. So this was taken upon them that this would get children to read more. So now enter books about sexualization, rape, gang rape, incest, pornography, child trafficking, even amongst families, descriptive, sexual instruction, activism, globalism, I could go on and on with the social experiment that is being done on children. This was all to help child, children read. Now we see the results. Not only did this experiment fail, but a contradicted years of studies on what pornography and feeling the mind with negativity does to children. It is known that what we think about, we become the expert, said, Trust us on covid. Trust us that they will read more, they will have better outcomes.
114We are now told that we have pandemic of behavior issues. We have gender issues. We are told that we have racial issues and we have reading issues. What we have is a confused society of children more than ever. Wasn't this to address their issue of angst? Why do we not have books or literature that inspire stories of heroism, stories of success, how to overcome obstacles. Instead, we have stories of fractured people, broken families, preying on the most vulnerable, the loners stories of mental and physical abuse. There is not any data that shows that this is effective and works. It actually shows the opposite. What is the role of the school to raise responsible, developing, and functioning adults? Not a social experiment that only talks about oppression and the condition or state of the world. These
115are issues. A minor does not have the mental capacity or experience to deal with, to understand or have problems. Solving skills towards private schools do not have the same results of reading test scores and behavior issues. Why? Because they have an expectation for their students academically. And they set a standard for discipline. They are not just babysitters. The school's goal must not to have graduates who are illiterate victims, but to educate to the higher standard, to empower each and every student to instill that they can be whatever they set their mind to, but in the midst be filled with hope, desire, belief, knowingness, confidence and victory. Thank You Mrs. Brinkley. Okay Chairman, that concludes public comment. Thank you very much. I must have been outta the room. I was Are you Mr. Pitts? Yes. Oh
116yes. I called your name several times. Come on down, Mr. Pitts Clarence Pits. I'm here to talk about the display of pride flags, LGBTQ et cetera stuff in schools. I know that there's a law about, you know, the instruction of these things for kindergarten and third grade, but you go into a school in the common areas, you'll see these things. So if it's a grade school, I don't see how that would be. And then if we go to the idea that this is not instructional, then that's even worse. And I'll use one of their slogans. Love is love, Okay? I'm a human being. I love everyone. Which means I love men pride. L G B T Q, homosexuality legally. And by definition is the sexual attraction to the, to the same sex, right? A flag
117is a sexual, that that's exactly what it is. It's not about love. Everyone loves each other. It's about sex. Okay? So it's basically, I'll give you a definition of propaganda information, especially that of a biased, misleading nature. Like love is, love used to promote or politicize, publicize a particular political cause or point of view. So I'm here to ask that the board have a zero tolerance and ban it from all schools. And in fact, it's not just the grave schools in high school, they're under 18. So if this is a sexual propaganda that's, there's laws against talking, Oh, say. So if you're structurally talking about sex in a, in a academic setting, that's one thing. But to have a, a advertisement of acl of, of a personal nature. This is child abuse lewd. There's, these
118are felonies. This should not be anywhere in school. So I ask you guys to put a zero tolerance all schools of man county and if not, maybe we should go the next step and have it legally done. Because I can guarantee a lawyer much more articulate than me, can definitely nuance this out. That these flags symbolize a third thing that is not just a little bit, not just kinda 100% sexual in nature. And that's all I gotta say. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, Chairman, that concludes public comment. I'll turn it back over to you. No, before that we need to find out whether there are any responses that anyone wants to hear or make with respect to, I would, since there were several different items that were brought up that are happening in our schools, I
119would like to request that the superintendent respond to those before the board. That's just my, That's fine. If that, if that's all right with the other, Yes. Yes. Okay. So Madam Superintendent, would you provide the response? Yes. In terms of display of any type of sexual orientation or information As noted at the end, we do have policies that guide our teachers and staff and schools on, on such activity. So I'm not aware that such things are occurring. We do have staff in the room that if anyone has a specific example of such, please let me know or my staff know so that we can look into a, a specific situation. Cuz all I know is the, a general tone, but Mr. Chapman and Msre are in the back, so if you wanna go into further
120detail, we'll be more than happy to look and such. But we do have policies that do go along, Considered it we do. Yeah. Mr. If you, if you want Mr. Chapman will be more than happy to discuss in great detail with that. In terms of media books, I think we've had a long discussion of that. We do have a procedure. We do have po process in place now. We will be amending with information if we get more direction coming from the state. So, and we seek information. I know Miss Brinkley has been very supportive of communicating with us on procedures and opinions so that we can look into it. We want to make sure that we're following parental choice, but also the letter of the law. So this is a new process and we're working
121through it and we really do appreciate her input and working with our staff so that we can follow the expectations of the legislation. That's it. That's it? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes. Bear recognizes Mrs. Foreman. Thank you. Yeah, I would just like the superintendent. I thought it was an interesting point that Mr. Jina raised about the paint, the $3 million for paint. And I just wanna make sure we're not paying sales tax on that. Anything that runs through our organization, Joe Rinaldi is here in front, but we are exempt and so forth. So you can address what our process is to ensure that we're not paying taxes when it's not deemed necessary. Good morning. Yes. We, we've got a robust program for the large capital projects where we go through a process where it's called owner
122direct purchase, where we purchase, we're under contract with a contractor, but we pull out those large purchases where material items for projects like painting, which are sometimes multimillion dollar projects, we pull those out as well. And we still rely on the contractor to store deliver, but we're actually paying for the product to, to come to the site and to be utilized. So yeah, we, we do have a, an active program for owner direct purchase to realize the cost savings. Thank you. All right. Anyone? I'm sorry that, that's it. Okay. Ms. Kennedy. Yeah, I'll be quick. I, I appreciate our public comments coming out. While I vehemently disagree with what I heard, I will always defend your right to come up and say it. And I appreciate you all coming out to say what you think,
123but I just do want to speak on behalf of our BT kids. They, we have a lot of lt I shouldn't say a lot. We have, I don't know what the number is, but we have LGBT kids in this district and they need to be supported just like any other student. So you have your opinion, I have mine. So please don't come to these meetings and, and single out a certain segment of kids for dis what sounds to me like discrimination. So if you're gonna say I love everyone, then love everyone. Don't discriminate against certain groups of people propaganda. Okay. That's all I gotta say. Less than three minutes. Thank you Mr. Kennedy. Okay. Grooming. I'm gonna Ask, we have litter boxes in schools too. Kennedy heard that one. I'm going to ask the public
124to respect the chair. We don't have outbursts in this meeting. I don't know what you do in the county commission meetings or what you do elsewhere, but here we adhere to discipline. At least we will until the end of this meeting, I believe. Did you have anything you wanted to say? Did you have your hand up first? No, you can go ahead. Okay. Just feel compelled. Just to, to give my 2 cents about the books. So, and I mean, I guess maybe correct me if I'm wrong on this, superintendent or somebody, I guess, do we have a rating system for movies that we can show in class? Right? Okay. So if, if, and and I say that just in the sense of, it just kind of makes sense to me that if I can't show
125a video of some of these books in the schools, reading them is almost just, it is the same. And so to me, I can't even, and I've expressed this to this superintendent and to Dr. Breslin as well. I can't even, as a grown man, been in locker room, I've been in a football coach, et cetera, I feel extremely uncomfortable reading these passages that I've seen in books to women. And I, I, there is no way I could get up here and read these books in public to, I I couldn't do it. If they can't go through our email system, how can they be provided to a kid to read if we can't show them the video of, and if it's only three scenes of that, of whatever it possibly is. If we can't show that
126video, how can we allow the book? So I, I think it just goes hand in hand. If, if we can't show the video of that book, then we shouldn't be able to read that book. Not saying as a parent, you can't go get that book for your kid. Absolutely. It's your right to go get whatever you want for your kid. I'm not telling you what you can and can't do for your kid, but that's, that to me, the process is pretty simple. I do believe that, that we've gotta fix getting these books in. I think the state will do that. I think that we're doing a, a good job here in the district, finding them, putting them aside. They're not on the, on the shelves. If we're questioning them, they're pulled. But to me it's
127pretty simple. Can we, can I show a rated art movie to my kids and as a, as a world history teacher in 10th grade, no, I couldn't. So how can they read that book? And that's, that's that to me is how, how simple it it could be. And that's all for the public comments I got. All right, Thank you very much. I don't have any comments to make at this point. I'm sorry. All right. We're round two vice chair and I don't wanna debate it. I just wanna point out that there's a difference between what's in a library and what's an instructional material. If you are a teacher and you watch a video, that's an instructional material that's different than what's in a library. If it's not a required material, like those are two different
