Volusia County School Board Meeting 5⧸11⧸2021

001good afternoon everyone and welcome to the volusia county school board meeting of may 11th it is 3 30. and in honor of military appreciation month i would love to welcome the deland high school jrotc color guard who are in the back of the present time who will present the colors for this evening school board meeting everyone please rise okay oh i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all order forward heart thank you you may be seated welcome everyone please silence your phones we're here because we all agree to disagree we also work we're going to all be practicing respectful behavior one towards one another i'd like to introduce the deus to all

002of you this evening to my far left is mr carl persis he represents district four to his right is mr ruben colon represents district five to his right is mr ted doran our school board attorney to my far right is our school board agency clerk extraordinaire miss aaron i was going to call her anita aaron leban next to her right or her left is mrs anita burnett representing district two to her left is vice chair and representing district one is mrs jamie haynes to her left is our superintendent dr fritz and i'm linda cuthbert your school board chair representing district 3. items for the approval on the agenda this evening is 1.03 6.02 19.01 through 19.04 public participation will be granted for items on the consent agenda five o'clock certain for items of general interest

003volusia county schools time will be provided for any public comment for any action item before before a board vote is called and time will be provided at the end of the meeting for public comment also for items of general interest relating to public education in volusia county schools 1.02 this is our district vision statement and board member comments would any board member like to start miss haynes since we were here last i had the honor and privilege to attend an academic signing day at deland high along with dr fritz and it was just wonderful to see how many students and they had it very well organized they had them by where they were headed off to and they did it during the lunch hour but they did it outside in what they call the bowl

004area so other students that were having lunch kind of gathered around and were able to see it which i felt that was kind of encouraging because that's what they had to look forward to and i thought that was great and also i know i've said this in a few other places but we have one of the top five finalists of the year for teacher of the year here in volusia county so mr g over at citrus grove we kind of uh snuck in very quietly on a testing day and since he teaches art we could sneak into his room but we surprised him and he he had tears in his eyes because he just absolutely loves what he does and he has such a passion for it but i think we should all be rooting

005him on in hopes that in july he may be named the state teacher of the year [Applause] thank you miss haynes miss burnett good afternoon um in the past week i was able to attend an event with a few of you all and it was the futures turnaround program and when we look at our mission statement and how we're trying to improve the quality for our students this was something that was really touching because these are students that have done something um extraordinary and turned things around so that they are on the right path and um it was nice to see the families show up for that and that we as a community could recognize them so i appreciated that invite and uh i want to say keep going with it with that and congratulations

006to all those students thank you miss purnet mr colon oh so i too attended a academic signing day at pine ridge that was a great experience however today i want to highlight three folks who have been received recognition as our ese [Music] amazing folks of the year first one is michelle brown from sunrise she was recognized as the esc elementary assistant principal of the year at deltona lakes we had miss lisa ewing who was the ese teacher of the year and at enterprise we had miss karen morley who was the esc inclusion teacher of the year so congratulations to them and we are grateful for everything they do for our students every day so that's it thank you thank you mr colon mr persis yeah great stuff uh i'll switch gears just a little a

007little bit but i want to just say how much i appreciate dr fritz getting out to the schools when all these recognitions are taking place you know not every superintendent does that and we can understand why i mean their day is slammed from the moment they leave the house until the moment they walk in the house and probably more after that but taking the time to do that and the reason why i'm bringing it up because uh uh because some of the some of the uh people who have received that recognition have have stopped me afterwards and said wasn't that nice that dr fritz came out you know so i mean they have probably their first time meeting a superintendent you know anyway and i just wanted to give you that shout out along that

008same line i was at ormond beach middle school for a recognition of a of a schoolway cafe employee who uh gave the heimlich maneuver to to another employee who was choking and actually was joking and erectly saved save her life that that effort was noticed by schoolway cafe in the district office they submitted something to the state this the uh the state grabbed it and uh i mean they produced this uh like a facebook live event at ormond beach middle school and uh had celebrities uh on a video thanking her i mean people like the tampa bay uh buck coach bruce arians and you know i mean really well-known folks gave her a great big tampa bay buck basket and then the florida dairy farmers association gave her two thousand dollar uh check so you

009know it was just it was just awesome and uh and she was just so touched and the kids were there clapping and it was just you know tears coming out of her eyes so you know you've really touched some somebody so i i thought it was just awesome and again to thank dr fritz i ran into him that same night at mainland but for some other events so i thought man i i can't keep up with you so i will i'll turn it over to you matt madam chair thank you thank you mr purses i got to go out yesterday and congratulate tamara hopkins principal at sweetwater elementary who was named media specialist principal of the year a media specialist gets to name a principal for all of our 69 schools she won especially by

010her peers and then we traveled to reed potillo elementary a former student of mine samantha anderson received the media specialist award and celebration for the year so it's wonderful to celebrate recognition for our administrators as well as teachers who give so much for each year and also starting next week our seniors are finishing their last year of k through 12. so we have to pick up our hacks to them of course i'm not wearing mine for the first time in almost six months so i'm real thrilled to go hatless but it's it's wonderful for uh this next couple weeks all the celebrations our seniors will be having a special shout out i have two grandchildren graduating this year two last year so of all times for your grandchildren to graduate these two have been two

011remarkable remarkable years and for this class especially the 2021 graduates to have gone through not only losing their fourth quarter their junior year but everything this year i don't think there's going to be a dry eye in the house during our graduation ceremonies so congratulations to all of our seniors thank you that concludes our vision statement and comments 1.03 approval of the minutes we have minutes from our work session on the 27th as well as the regularly scheduled board meeting on the 27th is there a motion motion to approve is there a second all second any discussion okay it has been moved by mr colon and seconded by miss burnett to approve the minutes of april 27th all in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say nay motion is carried carrying 2.01

012are there any agenda changes no manager thank you um is there a motion to achieve approve the agenda okay thank you mr purses is there a second i'll second it uh it has been moved by mr persis to uh approve the agenda if seconded by mrs haynes any discussion okay all those in pl uh favor please say aye aye all those in uh our opposed please say nay it has passed unanimously thank you 3.01 administrative appointments dr fritz board members uh we've we've had great conversations in the past couple weeks about my plans for middle schools as we move forward that i want middle school to be more of a gradual release between elementary and high school rather than many high schools and we've talked about some things that i haven't planned for that i

013am very very proud to make this recommendation and ask dr andrew olsen to come forward and as he does i'd like to share a little bit about him as we start to on our journey to take our middle schools from good to great dr olson has earned his educational doctorate degree in innovation from the university of south florida his research is on building collaborative cultures and middle schools focused on teacher improvement and growth dr olson comes to us from hillsborough county with 13 years experience as a principal in two urban schools and an assistant principal while being an assistant principal and a principal he continuously improved the school grades serving in the leadership capacity for both schools as a principal himself he understands how complex the important role of serving in leading a school is

014ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to recommend dr andrew olson as our director for middle school to work with patty core thank you dr fritz you've heard the recommendation by our superintendent is there a motion to approve dr olsen move approval okay is there a second second okay the motion has been made by carl yes by carl purses and it's been seconded by miss burnett is there any discussion okay well we have to vote first we we forget we get so enthusiastic to talk to you that we forget to vote but i think that's more important okay all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say no congratulations okay sir would you like to say something yeah just um thank you so much for the opportunity i'm really grateful um to

015be part of volusia and be part of such a great team i've had great interactions with everybody here so far and um and i just can't wait to be part of the team and i'm excited to get started so thanks for your confidence in me my wife and two daughters are here today melissa and janelle and taylor so i just want to thank them for their support [Applause] so uh we're just we're excited to be part of elusia and i just can't wait to get started so thank you again and i look forward to working with everybody here thank you well um any comments from the board i believe your wife is a elementary teacher is that right yeah she's a middle school media specialist and literacy coach two for one i don't like it

016[Laughter] well you know in district five we may have a spot [Laughter] district one is actually the best district i think the bargaining has begun right well thank you we welcome you to our our school district yes mr well i just wanted to say uh as a former middle school principal i as soon as i saw him and talked with him for 30 seconds i thought he's the right guy he's the right one he's he's he's got the energy he's got the spark i can see the smile under the mask you just got it i know you do and you you're working with a super person in uh uh patty core they they don't come too much better so uh you all you're all gonna be a dynamite team and middle school principals watch out

017i think this guy's the real thing so yeah that's a good thing very welcome looking forward to working with miss core well good that that's wonderful because we like working with her as well um but thank you very much sir and we wish you well and and you when do you start sir uh june 1st june 1st yes ma'am that's a good one all right thank you and good luck for your following uh the rest of your school year yes thank you thank you [Applause] and i'd like to ask mr adrian bronson to come forward ladies and gentlemen you know we all know mr bronson very successful principal at cypress creek he's done a really really good job he's been in volusia county for 23 years you know that we've had an opening at south

018daytona elementary school and that was because mr schwartz was promoted to a high school principal in flagler county and we wish him lots of luck but one of the things that i want to make sure that we do for a school like south daytona has made tremendous progress over the last year is that we give some consistency and so i've said this to adrian and i'll say it publicly adrian we expect you there in three years um adrian has adrian has a good plan for south daytona interviewed with the committee and he is my recommendation to serve as the principal at south daytona elementary you've heard the recommendation of the superintendent is there a motion to approve mr bronson as principal at south daytona elementary so moved thank you the motion has been made by

019miss burnett is there a second second second by mr cologne any discussion are you sure you want to leave my district [Laughter] all right okay all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say name congratulations yeah you would like to say something mr brown i do um first of all good evening thank you very much for this opportunity um over the past several days i've been asked several times why i would leave such a great gig over at cce um i was nine in living in north dakota when my father lost his job without an income my brother two sisters and my parents loaded while we could into a conversion van that would be our home for the next three years by the time i was in sixth grade i had

020attended 13 different schools in high school we again became homeless and in addition to being a student i began working full-time to support my family to provide food and pay for hotels so we could shower and have a place to sleep through it all school was my safe place my teachers provided me the stability that my home life couldn't they took me in tutored me so i did not fall behind gave me extra food and most importantly made me feel seen and loved for who i was regardless of the challenges i faced beyond the hours of school in order to honor those teachers mr everett mr horn mr beale and others it is my hope to do the same at south daytona every student on campus will know they are loved cared for and seen

021for the individuals they are and the potential they hold school will be their safe place where they will always be an adult on their side telling them they can do great things mythology just depicts dragons as fierce defenders of their treasures as the newest dragon at south daytona i will be a fierce defender and supporter of its greatest treasures the students and the teachers and staff who value them thank you for the opportunity to serve the community of south daytona [Applause] oh that's it okay thank you um we have public price participation but it's at five o'clock certain so we will return to public participation uh 6.01 removal are there any recommendations to remove anything from the consent agenda oh that's what we have seems though i skipped yes i did i skipped 4.01 recognitions

022i apologize recognitions for may 2021 uh madam chair this one gives me great pleasure i know it does the entire board we've talked about the service of our military personnel that are inside volusia county uh those that have worked for us and continue to work for us and continue to serve our community i'd like to ask as we honor um honor them if any military personnel or any former military personnel in the audience please stand so we can honor you [Applause] we'd also like to recognize may as national physical fitness and sports month this goes out to all our coaches our teachers our student athletes and the parent and the community volunteers that help make sports and athletics part of our children's lives every day so we'd like to honor them as well thank you

023[Applause] and our athletes have been fantastic absolutely this year right ms cervinet oh she must have stepped out um her son became state champion and for the javelin just this past weekend okay thank you very much dr fritz okay now 6.01 are there any items on the consent agenda that need to be removed dr fritz have you heard anything no ma'am okay 6.02 um is there a motion to approve the consent agenda for this evening mr persis has recommended that we approve the consent agenda is there a second second mr colon has seconded the motion any discussion thank you all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say nay motion is carried consent agenda has been approved uh 16.01 superintendent you have announcements we do have one announcement and that is

024for the next regular scheduled board meeting which will be may 25th at 5 30 right here in this boardroom okay thank you very much let's see okay and then uh public participation five o'clock um 18.01 human resources update i'd like to call mr westford rachel hazel that's all right miss hazel's got it hey miss mchaney how are you good how are you good good afternoon everyone um it's my pleasure to introduce christy mahaney who is our superstar of recruitment and retention and she is going to talk to you about some of the recruitment events that we have been and when i say we i mean christie has been doing good afternoon chairwoman cuthbert school board members dr fritz and audience members we had a busy recruitment season and open hiring for our school district kicked

025off with our spring instructional job fair on april 16th i'm here today to share some data from our spring events this presentation aligns with goal 2 of the district strategic plan which is recruiting retaining and developing high quality staff this spring we participated in 17 recruitment events from january 27th through the first week in april at these events we were in search of highly qualified current and future teachers to invite to our instructional job fair and to fill any vacant temporary positions for the remainder of the school year there was a lot of work that had to happen behind the scenes before open hiring could begin on april 16th this included facilitating two important events the vcs instructional transfer fair and also the assignment of displaced instructional staff current bcs instructional employees interested in transferring

026to another school site had the opportunity to participate in the transfer fair eligible employees created profiles on a virtual solutions platform called no dot careers on this platform principals were able to review candidate profiles and send interview questions to teachers who selected their school as a desired work site on their application the window to transfer schools was april 9th through april 14th we had 308 vcs instructional teachers participate in the transfer fair and during the window we had 82 successful transfers all displaced teachers were assigned schools and placed in positions matching their certifications on thursday april 15th we had a total of 95 teachers who were displaced due to the 2021 projected allocations 85 of these teachers were from volusia online learning displaced teachers are free to apply for any position of interest during the

027open hiring season which is going on right now the spring instructional job fair kicked off the open hiring season for the 21-22 school year the spring job fair was a hybrid event we hosted the in-person event on friday april 16th at the ocean center and the virtual event lasted two weeks and it ran from april 16th through april 30th we had 148 candidates register and participate in our in-person event and by the end of that afternoon on april 16th we had 72 candidates who had been hired by schools we had 154 candidates who opted to participate virtually and by friday april 23rd which was the midpoint of the virtual fair we had 22 candidates that had been hired it's important to note that hiring numbers change daily even hourly the snapshot that's captured on this

028screen is from friday april 23rd but yesterday we captured some numbers so yesterday may 10th to provide you a more accurate picture of what hiring is looking like behind the scenes so as of yesterday may 10th our schools have hired 79 candidates that participated in the in-person fair 42 candidates who participated in our virtual fair 22 candidates who were hired outside of the job fair who so they just applied online so for a total of 143 candidates that have been hired since open hiring started on april 16th this next slide gives you a snapshot of our vacancies as of april 23rd so you can see as of april 23rd after you subtract those numbers we had 144 vacancies and since then we have had additional vacancies posted to our website due to title 1 positions

029that have been added so as of this morning we're a little over 200 vacancies that we still have to fill it's about 212. we plan to continue recruiting throughout the spring and the summer and our candidate lists are continuously being sent out to principals each week with preferred candidates being starred based on feedback that we got from principals in their interviews that's all i have do we have any questions board members have any questions for miss mahini yes miss haines i actually want to make a comment i was fortunate to come over when you did the reception at jackie robinson ballpark for the people that were coming in for the job fair and then i went to the job fair on that friday morning and i have to tell you the excitement in the room

030was just wonderful and just seeing so many people um there you know interviewing and seeking out a position but also seeing some real quality experience because you had experienced teachers that were wanting to come to volusia county and i was just amazed by the professionalism too that they exhibited and it was just there was no way you could be in the room and just not get pulled into the excitement and just see principles and assistant principles or if they'd brought a coach with or whatever just their excitement when they got somebody that said yes you know i want to come to your school and um you did a great job and i know that was a lot of work um that you and your team put into it but it was phenomenal so thank you

031thank you so much uh mr purses yeah i i totally agree with what you just said it it was so exciting and then just you know you get excited when other people are excited and everybody was just so happy and a lot of energy uh out there so um okay so here so here we are what is it may the ninth and uh so lots of plans for the summer um can you share a little bit about sure absolutely so moving forward um most of the recruitment events that we're participating in are still virtual um i'm hopeful that next school you will be able to participate in some more face-to-face events now that we start a little bit going back to some more normalcy so we do have some recruitment events lined up we also

032just today actually slated a an instructional fair for support positions that's going to happen on june 30th and july 1st so more information will be shared for that and then we have candidate lists that there's a lot of follow-up going on one thing that i did share with our leadership team is that while not ideal the virtual recruitment events have extended our scope and reach nationwide and so on our virtual candidate list we do have some candidates very highly qualified candidates from pennsylvania colorado wyoming kentucky which really opens us up to some of those conversations with some highly qualified candidates that we might not normally have been able to contact have contact with so we're going to keep moving forward with that and i think part of recruitment is just showing up and being there

