School Board Workshop April 18, 2022

001Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the April 18th workshop or the school board of Manatee county. We are called to order. Thank you. All of you for being present and participatory in this process, the chair has found good cause to amend the agenda to include all of the items listed on the agenda amendments on the 18th 2022 agenda updated April 13th, 2022, and posted to the district website, www Manatee schools.net. Okay. I workshop today we'll cover three major subjects, four major subjects. The update and discussion about mental health support plan will be presented by Mrs. Janell Yoast. The presentation of the elementary gifted accreditation plan for the 20 22 20 23 school year will be given by Dr. Dan Evans this morning, instead of Dr. Robin Thompson, the communications for families and website navigation will be

002presented by Mr. Kevin Chapman and Mr. Mike Barbara, and the fourth workshop item, the department of education, African American history task force overview will also be presented by that's the Chapman and by Ms. Latina Electrum Singleton. The times of these presentations are approximately, we certainly wanted to give each of them the time due and necessary for them to be presented to us this morning. Moving forward, we will hear the public comment. Well, we'll hear the public comment instructions after the workshop presentation. It overlook anything. Mr. Choke, Ms. Foreman, Madam vice chair. Okay. Mr. Kennedy has been unavoidably detained and he will be joining us shortly in the meeting. All righty update and discussion of mental health support plan. Michelle's Good morning board members, as well as superintendents, Saunders. I hope you all enjoyed your long

003holiday weekend. It's great to see you this morning. As we get started on the mental health update, I wanted to call to your attention some questions really that I had received as well as some of the folks within our department have received. For example, as we move forward with mental health, what are the requirements and statute in the state of Florida that govern some of our work and our work today in our PowerPoint, we'll focus on what we have been doing this year, as well as the last couple of years. But today I wanted to address before we begin the statutes and the regulations really that govern our work beginning with the mental health assistance allocation and you all, none of us will forget the February 14th incident in Broward county. The Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

004high school public safety act was enacted and signed by the governor as a result of that unfortunate day. And as a result, we must spend at least 90% of our funds from the mental health assistance allocation to provide mental health services for our students. So that drives our work. And as we focus on the work that we've been doing, you'll see statistics and data that govern that work. And it will show you how we were focusing on that 90%. Plus additionally, there will be a final slide that addresses social, emotional learning. And that is part of the required instruction of 1003 0.4, two purines to S primarily where character education is a requirement that we present within our schools. And so we are using character strong, primarily character counts and character first are both mentioned

005in the legislative action itself. And so we wanted you to know that that is information that not only stands alone, but is connected to social studies, English, language arts, and other school-wide character building and veteran awareness initiatives. So as we move forward today, we hope to answer all of your questions regarding our mental health update. And to help me with that is our associate director of exceptional student education. Please welcome Cheryl Mathis, Good morning board members from one of the more condoms. Thank you for having me be here today. I am here to update you on all the mental health things that we have going on here in the district. I also have with me Diana Whitehead, who was our mental health coordinator, and we also have our community partners in the audience today. We

006have Charles Whitfield and Jessica Kruger from Centerstone. We have bill Jordan from Palm shores and I have Dr. Janet Bertoldi and Mr. Van Buren from MCR health. Really There, We're all, we're all scattered out this morning. Okay. So I first want to talk to you about our tier one mental health supports that we have. So first and foremost, there is a mental health health question on school registration. When a parent clicks yes. That their child has had either a mental health diagnosis or has had in the past some kind of mental health support that goes into focus. And it's just a warning for, for teachers in schools to handle that child, maybe with a little more care, we have a monitoring button in our SIS system for mental health referrals. We have a mental health

007component in our parent agency fair every year. And we offer a trainings for mental health, including youth mental health, first aid, which all of our staff in the school district must be trained on. We have a speak up for kids annual mental health conference. That's arranged primarily by our center folks, but is also supported by fiddlers. We have everyday behavior tools, training levels, one and level two. We do trauma informed care. We have PCM, we have con Cognito and we do restorative practices. Currently 22 of our schools have their deans or their SSS is trained and Sug and Palm view have their full staff trained and are currently in the process. In the beginning stages of implementing that. We also have four to five Florida. We have a SharePoint with staff access to information on

008mental health and restorative strategies. We have imagine learning and purpose prep, mental health awareness for grades six through 12, which we'll talk about a little bit later. We have character strong in grades, grades six through 12 with purposeful people. We employ the safe promise club with the Sandy hook promise and secondary, say something in secondary and start with hello. We have seven schools that are currently participating with that. Roger's gardens Daughtry, oh, Nico Johnson, Lee Bayshore, high school and Lakewood ranch high school. We also have handled with care and we'll be talking about that later. And we have bullying prevention training, tier two for tier two and tier three mental health supports for tier two. We have a program that we use called ripple effects. We also offer TeachTown for our students who have intellectual

009disabilities and are in our autistic spectrum disorder units. We have check-in and check-out we have our Centerstone intervention and prevention team. We have Manatee youth at risk that's primarily run or managed by our Sedna person. We have several behavior specialists in the district and behavior techs to support students. We do targeted group counseling. We have individual school-based mental health counseling. Currently in our school systems, we have 101 school counselors, 45 at the elementary level 20 at the middle school, level 30 at the high school level. And then there are six others. We have a counselor assigned to our life program to horizons, to Johnson and Palm view, which are K eight programs. We do have 20 school psychologists that provide support to our students. We have 21 school, social workers, and we also have the

010district crisis team for tier three interventions. We continue to have our behavior specialists that can work one-on-one with students and teachers and our behavior texts. We offer a Centerstone supports on our schools. We have one clinical supervisor and we have 15 therapists. We have the mobile crisis team, and we also have the community team that assist students who are already involved with Centerstone from Palm shores. This is a new partnership for us. This year. We have three clinical licensed therapists and possibly in the 22, 23 school year, we'll be adding three more. We have Sable our school of behavioral and learning excellence, which serves students in grades two through eight. And we have the school of therapeutic and academic resources, which we call star. And that helps serve our population pre-K to one. And we

011have school of threat assessment teams and the district crisis team Chairman. Can I ask her a question or would you rather have at the end? No, no, this, this is fine. That's Perfectly Fine. Yes. I just wanted to know what, how not actually numerically, but percentage wise, do you know how many students are in tier G receive tier two or tier three supports? Just out of curiosity? I do not know that you don't know that. Okay. It is only later on. Yeah. Hold on just a second. If you put the person at this podium, we'll identify someone we want to ask you to come, come up with. They don't want, I apologize. I jumped ahead. I do see that now that there are numbers, it's still not a percentage. I guess I'd be curious to

012know what the percentages are, but I, I apologize. Oh, no, no, no. I'm just, I'm talking to the crowd out there, disrupting everything and just creating problems. Yeah. You understand. So, oh. And Mr. Kennedy came in good morning, morning. Good morning. You came in just in time and things about to get out of hand, but seriously so that we can keep track of the input. We let them come up, give your name and then we'll, we'll hear that. Did you have any other, No, that was, I just wanted to know like what percentage of students were receiving these different ones. That's all. Okay. And I, you know, I'm so sorry. Go ahead, Mr. I did, before we get too far down the road, the number that I heard is that 90% of our funding at

013the formula for that was set before, in my mind, what I'm really concerned about now, we all appreciate the tragedy of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas episode, but that happened before the pandemic. And if I'm hearing you right, that formula has not changed in terms of what the legislature appropriates money is for and what we're required to do. I'm concerned about today specifically, what are we going to do to address the outcomes as a consequence of the pandemic and how, and how are we going to change that 90% or how do we increase funding so that we make allocations for that? And I would that Ms. Joseph, would that be a general, that's a general focus that I'd like to keep us. And so when we get the input we can here, and this is what

014we're doing post Marjorie Stoneman Douglas to deal with with the pandemic problems that many of us don't even know are coming. The data that will be shared from 2020 forward is the pandemic data. So that would be post Marjorie Stoneman. Additionally, we do have some Sr monies, those types of things. We were not going into great depth depth with it today, but there are additional funds in addition to those monies that can be allocated for the health and welfare of our students in the area of Mental health. These are federal funds as would Be federal. That would be accurate. That's what I'm really, I want to know what other state funds that have been brought forth to deal with us in this state. And if they aren't, we need to know that because that's part

015of the problem is that, that am I kind of saying where I thought we were when we were trying to bring this forward? Okay. That was all Mrs. Joe, go ahead. If you want to respond to them, I was going to say that we did not realize that our focus was primarily just on the Florida, but the overall funding. So we will be a little bit broader than your focus on just Florida and Mr. Choate. Well, I just kind of add on, we knew, we know there's going to be adding added funding from the state, but my question specifically is maybe something you touch on later. So please, if it is, if I'm ahead, how, how does the relationship we talk about tier three Centerstone Palm shores, the clinical supervisors, you know, one from Centerstone

016three from Palm shores therapists, et cetera. How what's that integration look like among the schools? Is it a floater? Is it, Hey, we're only really called when we need it. What does that relationship look like from, from our standpoint? Sure. I can answer that question. We currently have, we assigned one person from either Palm shores or Centerstone to different schools. And I think I had that later on in one of the slides. I think it's the next one. So if they want to go ahead and go to the next slide that I can be more specific. Don't go, go for it. Don't go further for it. No, I'm going to hold my questions. Cause it sounds like we're jumping ahead of them. Okay. And okay. Same thing. Did you have any other, okay. All right.

017Okay. Thank you very much. We can go the next slide. So here are the school-based mental health services that we provide, not only from the district, but from our district partners. We have our social workers and psychologists that can provide school-based mental health services. Each one of those serve approximately three schools Centerstone. This is I believe Mr. Joe, the answer to your question. We have 15 master level interns, each one of those support, three to four schools. So depending on the need of this at the school, that particular counselor may be there for one day, a day and a half, maybe even two days, if the need warranted. And they see students individually and the same goes for Palm shores. We currently have three clinical therapists from Palm shores. Each one of them support two

018schools. So they are able to be in those schools more frequently. And we do look at the data that we have as far as the number of visits and the number of referrals and Mrs. White had does a great job in allocating those resources appropriately to schools that need additional support. I'm a man, of course, we have our partnership with MCR health where we have those two school-based clinic clinics at Manatee Allen Southeast. Does that answer your question? Yes, but even in this, maybe not the 30,000 foot view, what I'm asking, maybe like the 5,000 or maybe close, how do we identify? Do we identify through the other ways you just talked about is how we identify, you know, where someone, one of the master level interns wakes up this morning and says, I'm going

019to Miller Cain, you know, whatever their schools are, that identification process with the school. And now once they go to the school, who are they meaning? Okay. So they ha I, I, they have a set schedule. So on Monday they may go to Miller on Tuesday, they're going to suck that kind of thing. And then at the school-based level, school counselors typically are aware of what's going on in their school. So there's children that they see that need additional support. That's where those referrals come in. Of course we get parent permission to be able to do that. And then may see those students. They try to work on a six to eight week period of time to provide that support if it needs to continue. Of course they do. If it doesn't and the students

020seem to be dealing with whatever trauma or whatever their mental health issue is better than they'll release them and pick up new students along the way. But it, it truly the start of the focus or the, the start of it focuses on at school level. Yes, sir. First. So I do have one quick other question that I had when reading through this earlier, I didn't see something on this and was brought to my attention just by a friend of a family of the families passing of the husband. Do we do any, does any of this, the, these supervisors and some of these interns and therapists and things that at the school, obviously we have to know if a parent passes away of a child, if it's ever brought to our attention, obviously we can't do

021anything about that, but if it is brought up, you know, parent calls, you know, little shoes, you start coming to school this week, her father just passed away over the weekend. Do we have, and I see some, do we have people in place saying, Edward, reach out to Susie, whether it's, don't wait for her to come back to school, what can we do now in that transitional period? So our school counselors would be the boots on the ground for that particular situation and our school counselors and our school psychologist and our social workers who are more intimately aware of what's going on campuses. They have, they can do individual counseling with those students. They do also have small groups for children who are maybe involved in divorces or death of a close family member or

022any kind of family member. Cause you never know what kind of, you know, trauma that's going to bring into a child's life. So, and then yes, if the school counselor or the social worker, a psychologist believes that it goes beyond what they can provide in a small group situation, then they can refer them also to Centerstone or to Palm shores therapists. Welcome. I think I'm sorry if I could piggyback off this, seeing that I concern in what we're trying to develop here is an approach and we need to know a 101 school counselors. Is that sufficient? Is that where we are? Is that, where do we need more? How, what I'm hoping, I appreciate the appreciate the forensic analysis of where we, where we are, but I'm really hoping that we can also deal with,

023as Mr. said, how do we handle the grief counseling we doing that adequately now? And if not, what, what would be the approach going forward? And again, as I've said, I'm leading with this pandemic and the impact. I just get reports all the time about parents whose children, my child used to be outgoing, my child, he used to be, you know, but in the year and a half that they've been isolated and insulated. And I was talking with the principal the other day and he says, well, they come, they, they don't have a lot of social skills in the first and second grade because for the first and second grade they'd been home. So they don't know you can't climb the wall. So I'm, I'm hoping that the tenor of the presentations today will help

024us because I believe in the SIM, the consensus is that we, we have a coming storm that we need to be as prepared for as we tried to be prepared for the etiology of the virus itself. And so that I don't presume to speak for everybody, but I am that's, I'm just hearing what Mr. had said. And Ms. Foreman said she had a lot of questions. She wants to ask pat at the end. And so too with the other, so, okay. I'm done. Okay. Okay. And, and in terms of, do we have enough, you know, I, I can't answer that question for you today. I would say my heart would say we never have enough, but I would also say we've never had enough in the past, even, you know, prior to the Marjorie Stoneman