128things. I just wanna point that out. Right? I, I agree with you 100% in what you, everything you just said, I am with you on that. But I wanna make sure that when, when that there's, there's a separation there because an instructional material goes through a whole lot of vetting and the library books go through a very different process than an instructional material. The instructional materials are vetted by, by the state and then vetted by the district and go through a long process. And the library materials, because they're not a required reading, don't go through that same process. I also wanna reiterate that there were comments made about my comment about the sparkly thing in the corner. And I wanna make very clear that I support parental rights, which is what I have emailed you
129and said to you before, which means that the parent should have the say, That's what I wanna see happen for our kids. That's what I support. And I think you do too. And my main focus is making sure our kids get a great education when we're talking about a handful of books versus the entire curriculum for our entire school district and moving our students forward in reading and moving our students forward in math and making sure that they have career and technical education and a great graduation rate and can go on and be successful in this world. That's my focus. That's why I was talking about our strategic plan. That is what I wanna make sure we focus on. That doesn't mean that we don't focus on other things, but our focus has to be
130moving our students forward as best as we possibly can. And there is a small amount of books. I think Mr. Choda is right. I think the district has done a wonderful job handling it. If there's ever a concern, it gets pulled, it gets reviewed. I don't know anything else better the district can do. I I think that the district has done a great job of doing that and has been extremely responsive and welcoming. So I wanna make sure that I make that really clear. I don't wanna leave with that not being said, but I, I really don't wanna keep talking about this issue because it's such a small portion of our job and it's such a small portion of what we do. And I don't want that to be the overarching feature of our job
131because it's not, I have a four year old and a seven year old and they need to learn how to read. They need to do math. They need to know how to be successful in this world. And they don't, this is not the overarching issue for them or for most kids in our schools, as evidenced by the fact that the book didn't even get checked out this year. So I just wanna make sure we focus on the most important issues in front of us to move our students forward. And, and that's really all I wanna say about that. And I wanna make sure I'm really clear about my comments because I I have no desire to upset or offend anyone. I wanna make sure I'm very clear. I wanna also make another comment. There was
132a comment made about public records request. A public records request is just that to request a record that already exists. If the record does not exist, the school district does not have to, does not legally have to create the record. There's a difference between giving you anything and answering every question and creating a new record because that is not a public records request. And I, I would like to ask the attorney to weigh in on that because that's my understanding of a public records request. It doesn't mean that the information isn't somewhere, it means it is not a record that the school district can produce because the school district is not required to make that record or report. They only have to give it out if it exists. Do I understand that correctly? That was
133very accurately put. There's a difference when somebody gets a response that says it doesn't exist. It doesn't mean there is no anything. It means it is not in a report or a record that can be produced. Yes. The the public records law does not require answering questions or compiling answers to questions. Right. That doesn't mean that if somebody has a question that they can't reach out to the board, the superintendent, somebody else to get an answer if they have a question. I always like to answer questions for people, but I wanna make it really clear what a public records request is and what a public record is so that people understand that. Yes, I agree with your Statement. Thank you. I also have one other question. There were comments made that the books that are
134currently in the library actually already violate certain laws. Can you or someone else touch on that or maybe the attorney touch on that, the current laws. And do any of the books violate those current laws? Not to our knowledge, no. Thank you. That was it. All right. I believe Mrs. Foreman, I recognized your hand a few moments ago. Yes, thank you. I do want to emphasize that there is not a single person up here on this di that wants inappropriate materials in the hands of students that, that it's not age appropriate. It's not content app appropriate. I think we all want the same thing. And the district has, and has had for many years a procedure that if there is a complaint or a title that they want reviewed, that that could be brought. And
135actually it was supposed to be the, the prior process was that it goes to the principal in the school and, and then goes through, goes through a process and in order to accommodate or to work with people in the public who had a list, actually our, our district really bent over backwards to not make them fill out a form for every book, for every school, you know, and, and, and just tried, tried to make it a better process. And we got proactive. We, the process and the procedures aren't gonna require be required until January. Well, we started during the summer. Which leads to the point though, that the, the book that Mr. Julina referred to, it hasn't been checked out this school year because it's been off the shelf for this school year. All of
136the books that are on that list are off the shelf. So, so how many times it was checked out the year before? You know, I don't know. I guess we could find out if we need to, the, the, the, the point about material or words kicking back emails, that has happened to me as well. I tried to send an email at one point to, to a staff person about pornography and it got kicked back. So, and I, I understand that, I understand the reason for that and I'm, I am, I'm perfectly fine with that. I think that we do as a district, need to have some controls over, over what's going through an email. And I'll also point out that one conference sort of out of town. I took the, took the district laptop with
137me and tried to watch Netflix that night and I got blocked. So, you know, that's, that's the way, that's the way it is. We're, we're protecting everybody. So I, I understand I, there are books that I would not want my children to read, but it doesn't mean that I don't want anyone to read them. So, you know, again, it's, it's parental choice and I support that. And if a book goes through the process goes through the committee and you're still not satisfied with the result, then I think I do think we need to come up with some procedure or process to allow an appeal. But, you know, because I don't, I don't know that we have that in, in place yet, but, but I commend the people who have spent countless hours working on this
138outside of their normal job requirements. And I, I think we, we we're proactive and we will continue to, to monitor and to act. Thank you Mr. Chot. Mr. Kennedy, do either of you have I'm done. You're done. Okay. Mr. Kennedy, Very quickly. First I wanna apologize cuz I was speaking to Mr. Pitts directly and I think that brought out the response. So I don't hold that against him. Mr. Pitts, I do have good news. This is my last meeting, so I'm gone after this one. So my viewpoint is gonna leave the school board, but, and I get your point about, you're talking about propaganda, not necessarily discrimination. So that absolutely, that's, that's a fair point. You're talking about propaganda. I, I see, I see your point. But I would just ask you respectfully to think
139about the, what I believe is propaganda that you are seeing and hearing because, and this is what I was talking about at the beginning of the meeting, the stuff about banning books and groomers and the, this story going around about, there's litter boxes and school bathrooms cuz kids identify as cats. I mean, like, it's just getting crazier and crazier as time goes, especially as we got closer to the election. So I, I take your point that's valid and, but I would ask you to do the same and just kind of think critically about some of the things that you're seeing and hearing out there related to public schools. That's my respectfully, that's my request. Thank you Reverend Goldman. Madame vice chair, is there any other aspect of public comments and responses that you want to
140address? Okay. Happy birthday. All right, That's all I got. Okay. Public comments and responses are concluded. We are now at item number 13. Since we have no item number 12. I'm so sorry. I apologize. We do have an item number 12 on the new business discussion items pulled from consent and I think it's item number 15. Okay. So we are at item number 12. New business discussion items pulled from consent and I believe you pulled that from consent, Mr. Kennedy. I did. And all right, and item number 15. May Yes, Sir. Yeah, Reverend Golden. What I would, I had a chance to talk to the superintendent and to Mr. Barran during our recess. So I kind of withdraw my reasons for pulling this. So if we, we can just get the superintendent's recommendation and move
141on and vote and Move on. All right. Thank you very much, Adam. Superintendent, with respect to item number 15 that was pulled from consent. Yes. I recommend the approval of item number 15 that was pulled from consent. All Right, For the record, that is the approval of the appointments, change of assignments, promotions, reappointments, reassignments, resignations, retirement suspensions, terminations, and transfers. All right. Thank you. Matter vice chair. All right. You've heard the recommendation from the superintendent regarding that consent item and the expectation of that item by the vice chair is their motion. I moved. All right. She has also so moved the approval of the recommendation of the superintendent. Second, and it has been seconded by Mr. Kennedy. You read the motion. And second, is there any other unreadiness respect to this formally consent agenda item?