033and so whenever we can get volusia county schools at the forefront and have a seat at these events we're going to fight to make sure that we can be there so i think that's great yeah do you do you do things like when you get uh someone who appears to be interested from colorado let's say uh uh then do you have their contact information so do you have people that like may follow up with the text to them or you know just just like football coaches do when they're after a certain college recruit you know hey you know we we want you here we want you here i do i actually send them pictures of the beach and you know just little things like that yes i actually keep a spreadsheet and anytime that um

034i get a phone call lead i get an email lead or a lot of times they'll email mr west and miss hazel and they'll forward me their contact i start a running record of any contact and information that's shared back and forth with them and so i know the last time that i communicated with them and if it's been a little bit too long and things are starting to go silent i always make sure that i reach back out i find that emails and phone calls are the best way to connect with them and we are looking into some other recruitment tools that might include some text messaging but that's a little bit further down the road yeah good well that's great um uh perhaps dr uh olson will get some folks from hillsborough we

035seem to be tapping into hillsborough a little bit he's been charged all right great all right sir thank you manager thank you mr clone question nope you guys do a great job even on during spring break i mean that was just that spoke to your dedication so thank you yeah awesome and mr purses asked the question that i was asking where where's everybody coming from is it um mostly experienced teachers is it uh and i asked you know what parts of the country but also are they a lot of our local graduates from in education so is it a sprinkling of yeah it really right now and it's hard to tell like i said the numbers are changing every hour so um like right before i walked over here we had one of our school

036counseling interns that was just hired right before and that was not included in our numbers for pine ridge high school [Music] so numbers are changing yes our student interns are being tapped into we have updated our senior intern exit survey so we can pull some more targeted data and information about our interns so the ones that are leaving why are you leaving how can we get you to stay you know and so um it's a little bit of everything right now we do have some candidates coming in from out of state we actually have one that's currently living in puerto rico that's on her way in trying to figure out some living situations for herself so a little bit of everything i'm excited to see what it's going to look like in august me too

037i think all of us are how are you doing with support personnel oh so for support so as i mentioned right now we are planning for a summer job fair for all of our support professionals i've been working with sheila reese over in the family and community engagement office and we were able to secure both the deland ymca and the port orange ymca for june 30th and july 1st because we figure we can get not only people who register ahead of time to participate but also some of the walk-in um you know the walk-in clientele that normally goes to the ymca so we're hopeful that we can you know fill and hire some positions at that summer event and we're working closely with those departments student transportation school way cafe [Music] that was mr west

038asking that wonderful question head of hr thank you very much um we certainly appreciate all the update and how are we doing my last question is how are we doing on ese personnel uh we well for right now like our high needs areas our school counselors ese teachers english math and science so those are some high needs areas for us um so we're really targeting our recruitment for school counselors we're working with miss roland's office abaco rayner and ingrid cruz over there trying to make sure that we target those schools where students are the interns the counseling interns are graduating from and trying to get them into volusia as quickly as possible before anybody else can snag them and you know we're also anybody who comes through our gate that is an esc certified teacher

039we're making sure to communicate that to any principals who are looking for esc candidates so we're updating our lists our candidate list daily and you know sending them to principals who are calling emailing and you know every week we send it out through mr west and are you finding it much easier to hire right now because you have the fingerprinting equipment right in-house it's quicker it is more convenient yes oh that's wonderful that's wonderful so we don't have that trouble this year that we had last year that's that's super thank you so much much thank you anything else dr prince just just one of the initiatives i want the board to know that we're doing and we're starting this process through hr is it's it's much more economical for us to retain employees rather than

040to continually recruit them one of the things that we're doing through mr west's office is we're going to begin exit interviews for our employees when they leave decide to go somewhere else so that we can start to look at those trends to figure out how we retain them and keep them over time i think that all those factors really are important for goal two it's it's not just recruitment it's retention and development as well but i am very proud of this team um we look at numbers where we've been in the past and where we are at this point time in the year um with everything that's gone on i'm just i couldn't be more pleased with the efforts we've taken to fill um i get a lot of compliments from principals and they're happy

041with the communication they feel like that that's an area that they they are getting candidates handed to them instead of always having to look for them so i'm very proud of the team good work thank you thank you thank you both very much 19.01 it's board action item approval of the job description additions and revisions dr fritz yes i'm going to ask mr west to come forward yeah two today correct thank you good afternoon board members um and i'm sorry that i wasn't up here for the update but i actually had to go out and congratulate one of my former colleagues so um yes we have uh a job description that we're pulling forward here i apologize okay in regards to oh my gosh well mr west is pulling that let me say one with

042the don roommates that's it i wanted to i want to share with this and thank the board uh this was one that you brought to me um principals were sharing their concerns um and as i walked schools with some of you we were seeing our principals and our assistant principals wiping off tables in the lunchrooms and um you know not that they're above that and they would do that but there's better ways for them to spend their time and day so there was a need for us to make sure that we provided some services to support our schools so we we came back pretty quickly and started putting together some budgets so that we could have those dining room aids in our elementary schools as a result as we went through that we realized that

043there's some jd our job descriptions that we needed to update so that's where that's the first one that mr west is going to talk about yes sir and it is for our dining room aid and this is actually just a revision to our current dining room aid position and as dr fritz said we are actually looking to put those in our sites that uh currently don't have those for the elementary school so i'm requesting approval for that and also the community involvement specialist position that is also a revision that's just an update to our existing job description as well so i'm requesting approval for both of these job descriptions to move forward um is there a motion so moved the second has been uh the motion has been made to approve these two job descriptions

044dining room aid and a community specialist for underneath dr balgovin's department motion has been made by mr carl persis and seconded by miss jamie haynes is there any further discussion by the board are there any um public participation requests okay thank you all those in favor please please say aye aye all those against please say nay the motion is passed i do want to say that um when a lot of us volunteer in the kitchens uh during school lunch week and always someone had to go out into the into the cafeteria and cleaned you know a lot of tables and they loved it when i was there because i didn't mind doing all that but now to have a dining room aid to help them yeah the people in the in the kitchen are just

045thrilled so now they can get ready for the next lunch so that too is a huge help especially at new smyrna beach middle school which yeah i mean their cafeteria with almost doubled in size so they're they're very happy thank you very much yes oh i'm sorry yes miss haines and i wanted to say dr ritz thank you for listening because um it does make a huge difference at the elementary level to have that extra pair of hands especially at the beginning of the year when you've got pre-k in kindergarten that have just walked in the door and we all know they can't open anything they can't open a milk they can't open a ketchup carry a tray yeah they can't carry a tray and they don't know their number yeah they don't know their

046numbers but i i do want to thank you because for listening because that was a need and i'm happy to see that we're going to make sure that our principals have that extra pair of hands and they don't have to worry about that can i also ask that uh reminding me is this a part-time position um it is and what we find is that many of our it's either a two or three hour depending on what the uh this individual site is and what they do is they pair up with for example a schoolway cafe worker or possibly a para position and they do both combine to make it a full full position so yes ma'am it is and that way they can have benefits as well that's correct thank you very much for that

047added information yes ma'am the next one um relates to our pilot program for our custodials um as we go forward with that i'll share with you it's my intent to come back to you in june to give you an update at the june 22nd board meeting because we will be launching july 1. we're in the process of hiring those leads at the schools and it's a collaborative effort between the operations division and the principals at the school uh but but what we're asking today and i'm sorry mr west i'm kind of doing your job that's okay we're asking we're asking for the salary schedule for these six students to be approved yes and this is board action item 19.02 yes and it's the approval of the proposed 21 non-bargaining salary schedule for technical support personnel

048and you all got us a copy of the of the um salary schedule yes okay any discussion and questions yes mr cleveland we come up with this number because yes you know on the way here i passed mcdonald's and they have a sign outside that says starting at ten dollars an hour or something like most fifteen dollars an hour and so the thought that we would have a head custodian starting off at 15 an hour just seems off what do we look like compared to other counties in our vicinity as it relates to this position so we did a couple of things and i worked with michelle golden up in finance and rachel and i did in regards to not only the head custodian salaries but we'll also be bringing the custodial salaries to next

049board meeting after uh talking with miss knowles at ashby but what we actually did was we looked to see where they were in 2012-13 okay compared to where our current um employees are that are non-bargain along that same line and we actually projected them up and actually made it to where it is currently so it looks like it's kind of an arbitrary fifteen dollars an hour because it also looks like the minimum wage but it's actually in line with what our other employees are making that are on that non-bargaining salary schedule as well and we also did the same thing i will tell you with our custodials schedule that we'll be bringing to the next board meeting as well um we also took a look at some other districts to see what they did and

050made sure that we were in line with what what their starting was what we also included in that was that we're looking to and i will say with part of the pilot program we're interviewing for the custodial supervisor right now john kraft is working and he has this team together and they actually have a pool of candidates that they're interviewing right now so the next phase is we're going to publish this and open it up advertise it for our head custodians have them come in and be interviewed along the same lines and then of course we'll load up it up to the custodians so that our head custodians hopefully will be starting june 1 and then our our custodians will be starting on june 15 and then we'll be able to um you know put

051our pilot in program in place with the training that they need in order to do that so all that said we do look at i'll say experience with custodians that are coming in and those hit custodians who have possibly worked with us in the past possibly are with abm right now we're hoping to be able to recruit them giving them the experience credit that um you know coming in for that so that's going to be important to recognize as well is this competitive to what abm's offering them right now it is and that's what we get you know they have um proprietary things that they can't necessarily share with us but we have um um done some research i'll i'll leave it at that say yes sir we're hoping to be able to compete with

052that those leads thank you thank you i thank you mr clone mr persis thank you good i'm glad you brought it up uh mr colon also i just wanted to ask you are we giving any thought about um incentive programs uh where these individuals you know if they if their track record is really great they're always cleaning the rooms phenomenally well everything's great you know that they can earn a little more money um i don't know what that would be but it it never hurts to reward people for doing a great job particularly in this area where it's sometimes um not appreciated as much as it as it could be and uh so i'm i'm just throwing it out there yeah if i may um mr kraft and i have talked about the beauty of

053what we actually have set up with abm with our dashboard that we have and requiring our not requiring um encouraging our teachers our our principals everyone to give input and feedback to each one of those is to it almost has a natural incentive base that's built into that so part of the pilot program of what we've talked about is that we want to see what's put in place keep in place that that that dashboard where our teachers have access and are able to get on and give those um up-to-date reports because you all know we get them every day right of the custodial operations and so um we're going to continue that side by side with abm hoping to first of all see how we do compared with abm but also set up that incentive

054program to where if we have some areas that are doing better than others we're able to reward those so that's a very good point yes sir thank you thank you uh thank you mr persis mrs haynes so since we're talking about custodians right now and i know that we're talking about the ones that we're going to bring on and this is what we're looking at is the heck of studying pay i have to say this i'm thankful that we're doing this i believe it's going to work but i'm very frustrated right now because yes i selected my schools based on um you know the ones that had the most tickets i mean it was very obvious but i had that one i had that one other school that had just as many tickets and it's

055become ridiculous because i just don't feel like anybody's showing up to work there and i'm so frustrated by it and i just i'm tired of the excuses because you know i don't put you on all the emails that i send them but you know i just i ask questions like so are you short staffed again tonight did it no one show up but i need one more spot it's what i need and i know you want one more school to be on the pilot let me share and and here's the thing and you probably know which one it is all right yes ma'am i can guess i will say this and it's funny because i'm sure if i ask each of you would all want an additional and dr shanoff and and um had and

056john had a meeting with with abm as late as yesterday in regards to some i'm going to call them hot spots areas we've had a number of concerns from from each of you and um so what we're trying to do is first of all address them individually as we meet and i had another meeting on the phone with the principal and uh of a specific school with apm with the representative and um so it is an issue of first of all workforce and this isn't just us and it's not just abm it's we know it's nationwide our our workforce it's it's a weird time with covid and with what this the government is doing and helping and that kind of thing but um so we're trying to address those issues and i'll put it this

057way not let the gas off the pedal with abm and continuing and um so what we will probably do is is be able to give you maybe at the next board meeting or two an update on what we're doing with abm in regards to that as well as not only just what we're doing with our pilot so but please continue to copy both myself and dr shanoff on those as well so that we can uh be tagging those and addressing them individually thank you um exactly and that's what we heard from our teachers and we heard from our our leaders and and i would love to give you another spot um well i mean i i had a tough time on my high school because i just have two that have had well and get

058this they're the largest two high schools in the entire district okay they hold spot one and two and it goes back and forth between the two of them on any given day and both of them have just not had the service that they need this year it's just constant issues and i get it because they're both very big buildings and everything but you know we deland high had a few more tickets than universities so deland high is where i went but university has just become it's unreal i don't personally know if they've had a day that they have had a full staff there and that's not the case in a number that means yes there are times when there's there's you know this is what i get well two people just didn't show up for

059work one showed up and a half hour later quit and walked away and you're left with one custodian to try to clean a school building that houses that's large enough to house 3600 kids well it can't be done and you know and i appreciate the teachers and the staff there and um karen cena with the principal i mean she has been wonderful she follows up on stuff but like it's just an added burden on her shoulders too that's keeping her from to be able to do so i i just had to put that plug in there because they are they're the two largest schools we have in the entire district and i did i struggled with which one to put and i finally went with just the sheer number of tickets and the one had

060a few more tickets than the other but it's just it's sad what's happening there i agree yes mr cohn as he alluded to you're not alone i actually had a call with mr west mr shanoff and abm on friday one of my schools in my i'm hoping for a change and we put together a plan but for a little while it felt like they had given up and you know that's not you know it's not acceptable it's not you know and i realized the labor market you know they're i mean they just can't get people to work um but you're not alone and we're definitely um you know while while we work in silo because i don't know what your issues you're having until we talk about it here yeah we've got problems which is

061why we're doing what we're doing exactly and i don't know at what point you know do they have to start incentivizing people to come to work i mean it's what we're having to do in all industries right now especially you know not so much the um higher ed but the work the the you know the work the workers the folks who are you know the custodians the kitchen all you know those are the posit we can't i mean positions that before people you know fought for now we're giving sign-on bonuses for so times have changed but you know nonetheless that's at the expense of our schools and that's a problem correct i mean if they can't handle it then they can call kelly i mean i don't know what they would do but you're not

062alone thank you when i retired in 2012 from teaching at new smyrna high that was the last year we had in-house custodians and it was a very sad time one of my campaign promises was to return our own custodians to the classroom and of course when we interviewed at least when i interviewed dr fritz uh of the other two candidates as well that was part of my conversation what would you what would you do um in order to help us get our own people back and to me it's much like what miss haynes was talking about the dining room aid to me this is is very very important because this is the pride of the school it's family i mean i still remember my custodians going up and down my hallway and it's they're part

063of the family of the school so i just want to say thank you and it feels really good in order to make sure that this promise has been kept so i know we have to start slowly because of finances and tweak everything because we want to do it right but thank you and when you do have a fourth school open i've got a i have a recommendation too okay okay well thank you all right thank you okay did [Music] i have a recommendation that we approve the salary salary schedule the salary schedule uh for the non-bargaining is there a motion to approve it makes a motion that we approve okay miss haynes has made the motion to approve is there a second i'll second thank you burnett has made the second um miss schultz are

064there any um comments for uh public participation okay thank you um all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please say nay motion is carrie thank you very much mr west okay we're moving on to 19.03 i'm going to ask mr pendley come forward and board and for the audience um you know this board did a very good job of making sure our students were safe and our staff was safe throughout the year but as things have come forward there's been a desire of this board to express a potential revision or adjustment in our 503 policy which is space covering so at this point i'll turn it over to manager regarding our current face covering policy let me recap several occurrences over the past few weeks on april 27th the school board

065directed the superintendent and mr pendley our school district attorney to begin revising our current policy in accordance to state statutes on monday may 3rd the governor issued two executive orders addressing coveted restrictions for the general public neither executive order directly had an impact upon school districts afterwards the florida department of education issued guidance to school districts for potential next steps this school board takes our role very seriously in an acting policy that's what we do we enact policy and protocol dr fritz runs the district through our vision we will hold this meeting with the purpose of revising our current face covering policy so that further face covering practice is voluntarily permitted for student staff parents in our community these revisions will be implemented expeditiously okay and dr pendley has been called by dr um fritz

066and so we will and now we have a presentation from dr pendley we will discuss it and before we vote we will have public participation thank you mr pendley thank you madam chair dr fretts board members uh as you recall from our work session this morning we've had an opportunity to bring forth today a request that the board uh authorized for advertising revisions to policy 503 which is the current mandatory face covering policy regarding mask wearing by students staff visitors vendors on our campuses the direction of the board was that we make that a voluntary permissive policy rather than mandatory so the draft you have before you after hearing comments this morning at work session revises the mandatory policy to make it permissive the word must obviously is and mandatory is taken out we did

067revise the language concerning encouraging individuals to substantially comply with authoritative or controlling government issued health standards we included the language in paragraph two that the superintendent upon advice guidance or direction of state officials would report timely to the board any significant escalation or emergency requiring reconsideration of the permissive policy we retained the definitions as we discussed new changes there clarifying that the face covering would be intended space coverings to be voluntarily worn would be those that were intended for health or safety purpose striking the exceptions and retaining paragraph c for the district to maintain a supply of personal protective equipment for those students staff or members who choose to [Music] wear a mask while on campus and i revised policy paragraph d to make the policy effective upon adoption of the school board so if