025Douglas Douglas situation. So, but I don't have any actual data to support that at this point. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else, or please continue. Next next slide. Okay. Okay. So here, oops, There we go. Okay. So this is a breakdown of the number of students that have received services in our district. So you can see in 1819, we served 5,934 students between in our district and school mental health program. Okay. So I want to warn you about this data. We didn't really know how the data was going to be collected during the school year. It wasn't until June that we got the information from the state as to how they wanted the data reported. So we're not entirely confident that this is an accurate representation of what happened in 1920, we had 5,378

026students served. And in 2021, we had 4,084 students. Or so in 1920, the thing to remember is this was our COVID closure. So we closed schools at the end of third quarter. And then in 2021, the numbers do seem lower, but we also had students who were performing on three different platforms. We had students who were in person. We had students who were doing a hybrid model. And then we also had students who were out on a virtual model as well, our mental health partners, which would be Centerstone and Palm shores. They served 835 students in eighteen, nineteen nine hundred and six students in 1920. And then you can see there's been a definite increase in 2021, 1088 students. So in total for total mental health services, we've served in 18, 19, 6,769 students, 1920

0276,284, and then 2021, 5,172. Okay, next slide. So for this current school year, thus far, our district social workers and psychologists, those folks who work for us have served, served 1052 students, whether that's an individual therapy or in a small group, and our community partners have served currently 801 students. And you can see there's a comparison of information from 2021 as well. So, and we're still in the process of collecting the data for the school year. And then these numbers do not support, do not reflect the supports that our school counselors have provided yet this year, because we just haven't collected that for the school year. Okay. Real, real quick question again. Sorry with the community partnerships. That's something that obviously we're adding another one, you know, to Daughtry very soon. So that's been extremely

028positive. Would when your opinion be that those 800 ones that are being that are being helped by the community partners, probably in the, within those schools, is what I'm assuming were numbers before. And I guess we really can't determine before maybe the community partnership, cause maybe we weren't keeping track of those numbers, but were those 801 missing, does that make like, were they not being helped because we didn't have those computing community partnerships in place? Does that make sense? What I'm asking? Yep. It does. And so they were probably being seen by school counselors and school psychologists or social workers within their schools, but because we have those community partners, the level of support is greater and higher at this point. Okay. All right. Yes, Ms. Kennedy, I think, but I'm not sure. So you

029can, you can verify for me, I think that community partners on this slide is all services from outside the district, not just that Manatee out. Okay. Yeah. So I, I mean, I see where the competing community partners implies community partnership school, but I think this was across the hall and not just their Right. It would include Centerstone and the support that we get from pump floors as well. Okay. That's it. All right, please. Go ahead, sir. So we just wanted to share with you what our community partners are seeing in terms of primary diagnoses, and you can see across all three community community partnerships, the first three are identical. So we're seeing more, we're seeing, I won't say more. We're seeing anxiety, depression and ADHD is our top diagnoses here in the district. And then

030there's a little bit of variation, adjustment disorder, impulse control, and adjustment disorder and MCR with the elementary schools being the highest levels. And then Centerstone is seeing more post-traumatic stress Palm shores, seeing more eating disorder and grief due to loss and then MCR seeing conduct disorder. So just a little information about diagnosis for you. Yes, sir. The question, if I may, Mr. I mean, I think I know what it means, but if you could just explain a little bit the term adjustment disorder, how does that, what does that look like in a student's behavior when, when they're going through adjustment disorder? Okay. I'm going to have to call on one of my community partners to explain that a little bit better. I'm not sure which one Don't, don't all, don't all. Y'all jump up. Don't

031don't everybody jump up on it once. Good morning. I'm Jessica from Centerstone. So adjustment disorder would really be probably any student that's dealing with some type of significant life change at home where they're having some behavioral issues that are kind of manifesting around that that's kind of a broad, generalized diagnosis. It can be related to a ton of different types of events. It would be more like post-traumatic stress or grief due to loss. If it was the death of a close family member or something maybe higher on the trauma scale would move further down. But adjustment is sort of in the middle, maybe parents loss of job displacement from the home, things like that. Any other questions about that one up here? Well, no, no, don't don't leave because that hits us in the direction

032that I keep focusing on the fact that we've got two years with the kids that have not experienced the foundational level of learning, not just ABCs, but how to act and how to get along with people. And so I really am hoping that the community partners can help us in terms of at least an understanding of whether some of these behaviors, this adjustment disorder, which I agree is a very vague term, whether we can attribute that to the fact that this kid who has spent the last two years at home learning over a computer screen, and it's not put into a classroom with 20 other kids, that's an adjustment disorder for all of them. Definitely. Okay. So I just want to keep us focused on yes, we are here about the mental health update, but

033the reality is this community along with communities all across the state has been impacted by this pandemic. And we cannot ignore that. We cannot just act as if well, now that the, the virus is under control, the impact is, is over that that that's just not happening. So thank you the skin of the foot for that, because I don't understand what impulse control is. See when I'm sitting at home in my computer and I want a sandwich, I get up and look at a sandwich and come back and nobody knows, and that's not a problem with anybody. If I do that at the school, I might be having impulse control problems. Cause I still want the sandwich. I'm just in a different environment and I'm not able to go and get that. And so that's,

034does that make sense? So help us. And I can only speak for me when I was pulling this data. So as therapists, we use the DSM-V and we're giving you a diagnosis. That's The diagnostic statistics manual. It's where we get our diagnosis, like the medical coding diagnosis that we would use. So that's where we're pulling this from and it's going to be, they have to have so many of the symptoms present for a certain timeline to get a diagnosis. So you might have five kids with the same diagnosis, but they all have different presenting factors in different symptoms that you're seeing. So we're reporting it from a clinical perspective, if that makes sense, which is why some of the terms are like this, but each of these kids is unique. Every single case is unique.

035It's going to look a little bit different. It's almost kind of like a Venn diagram. It's normally how I explain it to people where they're kind of all going to fall somewhere, somewhere on that scale. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? All right, continue. Okay. Next one. So Manatee county also participates in the handle with care beginning in 1718, the school district partnered with law enforcement agencies to establish a way to immediately identify students. When there has been an active situation in their home. The previous night, this system is designed to notify the school principals, teachers, the school counselors, nurses, and other staff that a student might be experienced, some level of trauma. And to simply be aware if outward signs or problems begin to emerge, it does not go into detail. It just is

036a notice that a situation happened that law enforcement was involved in at home and to handle this child with a little bit more care, the following days in school. And then you can see what our numbers are Before we go further. I do want to poll the board. We are set from nine to 12. Literally, if we were to have presentations only with these four, that would be about 45 minutes of a presentation, but we have also invited the public to be a part of the workshop to give public comment. And so the question that I would have, especially since some of these comments may be directed to one or more to one or the other, the programs, do we still want to try to have all of the presentations and then have public comments

037on all of the issues at the end? Or do we want to try to have presentations for maybe 30 or 40 minutes and then have questions relative to that particular issue so that the people can have an expectation? It, I don't have any druthers. I'm just wanting to make sure that we all on the same page. No, just It. So you guys can just, do we want to say if you have a public comment about the health yes. And break it up like that? Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with that. I don't have an issue. Okay. This woman, The agenda that was published had public comment at the end, there could be people that want to make public comment that are waiting to come, you know, and we'll arrive closer to noon. So, you know,

038w I think we need to be willing to go back to public comment at the end. If we, if we do this now Mrs. Format, right. I think we should follow the agenda as it's been published. Okay. And that all public comment will be after all four of the presentations. Okay. Given that then, well, how much time do we want to set aside for public comment at the end so that we can divide the time equally upon monster presentations? Cause I, I agree with more with that. And that's more what everybody is saying that we do want to hear from everybody. So we are now 35 minutes into the first presentation. If we do 44, that's 160 minutes that then leaves somebody to do the math. But I think it leaves about 30 minutes for,

039for public comment at the end. Yes. Ma'am. I don't know that we necessarily want to make the time, even among all four, because I think some are just require more time. And so I would like to see us allow whatever's needed for us to exhaust the topic before we go on to the next one. All right. Anyone else? Okay. Respectfully, I think you're the chairman and you can determine how much time is spent on each topic. I know, I know you want to get them all on the board, but Yeah. Yeah. So I think that what we will do is we will ask that each presentation lasts no longer than 40 minutes. If you tailor your presentation to that. And then that will allow us a certain block of time at the end to hear

040from, to hear from a public comment. I apologize. I didn't look at the clock when I, No, no, no, no. It's not. It's not, you it's, it's it as has been correctly pointed out it is the chair. So that's fine. So we will share with you that you have by about five more minutes to do your presentation. Okay. So I'll speak fast. Thank you. Oh boy. Okay. So when you guys, you all can look at the numbers, you can see the stars or where the increases have been. And then there was one month where there was a decrease. Okay. Makes sense. And this was Mrs. Yost shared this at the very beginning. This is the rule in the statute that requires us to provide five hours of instruction to students and get grade six through

04112 related to youth mental awareness and assistance. Okay. And we, in order to be able to do that, the FDA has provided the approved curriculum. We have purpose. Imagine learning purpose prep for grades nine through 12. Imagine learning purpose prep for grade six through eight. And then we use ever fi curriculum for our students who are currently on access points. And then each school has an implementation plan. They updated at the semester, they make changes and then they provide that and that data to us at the end of the school year. And currently to this point, six schools have already completed their five hours of mental health work with their students. Next slide. So this is about mental health training for our district personnel. So to date, we have had 246 youth mental health, first

042aid trainings, 4,700, 4,074 student or employees have been trained. And we, for this year, from July to March, we've had 44 of those trainings and we've trained 622 employees. Okay? So these are some of the, the areas that we still need to work on. As far as training or sour, secondary schools have completed. Most of their training. We are currently in the process. Now this year of looking at who of the new people who have come in since we've started that initial training. And then all the rest of these folks are people who have to be trained. Basically anybody in our school system has to have this training. Next slide. So we have a mental health coordinator. And this year that is Ms. Diana Whitehead. She has worked with professional learning to offer trainings during

043our summer academy this summer. And in the past, she is currently working with principals of schools with high training needs. So if there's less than 50% of their staff trained, Ms. Whitehead has reached out to them and is working on a plan to get more of their teachers trained. We are working on scheduling June and July training dates in person for 12 months. The district staff in July, we will schedule some trainings for our entire transportation department. We will also do trainings for our entire custodial staff. And we are working now with human resources to see if this training can be part of the onboarding process for new hires. We are working with professional learning to offer youth mental health trainings on the August PD days that we have for all remaining school-based staff, who

044haven't been trained. And then we will hopefully schedule two in-person trainings per month for the next school year. And we will limit the number of school-based instructional instructional personnel, because we understand that getting substitutes and bringing teachers out of classrooms is not the best way to provide this particular training. Cause we don't want our teachers to miss time with our students. Okay. Okay. And this is our, Are we working with our community partners or with mental health professionals to develop an aspect of this first aid training and the training that we do, the professional learning training for the staff to incorporate the, that have arisen because of the pandemic. We have people being specifically in particularly trained to train others, to recognize that that janitor, that sees that kid walking down the hall, got to

045know, well, that's just not somebody being truant to somebody that's being rebellious, but that's somebody that feels claustrophobic because now they're in this big school as opposed to being in their own home last year. Are we doing that kind of thing? That is part of the youth mental health first great training. Yes, it is absolutely part of that. And I can say that with 100% confidence, because I'm a trainer, I'm Not bragging If it's true, it ain't brain. Right. Okay. So bringing it all back together, tying mental health and SEL back together. So as you heard earlier, the district is using character strong is their SMO social, emotional learning curriculum for grades K through 12. And so they can access that information. And then by the plan is by June, 2023, all schools will implement

046character strong as stated in the district strategic plan. And that's all I have today. Do you have any more questions for me? I guess That was pretty good at 40 minutes, right? On the dock with all of the questions and everything. So anybody else The, oh, I'm sorry. Yes. The character strong actual material. The curriculum is Florida department of education approved, sent through. I know we had some changes. Yes, sir. Several days ago to what we thought was, was going to be approval. So it was any of that affected by some of those changes we saw. I don't believe so. Mrs. Yost would, you know the answer to that and Mr. F Dr. Evans, That's a good question. The a couple of things, I think you asked about HB seven, the last name, your answer.