142Hearing none, the chair would call the question. All those in favor of this item being approved as recommended by the superintendent? Let it be known by the sign of i. Aye. All opposed, hearing none the I have it. The item is approved. We now move to item 13 on our agenda. New business non-consent items from the superintendent recommendation. We have three and we have three comments that attach to each one of these. We did one already. We did one already. Oh, I'm sorry. Nevermind that, That's a full Paul Mr. Joke. I jumped the gun. All right. At this point, the chair will hear the superintendent's recommendation with respect to item number one. Yes, I recommend the approval of the budget amendments for September, 2022, and Mr. Barran will come and give you a summary. All
143right. Good Afternoon now. Yeah, the, what we do is provide information regarding transactions that exceeded certain threshold that's been established at a million dollars. So there's a good summary of the amendments in the board packet. The transaction information that we supplement this, the board packet each meeting. And in the general fund, we had transactions that exceeded a million. They were associated with Ian storm pay, shelter pay. We do expect to get reimbursed from the county on that, but until we submit the invoices to them, we haven't recognized that revenue. But that will be offset by a future, a future amendment, increasing revenue and capital projects, funds for two projects. The original project budgets are loaded in at a, at a full dollar amount. And then when we're actually starting to issue purchase orders, we have
144to move funds into the correct chart string, you know, the correct code to say they were purchasing furniture, fixtures and equipment and those types of things. So we had two transactions that exceeded a million dollars, reducing the project budgets and moving funds into those smaller subaccounts. And the final one is in the Special Revenue fund. We recognized individual, the I D E A of federal funds, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant carry Ford funds in, in 2223 from the prior year. That's it. Thanks. Thank You. I moved that we approve the budget amendments for September of 2022. Second. Okay, But I have listed here three. Yes, Mr. Lina has signed up to speak. All right. I'm gonna call his name though. He's not in the room, but he might be out in the lobby. Mr.
145Gi, if you're still out in the lobby, come on down. Seeing no response. So we don't have to keep going through this, but one of you all go out there and see if Mr. Lina is out there. So we don't, we just keep, Yeah, cuz he signed up for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 more times. I, he's gone. He's in the parking lot. Mr. Jerry, would you like for me to Chase him down? No, thank you. I appreciate that consideration, but I believe we'll we, that would make him different from everybody else, so we don't want to do that. Oh, I have called his name and he's certainly welcome to speak, but if he's not in the building, All right. He's not I, No chances he left. All right. Thank you very much. All
146right. That then gives us the motion. And second, no other no, no public comment. It's not a public hearing, so I don't have to see if there's anybody else that's signed up to speak hearing. Is there any other unreadiness? Alright, hearing no other unreadiness, the chair will move. The chair will call the question of approval of the budget amendments as recommended by the superintendent. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. On opposed? None. Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. Number two. Yes, I recommend the approval of advertising a notice of intent to amend school board policies and setting a public hearing at a board meeting on December 13th, 2022. The policies are 12 32, 32, 32, 42, 32 64 80, 62, 33, 84 0 5, 84 0 7 84 20 and 86 60. We will workshop
147these items before said meeting. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Item over abundance of caution. I do understand that we have one public, one person signed up a public hearing for Dippoli. Right. Hearing no response. The chair will go ahead. Is there any other unreadiness hearing none. The chair will call the question. All those in favor of item number two, Letter known by sound of aye. Aye. Aye. All Oppos hearing none the I have it. The motion passes unanimously. Madame Superintendent number three. Yes, I recommend the approval of the revision of the speech and language pathologist job description. The state has changed the requirement. Our job description currently requires a master's. You certainly may have a master's, but they require a bachelor's. We're amending to allow that for, it will be a wider,
148broader bank of employees that could qualify for the position. So that's the omitted change. So I moved second, Been moved. Public comment There is Mr. Gi, but I had a question. Question. My understanding is, yeah, that it's changing some of the requirements, but they still would have to go through the certification process. Still have to be certified, but they do not require a master's to get that certification. Okay. I just wanna make sure that was really clear that there there's still a certification requirement. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Any other explanation? Hearing none and having no public comment at this time. The, the chair will call the question of approval of the revision of the speech and language pathologist Job description is recommended by the superintendent. All those in favor? That will be known. The
149sign of i aye. All opposed hearing on the is have it motion passes unanimously. We now move to new business with no superintendent recommendation. The first item is the approval of the board's legal firm evaluation legal firm evaluation for the period of 2122. The chair will move the approval of the legal firm evaluation for the period of 21 20 22. We see again that Mr. Glenn GI has signed up a public comment. Madam Vice chair, Mr. Gi. All right. Hearing, hearing. No response, no hearing, no response. Yeah. Will now entertain a motion? Oh, I thought you said you moved. No, no, no. Oh, I'm sorry. I did. I moved. I will. Right. So it's been moved and seconded that the board's legal firm evaluation for the period of 20 21, 20 22 be approved. If
150there any other unreadiness That to thank Mr. Dye in his law firm and to make sure that it's really clear that he, that the firm received a ranking of 4.4, which is somewhere in between exceeds expectations and exemplary. So it's very high ratings. 4.6. It's 4.60, I'm so sorry. 4.6. Yeah. Once again, in between exceed's expectations and exemplary leaning more towards exemplary. If you wanna round up, I can, I would like to take a moment to, to personally thank the d Harrison Law Firm for the years that they have been involved and committed to serving the interests of the public in this community, particularly in the area of public education. It was a do or die that your, that was your dad and my grandfather. And your grandfather. I had an opportunity to participate in
151a, in a dedication workshop for the going Angola, discovering Ang, it's a historic part of the community down in East Bradenton down there. And it was there that I learned that it, that the history that is foundational to the study of this was a history that was developed by Doey die. And I wasn't so sure that was your father, your grandfather, Both of them. But they gave much credit to the history of finding Angola, which is a historic black settlement of freed slaves that were able to live there for hundreds of years before they relocated to The Bahamas. Where Sister Golden, who's present here with me today is from, And so I, I thank you and I thank you for your professionalism. It's just always comforting to have you here at the, at, at my
152right arm. At least as long as I've been chair. I, it has just been, We've gone through some things and we've seen some things, but you have handled them professionally. You are a credit to the Florida bar and it has been a pleasure to sit at your left hand throughout, throughout these proceeds. The only time I felt lost was when Chair Kennedy moved me to the other side of it. And I was, I was scared to say anything over that. I was too far away from my lawyer. So thank you so very, very Much Chair. If I could just make one comment. Yes, sir. Thank you for the kind remarks. I I just wanna thank everybody for filling out the evaluation. As you know, we, we take it very seriously. It's shared with other members
153of the firm, other members of the firm do work for you. And we're always open to any comments, suggestions. You don't have to wait until the annual evaluation, but I appreciate that y'all went through the time and, and did that. And we, we, we also took the time to update the evaluation form. I think it's a better form moving forward. It's more tailored to this district. And so I think it, it was a better, an accurate picture. So just thank you and thank you chairman. Thank you. You've heard the motion. And second, there's no other unreadiness at this time. The chair will call a question. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed here and none the I have it. And the motion passe unanimously. Second item, approval of the travel expenses associated with
154the school board members attendance at the Florida School Finance Officers Association. November, 2022 conference, November the 13th through the 17th at the Ka Royale and Monaco. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm so, I'm so sorry. That's Orlando not to exceed. Well, I should have known $1,400. You can't get the MoCo from $1,400. All right. And the chair will move the approval of that travel expense associated with the school board member's attendance. I'll second that. All right. It's been moved and seconded. You heard the motion. And second, is there any unreadiness or any explanation There's public comment? Oh, yes. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, Mr. GI Okay. Mr. Jim not being present in the room. Okay. Not being president in the room at this time. Then we will now I'm sorry, Go ahead. I have one other
155thing I'd like to say, if that's Yes. When you go, when you come back, will you kind of give us like a update or report or something that would be really beneficial? Absolutely. Yeah. This will be a new experience for me, but it's a lot of information that's specifically finance in school districts. So, yeah. So I'm looking forward to it. I think it's great. I just, I I will look forward to the reporting afterwards. I just wanna know if you would be so excited about going if it was at the cre Royal and Okie Chobe. I I I'm just asking. It wouldn't matter Because what goes on inside Okie choppy or is All right. Thank you so very much. That's a great answer. Rather be in MoCo. I know that she'd rather be in Monaco.