068the board's pleasure and direction is to revise the policy we will advertise that for a period of statutory requirement and then if you choose to adopt that at the june 22nd meeting i don't have my calendar out june 22 meeting the policy would then be effective immediately okay thank you mr president i did at the chair's request seek out uh guidance from any uh orders and there is on january the 29th of this year the center for disease control through the department of health and human services amended title 40 or code code of federal regulation 42 70.2 71.31 and 71.32 to include that person's must wear mask covering the mouth and nose when traveling on public conveyances this is an order that was implemented by the director of the division of global migration and quarantine

069it's not signed off it was adopted into the code of federal regulations through the the authority of the division of global migration and quarantine there is an argument to be made that that does not apply to public schools as it is not a public conveyance but it has been interpreted to apply to public schools okay so it i didn't quite understand what you said you said it doesn't apply it does apply to public schools but not to i have some concerns let me just put it that way about the adoption of this code of federal regulation because it comes from a division of the centers for disease control that would not appear at first blush to apply to public schools throughout the country i have problems with a director of global migration ordering the school

070board of volusia county to do anything but having said that this order has been interpreted to apply to public schools throughout the united states meaning that students individuals writing public school buses are subject to this regulation that public that while writing transportation must be worn okay so do you know if other districts are aware of this as well i can't speak to other districts but i can tell you that i stay in pretty constant communication with my colleagues throughout the state and no one has raised this as an issue at this point and i have not raised it with my colleagues yeah i think as we go forward within the next month by june 22nd we should find out i'm sure it will be okay thank you maybe we're the the first to raise the

071issue especially on our school buses um are there any questions for mr yesterday if i think probably the reason that people have not or at least not people attorneys for districts have not been as involved in this is because we have all had mandatory face covering policies pretty much to this point with the exception of some small and rural districts that do not so for the majority of districts that are our size this has not been an issue this being the cdc order for bus transportation has not been an issue to this point because we've all had mandatory face covering policies anyway yes okay thank you very much sir uh questions for mr pendley any questions for mr panning i i i did some research i think it's something we're going to have to look

072up because it um a few of the national organizations have stated that it doesn't apply to that they're exempted possibly i'll say possibly exempted from that order because um school bus transportation is not subject to that emergency order under blah blah blah so i think that's something we're going to have to research um [Music] because we just don't know the answer to that question right now well i i could just add to that madam chair the language of the order speaks to a conveyance operator transporting persons into and within the united states so it it really does read like someone cruise ships or continental buses coming across international borders that sort of things and we are not a conveyance operator i think that's probably the argument that's to be made there we don't hire we're

073not a for hire we're not running a transportation service for hire to transport individuals around and that may be the the basis for it but i will tell you that if you go on to the cdc website it does say specifically that it applies to public schools okay sir who do we contact for further explanation and clarification probably the attorney general of the united states of the state of the state okay all right thank you very much uh questions for mr pendley comments from the board is there a motion yes but we we have to have a motion and a second and then before we vote we have public participation i'd like to make a motion that we actually repeal the current face mask policy [Applause] excuse me that will not occur we are respecting

074each other's views not everyone thinks the same way if you choose to clap you're more than welcome to but not in our room please we are going to have a civil discussion thank you to finish my motion i'd like to make a motion that we repeal the current mandatory face covering policy and allow basically by repealing it we allow each individual and or as far as adults go and parents with children that are younger to make their own personal decision on whether or not they would like to wear a mask moving forward and i am willing to go with a repeal that would start effective monday june 7th based on what was said earlier today in the workshop okay i would second that okay in a second there's been a motion made by um miss

075uh sorry did you miss yeah jamie haynes vice chair but yes it was also our vice chair thank you so much um she has made the motion to repeal our current emergency uh policy 503 but that does not address what's before the board right now correct yeah okay i just want to make sure everything is clear so it's it's she's talking about something that we already have on the table and you are seconding mr purses the second of the motion and i'm glad that you clarified that um i i see them as two separate issues yes so two separate issues and that and the reason for that date just so the public understands that we'll maintain our current policy through the end of the school school year our current policy of wearing a mask okay

076so our current emergency order of mandating masks will occur through them through that time which then effect through the end of this school year okay now i'd like to ask mr doran is this okay to do this in this process when we have um 1903 before us uh yes i i think it's fine to do this um we presently advertised policy 503 as an amendment to the existing policy um so we would have to treat that if you're going to go fly i agree there are two separate issues this motion is different from what we're considering here so uh if this were to pass and the board were still inclined to have a policy in place that addressed the issues as set forth in the proposed amendment we would treat it as a new brand

077new policy and not an amendment because we would have repealed the underlying substance and so we just have to be clear on the record that that's what we would do so this if we're repealing the 503 what would this new policy that we've come for revision what would that be called well it could be 503 because i mean if you repeal 503 and take all the substance out of it but it didn't exist we could we could move forward with a new policy is set forth i don't know how much you would accomplish yeah any comments mr penley i could see giving it a new policy number as to permissive face covering um i would be hesitant to substitute a different type of policy for 503. that's fine yeah i mean it makes it clear

078and i would have to check our policy book to see exactly which next policy this would fall under okay would you have to bring that back to us or can you just adjust it before this goes out for advertising i think it has to come back it has to come back so it delay so yes sir so earlier today i said you know as we're considering this and and i think there's a consensus to have this ready for summer programs my question would be how would we so if we repeal this one do we have a meeting between now and then that we can possibly add something so that summer programs so that folks are covered for the optional because right now we would have no optional policy and so what would it be that

079first meeting in june that we would pass an emergency something or another just to carry us through in other words providing provisions for folks who want to wear optional masks to be able to wear them carrying us through whether we add it to the dress code whether we i mean basically what we're saying is if you want to wear a mask wear it so that would at least cover the policy it will allow the superintendent to not have to simply turn a blind eye until we're able to procedurally get this through yeah and [Music] is that an option so let's say we decide okay we're going to repeal this as of monday the 7th okay our meeting isn't until when it's right then too the next day so we would have to enact arguably an

080emergency policy to allow for face coverings to be optional so that would cover that our meeting is actually on monday the 7th it's on monday the 7th so even better so that same day we would uh and in good faith we can advertise that because i mean it's an emergency order but we know what we intend on doing at which point that would provide that coverage for until we develop it into a longer policy whether we plug it into the dress code or leave it on its own or whatever we do okay mr pendley unfortunately madam chair a permissive mass policy would not meet the definition of an emergency requiring that the board take action for a period of 90 days that's what an emergency means that and keep in mind back july of last

081year we were under a state of emergency imposed by the governor and by the state of florida so that's why we were able to adopt an emergency policy pursuant to your home rule provisions of the florida constitution i don't see how this would be an emergency okay um but there's yes sir and so going back to the same reasons we did it back when it was for the help it was for the health and safety of students and so for the students who feel that wearing a face covering is essential for their health and safety it would be the same argument i just don't want to not have a policy madam chair it's not a matter of not having the policy it's a matter of how you adopt it if you're using chapter 120 rule

082making procedures to adopt it i see no problem if you're using chapter 120 emergency rule-making problem this doesn't meet the definition of an emergency do you understand the distinction yes sir do you think that we maybe we have it reversed that we should adopt this first and then repeal what we have already or is this okay is her motion this is this is going to amend and modify the existing policy so i don't know how you would repeal anything once you amended it it would be okay yes i just want to make sure that the procedure is is appropriate i was wondering uh rather because ruben makes a an excellent point and and so the one way to do it is you just don't enforce the policy but the could there be another way of

083not policy wise but superintendent directive is there any procedural thing it's not school board policy but could the superintendent just say on a connected to all the summer school kids who are attending and to their parents to let them know that those students who wish to wear a mask mascara a medical mask will be allowed throughout summer school i mean just just hearing it from from your voice to me is is enough i i would definitely want some legal counsel on that one because not so much what would happen during that time what would happen what could happen legally after that time if someone came forward and said well you gave him permission not to do it at that time so i mean you know i i defer to mr pendley mr doran to kind

084of guide us through the legal process on that but i do take your meaning what you're saying you're talking about relaxing that requirement yeah just so it would be optional and and then when june 22nd came it really wouldn't be any change if this policy passed that just continue on there is one point madame trade like to make in this regard it's a fairly simple policy procedure to modify your dress code policy as it applies to students but keep in mind this policy applies to vendors visitors staff on campus this is a campus safety to mr colon's point earlier you did adopt this as a health safety and welfare measure back in july to address the campus environment your modification to the dress code policy only applies to students that doesn't apply to into other

085individuals coming onto campus okay so there is emotion on the floor before we vote we have public participation is there anyone that we can participate and of course we have a five o'clock certain which is the for the general public so we may have to interrupt this let's see i'll just call the general interest these are these are all green green yeah okay we will have to interrupt um the general uh the public participation for this specific board item for the five o'clock certain for the uh items of general interest because that is a certain is that art with everyone we just take a break and then come back and do public i'm sorry can we take a break and just come back and do public so we're not pregnant we can do that as

086well we can take a 15-minute break is that right with everyone all right let's have a 13-minute break we're adjourned you oh everybody back to what she says thank you for coming back to those are online and those in the audience we're now in public participation for 19.03 discussing our mask policy so what i'm going to do is con call the first person to come up before the board to the dyas please speak into the microphone state your name in what area of the county you are from you have three minutes in which to speak at the end of three minutes if you have not finished you need to wind everything up at three minutes now the timer is on the screen if you continue to speak i will have to cut you off in

087order favor of time madam chair just for clear clarification so the people that are speaking right now are not speaking about the mask they're speaking about something other than mass correct this is for five o'clock certain general information we do have those correct michelle i have the masked ones in front of me we're at five o'clock certainly thank you mr purses all right no no that's okay that's okay we have seven who would wish to speak for the general interests of public education in volusia county uh mike maples will come first and then after mike cameron pure mr maples come on out have a seat right in front sir enjoy excuse me is it say 503 yes sir okay i'm sorry this is not microphone we have to put you this is 503. so i'm

088sorry sir we're going to have to put you in the different come back oh you did both this is for general do you have um you have three minutes for general comments about the public education volusia county he's here for masks okay what we're doing first is for five o'clock certain we have to have it yeah i'll add you to my mask list thank you so much sir i appreciate very much thank you all right thank you so much for your patience uh cameron for fear is first and then terry fuhrer have a seat speaking to the microphone state your name in the area uh in the county you're from you have three minutes my name is cameron fuhrer i am from ormond beach um i used to be a student at sea breeze high

089school i recently transferred to mainland but i left because of coaches the way that they handled things um i don't think a coach should be taking things to social media thank you uh coach molo posted on social media a picture of her holding a poster that i sent that i passed around um that she claims was put in her yard with 400 forks on a seabreeze softball facebook page i feel that it was intentionally done to make me look like i was harassing her at the very least it was implying that the mainland softball team was the picture was taken at mainland the day of the mainland and seabreeze game um i went to mainland from seabreeze it was to get away from the harassment and have a fresh start without judgment therefore i made

090no reference regarding issues with seabreeze athletics i would like to have it formally noted and documented that i feel threatened and harassed by coach molo's i also want it formally documented and noted that molo was obviously talking to this season's team which only four were returners i had multiple people tell me that they had the new girls the freshmen were talking about me and how my mom was allegedly trying to get her fired which only would come from coach molo talking about it because these were private meetings no one knew about our private meetings or anything going on between us other than coach molo and the administration there and me and my family i also want it formally documented that i feel threatened and harassed by the seabreeze softball team due to them talking about

091me i also feel threatened by the fact that coach mello went to the players from last season discussed a private meeting and then work then gave these players a statement sheet and told them to write down statements regarding the private issue and intent to cause more negative reflection on my character i don't think that any of this is how a coach should behave and like i said i left mainland for this exact reason but it's continuing on and it's when is it gonna stop i mean especially the post like really you're a coach and a teacher don't you think that you preach that you think before you post but was that thinking before she posted i mean personally i don't think it was but thank you very much miss terry pure and then after miss

092fear cheryl taffy good afternoon to state your name and um the area of town you're from and speaking to the microphone please you have three minutes kind of remove my mouse let me take it off if you wish um my name is terry fuhrer um from ormond beach i would like to ask in regards to the poster and the comment that went around mr purses were you aware that one of your teachers and your coaches had gone on mainland property and made such a post and put it on social media out there that has a sea breeze name attached to it were you aware of this ma'am at this time during public participation the board does not respond but we're here to listen to you okay well i'd also like to mention i do wonder

093if miss burnett knows that seabreeze was going and posting such um posts on um while they were on mainland property okay like i said she posted it on mainland property it um the post and facebook page has the sea breeze name on it i believe that she did this in hopes that the softball coach would see this and think negatively of cameron and think that cameron did it rollins and montgomery were both in attendance at that game i can only assume that they had no problem with her conduct cameron brought to the attention regarding the ad which is montgomery mr miller and mr rawlings how she was being treated by molo and was asked for help in the matter not only was she was it not received her concerns were not even acknowledged and were

094ignored obviously cameron and myself are still being talked negatively about molo to the current team as they have been heard going around saying that i am trying to get molo fired cameron and molo in oh cameron and myself in no way wanted issues from sea breeze to follow her over to mainland i feel that the athletic director mr montgomery and molo went out of their way to bring these issues to the attention of the athletic director and coaches at mainland regarding some jerseys from last year instead of mr montgomery contacting me um stating that he thought they didn't have the jerseys which they had he went out of his way to contact the mainland athletic director and asked the mainland athletic director to contact me never once did he reach out to me via email

095via phone or anything before he brought mainland into the issue which i still believe is in the effort to get mainland in the loop of the things that happened at sea breeze and i believe it was intentional um the requesting of statements molo gave a form to four prior players and asked them to give a statement as my daughter said of something that happened in a private meeting i believe this was very unfair to these players you you give them a form when you and want to turn it back into you when you know that you know they she controls their playing time also do they have legal permission from their parents to do that thank you very much we appreciate you and your daughter coming in to talk to us this evening thank you

096very much miss taft cheryl taffy and then carol sawyer good evening good evening volusia county school board superintendent and parents i addressed the school board this afternoon late afternoon mostly to let parents know about florida's best kept secret the hope scholarship every parent must weigh heavily on the substance of the education that their children are receiving and be very alert as to the environment in which they are receiving it for concerned and vigilant parents the state of florida has generously created the hope scholarship in order for those parents to take firm control of their children's educational environment when they deem necessary this scholarship was created to protect our children from bullying school bullying in the state of florida means any kind of threat intimidation harassment physical attack by other students teachers administrators counselors bus drivers

097and even if and even a contractor if they are on school property this includes a bus stop bullying need not be defined simply as physical abuse the abuse can be psychological as well our schools were never intended to be for political indoctrination they were established to teach fundamentals that our children could use to develop their own ideas and opinions in some areas students are being taught feelings not substance or silence science and some instruction is about subliminal subliminal hate and subconscious racism subconscious racism may sound familiar to most in this room as teachers were accused of it in a news journal article when accused of subconscious racism while teaching their black students government schools have assumed the role to teach children things that they feel parents aren't teaching at home uh and take they take

098precious time away from teaching academics instead they are injecting sex education which includes graphic uh masturbation for 10 years for 10 year olds they teach anti-american the critical race theory 1619 project which uh defines and transforms our country's history and have numerous posters that are inappropriate in the classroom in fact after the initial motion failed to have a designated week for lbgtq health awareness here in volusia county schools one of our very own teachers felt emboldened enough to show a video to students surrounding gender identity and fluidity this all meets parents definition of bullying intimidation or harassment the hope scholarship empowers parents of bully children to transfer to an alternative government school or to a qualified private school of their choosing it provides an average of seven to eight thousand per student per year to

099do so and the award is not income based and only requires that an applicant declare that their child had a qualifying incident in the school the parent had the parents have absolute authority to determine what they believe to be the threat imitation uh intimidation or harassment and a parent only has to report the qualifying incident and complete the hope scholarship notification form thank you miss taffy we really appreciate you coming to let us know thank you so much miss carol sawyer good evening chairwoman comfort board members dr fritz my name is carol sawyer i know you all know it by now from new smyrna beach i would just like to revisit the mou that askme has submitted regarding the bonus of a thousand dollars for the employees that have persevered throughout this pandemic some employees

100have contracted the virus and came back to work and others have had to quarantine some several times and others have probably had the virus but don't even know it but your employees kept coming back to work because they knew it was the right thing to do your employees persevered so our students would not have to suffer most of your employees will be ending their jobs the first week in june this would be a perfect time for you to reward these employees with this bonus let's not wait till negotiations take place because that could be into next school year governor desantis has rewarded all his first responders with a thousand dollar bonus and he has asked all the schools to give their instructional employees a thousand dollar bonus giving this a thousand dollar bonus to all