047So at present, a couple of those curriculum we named are named in the present legislation, just named as examples and Michelle's referenced that, but the new HB seven rule to come and play here pretty soon does not name any particular curricula. And so it may be the case that we will have to revisit that as we move into the coming years as the state makes recommendations. So we as promised to the board, we would want to only use curriculum that was endorsed and supported on a state list. And at present, the new rule has not named any particular, Not yet, sir. Okay. But this was on the approved list. This was on the list of recommended. So as a general caveat, everything that you're presenting to us is not something that originated here, Ave SHEEO

048originally, but it is something that we are using that is approved by the Florida department of education. Yes, sir. That is correct. All right. Thank you. All right. Was that it? I'm going to use one of my new words. That was a great segue into the next better Dr. Evans. You you're up next. Yeah. So we'll have our great and thank you all so much. And I, I hope that our partners will be able to stay just in case there's some questions that arise later from the public comments that might be helpful. All right. Dr. Dan Evans presentation of the elementary gifted acceleration plan for the 20 22, 20 23 school year. Well thank you. And again, I'm representing Dr. Thompson today. She's out today on a, on a mental or not mental health. So

049you have a mental health, don't say that on a sick day today. So we'll offer her an opportunity to get well. And She's going to tell me, let's start over. Hello and good morning, Dr. Thompson is not here today. She's out on a sick day today. And so I'm bringing welcome to the team once again, Dr. Thompson, Dr. Breslin, who we heard from last time and Dr. Callaway are here with us. Our curriculum team, who we heard from last week is with us today. We're excited th the board's leadership, the community's leadership, the superintendents leadership. We keep hearing that what can we do to bolster our program is for, to gifted students and accelerated opportunities for all students. And so we want to lead the way in this work, and we're very excited to bring

050to you updates today. Dr. Breslin is with us as well from the secondary team, but I think, you know, Dr. Stephanie Callaway, our director of elementary curriculum, and she's going to be our lead presenter today, but we're all here to answer your questions. Thank you, Dr. Kevin. Thank you. Good morning board and good morning superintendent, Ms. Saunders. Thank you, Dr. Evans for that quick introduction for us, I am happy to speak on behalf of the work that has been ongoing this year with a committee of individuals, some of whom are here today. So I'd like to say thank you to dev SDS and share all Mathis from ESE. Dr. Cheryl Hughes also served on the committee where we collaborated to really drill down into how we can ensure that more students in this school district

051are receiving targeted instruction on their level, specifically, our highest achieving students and Jody Omera was also on that committee. And so we have been working, like I said, for several months to be able to present to you this morning on very specific actions around increasing, certainly sustaining, but also increasing the number of students who are identified as gifted in this whole district of Manatee county. And making sure that the curriculum and instructional approaches used through the gifted program are really customized to address the needs of our highest level learners. And so that is the first prong of the work that we did together as a team. And then the second prong was to look at students who are not necessarily identified as gifted, however, who achieve again in the highest level of learning, what experiences

052are afforded those students across the district in all of our 33 elementary schools. And so, again, two fold, we want to make sure that we are sustaining and increasing gifted identified students, and then providing very ambitious and challenging rewarding curriculum for those students who are in the highest levels of learning. And so for gifted identification, which is our first area, we looked at specifically the data analytics around which students are brought into the nomination screening and evaluation process. And who are those students and what data points are we looking at right now to make sure that as students are exiting second through fifth grade, that if those students are in the highest tier of intelligence and cognitive ability that we have by name who those students are by school, and then making sure that our

053school psychologist and our gifted teachers are working through the screening process and the evaluation process. And so the first step of that is looking at the application of the 95th confidence interval, again, in the evaluation process to make sure that we are capturing all of the students who would be eligible for screening and evaluation. The priority of course, is to catch students sooner rather than later. And so we want to make sure that we're screening students in grades two and three, who scored at, or above the 95th percentile on iReady diagnostic, and that was ELA and or math. And we also use a triangulation of data to identify those students to include district benchmark as well. We have screening underway for students in grades four and five who scored two standard deviations above the mean

054in either ELA or math FSA. And so again, we have quite a number of students who are now in that channel to be evaluated, and they are currently being screened. One of the, one of the reasons that we saw some numbers for the number of gifted students, kind of stagnate as many processes were revised in response to COVID and students being at home. And we saw students who are gifted, graduating from Manatee county schools. And so this work is to make sure that we have between six and 8% of our students in the district properly identified as gifted as well. We did extensive research in the data for different demographics, subgroups of students. And we want to make sure that there's equity in the identification process. The force saying that we did Ms. SDS and

055Dr. Cheryl Hughes created a media segment that is being shared with all principals to share with their teachers, looking at the characteristics of gifted students. So that as a classroom teacher, I have students and, and we're, you know, we spend a lot of time really drilling down to our most at-risk learners. And we want to give this same intentional attention to our highest achieving students. And what does that look like to be a gifted learner and sharing that with teachers and asking them to reflect on those characteristics, to nominate students who were in their seats in their classrooms right now, in addition to the hundreds of students who are captured in the first three bullets. And so we're really excited about making sure again, that we are identifying students who specifically our ELL students, we

056want to make sure that, that those gifted students are, are looked at through those characteristics and nominations. The second piece of the work that we've accomplished and designing this plan this year is looking at acceleration. So gifted identification is one lens and then really addressing through differentiated learning experiences for our highest achieving students was the second aim of our work. And so academic acceleration provides an opportunity for students to receive robust instruction and deep engagement in Florida's best standards. Standards-based learning is, is goal number one, I'm Sorry. Yes, sir. Best stent. Those are the new Florida standards. E S T yes. On the spot. Yes. Oh, of course. Now I can't remember it. It standards of excellence in education. I'm sorry. I can't remember the B right now. So these are new standards. I apologize.

057All right. I'm so used to saying best that I've the acronym eludes me at the moment, but I'm sure I know Dr. Breslin right now is frantically looking it up on her phone to help me out with them as I would for her. I'm so sorry. I'm like, Yeah, it is Excellent Benchmarks for excellent student thinking. Excellent student thinking. That's great. And Dr. Kelly is right. Thank you. I, I knew you were. I knew you were Dr. Breslin. Thank you so much. The school districted me. Yes, sir. About the best standards, not that kind of, but when we were there recently, obviously during the legislative time, you know, how they were going to be doing the benchmarking, you know, all the progress monitoring, things like that hadn't been decided, has anything been decided yet on

058from a, a gifted level? Has anything been decided on how it's going, how that's going to look next, you know, once the best standards are actually in. So I think what you might be speaking to is the state of Florida has created a model for math acceleration. So, yes. And in fact, in, I'll share a little bit more about where we are with that. So that elementary schools now offer math accelerated courses that lead into higher level mathematics that achievement in secondary, middle and high school experiences. So yes, I will speak to that. And then of course, we are very committed to making sure that we're delivering appropriately challenging standard space opportunities for our students and in the elementary grade levels that is delivered through obviously quality instructional materials, the math acceleration materials I'll be

059talking about in just a little bit, and then making sure that our teachers receive professional development in instructional strategies and methodologies for those students and in using supplemental materials for ELA. And so elementary acceleration placement. Again, we will use district benchmark data iReady data and our FSA data, which has already been dis-aggregated and provided to principles this, this year, to be able to look at those students and be thinking about their master schedule for next year, based upon our current data. And all of that will be again updated as we get through FSA testing and additional benchmark. And I ready. And then as always, one of the main pillars of acceleration for elementary students is to make sure that all stakeholders have a voice in that conversation. And so that parents are aware about acceleration

060and what that looks like for their student and, and be able to have those decision-making conversations with administrators. We have a, an acceleration implementation guide that has been developed to be able to support schools, communicate with families about acceleration for ELA and math. Mr. Chair. Yeah. I've got several questions before we leave the elementary site. If the student is placed, you know, as, as TA you know, coming in at 95% on iReady. And so they're identified or to be what, what further testing is done for those students? Are they, do we do an IQ test? Yeah. So this there's a screener that is administered with that student. And then there, from that screener, there is a requisite score that the school psychologists will look at to determine if a full, complete evaluation will be, be

061administered for that child to, to determine eligibility for giftedness. And so academic achievement is one facet of making that decision, but there is to actually go through to being identified as gifted. There is an intelligence score that is calculated for every child. Okay. And then when, when you identify who's, who's gifted and the delivery are they taken out of the, out of the regular classroom and into another group to work. Yeah. So there are different models for gifted instruction provided by a gifted endorsed teacher. And so the most common model is to a resource model where the student will go to the gifted teacher. It depends on the assignment across the schools, in the district. It varies a little bit, but it in range, it's several days a week, two to two to three days

062a week where the gifted teacher will work on the gifted there's portfolio pieces and really looking at providing more complex and challenging type of learning experiences for gifted students. That's complimentary to what they're doing in their core instructional program. Did the parents have to provide permission? I mean, you know, I could, I could see a parent going, no, this is not healthy for my child to be taken out of the class. Yes. And you make a good point because for our gifted students, it is. And that's why I said it really is a team decision with the parents having a voice at any point in the child's academic career, because a gifted student might, might navigate very well in elementary years and, you know, get to fourth and fifth grade and, and, and start having

063some, either, you know, academic challenges or, you know, social challenges. And so, yes, it is always important for the team to work together and parents sign in acknowledgement of the gifted evaluation and, and certainly throughout every school year, when they receive re progress reports specifically from the gifted teacher. So a gifted student receives the standard reporting for the interim and your, you know, grade reports, but then they also receive progress reports specifically from the gifted teacher to keep the family informed. Okay. Is there a cutoff of when a student will be identified as, as gifted, let's say you've got someone in fourth grade new to the district, are they out of luck? No. A child can be identified as gifted through the evaluation process at any point in their academic career. K-12 Great. Thank you.

064Okay. So this slide for ELA acceleration just provides a sampling of the goals, the strategies and the resources, and you can see under strategies and resources, things like the Socratic seminars debates document based questioning, it's called the DBQ project, which is a very high level integration of reading and writing, and really using evidence from a variety of texts on one, one topic, different daily writing opportunities, research opportunities, and then our benchmark advance, which is our ELA instructional materials for next year has a very nice component on acceleration, ELA acceleration, a core occurs in the enrichment block during the school day. The math acceleration is a little bit more interesting. So when you are going into a math accelerated course as an elementary student in third grade or entering fourth grade, that happens in the 60

065minute core math, and it's actually a separate textbook. It is a separate course code referring back to the question about the standards and the implication on acceleration from the state level. And so the state has created math courses specifically for accelerated math opportunities. The graphic that is provided here shows you that if I am a third grade student next year, and I'm taking accelerated math, I will have all of third grade standards. And the first half of fourth grade standards. And what's really exciting about this is the same student moves into fourth grade. I have the remaining fourth grade standards as an accelerated math student and all of fifth grade. And what this looks like moving forward, which is why the state has sanctioned. This progression in math is because by the time I leave

066fourth grade and go into fifth grade, I am now taking sixth grade accelerated math, which is all of sixth grade and seventh, or I'm sorry, fifth grade students take sixth grade accelerated math, which is all of sixth grade and half of seventh. And then when they go into middle grades, now they're taking as a sixth grade student, they're taking seventh grade accelerated math as a seventh grade student, they're taking algebra one honors. And as an eighth grade student, they're taking geometry one honors. And so again, the state offering these course codes really kind of put into elementary, a strong program so that our students are truly accelerating in math, which as, you know, complements other areas, specifically stem and science learning as well. But Yes, sir, I have a question in conjunction with the academic

067acceleration. Cause I, I have a daughter who was a gifted kid and I had no idea just used to aggravate me to death, that she was asking all these questions that I could not answer. And she might still be impacted by that she's in her forties now. I don't know, but, but seriously, are we accompanying this academic acceleration with the social, emotional learning aspect, particularly for the parents? I, I, I took note of what Mrs. Foreman said earlier, what happened? What happens if you, what happens if the parent doesn't want this child to be exposed to that? That's understandable. But if they do, you know, All the Children in the house and the other children in the classroom, It's a great question that really speaks to how well educators support students in their learning environment,

068especially when it is more academically challenging. So the teacher changing is a big, important part of a strong foundation for this. And so making sure that teachers understand how to help students navigate this accelerated curriculum. So there are training opportunities planned for the summer for the teachers in terms of the instructional approaches and supports for students, but also in being able to communicate with family about the complexity of the curriculum and inviting parents to be able to express their concerns, which is, which is routinely the expectation, right? And that we communicate often and clearly about what supports a child needs to be successful. And then at any point what's also important to remember, especially with the math acceleration, is that if, if a student is struggling much like we do in secondary, by the time

069we near the end of quarter one, and again, having communicated with families at the first interim in the fall to say your student is having limited success in, in this acceleration model and being able to support that child's movement back into a traditional classroom at the close of quarter one. And again, that's doing what's right for students and making sure that, you know, every environment provides them the differentiated support that they need. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Continue. And then I, don't Dr. Breslin, I don't know if you would like to come and talk through secondary. Absolutely. Good morning. So middle school acceleration, you see the list of offerings we have and, and those note what high school offerings we offer already to our middle school students. The exciting thing with the, the new

070standards and the accelerated options for elementary is that future success for algebra and geometry will be elevated. What we were seeing oftentimes as a, as a school administrator, students are quite successful in algebra one and geometry in the middle grades, and then maybe struggled in algebra two honors in high school. And of course that affects their next steps moving forward. And so by, by compressing the curriculum in elementary, it really offers the opportunity to make sure there are no gaps in instruction. And so that struggle will not be present as they move forward. And so that, that's the great thing about offering it for all, all students, not just students on the, on the gifted path. We continue to look at our middle school programs for acceleration, and you can see that as we go

071down, looking at it, pre eight ACE, IB, AP, and then avid of course, is used to support students on their path towards acceleration. So it's open for all students. When we go into high school, as you know, we have our dual enrollment programs, advanced placement programs on all campuses, ACE courses are now available to some extent on all campuses, broader than it's ever been. And we know that research shows that students who have taken at least one college equivalent course in high school, regardless of their success rate on that particular examination at the conclusion of their course, they are more likely to succeed as they move on to the collegiate level. So when we talk about what's best for all learners, that's why the ACE courses have been expanded ACE program at Palmetto high school.

