August 6, 2021 State Board of Education Meeting

001good morning and welcome to the august 6 2021 state board of education meeting and welcome to all of those who are in attendance in the room board members please engage your microphones before speaking and turn them off when you are done and please turn off your cell phones or put them on mute live streaming is available through the state board of education website www.education.net [Music] state board agenda item 1 the state board the august 6 2021 state board meeting will now come to order agenda item 1.1 andrea please call the roll debra neary present jacqueline morrison present patti goobles here patsy cojones the right side here maureen nichols here robin stevens here patricia tim commissioner bloomstead present all present thank you andrea please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance

002[Music] [Applause] agenda item 1.3 information regarding the open meetings act is posted as you enter the room from the main hallway doors the open meetings act is also posted on the state board of education's website www.education.ne.gov state board agenda item 1.4 covet 19 meeting protocol commissioner bloomstead yeah i'll just note that we have printed protocols for this particular meeting just appreciate folks recognizing others needs whether it comes to masking and distance and uh thank you for keeping one another safe thank you commissioner agenda item two is there a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved do i have a second the motion was made by patsy and seconded by patty per board policy there is no discussion on the motion to approve the consent agenda andrea please call the role co john's [Music] yes

003niry yes morrison yes nichols yes frankie yes google's yes tim yes stevens yes eight yes motion passes thank you andrea agenda item three we will now have public comment period this period of public comment is available for any person who wishes to address the state board on subjects within its authority please note that public comment should be on topics related to the state board's constitutional and statutory authority thanks to the members of the public who have attended today agenda item 3.1 the motion was made on august 5th pursuant to board policy b9 to limit public comment to two minutes per person at today's meeting and to conclude public comment no later than 2 30 p.m the board will take a 45-minute lunch break during this time to be announced prior to recessing as provided under

004lb 83 from the 2021 legislature the board waives and does not require that persons that address the board in public comment provide their physical address the board does request that you state what town you are from i will announce the names of 16 speakers at a time to be prepared to come forward to sit in the front row reserved seats i will call you to the podium in the order that i call you when i call your names kim salus jamie gould lily castellon melanie coronado amaya kendall bartling helena murray ashley schmidt ava whalen reese heath heather hall laura rauscher dwayne rousher megan hunt sarah freehoff morgan ryan and ruby kinsey kim solace welcome kim hi i'm kim salas i'm from omaha nebraska um good morning everyone i'm kim as i said an intern of

005the white heart research team we understand that as one of president maureen's nick murray's nicholls policy program yes i'm going to interrupt you could you move the microphone closer to your thank you positive priorities for this board outline in the march 5 board meeting to explore meaningful and intentional ways to engage students in the policy making process i don't believe that there has been a meaningful and intentional opportunity in relation to the standards but our wiper research does provide that meaningful feedback for the past six months we interns have been preparing for and conducting research as part of the adolescent health project evaluation youth participatory action research we've had the opportunity to inform the ahp with data collected by youth from youth for the improved outcomes of youth the edelson health project is an initiative

006of the women's fund of omaha that provides sexual reproductive health and education and services we wanted to find out what students are learning in school-based sex ed what they want to learn and brainstorm ways to fill in those gaps we put intentional effort into hearing about the experience of of people with different backgrounds and identities to make sure these valuables are in valuable perspectives are heard during this project we surveyed 204 youth and interviewed 21 students ages 15 through 19 all across nebraska with 24 percent of students being outside of lincoln and omaha areas a topic that we thought it was important to address from our finding was inclusivity while almost 70 percent of white students reported receiving sex said in high school only half of hispanic latinx and 44 percent of other students of

007color received any sex education if this board is truly committed in to equity it is important to know that leaving school-based success up to local districts and communities asked to suggest and as it is right now will perpetuate inequitable health education and outcomes i'm proud to identify as a young hispanic and queer woman who is worthy of comprehensive sex side unfortunately i feel that i was time i information thank you sarah thank you for your time i just want to i want to make one note obviously that the timer is over here and so if you're reading comments you'll want to look she's holding up at 30 seconds and then a stop so just to be clear thank you commissioner i failed to share that jamie gould welcome jamie hello good morning my name is

008jamie gould i'm from omaha nebraska and i was a researcher on this project as well we asked survey respondents to rate how confident they feel in their knowledge on 13 different sex ed topics response options ranging from very competent to not at all confident when we when we looked at these responses and compared the answers of boys to girls for 70 percent of topics boys had drastically higher confidence than girls we also looked at respondent we also asked respondents what their current sources of information are for these 13 topics and through that we found that boys are having much more discussion with their families about sexual and reproductive health this is a matter of inequality if opponents are saying that this education should be left to parents then less than a third of girls in

009nebraska will be getting educated another source option on our survey was pornography and our findings show that over 40 percent of nebraska students rely on pornography as a current source of information on the mechanics of sex when comparing the responses of lgbt individuals to non-lgbt we found that queer youth are significantly more likely than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts to consider pornography a current source of information on the mechanics of sex for many lgbt students families are not a safe place to turn when they need sexual health information so if school is telling them they need to go to their families and their families are not a safe place then they have nowhere left to turn but the internet social media and pornography again this is a matter of inequality i grew up with zero sex

010education nothing from school nothing from family only social media i can't even begin to explain how damaging that was i felt completely in the dark and it was terrifying please don't place the burden of education on parents because if parents cannot answer all their child's questions the burden then falls to the child who is forced to go to even less reliable information sources and this data shows that girls and lgbt individuals will be disproportionately affected by that thank you thank you jamie i am going to ask that i am going to ask that everyone in the audience respect the speaker no matter what their stance is because i know that you would want to be respected as well so let's show kindness and respect that is my mantra lily welcome lily thank you good morning

011everyone my name is lily castellan and i'm from omaha and i'm also a researcher with the adolescent health project in our survey we dove into what sources students are currently turning to to learn about human growth topics and where they want to be learning about these topics the majority of students we surveyed are currently learning about health education topics from online and social media but want to be learning about them from school-based health education instead notably students are getting the majority of their media literacy knowledge from social media which seems almost like learning fire safety from an arsonist over half of our survey respondents desire to learn media literacy school skills from school which will allow them to better navigate information in our increasingly digital world the topics that students reported learning the most about

012from social media are sexual orientation and gender identity over three quarters of students are learning about gender identity from social media well just over one quarter of them actually desire to learn about this topic via this source 72.5 of students are learning about sexual orientation from social media while a little over one quarter of them actually desire to over half of the students we surveyed desire to learn about these topics via school-based health education and trained teachers rather than from online the second draft of the health standards by the nebraska department of education failed to include topics like sexual orientation and gender identity and expression which is exactly the opposite of what students across nebraska have been asking for if these standards are not readjusted to meet the needs and wants of nebraska's students we'll

013be letting down thousands of students in nebraska who need us as an lgbt person who attended grades k-12 in nebraska not learning about lgbt topics in my school's health classes was really harmful to my self-image i felt confused and isolated from the rest of my classmates those negative feelings resurfaced after reading the second draft of the health education standards if the board of education wants human growth content to be affirming and protective in order to provide inclusive equitable and safe learning environments for every student as stated in the most recent draft then they should listen to what the students are directly asking for thank you thank you jay lilly thank you lady lily next up melanie melanie coronado amaya [Music] welcome hi um good morning my name is melanie and i'm also from omaha and

014i was also a researcher with the adolescent health project so in addition to the valuable information presented by the previous interns i am here to talk about the cultural and religious findings from our research nearly half of hispanics latino survey respondents stated that their own religion made it harder to access sexual health information while less than one quarter of non-hispanic and latino respondents said the same thing this finding is super important because it not only shows the impact of religion on adolescence and their access to information but also shows the intersectionality that is present within all schools in nebraska this is also important to me because as a young latina religion has played a huge part in my life and cultural beliefs although it has helped me through my hardest moments it has also been

015used to ostracize and shun others as a student advocate and researcher i believe that students from all around nebraska should have access to inclusive and accurate sexual health information regardless of religion race gender or sexuality we all have to remember that not everyone is going to be religious or have a religion at all so it is important to give adolescents the autonomy they want and deserve in addition to the religious impacts youth of color are significantly less likely than the white counterparts to consider family as a current source of information about anatomy and consent it saddens me to think that many students of color cannot turn to school nor their families to get accurate sexual health information but there is a clear pattern here it is people of color women and lgbt students that are

016not getting the necessary information for school from school or family which results in estate previously students come fighting more in the internet and social media more than ever for too long marginalized communities have not gotten the necessary information to feel comfortable confident and safe and it changes with us for everyone listening here today i would like to reiterate that one shoe does not fit all and in order to progress in the future we must listen to youth because frankly we are the future finally we created a colorful infographic that contains important highlights of our research that each of our members should have received thank you thank you melanie kendall bartley welcome kendall thank you president nicholls uh commissioner blomstedt and members of the board i want to thank you for accepting public comment on these

017standards i truly appreciate it my name is of course kendall bartling and i hail from grand island nebraska i come today for my friends for my family and most importantly for the thousands of nebraska students that would benefit from revised health standards what we are talking about here is not so much an issue of values but one of acceptance and recognition of differences including language that includes all students instead of one particular crowd is critical to ensuring that the standards you put forth are equitable that's plain and simple by including language that only supports one identity a traditional heterosexual couple household you are shutting out thousands of nebraska families including mine and nearly every one of my friends the reality that thousands of nebraskans face are absent from these standards that needs to change adopting

018changes to these standards that re-include different family structures that include gender identity and sexual orientation goes hand in hand with the equity lens that you yourselves have established draft two as it stands has not fulfilled the necessary consideration steps to ensure that all students regardless of sexual orientation gender identity expression or family status have been thoroughly included in your standards lastly i just want to speak on this briefly comprehensive sex education ensures that students who are sexually active go about those activities in a safe healthy and responsible manner it is irresponsible to assume that all students will remain abstinent throughout their schooling and ensuring they have the tools necessary to stay safe and healthy is critical education is the most important tool to have in an effective sex education toolkit thank you for your time

019thank you kendall helena hi my name is helena moray i'm also from omaha nebraska as a straight white cisgender woman i feel fairly represented in nebraska's sex education but i'm here today for the people who are not i was raised in district 66 most of my life by my two moms starting in elementary and middle school i've had classmates who were confused or just plain rude about the facts that my parents are gay for example i've been told by classmates that my moms were going to hell or that same-sex couples should not be visible in pop culture of course these were very painful for me to hear as a young kid that's why i was so excited to see that the standards included teaching young kids about different family types now imagine my disappointment when

020i found out a week ago that this provision in nearly every other lgbtq topic has been dropped from the standards it's difficult for me to watch the department of education that is supposed to serve all students kneel before neil over the organized anti-lgbtq hate evidently the nde believes the respect of families like mine is not worth fighting for commissioner bromstead has said it's a priority that every student is able to see themselves in these standards if that is the goal the second draft misses by a mile it's hard for the more than 12 000 lgbtq kids in nebraska to see themselves in one sentence fragment about gender identities in the standards if you really want lgbtq people to feel included please insist on a third draft that teaches all young people how to keep themselves