101your employees would be a nice way to send them off for the summer to tell them that you appreciate the work throughout this pandemic and working through the entire school year after all isn't that what all the esser funds are for pandemic related expenses thank you for listening thank you very much miss sawyer miss albert good evening good afternoon chairman cuthbert members of the board dr fritz members of the audience first i'd like to say uh congratulations to miss mahani miss hazel mr west and all of the folks that are working so hard in hr to recruit new employees to our district they're doing a great job but i want to point out as dr fritz did we don't have a recruitment problem we have a retention problem who wouldn't want to come and work

102here if they met christie in the gang but what we know is we're not keeping our people here so we need to do a really intense work around that and one of the ways that we can do that is something that we talked about this morning which was insurance so i want to talk to you about that in the time that i have romanian and i want to thank you for the conversation that occurred this morning it was heartfelt and i could tell it was genuine and i will say never before have we seen that the members of the committee were invited to address the board and so dr fritz thank you again for that i'm curious about one thing that was mentioned though by the cfo florida healthcare he mentioned that there was a

103a return in premiums of 702 000 that's nearly three-quarters of a million dollars that he said was returned to volusia county schools where's that money did you know that that came back none of the committee members had any idea that that money was returned to us um it surprised every one of them when was it received and and where did it go was it folded back into the insurance line item to help benefit the employees is it included in the financial update for march that we're getting ready to see later i don't know and i'll just say this the sliding scale that was mentioned for our employees who are currently making poverty level wages is a great idea but it's a band-aid it's a band-aid that's not going to fix the larger problem that we

104have and that larger problem is the poverty level wages that the largest employer in this county is paying to its employees you're absolutely right we can't compete with mcdonald's and target and buckies and that's sad because it's choice so let's not worry about creating a sliding scale mechanism to assist folks with our premiums let's fix the insurance problem that we have and let's pay people a living wage because a rising tide raises all boats thank you very much miss albert that concludes five o'clock certain time and now we will hear from public participation based on the motion that is on the floor uh before the school board and that concerns our face mass policy again everyone is going to be we we ourselves do not respond but we want to hear your concerns there will

105be no clapping and no voices we don't do it we don't expect you to um and i will name the first person to come up to sit at the desk welcome you speaking to the microphone everybody needs to hear you not only here but online as well and then i will uh also announce the second person to come up so that person is ready to move so we can make sure everybody has enough time to speak so first up is carmen ting and second is stephanie walton is miss ting here is there anyone out time okay thank you hello come on up have a seat your children can have a seat as well thank you uh speaking to the microphone just tell us your name in the area of the county you're from and you

106have three minutes okay thank you i am um carmen ting or from deland florida i can't hear you man you don't have to wear the mask and then pull the microphone a little bit closer to you that might help okay thank you okay carmen ting i'm from deland florida so i'm here today to speak out on the kids being forced to learn with a mask on i have sucked it up i have tried to be okay with my son learning a virus won't touch him if he puts on his mask in the hallways to make sure that it's up to his eyeballs so he doesn't lose points on a card that rewards him with eminem's at the end of the week i have tried to be okay that when he steps outside the virus won't

107touch him as long as him and his classmates remain three feet apart because of course six feet is now gone what great news i have tried to be okay seeing his smile hit him from this world i try to be okay when he tells me it's hard to breathe when his teacher makes them keep it on tight i have tried to tell myself it's almost over we can make it but i'm done saying it's okay this is not okay i'm not okay with your staff members also insecure taking off their mask of the car lines which i have pictures and these other beautiful eyes staring me while they're covered and shamed to breathe they're being taught breathing is naturally dangerous but what are you allowing as a school system is much worse what a mentally

108dysfunctional thing to do children in the developing stages of life they need to say they need to see the mouse so rules for you but not for them we have three and a half weeks left of school and i'm asking you to please let these kids breathe let them enjoy these last weeks about panic or confusion where when the virus could pop up so far you've taught them a virus doesn't attack at lunch virus doesn't attack you when you shut the door and use the bathroom the virus doesn't bother you when you go to pee you need a lot to take off your mask the virus does not follow you with snack time it doesn't follow you when you get inside your car the virus doesn't follow you at home doesn't follow you when you

109sleep but when you wake up you go to school here comes the virus this virus will follow you in the hallways at school so stay safe they say mess up say three feet away use toxic hand sanitizer that's healthy if you can honestly sleep at night knowing this system is actually benefiting our kids the kids that you say you're supposed to serve teacher protect and i humbly and i deeply ask you to get on your knees and ask god to open up your eyes these are hurting children mentally and physically every single day because of your choices i am begging you take this mask off now not next year not tomorrow now these kids need you they need you to care about them thank you for your time thank you very much miss king stephanie

110walton and then after miss walton is anna hansen right here yes ma'am please do hi i'm stephanie walton and i live in deland my kids attend deland schools and you know i just came probably to speak on a little bit different level of what's happening right now i'm kind of amazed that we all stood here and pledge allegiance at the beginning of this meeting we pledged to liberty for all yet we have a group of people conditioning and shaming parents students and other teachers alike who are fighting for their own personal medical liberties i support this board removing these masks from these children immediately but more than that i'm here to speak regarding the toxic environment that has been created by this mass policy sorry excuse me i have screenshots from volusia united educators facebook

111page that would hopefully embarrass some of the people that are in this very room i have screenshots of teachers who say they will contort a non-behavioral issue into a behavioral issue by calling it insubordination and writing referrals i have screenshots from someone in this room calling parents in this county stupid lazy and hoping our children don't procreate at all i'm happy to share them with you and i'd hope that all of you would find them as disgusting as i do the very next day after the governor issued the executive orders that everybody's arguing over um i'm just going to put this away my daughter who is a very loving kind good person i don't even know how i raised her she's just amazing was so disappointed when she went to school the next day because

112her favorite teacher unprompted asked the class what they knew about this order the kids 8th graders they don't care about the order they don't know she proceeded to tell them that it was shameful uncaring and awful of them to remove their mask even if the governor's order said that they could to me that's just insane the conditioning the bullying it has to stop we're not ignorant because we choose our own medical choices for ourselves this is a medical device we're not ignorant we're not stupid our children deserve to have children we deserve to have a voice and the constant bullying and conditioning and the the division has got to stop and it's it's from the adults and it's from the very people who stood up here years ago and begged for a uniform to stop

113bullying and they're the biggest bullies out there and if you get on social media and you take the time to read it you're going to see it and i hope it disgusts you and i hope that people call them to task on it there's no reason for it we're all adults we can have conversations we can talk we can appreciate each other's opinions we can appreciate science we can talk about the science we can debate the science but saying that people shouldn't procreate i have other parents saying yes i'll shame you i'll shame your kids thank you very much miss welton yeah we appreciate you coming uh miss anna hannon or henson and then after uh anna is lydia sorry good evening hello my name is anna hannon my son goes to seabreeze i represent

114him and all students and i stand with moms for liberty volusia moms for liberty is dedicated to upholding american values by unifying educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government we are parents grandparents and members of the community we hold leaders accountable spread awareness oppose government overreach promote liberty engage on key issues i am so disappointed in the motions and the discussion i've heard today it is beyond confusing when it shouldn't have to be the outcome was a new policy for liability it is not about the kids totally repealing the current policy and not adding another one would have the best the kid's best interest in mind this week the florida department of education board of governors announced that florida university system will return to pre-coveted operations fsu unf

115and yesterday ucf made masks optional effective immediately today you all have the opportunity to show the children that you do care about them you have the opportunity to show the parents the constituents that you do care and that you are listening to the majority that you are not ruled and influenced by the teachers union that you're not manipulated by the t union and that there are threats to walk out if the policy was repealed at this point you're showing volusia county and the rest of the state that you had to be told by the governor the board of governors the commissioner and the surgeon general to work on making masks optional don't wait until the last possible minute to make mask optional there are 23 counties that are mask optional i would be ashamed if

116we were the 67th county to repeal a mask policy pinellas county repealed their mass policy effective immediately and so can you show volusia county that you decided on your own to repeal the policy now based on your integrity you can show the kids that you are loyal to them as opposed to the teachers by repealing the mass policy for the last three weeks of school the kids went above and beyond to protect all of the adults they put their own health in danger for all adults when they were low risk for being affected by the virus themselves we voted for you to represent us but really to represent our kids who can't vote today you should go above and beyond for them and be a leader in the state and show good character by repealing

117the mass policy effective today and not implementing another policy like the universities we should return to pre-covet operations like ms haynes said in the workshop the parents should make those decisions the parents bill of rights is your new mass policy ms hannon thank you very much we appreciate your comments uh miss lydia suarey and then amy simeon hi sweetheart would you mind can someone help her bring the microphone further to her so she can be heard thank you dr belgman thank you please state your name and what town you live in and then you have three minutes in which to speak my name is lydia sorry i live in port orange i want masks to go away we can't breathe through them there's not so much air in school we have to wear our masks

118a lot and we can't like speak so much like like without like so much air and we don't want masks we want to get rid of them today we don't want them anymore okay okay that's that's thank you so much and i like your wings so thank you so much you were very brave coming up amy simeon and then after amy is kindly irish good afternoon you can adjust it thank you hi my name is amy simonian and i'm speaking today as a parent of three volusia county school district students from deltona and as a school district employee as a substitute teacher as a sub it's extremely difficult to understand and hear children when you call on them in the classroom when they speak the inside of their masks are brown and disgusting when you

119give them a new one they are too big for their faces kids especially in the esc rooms leave them laying around kids chew on them it's cruel to make the kids keep them on their faces all day they don't wear them properly rendering them ineffective anyways when dropping off children to the cafeteria for lunch the plastic dividers are unsanitary and absolutely disgusting the children sit down and hang their masks up on the side of the divider when they leave the next class comes in and hangs their mask where the previous students just were transferring germs to each other all day every day they also have hardened food on them that never gets cleaned would you like to sit in an unsanitary plastic divider in front of your face with food weeks old on it i

120don't think you would teachers are not sitting behind plastic dividers in the teacher's lounge neither should students it sickens me as a parent to know my child is sitting every day in an unappetizing setting having to eat lunch two of my children have to wear masks all day and one only has to wear it in the hallway and away from his desk he goes to a charter school my two all-day masked children have been sick multiple times this year with very high fevers and heavy congestion my one who gets breathing freedom at his desk has now been homesick once a year so who what masks are not protecting our children from germs i am worried you will place legal wording in your policy for next year to reinstate the mass mandate at any point for

121any reason parents want reassurance this will not be the case in the future going forward in the past the school district has made statements to parents they have not followed through on and you have made it clear to parents that you don't want our involvement at least that's what it feels like and here are my examples the school board holds meetings at 3 30 a very inconvenient time for parents to attend and to make public comments many of our children are still in school and parents are work middle school gets out at 4 15. the school board asked parents to fill out a survey on new start and end times they ended the survey before the deadline was advertised and then announced new times that were not even on the survey the mass mandate was

122supposed to last 90 days and as an emergency policy two weeks last march has turned into 14 months a few board meetings ago opening up the playgrounds for recess was discussed and none have been opened three times a week my first grader gets recess which consists of walking alone with a mat with no mask on or walking next to a friend with a mask on in 90 plus degree heat it is hot out now that is not recess that's cruel and let's not forget the times that you board members have sat here during meetings which we have pictures of with no masks on please rescind the policy now starting now you are not above the governor the emergency policy is covering now until july first when the bill goes into effect you cannot cater to

123the teachers union anymore you need to cater to the parents who elected you we voted for you to speak for us and the children please do the right thing today thank you so much ma'am um kenley irish and then um janae irish hello um pull your chair in and can you pull the microphone down okay there you go just state your name and where you live my name is kenli irish i live in porter in florida first i'd like to say that i live in a free country for one reason to have a right and to say what i wish to say my right has been taken away by people that don't even know me tell me to put on a mess i am not liking the mask you go to the grocery store you

124touch something and then you decide to put it back no one wipes it down when you go to school and you touch chunking all sudden like a bunch of people come wiping it down it does not make any sense also kids have been breathing in carbon dioxide it's a gas that no one should have to breathe in we have been breathing in half the carbon dioxide of our fresh air that's what the mass can do i've seen pictures of mass that have been swapped germs can get on them like crazy they're not protecting us they're giving us more germs you cough in your mask and your rooms just stay there all day we've been wearing them seven hours a day when it gets hot outside and we're wearing the mask that it's not cool all

125of us kids should not have to suffer from wearing a mask that people that don't even know us the governor and surgeon general said that we are no longer supposed to be wearing the mask they are now optional but we are still wearing them by people that don't even know us it is so unfair to all these kids that have to suffer suffer at school for reading them we should not have to wear something that we do not want to wear you people are not our parents our parents tell us what we want to wear they are in charge of us not the school board we should have a right to say what we want to do our rights have been taken away by people that don't even notice thank you for your time thank

126you very much excuse be careful be careful thank you very much miss irish janae irish and then tim movie that's my daughter she's amazing my name is janae irish and my children are five and seven and they attend school in port orange board members please remove the mandatory mass policy today the governor's executive order and the florida surgeon general's rescinding mass should be enough for the board to change the policy to optional parents should have the right to decide what is best for their child not the school board please unmask the children please allow the children and teachers to see each other's smiling faces the masks are dirty they are not wearing them properly the world health organization does not even recommend men mass for children the cdc recommends things it does not mandate please

127unmask the children thank you very much miss irish i think it's tim movie and then phyllis strausenberg i apologize if i mispronounced your name sir moony okay thank you good afternoon board members good afternoon my name is tim mooney from deltona i'm going to read you something from the nuremberg trials mr han and goran how do you convince the german people to accept all this he replied it was easy and has nothing to do with nazism the only thing a government needs to turn people into slaves is fear if you can find something to scare them you can make them do anything you want well folks the time for the fear-mongering and propagandic crap has come to an end sir even though the mainstream media has tried to silence the people and the scientists with

128their censoring and fact checkers the kuwait 19 virus came to the world from the labs in wuhan china with the help of mad scientists several of these scientists are now under the microscopes themselves they have told us to mask up and stay apart and shut down our schools for a calming virus called the common cold it was altered by means of gain of function this worked for them for a while until we figured out the virus and who was the target of the virus this virus was a biological attack on the whole world the virus is easily controlled and no danger to 99.98 percent of the population of the united states strange how the flu viruses are nil but yet today schools school boards across the country have been pushing the mask wearing mandate to

129the max if you tell i could tell the school board members of volusia county that the parents and the students of volusia county schools are totally fed up with this nonsense you're making our kids sick from the masks and dirty air in your schools your older school buildings are riddled with mold and mildew and other pathogens that are not healthy this situation is easily remedied at a very reasonable cost sunshine and fresh air for our kids will keep the virus cases to a minimum masking kids up only does the following damage compromised cognitive performance immunosuppression headaches lower blood oxygen levels buildup of carbon dioxide levels shortness of breath toxicity inflammation self-contamination increase in stress hormone levels increased muscle tension chronic stress fear mood disturb disturbances insomnia fatigue viral infections anxiety depression and hypertension and cardiovascular

130disease thank you goes on and on thank you sir sir you're excused your three minutes is up sir thank you so much miss josenburg and then ryan for now good evening my name is phyllis thank you i apologize for mispronouncing your name would you mind speaking into the microphone thank you so much i guess it's very simple for me i don't have a big long dialogue i can only say you heard our next generation speak and they spoke loudly and they spoke emphatically and they spoke very articulately they weren't the mask removed i'm a grandmother my youngest one is 54 years old i don't know about all this school stuff i do know you have one member on your board that home teaches and yet says he does research the only way you can do

131research is if you put masks on your children seven hours a day five days a week throughout the whole school year to see the impact it has on our children my grandson my youngest one has asthma he walked out without a mask even though he has a physician's excuse simply because he doesn't want the peer pressure it's understandable he wants to be like the other children and be accepted with the other children remove the mask listen to the next generation they are very wise coming up thank you for your time thank you for yours ma'am ryan for now and then sean smith is mr frenel here is there anyone outside for now there we go hello sir have a seat i'll make sure you speak into the microphone tell us your name in the area

132of the county from which you're from most certainly good evening my name is ryan favreau and my son goes to south daytona elementary the reason for me speaking today is while you guessed about removing the masks off our children by now you've all been given plenty of time to collaborate make honest scientific fact-based decisions decisions that are loudly represented by the people you've listened to nurses doctors parents grandparents everyday american citizens speak right before your eyes you've been sent countless amounts of information backing up every single one of these claims yet we're still met with the same roadblocks and i hope that changes today now i understand that all of you are for harming our children so i just want to ask one simple question to those holding back from allowing our children to breathe