072IB of course, it's Southeast high school Manatee the college preparatory academy, which is built largely on plentiful AP courses. And then our entrance recertification options have also been expanded. The CTE department is working hard at that. When we talk about preparing our students for post-secondary, we mean all options. And so we're excited about those accelerated options as well. And we continue with avid to support all students in the classroom. Any questions on secondary, And then Sure. Mine is a quick, easy one. That there's just been a lot of conversation around the state over the past couple of years, about the decline in physics instruction in high school. And I'm just kind of curious where, where are we at in Manatee county compared to the, to the rest of the state and has it luckier? So

073I don't have specific numbers, but we do offer physics on our campuses at, at times, for example, I know Southeast it will be rotating. So an IB physics class may be offered currently this year, next year, it won't be offered. They'll bring it back the following year. And then students have the option to take it their junior or senior year. So, so often that's the option. We do know recruiting wise to get the highly qualified physics teachers is, is often a challenge. And so work needs to be done in partnerships with our, our college programs and getting in those physics teachers to teach those courses. You said physics and brought back some memories of Ms. Pepper Tony's class. She's great physics. We won't embarrass anybody by asking what grade y'all got in those classes. So

074we'll just go. So I'm sure you're prepared for this question. We approved some curriculum and it's not necessarily with the acceleration, but I want to make sure that that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing at district level. We approved curriculum last week towards the end, the week state says, wait a minute, those books we gave you, we don't want on that list anymore. Can you just, and it just doesn't have to be elaborate, but can you just tell us how many we had? I mean, what's that process look like for us now, if we had any way to go back and say, Hey, sorry, got to find other ones, you know? Right. Absolutely. So when I spoke last week, I spoke of layers and certainly this is one of those layers that, that

075has been modified. And so we do not put anything in front of students for core resources that aren't on the state approved list, as we stated last week. And that remains to be true. And so we're looking at the revised list that was issued right before we started our, our weekend. I wish it was put in Monday, Monday instead of on Friday, but whatever Timing isn't always favorable, but, but nonetheless, we will follow the direction of the state and review the materials and, and make plans moving forward. I would hate to jump ahead of the plan and speak exactly of, of our next steps, but just know that we're in conversation and nothing has been purchased related to the math materials and this is specific to math. And so we will, re-examine make sure that

076we have alignment with the state approved list. If we find that alignment is off again, we want to make sure we're purposeful. In our process. We spend a lot of time receiving feedback from teachers and parents and our math curriculum experts and, and want to bring those voices back before we make any decisions moving forward. Once we have a chance to review all the information from the state and a little more detailed, And I think with the best standards moving to a different standard, you know, those publishers have got to now realize what we've been doing for X amount of years with old standards is no longer, you know, liable. And so there's going to be some changes with those best standards that I think that they really didn't weren't on board, but Right. And,

077and we find that, you know, publishers were okay for maybe this course code, but not for this course code. And so, so tightening that up. So in the end, the positive results is the best materials will be no pun intended on that. But in front of our students, as we move forward in the fall, what is, what is best to use to allow our teachers to work with our students, to show mastery of the standards. And that's still, that's still our ultimate goal, But before we go to Mrs. Foreman, who's next in the queue. I want to provide a follow-up to what Mr. Childrens just raised two questions. Number one, do we have any discretion at the school board level in Manatee county to either not abide by the recommended textbooks by the state, or

078to ask for exceptions to use textbooks not approved by the state? Do we, do we have either of those options available to us? Excellent question. I would fall on the preference of only moving from the state list, but as far as, as the, the work of the board, I think I would defer back to, to maybe legal on that, But, and Madam superintendent, I, I see you've raised your hand. I just want to be clear that that would be an exercise of discretion by the board to either ask for an exception to the state approval list or to allow a list, allow a book to be used. That's not on the state approved list. That would be an exercise of the discretion of this board. Not something that is required by the state or not

079allowed by the state. Okay. Yes. Yes. Ma'am. The state did give discretion a few years ago that any board could choose to purchase textbooks that were not on the adopted list, as long as you went through an exercise. So there is statute that does support it. We have only in the past chosen books off that list, just like the ones we chose that were now rejected Friday, we're on the state list from the department of education. So I'm not sure what happened between when it was listed to Friday, but yes, your question, can you, the answer is yes. And we done that in the past. The answer is no, because we've never had a situation similar to this, but I think I'm sure the vendors in the state are probably speaking feverously to figure this

080out. I will tell you, most of those vendors were at the superintendent conference last week and none of this conversation occurred. So I think everybody was probably caught Off Guard. So at this point, what we are hearing is what we are prepared to do without exercising any discretion on this board to include or exclude any book or to include any book that's not on the approved list or to not use any book that is on the approved list. We can, we will go ahead and purchase the ones that have been approved. We're going to sit back a little bit and see how this process works out, because I would imagine many will correct whatever the issue was, but we do have a little bit of time, but not a lot of time. Most districts have

081already purchased or in the process to ensure that they receive the materials before the next school year. And remember we have new standards. So we really do need new textbooks that align with those new standards. The current materials we have really are not best aligned, no pun intended, but I do think we have a little bit of time, but we will go ahead and move forward with those that did meet that approval list so that we're not delaying everything. Alright, Thank you. This woman. Okay. I'm going to go back to the gifted thing. I too had a gifted child. I'll pit mine against yours, but okay. But, and there's a lot to raising a gifted child is as you know, but one of the questions I had, she did not come through the Manatee county

082school district, but one of the things they did was the duke tip program. Are you familiar with that? Why are we not participating in that? We do have students participating, but you're, you're correct that we could do it on a wider scale. And, and we do have plans that to actually bring that into fruition. I too have a gifted student. He's he's a sophomore. Now, when he was in middle grades here in Manatee county, he did have the opportunity to participate in the duke program and take the act is what he took to qualify. And that was identified based off of his scores from elementary. He was a student at Palma Sola. So we do have students who receive those invitations, current elementary students. One of the challenges is finding that assessment for them to

083take in middle school. And so we do have plans to offer the PSVT for students in middle school. We already offer it in high school, and that will be twofold. One to identify students for programs such as the duke tip program, but to also identify students who would be good participants in any accelerated courses. And that those scores directly inform us on how to place students moving forward in high school. So if we have a student that maybe hasn't been identified through elementary as gifted, it's one more way. It's one more way to identify and be able to support student learning. Okay. And do we offer Latin in all of our high schools? We do not. I'm not sure if anyone offers it on campus off the top of my head. I believe not. Of

084course we have options or students could partner with virtual programs and, and offer Latin again. We've had, have had it in the past. We do run into difficulty finding certified teachers for Latin. Yeah. It's, it's just very, very helpful. And the English, the ELA stuff. And then just, I just want to throw this out here because I'm have seen so many benefits from debate programs, mock trial model, you in not just in challenging the gifted people, but, but it's a, the civics and history, you know, training behind it is just exceptional. And I would really like to see us. Yes, Ma'am do more in that area. And Katie Wald, our social studies specialist is in the room. We do have three schools that have agreed in the past week to open up a program on

085their campus, in addition to our existing programs at the secondary level. So we are expanding and hope to continue making it an option at all schools in the near future supported properly through the process. So they're, they're long lasting programs. What program are you talking about? The, the debate program? Yes. Ms. Messenger was also a debater in high school Just shows where it can lead. Yeah, Y'all done. Okay. I think that concluded your presentation. Yes, sir. Are there any other questions, if not, we're going to go forward now with the communication for families and Website navigation, Mr. Chapman and Mr. Barbara. All right. We're going to get a website up here, but Mr. Board chair and board members, superintendent Saunders, you know how, when I come up here and do the board presentations, I kind

086of like to have a theme if it's possible. The only theme I can possibly come up with today is the fact that Kevin and I would both appreciate your social and emotional support during this presentation And the, but the problem is neither one of us is gifted, so you'll have to share with us. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Okay. What I thought I'd do, you know, the, the topic is communications for families and website navigation. I thought I would just do a little background on our website, give you an idea of some aspects to it. And then we, you know, can take all your questions and try and help you in any way we can. So let me just let you know that we went back and looked at the number of visits to our

087district website. And I'm talking specifically today about our district website. You know, we have each one of our schools has their own website as well. And that's part of the school district of Manatee county, a website network. But right now I think we're talking, I thought, I think the intent was to talk to specifically about the district website. So for March the end of March, 2021 to March 20 through March, 2022, we had 1.28 million visits to our district website. The number of total targeted visits that's meaning that people came to our district website and went to a specific page. They knew where they were going. So they, they put in, or they came to the website and went to a specific page on the website that was 696,000. We averaged between 50 to 70,000

088visits to our district website each month. And of course that varies throughout the year with what's going on. The low number of visits last year was June of 2021, which you would expect. And it was 36,517 visits. And the high was August, which I think would also expect. And that was 94,556 visits. So that's just a little background on numbers. There's a couple other things that I wanted to let you know about the website. And I think it's important to know that this the, the, the website is reflective of our school district of a whole, in terms of the breadth and scope of what it covers. You know, we have 50,000 students, 6,000 employees, we have 50 traditional public schools, Manatee technical college. And if you go on our directory page for our departments, you'll

089find 51 departments or entities on that page. So as you all well know, it's a massive operation. It ranges from instruction to construction, transportation, to food and nutrition, and from curriculum human resources to finance. And, you know, as I said, the number of departments on our department page total is 51. The second thing I'd like you to know is that the content for the district website is a collaborative effort, virtually every single area. And, you know, you heard this morning, you know, it requires subject matter experts to help provide content and to, to know about the contest because our district is so big and so vast that the people who work in those specific areas that you can access through our website need to be involved in providing content and making sure it's up to

090date. So that's another thing like you to think about. And then the third thing is that this is a Le a living technical organism. I mean, it's, it's constantly evolving and changing. And so it's something that, as I said, because of its size and scope, it constantly needs to be updated. We try and do that as best we can, but it is a massive operation for people who are extremely busy doing their day-to-day jobs. But anyway, I just wanted to run those points by you. Before we start really delving into the website. As you know, this is our district home page at the very top here, we have a NA navigational menu, and I'll just show you here. You know, we have the career navigational button here, community, and this takes you to various aspects.

091As you can see the good news page, graduation education foundation, MSTB so forth. Here's our department's page. If you go on there again, as I said, we have 51 different entities that you can go to a few click on those. Like, let's see, let me go to just go to curriculum right here. You'll see every, every page then has additional areas that, you know, lead to aspects that you even go to like social, emotional learning and so forth. So, as I said, it goes pretty deep in terms of where you can go on the page. Then for district, the support you guys are located, we, you get access to the policy manual and so forth parents and students, obviously, this is the, the reason why we're all here. And you can see the different areas

092that you can go to in regards to parents and students registration there. And as you look on the left, you can see the different options that we have. And again, this would be visited on a heavy basis, depending on the time of the year. And then our good news page. Now, let me just let you know also, and this is very important right up here. You have access to all our school websites. If you click on that, you'll see a list of all the schools and that'll take you directly School website, And You can see These buttons right here. These are some of our primary buttons tools that we have for exploration and navigation of the website. We have a translation button. If you click on this, you can see the vast list of languages

093that at all, let you use. And if you click on one of those languages, it'll translate all the text. It won't translate like if you had a video on here and stuff like that, it won't translate the video for you, but it will translate the text on the page for you. And I'm not going to click on that because if I do, I'll have to go back out and start over. And I don't want to do that right now, school menus, for some reason, I like I liked this page. I just think it's really cool that we're able to provide this. You know, I can go here and you can go to Ballard elementary school, Click on lunch. No, it shows you What they're having for lunch this week. And so that that'd be a

094good help to you guys to, you know, if you know, you're looking for a good meal On the go, And then let's see here, All right, we have transportation, public notices. These have to do with like y'all's meetings and so forth. Anything that we really need to publish publicly notice they're right there at the top focus. That's where our parents spend a lot of their time. I think I heard one comment coming from one of the board members who says that focus. And he said, that's it. So we'll take that as the first question, Mr. Bob, we appreciate your enlightening us, but why is this so important Mr. Choke? Oh, well, I'm on focus all the time for kids grades my own kids' grades. So this is the part of the website that is a

095problem, the most focused on in terms of, I think what's great of, well as a parent, maybe not as a student, but, you know, we didn't have something like this going to school for our parents to look at, which I said, maybe give it a good thing, you know? And so we can, you can literally, within the day of, of a assignment being put in and nor tests being taken and graded see exactly what their grade is in the course. So it's, it's good. Yeah. It's amazing what, you know, how parents can keep up with what's going on with our children. And, and again, Kevin and I aren't really subject matter experts on a lot of these areas, like a focus. We have people in the room that are much more, you know, educated on

096those areas. But like you said, I mean, I was the last of six kids. I went to plant high school in Tampa. And by the time I got to high school, my parents didn't care of what kind of grades I made, you know, they had had. Right. Yeah, Exactly. That's right. So I think, I think you do have to, you got to register it at the home school. It's your school, but I mean, on there, there's tons of things on there, you know, your hardship forms and your school choice forms, and we've done a good job. I think of the district of putting all of that stuff that you'd normally have to, as a parent, go to the school, bug, the registrar and all the, all that. Now it's all on that focus, you know,

097when you log in, But, and I, and not to belabor the point, but this arose as a workshop matter because we were receiving comments from parents and from other other people who were involved in the system as to how to make it better. And, and I appreciate the overview and the tutorial, but what I'd really like to hear more than any other thing. And I'm sure the parents who are watching and who will be this lady would like to hear what have we done to make it better than it was when we first listed this as a workshop. Is there other specific, is that focus page easier to read is Here. Here's the thing. I mean, the way that we kind of approached this when it was brought up and, you know, anybody's welcome to

098join in as this was our opportunity to have a discussion with you all about how you might like to see, you know, things, you know, changed or things that need to be added to the website. The web, as I said, the website is constantly evolving. The last time that we did a complete overhaul of the website was 2017. And, but, but as you can see some of these things like the academic dashboard, I think that's just been a solid sentence. Superintendent Saunders, you know, has been an office. And let me just go to that real quick, but that's a great new tool, you know, that people can use just to see how the district is doing. So it's constantly updating. But I think the way that we came into approach today was to here's y'all's