021healthy and safe on all facets of their life no matter their sexual identity their gender identity or sexual orientation thank you for your time thank you helena ashley welcome ashley thank you good morning my name is ashley schmidt and i was born and raised in rural nebraska wahoo to be exact i am the mother of four children that i am trusting the saunders county school district to educate i support unbiased accurate and comprehensive sexual health education for my children's education so they can protect and plan for their futures it is vital that comprehensive health information includes sexual health it is not controversial it is normal and it should not be left to the home i believe this to be true for several reasons i want my children and their peers to get complete information in

022a standardized way so that we can understand one another and themselves as their bodies grow and change i want them to be able to hold one another accountable from consent to respect for the spectrum of gender identity and sexuality what i don't want is another failed child because they didn't get basic health information i didn't learn anything about sex ed in my health class i was given no information whatsoever about my body the changes that were happening to me or what could happen if i were to have sex and because of this absolute lack of any information about my body offered to me in school i became pregnant when i was 17 years old i am the third generation third generation of anecdotal proof that this state's history of leaving education to sexual health in

023its home only fails us as i am a third generation teenage mother why do we pretend that our children don't have access to the internet and access to sexual health at their fingertips in an era that everything is online how are we to guide these children to accurate information thank you ashley ava ava whalen welcome ava hi thank you for having me i'm ava whelan i'm from omaha nebraska and i am a member i am a student of ops high schools why are we still shielding our youth away from comprehensive sex education change is scary for many but it can feel as though the world is moving on without you but ignorance is worse ignorance about women's bodies ignorance about a gender identity ignorance about sexuality ignorance is what upholds the current balance of power

024nothing is scarier for someone in power than the idea of having it taken away the patriarchy is what upholds this power and really those with privilege in our society knowledge is power and giving power to those who has been taking from is how we balance that power giving education to children and teaching them about sexuality and consent can give them the knowledge they need to further themselves we must start education educating kids at an early age to prepare them for as fast as the world changes society is changing for the better and when it comes to talking and learning about sex education by putting it in our schools we can further our health at a younger age to really grasp the concept of inclusiveness diversity and equity let's educate our youth about ways to prevent

025disease safe conception and enhancing our health without the fear of being shame or humili being shamed or humiliated when you feel changed you cannot dig in your heels because you are scared as taylor swift once said i'm done being miss misery for too long thank you ava reese [Music] hello i am maurice haif i am from omaha and i attend an ops high school when sex education is not learned in schools it is sometimes never taught women are given tips to stay safe from dangerous people like don't talk to strangers at night don't take the bus at night and to never smile to a stranger instead of women being taught these things to conform into the man's world that we live in we can teach all youth what consent means in today's society how to

026form healthy relationships and how to respect others different than yourself this is all this all can come out of the betterment of the sex education curriculum by addressing the issue by addressing the issue children can by addressing the issue of sexual harassment and sexual education we can make a better future for the children growing up now school should be a place where you are able to learn to be yourself in most women's case they are taught to stay within the strict lines of the patriarchy to follow the rules and never break them to fit in with the crowd it is a large wall to overcome but no matter sexual orientation gender identity race or race or or ethnicity people should be able to embrace their true selves no one should be shamed for who they

027are whether or not on individual beliefs with a quick google search we know that the curriculum hasn't changed in over 40 years society has changed a lot as a whole accepting members of the lgbtq community and how women should be treated are still topics of debate by addressing it in schools our society can only grow thank you thank you reese heather heather hall welcome heather thank you good morning my name is heather hall from roca nebraska i have three children that attend public school and i'm here to express my extreme opposition to these health standards i'm not going to say anything profound or anything that you haven't already heard in the past few months with these meetings i'm just going to talk to you as a very concerned mother and as a follower of jesus

028christ in our home we teach our kids that god loves everyone even those that hate him even those that deny his existence we teach our kids to be kind and respectful and to treat others the way that they would want to be treated even their enemies this is the teaching of jesus christ we preach abstinence to our children and to save sex for marriage between a man and a woman this is god's plan for sex it's holy and it is sacred and it is not to be messed with and it protects us from the consequences of sin of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman we teach our kids to love the lord their god with all their hearts and minds and souls that is my ultimate goal for my children more

029than financial security more than success by the standards of this world is to love the lord their god when i read draft number one i was appalled and it went against so many of my deeply held beliefs and what god's word proclaims although draft number two removed much of the sexually explicit content it's still just a watered-down version of draft number one how can we as parents trust that you are not going to add this back in the future i will be honest you have lost 100 of my trust and faith in you in protecting my children i believe you're using your position of power and abusing it by trying to implement these health standards and indoctrinate our children with the radical left's agenda and ideologies these health standards are unnecessary we do not need

030them as a taxpayer as a mother and most importantly as a follower of jesus christ i demand that you remove time these standards [Applause] laura welcome laura thank you i'm laura rauscher from lincoln i do not appreciate needing to come here to spend my entire morning waiting to address you for two minutes you hired professionals are now being paid to listen to us i always believed that you would sift through the best curriculum find the most up-to-date data to teach our children solid concepts instead we are here to try to stop you from the perversity of what you plan to teach your children your watered-down version of the second draft shows how you still intend to have it taught in school and the perverse sexual orientation of most of our precious children i believe god's

031word does not return in void therefore i'm quoting the niv version and paraphrasing genesis 1 1 through 124 tells us how god created the entire world with a word he spoke it and it was done and then in verse 126 let us make man in our image in our likeness in his own image in the image of god he created him male and female he created them by god's word all is created and every word he speaks has authority matthew 18 1 18 1-7 at that time the disciples came to jesus and asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and he called a little child and had him stand among them and he said i tell you the truth unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the

032kingdom of heaven therefore who humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me but if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for him to have a large millstone several cement blocks hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin such things must come but woe to the man through whom they come and verse 10 see that you do not look down on one of these little ones for i tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my father i thank you oh thank you for you thank

033you laura [Music] [Applause] wayne roscher welcome dwayne hi thank you i'm dwayne from lincoln nebraska i just wanted to talk with you a little bit about the masks about the covid about the shots about the sexual orientation with man and woman because i think we have you have so many things that are being thrown at you at once but what is the truth on these things what do we need to know what about the mask you know are they beneficial are they not beneficial are they helping are they hindering then part of it is too you know what benefit is there financially by wearing the mask i think so many of the things that department of education gets through grants and stuff is associated with the agenda of masks and the agenda that's going on

034coming from the u.s department of education so your money is flowing downhill here so i think sometimes they have their hooks in you in this organization to be able to just pocket money is it really the finances that you're interested in or is it the children that you're interested in the kid the kids need to be children they don't need to be growing up quicker than they need to be growing up homes can take care of the sex education stuff if they're willing to stand up and do it and i pray that the parents stand up to do it i also wanted to ask you know what is driving this change where is it coming from what is really going on have you thought about that where is it coming from why is there such

035an overwhelming number of items that are being thrown at you and whose agenda are you really following following are you acting in the best interest of those you serve that would be my big question thank you thank you dwayne megan hunt welcome megan thank you very much good morning everybody a lot's going on um i'm megan hunt i'm from omaha nebraska i'm a state senator and i represent the neighborhoods of dundee and benson and keystone in midtown omaha and i'm here to give some of you some political courage that i know that you have but perhaps you aren't standing in when it comes to the opportunity to update the health standards for our students in 2018 i was elected as the first out lgbtq state senator in nebraska's history and i am a mother to

036a public school student i am a rape survivor and i can't help but think about the arc that my life has taken and how different it could have been if i had had comprehensive health education growing up the types of things that i wouldn't have had to deal with the depression and the anxiety that so many other kids deal with today and i'm here to speak on behalf of so many of those kids who cannot be here today and i'm just in awe of the students who have already spoken and who have come here and to lincoln today to speak to their board of education you know how nerve-wracking that can be for young people especially in the face of christian adults who are behind me laughing at them and i say shame on them

037for that so let's talk about the reality parents still have the ability to homeschool and they have the ability to send their kids to private and alternative schools which many of them are and parents will be able to opt out of this curriculum if they want to the standards don't dictate that one way or another and this is universally the practice the second draft of standards has a whole introductory paragraph about parent involvement so any concern about lack of parental control is not valid finally i want to give you some courage about the legislature we are a second branch of government the christians would like me to stop thanks everybody thank you thank you megan sarah for y'all good morning i'm sarah from crete nebraska in the late 1970s a ceca sex ed film was

038shown to our nebraska governor then governor exxon i watched our government our governor almost fall off his chair in shock as he watched a pornographic sex ed film that had been shown in many nebraska high schools livid parents brought that film to a nebraska state school board member wise assertive parents took action and that film was banned from our state fast forward to today we still have a very bloated state department of educrets and sboe what i have seen of your proposed standards curricula or whatever you prefer to call it i label as revolting how dare you destroy the innocence of childhood while grooming our kids and our grandkids to become potential sex perverts ready for the sex traffickers how dare you ruin our children's healthy view of love marriage and family with this garbage

039how can any of this trash you claim as health ed do anything positive toward promoting academic excellence knowledge math and verbal skills and appreciation for the arts and for the freedom and liberty granted to us in this amazing constitutional republic comfort confronting you today are many wise asserted parents and taxpayers who say enough no more of your egregious educate manipulation of our children into something god never intended them to be public schools were started in america to teach children how to read so they could read the bible so they could be saved at one time public schools advanced academic excellence more recently it's been the ddds the deliberately dumbing down your pathetic sex ed standards are a super good example of that we've had it with the federal bandwagons federal and state mandated outcome-based education

040goals 2000 no child left behind race to the top and common core kids are born with a desire to succeed if they are not taught academics or if they are distracted with inappropriate sex ed transgenderism and critical race theory to name a few they're still going to succeed but with the das the drug alcohol and sex how dare you people blatantly dumb down our children by sexualizing them [Applause] morgan ryan welcome morgan thank you my name is morgan ryan i'm a student in district 66 and a trained pure health educator last week commissioner bloomstead stated that the purpose of health education was quote to make sure that students are prepared for the environment that they're going to enter into post high school well these standards fail massively the fact remains that there are sexually active

041students in every one of your districts that's a fact and closing our eyes and plugging our ears to this reality just isn't a viable option anymore according to a poll most nebraska kids teenagers want to learn more through school-based sex ed than they're getting now this includes birth control gender identity sexual orientation and the mechanics of sex all content that has been stripped from the standards i'm not sure that anything represents the astounding inadequacy that is these standards better than the fact that i received more education on the mechanics of sex from my catholic grade school than i would have as a high schooler under these current standards it makes me sad to see the department of education decide that information on birth control a huge part of a healthy life for many young women

042is expendable that our health is expendable this is despite the fact that nationwide 94 of high school parents support birth control and sex ed the second draft changes were justified by saying that the nde wants to let school districts develop curriculum that meets their needs however this condition is already met because these standards are voluntary for schools to begin with so i ask that you all use this opportunity to tell every nebraska child that this body believes that their health is worth fighting for omitting basic expert-supported sex ed from these standards conveys the message that you care more about political expediency than the well-being of young nebraskans we deserve the opportunity to live healthy and safe lives no matter our zip code or our sexual orientation or the personal beliefs of people in power yeah