156Right. Okay. All right. You've heard the motion. Second, all of the comments, The chair's ready to call the question. All those in favor That be aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. Hearing none. The I have it. The motion passes. Number three, approval of the Citizens Financial Oversight Committee member. It's the chair's understanding that we had one vacancy that was still left on the Citizens Financial Oversight Committee. I had met this wonderful person who has been interested in working with the, within the school system. She came and was interviewed by the chair and by the, the chair of the committee and by a representative to the committee from the school board. And so I'm happy to, to, to move her approval to serve on the last vacancy of the Citizens Financial Oversight Committee. Second. Okay. It's been
157moved and seconded. And Mrs. I'm so sorry. Just met him. Last, You Mr. Lina sign up for this. So I just wanna call his name. Mr. Lina. Okay. There's nobody here. I wanna make sure I follow. Yes. That, that, that, that's it. Cause people are watching us and they'll certainly point out, point out our full pause. Amen. You have none. No, I only have Paul fulls, but that's another story. Okay. Mrs. Yeah. I, Ms. Fur is, is here and, and you know, if she, we could invite her. Won't you come please then Yes. So that She can Well, at this meeting didn't scare you away. So, Hi Heather. Yes. Yesterday Ms. Harrington and I had the opportunity to meet and, and we highly recommend to be approved. And would you like to tell us a
158little something about yourself? First of all, thank you all for considering this nomination. Thank you Chairman, and happy birthday. My name is Catherine for Rare. I have two children and I proudly send them to Luis r Johnson, which is an amazing school and has been since it was wakeland for our family where we started. I'm also the daughter of a public school teacher who is retired from the school district of Manatee County. And serving in this capacity, however I can help and learn and be of service is, is an honor and a privilege. And I thank you all for that. Thank you very much. We thank you. I didn't, I didn't read the whole resume. I, I just got as far as Harvard and I saw that. I don't even know what it was about.
159She, she, I, it just said Harvard and I was That's it. If you can get it. So thank you so very much. All right. That's it. Any other questions? All right. Hearing none, stand there in the well and watch this. You ready? Yes. Okay. We will, the chair will call the question and we will begin the voting with the chair. Yes. Okay. Yes, Yes, yes, yes, of course. Thank you so very much for that unanimous, accepting of the recommendation. And thank you Mr. Ra serving. All right. We are now at item 15 on the, on the agenda workshop item request. I think we had talked the last time about making a couple of modifications and I think this is the result of that. We haven't added anything. I, I believe this is what we had
160decided. Matter vice chair. I wanna add something Or I That's alright with me. That's fine. You want to add Something? Given that the unfortunate news that came out a little over a week ago from our superintendent, I really think this board needs to put an item hopefully in December or perhaps January, where we invite Ms. Messina from F SBA to come and speak about superintendent searches. Yep. So hopefully I would, I would, I would advocate that we contact her, if you don't mind, and see what dates work for her. I think we're gonna have to be more flexible on that one. But, you know, she would be able to guide us on the best way to do that. And we have to face that. And I think the sooner we get started, the better Can,
161Can I just, I know you'll be shocked, but I, I did alert the group in Tallahassee that you may want that. So they have penciled in on our next board meeting in December to just come and explain the process and kind of lay out a calendar so that you could then make a decision. So if you would like, we can put it on that for the first conversation. And then from there you will of course need workshops, but we can at least let them come and kind of lay out. So I've already kind of alerted them that date. So I I do believe that they are available to come in. So we can go ahead and put it then, and then we can, the board can then determine which workshops and dates thereafter if you
162prefer. I prefer none of it. I understood. But I, I, I, I mean we have to, you know, is that, I mean, I'm okay doing it that way. I mean, that way we get the information and then we can have a discussion at a later date. I just wanna make sure that we get on top of it and then that maybe that's the better way to do it. We just get all the information and then we maybe, you know, to me, sometimes I need time to really marinate in it and think about which way is gonna be the best way. And maybe that, maybe that's a better way to do it. Go Ahead. Oh, I was just say, I agree. I, if she can come in and tell us what the process looks like, give
163us a calendar, then we can go back and do a workshop after we have that information come together and say, Okay, here's the timing and here's what we wanna do. So yeah, I think that's probably the best. And that way that workshop is not just her explaining the process, but that workshop is actually us doing something with what she's already told us the process should look like. Yeah. Or can look like My, my only other request will be that, and I don't, that's the other thing on my list for this discussion was master board training. I, I really feel like that we have always benefited from doing that. And with two new members, we're going to need to go through that again. And I don't even think you got to go through the whole thing
164with us most of it, yeah. About 55% it would be beneficial. So I'd like to get that on the calendar, but I don't know if it's appropriate to have that conversation until they're sitting here to discuss that part. I mean, I don't know whether there's an appetite to consider this, and I don't know whether everyone got the notification that I received, but I have received communications from at least two superintendent search firms that assist in the process of locating and finding other superintendents. So I'm, I'm just hoping that this process does not devolve into just the intellect on the board at that time, trying to make a decision about who will be the successor to this, to this superintendent. And so I'm, I'm just hoping that as a consideration of these discussions, that there might
165be an opportunity to hear from other third parties about what you should be doing, what you ought to be doing in terms of trying to select other successor. I believe this superintendent came into our midst as a consequence of the previous superintendent coming into our midst as a consequence of that soup, that person being a deputy superintendent under the person that was the superintendent at that time. And so at, you just can't keep herky jerky going forward into the future. At some point you have to have some directions and I'm hoping that that will be a part of it. Mrs. Foreman, I believe you had your hand raised. Yes. I would like to express a preference that we do it in a workshop setting, simply because in board meetings time is short. We've got X
166amount of, you know, we, we receive information, we ask questions, and then we move on. And I think that we really need to hear what our options are and explore it with each other. I think we need to have discussions about, about many things related to it, you know, community involvement, whether it's F A S B or another search committee nationwide versus I, I think we need, we need a little more discussion among the board members about what our preferences and, you know, we certainly have enough time to think about it before we sit down and have a workshop. But I would much rather do it in a workshop setting than at a, at a regular board meeting with, With someone From, from fasb. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we could do it on the same
167date that we have a board meeting. Just, you know, that, that would be a morning board meeting. We could tack on an afternoon workshop on it. I don't really have a strong preference. I do see the value in just getting the information and then really thinking about it and maybe hearing from the community before we really have more discussion. But I also see the value of being able to take our time and discuss it as the information arises. So I really have no preference at all. It does not matter to me. Okay. All right. Are there any other remarks with respect to workshop item request? Can I add, Oh, I'm sorry I jumped In there. No, That's okay. I just wanted to ask, can we ask Andrew, can we ask f SBA what, what their
168preference would be like? We, we have a workshop on D December the eighth, and then we have the meeting on the 13th and they had already penciled in the 13th. So I, I can follow up with them to see if they're available each day. So if they're on the workshop, we could put 'em, we could, you know, break for lunch. That means our workshop will be longer. It, you know, we've already got three items on there than you could break for lunch and then have them come in time certain, you know, at the end so they could discuss it. Or as as stated, if you wanted it on the day of the meeting of the 13th, it would be a workshop after the meeting's over, after a lunch break. And we could do it that
169way. So I think hearing I'll, I'll follow up with them and see what their calendar is available, but I'm, I'll certainly work on that. Okay. The only other item I did want, and I've spoken to you individually about, I would like to put on a workshop item in January, the discussion of po. So remember it was one of the eight, we just got the KSAL report back. So we need to discuss the next steps for the work. But that would be in January, not December. We don't have time, so I'll add that item to the list. Right. Any other comments relative to the workshop request in the workshop law? All right, hearing none, we will then move forward to updates. We will have the legal department update from Attorney Dye. No update today. All right.