133fresh air at school for those that still think strapping a piece of fabric to a child's face is actually a good idea even after knowing children can even get or transmit covet so who are you protecting and what are you so scared of from this side of the table from the view of the majority from the view of the people who've been out working never allowed the quarantine because our jobs were a necessity unable to be done virtual being on the front lines during this entire pandemic it seems you're protecting your own self-interest protecting your own emotions and feelings instead of protecting those who elected you don't forget not long ago you were so happy to call all these people heroes during the pandemic if you're curious this is the moment that will make or

134break your reelection make no mistake how you handle this important situation will define your career i am well aware of the idea to make mass optional next year so let me ask you this if we live in a free country the united states of america landed the free then masks were always optional optional hence the cdc's recommendation not mandate this is just another over step to keep control we do not need another piece of paper to define this basic freedom that we already enjoy everywhere else we walk besides our own school i am telling you you must rescind this ridiculous policy today it helps no one right now the entire world is looking to florida for leadership it's your chance to make your mark in history and give everyone a reason to be proud of

135our elected leaders again thank you and god bless thank you very much sir uh sean smith and then crystal mcclure [Music] would you mind putting the microphone closer to you thank you we'd like to hear what you have to say i wouldn't personally thank the members of the board specific there we go that was the issue um that have represented not only the people in your district but those across volusia county and volusia county schools and the thousands of students across the county because it's been clear that you stand alone we have fought tirelessly to end the masks in school first we fought based on scientific data but that didn't seem to matter and after the chancellor of education the state surgeon general and our governor chose to liberate kids that too doesn't matter to

136this board what i don't understand is what is the difference between now and june 7th it's just a piece of paper please consider a motion to rescind this mass policy 503 effective today the kids have asked for it they are begging for it teachers are ready for it and i think the majority as opposed to the minority is really worth taking into consideration at this point in time thank you thank you very much crystal mcclure is next and then mike maples [Music] hi my name is crystal and my kids go to deland area schools um today i listen to your workshop meeting and um i was heartbroken miss zanes mentioned some problems with some kids having asthma attacks after gem that was my child no one called 9-1-1 that was my child the child that's

137not getting her iep that sits in the back that doesn't get our work done is my child you mentioned june 7th june 22nd july 1st do you know what the difference is a piece of paper a piece of paper when you said you need a policy to protect those who are masked but our civilian master unmastered not being protected right now but they're being bullied by teachers over and over and over again my asthmatic child's teacher told his friend the reason why he can't wear a mask is because he has some made-up disease why give him five medications a day okay five and they're not cheap my child with the iep was told to call katie kelly i'm sure you know her i said no i'm speaking to my school board but you know what

138i'm done speaking i've begged i've pleaded you've seen science we shouldn't go by cdc because it changes daily the only thing you should change daily is your underwear it doesn't make sense that you can look at the science and see that 99 of children are not dying by this disease but yet some kids will actually need to be protected by being unmasked most kids all kids and nobody should be bullied we have a policy in place right now that no one follows maybe one school follows maybe two school follows i don't know mine do not and every day i have to listen to this and i feel like i write you letters and i come here and speak and i write and write and write and you don't listen it's a piece of paper versus

139our liberty and our freedom and it's my choice as their mother as their nurse practitioner anything if they need a mask or if they need more medicine or if they need a different mask because that one's too thick okay let's give them the thinner ones so more viruses can come through their masks are disgusting they are disgusting i just wish you would really really hear the words today and repeal this policy today it is today because their health is good today not june 7th not june 22nd and not july 1st today thank you very much mike maples now sir you have two cards did i accidentally [Laughter] i just okay i just wanted to make sure you you yes you're addressing everything okay thank you so much my name is mike maples thank you i

140live here in deleon springs i'm coming to you approaching you from a little bit of a different angle um the young lady that just spoke she spoke something that that stuck with me just a second ago and i wanted to read this and i know that y'all know this because you guys have been in the midst of it but it's your policy and it says pursuant to the authority of the school board under article 9 section 4 of the florida's constitution face coverings must be worn by all students employees visitors vendors or other persons while in or on school board property where social distancing guidelines from center of disease control and prevention cannot be maintained i want to read to you something else that was sent out by multiple of your athletic directors throughout the

141county and it is the protocols for athletics maps are required to enter the complex mind you this is outside make sure all players coaches fans bring a mask with them fans will not be allowed to enter and no refunds will be issued masks must be worn at all times except for when activity eating drinking or participating in the game as a player i'm a coach i was threatened to be arrested to be ejected to be trespassed because i was outside well beyond six feet and i was threatened multiple times by school board athletic directors and administrators the young lady that just spoke talked about not everybody most people don't abide by the policies they don't enforce them well let me go back real quick and read this to you again and it says you will

142have to wear masks where social distancing guidelines from the cdc cannot be maintained i've been sitting back there in the back 10 feet from anybody else and i was ordered to wear a mask or i had to leave i am in a school board building i am socially distanced but yet i have to wear a mask when your policy tells me i don't i don't understand that thank you very much mr maples miss albert and then cynthia colin canelo thank you i'm so sorry colinello good afternoon chairman cuthbert board members dr fritz members of the audience so someone a whole lot smarter than me said this one time a kind word turneth away wrath so i'm going to kindly ask all of you to show me where the volusia united educators have ever stated that

143we would walk out if this mask policy was revealed we've never said that and i believe you know that but what i would say um to you in this moment in time uh is i i believe i understand the intent of what is what was discussed earlier and what is uh now on the floor is emotion with the second i get it and i i understand people are weary but i would ask you to consider your timeline i know that you're talking about june 7th but your instructional employees they work until the 8th they have two days of post-planning i don't know if that will make a difference to you we also have some 11-month employees that potentially be affected by this decision as well but i would leave you with this there's power in

144giving people choice and so i simply ask you to consider giving people the opportunity to choose i think that's resonated through a variety of speakers tonight choice is powerful and i think that in this moment in time people deserve the ability to make their own choices so i'd ask you to consider that thank you very much miss albert cynthia colinello and then zachary ming afterwards thank you sir thank you hello good evening you can move the microphone to make sure we we hear you okay state your name and where you're from okay i'm gonna read a little something that certainly you have three minutes okay thank you hello and good evening my name is cynthia collinello and my sons are in kindergarten at tomoka elementary as a parent i'm here to stand up for what's

145right for my children and what's right for my children is that they have the option not to wear a mask people say that this whole thing does not affect the kids but that is furthest from the truth both of my children suffer from disabilities one has a learning dis disability and speech delays the other who suffers from anxiety and panic disorders since they have started school they have both regressed in many ways and have been overcome with fear and sadness they talk about death and about us dying they won't let us out of their sight they talk about people getting sick and how they hate the coronavirus they talk about not being able to be near their friends and having to social distance and give air hugs to them they can't celebrate a birthday they

146have or a party in school they can't even have cupcakes without them being wrapped or or individually wrapped and being behind some kind of plastic divider they talk about they come home telling me stories of how they got in trouble for not having their mask over their noses they tell me how they got in trouble by the teachers because they thought they were saying words when in fact they have a speech delay they cry a lot and are sad they're frightened they come home with their underwear wet when they never did there are only five the happiest day was when they heard the governor signed an executive order that mass was no longer mandatory they said does that mean no more mess for us and they danced and they were so happy and it applies

147for everyone else why can't it apply for our children too everyone tells that the children don't suffer but little do they know that they're suffering extremely we are asking that they must be optional not in two days or two weeks or two months but tomorrow kids don't want math they want to be free they want to be kids they want to laugh they want to see that they each other lost their tooth and count how many are missing children are not super spreaders and the science proves it they just want to be like everybody else if you are concerned about the well-being of the children then we hope that you will do what's right for them effective immediately thank you and we have somebody here who would like to say something as well you could

148take down your mask and just tell them who you are junior this is junior and how old are you five okay and tell them how you feel about having to wear the mask what did you tell me earlier [Music] i can't breathe in the side it makes him sad and he's not able to have your friends you can't see your friends okay yes and he wants to be able to thank you just be happy thank you thank you thank you so much thank you so much um zachary minnick and then tammy minnick and that would conclude after these two speakers that concludes our uh public participation now gentlemen are you speaking at the same time you're going three minutes and then you go three minutes you're gonna split the three minutes let me know so

149i can let you know when you're finished we're gonna split it and split it okay i think that's that's perfect for gentlemen for gentlemen and brotherly love okay so during school my coach makes me wear a mask after and in p.e my brother doesn't my brother got trouble not wearing a mask because he said the governor said he cannot he doesn't have to wear a mask and then um i can't breathe my teacher wears me makes me wear a mask adoring and make us wear a mask after school too when we leave from school we can take off her mask some people um after school don't take off their mess maths are optional you can where you can decide if you want to you should the governor should make the math optional and next thank

150you i'm zachary minnick i am in sixth grade and i go to holly hill school my problem with the mask is i have um i have anxiety and what's the other thing i forgot just tell us how you feel um i feel like i can't breathe like i come home and i just i'm tired i'm exhausted and it's just over it's overwhelming of how how long i have to wear the mask every single day for seven hours or more um i forgot thank you i'm sorry oh no that's fine we appreciate very much we know you care a great deal good job zach yeah nice job thank you my name is tammy minnick i am the parent of those lovely boys that just talked to you and we attend holly hill school i was here

151at the last board meeting and spoke asking that the mass be made optional and i appreciate your consideration and even your uh likelihood to do so i'm here tonight because i want it to be right now i don't want it to be july first i printed out your mask policy and i looked up article 9 section 4 of the florida constitution and that basically gives you the ability to be a school board further in your mass policy you mentioned that your legal authority comes from section 1001.32 i looked that up and read it as well that essentially gives you the management control operation administration and supervision of schools doesn't say anything about masks the next legal authority that you list is 1001.41 i looked that up and i read that as well that just talks

152about the general powers of the school district it says that you essentially have the ability given to you by the state of florida to make rules for school the next thing that you mention is 1001.42 that talks about the powers and duties of district school board it's nine pages long no place in there does it say that you don't have the power to rescind a policy immediately the next thing that you mention is 1001.43 of the florida statute that um talks about your supplemental powers and duties of the district school board again nothing in there saying that you have the authority to mandate the mass any further a lot later in your uh mask policy it talks about the laws that have been implemented i've read all of them as well folks i read regulations

153that's my job nothing in here says that you don't have the ability to rescind the policy immediately everybody here is asking for the policy to be rescinded immediately one of the other things it mentions is the florida constitution so i looked that up and i read that as well in the florida constitution it gives political power it says all political power is inherent in the people that would be us folks the next section section two of that same constitution defines our basic rights it says that we are all equal before law and have unalienable rights among which is the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty uh depriving our children of oxygen does not give us life or liberty thank you very much we appreciate you coming next up is ali vanderhoot and then

154after that is victoria crabby so we have four more good evening thank you very much um for your time i really appreciate it i'm going to keep this very short um my name is ali van der voort um i have two children at pathways elementary school go pathways patriots i'm a registered nurse at sma healthcare i used to be known as stuart marchman we're a crisis and recovery center for those struggling with addiction and psychiatric disorders were non-profit with multiple locations and we received most of our funding directly from the state following guidance from the state last week i showed up for my 7 p.m shift last night and we were told that we are no longer screening for covid and that masks are optional effective immediately whether staff is vaccinated or not and i

155believe that if they are becoming optional for healthcare workers that they should also be optional for our children and the staffs in our staff in our school so i'm asking you please give our children and volusia county school staff a choice and please make masks optional effective immediately thank you so much for your time thank you very much we appreciate it uh victoria crabby and then um i think it's julia smith and then the last one will be elizabeth ethan hall good evening hi there i'm kind of ashamed this is my first school board meeting first time i've ever spoke but i feel like it's extremely necessary right now because i'm completely fed up with the rules with the mass policy i have taught my daughter from day one to listen to their authority to

156respect their teachers to respect their elders and that's what she does she follows the rules she has done everything you've asked of her she's put on her mask she's sat behind the plexiglas she's social distance from kids she needed to go back to school and while i was so grateful that she was able to go back to school in person at this point it's kind of breaking her and every night i go to bed and i'm worried about her mental health and while you're putting all these rules on our kids you're not taking into consideration what it's doing to them mentally there are so many kids in counseling right now because they can't handle it you put masks on them you you did so much and put this fear into them where that's all they

157think about you didn't take into consideration that they're more depressed now they're more anxious we've made healthy children into obsessive compulsive kids they're worried all the time they're having sleep issues they're having eating issues i just can't take it anymore and i don't understand what the hold up is if there's no mass mandate in florida why are you holding on to this it doesn't make any sense i don't have to wear a mask when i go out why are you forcing my child to you're holding on to this few weeks just end it there's no need for you to continue it it's killing our kids mentally and it's killing me i go to bed and i worry about her and i want you to think about that it's breaking them thank you uh ma'am for

158the record could you state your name in the area of town i'm sorry my name is vicky my daughter goes to ormond beach seabreeze high school and i feel so bad for the little ones i have a teenager i couldn't imagine having a little one in this okay thank you very much ma'am julia smith and then elizabeth althea hall hello i'm jessica smith sorry about my body oh thank you that's okay i apologize um i'm from the samsula ocean area where i recently graduated from a daytona beach high school where my brother still attends um i'm only 19 years old and about two months ago i tested positive for covet 19 after attending a work event and frankly it's one of the most debilitating and worst things that i've been through thus far um i

159cannot stress that enough um before testing positive for two days i had a low grade fever and then seven days after that the fever still did not stop um i've been continuously fatigued where i can easily sleep 15 to 20 hours a night i can't go play tennis with my friends anymore i had to get extensions on my classes due to continued brain fog and issues with my cognitive ability post coven 19. i've had a lot taken away from me from catching kova 19 while trying to still remain safe and i can't stress enough just how the risk versus reward of making masks optional is just something that we really need to weigh heavily i had no pre-existing conditions i was perfectly healthy i was at the gym every other day and yet after just

160a single work event it was enough to knock me out four months and i still do not know when i'm going to be fully recovered and i don't want any kid or family to go through what my family's gone through seeing my mom cry because i can't carry on a conversation due to the brain fog that i have it's just too much for them to handle and i i just can't stress enough how we really need to reconsider the idea of making masks optional and i understand the mental toll that it takes to just keep chronovirus in the back of our minds but the mental toll that myself and my family has had just given the fact that as a young person catching kovid was just so debilitating i it's it is not it was

161not worth it i was safe as safe as i could be around my co-workers and yet i still got it and i know that there's been a lot of talk about the efficacy of masks however with having coven my family was still able to help me out when they were masked up gloved up and sanitizing everything that they could i just ask that um in volusia county we reconsider the the idea of making masks optional to keep other kids safe to keep my younger brother safe to keep my friends who are still in the high school system safe i just it's just a matter of empathy for me and i i just yeah i would just like everybody to consider that thank you thank you very much we wish you well thank you and elizabeth

162hi i'm elizabeth atley hall and i've spoken to you before a couple of times i have three kids that are in the school system right now and i've been schooling them at home and i don't like masks just as much as anybody else and and honestly i kept them home because i didn't want them to have to wear masks this year and i wanted to maintain their safety however the program that my daughter is is currently doing very well in by the way um being an at-home student um is not going to be offered next year um while being you know as a live option so she will have to return to school and my my my daughter if she was here tonight she's almost 15 so hopefully she'll be vaccinated soon but she she

163believes that masks work and i believe that masks work i was actually with jessica um just before she tested positive and i didn't test positive we were both wearing masks and i believe that they work and i believe that we have kept this virus at bay between the kids in the school environment because we've been wearing masks and i i believe that masks have offered us the freedom to get back to some type of normalcy for the kids so that the kids can attend school if we didn't have the masks to begin with i believe that we may still be at home i mean we said we're going to offer this safety protocol which included masks and distancing and everybody went back to school despite some opposition to that and i believe that that we

164need to follow what the cdc guidelines say and the science in this instance because we don't know what's going to happen for people that are exposed to the virus repeatedly like jessica got it one time what's going to happen if she gets it again you know and we don't know we don't know that none of us know that but what we do know is that masks actually do provide some protection and i believe that until our children are able to be vaccinated just like we are as adults i believe that we need to to continue to protect them until they can get a vaccine in september october i'm hearing that kids will be able to be vaccinated i believe that um that that would be a good time to make app masks optional and i

165mean i i just i feel like it would be wrong and wrong as as a state and a local government to just say well our kids you know don't we can do optional masks so we're all really tired of masks and everybody's sad you know having masks but i believe that they have they have helped us to get through this pandemic up until this time and i just can't even believe that we're not willing to protect our children you know and so my kids will probably be wearing a mask and i hope that they're not made fun of just like the kids you know somebody was talking about the kid their kids being bullied i hope that my kids aren't going to be bullied thank you very much we appreciate your view that concludes public

166participation does anybody need a five minute break can we break for five minutes before we come back and i'll hold you to the five minutes we are reconvening after a short break there is a motion on the floor the motion has been made to immediately repeal our covet 19 emergency mask order the motion was made by miss haynes and it was seconded by mr persis we've had discussion we've also had public participation do board members want to say anything else well i just may i yes go ahead mr purses thank you uh i do not have uh uh you know a strong feeling whether about the effective date i'm just saying that to the maker of the motion i mean i would second it whether if it was september 7th september 8th september 9th 10th