043you're gonna have to fight all the people here but i think we're worth it thank you morgan ruby kinsey welcome ruby hello i am ruby kinsey a senior at wayne high school i testified in may and told you about the very insufficient absence-based program i had in junior high i am disappointed and angry with the second draft of the standards you have taken out anything regarding sexual orientation and most of anything regarding gender identity you have basically made a whole group of nebraska's youth feel unseen this is especially important to me as i am part of that group i struggled throughout an absence-based class called why am i tempted confused and worried that i wasn't tempted while girls my age were talking about their crushes i was thinking there was something wrong with me two

044years later i figured out i am asexual i do not experience sexual attraction during those two years i was confused about who i was and was afraid to discuss it had there been even a short lesson in a comprehensive sex ed class to identify different sexual orientations maybe those that two years could have been much different for me i've noticed that there have been very few teens involved in this discussion why wouldn't you want us to talk about what we want to learn or wish we had learned if in eighth grade they sensed we were already having feelings of sexual attraction and that we are old enough to learn that we should abstain from sex are we not old enough to then learn the correct terms for different sexual orientations and gender identities learning these

045things are not going to make children not heterosexual it will just give them the knowledge to know who they are and that there are different people out there and to treat every human being with respect and kindness i urge you to include sexual orientation and gender identity and the next draft and to not discard nebraska's lgbtq plus youth thank you ruby did i by chance miss any one of the first 16. you may go back to your seats the next group riley welsh karen schrader michaela atkins aiden whalen anila jayan maria gilmore isaac bern bernoud lauren melacon eva mitch mitcher eric reader isabel salas marshall johnson julie sheldon liz davids stephanie johnson and jody morganson riley welsh good morning my name is riley hi i'm from omaha born and raised in high school i was

046a member of teen council which is a program where students teach other students comprehensive sexual education i saw and felt the difference that it made on young people students felt acknowledged uplifted and safe i felt the importance of having a community reaffirm that they had the right to information about their bodies their identities healthy relationships with others and informative decision making i address you today to encourage a third draft of the nebraska standards of education to be written that includes information that will provide students with medically accurate knowledge regarding their health and safety this draft must include lgbtq plus identities gender identities pregnancy prevention and stds consent and sexual violence prevention if we have a limited amount of knowledge we will have a limited understanding teaching with fear and shame is setting students up to

047fail you hold a responsibility in sharing tools with young people for healthy decision making as a community we hold a responsibility to show them that there are available resources for every student in any situation especially lgbtq plus youth and youth of color who have to fight even harder to find these resources we have the power to lead a generation of students who don't have to unlearn this fear and shame who don't have to jump through obstacles later in life to learn that they had the opportunity to learn honest and helpful information from their trusted leaders all along let us show them that their own school teachers are their resources once more i ask you that the standards of health education reflects the needs of our youth fully and honestly thank you riley um madam president

048i i just want to know say your name and where you're from again i would ask that if we're that we be consistent in what we ask to speak the information that we ask the speakers to disclose uh just for everyone's own safety concerns but also uh just for consistency so that would be their their name and where they're from correct correct karen we're good okay my name is karen schroeder i live in omaha i'm a nebraska trained and currently practicing family medicine physician assistant and i've provided paid volunteer services in internal medicine primary urgent and acute care to ensured um transient diverse immigrant and indigent populations in omaha and lincoln for 25 years i'm also a mother of two and a grandmother of two i'm here today at the innovation center to encourage you

049to advocate for and seek to adopt a newer draft of a more comprehensive age-appropriate evidence-based nebraska sex and health education standard for the k-12 curriculums as a proactive and preventative health measure as a mother and health provider i understand the benefits of preventive care such as well visits and vaccinations to promote health and avoid illness we start these in infancy and continue to seek health benefits into adulthood medical research supports those practices and decades of research supporting sex education as part of school-based human growth and development programs these similarly are desirable as high yield investments in prevention effective and communi and comprehensive self-education as part of health education curriculums for students has been shown to promote better social economic health and relationship outcomes we know that 50 percent of students will have sex before they

050leave high school a few of them will be std tested when i see students and parents in my clinic i'm appalled and saddened by the lack of preparation for sexual risk and in sexual development and growth the lack of information about access to counseling advisement treatment contraception is diffuse and needs intervention thank you karen madam president am i allowed to ask a clarifying question yes okay um our speaker i did i hear right did you say 50 of students will have sex before leaving high school that's correct okay thank you michaela atkins may i begin or welcome michaela hi good morning so my name is michaela i am from omaha nebraska and i identify as a black bisexual christian woman who supports comprehensive sexual health education i support an education that is inclusive and affirming

051and that it i support an inclusive and informing environment that teaches young people and children how to protect themselves from sexual assault i support an education where each student feels safe and comfortable in their classrooms and can apply the teachings to their real life young people deserve an education that accurately represents their identities and realities this is not the education we have now and that must change my goal in speaking with you all today is to encourage us to have this education for the students of tomorrow if i had had this education when i was in school i would have never questioned who i was growing up and whether it was right or wrong and the students of tomorrow should not have to question themselves either when we erase lgbtq plus identities and refuse to

052acknowledge the realness of racism we are conveying the message that people who look like me do not matter these conversations must be normal must be normalized instead of feared this normalization needs to begin in schools and classrooms we must encourage and empower our youth to explore who they are but they can only do this if they feel safe knowledge is power so let's give youth the power and the autonomy that they deserve i will never be satisfied until we until we acknowledge people's identities and that is the bare minimum before i go i just want to say one last thing that you can be bisexual be christian and support human rights all at the same time thank you for your time thank you michaela aidan waylon i have another time or two welcome aiden hi

053i'm aiden i'm from omaha okay um i am one of the many queer and transgender students that will be affected by these health standards it is up to you to decide whether it will be a good effect or a bad one inclusive health standards pave the way for more inclusive education in the classroom it creates conversations that will acknowledge everyone and it gives resources to those questioning their gender and sexuality inclusive education is not a bad thing it will not turn our children gay or trans it will not force beliefs onto our children the only thing it does is create a space where every student feels safe and a sense of belonging that safe environment is something i crave and something that i need and deserve if i heard my identity being taught in school

054i would not feel the loneliness i do now and i will not feel the loneliness i felt 13 months ago 13 months ago i attempted to take my own life i was not appreciated at school so i figured i was not appreciated anywhere else this is a shared experience among experience amongst our lgbtq plus youth we are pushed to self-harm and suicide because of the misinformation and ignorance amongst our peers taught to them by the adults in their life teaching gender identity and sexuality in the classroom means all students receive the same information they do not hear what their parents want them to they do not hear opinions they hear facts about our identities that will shape them into kind people who respect everyone it won't shape them into people who come to these events

055and bully children as nebraskans we need to think about the future of our state our children's futures the lack of education is pushing people away my friends myself my classmates none of us want to stay here because we do not feel respected we do not feel like we are appreciated here because our classrooms do not reflect it if we continue ignoring the existence of marginalized voices we will ignore you back if you can choose to have a disrespectful and ignorant present but that means we will you will have a non-existent future it's time to listen to the voices you are trying to smother and give us the education that we deserve for the future of youth the future of education and the future of nebraska thank you thank you aiden do you need the scepter

056ananya welcome thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify to get closer to the microphone my name is anjali jan i'm currently a student in omaha nebraska and a trained peer health educator i vaguely remember my health classes in middle school the stigmas of sex education would always make students laugh or feel uncomfortable but what i can clearly remember is the lack of lgbtq representation in the health curriculum there wasn't anything mentioned regarding sexual orientation or gender identity and although my peers and i would like to learn about these topics in a safe space such as a school setting students were either ashamed to ask or educators were prohibited to speak the belief that sex education should only be taught at home is discriminatory to those who don't have access to reliable resources of

057information as young people we have the right to learn accurate and reliable health education that includes gender identity and expression sexual orientation sti pregnancy prevention health disparities intersectionality and consent statistically lgbtq folks are more likely to not only feel unsafe in schools but also are more likely to experience sexual violence later in life a 2020 survey by the trevor project found that 40 percent of lgbtq plus people seriously considered suicide in the past year and when we fail to be open-minded to those who differ from us we comply to the hate and discrimination our community faces and that is no excuse not every child is raised in the same household nor will have the same future after high school which means that it is more crucial than ever to teach about such topics during school

058where nebraska students will have access to inclusive and equitable health education i ask that we should create a new draft that is genuinely inclusive to all students in nebraska thank you for your time thank you anaya maria gilmore welcome bria hi my name is bria gilmore and i'm a 19 year old student at uno i'm gonna start with a story if that's okay as a young black girl my mom felt it was her job to protect me from a world who did not want me she immediately began to control the media i took in and information i was afforded access to from an early age i was opted out of every human growth and development class as early as first grade until high school and to put it bluntly i was clueless my parents had

059the mindset that what i didn't know wouldn't hurt me and that was mostly true until it wasn't i knew nothing about my body more importantly healthy relationships warning signs or even who to go to if the worst may happen and unfortunately for me and many others the worst did happen i was lost confused and i could only blame myself my assault was not my fault but i thought it was this is preventable ignorance is not bliss and knowledge is power it's okay to be scared we all want what's best for our kids but fear insane driven sheltering has never been the answer medically scientifically accurate information has never been the cause of growing up too fast instead it helps equip young children with the information they need the information i needed when i did not

060have it comprehensive sex education prevents sexual violence validates identity and saves lives this is not a laughing matter we can't learn from the past and if we want our children no matter who they are to be happy healthy alive and well we need to do better it's important to take the collective knowledge of personal experience and use it as a driving factor for change thank you isaac welcome isaac my name is isaac burnett i'm from omaha the second draft includes zero mentions of contraceptives or birth control in fact it doesn't mention sex is an activity for anything other than reproduction at all similarly ethnic sex doesn't exist is barbaric as is relying on abstinence which is like saying don't wanna choke don't eat sexual desire is one of the strongest urges known to humanity and

061this draft proposed we ask children just to pretend it doesn't exist which is very smart as everyone knows teenagers never have sex or do anything they're told not to lack of sex ed has been scientifically proven to harm society in several ways no sex ed means more wanted pregnancies no sex means more stis and stds most importantly more sex ed means far more abortions when countless teenagers become pregnant due to your reckless injection of your personal beliefs into our educational system how many of them you truly think will decide to keep the baby and letter b 15 14 13 i definitely say you should vote yes second draft you want more abortions all the ones that result from it will be all thanks to your help no birth control has another major effect the many

062many single mothers that will result from the education standards will be unable to have normal post high school wise will have sincerely damaged their chances to get early chan's successful job because of this you are harming all the women of nebraska in the future damaging them financially and hurting them socially as they lose their independence this will quite obviously set back the woman in our state by not allowing them to achieve their full potential by voting yes for the second draft you're telling your daughters they matter far less to you than your sons the idea that not knowing anything about sex will prevent teenagers from engaging their natural desires is completely nonsensical if anything not knowing anything about the risk will make them more curious about sex not west think it this way you're walking