170And then the operations update and safety and security update from Mr. Wagner. Very good. Good afternoon chairman. Golden members of the board superintendent. The first thing chairman, gold golden. Thank you for your service to our school district and thank you school board member Kennedy as well. We appreciate that. I have four items. Number one, a shout out to Southeast High School Culinary Arts. Their students and their teacher Chef Allen, They went to the, the chamber business. Business Expo was at Lecom Park last week. They were there. Manatee Technical College was there. Dr. Bs. And then the school district had a, a table also for human resources. So we were rep well represented at the chamber event. I appreciate people going after hours for that. Number two, we have our East County K eight prototype posted
171right now that ran on Sunday. It runs for three Sundays. So that's posted, if you recall, that's a 79 million project and it closes December 14th. So we'll still get the, the notification out to everybody when we have the onsite presentations. I know some of you like to attend that as well will be the last week in January is when they're tentatively set for right now. But number three, we have, we are at attending a job fair today at, at USF Sarasota. And we also have still on the books for this Thursday, a job fair at Wakeland Support Center for ESC and healthcare. Number four for the safety and security update. Mr. Chairman, we're continuing implementing our, our good practices that we have to keep our, our schools and employees as safe and secure. This
172week of course, we're focusing on the storm. We have learned from the last storm and we've actually updated our hurricane box this year and have batteries that power in case power goes down. Not that we think that's happening with this storm, but we do learn from every storm and we continue to make it better, that we're better well equipped reminder that November 30th, of course is the end of the hurricane season. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that that holds. And this of course is our last storm, so appreciate the time today. Thank you. Okay, thank you Mr. Wagner. I think the, the next item on the agenda, superintendent's remarks, and I will pick upon a personal privilege to say thank you for the opportunity to work with you for four years. And I really
173appreciate all that I have learned about public education and the, the being able to serve to do the things that all of us have been able to accomplish here in the public school system. I am sorry that you are not here for my last briefing from the superintendent, but I want you to know that my briefing from Deputy Superintendent Wagner was an outstanding, excellent, in depth briefing provided by him, except in one respect You didn't have any candy, did He? No. Well then that's two now. Cause he, he didn't have any can in his office and number one, we were at his office and not at Cracker Barrel. Oh my. So I'm a little upset about that and I'm kind of glad I don't have to worry about that. I'll have to train him a
174little better, train Him a little better. I'm working on it. All Right. But seriously, thank you so very, very much for all that you have helped us to get through over the, over the last four years. If you just stop and think about how far we've come and the things that we've had to, to have to negotiate it has really been, it's really been a pleasure and I thank you so very much. Thank you. I'm gonna save my comments on that at the end of my statement. Okay. But at the beginning I did want to give you an update. So I have two of my wonderful team members from curriculum, Evan McCarthy, 'em have a McCarthy, our assessment director, and Dr. Breslin, the ED over curriculum. Just to give you an update on, you know,
175we have new assessments this year from the TE the state. Of course they're not called that, they're called progress monitoring. So I did want to give you an update of where we are. So we have a slide presentation and this will continue that they will be given three times a year. So this is after our progress monitoring one. So if our team can show it on the screen so that all can see. There we go. You're ready. Wonderful. Thank, thank you all. And this is not lengthy. I, I promise you, I know you've been in here for some time, but if we start to go fast, please stop us and, and we will address any questions you may have. We're going to focus on elementary, you'll see some secondary data in here as well. But
176we will come back and do a secondary update with additional data reaching far into high school. We have Evan McCarthy, our director of research and assessment who's doing a wonderful job with his team on all of these new assessments. So we really appreciate the guidance from his team. As a reminder, we have two platforms, one for kindergarten through second and one that covers three through 10 ELA and three through eight math. And that is under the umbrella of the fast testing with the progress monitoring. So we're bringing to you updates from PM one progress monitoring one. Good, I guess we're at afternoon now. Board members superintendent. So first we're gonna talk about our renaissance data. Renaissance is the kindergarten through second grade test progress monitoring platform from the state. It consists of three assessments, star
177early literacy, star reading and star math. Starting off star early literacy was taken by kindergarten and first grade and star reading is taken by second grade. That's gonna start getting a little more confusing in December because if you meet certain cut scores that start early literacy, you switch over star reading. But I think our school's are ready to jump into that. So kind of starting off with star assessments, we, we don't have quite as much information on star assessments as to how we're doing relative to the rest of the state. The state hasn't released statewide data yet. I'm hoping that comes sometime in the next week or so when election stuff is, oh we'll see. But so far the one thing they have told us is the 40th percentile is kind of the cut score
178that Renaissance uses to measure proficiency. And so they will look at where students fall on that percentile throughout the year. So since we tested in the kind of fall, September, August, September window, they looked at how we perform relative to other students nationwide when they set those cut scores. So if you look at kindergarten currently as of aug, late August September, 47% of our kindergarten students were considered a proficient on star early literacy assessment. 51% of our first graders were. And then jumping up to star reading for second graders that are presumably were reading proficient at that point, 47% of our second graders were proficient based on that cut score. Now star math, we only have one star math assessment make, it's a little bit easier than reading. So kindergarten through second, I'll take the
179same assessment there. 51% of our kindergartners were considered proficient after that 76% of our first graders and 59% of our second graders. And that's a little bit of an odd kind of curve where they are doing a lot better in first grade as far as I can tell. What I think is going on with that is these are adapt, computer adapt based adaptive assessments at this point. So the second graders, what kind of adaptive, they're computer based computer adaptive assessment I think is the phrase the state keeps using. So what that means is I think the second graders are getting harder questions cuz if I look at like the average assessment time for those students, they're taking, the second graders are taking on average four minutes longer to take the star math assessment than the
180first grade. So like little changes like that of like the proficiency being higher in first grade and lower in second grade, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It probably just means they're getting two harder questions than the first grade students are. So Evan, just to be clear, I think what if I'm hearing you right and I just wanna make sure that I am, when you say computer adaptive music, if a child answers a question correctly at a certain skill level, it's gonna bump them up to another as they're taking that, as they're okay. Whereas if they get it wrong, it's gonna give them something on a similar skill Level. I like to think of it as kind of like a family tree turns sideways, you start at the trunk. If you do well, you go
181up, if you do poorly, you go down. It just kind of keeps working Within the same test as John said. Yeah, okay, Thank you. So they have a better idea where you're at. And, And just a a reminder, this is how our students walked in the door on these comprehensive exams reading at grade level. And so it does not, it does not really say this is where we're going to be at the end of the year. If we did nothing else, this is where we would be at the end of the year. And so teachers of course have the opportunity to work with our students and you'll see some of those tools at the end of this short presentation. And also we did hear feedback on the touch screens for the testing, especially with those
182early learners. And so we do have, with the support of Mrs. Saunders, Scott Hanson, the IT team, more of those tech tools that have the touch screen coming in for PM two and then the May assessment as well. So that a little easier for the students when they're taking these assessments. Okay. So moving up through the grade levels, we get into the CAMBIUM testing platform, which is, it's the same platform we've been using for state testing for I don't know how many years now with, and our camm tied all whatever the name has been. So, but now it's all computer based, three through 10 ELA and three through eight math. So looking at our reading results, we can tell a little bit more from this data than we could from the star renaissance data. So
183first of all, in this platform they give us live results instantly. So you can see in the first kind of those two live results columns, you can see where we are relative to the state and we're doing pretty well compared to the state in reading, which is really nice to see. But they also, there's another thing we can kind of look at. So currently the results in the platform are what they call criterion based or criterion referenced results. So they tell you where a student is based on how they're doing meeting standards and benchmarks for those standards. And kinda estimates of where like a level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 student would fall. Normally in Florida we have more what's called norm referenced results, which are how are you doing relative to all the other