099question and see if we could help answer questions that you have, and then see what ideas you might have. We obviously have ideas and about things that we need to work on. We need to improve as we move out of the COVID era and move into, you know, hopefully a more normal kind of frame of a school. And one of those areas, I'll give you one of those kinds of areas. And I think Ms. Former brought it up when she met with Kevin and Melissa Parker, who is in the back and by the way, our instructional technology department plays. I mean, they obviously are the brains behind this website. We have a webmaster, Suzanne Kelly Perez, who does a tremendous job, Scott Hanson and his team. They do a tremendous job on the technology end

100of this. But you know, one of the things that we are looking at as we need to get our schools back in the mode of marketing themselves during COVID, you know, we were so wrapped up and just surviving the year, getting to the end of the year, getting kids graduated and, you know, they're moving onto the next year. I think that's one area that we've lapsed on, but we need to do a better job as we're moving forward into next year and beyond of marketing our schools through their school websites. And so that's one of the things I got to do have some things, I mean, you just talked about maybe some ideas and things to bring up. So couple a couple of those. I think that there is a lot on the website as

101a whole, right? I mean, there's, there's layers and layers and layers. I think that the, the tabs up top calendar menus, transportation, public notice focus, academic dashboard are great to have as a focus to say, look at, look at those. Those are a lot of the things that are gonna have a lot of traffic on there. Right? I think we need to add a curriculum to that. So you're not having to go hunt through curriculum. We're going to have to have that anyways, you know, soon with the, with some of the bills that were passed, right? So I think that that is something, you know, a header that's clicked on there that you go to curriculum and then you can pick your K through five math, blah, blah, blah, and go through, look at the

102books that the kids are looking through the libraries and Bashar elementary, you know, whatever. So I think that is probably something that can be easily found for parents and anyone in the district. That'd be good. I think that when we talk about the individual schools, I guess my first question would be, is each school held accountable or they're told, Hey, you gotta run your website. Or is that something as a whole district, we participate in, I'm assuming it's probably per school so they can have their SAC and their PTO stuff on there, and different things, events that they're doing. So I'm assuming that, that each individual school in charge of it. And so that's kind of going on your point of, you know, let's broadcast what you're doing at your schools. Cause there's amazing things

103going on in schools. And I guess my question is who's in charge of that at the schools, you know, and that, and to make sure that happens Well, let me just show you, I'm going to scroll down the homepage of our website and I'm going to tell you what the differences are between our website and school websites. And so obviously the, we call these sliders right here, you know, and, and these are what we think are the most important things that people need to see at this present time. You know, we have our good news, we have have updated COVID protocols. And then we just have added this where we have a class of 2022 graduations should go on there. You see the time and the schedule for our high school graduations, as well as

104MTC. But as you scroll down here, and this is strictly on the district page, every school's site up here is different. The background for this section would be video from the school, Mr. Barbara, I appreciate your taking us all the way down into the weeds, right? But I think the process that Mr is alluding to is at the school level, who is responsible for maintaining that school's website. Is there someone do we have, do we need a policy to say that each school will do that? Every school is different because they have their own technology people so that somebody, you know, who's in technology now they communicate with our, with the district communications office. And again, I don't, I don't mean to get down in the weeds here, but they, they, the, the, the principal

105and the school leadership are really responsible. What's on their page. They would identify somebody who will be the person to upkeep them. There'll be in communications with us. And with Suzanne Kelly Perez, who's our webmaster. She works with them on a daily basis in terms of what's needed there. So the schools are basically in charge of their websites. So again, we're so big that I don't have the staff in my office to oversee what's on every school website. Again, it's a collaborative effort between the district and each individual schools. Again, we have 51 different schools out there and not counting charter schools, but we have 51 of our own traditional type schools. Did you want to add something? Yeah. So we use a product called Blackboard that's, that's the skeleton of the wa think of

106it that way, the, the, the setup, the frame of the website. So our district website will look very similar to all the other school websites, because they're all using that Blackboard skeleton. So when you look at all of the boxes and all of the, the links on the top or throughout the page, those boxes are going to be the same through all of the school websites, because that's the model they're using after. And that's a way for us to keep order in, in an, a brand, if you will, of our websites. Second point is we've, we have added to your curriculum point, but, but we'll expand it to your point, right here is the curriculum resources catalog. That that is a quick link to show you every piece of instructional material K through 12 in

107the school district is right there on that catalog. So again, those, it's not like we can add a box to the top because Blackboard only gives you those six boxes, but, but obviously we can make one of those boxes curriculum to your point. And, and remember what Mike was saying was, was right for, for a long time, our schools have been using their websites correctly, which is an information source, their calendars, their events, their flyers, what's going on at their schools. But we're going to try to add a piece new piece to it this year, which is more of let's market. What's going on at the school, meaning if you're, you know, Southeast and you've got the IB program at Southeast, you have a new incubator program, the Bluebird finance, maybe let's talk more about

108that and showcase that on their school website. So that's going to take, you know, some, some training and some weaving there to get that done, but we can push a lot of that from the district as well. We have, we have the opportunities through the it department to, you know, like when we have a COVID update and we have something very urgent, we can put that, you know, flash or that bullet on, on all the websites. But, but, but like Mike said, there's a, let's say, you know, a webmaster, if you will, at each school, who's in charge of updating their school website with the calendars and dates and things that are going on at their events. So my guess is like, if you go to the Ballard site, Ballard celebrating their hundredth year anniversary,

109I'm sure their events, I think on May 14th or something, I'm sure it's on there. So something like that, where they're not going to call the district and say, Hey, Kevin, can you put our flyer for May 14th on our district website? Right. We that's an impossible communication. So they have the ability to push that onto their website. Did you have anything else, Mr. Chatelet alright. Ms. Foreman, Thank you for meeting with me, you and Melissa, that was really helpful. And part of what we talked, we talked about the schools and the school websites, and that came about because one of the, probably the most common question that I see parents asking is which is a better school, you know, they're, they may be determining school choice. They may be looking at a charter versus

110the district school. And I don't find anything on our website that can guide them. You know, I would re our academic dashboard is for the district and that's it. I think we need to provide more information. It's my opinion on, on the school's performance. And so that they can look at it and go, Hey, this school is really rocking it with, with stem, you know, or, you know, so I think that would be very helpful to families also on the side of the curriculum. Absolutely. You really have to dig to find curriculum. Okay. And then once you find it, I went looking yesterday or over the weekend to find our textbook list versus the states approve lists. And there's no, I couldn't, I couldn't get there. I couldn't mesh the two. I could not find

111the state's approved list without digging on this, on the state side. And also, as far as the curriculum, that's the, whatever you mentioned. That's current that's for the year 21, 22. Now for 2223, the only way to find that is to go to the textbook adoption, which is in a different section. So I think it, it, we could do a lot there to, to make it because that that's going to be a hot topic. Yeah. We've who you now know very well. Dr. Breslin and Dr. Calloway and Dr. Evans. We've been meeting since recent legislation to figure out how to do all that. And it's all doable. And I, I think you're right, is to easily show where these materials are a quick link and then show whether that's through highlights or Astrix scores, they're

112all approved by the state. But again, having here's the state list or, you know, link to a DOE site. And so that people can at, at, you know, pretty easily navigate where our materials are, where DOE materials are. I think that's a great point, our academic dashboard, which Mike and I aren't gifted, but I know Scott Hanson is because he's, he's the it guru. He, he and his team have built this academic dashboard. And on your screen right now, I have the link where you can look at each schools, academic performance, and at live, if you will. And so that's every school. And then I believe we have the financial information either on this one or a financial dashboard. So you could also look at the financial information of the district, Ghana and at schools

113too. This is a product in, in Zeta Zeta in Zeta. You all approved that contract, I think a year or two ago. And Zeta is the company that has built this dashboard for us. And it's, and it's very, like I said, it, it is up to date as, as if you're watching a baseball game. I mean, it will tell you strikes and announces is very quickly. So, and you can just navigate that as a parent, But this is, and I don't mean to cut you off here, but it seems as if what I'm hearing you say is that we have a skeleton that we built around six categories. Now we're gonna add a seventh for curriculum or remove one, whatever it is. And that in the context of the website that we do have, there

114are links to provide all of the information that has been requested. Number one, we've had an inquiry about which schools and where they are ranked. I know you can go on the department of education website for the state of Florida and get that because there's a ranking for all of the schools in the state of Florida as to where they ranked only two of our schools. And I, I did this research recently, laying out two of our schools are, are up there in terms of all of the high schools. They have it by high school and middle school elementary. So a lot of the information may simply be a question of titles that inform people more adequately. Like maybe we just want to say, if you want to know which school is the best school

115click here instead of rankings for the state. So I, I just want to be clear that, Hey, we do have a good website and that it is quite informative. It provides information. And now what I hear you say is that we have broken the website down to not only allows district information, district wide information to anybody that wants to seek it, but it also provides per school information. Am I correct? Yes. Very detailed score information. Okay. So I, I don't want it to just keep us going round and round and round about the specific in particular things. When, what we're really dealing with maybe is that we just need to re re categorize something like, like he said, we need a button that says curriculum, and you've already said there are six categories and we

116can add curriculum, or we can take one of those out and put curriculum up there so that the people who are interested in curriculum can go there and have their questions answered at the district level, because we know we don't do curriculum decisions at the school level. And we know that the curriculum choices that they're going to find, there are curriculum choices that have been approved at the state level, because we've already heard, we don't exercise any discretion in this regard. Am I, if I summarize that, I just, I didn't want to be clear. I don't want to put any words in anybody's mouth, Is that correct, Reverend, but the, We Also it's on this website, which I think is very helpful, are the names, phone, numbers, and email addresses of those key district staff

117to contact with questions or with comments. So if you do go to curriculum, you know, you know, there, the RA We're all district leaders for a reason, we're not here to hide. We're here to be, to be informative and be as helpful as possible. So like, you'll see the curriculum teams, names and email addresses and phone numbers to contact with, with, with questions. So Like Dr. Breslin who knew what best was, all right, let's check it. Typically how we would handle this is again, we would work with it. And with Suzanne Kelly Perez to add, you know, another menu item to the top of the navigation page there, again, as Kevin said, there are some restrictions that just built into the Blackboard system. But I think we might be able to add a, another item

118to the top of the menu there and, and still have it fit in. One of the things that, you know, we have to keep in mind is, and this is very, very much important to websites. These days is they have to be responsive. And by that, I mean, people are viewing it about 50% of the people are viewing the website on their cell phones, 50% are viewing it on laptops and stuff like that. It looks different so on those different devices. So we have to take that into consideration when we're making changes to the website, because you know, how we, how we build it is going to impact the, the viewability of the website, depending on what device you're looking at. So, And just to add to them like a great point, is it also,

119you know, again, kudos to them. Mike showed you, you know, all the languages that you can, you can, you know, whether that's via minis or even Polish, it will change into that language. But also it's ADA compliant. I would, you know, try to find a school district website that has the amount of ADA compliant, NIS, which is not a word, but a compliant more compliant than, than any other school district. So that when everything we put on here, P P individuals who have any ability will have the sense to, to navigate this website. So it is a huge lift to make this ADA compliant and make everything that we add to this ADA compliant and also accessible to anybody in our community of any language or background I think is, is, is, is very important

120and key. And like Mike said, in addition to also making sure all of that is workable when we put something on a website is also, can you look at it on your iPhone or Android is very important because most of us are looking at that, looking through our system on that. Now I will make a point that the academic dashboard from an Zeta, if you remember, we were talking about that right now cannot be seen on your iPhone because of not because of us, not because of an Zaida, but because of our friends at apple, apple, just, if you all looked at your phones, maybe in the last couple of days, they sent an update out. So that update has now what happens is, is then all these companies now have to catch up and

121make sure that they're at the update is then transformed into whatever they're doing. So once in Zeta figures out how to, because remember any in Zeta dashboard, and that's what the company does all over the world now has to make it apple compliant. Once it's apple compliant, then it will look better on your iPhone. Now, if you have an Android, you're, you're lucky you, you can see our dashboard, but a bang. I just want to make that point because as, as software, as these huge companies, obviously keep inventing and keep that has to flow all the way down the stream. And there's only so much we can do until those companies bigger around the world, changed their things, then it flows to us. So Thank you, Mr. Tim, Mr. Kennedy. Oh, well, I'm so sorry.