063through a desert you're very thirsty you find a small oasis of muddy green water farther off in the distance you see some much more clear water but you're very thirsty and tired and no one has taught you anything about which pool is safe so you decide the green water is good enough of course you choose the green water after all it'd be completely illogical to choose the clean water because it takes far more effort to reach there and there's probably not any risk in the green water anyways of course in this case the green water is unprotected sex and the clear water is sex with proper knowledge if you wish to increase abortions harm the future of half the human population and be ultimately completely ineffectual in stopping people from having sex thank you isaac

064lauren milicon welcome lauren hello i'm a student at ops and i'm 14 years old leaders in our government need to start taking action they're the ones who can help create and sustain a comprehensive sex education curriculum the world is moving fast but we need to move quicker teaching a curriculum that was written before closer to the aids epidemic rather than the legalization of gay marriage with modern medicine changing so much and so fast we are what we are learning today is not enough leaders in our community must stand behind better sex education and start learning about what good sex education looks like our generation has grown up with the information super highway at their fingertips it has changed it has changed the way we interact with information interact with the world and interact with each

065other we live in a world where the youth learn more about sexuality gender and sex education um in general on ted talk instagram and other social medias than their own schools it's their own schools a place where they're supposed to figure out who they are and prepare them for the world it's scary to know that men my age are not taught proper education on women's bodies due to the lack of information taught in sex ed i've talked to men my age that don't know how periods work how half the population has one with the failure to teach this information on women's bodies this leads to misinformation and harmful tendencies because of ignorance not giving men the basic knowledge they need um because it makes them uncomfy and makes them in making up excuses for them

066is not step forward it's a good 10 steps back and that is not what we need teaching this generation a standard written before their parents are born is not teaching them anything we have the chance to change everything and change as many things um change the way many things are viewed in society as taylor swift once said today is never too late to be brand new thank you lauren [Applause] ava [Applause] welcome ava hi what has led to the lack of good comprehensive sex education today well it led to extreme amount of bullying to many students because of their race gender sexuality and beliefs having a good curriculum for students to learn will start to teach them about what they are seeing in the real world most students learn things from their parent or guardians

067we can't leave things like gender identity consent sexual orientation birth control etc up to parents and guardians it needs to be taught in school so we can create a more inclusive and kinder environment the prejudice and bigotry i see every day can easily start to change and become better if we add better sex education to our schools sixty percent of the seventeen percent of students who seriously consider suicide identify with the lgbt plus community we must stop accepting how bullying is affecting our environment where students should feel cared for and safe i cannot watch any of my fellow students and friends die because of your lack of education we can change this you can change and you can help this with effective age-appropriate concepts about gender identity expression sexual orientation consent birth control pregnancy and

068disease prevention thank you ava i have a clarifying question you mentioned a piece of data 60 i missed what followed on that of the 17 of students who seriously consider attempting suicide identify with the lgbtq plus community thank you you're welcome eric reader good morning my name is eric ryder i'm from lincoln nebraska my pronouns are they them and their and i'm here today as a lifelong nebraskan and a member of our state's vibrant and resilient lgbtq plus community to express my utter disappointment and the choice to almost entirely erase lgbtq people from these comprehensive sex education standards i grew up in a town of 500 in east central nebraska where sex education was a unit in our ninth grade health class our gym teacher taught it even though he didn't have any training he

069put things in crude terms telling us to just quote pull out and ejaculate wherever unquote if we didn't have a condom lack of suffice it to say we weren't provided with medically accurate sex education lack of medical accuracy wasn't the only glaring error in our education there was also no comprehension of gender identity or sexual orientation i had no idea that anyone else in the world felt the way that i felt i didn't know the language to describe my own sexuality or gender identity until my mid-twenties experiencing this inner push and pull of who i was led me to attempting suicide at ages 13 16 and 19. comprehensive sex education is suicide prevention creating space that is affirming and providing resources to explore someone's authentic self will keep them alive i got cheated out of

070a childhood because mine was spent in a closet my schools failed to equip me with the necessary tools to make informed choices about my sexual and reproductive health care and identity i urge you to include these elements in a third draft that shows a commitment to keeping lgbtq plus youth healthy safe and alive thank you thank you eric isabelle [Applause] welcome isabelle good morning just going to do this my name is isabelle salas i live in lincoln now but i grew up in lexington nebraska and i'm here today to ask you to basically do what everyone else is asking you to do is to include sexual orientation and gender identity as part of our sex ed standards just like other folks have said before me erasing lgbtqia plus folks from our public school curriculum won't

071stop nebraskans from being gay nor will it stop nebraskans from internalizing homophobia and transphobia in our everyday lives what it did and does currently do is force youth into the closet keeping them from being their true authentic selves and inhibit their understanding of their peers who are just as deserving of love and respect regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity what is dangerous is letting hateful narrow-minded people attach shame to parts of our identities from and the identities of our youth from our most formative years instead of adequate language and material on our identities my peers and i received shameful sex education including having to sign an abstinence pledge in the seventh grade and also as part of our sex ed class we watched a drama uh an over dramatized movie called she's too

072young that aired on lifetime about the dangers of oral sex and this was in the seventh grade what really makes me sad though is that i have identified what i call the gay glow up in my peers where uh we leave our hometowns and then we all glow up we're all the most true and authentic parts of ourselves and i'm so sad that our community and our hometown was not able to experience that our communities in all of nebraska but especially in rural nebraska are missing out on these vibrant exuberant youth who are so proud to be themselves they are killing them thank you isabelle marshall welcome marshall my name is marshall johnson i'm the senior pastor of saint luke united methodist church in omaha nebraska i live in omaha i appear before you as

073a citizen and as a person who's had the privilege and the pleasure to be an elected school board member in the state of nebraska and as an ordained united methodist pastor as a person of faith i believe in the diverse creation of humanity and the sanctity of each person we are not all created alike not acknowledging that reality does not make it any less true my faith leads me to believe that we are all created to receive the same dignity and respect as a former school board member i was proud to serve what i thought was the most important institution for my community i was not elected to serve the majority of the students in the school nor the majority of the families in my community i was asked the best of my ability to

074serve them all guidelines for public education need to reflect the reality and experience of all students to not name and acknowledge the experience of lgbtqia plus students diminishes everyone's education and denies individuals the opportunity to learn in a supportive community as a citizen it is in my self-interest to live in a community where each person has the opportunity to develop themselves through education in a state that struggles to keep its young citizens we need to do everything we can not only to provide quality public education but also to inspire in students a belief that they have a future in our state and finally as a graduate of a rural public school in central nebraska i can only wonder how a well-rounded human development education would have affected my transgender classmates experience of school community and

075their own personal development my hope and concern is that my grandchildren will have a broader and more complete education than i received i encourage you to put the language addressing gender and sexual orientation back into the guidelines thank you thank you marshall julie sheldon welcome julie my name is julie sheldon i am from here in lincoln i went to lps schools and i want to caution all of you to take all of the statistics you've heard today with a grain of salt as we have no idea a lot of them what the sources are what the pool was statistics can be manipulated if you choose to pick a pool of all like-minded people and also i feel like with the slam against all of the rural communities today that maybe those students were not polled

076in any of these particular polls that they're quoting i also wanted to say that no one is no one here i don't believe is calling for an attacks against the lgbt community or any want them to be bullied or anything else don't want anybody to be bullied however there should be certain protections against some of the standards that you guys are proposing as these are adult issues we need to focus on the science uh obviously sex is gender is one there's two genders male and female the rest of that is uh up for debate whether that is factual or not and um as for sexual orientation and uh those sexual identity being taught um i think that's very very inappropriate as i don't believe anybody here wants to know what my sexual preferences are or

077what i choose to do in my bedroom um we need to protect our children from being sexualized and i would like to say i am also a parent who had children young mike my first son was born at 15 my second one is at 17 and i want to caution everybody who says that parents have the option to opt out parents often don't know what's going on and i can speak to that as a student when i was 16 years old and pregnant with my second son lps staff members took me out of school took me to planned parenthood where i took a pregnancy test my mother was never consulted she was never asked if that was okay and afterwards she was never told that it happened thank you julie [Applause] [Music] liz david liz

078welcome liz thank you i'm a little taller here we go you're not fooling anyone with a second draft you showed your cards the first time you want our 330 000 nebraska children corrupted by extreme political ideologies from groups like cecus planned parenthood playboy answer glsen and gender spectrum your committees for developing these standards did not include conservative moderate common sense parents educators medical or psychological professionals because you don't want middle of the road compromise you want to set a social agenda for our kids that will indoctrinate them into sexual perversion and identity confusion to their destruction identity confusion is leading kids to sign up for puberty blockers and hormone supplements and even permanent surgeries that mutilate their perfectly healthy body parts causing irreparable damage to their minds bodies and confidence i'm old enough to remember

079that previous generations by and large did not struggle with these things the reason these children are struggling is because of the indoctrination from predatory businesses that have made their way into our schools to the shame of every administrator who has allowed them in right now you have students walking around in your schools who not only don't know if they're male or female they don't know if they're a human being because they are claiming identity as cat or dog how about affirming biology in our schools how about affirming reality in our schools we can absolutely have compassion for individuals who are struggling while at the same time of affirming their very real actual genetics and chromosomes there's no need and no possible way to have every single version of every single identity or orientation represented and

080taught in our schools because the world of social media makes up new versions of these imaginary social constructs every day and wars with each other about their arbitrary definitions why would you further these delusions from malicious devious adults to our kids destruction you need to remove everything about gender identity sexual orientation and sexual pleasure like recommending these homegrown sex toys from these standards and keep predators out of our schools thank you stephanie johnson welcome stephanie hi thank you my name is stephanie johnson and i am here um from lincoln nebraska i just do want to say too it is very disheartening that in order to stand in opposition to these standards it is automatically assumed that we are filled with hate and and we are in somehow bigoted against groups of people which is totally

081absolutely untrue and there is a definite difference between a mom like me who's put six kids through school with children who are getting up to testify about their experience so you just have to weigh all of that but with that said i want to just talk about three key points is that the state board of education is not required or mandated by state law to write or implement health standards so i just do not understand why which i actually do understand why but i'm just presenting this why we would put together standards that come from derived from the planned parenthood from the west coast that cause such division in the state it literally makes absolute no sense and then when we talk about i heard somebody earlier talk about we should not include values when

082we are looking at these standards but you have to understand what you do know that we are a christian state many of us are christian and that's where we get our values and if the education system decided long ago to eliminate god from the educational system then it needs to have equal treatment towards satan and if we're going to take godly if we're going to take god out of the schools then we need to have ungodly principles out of the schools as well god created man and woman satan says that's not true god said listen to the teaching of your mother and father satan says no let the state teach you the state does not have the right to impose their ideologies and beliefs onto our children knowing my perspective and i what if i

083said i'm coming to you with some standards and i want to teach your children would you want that because you vehemently disagree with me that's how we feel that's how we feel and so you have to understand that's where we're coming from the state does not have the right to do this to our children [Applause] jody morganson welcome jody thank you greetings nda board members you need the microphone closer my name is jody morganson i live in lincoln my pronouns are she her and hers i'm here to express my point of view as a mother of one daughter and one queer child high school teacher of 21 years member of the lgbtqia plus community and lifelong nebraskan these are my views as an individual not my employers even though i believe nebraska public schools excel