184students in the state on a normal distribution curve. So after the PM one window closed, we had the live results initially and then the state went back and gave us percentile data of where our students fall relative to every single other student that took the PM one for each of these tests and the state. And the nice thing about that is the percent having those relative percentiles, we can use them to kind of draw back and look at some information we got, we we received from the state when FSA first started, 1415, I dunno if anybody remembers, they did an assign set scores or levels immediately, right back then. Instead they gave us these things called T scores, which are just kind of a standardized relative value. And so we can manage to use the
185percentile data they give us after the window and do that percentile results column, which is more of projects out if this was the end of the year where how we would be doing relative to the rest of the state. And so that translated score is what you'll see here on the end through all of that, it's, it's the translated score. So you see for example, third grade ELA reading state results for the end of the year last year at 46%. Right now our students are, are trending at the 48%. And then of course that was when they came in. So a lot of the, the movement we saw in second grade last year continuing and then hopefully we'll see PM two, pm three in may, that positive trend upwards as we're really closing the gaps
186that we saw widen during c d And hopefully those live results will slowly move closer to where our, where our percentile projected results are landing too. How, how, how are you all able to use these results to ascertain the direction in which the improvement you'd like to see? I I like your example about the tree that you go down in the first quarter. What, what, what corrective measures put you back up in terms of, of reading? How do you, how do you get that? And so we'll when we reach the end, we have a slide with some of our initiatives, but it just solidifies really what we found at the end of last year and the plans we worked on for this summer and identifying the right resources, the right instructional rotations, the selection of
187of, of our strongest teachers to, to work with some of our most struggling students. And I think you see that benefit already happening, but we'll hit on it a bit more here. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disruptive here, but what I'm, I keep hearing about third grade reading score, third grade reading score. Well now you're not gonna get to the third grade be reading below third grade level and at third grade 0.5 bam all of us. So how, what is the trajectory for recovery? That's what I'm really And how do we make sure that even though you might not be reading at the third grade level, by the time you get to the next eva, was that eighth grade I think it is that, that you read. So so you see it going
188down third, fourth, fifth. Yes. And if we look at the trajectory, if you're talking the students who might have been struggling in third grade last year, we'd take a look at their fourth grade and so then we can develop a plan to make sure, for example, last year, fifth grade, the, it was really favorable. Those gaps were closing in fifth grade and it's that work that's happening in third, fourth, fifth. Cuz you're right, we do have to build on that to cover. Yes sir. I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. Thank you. And one nice thing that is coming that is we do have with this platform now is there's kind of live tracking over the years. As we get more and more of those progress monitoring data points, you'll be able to see back maybe like four
189or five, six years even. However we keep the system around of how each student did on each period. So we'll be able to kind of track it over time and see how that's changed. Has have, do you have any response or any, any information from the, from the state that, and I, I don't remember exactly when we tested, I mean I know it's late August, but it was like, welcome back, here's a test. You know what I mean? Like, and I don't, I don't think it was that quick like week one, but it was pretty quick. So is there any indication that the state feels, and maybe they don't know because we gotta wait until the next how we progress, but that maybe that early is, is not good. And so they have really have
190not released any information as far as their thinking is with the timing of that first assessment. I will say it did help us in getting some immediate information with some of our young learners who we didn't previously have state data on. But it will be interesting to see, I mean obviously there's the learning of the standards that happen the first half of the year prior to PM two, but additionally for those younger learners, the comfort of being in their school environment, working on, you know, the assessment online that that has to factor in, in my opinion. Yeah, not sure how we measure that yet, but it will be interesting to look at to dissect it from PM two. Yeah, I mean there are definitely like testing time and percent test of things that do show
191in the lower grade levels, some of those struggles trying to jump into a new testing systems at the beginning of the year. Yeah. How do adverse childhood experiences impact or skew this or is that even a factor in? And so we don't have a way to, I guess, quantify that at the present time. Not with, not with the brand new assessments coming, coming forth. We just don't have enough measurements. But we do know that they haven't Paid. Yes sir. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry, go Ahead. So looking at our three through eight math fast math results, you can see these are a little bit, so these are, these are kind a little bit different looking than the reading one. So first of all, if you look overall in the live results section one, we're
192blowing the state out of the water, which is always nice to see, but also both the state and us as a whole are lower. But then if you look at the percentile ones, our percentile results are higher because we're doing so much better relative to the rest of the state in math and as we have been for several years. Right? I would like to make a comment that you may say, well, what happened in seventh and eighth grade? Remember we are very accelerated in our math progression plan. So many of our students are taking algebra or geometry and seventh and eighth grade, so therefore they're not in this calculation. So when the schools get their overall math score for seventh grade math, it's added with their students that are in algebra for an overall combined
193result that's not factored in here. You will see that our overall percentage of proficiency in math for all of middle school and elementary school far exceeds the state because of our matriculation plan. So I just wanted to point out the why that you may see we're looking lower in eighth grade. That's because almost all of our kids are in algebra one or geometry. Okay. And just a reminder, with the writing assessment this year, the state has only field tests, so you won't be seeing results for writing this year. Once we participate in the field test, we'll bring an update on what writing looks like for the state assessment. And so just some quick points to hit on here with elementary, elementary education, again, just to solidify the plans that we knew were the best action
194steps and supporting our students and our teachers this year, of course our campaign for grade level reading, our partnerships with our community organizations are vital when we look at our new resources and the training that's been involved with that. Our professional professional learning Wednesday, this past Wednesday afforded us the opportunity to work with our teachers once again on really using those resources in the best possible way in the classroom. Standards based learning, high rigor, all of those things equate to that solid tier one instruction. That solid tier one instruction is what is going to bring all of our students up to that grade level performance. And then of course, we put in the interventions as needed for tier two and tier three to help the students that are showing gaps in their learning. In addition
195to the state progress monitoring, we of course use our tools that come with our resources, our own district benchmark assessments. And so we can really hone in on any students that might be struggling to acquire those skills. And also to help any teachers that might be new and helping them in the classroom understand where their students are and reaching them. And then afterschool programs, really looking into how to monopolize that time with our students that are in our afterschool programs to provide them additional instruction and support. We might as well use that time to support the learning as well. And then secondary, we will of course go through more information here, but just a reminder of all the work being done as secondary and I, I can't say enough about the accelerated programs as well
196and increasing avid to provide all of our students opportunity to excel in, in their classrooms. And that is the current update. And of course we'll bring more for secondary at at our next opportunity to speak with you. Thank you. All right. Any, I'm sorry, this is, this is your comment. Yes, no, that was, that was part. Thank you guys. You did a great job for us. Very much appreciate that. Okay, so that's one. I know some of you may be wondering what's going on with the storm. Mr. Barber has just recently sent out communication. We are monitoring it. Remember if the wind load is beyond 45 miles an hour, we can't run buses. We're crossing our fingers that we're not going to have to close schools or have a shelter. But we are working directly
197with our emergency management system and we will have an update that's sent out later this afternoon to all parents and staff. We do have school tomorrow because if you look at the trajectory, it doesn't look like we will even see impacts till the evening of Wednesday or in the, we wee hours into Thursday. We are counseling after school activities Wednesday afternoon. We did have a football game Wednesday night at Bayshore. We've canceled that. So we're not going to have any after school activities beyond five after Wednesday, just in precaution. And we'll monitor the situation. We do think this is going to be a fast moving tropical storm. It doesn't look anything on the same scale as what we just went through with Ian. However, we have to be cautious and prepare. So we are working