122I'm sorry. And to defer to Mrs. Foreman. Okay. Just really quick here. Right? I, I encountered some broken links. Okay. It's going to happen, you know, and so I see that we have a, at the very bottom, you know, a feedback form, where does that go? Who's, who's responsible for Following the curriculum section or just At the very bottom of, of the homepage. All Right, let's go there. That's Right here is give feedback. Feedback is somebody, I think I know the answer to this. Yeah. So if somebody's in this, and so I encourage anybody to use that comment box on our website that is then sent to our communications department who then who then usually forwards them to Melissa, if you have, let's just here. So Melissa track stack, it comes to her inbox. There's

123a communications kind of inbox that we all can see, but the process is that Melissa then sends it to Mike and I for a response. Now, sometimes when it's anonymous and they don't leave their email address or phone number, there's no way for me or Mike to contact them back, which is fine. We got the comment. Thank you. But if they leave their email address and phone number, then we make sure that every comment is, is answered. And, and I, I say that because it's important because I can't see your email address. If you do not leave it, I cannot see it, which is maybe how you meant it. That's fine. But if you do leave your information or whatever sort, I, I make sure that we're communicating right back to you with whatever comment

124or a question. If it's a comment I say, thank you and appreciate, you know, appreciate your feedback. So yeah. Let me just say the email address is [email protected], right. And so, yeah, it does come directly to our communications department. Alyssa is checking that regularly. And as Kevin said, you know, disperses that. And then when we talked, my suggestion and I put that up for board members is that we have somewhere on the home page, a link for frequently asked questions because, you know, we've got a hot topics, but things like curriculum, you know, which is a hot topic, school library, books, academic, you know, academic dashboard comparison by school that perhaps that would be helpful. And it wouldn't require a button across the top. You know, it wouldn't take up, I've met with the team

125we're going to, we're going to do that. I think that's a great idea. And I would encourage, we have, and it's detailed in the, in the curriculum department website. And we have a board policy on this, but you know, any parent who has a question about our, our, our curriculum, obviously what's on our website is what's on our website. Some of that information is proprietary to that instructional company. So, but what our policy details is that any parent or community member can contact a school and can come in and meet with this school staff and go over line by line the curriculum or a textbook. So there is a process in place it's detailed in our board policy for any parent or community member to, to go to a school and actually look at the

126structural materials or textbooks with the school stats. Well, I think Mrs. Foreman is driving at quite candidly, is that under the six categories or seven categories, whatever we wound up at the top, they ought to be a button in that particular category at the district level that talks about frequently asked questions. It just not ought to be one button for the whole website that it ought to be for the particular topics across the top. And what I'm hearing you say is that we also have that capability to create a frequently asked questions for each school. Am I right For each school? Well, Yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to overload the department of communications with questions about ballad elementary. When you can go to ballad elementary and answer frequently asked questions about ballot

127by the same token, you don't want to overload the system with questions about curriculum. When they just have a question about transportation or one of the other six categories that you got here, I think that's pretty clear and straightforward. So we're going to do that for the candidate. Did you have any, any questions that you want to, isn't it. Okay. All right. Madam vice chair. Did you have any questions? Comments. Okay. I really appreciate all the work that you guys do. Anyone who's watching for the last six years knows communication is a huge thing to me. I think that a lack of communication really breeds misinformation and that spreads so much faster than accurate information. So I really appreciate all that you guys do. I wanted to go back to one thing that had been

128spoken about, about schools marketing themselves. A few years ago, I had pushed in the superintendent. I think relented, I'll say relented agreed to do like a school choice fair. And it really was very successful though. Whole civic center was full of parents. All the schools, I had capacity set up a table. Parents came, they got information about the specialized programs that were at all the schools. And that was a really great way, and that's not website related, but that was a really great way that we communicated to parents and they could walk from table to table, meet that principal and go, oh, I really, you know, I really hit home with that one or why, you know, so, and then we couldn't do it because of COVID. Right. So my request would be that we

129do that again. I think that was really beneficial. I understand like there's certain schools that are at capacity that that would not be relevant for them to necessarily attend this. But if there is capacity, you know, and that I'm going to say that idea actually came from a principal that said, Hey, we used to do this. It was great. The principals got to meet lots of people. They got to, they got to talk about their programs and to their own horn. And, and so I would, I would advocate for that to come back if we can. I know that we've moved the choice window some, but I really thought that was beneficial. I really enjoyed going. And I think a lot of other parents did too. And I remember that was extremely well attended. Can

130I just say, cause I've been around, you know, for the district for 20 years, we had had previous ones, but that was the most successful one we had ever had. You're right. But that was what the principal said. They hate, we used to do this and they stopped doing it. I was like, I don't know why we wouldn't do it because it's a great way. And I'm not a computer person. So it's a great way for, I like to go meet people in person. I like to see their faces. I like, I liked that so that it was very enjoyable and it was very informational for me even to say, oh, wow, I didn't know about this or that, or so I think, I think it's great. And I would advocate for that if y'all

131want to undertake that again. Or I, I think I really felt like that was very beneficial. Just speaking about the website. I do remember the old website and I've also worked for other school districts. And to me, this website is far more user-friendly than other districts I've worked for. And I do visit a lot of other counties websites. And there are some, now that looks similar because I think they use the same framework. So I I'm starting to see it more and more because it makes sense. You know what I mean? But there is an overload, right? I mean, like I'm an, I'm like, this is like too much for me. So I guess I worry about putting too many more buttons because I already feel like it's a lot. And so finding the, the,

132Ah, what's even the word, so balance. Yeah. The balance of, okay, this is information that we want to make sure it's out there, but we don't want to put so much that you get lost in it. And, and, and that is a concern for me. Can I just mention one thing and it just, this is just an idea for y'all to think about it, but again, this is the homepage of our district website, this right here, top stories. This is, you know, important things that are coming up for the district. Now on the school websites, they have total control of their. So what you would see on a school website would be totally different from what you see here. But if you scroll down, we have what we call district hot topics. Now, when we

133put something in district hot topics that is going to show up on every single school website as well. So I'm just, you know, thinking that this might be a, and again, I, you know, the whole time I've been here with the district, I've never seen the issue of textbook adoption rise to the level of where it was a hot topic that, that people were, you know, really needed a lot of help and, and searching out. But if we were to post it under district hot topics, like I said, not only would it show up on our district website, it would show up on every school website as well. So, So he actually just touched on one of the other comments I was going to make about curriculum and not being under hot topics, because I

134do think that is a current hot topic. And I know that legally, we must post on that curriculum that came before us and we did, it was posted, but it wasn't posted right there under hot topics. And I know that we're going to go through a lot more adoption. So my request would be that whenever there's any kind of curricular curriculum adoption, that it does go under hot topics. Because I agree with you. If you go to any school's website, it does show up there. And I think that would be beneficial for parents to know that and the community as a whole, to be able to find it easily because it was in there, but it's hard to find it. That would be right there. So that was those where my comments. Thank you. Thank

135you. Thank you for your presentation. We want to take a five minute recess and we are then going to go forward into the last overview, the department of education African-American history task force. I have been given a list with seven people who would have public comment that translates to me to be 21 minutes. And so after the five minute recess, we'll come back, we'll hear the presentation. And at 20 of 12, we'll be prepared to start with our comments When I call back to order and we will begin the presentation. Okay. I don't want to be okay. This is the department of education. African-American history, task force overview that correct. Okay. Mr. Chapman and Ms. Singleton. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Good Morning. Before we get into the presentation of our African-American history task force plan,

136I think we need to address the elephant that has been in the boardroom recently in regards to legislation and understanding the legislation, how it is outlined and how the plan truly follows. So with that being said, we're going to look at house bill seven and inside of the house bill. We want to look at the definition of what our state has deemed as critical race theory. And then also look at what house bill seven says in the teaching and instruction of African-American history. Now also contained in this bill, we talked about SEL this morning, we talked about the additions with character development. We talked about adopted materials. All of that information is in this house bill. So hopefully the highlighted version came to you all of course, I only highlighted what was pertinent to our

137discussion and not everyone else's, but you do have that legislation in front of you that you're able to utilize. It sounds good. No, it doesn't. What we are here today for, in this workshop is to hear a report about the African American history. And I'm looking at this for the instruction of African-American history. That's the preliminary report that this board is prepared to receive. There is no elephant in the room because quite candidly, we decide what the elephants are. Okay. Now there have been a lot of people that have come with a lot of opinions and a lot of perspectives, some correct, some incorrect, some proper, some improper that that as a non partisan board of public education, we are not going to, I'd be naive to say, we're not political. We are, everybody is,

138but we are not partisan. And I'm not going to entertain partisan considerations and concerns. This is too important. And I, and I'm not going to give a stage or an opportunity for all of that to come up here. If you've got something to say about how we teach African American history pursuant to the statute, I want to hear that, but I'm not interested in anybody else's opinion about critical race theory. First off that's that's against the law to teach. So I don't care what your theory is. We can't teach it and not be in compliance with the statute. So I want to talk about what we can do under the statute. I'm not trying to defend or take away from critical race theory or anybody's opinion about it, or anybody's attitude about it. But I

139want to spend the precious time that we've got here, talking about how we're going to teach African-American history. Pursuant to the statute, sent down by the state, unless you're going to tell me right now, you all made up all of this and this all came up out of your imagination and out of your intelligence, because if not, and I want to proceed with the job at hand, I'm not going to dignify or elevate all of these other issues and objects. And just not, we don't have time for that Now, page 15. Okay. Now that's just, that's just the chair. I are the chair. That's all. So if, if, if there's a different sentiment that we want to hear expressed, but I I'm remembering what we have said before, in terms of the dirt. We had

140this discussion before, when you all were before us at that time. So right now I want to hear how we going to teach history. And I think what I was trying to help us understand is since this is that second board workshop and those conversations did come up, understanding what the statute says, what it looks like as definition and the revisions to the teaching of African-American history. So I'm just going to jump to the teachings of African-American history, as it is outlined in SB seven, and then we will get into the plan. Perfect. So when you're looking at this, Kevin, you can stay right there. I have it written down, cause my eyesight, sometimes it's not as great. We're looking at line 360. So the history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples

141before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience abolition and the history and contributions of Americans of the African dysphoria to society. Students shall develop an understanding of the America, of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms and examine what it means to be responsible and respectful persons for the purpose of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions and structures shall include the roles and contributions of individuals from all walks of life and their endeavors to learn and thrive throughout history. As artist scientists, educators, business, people, influential thinkers, members of the faith, community and political and government leaders and the courageous steps that took to fulfill the promise of democracy and unite nation.

142Then we're going to drop down to line 33 79. We're going to look at celebrate the inspirational stories of African-Americans who prospered, even in the most difficult circumstances and structional personnel may facilitate discussions and use curricula to address in an age appropriate manner. How individuals freedoms of persons have been infringed upon by slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination, as well as topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination, and how recognition of these freedoms was, has overturned these unjust laws, however, classroom instruction and curriculum may not be used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view, inconsistent with the principles enumerated in subsection three or the state academic standards. The department shall prepare and offer standards and curriculum for the

143instructional required by this paragraph and may seek input from the commissioner of education's African-American history task force. So in that statute, it lays out the teachings of what African-American history would look like, what we are to follow in regards to our standards and following the statue. And the plan that we presented that at our board workshop, there were edits that were made to the original plan for fear of the elephant that existed in the room. Some of those things were in regards to our diversity equity and inclusion policy that maybe when people were reading it, they misconstrued the plan as it existed compared to what they thought was happening. So we clarify some of that language took that out based on meeting with board members, communications from our constituents, and then having an updated plan

144with that updated plan. We still need to look at some areas, especially in the area of professional development and the work that our community partners I E universities do provide us that we need to make sure that we highlight those efforts in order to move towards exemplar status. I have one question before you started making your presentation, would you put that statute back up please and all the way at the end that that's it. Okay. I just want to ask you if any of what you are going to present here today is not approved or contained in the recommendations from the state of Florida department of education. I want to be sure that nothing that you present here today will allow the district to be accused of indoctrinating or persuading students to a particular point

145of view, inconsistent with the principles enumerated in subsection three, which was the subsection that you described in detail, or that we're not presenting something that is not consistent with state academic standards. If everything that you're about to do today is done in conjunction with what the department has prepared and offered as standards and curriculum for the instruction, and that you have sought input from the commission of educations African-American history taskforce. Then I want to, I want to go forward with that caveat that we are not about to hear your opinion, your thoughts, your ideas, and your personal attitudes. I want to make sure that what you're presenting to this board is something that has already been approved at the state level. Yes. All right. And then the revised plan that's in front of you you'll

146see footnotes and citations back to the statute and to this piece of legislation. And you'll also see the numerical codes of the state that will be used in the teaching of history of African-Americans. And I would highlight African-Americans women veterans really, of, of, of many backgrounds. So, but you'll see all those state standard codes cited and also references back to language in this new legislation and in Florida statute. And all of this information that y'all are talking about is already on this wonderful website that we just discussed a little while ago. That's correct. And it will remain on there. Thank you. Well, what we can do real briefly is just kind of, since we've had, this is our second workshop on this to kind of just go through the plan and maybe some of the

147revisions that were made to the, to the plan and overview, you'll see, on, on page three, we've added more about the, the state task force on African-American history, their goals, their membership, their mission statement. So that's more detailed there. And then you'll also see, starting on page is six. What I just referenced citing the Florida statute 1 0 1 0 0 3 0.42 and also HB seven, which Latrina just read from as, as you work your way through the plan, but really the, the, the, the meat of the plan, the, the heart of the plan is the, is the curriculum starting on page eight of, of the draft plan. And again, you'll see walking through the different grade levels and what would be, what would be taught using the state codes. And then as you

148walk through elementary and then middle school, you'll the plan, I think does a good job in walking, Highlighting specific standards that applies to African-American history. And a, And, and as you accelerate through grades, how, how the different steps of, of history is then taken again, all these are all the state standard codes. And then what Latrina highlighted is really the partnerships that the state recommends that we work with to, with when it comes to professional development of our teachers, and then also the, And the development of the plan for their input from those stakeholders. So it's, it's also partnerships that are available in the Tampa bay area for student field trips, for people to come in and speak to class classes, so and so forth. So those are type things to really, again, the state

149recommends when it comes to this plan. So, and then we, we lay out a timeline of when this would kind of all put, be put together over the next two school years. Also, what would be added in this plan is, is I think two elective courses for those students who wish to, and I think it's in high school learn more who have that flexibility in their high school schedule as they build that out, the capability of, of electing even more courses to learn more about African-American history. So again, the conclusion I think is, is right to the point that this is a plan that is based off of HB seven, what Latrina read and, and off of a Florida statute, and again, cited throughout the plan. So the goal would be for you all to