084in many ways over the past 20 years i have watched our system fail youth by not giving them honest accurate and complete information regarding their bodies identities consent and reproductive health this gap in my own education negatively affected my life in personal ways that i would be willing to share with any of you when there is more time as a result of limited health education many of our young people operate with a narrow understanding of themselves in the world which results in youth who do not know how to properly protect themselves against sti's sexual assault and pregnancy and who may be confused or ashamed about their own identities those who end up with stis might not know how to seek treatment and those who end up with unintended pregnancy might not realize what options they

085have those who realize their bodies don't align with who they know they are experience feelings of isolation and shame which can lead to self-harm and suicide students who don't know how to receive give or deny consent can wind up as perpetrator or victim of serious crimes according to the cdc sexual violence is preventable through education the previous draft of these standards that included information regarding gender identity and expression and sexual orientation was a step toward a complete health education you have made a mistake by removing that information when gender and sexual orientation is presented as binary it sets many of us up for a lifetime of confusion heartache and shame time thank you jody that concludes that group of 16 the next kelly brady wait a minute stephanie bondi then kelly brady justin riddle marge

086kirschner gerald kirschner karen bell dancing chris pole pastor darrell brown jr andrew alan emily hype kathleen brandert joe giles jill brown jocelyn heyco anna reef luke peterson stephanie bondi welcome stephanie thank you my name is stephanie bondi i use she and they pronouns i live in lincoln i'm hearing some people are arguing schools shouldn't teach about sexuality and gender identities those are things that should be taught at home that's fine those can be personal or religious beliefs but that shouldn't direct and people should be able to direct the education of their own children it should not be directing the educational curriculum of the state however i'm an educator and i study college student development and i know the importance of the role identities play in school and society we have plenty of evidence that identifying

087as lgbtqia 2s to spirit is healthy actually it's denying oneself that is unhealthy i think everyone in here can imagine spaces where you know that people accept you for who you are and don't those spaces feel really good isabelle earlier you know glowing our students up can you imagine all of our students in our schools just feeling really great and ready to learn if you're an environment where you're not sure that you can be who you are does that cause stress is that an ideal environment for learning you know i have students in my classes who say that my showing examples of gay couples and discussing how issues impact lgbt qia 2s individuals is really important to them and i'm teaching from a level of inclusivity where i do that and it does not mean

088that i cannot accept straight and cisgender students we can make space to value them and various religious traditions to the extent those traditions are also affirming to our students we really do need to glow them up one way to value our students is writing their identities into the curriculum this is an evidence-based pedagogical method time rooted in identity development thank you kelly brady welcome kelly hello kelly brady bellevue i am opposed to the standards that include any version of crt or cse i demand the board abide by this statute which is current on the books 79.7 it reads character education principles of instruction duties as teachers each teacher employed to give instruction in public private parochial denominational schools in the state of nebraska shall arrange and present his or his his or her instruction to

089give special emphasis on common honesty morality courtesy obedience to the law respect of our flag the united states constitution the constitution of nebraska respect of parents and the home the dignity the necessity of honest labor and other lessons of studying influence which tends to promote and develop an upright and desirable citizenry the sex ed model is immoral it's wrong 1619 is not honest it does not respect the constitution nebraska's legislature put this in the statute which applies to everyone in the state educators are obligated by this law and must adhere to it now for equity crt and few standards definition of equity being fair just even which are all subjective equity is not equality vice president harris says equitably equitable treatment thank you kelly you have the law justin riddle welcome justin hi my name

090is justin riddle i'm the biggest news story you never heard about because on monday at the omaha public school board meeting my mom a 37 36 year teacher in ops was silenced when she went to speak about crt which does exist they call it lots of things but the people in charge should understand then i was silenced wasn't even allowed to speak yeah it's all on video the news was there nobody said a word right now why won't they discuss it with me ask them i'll tell you why because it's fake it's not real and it's marxism and i don't know if you guys quite understand this but when that gets implemented in ops all these other arguments go bye-bye because it doesn't matter at that point because guess what you get no choice if

091you fight the system you're wrong well i'm not wrong i lost an argument in years a debate let's call it and guess what my challenge is find somebody to debate me take that 270 million dollars and put a bounty out and say somebody that can debate this guy with the aid of video cameras in google and we'll see if crt is a real thing or not i'm maintaining that it's not and i'm stopping early thank you justin to ops website sorry go to ops website please and uh check out their posts and look for my comments everybody should do that not a lot of people from omaha are here thank you [Applause] welcome marge thank you good morning i'm marge kirschner from minden nebraska i'm speaking against the proposed health standards safe space that's a

092phrase we hear frequently today we've heard it for years a safe space is a space that's free from danger and free from outside forces and i stand here today to demand safe space for the children in our schools currently school doors are locked to keep students and educators safe from intruders who would do them physical harm a safe space a space free from the interference of marxist-based critical race theory that would divide us into the oppressed and the oppressor a safe space a space free from the interference of planned parenthood an organization that strives to separate children from their parents when making decisions about their own sexual health an ideology that promotes and provides contraceptions hormone blockers and rights to abortion clinics to name only a few of their services all without the knowledge or

093consent of their parents a safe space a space free from those who would insist that a sexually deviant curriculum be taught in the schools and now for all of us father god knowing that we live in a world where our all people suffer we ask you to be at work in our lives and our children's lives to heal hurting bodies lives and hearts freeing their minds to learn we claim your freedom from the lies prides lack of forgiveness envies and prejudices that bind our hearts reconcile us to yourself that we may be reconciled with each other thank you and work in harmony [Applause] gerald kirshner gerald thank you members of the board thank you uh and thank you for the hard work that you do uh gerald kirschner from minden uh proud husband of that

094woman who just spoke with such righteousness [Applause] uh i'm here to speak against the revision of proposed health standards congratulations i'd like to say to the writers of the virgin the virgin for because of their brilliance contrary to what you've been told this morning it is a highly sophisticated and intentionally obfuscated restatement of version one but a lie by any other name is still a lie we've heard a lot of them today today my prayer is for all of us and especially those who embrace comprehensive sex education for our children from luke 17 temptation to sin are sure to come but woe to the ones through whom they come it would be better for you to if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were cast into the sea then that you would

095cause one of these little ones to sin and respectfully to the board your state legislature has made clear those subjects to which your department is to attend sex education is not among them your state legislature has twice fundamentally rejected such a proposition under the law your proper proper response is to stay in your own lane and mind your own business [Applause] [Music] that is said with great heart great love and respect thank you [Music] karen bill nancy welcome thank you good morning my name is karen beldancey and i said you move the microphone up sure good morning i am karen valdancy and i serve as the executive director of the ywca here in lincoln nebraska the ywca lincoln has served this community for over 135 years implementing the mission of eliminating racism and the empowerment

096of women and girls on behalf of the ywca lincoln i am here to implore you to reconsider the current draft of the nebraska health education standards it is our belief that the standards as outlined do not address the readiness level and opportunity for youth to learn about development we exert that there be more inclusive language around specific topics and subjects we know that this type of education should increase understanding surrounding identity and consequently positively affect future decisions when they are faced with life's choices introducing physiological and biological concepts about lifestyles body changes healthy relationships will address pregnancy prevention sexual orientation and gender identity men's information as well as consent distrust and diverse family structures this includes inclusive language will also promote cultural competency it is not being addressed at the level of which it should

097within the school curriculum these topics are all necessary for the development for a comprehensive health education conversely removing these topics the second draft does not meet best practices in health education to promote healthy youth development serving nebraska over these past decades has afforded the ywca ample opportunity to identify define and deliver educational and lifestyles that are crucial to social and mental development thank you time time thank you [Applause] chris paul welcome chris thank you hello my name is chris cole i use she her pronouns and i'm here today as a parent i'm a parent in the elkhorn school system i have three children that have been or currently are in that school system over the last few months i watched the public comments delivered in these meetings public comments delivered mostly by adults i am

098so happy to see so many youth here today youth sharing with you their reality and sharing with you what they need i am speaking today in support of the first draft of this these health standards not the second i am not okay with the second when i first heard that these standards were being introduced i was hopeful i thought great we can talk about sex education that offers fact-based and medically accurate information and birth control sexually transmitted infections information information that is life-saving the youth i thought we can talk about sex education that begins talking about consent at a young age before a sexual assault occurs because after it's not as effective sex education that offers gender expansive language and information about sexual orientation different identities and different types of families this type of information

099is life-saving opponents of the draft want to point fingers at various organizations as adults as the reason for these standards it's not it's the youth it's the wypar youth you hear it here today i attached information from their document 42 percent of youth getting their information from pornography because of not having sex ed in the schools i think all of us as parents can agree that we would rather they got credible information than going online and viewing porn and if you think because you're here today your kids aren't beautiful to get it you're wrong fine chris thank you pastor daryl brown jr welcome pastor thank you my name is pastor daryl brown jr from omaha nebraska when i told my 17 year old son that i had to be in lincoln to testify again his

100response to me with frustration and disdain was they're still debating that my reply yes son and i'm sorry that is precisely why i'm here today is because i believe we owe our young people an apology i apologize that science is not the basis of education that we wish to provide you i apologize that science-based education is being deemed as indoctrination when that characterization is made by people who would prefer to indoctrinate us regarding their own religious beliefs and to implement it into a non-religious public school system in theory that as a young person your ability to navigate sexual health truths is being discounted i apologize that sexuality is being deemed as dirty and taboo by some leadership regarding health standards some parents and others who simply want to be loud and proud about all the

101wrong things when news flash sex is the reason we are all in this room i apologize that religious people more specifically christians are seeking to dismiss a particular population of people namely the lgbtqia 2s population the same as they have attempted to dismiss the true identity of the jesus they say they serve with their blonde hair blue-eyed representation of him i apologize [Applause] i apologize that the same biblical quotes and stances represented by christians are often coming from a king james bible the same king james who himself was at best a bisexual the nebraska board of education is questioning whether or not to choose or to align with their 2019 statement of providing equitable educational opportunities time and young people i apologize thank you [Applause] andrew elenin welcome andrew good morning uh my name is

102andrew aliman he him i reside in board member morrison's district first of all to all the young people who showed bravery today by sharing your voices i applaud you i'm in solidarity with you today the violent reactions to your reality are based in fear and certainty and certainly not reality it is because of you that i proudly stand here today and i'm sorry that this second draft strips away representation of many of your identities you are not an imaginary social construct i'm a licensed clinical social worker with almost 20 years of professional experience working with young people rating ranging from toddlers to young adults worked in child care inpatient facilities group homes level three schools non-profits youth camps as well as a mental health therapist so i think that it's fair for me to say

103that i have a strong understanding of young people september 6 2019 i was extremely proud of this board this board made a strong statement to students parents educators and the broader community you your predecessors and the responsibility you represent stated that the state board believes that all children enrolled in public schools are entitled to equitable educational opportunities across all races colors sexes and national origins you further stated that these equitable opportunities and outcomes exist for all nebraskans including but not limited to the identification of including gender expression gender identity and sexual orientation removing lgbtq related language is a discriminatory act and it is not equitable the difficult choice is your job and your lane one in which you personally chose to do and you also gracefully outlined it all i'm asking you to do is