198hand in hand on that. So please pay attention to phone messages and so forth because we will keep everyone updated as the storm progresses. A team went with me to Arizona last week to receive, and I believe I have a video or some slides Amanda can pop up for us and we'll show that. So hang on. So as she's going through my slide presentation, I, I knew we were at the foundation of Steve Wozniak's initiative for the Career Pathways, but I don't know that I fully understood the impact until we were invited out to be recognized again as a district, you know, that really launched this pathway, Palm View. We were really the first in the nation to launch his curriculum for a wonderful stem and robotics and, you know, technical education. And what was
199amazing is from that initiative, there are now 19 districts in the state of floor Florida using their STEM curriculum, but it's now all over the nation. So they recognized Manatee County, Steve Wasniak and his team and that's, we were there to receive that award. So it was a wonderful opportunity and just showed the great work of our schools and our teachers and our administrators. So, so it was, it was a, a very proud moment. So yeah, it was pretty amazing. So I just wanted to congratulate everybody that took part in that, that groundbreaking initiative, Mr. Wagner for closing the deal for us. And you know, Will Robinson for sponsoring the legislative bill that gave us the funding. It really was a wonderful, wonderful experience. So, and will continue, it's now in every elementary school we've
200expanded into middle and this next year it will grow into our high schools. So the kids love it and those are the type of experiences that we need to be providing our students. So I certainly wanted to showcase that. We've also recognized and selected our principal of the year nomination as well as assistant principal of the year. And I would like to make you aware of those. Carol Ricks, who is the principal of Myakka Elementary School, she definitely is well deserving as you can imagine. What she has had to undergo this year is beyond what most principals in their career have to undergo. She just does a phenomenal job. She was also recognized as expanding into an ag program. She's really launched a lot of initiatives. So she is our nominee for that. We will
201submit to the state for principal of the year and our assistant principal of the year is Adriannene Vos at Johnson K eight. She is an assistant principal doing an amazing job and help leading that school to excellence. So we congratulate both of our nominees and you know, we have had an assistant principal of the year recognized who is now a principal burning at Platcher once, once upon a time. So, you know, I have complete confidence in our, in our nominees. So with that, I come to my last, my last part of the meeting and I have two recognitions. So Mr. Kennedy, if you will come down to the podium for a moment, Sir, I would've worn a suit if I knew this was, you know, you know, we wanna make sure we get a good
202photo. Yeah, it's, I wore you did. You did. So as we all know that Mr. Kennedy has served two terms. He's not leaving us. I'm not, he is continuing on his mission of serving children and being, you know, I I did have to coax him a little bit and applying for the job, but it's a perfect job for Charlie and I know he is gonna serve our students well, working alongside Dory Elementary and thanks so much. And the district will see him still in years to come. Yeah, but you've done an amazing job. We thank you for your dedication. Thank you. Much appreciated by I I'm legit surprised Right now. This is your plot for a job well done. Thank you so much. That's Robert Golden. Can you please come down to the podium, sir?
203Why? Well, just because The superintendent gets to ask that of the chair on occasion. Okay. Okay. Oh, we're going to Cracker Barrel alone. Yes. Well, I don't know. You've, We've exceeded our lunchtime. Maybe they're Still open. Oh yeah, They're still open. Oh, I stated Reverend Golden has been here through the great times and the hard times, but right, right side by side me, I will tell you, I have cherished your words of wisdom, your dedication, your commitment to our, our community and our students. And you will be missed. I am gonna miss not being able to go to Cracker Barrel on occasion, but I guess I'll find somebody to eat with. Maybe I'll drag Doug along to Cracker Barrel. I don't know, but it's not gonna be the same. So I thank you sir for,
204for four years of service for being our chair and a job well done. Thank you. Thank you. Now we may wanna sing Happy Birthday cuz we do have a nice cake for you back there and I can't believe you haven't even eaten it yet. Let's hurt. Hurt. Yeah, I know. Let's hurt. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Now I don't have to steal it when that's up here. There you go. Oh wow. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And that this was even bigger to me. It's got gold on. Okay. That's it. That's it. Okay. Then what we will do, the board comments that are listed here are foreman Joe Kennedy Messenger and Golden. And if the vice chair will so allow me, I'm going to allow Mr. Kennedy to have the next to
205the last word. And so the order will be foreman choke messenger in Kennedy and, and Golden. Right. Okay, Ms. Foreman. Okay. I'm about to pass my tissues down to Miss Messenger. I got a bag Already. You you are all set. Yeah. Let me start off with today we had the, the farmer recognition and I just want to comment how amazing our FFA and four H programs are. You know, I've had the opportunity in the last couple years to to visit them at the different schools and just, we're doing more than teaching them about farming. We're teaching them about life, you know, and leadership. And these are just fantastic programs and I'm gonna miss the market on Saturday because I will be over at Southeast High School judging a debate tournament. So I'm kind of excited
206about that, actually very excited about that. And lunch is being provided by the Southeast High School Culinary Institute. So I'll let you know if there are any good, I do wanna say, you know, recognize our veterans. Unfortunately the storm is messing with our schedules on Thursday, you know, on some, some veterans events. But I don't want the, the week to pass without recognizing and thanking veterans who have served our country and made incredible sacrifices. So just, just to honor them and just wanna say to, to Mr. Kennedy, you know, whenever I go to a school event, okay, Mr. Kennedy's there or has been there, I mean he has been out of all of us. I'm not pointing any fingers or anything, but just want to, want to commend it. He's been so involved with our
207schools, with our students, with our teachers, that while we are going to have a loss on the Dias here, I think our entire district is going to really feel the loss of your, of your involvement and just, you know, and I know I'm gonna miss you a whole lot, you know, so I just Yeah, you're Not going anywhere. Don't worry about it. We're Well, you're not gonna be next. You're gonna see me a lot. I know, but you're not gonna be next to me and able to, to make your very true, your interesting comments. So yeah. So you, you are a diplomat. Yes. So anyway, but, but very, very fond of you and, you know, wish you well on Gotry. And then Reverend Golden, he ran off. So I can say anything I want. Whoops.
208He's back. But Reverend Golden, I will never be able to go to a Cracker Barrel without thinking of you. You know, I'm just, just saying. In fact, I was there last weekend and I was looking, I was really wanted to take a photo or picture on the wall and turn it upside down. Yes. Take a picture for you. But I figured I'd get thrown out of a cracker barrel so it wasn't, you know, so I didn't do that. But thank you for the last two years and your kindness, your civility. You, you said you came on the board to, to create a more civil environment and I, I truly believe that you did. We've had a, a good, good, good board relationship and, and a civil one and through some very difficult times. And so
209I thank you and wish you well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, it's me. You're Not crying. I already did. I'm gonna hold it Together. Okay. Thanks everybody for a good meeting. I wanna reiterate what Ms. Foreman said about the, the veterans. Hopefully this storm doesn't detract some of the stuff going on, but thank for all the veterans out there that have served. We wouldn't be here doing what we're doing without 'em. So keep it a little short and sweet. We can't get rid of Kennedy. He's still gonna be around and, but that's gonna be great. I i in in the capacity you've championed the community schools and, and what better way than to jump right in and be a part of it. And so I know you're, you're gone from here, but you're
210not gonna be gone very far and you'll still be, still be affecting kids' lives. And that's what, that's what it's all about. And Trevor Golden, I'll give you my Cracker Barrel story. It changed my life. His, his wife warn asked for the apple butter to be warmed when it's brought to the table for the biscuits. And I've never had that. I just had it normally served. And warming changes your life. So if you, if you've, if you've never had the apple butter warm, make sure you get that next time you're a Cracker Barrel. No, but, but honestly Reverend Golden, you know, I appreciate your, your service. It your, for you, it's always been about one thing and that's the students. And although we don't necessarily agree on everything, I appreciate the, the corals oneness that
211you've shown me. And, and I hope I've shown you the same. And both y'all be missed and good luck with your future endeavors. Thank You. Thanks Jack. Mary's looking at me cuz she knows gonna be a blubbery mess. I'm not gonna be a blubbery mess. Gonna hold it together by making it very short. You're not going anywhere. I'll still see you. I don't like Cracker Barrel. I ask him is now, We're gonna argue Now. Okay, now. But I'll hang out with you time because I feel like our heart speak the same language and that's, that's it. Love for kids in education that I've always appreciated It. So I'm sorry. Don't apologize, daughter. It's okay. It's not okay. It's okay. It's all right. It's okay. So I'm gonna thank you for always being here. Like Mr.