150hear from new wall and give us some more recommendations and some suggestions and questions, and then go back and edit this plan so forth, and then probably presented at a board upcoming board member, a board meeting for them to open it up to, you know, like we do with other instructional materials for a 30 day public comment window, and then have the board do a final approval of that. If you look at the timeline, maybe perhaps early June, something like that. So There is no expectation today that this, that you have presented is the final thing. You're not bringing us something that we have to decide on you bringing us something that we will have input into Round two, round two For input, so that we can have a good document to then present to

151the board. I ended up coming forward meeting. All right. Then in that, given that we'll start with Mr. Choate and go around the room and go from there. Thank you, sir. Thank you for this, both of y'all question. I guess the first question is with, did the state have anything with the new, like the new standards for their curriculum? Are they guiding us that if we're putting anything, for instance, in the arts, right? We, we fit, we find a curriculum. That's great. We want to put it in, in for arts part, you know, are there, are they giving us suggestions? Does that make Sense? Can we ask them, Hey, can we use this? And then We can. And so that's when we look at the state's African-American history task force, because they have the interdisciplinary

152units of how they exist and interdisciplinary means cross content. So if it's arts education merging with ELA or arts education merging with history, then they give you an outline of how that can be done and resources and materials to utilize. No, we do not. The other suggestion. So reading through it, I don't think economics is mentioned, or, or maybe it says it's not ready yet. Maybe they don't have anything for that perhaps. And correct me if I'm wrong. Well, in regards to economics, it's not like the theory or teaching of economics, but if there are African-Americans that were economists or participatory, you would highlight those individuals, but it's correct. Yeah. Cause, but just says we don't, obviously right now does not include standards. Gotcha. I just want to make sure it's being like, and I

153would S and I would suggest, especially, you know, obviously with the historical part, you're, you're going to use the Frederick Douglas of the world, et cetera. But for the economists, even present day locally, I mean, there's, there's, African-American leaders in this, in this county that we could have come in and talk to kids. What, what did I, you know, what was their path like? What did they do to get where they, where they are? I mean, MCR is one of our great partnerships. So Mr. Carnegie, shouldn't be probably one of the first calls we say, how did w how'd you get into a CEO role of Nancy county role? So I just want to make sure that is, you know, part of it some way, somehow that it's not. And I know that that, that,

154that center for paint is some USF does. And so maybe they have like the connections to get people in to talk. But you, you, you talk about, you know, locally, you know, a lot of those kids played the youth league when pat Mr. Carney was coaching. And so there's just so there's connection. I think in the, in our own community that I would really like to make sure we see, because those are the kids, the kids see them, the students see them. And so that would be, that would be a suggestion how it's implemented, that's up to everybody else. I just gave the suggestion. How do you figure that out and even go broader? I mean, I know we're not going to get JZ here, but I'm saying go broader than the fact of look

155what, look, what they have done. And, and, and really, you know, I think that's the, especially in economic world, part of that could definitely be using some of those. The kids know exactly right now, they're going to turn on hope and they're gonna listen to them. And they may not know exactly how 50 cent got in with the beats. And then it got in with vitamin water and then it grew what he did. So I just want to make sure, especially the economics I saw there, wasn't a standard for that, but we're doing something in there. I think that the students can relate to, to see what, what has happened. Yeah. That's a great point, Mr. Jordan, again, you're, you're picking that right out of HB, several notices to highlight, to celebrate the vital contributions

156of all individuals from all walks of life and their endeavors from artists, scientists, educators, business, people, influential thinkers, faith, community, political government leaders, to highlight in all content areas. Just like you said, whether it's economics or art or science, and it's something that we're gonna then do in the state, recommends this with when it comes to women's history, when it comes to Hispanic and Latino history to highlight people along the way who've, who've, who've really made a difference along the way and integrate that through the content areas is something that the state is recommending through this legislation, Right? This former Mr. Chuck was able to, to bring some Connections, Thank you. On the economics. I had a hard time. I had a hard time with that. I looked at it and went really, you know,

157so, so thank you for that. Because one of the, one of the main points I had in the, in the previous document was that it talked about African-American history were possible. We should be putting it in with other curriculums. And my comment on that was, I think it should be where appropriate versus where possible, because anything is possible. But, and I liked, I liked what you had to say, Mr. Chuck, one thing that this board never discussed before. And I wasn't sure, because I was fairly new on the board is whether we want to achieve exemplary status and what the benefit is there. And I know we had a conversation about that. If you would, please, why do we want the exemplary status? Well, the exemplary status would basically demonstrate to not only our stakeholders

158in our community, but we are aligned with the state. The state is the one that approves like after. So the process is basically we're taking the plan, we're presenting it to the community, presenting it to our board, getting feedback and cleaning that plan up. When we submit that plan to the state, the state is saying, yes, Manatee county is following what we have set forth inside of our documentation for your African-American history and the teaching of African-American history. So we completely aligned to the state. So that's why we want to reach out and receive exemplar status in regards to the plan. Thank you. Okay. So the number of people that are on the task force, I thought we had too many people in the citizen, financial oversight committee, and even breaking it down into, into

159committees how, and who will be controlling all of that, you know, because I think anytime someone is on a committee, they get really wrapped up and enthused about their committee, you know, and can run, run rampant. So I think, you know, we've got to be sure that we're going to be overseeing what they're doing. And so that's the work that I have done as chair with Ms. Wall, who is here, our coordinator for social studies and working with our district personnel, like each of those sub committees are led by our district personnel person. So we are there and present and to get back on track of the work, let's say we have been doing this for 18 months. So of course you have a large amount of people that were participatory and that may have

160fallen off. And so with that core of the committee, we're the ones that's doing the work inside of our district. And so we're providing that communication and making sure that we're all aligned. I, I appreciate you being so responsive to the comments that we've all had on this. And I think this document brings it back to what the scope of teaching African-American history is about. Okay. And I just, I want reassurance, I guess that what's, what has changed here is not the document, but the scope and the plans for, for the taskforce. Correct. Okay. And we're fortunate, right? That HB seven came out this year because that is the roadmap, those, those sections, we just read what really, they, they really come from one of the Florida statute, 1 0, 0 3 0.42, and then

161the state took that and said, here's exactly how we want you to teach African-American history from whatever it is, three line, whatever it is, three something three, We're gonna look at 360 all the way to line 3 96. So, you know, that's, that's, that's, that is what's in front of you is, is, is exactly that. And we're going to stick to that. And especially that section that says that this is not a exercise in indoctrination or, or influencing one's view on, on students. And that's why training is important. And the oversight of, you know, school admin and district admin, to make sure that this plan and this, that HB seven is followed word for word. Thank you. Thank you for the work you did. Yeah. To repeat. Thank you. And the committee for it has

162been a very long process here, and we're still going. I just had one piece of input for the, for the report. And that is, I've really found that language of the statute very useful. It kind of interesting to, to read and hear, because as I'm reading it, it's like, Hmm, that's a definition of what some people consider to be critical race theory. So I really think it's important for us to include that specific statute language, right? In the beginning of the report to talk about this as our guiding document here and our guiding language. So, you know, based on Friday, I'm sure we're, we're probably gonna another press release this week from the governor's office saying they found a whole bunch of problematic stuff and 85% of the textbooks that had been submitted. And although

163they won't provide any examples or any textbook titles they're objecting to, but I think we can, we can count on that soon. So I think that would really, really be helpful as kind of a supporting piece for future readers of the report. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Yeah, I don't have much other than thank you. I, I, unfortunately wasn't able to hear your first presentation, but so I might have a few more questions, but I want to first say, I appreciate it. I appreciate you going over the law because I do think there are questions and concerns. And I think that stating exactly what the law says and probably as Mr. Kennedy's suggestion, adding it. I think that actually be really beneficial for anyone. That's going to read it and have

164questions that you can say, no, but here's the actual citation of the law, and this is what we're following. Cause that's, I mean, that's what we're doing. So I really appreciate that. I, I did have one question and it was on page 13, it was all about the committees. So there'd be a community committee and a and parent and parent committee, I think. And I want to get our fund 13, a student, one focus groups, I'm sorry. There was that community and government partners. And there was a parent and student focus groups. And I, and I guess all of this will come to fruition over time, but my questions are, how frequently would those groups meet and who be picking the attendees or the community, the committee groups That group exists, our parent and community

165partnerships already. They were a part of the task force. We met on a monthly basis to help with the plan and drafting the plan when we're moving towards those students. Some of them, it was a principal that wanted to have representation of a student voice, and it was a high school principal. So of course those high school principals will be tapped, maybe looking at their student government when it is time. If that, if the plan is approved, how we can increase in cap, the student buy in and participation. Yeah, I really, I, I think that that's important. I think having the parent and the student buy-in, I think are really vital pieces of that. So the, you said that the, the members of the community group was already included. You said the members of the

166parent, We had some parents That had some parents on this already with students that are currently in our schools. Students, not yet nobody. I mean, the parents are parents that have students currently in our schools. Okay. And how were they chosen? Well, at the beginning, there was a list provided by the NAACP former president that went to Dr. Gibson and then it came to me. So we reached out of those community members and people who are able to participate. And then from there, certain people emailed either former deputy superintendent to be involved in the task force or emailed us as people were talking throughout the community. And so that's how it blossomed to where we currently are with all the pieces. Okay. So it started with one list, but really the school district then imparted

167more people and added to it. Okay. I want to go back to one of the thing that Mr. Cho had said, and it was, he had talked about economics and integrating that, but I'm a big believer in integrating subject areas together. I mean, not maybe that's from the LNG perspective of that, to me always led to deeper understanding of any subject. You know what I mean? If you can integrate some African-American history into any topic, that's going to lead to deep understanding of it. So I really appreciated his highlight of that. And I really appreciate that that's a consideration here because to me that that really in general, I mean, you can do that with science. You can do that with like, my kids always had great science scores it's because I integrated in every

168single subject, we talked about science and reading and talking about science and math. We talked about. So like, to me, like that leads to a deeper understanding for whatever subject you're trying to teach. Well, we learned from the last time that sometimes the language cause you have your former educator, Mr. Choate, as a former educator, but if we're speaking from that background and vocabulary and content, sometimes the masses may misconstrue that information and not truly understand what we were saying. So that's why we want it to be very specific and refer back to the statute of how that interdisciplinary or cross content does. Look, I can understand what you mean in the sense that any professional career has their own language. Like, I think I hear their attorneys say something like you're like, I don't,

169you'd have to break that down for me more because that's not my expertise. So I do understand your point of view of, you know, there is a, there we do have our own abbreviations and we have speak that may not mean the same thing. I I've, I've, I've gone to other conferences and I'm, they'd use a certain abbreviation. They go well that in education, that means, but in this, it means something else, you know? So even that, you know, so I do understand your point of view on that and, and, and understanding that, you know, we are trying to make sure the community as a whole is aware of this and understands that, you know, we're complying with the law of our following what we're supposed to be doing. And so I really appreciate you

170taking the time to explain that today. So I'm, and that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam vice chair. Let me conclude by saying that first off, thank you for the, for the hard work that you put in to deal with a problematic situation across the state of Florida. We're not just dealing with teaching America, African-American history. He didn't Manatee county. This is a problem in the state of Florida. This is a problem in the country. And so I appreciate the leadership and the stewardship that you all have taken to bring us to that. I also want to thank the district and the board in terms of this also being consistent with our aim of diversity equity and inclusion in this district, because this is not the only area that we have problems with

171treating each other fairly and respecting the diversity that exists and promoting the inclusion that we would like to see. I know there's a presumption here that African-American history is a real big issue here, but you need to understand that the largest growing minority in Manatee county, I Hispanics, and we haven't even touched on that. We haven't even addressed the fact that if somebody came up and started speaking to us in Spanish, we'd have to be running around, trying to figure out who we could get to interpret for us. So they, they, they, they appreciate what you're doing, but I don't want anybody to be misled and think that this is the only consideration that we have in Manatee county about trying to become more diverse and become more equitable in how we deliver public education

172to everybody and how we become more inclusive so that no child really does get left behind and no parent gets left out and no part of this community gets overlooked. So I appreciate y'all, y'all taking this, this chunk of the problem and dealing with it as professionally as you have, as you have done. So thank, thank you for your report. We look forward to, you know, I'm in the mode is we got to have not one more to mold. It depends. It depends on us. I think I just want to chime in on your sentiment, Reverend golden, because there are individuals that are in the crowd that have been a part of these 18 months, and we don't work during work hours because of those community partnerships. So like I want Katie to stand up

173because it was a thought process from the curriculum department. I'm just a pretty face. Sometimes That Comes along That department and the work that Ms. Wald and Mr. Raymond did before to get everything started. And then our community partners that are here because we're meeting at six o'clock at night. And sometimes those meetings, like when you were saying who's on it and how are you rallying? It has been a rally to get everyone on board, but if you're meeting with people from six to eight o'clock at night on teams, it's a very interesting dynamic. So I just want to say that task force, and we have a lot of district representatives on it have been what continues to keep us moving forward because of those conversations and making sure that we are in alignment. So

174I just want to say things, But they let the record reflect that Mr. Singleton is gesturing toward Mr. David Wilkins, who is the president of the African-American society for the life and history of African America Sala. And he was the one that was with us during black history month to receive our, our proclamation at that time. So that this one had acknowledged that that's his involvement in his organization. A couple of hundred people sprinkled between Manatee and Sarasota county for getting this for getting this done. Right? Sure. That that same Katy wall to Latrina highlighted is now working very hard on the Holocaust history task force, which is now currently ongoing. So if any community folks in Manatee county would like to participate in the Holocaust history taskforce, as we review how we teach Holocaust