104do what you've promised young people you would do show nebraska's young people you mean what you say about your equity statement i ask that you approve the first draft of these standards thank you emily welcome emily thank you good morning my name is emily hike i'm from omaha and i serve as the executive director at montessori co-op school located in omaha we serve children 18 months through the 6th grade i'm so excited to be here in front of you today to share with you this message it's going to be okay i am the only one in the room today that can assure you of this and here's why the co-op implemented a medically accurate age-appropriate sexuality and health curriculum for our elementary program in the fall of 2018. we are the only school i know

105of that offers this inclusive curriculum to our students and families in the state of nebraska our health curriculum was generated by the needs of our students questions were coming to our teachers about sex and sexuality our teachers reached out to me and asked for guidance and training i then reached out to the experts with the advice of medical experts and health educators we offer a full comprehensive health curriculum with topics ranging from bullying friendship boundaries communication skills gender sexual orientation orientation diverse families and consent here's what we know and have learned at the co-op the research is conclusive regarding positive outcomes for our students health and well-being conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation are life affirming for our students talking about gender does not make you gay or trans it's not contagious children have

106questions and explore gender in developmentally appropriate ways when they are young and it's okay our curriculum allows for trained teachers who meet students where they're at by answering questions with facts and not lies i have 80 families who will tell you that their diverse families are better for it we do not talk in circles or obscurities about their identities because their identities are not obscure they are real and exist and need language to talk about them and need visibility to see them this is an open invitation to all of you to come to the co-op and see this thank you first thank you president may i ask a clarifying question yes deborah okay um speaker and i don't know if this is okay or if you said it but i don't know if i heard

107it you represent a school are you allowed to say the name of the school and what grades were yeah and oh i'm just curious we don't have to we don't have to say that never mind i was just curious but i am curious what grades your health standards were for kindergarten through sixth grade thank you emily joe giles thank you joe welcome joe thank you my name is jo giles i'm the executive director of the women's fund of omaha for more than 30 years the women's fund has been working on the most critical issues facing women and girls in our state including increasing sexual literacy through our adolescent health project which focuses on pregnancy and std prevention and provides access to medically accurate comprehensive sex education we are dismayed that the second draft of nebraska's

108health education standards is a complete departure for what medical experts education professionals and decades of research clearly demonstrate is effective health education that research is conclusive comprehensive sex education helps young people by delaying the age of first sexual intercourse reduces unprotected sex and reduces unintended pregnancy it also improves mental health outcomes and reduces dating violence the health education standards can be all of those things with your leadership and commitment to a draft that includes essential life-saving elements right now young people in douglas county ages 15 to 24 are disproportionately impacted by high rates of stds while 57 of students will have sex by the time they graduate high school only 8 percent will have ever been tested for an std that is where education comes into play and that's why i am here today to

109continue to advocate for students to have shame-free information so that they can care for their health it is the human growth and development standard that should provide the information for pregnancy and std prevention it's important at the end of this process that the standards do not erase anyone's identities or leave important life-saving information out of the conversation as a public school parent and advocate it's my hope that the standards will showcase my nebraska values of equity acceptance and inclusion thank you thank you joe jill brown [Applause] welcome jill hi thank you so much and thanks for listening to all this my name is joel brown i'm from omaha i grew up in rural nebraska i'm a professor of psychology at creighton university trained as a developmental psychologist who studies human growth and development across the

110lifespan i'm also a parent many of our hardest decisions can be worked through by identifying fears and if we think about what a fear is it's really an unpleasant emotion caused by a belief that something or somebody might be dangerous present pain or a threat i want to talk using peer-reviewed research about some of the fears that you've been hearing and that you're going to hear today the opponents of comprehensive sex education are fearful that it will encourage promiscuity a meta-analysis of multiple studies not just one published in jama found that comprehensive sex education actually reduces rates of sexual activity sexual risk behaviors including multiple partners unprotected intercourse stds and pregnancy so education is not an aphrodisiac opponents are also afraid that it will confuse children and leave them vulnerable to sex offenders and predators

111children who lack sexual knowledge not the opposite of this actually are more vulnerable to sexual abuse we've known this since 1995 and published research by elliott and brown that sexual offenders will avoid children who medically correct terms for their genitals because it suggests that they've been educated about sexuality you'll hear fears that these standards don't reflect the values of most nebraskans comprehensive sex ed reflects reality it reflects the findings of scientific rigor and it reflects non-values the diversity of human sexual behavior and that seems like good education here are my fears my child might die kids are dying 40 of lgbtqia kids have thought about committing suicide comprehensive sex ed lowers those attempts by not adopting it you are failing equitable and inclusiveness it's not often you're in a position to save someone's life but

112you're here now from a developmental science backed perspective through period research i can say that fears they're not fears i have a question thank you maureen i have one question jacqueline has a question for you you said jama which i'm guessing is j-a-m-a journal of american medical association thank you thanks i overlooked uh an individual kathleen brander i apologize kathleen well hold it against you i'm kathleen brandard i'm from omaha and i'm here as a private citizen today but i can't leave my public health background behind i'm a member of the unmc college of public health staff i also was a former faculty member at uno in the health education department i'm a mother raising three young boys and i'm also a catholic i'm deeply disappointed with draft two of the standards in the omission

113of nearly all materials related to the lived experience of lgbtq plus community members when i taught health aspects of sexual development at uno to 18 19 and 20 year olds i was shocked every single semester when the majority of undergraduates didn't know what a vulva was let alone had never heard the lived experience of a trans transgender female i taught this class before i had kids and now i know all too well how dangerous it is when kids become young adults who don't know enough about their bodies or understand their own mental well-being my kids go to the co-op school that emily talked about earlier they know the names of their body parts they understand that families might look like a mom and a dad a mom and a mom a mom and a dad

114who don't live together like ours they're lucky enough to attend that school i believe that learning about health including health education is a partnership between all of the trusted adults in my children's lives that's me as their parent that's their teachers that's their pediatrician learning at school does not take the place of what i as their parent teach them or what we in our family hold as our values in fact it is the opposite when they are learning in school medically accurate information i can reinforce at home more clearly and more easily my expectations for their behaviors related to that information and my values as their parent and when they learn something at school that sits a little differently for me i can share my opinions and ideas with them as can any parent of

115any child in that classroom i am proud that my three-year-old knows i have a vulva and he has a scrotum and that my seven-year-old understands why one of his oldest friends doesn't like to be called a boy i encourage you the state board of education to follow the science reinstate this draft and stand in opposition to the fear thank you thank you jocelyn jaws on hicko welcome hello my name is josie or jocelyn i'm an ops graduate from omaha in school i was first introduced to health education in fourth grade the health education i received helped me navigate through adolescence especially when i didn't feel comfortable going to my parents which is what a lot of kids feel if i hadn't gotten the inclusive health education that i did i would most likely have turned

116to the internet which is where many kids without a health head program turn in this case there is no telling what information kids could get giving them unrealistic expectations and even false information about sex learning about how to keep myself healthy both physically and mentally better prepared me for what adulthood would eventually bring me kids have the right to know and to be educated about what will happen or is happening to their bodies during puberty they should be aware of the nuances of becoming an adult they should be prepared for anything that could come their way and prepared to safely engage in healthy relationships whether they be platonic romantic or sexual i urge you to add essential elements back into the standards such as sexual orientation gender identity birth control and safe sex practices to

117ensure that all students feel accepted and supported the removal of these topics in the standards will leave students feeling lost invalid and excluded my dad is gay he took him almost 20 years of marriage to realize come to terms with this and embrace that teaching kids will not change who they are it will change their level of confidence and ability to properly and actually define who they are the people behind me will never experience these standards in practice it's those my age and younger who will be impacted thank you i hope you take this into consideration thank you joshua [Applause] anna reid welcome hi folks my name is anna reiff and i'm from omaha nebraska and someday soon i want to be a teacher for now though i'm learning preparing getting ready and something that

118you study in nebraska when you want to be a teacher is standards and dispositions that you need to have when going into the classroom one of them in particular and i want to share with you today is standard 9.2 the teacher candidate model models ethical professional practice now this can be shown in a variety of different ways but teachers have the basic idea that they need to be ethical in the classroom what's better than teaching ethical than teaching students their own safety so why should this be different when they're learning and when i'm supposed to teach i want to make sure that my students are safe and hiding their own body from them is unethical in themself they deserve the right to say no but more importantly what body parts they have including language that

119is medically descriptive can protect students especially when they are young having classroom conversations with teenagers about enthusiastic consent and how to want to want to and even not to want to have sex is completely normal it's also okay to teach students that they might have a crush on another boy in the classroom they might be a boy and that's awesome by hiding the truth from our students we break the idea of being ethical and imagining that we don't teach them that what's rightfully theirs is not okay i would like to say thank you for your time and consideration because someday i will be a teacher and i hope my students know i support them thank you anna luke peterson welcome luke distinguished members of the nebraska state board of education my name is lucas peterson

120you can call me luke i live here in lincoln i'm not related to the nebraska attorney general i'm here representing myself under no authority from any organization that i may belong to but since senator hunt was here i am as i like to say one of nine openly gay or lesbian transgender out nebraskans in public office i'm here urging for your reconsideration to the second drought oh and by the way in 2022 that number is only going to grow i'm here urging for your reconsideration to the second draft standards proposed to include comprehensive sex education for all nebraska children in in schools i'm a product of public education and a proud grandson of my sixth grade teacher i believe my grandmother would approve the initial standards that were gutted due to the fear and hate-based

121rhetoric that i saw on kearney i come from that part of the state and while not surprised to the things i heard i'm disappointed i was not groomed to be out but i was shamed to lie and to be in the closet the opposition wants to continue that bias and wants to keep kids in the closet and i want to share what i found the most recent information 2015 nebraska surveillance of hiv rates from the department of health and human services that's our department of health and human services in the 10 years they did a study from 06 to 2015 an average of 95 newly diagnosed hiv infection happened in the year 2000 the year that i tested positive was 114. the most common mode of transport or most common mode of exposure was unprotected

122sex according to the study um black and latino nebraskans thank you i didn't see the 30 minutes i have the information if you need it the next 16 to come up courtney farmer scott klein annie klein angie klein judy durr katie mclemons jenna derr janiece van winkle madeleine walker elizabeth tegmeyer jennifer thomas sherry jones beth hyatt paula crozier warren crozier chelsea lemberg courtney courtney farmer welcome courtney good morning thank you my name is courtney farmer from bellevue nebraska and i'm an educator for omaha public schools i'm speaking today in opposition against cse why alter why dilute god's perfect love by sexualizing the innocence of children why distort and stain that this is what cse will do to our children in society we will no longer see god's love in people but only lust after each