212Cho said, we didn't always agree, but I always knew from both of you. Well sometimes you were a little, but I always knew it was because the kids, sometimes it was a political stunt come on. But I always knew, at least from you, it was always from the kids. Sometimes you had to take a job. I get it. But you know, to me like this is about the kids. And I, I think that that's what I've always appreciated is that you and I felt the same way about that. Even if we didn't agree on whatever it was, we at least felt the same way about that. And that's deeply important to me as a parent sitting here. I truly wish you well in your new job. And I know we'll see each other around. So
213I don't like Cracker Barrel, but you know, we can still go have lunch somewhere all together and You'll be getting invites. Not to Cracker Barrel though. Not to Cracker Barrel. Yeah. I don't like Cracker Barrel. I've tried lots of things. I just haven't had that thing. Maybe we can go eat ice cream. Warm Water. Ice cream. That's what's said. Ice cream ice cream. Yeah. But just you two have been great to work, work with and I very much appreciate both of you and I really hope that as you move on, that it's positive. So, and I'm sorry I cried. Gotta let that stuff out. I've done. All right. Well then I got a lot to say. No, I'm just kidding. I am actually going to make this very short and I've to all four of
214you. It really, the past couple years have been, despite how tumultuous it's been at times like this board has been so stable and we can agree without being disagreeable, it's really like, in all of my eight years, this group right here is the one I have most enjoyed working with. And that is no, you know, to Bob GOs, Karen Carpenter, John Coone, Dr. Mary Terrell, Watchdog, Dr. Hopes, you know, we were all, and I and I, I put myself at the front of this line. We were all a bunch of characters that had our idiosyncrasies and our little issues that we got on our part of soapbox about. And, but I have, I, I knew when I started this job and or when I was elected in 14, that I, I knew that I had
215so much to learn. And I'm still after two terms, still learning things all the time. And I just have a great respect for people who are willing to put themselves out there. I'm, I'm not talking about me, I'm just in general people who are willing to put themselves in public life and up for election. Cuz it is not easy, especially lately in our political environment. It is, as we all know, it's become very charged. And so I want to, I, I wanna address a few segments of people and one of them is the public. And I would ask people who may hear this later that don't be afraid to step up to run for public office and to serve your community because I have now been in this job longer than anything I've ever done
216in my life. I've been in education a long time, but I've, you know, I've changed jobs and so forth. So I've never done anything for eight years straight in my life. And, but there's a reason I ran for a second term. It's cuz I thought there was more that we had to do. And so I would just encourage people to, you know, come outta your comfort zone and, you know, you don't have to be guaranteed to win, to run for office. Sometimes it's just the experience of running and then low and behold, like me, you might actually surprise yourself and get elected. So, but to the superintendents, I've worked with Rick Mills first and then still one of my most proud moments is, you know, going to my board colleagues at that time and advocating
217for Dr. Green to become our superintendent, which she did and how she's moved on and, and with Cindy. So Cynthia Saunders, excuse me. It's been a pleasure to, to work with you. You know, we have certainly like the board members, we've had our disagreements, but we have always worked through them in a professional way. I have so much admiration for your skill set and you know, Doug, this community loves you. I know sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but it's been a pleasure to work with you and you are so well respected and loved in this district. And, and Tim, I apologize, I didn't mean to put you on the spot earlier in the meeting, I was kind of thinking ahead. So, but Tim, you, you are a valued member of a very much valued
218leadership team. And, and two are really our, our, our our staff, our faculty and staff that are out there. I just want you to know that, that this board is in very good hands and it has been expressed to me that, oh well, you know, you're leaving and Reverend Golden's leaving and it's gonna be all Republicans. And I just want to say to people out there that if you have that perception in this community, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Because the, the Chad, Mary and Gina are three very reasonable people and very easy to work with. They listen, they listen before speaking. They hear you when you are speaking and, pardon me. So this, this district is in very good hands going forward, regardless of what happens tonight. This district is in very
219good hands. We're about to go through some change obviously, but, but we are in very capable hands. I I completely trust this board to make a wise decision when it comes to the, the transition. And I look forward to that. And I I will certainly have a few things I'll probably email you about. I'll have some thoughts to share. I'll keep them short. But no profanity. No profanity. I promise you won't get it. I don't, yeah, I don't want, I don't wanna get tripped up in the filter or anything, but, you know, and, and really to our, to our faculties and staff, like they, and I've said this many times before, but I, I wanna leave this seat with this thought is that faculty and staff, you are the people that make this district go
220around. We succeed and or fail based on the efforts of our bus drivers, our custodians, our teachers aides, our teachers, our administrators. Cuz what's happening in our schools every morning when when kids jump off the bus or they jump off their bike or they walk up to school, that's where the rubber meets the road. And so a lot of attention is put on us because we are elected officials and we're, and we're public figures. But I, I wish more attention was put onto our teachers and our staff and, and they are fortunately not as underpaid as they used to due to the leadership of this board and supporting our referendum and making our teachers one of the highest paid in the state. But I just wanna leave on that kind of note that I have.
221You know, I came from the classroom and I had respect for teachers when I, when I came out of the classroom. I have even more respect for our faculty and staff now. So that's kind of what I leave with is just my, my deeper appreciation for, for our employees and my deep respect for all of you because this has really been one of the most interesting experiences in my life. And, and I'm really proud to be staying within Manatee County within the district. I won't be working for the district, but I'll be on campus. And so it's just, for me, it's a natural progression and I'll see everybody around. That's it for me. Ralph. That was a little longer than I thought, but It's alright. Thank you very much. Thank you. At 14, I left
222Daytona Beach as an early entrance to attend Fisk University. It was there at the age of 15 that I pledged into the fraternity that I'm a member of Omega Sci Phi Fraternity. A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to go back to Nashville, Tennessee and stand on that campus and reminisce about what had happened since 1962. And I just remember the ups and downs, the ins and outs and rounds and rounds that I've been privileged to go through. And I thank you as a board. I thank this community. As a community. I thank the school district as a district for trusting part of the leadership of this community, part of the stewardship of this community to me. And so I stood there and I, I remembered something that I first learned. I think
223when I was there out of the night that covers me. Black has appeared from pole to pole. I think whatever Gods may be for my uncomparable soul under the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced, no crowd allowed. And under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but unbounded beyond this place of wrath and tears looms, but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years have found me and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment this grows with Apologies to William Henley. We are the masters of our faiths and we are the captains of our souls. I thank God for the opportunity to have served and not lost my soul. I thank God for those who have served with me and
224have shared their souls with me along this journey. But as my closing comment, I want to thank God I for Mildred Moton Golden, who has been with me every step along this journey. And she has shared with me the joy and the pain and so publicly I want to acknowledge she was here the first day I set, set foot in this building to to serve. And she's here with me as I walk out the door. And so I want to thank you And finally To Reverend James Carson Golden and to Vivian, Eugene Miller Golden. I did my Best that I hope it's pleasing to you. We are adjourned.