175history and make sure again, that we are aligning the state task force on all the coast history, but please find us through our website to, to join that task force. And then like we keep saying soon, we'll be probably starting a Hispanic, Latino history task force as well, so that we can do do the same type work. And I, I cannot stress that the, the requirement for us here at the board level is to not let that become that those entities become silos, but that they become into related to one another to make of us of what we want to be. Diversity is not an end. I chair a diversity group for Centerstone's national body. I serve on that board and we, we were wrestling with the same issues. Diversity is not an end. It's

176a means to achieve an end, which ought to be inclusion. And we were trying to include as many people as we possibly can. And so through diversity and using equitables using resources, equitably, we arrive at inclusion. So I, I think you're, and by the way, Mr. Wilkins is not another pretty face. I just want to let Pope know that. All right. Okay. Now You open that back up. Cause we've been using that. Oh, That's right. That's right. All right. Our new system. I'm sorry. Yeah. We all had an opportunity to come and do. Okay. At this point, we are late with respect to the public comment. We had scheduled 21 minutes, which is three minutes for the seven people that are listed, or we can give each one of the seven people listed one minute

177and we can still get out at 12. I'm going to give them the three minutes. It would say we can stay that long. Okay. Nobody. Okay. In that case with what I asked first, Mr. Hartman. Oh, I'm so sorry. I apologize. We are in the hands of our vice chair now for the public comment commentary. All right. I'm just going to read her typical spiel. Public comment is not an open forum to discuss matters, unrelated to education, to support or oppose candidates for public office or intake, engage in commercial speech, attempting to sell a service or product to the school board or public. Also public comment is not a foreign to attack individual school system employees or board members. Any such complaints should be submitted in writing to the superintendent for appropriate handling. Finally, this

178is not a forum for addressing issues involving individual students because of privacy concerns, such such issue should be submitted in writing to the superintendent for appropriate handling. Each speaker's allowed three minutes to address the board. Speakers must stand at the podium and not approach the diocese. This is a business meeting of the school board and the public expects that we conducted an orderly efficient, effective, and dignified manner. We request that speakers keep this mind when making your comments. We, 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. Melissa attentively consider each comment and usually will not respond. Enter into debate or answer questions during comments on agenda items or during the public

179comments section. Before you begin speaking, please provide any handouts to the agency clerk. Please identify yourself by 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 expeditious, an orderly process of a school board meeting will be subject to removal from the meeting pursuant to Florida statute at the discretion of the chair, orderly fashion is deemed as Adam minimum, no profanity, no vulgar language, no discourteous disrespectful or disparaging conduct. And for those of you that were not with us on Tuesday, we have a new computer system and the timer is now I'm working with the new computer system. So the timer above here

180will not work the timer and said will be on the laptop in front of you. Cause that's how it worked on Tuesday. And also on these two side screens, it is green until you have 30 seconds left and then it turns to yellow. And then it turns to red when you're out of time. And with that, we do have seven people that have signed up to speak. I'm going to start with Mr. Hartman. And after Mr. Hartman will be Ms. Copeland Thank you, Michael Hartman. You had To keep that up. Mr. Hartman, sir. The timers on that. Oh, I'm so sorry. My bad. We all, this is a learning process here, I guess, for all of his Friends, Give her much. Oh, you have no idea how glad I am to see that you close

181that thing down. I feel so much better knowing I'm not the only one You talk about computer error. I actually spoke four times and only signed up for, to the meeting. So we got the bugs out. Anyway, Michael Hartman here, I just wanted to share about mental health. Proverbs three five says trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean, not to your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him. And he shall direct that path, fear of the Lord, and it shall be health to the navel and marrow to the bones. And this is a from a article that was posted in pub med that we systematically reviewed an epidemic or logical study to determine whether an association exists between diet quality and patterns and mental health in children and adolescents nine explored

182the relationship using diet as the exposure and three as mental health. As the exposure, the evidence found a significant cross sectional relationship between unhealthy dietary patterns and poor mental health in children and adolescents. We observed a consistent trend for the relationship between good quality diet and better mental health data has indicated that better quality diet is associated with better mental health. And I would like to make a cross reference talking about mental health, and this has to do with the audience. And we saw that at the last meeting it's called the Venturi effect. And what that actually means is is if you take the garden hose and you don't have a nozzle on the end of it, the water just flows out. But if you put a constriction on it and constrict the water, it

183actually squirts out further. And so something that is forced through with, through a space that is constricted and a garden hose, and that would be a perfect example. What we saw at the last meeting, people felt cause instructed. So when working, when I used to work at the company, when I first started, we used to have gang room meetings where the big supervisors from Tampa would come down and it was like, everybody got to complain and share what their beef was and if they were allowed to speak and express themselves without being interrupted or without a fear of being persecuted, what would happen is, is that the people would leave feeling like the Dave actually got something across. And so what we need to understand and realize is that just as real as children have

184a problem with mental health. So two adults we're trying to fix it before it starts, but some adults have not had that opportunity to do that. And so I would just like to say that that, that applies to people that speak and we need to allow people to speak and just sometimes just skull out, you got to let it hit the fan and then just walk away from it. So God bless you have a great day, Ms. Copeland. I didn't see her, but, or the record Susie Copeland, Ms. Parker, and then after Ms. Parker will be David Wilkins. Nice. Just don't like that. Okay, good morning. I am representing the league of women voters. And as you recall, I don't know it was a month or so ago. We presented you with our position paper

185on diversity, equity and inclusion, and just reinforced what Cher golden indicated in terms of our support of the school districts efforts through your strategic plan. And other means to continue to work as diversity as a strength equity, as a moral obligation and inclusion as a worthy goal. And therefore, we certainly concur that teaching history should reflect. Everyone's lived experiences, teaching and learning complete and truthful history is a civic duty and Manatee school board creates policy to guide district staff, school leaders, and teachers to sustain teaching and learning. And when everyone knows everyone's comprehensive history, comprehensive history, we are able to move together better. Thank you. Thank you, David Wilkins. And after Mr. Wilkins will be Ms. Graham. Good morning. Thank you. David Wilkins and the president of the Minnesota branch of the association for the

186study of African-American life and history. I was going to address that elephant, but it's disappeared. So I'm going to skip those comments and simply begin by complimenting this board and staff and the district for this really, really important work that you're doing. Asana is obviously all about the promotion of our history. And, and so we are very much aligned. The Florida statute in the standards is a bleed. Mr. Show pointed out are very much extraordinary. I'm not a Florida invited by my wife and I moved here about eight years ago, got involved in a solid discovered this set of standards and have been impressed ever since. And so could not be more impressed that this board is grappling with this important work and a solid wants to lend its assistance. However, it can in the

187promotion of that, this history is hard. Most history is hard. If we're going to deal with the Holocaust, that's going to be very difficult. And so to deal with heart history, difficult history, honest history is, is simply a reality. And there's a way, and you all know better than I had to do that. And so I encourage you to continue on that path because it will make a difference in the lives of our kids. I've had the opportunity to teach some since retiring as a lawyer. And the question I got most from the high school students I taught in Sarasota was why am I just out learning this history? And so, I mean, the message is pretty clear. The most part about our history history of the Holocaust and these other areas we're going to

188touch is that race and racism are inextricably woven in that history. And so it would make it very, very difficult, but that's not an issue. That's an opportunity for us to learn. And so I encouraged into the question of exemplary status. I think that's a laudable goal. I think that places Manatee far above all of the other, I think there may be two or three others in the state. And so we wholeheartedly encourage the board to pursue that with all deliberate speed. Thank you for your time this morning. Thank you, Ms. Graham, and after Ms. Graham will be Mr. Tatum. Good afternoon. We just crossed over Elaine Graham. And I'm speaking for the work of the African-American history task force as community members with background knowledge and experience and education and civic responsibility. The league

189of women voters has a vested interest in supporting the Manatee county school board it's teachers and ultimately students in establishing an environment in which all voices and lived experiences are present and valued in the classroom. The goal of public education is to create well informed citizens. Therefore, the discussion of comprehensive history impacting African-Americans must take place in the classroom. This is a way young people will learn to think critically about our history and the only way to create a United America for future generations. The history of our Republic will not be tarnished. It will be expanded. Maya Angelou, American poet and writer stated history. Despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Mr. Tatum. And then after Mr. Tatum

190will be Luther Wilkens. I think we'll pass those out before we start, please. Go ahead, Mr. Tatum. I was just waiting for the timer. I don't think they're going to start it until you start. Okay, great. That's how it works. We're all learning. Great. So good morning. I'm glad to be here, Richard datum for the record. So I'd like to thank you all for some of the work that you did and revising the wording and the African-American history task force. I still have some concerns though, about the construction of the task force. I noticed that the people that are on the task force haven't changed. There's an excellent black history organization called the Yoakum, his black history organization up in Pinellas county. And they're not included in this. The Woodson center would be nice to

191include in this. Some of the economists that Mr Choate talked about would be people like Thomas Sol, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele in English, Carol Swain, and political science. This would get, give a larger range of ideas that would come into the task force. The second problem that I have, or concern that I have is what is the intent of this task force? We've heard that it's just to teach African-American history, but what I would like to draw your attention to is the first exhibit a that I have here. So this is from the black civil organization and the blacks had organization as an organization of people who were politically on the left and decided to move out of the political arena. And this is a document that they've put out on critical race theory. And

192at the bottom, you can see us as how to spot CRT in schools. So if you go to the first arrow there, you can see de-colonize or decolonization and the original draft of the plan. That word was very specific. There was going to be a decolonized curriculum. If you go down to the second arrow, you will see a diversity equity and inclusion with which Mr. Golden just mentioned. And right there, it says DEI is critical race theory and action. So we keep hearing those words associated with this plan. This, this, this document was written by people who have dark skin, Tonya Gorman was on my radio show. The other day. She leads this organization. She actually said on my radio show, if you as a parent, C D E I R C R T in

193a school system, pull your children out immediately. I don't understand why we want to keep going back to that all the time. D E I S C R T. And action. And the third page, I'd like to bring your attention to of your booklet. There is from Carol Swain. If you go to the next page in your little booklet, we might call that exhibit B. Carol Swain is a former political science teacher. She also is a black female. She has a tweet here from let's see September 5th, 2020. And it says we did not need the vice in this training. We need unity training, diversity equity, and inclusiveness trainers, indoctrinate, a captive audience with critical theory, which comes out of the Marxist playbook. So again, all of these things were in the original plan, which

194makes it makes me a little bit suspicious that the wording has changed, but the people involved in the plan still have the same intent behind it, which is critical race theory and DEI. Another point that I would like to make to you is the Florida citizens Alliance incorporated versus Douglas vs Collier county, the school board up there. Now all instructional material committee meetings have to be done in the sunshine with proper public notice. So as we go forward with this all instruction material for these plan, if you decide to go forward with it, it's going to have to be done in sunshine with public announcement properly done. So thank you for your time today. Yeah, I couldn't, I normally just say last names, but I couldn't say Mr. Wilkins earlier because there was two Mr.

195Wilkins. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I'm Luther Wilkins with the Manatee county NAACP, We, the Manatee county branch NAACP support the district effort to teach African-American history in a factual manner. We assert that authentic teaching of history has nothing to do with critical race theory. And in fact, it's called for and specific bill house, bill seven, which goes into effect July 1st explained to description of what should be taught it's on chapter 1, 0 0 3 0.42, which the lady just, just went through while that hospital's seventh specifically specified this content. The history of African America included the history of African-American people to put clip the Pope political conflict that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement and experience, And the history of contributing to the African-American and African-American deployed to society.

196Students shall develop data understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, stereotype, and individual freedoms, and explain what it means to be a responsible and respectful person to encourage tolerance of diversity in the pro holistic society for neutering and protecting democracy values and instructions hospitals, seven fathers states, instructional personnel may facilitate the sessions, use curriculum to address an age appropriate manner. How individual of persons have been infringing by slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, racial discrimination, and as well as topics related to enact men enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial district migration. How recognition of these freedoms have been overturned through unjust laws? You know, there's not been a lot of laws that facilitated racism. And thank God that the notice of that has, has, has been adjusted while it's true that

197according to hospital seven classroom instruction and curriculum may not be used to indoctrinate or persuade students in a particular point of view, the NAACP does not believe in indoctrinating anyone. We think that is wrong. It is clear that some members of the community are confused about critical race theory, which we just heard that, that conflicts, that academic theory. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Well, thank you, Mr. Wilkins, let me take this moment to thank you for coming. I understand that you are the newly elect, what the new lip determined president of the Manatee county branch of the NAACP. And we, we, we thank you for your input today and we welcome the input from the NAACP. As you have brought it today, you have come, you stood before the school board and you have spoken

198on behalf of your organization as others have you are welcomed here at any time to bring the message to us from the NAACP. I appreciate hearing what you had to say here today, hearing it from you in this setting and not reading about it in the media, or being told about it by some other people who probably not even members of the NAACP, A lot of media. Cause I understand, but there are a lot of people that talk on behalf of the NAACP. And if you asked them to pull out a NAACP card, like I can do right now, they couldn't do it. So I appreciate them not speaking on your behalf, that you're a man that speaks for himself. Thank you very much. You got to go. Thank you all. And I appreciate y'all

199help and hopefully we can move forward on this side. God bless. We will. Thank you. All right, Ms. Choke, Any comments? Yeah. We're 15 minutes over. So no, we're good. I don't know why you laughing, Ms. Foreman, you're next. Mr. Kennedy. Just the thank you to the members of the task force that are here. Got a good showing today from the group And Madam vice chair On it. Yes, I can speak better with my gavel.