16711th 14th you know i mean i mean those are all you know you think september no i'm sorry june jesus did i say september i'm so sorry thank you for correcting me uh uh i just wanna know i mean i my my my thinking was to just get it into effect before the start of summer school i i realized that the teachers come come back those two days the seventh and the eighth is it i guess uh also uh for the board's pleasure when when summer school does start on june the 14th it will be a four-day week it will be a four-day week so you know as you know i support this motion and i also support the policy that we just went over to and so when you look at it from june

16814th till the effective date of june um 22 don't know there's probably six days of six days of summer school you know something like that there's four days in one week two days in the next um so we're not talking a long a long period of time okay i think there needs to be some clarification mr doran yeah well i was just going to suggest that i don't know i need to be the one to make it but june 22nd as i understood it is not an option if we do a repeal june 7th it would take longer to put the the uh voluntary mass policy in place essentially what you're discussing here is the going back to rule-making proceedings under chapter 120 and having a new rule in place the new policy would be

169in place that requires re-advertising you can't repeal 503 and then amend it you understand yeah so it's it's a pers it's a the effect would be essentially the same but there is going to be a time lag between implementing and proposing and implementing advertising and then voting on a new policy that would be i did check the uh policy book it would be 526. okay so uh so just so that i'm clear because i thought i was clear but now i'm not so clear so what we were what my intent was was to adopt the policy that you rewrote between the workshop and now and and then have that policy uh go into effect as soon as possible and you said we that policy could go into effect the day we vote on it correct

170upon adoption by the board that would be your next meeting of june 22nd and we could not excuse me we could not adopt the policy at a board meeting prior to june 22nd because why because it has to go through rulemaking and re-advertising and when does the 28-day time period like if you're you're going to advertise it tomorrow i would guess if it passed here so as the motion currently stands and mr doran will correct me if i'm wrong you have a pending motion to repeal in its entirety policy 503 right therefore there would not be anything to be amended that you could do through the currently so tonight if you look at item 1903 the recommendation of the superintendent is that you advertise a amendment to and amendment to policy 503 if you repeal

171503 i can't advertise three i understand i have a minute i wasn't i wasn't clear with my question let's suppose we do not repeal okay when when is the earliest the board could take action [Music] because i'm just saying if if there if there is a time difference and if we could have a special board meeting one item to approve this policy if this policy could take effect june june 14th or june 15th you know what i'm saying yes you still have to advertise 28 days by law 28 days and it seems like tomorrow's may 10th so tomorrow so your next board meeting mr purchase is the 25th of may right if if and you know that we have agenda conference and we have to have everything according to the superintendent's directions any proposals that

172is for the next board meeting have to be two weeks in advance essentially so we're talking about tomorrow's agenda conference adopt having a recommendation of the superintendent to propose a new policy for voluntary face covering that would be brought before you for action on the 25th potentially and then that has to be advertised for a period of 28 days you would likely not be able to vote on that prior to the june your first meeting there's not a meeting in july until yeah the 20th 27th i would just have to calculate the date calculate the dates for advertising it depends a lot on so if you would be able to get enough lag time for advertising and keep in mind now july 1st there is a new statute that allows you to publish on your

173website it amended chapter 120 to allow publication through website instead of the legal organ of the county which in this case is the daytona newspaper mr penley let me ask you this that's that's trying to make it simple and it's getting more complicated what what about the amended policy that we have in front of us right now the whatever it is 503 what happened to that one five one third why why couldn't why couldn't we advertise if the board approved the new language and we didn't re repeal what we currently have what stops us from advertising that policy 503 as an amended nothing that is the recommendation that's before that's the superintendent's record however you have a motion on that so that repeals it let's stick with that one let's say we're going with 503.

174when could you ever couldn't you advertise that one starting tomorrow tomorrow is probably a tight we don't control the deadlines for advertising from the newspapers but typically we're able to get it in on on a thursday so the 20th i'm sorry the 13th would be the most likely publicly so if you count 28 days from may 13th right there is no problem with advertising for 28 days the proposed amendments that you have before you concerning 503. i am i understand what i'm just trying to say june 10th when into the date the 2018 you want to know the 28th day after that's all i'm trying to get what if it advertises starting june 13th and well he said june june 14th may and when is the next school board meeting 22nd is when you would

175have it in place okay so or we could have a special board meeting june 15th or 14th june 14th because we're all back in town on june 14th which happens to be the first day of summer school so we could adopt the policy on june 14th effective june 14th and that would achieve the goal of having masks optional for summer school and i mean i i think that's the way to go okay and that that avoids all this lag time and well what happened was we we had we've discussed it in a board meeting we discussed it earlier um i read the the chronological order so we've talked about this three previous times so and we had mr pendley amend a few things from the workshop this morning and that's what was brought forward for

176us to vote on it's recommended by the superintendent and when i asked for a motion on that policy which and she has every right to do so miss haines right in her constitutional right as a representative put a different motion on and madam chair if now that i understand you have a second you can pull it that there's a possibility that we could have a special school board meeting june 14th right yeah i just would want to make sure that we meet those dates for advertising correct and we can as long as we do it two weeks at least a week in advance correct we have to notify a board meeting at least a week seven days in advance as long as we have that time we can always yes we can decide that at

177our next meeting okay so then what i will do i will withdraw my second of of the motion to repeal immediately or june 7th whatever the date was jamie i forget so that we can move forward with adopting policy uh 503 and uh you know move forward with that so i withdraw my second okay mr doran all right so he's withdrawing a second but that there's still a motion to someone else that's what i was going to do okay okay mrs haynes has brought forward a motion at the death uh to immediately repeal our policy 503 that we have in place right now okay there we go so it's not immediate it's not a meeting not a meeting so june 7th i i apologize thank you um mr uh persis um made a second however

178he's now rescinded that does someone else either miss burnett or mr colon wish to second miss hayden's motion i think we're doing the same thing yeah well no we're addressing her emotions right but the outcome is the same so so um but it's we have to follow the legality right she has a motion yes the question is does someone want a second emotion if there is no second it will die for lack of a second and then we're going to be a new motion and then we go back to what's what whatever on the agenda yes there can be a new motion can we discuss what this new motion is going to be yeah well before is to adopt the 503 amended policy that we have before us yeah what's on the agenda i think

179and he gave us copies we all received a copy at our give or take a day if you had a special meeting say june 14th just for discussion purposes 15th whatever and that date you would uh terminate the mask mandate and replace it with the language that's in the amendment which it makes it optional the the policy amendment is also on the attachment on the board docs 19.03 you just click on the attachment i mean to put it in short terms if the person says pointing out either you go with an immediate termination by definition being june 7th or you just follow through the superintendent's recommendation which he is only recommending because you've asked him to come forward with something but your father if we follow through with what we've got on the agenda instead

180of june 7th the mandate would terminate on whatever date we hold the special election which could be as early as potentially june 14th so it'd be a weak difference and and when does when does uh summer school start june 14th june 14th so whether we ended it on june 7th or june 14th that the students are would not have to are not impacted in that time it's the same thing this assumes of course that you do all agree to have a special meeting on the 14th or 15th or whatever other day because the next time you'll all be together is from what i'm hearing june 22nd correct which would be the normal progression of things and then you would address the policy but if you you can accelerate that of course i don't mind if

181it's the board's pleasure to recommend to the superintendent to have a special meeting so madam chair are you ready to entertain a motion right now is there a second well i didn't hear any seconds so that's why well we'll just let everybody have the time to think uh i think miss burnett had some questions yes ma'am would you like to i have a question for you so have any of you throughout this year received emails like i have about children wearing masks at pe and having to run or medical exemptions being denied or any of the things that we've heard even shared with us tonight or am i the only one that has been getting these emails throughout the year and and going to bat when our policy has not been followed at the very

182beginning yes i have got nothing after that there were some concerns at one of my schools and it was addressed and i've never heard anything else as an issue in fact our ese classrooms and and areas that have the autism programs have been more so aligned with protecting the adults knowing that the children cannot you know because of sensory issues etc where the mass so you know they've been very sensitive to that and the adults have protected themselves but not since the beginning since we really had to clarify that and have some of those crucial conversations okay is there a second for ms haynes motion i mean i i'm okay to second it to be honest with you but i don't know that it solves the problem okay and that and that's it look i

183was in favor a second it it creates a problem from where i sit now because in order to get from that motion to an optional policy it's going to push back the time line because he's going to have to write a whole new post it's going to write a whole new policy and it's going to push it back into july it'll probably be july 27th would you say kevin or unless we have an emergency meeting in july if we could get this why can't it just be optional why do we have to have a policy that says it's optional because we have a policy that says it's not we have a policy that says it can't be born we have a policy that says a lot of things well wrong and wrong don't mate right

184and we can agree on that however however um you know i don't know that it would that's what i'm saying at the end of the day this actually will ensure that we're not left without a policy to protect those who do want to wear the masks yeah i think it just provides a sense of comfort having a policy and so and so principals will know that it is a policy that it's okay to wear a mask and that children should not be bullied for wearing a mask and teachers should not bully children who wear a mask uh like you know like we're hearing that that may have been going on uh you know we need to you know we need and there needs to be some basis for it and i think it would so

185be stronger if we had a policy if we repealed it effective today and we repealed it effective today and had the new policy written today how how does that impact us we can't write a policy today it would be we would come back to you in two weeks then it would be advertised then it would be from what i'm hearing just based on our regular schedule it would be july 27th before the new policy would be in place but in the meantime you'd have no policy which would mean that you could wear you know you would it would remove the mandate the mass mandate it wouldn't be any what and and how can we assure that the ones who want to wear it are allowed to wear it the option well i mean i think

186from a practical standpoint it seems like you know people show up with a mask i don't think anybody is you know reasonably question that under the circumstances but we would not have a policy that allowed for it so so this this is my question mr purses did you ever have a kid or a teacher or a staff member wear a mask and all the times that you were out there on school campuses i know that i i did are you asking me did i ever see a teacher without wearing a mask no no no no no prior to the pandemic okay when you were a teacher an assistant principal and a principal at schools did you ever have a child a staff member or a teacher you know at some point in time wear a

187mask did you tell them they couldn't wear a mask or something it was always a medical you know it was a blue it looked like a metal i mean it's like i said earlier i mean i had i had a little child going through cancer with chemo she came to school in a mess nobody said anything i've had teachers and staff members come to school with a mask what's really happened is we put in a policy that said everybody will do this and we put but with some exemptions exemptions have been followed in some places but as we well know they haven't been followed in others or it's taken kevin getting involved and assistant superintendents and the superintendent getting involved to get things to be followed okay my thing is i don't think it's i

188personally don't feel that it's my decision to state what people will or will not do or what their choice is i don't think there's going to be any problem if somebody wants to wear a mask i'll be honest with you the kids that the people that have had the hardest time right now are those that have been forced even to wear them in situations where they where we said they shouldn't be you know and some of it's even been with some of our esc kids where we did even put the cdc guidance that they gave at that time that said if they couldn't put it on or take it off themselves like for a multi-ve kids they shouldn't be wearing it i just don't know why we can't repeal it which is what i've said

189from the beginning and everybody make their own personal choice well matt mr person you may recall in march i brought up about that's how it kind of started i believe i brought up that would there be a way for us to make mask wearing optional in the month of may remember i said that in march what would we have to do to make masker and i got a flood of email really from principals from principals just saying carl we've gone this far let it ride till the end of the year we have parents who are sending their kids to school on the basis that you said for the second semester mask would be mandatory now you're going to lose the trust of those parents who were counting on you and that's why they sent their

190children back to school because the mask mandate was going to be in effect till the end of the school year so that made me think well you know that makes a lot of sense a lot of parents are sending their did send their children back and they're counting on us to do what we said so we said we were gonna have mass for the rest of the school year so then i said what would we have to do to make mask wearing um optional for summer school and then that's what got us to the time frame where we are and then um we ran into the situation where we have two summer schools a july fifth sixth date of summer school for a second session but the first session starts june 14th and uh so

191when order so that's when it got into that well we can have us optional policy start july first but then we have this gap in june that what are you going to do and and you're going to rescind it you're going to have no policy and then i thought it would be better rather than have uh no policy in in the month of june just to speed it up and rather than put it into effect july 1st started june 14th it still achieves the same goal because june 14 is the first day of summer school it's not as good as june 7th but it's only one week out and then there's no student and they won't have any students in school june 7 through june the 10th and and i'm sure and i'll go a

192step further and it's something that was mentioned you know once we're talking about june now we're talking about you know mostly staff because you know their their year ends on the 8th i believe and so even for the staff we've said this is what we're doing till the end of the year and so i am in support of you know for me this is no longer a should we have mass optional or not we've already had a consensus now we're talking about the language that we're going to put in whether you know because mass you know clearly by consensus will be optional next year and so um i support you know carl's thought process i honestly i think whether it's the 7th or the 14th you know i i think we're actually going to have

193a policy to protect those and not leave it up to the principles to have to be the referees because we don't have a policy and have that special meeting you know which you know in essence would leave us with if we didn't do that we would not have a policy at all which i'm afraid would do the opposite of what we're describing where now it's going to end up being just a free-for-all because there is no policy again you know there you know what we've considered today has been beyond the start of the school year or the end of the school year is what we've considered thus far and so i can support that as well and i think that would be and it's and it's how we've gotten this far in all our conversations

194as well okay uh miss burnett did you say you wanted to make them a second or not well i mean and i'm in support of it being optional um if there's no effect on children you know between june 7th and june 14th promotion because that's when we hit okay let me reiterate ms haynes has made a motion that we repeal the um the mass policy 503 uh with nothing to replace it at this point time we'd have to come back and and start all over again but it would end i guess june 8th you said did you say june 7th i thought you said june 7th well i just said it would no longer be in effect starting monday june the 7th because here's the thing yeah it's only adults on campus and they can

195choose if they wear them or not wear them they're they can choose to be in their classroom or not in their classroom i mean we've got adults already that aren't wearing masks on campus guys that they they post pictures on social media that you know they're out doing things or they're getting pictures taken close together i mean at the beginning of the year they got chewed up when they posted it but now you know we justify some people it doesn't matter to me it's ideally i just want to repeal the whole thing but you know i'm fine with i'm one person today it's just for staff i know that we're doing so that we can kind of understand the risk the ascending of the policy would be in effect what message is saying june 7th

196if we go forward with the policy to make it optional counting 28 days out that's june 14. it's actually before june 14th but i recognize that that we're gone um so the first time we're talking about being able to get in front and to actually call a special board meeting would be june 14th so you're talking a difference of seven days to either rescind and start over or to enact a policy and have it optional on the 14th yeah because it isn't it isn't the seven days if it was just the seven days but it's the fact that we'd have to advertise a whole new policy and then that will take us into july so it's not just seven days it's it's a month or more before we could create the policy advertise it again

197and meet again in a special meeting in july that's the that's the kicker you know it's more than a month more than five five boys and i think i just think if your families are going to want to know sooner than later um but i don't think july 27th is too late yeah so miss burnett what would you like to do i mean i think we we move forward with the um the policy with the june 14th okay you you are not going to second miss haines motion not with that language now okay so the miss haines motion has failed um as a result of not having a second motion um we have a policy before us an amended mandatory face mask covering policy 503 we have a copy of it we've discussed it most

198intensely is there a motion yes madam chair i i move that we adopt policy amended amended well policy 503 yes as amended from the workshop and since it says shall become effective upon adoption of the school board that that works um yeah one point of parliamentary procedure madam chair believe that the motion should say authorize to advertise and adoption authorize to advertise okay thank you sir very much i also insert something here i know we've all i know you all i i hope you all have read the actual document that you're going to advertise just recall as we ran into this problem with the dress code you can't change anything substantive so now is the time to direct any changes any substantive changes if you want this to go through on the 14th you're not

199going to have the option on the 14th of saying gee i've thought about this and i'd like to just tweak it there is no tweaking because that would push it another morning because yeah and we would have to re-advertise it so i'm just warning everybody whatever you're voting to advertise that is what you're going to vote to approve or you're going to require it be re-advertised and so just mentioning that okay thank you um well we have a motion do you mind and then you have to go further a motion to uh authorize the advertising of policy 503. okay what we have is there a second second okay it's been the motion has been made by mr purses and seconded by mr colon miss haynes um so if i understand you correctly if we want

200anything a word whatever changed now is the time that we have to agree to it that's right so i'd like to start with the title i'd like the word i'd like the word optional put in front of face coverings because it isn't until you get down to it where it says maybe worn so i'd like to say i'd like it to say optional face coverings pursuant to the authority of the school board under article 9 section 4 of the florida constitution based coverings may be worn by all students employees visitors vendors or any other persons while enter on school board property all students employees visitors vendors or any other persons are encouraged to substantially comply with authoritative i still don't like that but authoritative or controlling government issued health standards while enter on school board