123other and sin chasing after our own desire of happiness why are we pushing something that is obscene pornographic and calling educational why are we arguing if it's right to teach it in schools when we already have evidence of the damages science pornography causes on the development of a child's brain what are we really trying to do with cse the core root of csc is the fact that people are looking to be loved and they're trying to substitute it by pushing csc into schools god's perfect love restores the brokenness of those confused about their gender and creates unity among all people without sexualizing children's mind or using pornography god's love creates an atmosphere that is safe and nurturing from the mind body and soul so now what we need to pray in god's love to cast

124out all fear and to heal the brokenness that has caused gender confusion we need to pray out hate to create unity between both parties god's love is the answer to fix all of this and csc is a counterfeit to that i thank you for your time and i appreciate this thank you thank you courtney scott klein morning everyone welcome my name is scott klein of bellevue nebraska i am a husband and a father of two small children ages six and three my children also know their body parts and nobody at a school setting has ever had to tell them what they are [Applause] at the tender age of 10 while i was in the fourth grade in minnesota i was introduced to sex education and pornography within months of each other i was driven towards

125it by what i saw in the sex education that was presented to me as a fourth grader in minnesota the way i looked at myself and the girls was damaged the poison was poured in through my eyes and my ears which my young and impressionable mind was not ready to take in i spent the next 30 years locked in the destructive addiction that robbed me of so much my youth and my adulthood addiction to pornography is as bad as the worst of drug addiction it completely rewires partial portions of the brain those are facts for persons of any age but for the impressionable mind of a ten-year-old boy it is destructive the concepts in the curriculum designed to meet the recommendations of cse curriculum which these books are already available in ops and lps libraries

126will be a poisonous setup for tens of thousands of children for generations to come if you have children or grandchildren imagine them seeing sexually graphic material at the proposed age-appropriate times laid out in cse curriculum imagine that you have injected them with their first drug high because that is what this will be for so many of these boys and girls pornography addiction is an epidemic in this country and for some reason the school system now wants to throw fuel on that fire as though somehow because it is in an academic setting that it won't cause injury that somehow the addictive nature of sexual imagery being shown to young boys and girls won't take hold because it's done in a school setting respectfully that is foolish thinking hi thank you scott angie pine angie klein welcome

127angie thank you i'm angie klein from bellevue nebraska and that was my husband that i'm proud of as my husband stated we have two kids one six and one three and we take this this this conversation very seriously i stand before you today in opposition because i am a former homosexual and let me tell you my heart grieves for the people who have stood up here today that are broken that are looking for something my heart is broken for them because a sex education is not their savior this school board is not their savior their teachers are not their savior what is done in their schools does not save them but only when they address the brokenness in them and through our savior jesus christ personally i've seen my transgender friends go to the school

128counselor and go to other counselors where affirmation therapy is is taught and all of my transgender friends are sterile because of the counseling they have got and this is what we're setting our children up for in schools that book my husband held up you can't even sit on youtube and show the pages in that book because youtube will take it down because they will censor it because they find it pornographic but yet a fourth grader can watch it those of you in this room who are in opposition we need to start showing up to our local school boards we need to start showing up into the classrooms we need to start showing our faces and be heard this is not enough and we're not okay with what's going on your job is to protect the

129innocent and one day my children will come to me and say mommy what did you do and i'll say daddy and mommy fought hard not only for them but for the generations to come up in nebraska thank you angie judy durr welcome judy good morning um judy derv from kearney nebraska um i received the following statement two days ago this educator wishes to remain anonymous and and wanted their voice to be heard so here here it is i am a proud first grade teacher in nebraska and i've read both drafts of the proposed standards daily i teach the importance of good hygiene such as washing hands after using the restroom and before eating using a kleenex instead of clothes coughing sneezing into sleeves and dental health during dental health month i also teach my 20

130first graders the importance of being a good kind person to everyone not being a bully or unkind and i make sure my students feel safe enough to talk to someone if they're having problems whether the issues be at school or at home schools and teachers are already teaching these common sense practices and we do not need health sex education state mandates my day consists of 120 minutes of reading 90 minutes of math 30 minutes of science and social studies 30 minutes of writing squeeze in a lunch a couple of recesses special events conflict management that is never ending tear wiping helping our non-english speaking kiddos consistently validating each little person and finally some story time all the while trying to make sure that my students many needs are being met throughout the day i also

131make sure that they're reaching their benchmark goals in reading and math continue to feel safe and loved and accepted and that no one has a bathroom accident in the classroom there's no time in our day to set aside and teach more required curriculum especially these proposed content that i believe is cross-family boundaries as teachers we should not be expected to teach comprehensive sex education in the classrooms as that is something that should be addressed at home by parents and guardians my first graders are more concerned about picking their noses than picking their genders if this is if this is passed and made mandatory i will have no other choice but to walk away from a job and life calling that i love because i refuse to teach i cannot scrap the standards please and thank

132you for hearing my voice thank you judy katie mclemons welcome katie thank you good morning board my name is katie mclemons from kearney and today i represent protect nebraska children coalition a crisis of confidence this is how the commissioner has described the level of trust nebraska's parents have in the nde the reasons for this distress are numerous and founded but today i will address draft two's contents in short the nde has taken out explicit examples in the standards and reworded them but we citizens understand this tactic and that the outcome of draft two will still be csc and crt in nebraska's classrooms targeting nebraska's children with early sexual sexualization and indoctrination after all the members of the advisory team didn't change it includes the same activists and we all know that an activist doesn't relent

133ideas have consequences and words represent ideas so i want to draw your attention to the first paragraph of draft 2 where the nde says that every student is entitled to quote equitable educational opportunities that sounds really good after all equitable is the word of the hour it sounds so close to equal almost as though they might mean the same thing but they don't equal is same opportunities and equal protection under the law equal is seeing people as people no matter their skin tone equal is american equitable is the abolishment of grades s.a.t tests and advanced math math courses equitable is division equitable is oppressor versus oppressed equitable is marxism this same first paragraph cites a federal law from 1974 for that ensures quote equal education opportunities not equitable the terms don't match and neither do

134the ideals sadly and ironically the crt philosophy promoted by the nde will lead to a form of the very segregation this federal law sought to eradicate you see a crisis of confidence there is the state board of education has repeatedly shown errors where there should be accuracy vagueness where there should be clarity and obfuscation where there should be transparency there is no trust remaining in the public and no reason to keep these standards they're not required by the legislature and you're not going to make either side happy and so we're left to surmise why are they being pushed thank you scrap the standards [Music] [Applause] janitor hi my name is jennifer and i'm from kearney and today i'm speaking on behalf of protect nebraska children coalition in a july letter to school districts across the

135state mr bloomstead stated and i quote we've experienced a crisis of confidence end quote this is in part related to draft one of the health sex education standards we agree there is certainly a crisis of confidence across the state regarding the nde and this board all this point in time are at this point in time the reason should be obvious however i will quickly review in april the nde released draft one this draft was met with significant backlash from the majority of nebraskans as it included developmentally inappropriate and medically and biologically inaccurate information confidence slipped because the public could not believe this board would even allow the release of such outrageous standards in may this board that insisted draft one did not include any concepts related to cse or crt while at the same time

136pleading ignorance as to what those concepts even were at the meeting in may the board treated public commenters as if they were confused stupid and misguided confidence slipped further in the nde also doubled down at the may state board meeting distributing a document entitled points of clarification the document was a thinly veiled attempt to discredit and discourage opposition to draft one and really offered nothing constructive to the conversation moreover it included some points that were verifiably false confidence was shattered over the course of the following weeks one board member took the points of clarification even further sending out a modified version to most of the newspapers in his district he claimed to be discouraged by the criticism of the draft standards and accused those of fact-checking the nd's claims of spreading false narratives and causing

137division then there was the june meeting in kearney this board allowed 150 people to sign up to speak but prevented half of them from delivering their remarks and then had the audacity to urge people to stay involved and keep coming to the meetings the anger and lack of confidence reached a fever pitch and now with draft two there is still no confidence in the nde and this board these health such sex education standards are not necessary and we continue to call for them to be scrapped entirely thank you denise van winkle janiece van winkle welcome denise thank you my name is janiece van winkle my husband and i are educators in kearney nebraska i oppose both drafts of the health standards the responsibility to teach this information found in the standard should fall to parents

138and parents alone as a seasoned foster parent i will also add that the proposed content is alarming on many levels once children have been exposed to these sexually explicit scenarios and awaken sexual urges too soon this can set them down an irreversible road of trauma and to the community that is pushing for these standards to pass this is not a direct attack on you i'm just trying to protect my own and allow them to pat to just be children as long as possible thank you for your time thank you madeleine walker welcome madeline thank you [Music] hi my name is maddie walker and i'm the human trafficking program coordinator with the nebraska coalition to end sexual domestic violence i reside in lincoln um i am here to voice my opposition to the second draft of

139the proposed health education standards and ask for a new draft that restores content related to gender identity and sexual orientation in my professional role i work with nebraska's 20 domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy agencies to strengthen services for survivors of sex trafficking in order to prevent sex trafficking students must receive health education that is medically accurate included inclusive of the experiences of all students and aimed at reducing negative health outcomes including sexual violence victimization the second draft of the health standards largely removes mention of gender identity and sexual orientation and therefore does not go far enough to prevent sexual violence according to the national center for missing and exploited children traffickers often target marginalized youth who lack a strong support network in addition the center identifies quote lack of acceptance of gender identity or

140sexual orientation and quote as a risk factor for sex trafficking victimization by excluding topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation from the health education standards you are telling nebraska's lgbtq youth you are not accepted here including topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation in the health education standards will strengthen the support network of lgbtq students promote acceptance and prevent sex trafficking victimization while parents play an important role in educating youth about healthy sexuality not every child has a safe adult in their life in the vast majority of cases of sex trafficking and other forms of sex violence sexual violence the victim knows their abuser someone's abuser might be their parent family member friend or another trusted acquaintance we cannot assume that each child has a safe adult in their life thank you jessica

141you have a question from adeline um you talked about um a statistic uh just a minute ago um in your last part of your presentation would you say that again please um which so i i said um the national center for missing and exploited children site that traffickers are often target marginalized youth who lack a strong support network okay thank you very much okay thank you jessica baldwin hi um my name is jessica baldwin uh lincoln [Music] uh in the late 1980s i was a six-year-old girl who was sexually molested by two of my male cousins as a direct result of what they learned in schools in the 1980s at eight years old i was narrowly it was a narrow mess of being sexually assaulted by my babysitter's husband and i myself was exposed to

142pornographic material at another daycare that my mom sent me to raised by a single mom from 11 years old i was put into the foster care system until i aged out many of these people who have spoken today can relate to my story i should be supporting this according to all the statistics because statistically speaking the majority of the lbgtq community has shared a common experience of many of the things that i have shared when we are exposed to these things prematurely it changes our lives i try to take my life at 13. don't continue this cycle don't perpetuate this cycle it's only going to exacerbate if you put in these cse standards and the second draft you're not pulling the wool over anybody's eyes we can see through it it's all there thank you