201property i feel that we have left a statement there that says a teacher can mandate children wear it in their room so i i just need i need the word optional on the top if everybody else i don't i don't have any problem that's a good a good suggestion i'm okay with that but she brings up sir um an interesting point i wouldn't want teachers to insist children wear masks if they choose not to but that this policy does not state that correct it does not madam chair it says that their persons are encouraged encouraged to substantially comply because that is the language that mr person suggested in workshop taken from senate bill 72 as engrossed okay okay i just wanted to make sure that the children have that option parents have that option okay

202that is my interpretation of the pause okay any further discussion miss burnett so so the upon advice guidance and direction of state officials i know we had talked about that multiple times but what are other what are other boards doing with that can we remove that completely i don't have an answer to what other boards then you reinstitute an emergency order yes you could anytime there's an emergency as we did in july of 2020 it would be the superintendent making a recommendation as to the emergency nature in that case it was pursuant to the executive order of the governor declaring a state of emergency in this case from i believe it was two meetings ago where we discussed allowing the superintendent discretion to do that to implement a change we came back this morning in

203workshop in the suggested language was that he follow the guidance or direction of state officials as i understood and on here if you notice it's just he is to notify us okay i think there was some concern that we were going to make it mandatory again with that verbiage is is what i was hearing from people today i don't think that this policy states that it's not the drafting intent that you would be able to do that without coming back and notifying the board you would go through the same procedure i just wanted to make sure that was clear that we were not going to institute it just randomly again it would it would have to come before the board again okay okay any further discussion and so with that being said you know and

204again i could like you i could do without it because the reality is we're going against everybody right now anyways and so my my challenge will be is if we have a school that has a significant situation and the health department says to dr fritz you should institute mass that will be an emergency school board meeting in order to allow that emergency order pursuant to and i'm not an attorney so i'm not going to try and sound like one that would mean we would have to come back emergently to vote on allowing the superintendent the ability and the reality is is you know like i said you know we've helped i haven't always agreed with the health department and their ways of doing things and yet we've been required to work with them and so

205right now we are breaking away from that and so to have that language in there again we are saying that if the health department comes and says you all need to do this that we will then come back to the drawing board but if there's an individual school that has a significant spread we would have to do the same so just putting that out there you know and and my fear is that we're not following i mean we're really doing [Music] you know so much so that you know even the governor and the commissioner of education exempted schools they they chose to do that that was a choice you know and we wouldn't have gotten that letter that night if that wasn't the case so that that's the only thing again i can do without

206the language because the reality is we're not following any of that guidance right now whether we like it or not and that's what we're choosing to do which is our choice but then we would be subject to these groups okay any other discussion ms haynes okay so mr pendley i need you and mr doran to tell me unequivocally that if this is posted the way this is posted and it is voted on and it is put into play that it is choice it is optional it's wear a mask don't wear a mask wear a face shield don't wear a face shield wear three masks don't wear a mask and that there's nothing in here that can be misconstrued in any way at all that an adult can override and force children to wear masks if

207that's not what their parent chooses i just need to know that as drafted i see absolutely no basis legal basis for anyone to use this policy as an optional face covering policy to require the wearing of a mask so i'm turning to you next to say if that happens whether it starts in summer program or in the school year if we get notified that there are kids especially if they're haven't helped us if they're outdoors you know and they're being told or a teacher says in my room you will do this i need to know what you're going to do it's pretty simple once it's in policy once it's in policy it's the way we have to do our work so if someone quite simply they would not be able to force a child to

208wear it because it's in policy if you don't enact the policy then we have problems if you put it in policy then it's it's the way we do work just like it was when it was mandatory when we were in the height of the pandemic uh madam chair oh yes mr person ms haynes brought up a good point though you know under the face shields things we may have some parents that don't want their child to wear a mask but maybe we do want them to wear a face shield and maybe this language existing language in here should just say uh the sentence that's left in here face shields may be worn as a substitute for cloth face coverings period that can come out would you it doesn't need to be in situations where it

209may not be feasible to wear a mask just make it it's just so can we strike that much of a sentence and it not have to come back strike out in situations where it may not be doing anything you want right now to make the change because he's going to make the change where you're going to approve subject all these changes then he's going to advertise it as you decided it today that's not a problem i just again wanted to make sure that 30 days from now you didn't hear from a bunch of constituents parents or otherwise and come back expecting to make alterations prior to the final approval that would not happen has to be done so in roman numeral three it would just read face shields may be worn as a substitute for

210cloth face coverings that's the way i have i have two revisions to the draft as a version 2.3 striking well mandatory was stricken but inserting in place of mandatory optional in the in the title and paragraph b sub three face shields may be worn as a substitute for cloth-based coverings striking the remainder of the sentence yeah so i go back to what miss springett said so on the statement where it says upon advice guidance or direction of state officials the superintendent shall timely notify the school board of any significant escalation or emergency requiring reconsideration of this policy what ultimately does that sentence mean it is direction and policy that the superintendent bring to the board any recommendations for an emergency basis should changes occur in the positivity rates or direction from a state effectual okay

211but that so if i i'm clarifying so that statement does not say that he can all he that dr fritz can say something's happened and on wednesday everybody's now mandatorily wearing a mask yes to timely notify the board yeah okay we take board action yes so it's just about notification okay any further discussion that's in china and as a second i can support striking that face mask line that's not needed okay i can support striking that face mask line or the uh face shield my line in there because that's not needed anymore so as the second i'm good with that we're happy to make that change thank you sir and then when would you contact me or let me know when you uh and or the superintendent when our first day of advertisement is so

212we can start looking at dates to come back assuming that the motion carries madame trail be glad to do that yes okay thank you very much sir madam shared just one other thing and i don't mean to be later but as soon as we can get clarification on uh wearing these on the buses you know as soon as we can absolutely you know in the next month or before june 14th um perhaps it become a little clearer what other school districts are you know i don't know if the department of education would be able to help us with that or not but um i would think someone should okay are we going to you have something more to do so my opinion on the bus is if it's federal mandate and it truly applies to

213us then it'll apply to it for us until it doesn't anymore in other words if it expires it expires and it won't apply to us it's federal minded mandate and so if it is determined that school buses apply then we have that overarching correct me if i'm wrong i've done some reading and my understanding from the few places that i've read including some of the bus driver associations is that it is excluded so again i don't know that that needs to be included in this policy because if it's an overarching federal then that covers it until it expires and then we're it's a non-issue i mean that's my fault thank you mr colon all right seeing that there's no further discussion all those in favor of this amended um optional face covering policy 503 with

214all the amendments we've put into it today all those in favor please please say aye all those who are opposed please say nay the motion is carried five to nothing thank you [Applause] [Music] now let's go on to 1904 board action item mr doran thank you madam chair um just to give you guys a quick refresher when we hired the superintendent and entered into a contract with him uh it was the decision of the board and the superintendent agreed that he we would annualize his review on setting honor before the date of august 15 2020. so to bring that into sync because he was not hired on august 15 2020 so to bring that into sync it was agreed and it's in the contract that by february 11 2020 that there would be a determination

215of what his goals would be that he might be [Music] compensated under his performance compensation paragraph at 7.13 it was agreed in advance that the compensation would be set at 10 000 when august 15 2020 rolled around for obvious reasons uh whether he coveted or uh the unfortunate fact the superintendent had some medical concerns he was dealing with we never addressed the issue of whether or not he had met the criteria that was set forth in a separate document which is attached to the agenda but the criteria uh which was a the sole issue of creating a strategic plan whether or not that was uh met and if if so he would be entitled to this performance compensation so now we brought it back we brought it before you for the first time even though

216we should have been could have been well how do we put this we should have contractually been dealing with this august 15th but it was impossible to deal with it for two reasons so now here we are so the questions is simply put is is that you gave the superintendent a singular goal of creating a strategic plan you have a contractual obligation to consider his performance compensation which you've already agreed as ten thousand dollars if you agree that he has fulfilled the requirements of establishing a strategic plan in accordance with your liking which you all approved it uh then he is entitled to receive that performance compensation okay now i don't think he can recommend that can he he does not recommend there's no recommendation it's just you all have to look at the facts

217look at the contract you have a contractual obligation the only factual decision is whether or not he did it if he did it he is entitled to it okay do we do we need a motion in a second we do okay that's what i thought is there a motion to fairly contractually award our superintendent his performance-based salary performance compensation for um succeeding in his strategic plan in the amount of ten thousand dollars is there a motion yeah i i would i would make a make a motion uh [Music] my my feeling is that it i i'd like to make a motion that it it could be shared with dr belgran are are i mean dr belgamin was was here uh during that time and helping that um that effort obviously obviously you the superintendent that

218got it all going and got everything you know started so i i i want to give credit where credit's due i i guess and i'm and i know the contract doesn't mention covid or dr melgovin or dr fritz you know having a medical issue that came up and no one could predict any of that stuff however the fact is the strategic plan did happen did occur and that's what the that's what the board wanted we wanted a new strategic plan and that did happen under his watcher their watcher who's ever what you want to say but okay you know that's how i feel about it i i don't know about it we do have to follow what the contract says however that is up to him uh that's a personal decision um that we we

219really can't right we have no we have no jurisdiction all right so i i would make a motion to uh approve of the compensation compensation okay um it's the motion has been made by mr persis is there a second second seconded by uh mr colon um is are there any cards for this action item okay thank you any further discussion is that for you miss elizabeth albert come on down thank you okay i'm going to be really brief uh madame chair members of the board dr fritz members of the audience so this is lovely um i think that it's great to recognize people who show up and do the work right two weeks ago i came before you and i spoke to you about a bonus for all employees because guess what they also did

220they've shown up they've done the work they've taken care of kids i got crickets tonight carol sawyer came before you again and asked for the same thing hoping there will be some kind of conversation at the end of this lovely meeting but here's what i would urge you to deeply consider as i said earlier a rising tide raises all boats the majority of your workers are not earning salaries that are competitive with the surrounding districts when we did the numbers when we did the tsia negotiations your instructional staff rank 42nd out of the 67 counties in the state your support professionals that we represent as you know earn poverty level wages most of them the majority of them and respectfully the data shows that our superintendent ranks 15th in salary out of the 67 districts

221in the state you gave that to him it was your choice that's fine right but what i'm asking for is equity i'm asking for something for the people who have carried the load this year when they've gotten sick but they showed up when they worked from home when they had to make arrangements to take care of sick kids and six family members they've come to work and they've done for you what you needed to do for the children of this community and i will say this today and i'll continue to say it to you you have an opportunity to show your employees that you care about them i urge you to do it we've got money coming down it's not even gonna cost you anything in this moment in time we have esther money coming

222from the federal government 64 million to volusia county schools in round two 7.1 billion coming to the state in the third round the money is not the object i would like as a result of this meeting somebody to contact me tomorrow to say hey albert you were heard let's let's have a conversation because every single employee in this district from fmt's to school bus drivers to cafeteria workers paris office specialists teachers principals everybody they deserve it thank you very much miss albert um is okay we've had a motion second we've had discussion anything further okay all those in favor for following the contract of our superintendent please say aye aye all those opposed please say nay the motion is carried that concludes our board action items for this uh this evening is there any public

223participation okay thank you very much miss schultz um time for school board comments who would like to go first i i feel like i've spoken a lot tonight let someone else go yes well we're going to have mr doran you'll see the door is going to speak well the reason i'm you know joking about i'm not a school i my point only point is uh in my comments i i was going to discuss beyond where we just resolved this issue so it might be a good time just to go ahead and deal with it all one shot and then i'll be done for the evening um i just want to mention to everyone so everything has been very off track to the superintendent for all the reasons we've discussed um we do have august 15

2242021 looming and um two things will need to occur on or before that date one is that we will need to evaluate superintendent uh and you know as a subheading of that we as you all as a board will have to determine what instrument to use whether we use the one we have used last year or not last year but the year before that or alter it as we have done in the past two is we will have to establish before that date what the goals and objectives are of the superintendent are for the next school year from august 15 2021 to august 15 2022 and um because you know this performance compensation paragraph provides for an analysis based on the those goals and objectives having been set by the board and whether or not

225at that time in august 15 2022 whether the superintendent has met those uh goals and if so uh you know there's another performance compensation that we can do so i'm just bringing to your attention that there's some pretty significant things that have to get resolved this summer between now and 15. evaluating the superintendent figuring out what the goals are for the next school year and putting those in writing and in conjunction with the evaluation of the superintendent what evaluated evaluation instrument are we going to use to do that evaluation so i'm going to be coming i'm not looking for anybody to do anything tonight or even comment i'm just giving you a heads up that we have this coming down the road we're going to have to come up with a timeline to deal with

226this because it's going to come really fast i'm guessing that you know we need to have some discussion probably at the next school board meeting or certainly at the july 27th meeting because august 15th is going to come up i don't know if when the first august meeting is but it would need to be before august 15. yeah so we have maybe one two three four board meetings so is it i'll volunteer is it the pleasure the board for me to meet with mr doran first to set some parameters um a couple of timelines um and then some suggestions for you to choose from instead of coming up with scrap from i'll scratch so glad when these things are gone you have no idea um keep in mind june um i was going to say

227that just right off the top when it comes to his goals they obviously need to be part of the strategic plan i mean everything we are doing as a district falls back on one of those goals so it just seems like it makes sense that since the whole district is working toward achieving the goals and the strategic plan the five goals that his goals ought to be that that's what happens and so there should be some benchmarks you know in in there i mean that's what i'm just thinking is is a very logical yeah especially oh yes sir especially for miss burnett because you haven't been around for these things but we've never done it oh you've never done it well that's true so um the reason that we did what we did at the

228time we wrote the contract and said we're going to have one goal that being the strategic claim was because it was a visionary very broad goal that everybody needed to get accomplished and at that time there was it was we were too far into the year to discuss things that might be goals that would be very specific such as increasing graduation rates by three percent type of thing which is what we have historically had uh as goals with private superintendents very specific things uh moving a certain number of schools from a c status to a b status or moving the whole district from a b status to an a status these are all goals and objectives that you you know potentially could put out there that you know then he works towards these goals and

229that's later going to define whether or not he gets any performance compensation at the end of the year right and historically what we've done but you don't have to do it this way is we've actually asked the superintendent to put forward some ideas they've got something who knows better yeah what some of those ideas might be you don't have to follow him you don't have to accept his list but you know it'd be nice to maybe have his input and what some of those goals might be is it okay the strategic plan as we wrote it was done in july of 2020 before i went on medical leave and so that plan is what i've been going out i've done over 30 meetings with civic groups and community groups and and business partners sharing and

230at the top of every of that plan are metrics everything we do everything i do is that plan so if you give me other goals it's outside of that plan yeah i guess it's my point because if you're looking at that that's our plan that's what we've done that's what we've said is important and i just i say to you that i i think you have a road map on the work you want me to do when we approve that plan yeah just my two cents um and i think this is you know because this is the way it's in the past and you know he usually takes a meeting where the board sits and discusses this we could even do a workshop yeah i was going to suggest madam chair how about you know

231we have a workshop scheduled on june the 7th june 7 june 7. maybe that's this is one of the items that you could add to the workshop sure that'd give us plenty of time yeah i would like to know your priorities um and you've been back now since february you see where the strengths are where the weaknesses are um where is it that you would like to us to focus like first or second so and it doesn't have to be all of it it's just one or two so because we want to do it well and we value the goals that you've set we've agreed to it i mean i thought it was a wonderful process and it does address the whole the entire district so that's what i would like to know what are

232your priorities i would i do want your input as to what we're doing well and maybe what we need to work on first yeah and the other thing i can do is provide all the board members with the past stockings so you can see for instance we had i forget seven or eight yeah a very very specific goal that at one point i think it was mr russell and i can of course i would provide the superintendent as well so you can see what has been done in the past but then think about what you're you know what you want to do going forward um because i mean in the past it was even broken down by weighting it you would weight certain goals like you know you may have one goal that is you

233everybody wants to achieve but in the big picture it's only ten percent of you know what you think is important right it may be another one that is 50 if you get this and then those percentages get applied toward the available funds for performance compensation which then determines what that compensation is yeah and madam chair i wouldn't be opposed at all i think it'd be helpful if you had some superintendent instrument evaluation instruments from osceola hillsborough orange places you know where you notice the superintendent yeah exactly there is no one magic one that's yeah i can certainly grow that i'll tell you i mean i think this is important for you to know when we come in you ask me number one what's the priority it's going to be student achievement goal number one is

234and that's why we made it number one yeah and those metrics are really important and those are the ones we have to push and to improve our kids okay thank you miss haynes you had your hand so looking at the strategic plan one of and yes um student achievement is i think number one for all of us but we're kind of between a rock and a hard place this year because we've got students that are you know they didn't take the test at all last year they're not taking the test this year or the test scores are not counting and all of that i think that's going to be a harder metric to really you know evaluate for all of us but one of the priorities that you know even when i did my one-on-one

235with you in the interview phase and i've said it repeatedly it falls under number two and i feel very strongly about this and you know this is just my personal feeling i need classrooms staffed with certified teachers and i need that to be a priority for this fall i you know hats off to hr for what they've done and christy mahaney's team you know just the way that they have worked this to reach out to people to find people you know to come to volusia county to teach is phenomenal but that's that's one of the most important things to me because yes because here's the thing without that classroom teacher or that paraprofessional or the or those positions where the individuals touch our kids on a daily basis if those positions aren't staffed then the

236student achievement's not going to be there i mean that's what we all ultimately know and so you know i'm just giving you some guidance miss cuthbert that as you work on this because i'm not opposed to you and um mr doran working on this to come you know with some kind of a framework for us you know so that it it's better than starting with a blank slate but i i feel that that is important and i just from the time i've sat on this board and i've watched those classrooms not be staffed i have struggled with that because there are great substitutes out there and we need substitutes you know when somebody gets sick or you know they go on maternity leave or whatever but i need certified teachers and i need paraprofessionals um

237schoolway cafe and all those people in place to make a difference kids so that's where i stand on the strategic plan for me thank you yes sir one last thought um because of mr purchases comment which was excellent you know can reach out i mean if osceola has whatever whatever but i do want to give you a history on that we used the same evaluation instrument for i'm just going to pick a number 15 years i don't know how long it was forever and the board at some point i'm going to say five or six years ago decided yeah mr purchase was a part of all this and decided you know this thing really i mean what does it really do is it really what we want i mean what are we really saying uh

238and so we had this big movement to try and revamp the entire evaluation instruments so we reached out florida school board association all these different districts and i was shocked at how poor all of the evaluation instruments out there were i mean we got copies from all over all these districts major you know long beach you name it and we're looking at them thinking really yeah i mean what does this really say and so we kind of pulled it together i can't even remember if you were the chair that year or somebody said i don't think i was the chair but i think it was around two thousand i think maybe you were and we did the best we could to pull it together and of course we included the superintendent in that process yeah

239because i mean yeah to make it make sure it was very important but he had he would have a lot of input in that so we can we can look at what we've got we can i don't think it would be fruitful to go back and see if anybody's changed there anything new out there if there is something i think we definitely you should be looking at it but i'm just giving you a heads up i don't i don't think there's any magic bullet out there we're going to find another district that's going to have some great evaluation but i encourage you to focus in on those metrics that you said were important in that strategic plan because if you really look at that you have 16 17 strategies five goals and and a slew

240of metrics to look at yeah you could you could go back and wait those you know mr persis the things you asked me in the interview it's glad i answered right by the way you said define one metric and student achievement that's most important and i think i didn't miss me when i said graduation because if we don't hit graduation then everything we did before doesn't count and so we put that in our metric plans we put the number of a schools we put we put in there uh moving us from a b district to an a district and are we making progress on that yes it's a very different kind of the year but i'm not afraid of that i'm just telling you you know it was been a very different kind of year

241but we'll deal with the numbers when they come in that's what we've been telling our principles and what we we've been saying around staff it's a different kind of year we'll deal with the numbers it's just that like for instance i've heard you say we've all heard you say often that next year you kind of really wanted to give more attention to the middle schools yes so you know and i know that's in the strategic plan somewhere but you know that may be something that you've kind of made a commitment you want to do some things differently at social school so you may want us to judge you absolutely you're right how well you did with that i'm just telling you the strategy you can't it's not that you can't add more to it i

242mean you can do whatever you want you're the board i'm just telling you as a starting point we've been working on this for the last year and a half and this is what we've said is important this is not what we've said is important this is what our constituents when we did our focus group said was important but yes to your point if if we do some reformation with the middle schools that might be an area that you guys say is important we want to see how it changes okay just an idea okay yes ma'am are you opposed to us and i'm not i'm not saying everybody has to have homework but if we chose or wanted to kind of send you in some thoughts yes please is that allowed like if i just of

243course yeah okay yeah yeah now are we talking june 7th as a workshop so because it is my mind's racing here now remembering because it's been a couple years since we've done it because last year we didn't do it but uh we do have to have some pretty significant amount of time here and so we're we're gonna need to get going because what happens is you all meet you you decide what those uh goals are and what the evaluation instrument is and then the superintendent has an opportunity to uh put together a package some of them had put together like packages of information material just kind of reminding everybody of what the district did for the you know the past year i don't know how applicable that is but anyway uh you know and and

244you all are going to need a certain number of weeks to actually sit down with anything he does provide or if he doesn't provide and and actually go through that evaluation instrument and and think about and prepare because there's written comments from board members you know uh very specific written comments not to mention uh you'll see in the form where you check certain blocks outstanding uh above average you you there's a range of options and then there's but it takes time sure but again let's let's go back to beside that because we we are having to report the strategic plan update to this board on july 27th that was one of the things the board and i talked about doing that we would update you twice a year and we'll have our data back at

245the end of july for our student achievement so we're going to bring you data for goals one through five in a packet i don't i don't like doing extra things on top of that this is this is our plan we'll bring it to you we'll have a nice packet for you at that july 27th workshop and so we we can get together and talk about it but that's what the staff and i are already planning to do because we're going to present to you the progress we've made through goals one through five at july 27th we'll have hopefully all of our student data back you know we may not have it if we don't then we'll we'll get you what we have and then we can update you later but that is our plan to

246go forward and it would be a work stop shop setting where we will present the data to you we'll go through each of the goals each of the metrics each of the strategies and we will share with you exactly where we're at and you'll you'll have a packet of information for each of those so that you can review that if we get that to you on the 27th and it's not the evaluation's not due to august that'll give you about two weeks to kind of go through it so our board meetings for august are august 10th and august 24th so the problem is we have this date of the 15th so are we are we pushing for the 10th which is five days before or can we go with the 24th which is right yeah

247there's i mean there's nothing magical i'm playing at you know whether we do it before or after i do know we're going to have school opens up the idea behind the 15th as i recall and this was mr purchase and i doing this was to get this done before school opened and because then things get very hectic very busy there's lots of things on the agenda the idea is to get it done right before and to set those uh goals and objectives for the upcoming school year so the superintendent would be on notice of what the board was looking for so that at the end of the year august 15 he would have he would have been told in advance and fairness to him he knows then you evaluate that everybody you know and so

248the idea was to get it done by august 15th but yeah i i think madam chair i think on the june 7th was it uh school board meeting it's a monday because we moved it yeah that um if we have a workshop um we if you allowed two and a half hours two two two and a half hours i think we could decide on it on an evaluation instrument and in his goals probably right then and there i mean i i i don't think it's going to be that difficult would you want samples i mean hr can pull samples of the superintendent's evaluation currently i'm sorry is it what we currently have isn't isn't terrible you know it no no no i mean nothing wrong i mean it can be tweaked of course we can

249get you five or six samples though i mean if you'd like to see some school districts in central florida yeah well i i have samples sitting around too yeah i mean you can get them that was my point we did get them and then we looked at them and said i can't believe how bad these are so well i'll have mr so i can have mr west do an update too and just to make sure if they've not been changed if you are okay with that then he can reach out um and get samples at least a sample and we'll make a copy if you want more than five it will get you more than five but if you want five to start with then we'll get you five i think that's plenty that sounds

250fine mr west you got your homework assignment i just also want the board to to realize we have not been discussing anything for the upcoming budget the 2122 budget yet so we need to have time you know to be acquainted with that as well okay um any more comments we mr dormant okay all right mr doran has concluded anyone else like to add something yes okay so when we met again this morning and talked about the insurance you know i asked for some data and everything because i i do and even though miss albert i did hear you about the band-aid piece um i'm not looking to bandy but i'm looking at you know what we can do um so you know i i kind of need to see that to see what where our

251members are at and all of that and as i said i'd like once we have that if we could have an executive you know i have it on my list it's on the schedule for the 25th okay so it's on schedule for the 25th um with dad excuse me jamie would that be late in the day like like four o'clock or something well on the 25th we is our next board meeting so we have uh we don't have a workshop that day but we do have an executive session yeah just i'm just trying to help it'll be before the board meeting oh what and what time will that be um what do you don't have so there's no way mr pendley do you know the time for the executive session on the 25th or any

252does anybody mark i don't have we determined one yet hello we haven't determined the actual time not determine the time for that do we have a workshop scheduled for that no we have a 5 30 board we have a five would you be willing to do an executive session before 5 30 yeah i just was trying to avoid having a gap you know um mrs burnett says 4 is probably the earliest she can get four o'clock okay it's four o'clock that's worked for me okay four o'clock on the 25th i mean got enough time yes and it's right before the board meeting okay so i need to go on record i did not vote on the policy okay so you want us to change that to you abstain i don't know you have to vote

253you're required to go you have to okay then unless you you're announcing the interest i don't have a conflict of interest so i paused and then it went on through so um yes i want it to be optional but i'm still struggling with the fact that we're putting in a policy so i am voting no against it can you do that okay okay thank you miss haynes i thought the policy was that we made it optional i thought the policy was that we made it optional i know you made it optional but i i still feel it should have just been repealed and it should have been frontal choice so that's that's where i stand okay okay okay thank you very much um anything else okay i mean i guess i guess i've never had

254this happen that's real it is what it is well i'm confused because i thought that's what we just did yeah we're making it optional i thought that's what we did it is it is an optional because she asked um that revision and it was optional it's all about how we're registering our votes on the question of advertising the proposed policy so what mccain's saying is that at the time she didn't say anything and we didn't pick up on she didn't vote as a matter of law she's required to vote unless she has a conflict so now i've informed her of that she's voted does that change anybody else's vote i guess i i don't know how that impacts everybody else well again we're not voting on the policy we're voting to advertise romney voting that's

255true you're only willing to advertise i'm playing with okay okay so it's a four to one okay okay um miss burnett you have anything no okay mr person well i i would like for the superintendent at some point once there's just so much seems like uh conflicting in information about what money can be spent on from covert relief funds coming into the state or to or to the district and i just would not want us to have a belief that funds could not be used to give a bonus and then find out that seminole county gave their teachers five thousand dollars each you know i mean then we're gonna look uh you know in a very bad bad way so uh hello hi there good evening uh uh i i think it's just one of

256those things that we need to get a definitive answer if if there is one and i agree with mr purchase because um i can't i kind of need to also know what the governor is or isn't doing as far as bonuses go there because right we've heard you know there's bonuses for different groups and you know so is the governor doing a bonus for all employees in school systems or is he only doing a bonus for certain employees kind of the way they did the money when they handed it out last time yeah and you had to have a class list you know a class roster in order to be considered you couldn't be a media specialist you couldn't be a school counselor you know all of that and so i think we need some

257clarification on what the governor is also doing because i don't want i mean in all hopes i want to say the governor comes if he's going to give the thousand dollar bonus that he's giving it to everybody you know within the school system because i don't want him to come back and say you know we think he's only giving it to certain groups and then we're like well we're going to give it to the groups he's not giving if we if we're even allowed to do that and then find out we're doubling some people because we didn't know what his so i need clarification on what he's doing too so i have miss need going to look into what's permitted um but we we've been doing some research and we will be talking with other

258cfos and what's what's able to be but i wanted her just to come forward so you know she's the person looking into that now um you know we want to verify we want to make sure that we're able to do everything we can the budget is very bleak with general dollars i will share with you on that that um you know when we with the decrease in enrollment uh we're looking at 10.8 million dollars less than general funds yeah and so whatever we can use for esser dollars we will absolutely uh the priorities to keep the doors open for sure but but we also need to figure out what what options we do have with that esser fund so lisa you know as you go through that research um and we'll bring it back to

259the board okay yeah okay okay thank you thank you yeah that's that was my big big concern because even the even the cities that are getting money you know their employees are asking the same thing you know can that money be used for a bonus for us so yeah i just need to know the general direction that we've been given so far is you know the big categories are learning loss um and anything that we can do to supplement with learning loss but we will certainly explore all options great thank you madam chair that's all certainly mr colon and so you know i too am supportive of seeing what we are able to do um i also caution and yes it's a bleak year and you know it's interesting that the governor can use that

260money for bonuses but then we wouldn't be able to so that just maybe begs the question um however there are things and mind you yes this year has been rough there's no question about it but there are things that we are using esser funds for summer programs and all that that normally would come out of the general budget and so you know yes you may not be able to use that over there but you didn't have to use this over here today because you're using that over there and then some so i think that there is if allowable or i'd even go a step further you know again we are using esser funds to do a lot of things that normally we would be paying out of our general fund so i am in support

261of seeing or i'll even rephrase that i am in support of letting our folks know we appreciate them because the reality is they have given a lot and you know don't get me wrong as i said to miss pina who called me the other day i said you know this is again the same case we were in before where they gave to one group or as i described to her you know they gave one twin a thousand dollars and said you guys figure out what you're going to do with the other twin who's not happy now at which point we're left in that position to do that however you know again i i think our greatest asset is our folks and uh if we are able to i am fully in support of you know

262if it's not at that you know let's see what the numbers are let's see what we can do uh you know if we can because again i get that the esser funds may not be able to but we're sure doing a lot with them so that's just my feeling and as far as the evaluation tool i think that you know even our evaluation tool that we have now won't align because we have a new strategic plan and so uh i think that is good but i do definitely welcome the workshop to set you know you know what what that would look like um other than that you know again you know just like ms hayne you know for for me today and the whole mass topic was not about whether or not to make it

263optional or not we had already pseudo decided that arguably you know but you know at the same time you know while you know there were a lot of folks that came and support either way you know and i'll say this and i'll say this over again we have done exactly what the governor the commissioner of education has asked us to do the entire time which is work with our health departments at the time when he rescinded rescinded everybody's mandates he didn't include schools he chose to do that the commissioner and the governor could have stricken every masked mandate with the stroke of a pen and they did not leaving us once again and that was our fault too so once again leaving us in the middle and so um i am hopeful that things are

264getting better with the vaccinations i am hopeful that with students age 12 or more being able to get the vaccines we will be in a better place in the fall and you know and i'll make it clear if we need to come back based on a situational you know based on recommendations we will and so i think it's important that parents also hear that and have that assurance either way whether they support it or they don't so that's all i have for tonight thank you mr cologne oh yes miss burnett of course well and speaking and following what you were saying what we did tonight was just about what the appeal was it was it was exactly what it was it was just in a different form it was going to be on june 7th

265and between june 7th and june 14th there's no children in school and it was simply to make sure that we had all of our eyes dotted and our teeth crossed so we still achieve the goal of making this optional or setting forth options that's that's how i'm seeing it if i'm not if i'm not seeing it the right way please let me know but that's how i'm seeing it you're right and effective the first day of summer school right so so the the repeal and this so they mirror each other it's just a matter of semantics okay anything else miss burnett no i'm sorry no no no please no i no that's that's just fine thank you um i just want to reiterate graduation's coming up and we had made the decision along with the

266principals and jose rivera that we are attending only our own schools high school graduations at least on stage we are not speaking because we're trying to keep the graduation ceremonies shorter to allow for cleaning the ocean center in between graduations and and also to increase the social distancing availability on stage and hopefully next year we can go back to normal and go back to visiting all the others because i mean i only saw new smyrna's graduation and it was amazing to see university come up in that wave of that dark grayish orange it was just so cool and then i would like to bring something to your attention very quickly the florida school board association every other year we have to vote for board of director this year the odd districts when we're district 27

267according to the florida school board association we have to vote for a new board of directors um so i would i need to put that our director and alternative alternate uh and send that to andrew messina so is it possible we can do that very quickly who's there now i'm i'm the director right now um and actually what's happened during this time is they re-looked at all of the policy and the guidelines and i agreed to be on the committees for that because otherwise i was afraid we were going to lose our seat because you know right now we own a seat we don't have to share it with two or three other districts you know in some instances there's four districts that serve a seat so they're actually renumbering the district so we are

268currently number 27 but we're going to be number 13 and we just made the cut off to keep a seat and not have to be combined with someone else it was touch and go there for a while but there is there is one larger district that is no not a part of the association and that's what kept us with a seat but i i would be happy it's been a crazy year carl kind of like with you with the culture yeah but the coalition i would you know because it's not been a true thing i would be happy if you know if the rest of you felt that way i'd be happy to remain as the um on the board of directors i moved that we uh i would be happy too absolutely okay i

269think that's what we established congratulations board of director yes congratulations we do hey congratulations that was a hard hard-fought election [Laughter] too bad they're all not like that um is there an uh volunteer for an alternate miss burnett yeah okay that's wonderful great i don't know that's terrific but i'm just happy we kept a seat okay that we didn't have to then go you know battle it out with one or two other districts to be at the table yeah this this board meeting's been a very difficult board meeting and workshop um decisions like this are not easy to be made but we're also representatives of all of our students all of our staff people in the audience we have to be ever cognizant of everyone's welfare so with that it is before eight o'clock it

270looks like there's still some light outside everyone go forth and have a good time see in a couple weeks we're adjourned