143elizabeth kegmeyer welcome elizabeth good morning i'm elizabeth tegmeier and i'm from north platte i am the mom of five college and school-aged children the reason for my crisis of confidence in this board stems from the very creation of these standards the nebraska state legislature failed to pass a bill and a subsequent resolution concerning the health standards our 49-member legislative body did not feel that the health standards needed to be addressed at the state level sadly this eight-person board decided to circumvent the will of the legislature the only entity that sits above the nebraska board of education and write standards that they were never by law required to do why why were these standards so critical when local districts were already teaching health and wellness in their classrooms why is the nebraska state board of education

144wasting so many hours on writing testimonies and rewrites when our state's academic proficiency levels need to be addressed according to the nde's own website the most current proficiency data of the state's 11th graders show that in 2019 were not considered proficient in english and 63 percent were not proficient in math how can such low proficiency levels prepare our students for their future why isn't the nebraska state board of education devoting the same amount of hours to improving proficiency that has been devoted to these unlegislated unnecessary and morally poor polarizing health standards if you want to rebuild trust remember this we don't entrust our children to you to be indoctrinated we send them to school to be educated stay in your lane focus on academics and scrap the standards jennifer thomas jennifer comic jennifer thomas jennifer

145thomas welcome jennifer good morning members of the board jennifer thomas from north platte the first time i provided feedback on the initial draft of the health standards my request was that the entire document be abandoned as those in charge of writing it and those allowed who allowed it to see the light of day could not be trusted with this subject matter or with the innocence of our children after reading draft two my request remains as long as the draft includes gender identity and the nde website still promotes equity over equality points to the 1619 project and state still comprehensive sex ed programs ideally start in pre-kindergarten then i failed to be convinced that the nde would not at some point attempt to insert any and all of the objectionable topics that were in draft one

146i know proponents of draft one are not happy with draft two for different reasons and i read one that stated we're disappointed with the second draft of the nebraska health education standards as its erasure of lgbtqa plus youth and families rest assured removing sexually explicit material from our public education system doesn't erase anyone for me or my kids to treat you with love and respect does not require us to know about or approve of your sexual preferences or how you feel about your sexuality i've also heard some standards proponents claim that there's a need for their validation look around at social media tv shows movies product ads they're getting plenty of validation they may have facebook cnn and disney but they can't have my kids it's enough to know that we are all god's children

147and in infinitely valuable and deserving of kindness that does not mean that we need to agree and share the same ideas when in doubt i hope you can err on the side of protecting the innocence of our children and the rights of parents to raise them free of ideological and political indoctrination please get the focus back on math reading science and stop adding fuel to the social sherry jones welcome sherry and thank you i'm sheri jones from grand island and i'm running for state board of education district six i want to respond to the concerns of some individuals regarding the subject of bullying it has been said that soji sexual orientation and gender identity instruction is needed to address bullying in our schools i do not believe this is so i was an elementary school

148counselor for 14 years during which our district schools counselors devoted three or four lessons to each grade each year to address the subject of bullying with successful results we focused on the unacceptable bullying behavior how to respond if you are bullied and what to do if you see someone else being bullied rather than the circumstances which could bring about bullying which are truly unlimited one could be bullied because of the shape or size of their ears because of their body size or because of their level of intelligence we can address bullying without focusing on specific circumstances and soji you can be assured bullying of anyone was not tolerated on my watch lastly i want to mention an issue which is not receiving the attention the proposed health standards have received but could be even more

149impacting that is nd rules changes involving rule 10 and 14. from what i understand these rule changes would bring about loss of local control for public schools and for parochial schools it could me bring about requirements violating religious beliefs so i encourage all of us to take a look at nd rule changes thank you sherry [Music] beth hyatt welcome beth thank you you have what i wrote i'm going to speak for my heart you know i was abused as a kid and i survived i'm happily married to my husband of almost 42 years we have four grown children seven grandchildren well-adjusted people but it was a suffering thing that i had to go through but it was because of the love of jesus christ in my life that i was able to survive and whether

150you believe in him or not he is the creator and he created these little children and he entrusted those little guys to their parents because he chose them to be in that family and i i really feel bad there are parents who don't seem to be capable of taking care of their own children it's very sad but that is not the majority of us the majority of us talk about these things at home we don't want to have it talked about at school because it's this stuff that you're presenting i don't care which draft you present this is garbage the places that this stuff comes from these people the opponents have done your research for the for you do you know that this stuff has gone worldwide it's just not in america that they're trying

151to get children to have sex early so that planned parenthood can have more money and to have little kids think that they ought to change the xy xx chromosomes in their lives and the planned parenthood sells the hormones to them i mean and don't tell me don't tell me that these weren't written by activists i looked at your list time thank you beth paula closure welcome paula thank you my name is paula crozier i'm from omaha nebraska today i will answer how the crt components are inherently racist discriminatory and have already created horrific repercussions for my child in late 2019 we filed seven valid complaints with the nde against a teacher in the administration of west side schools for decimating our daughter's good character and a reputation and violating her civil rights amongst other issues

152this teacher a long-term blm supporter states in her social media that she finds it hard to support law enforcement in this digital age we believe she intimately understands her power as a teacher this english teacher in 2016 assigned an unvetted video which contained racial slurs and an athlete's reason for kneeling for the national anthem in support of blm she called on our daughter to state if she supported or didn't support this athlete she insisted our daughter answer our daughter started articulating and was quickly cut off because it countered the teacher's one-sided narrative in fact this teacher defamed our daughter a racist the next day to every class she taught when our daughter was at home ill as anyone can imagine every friend our daughter had but a few immediately shunned her to avoid being called

153a racist as well our daughter once wanting to be in law enforcement and outgoing was now alone and quickly resorted to eating lunch in a bathroom stall with a gray cloud of defamation following her every day by now you were asking what does this have to do with english literature absolutely nothing in this news article at westside wired mr sayers the high school english teacher criticized the teacher for directly removing shakespeare from the 8th grade english curriculum stating at what point in time do we worry about not having enough literature that pushes students to a higher reading level leaving them woefully unprepared in the seven complaints commissioner blomstead dismissed all of them in a half-page letter about one month prior to starting these standards our daughter every year thank you paul has tried to commit

154suicide thank you warren brosher welcome warren thank you i'm gonna first say that uh these are tough acts to follow but i'm gonna give it a try i oppose the drafts for the ses and i want to share my life's experiences and my families my daughter did attend west side middle school eighth grade an english teacher there can i name her no okay she knows who she is uh she has such media posts that are pedophilic in in nature and commentary and sexually suggestive posts including that she misses overdeveloped preteens in their visible underwear and has a story that she had posted all of this has now been taken down and hidden from her and the school uh a former student of hers that she regarded as exceedingly good looking and was ballsy in other

155posts such as losers go losers go goes home with the winners to the prom queen her words not mine also she posted procrastination is like masturbation you're only effing yourself this type of rhetoric by teachers with students following them in social media is nothing more than grooming digital enticement and is criminally in violation the nebraska department of education was presented all of this you all did nothing [Applause] could anyone in this room post those exact words and get to keep their job and have matt give you a big thumbs up time thank you warren thank you [Music] chelsea lemberg welcome chelsea good morning my name is chelsea lemberg i am a public employee and a graduate student i'm from grind island but i live in omaha and work in lincoln so pretty much all over

156i'm also extremely concerned about the future of education in nebraska in light of this apparent attempt to suppress medically accurate age-appropriate information in schools i put a lot of thought into the optics of my messaging today or how my words be received in the end though as an out and proud lesbian woman my first and most important priority is to center the needs of my community specifically the lgbtq children i once was one in the state of nebraska who find themselves devoid of an education that includes them as well as the lgbtq parents in the state whose existence is erased when school curricula neglects to include any discussion of diverse family units our schools belong to the students who attend them as well as the families who support their education how does it make sense

157then that the existence and validity of these families would be censored in the school environment and then there's the fact that every mention of medically accurate pregnancy and std prevention has been tossed out of this newest version of the standards which even by itself is a glaringly dangerous problem as is the lack of discussion of consent in this version of the standards how can we expect young people to lead healthy lives without being given the tools to do so knowledge is a tool educators know this which is why the first iteration of the standards was written to be comprehensive age-appropriate and medically accurate there should really be no controversy about this baseline expectation in education to close out my comment i want to invite you to empathize with the students in our schools they continue

158to endure the trauma of a pandemic the effects of climate change food insecurity economic uncertainty all of this on top of their normal stress it would be well of us and the least we can do to help them with knowledge to go into the future [Applause] it's getting close for the board to take a quick break but we're going to do the next 16 and then we'll take a short break or lunch break one or the other um the next 16 are dr linda berkel marnie hodgin jennifer hicks allie french amber parker kathy hulk bohr mark gill kirby wilson amy wilson kathleen coutt tammy riley sam schlegel dorothy renter brad richter gina frank ben stengel right dr linda burple dr linda berkel welcome hold on my name is dr linda berkley and i'm from omaha

159nebraska linda hold on a minute we need a quiet in the room okay my name is linda berkley and i'm from omaha nebraska my doctoral dissertation was on human rights currently i serve as a fellow with the international ngo located in washington dc i write articles on persecution which are published on their website i've been to over 26 countries serving under uh privileged and oppressed populations including survivors of genocide i have three grown children eight grandchildren a great grandchild and another one on the way all my family children also attended ops as do my grandchildren my family's racial makeup is white black and native american under the the tenure of governor ben nelson i served in nebraska as a state trainer of multicultural competency in this capacity i conducted workshops and seminars on this subject

160i spoke at regional national and international venues these trainings included identifying our personal biases which we all have the goal of these trainings was to increase awareness and appreciation of racial ethnic and cultural differences to foster better understanding and appreciation of diversity which makes up our population in contrast today's critical race theory and all of its derivatives and and additional names and constructs focus on dividing the population in opposing subsets with one race as opposed to the other this says fundamentally marxist and i did my i'd have done a lot of post graduate work in in the government styles of marxism is very very prevalent here and so i fundamentally it is fundamentally racist at its core i have several examples of my own family we have experienced racial profiling in some respects but we've

161also had advantages my one daughter who is biracial was able to choose their own high school okay time thank you [Applause] [Music] good morning thank you welcome thank you my name is marnie i have three children i'm from omaha i come today with gratitude i want to say thank you to those who wrote these health standards i'm grateful for the transparency in draft one thank you for including cse and crt your desire to introduce inappropriate topics and attempt to weave marxism ideology into the minds of our children has been a blessing inadvertently you have poked the bear you have shaken us out of a complacent slumber and now we are aware awake and working together to create a movement of goodness out of this evil so thank you for prompting us to investigate i've learned

162about cecus and its co-founders ties to planned parenthood and alfred kinsey i learned about kinsey's table 34 where pedophiles abused children as young as two months i learned hugh hefner in dorsicus which explains the pornography leading curriculum we've seen floating around lps and ops dr matt blumstead said the standards were not written by activists and that was a lie the board denied cse was written into the health standards but the nses on secas's website are nearly identical to nebraska's thank you for being dishonest trust has been broken scrap the standards and put resources into what school is for which is academics thank you for bringing crt authors like x kendi to my attention he says the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only

163remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination advocates for crt have no intention of ending racism crt perpetuates stereotypes and is used to distract and divide stealing our energies from attaining our true spiritual and human potentials thank you to the school board senators and governor for making statements against the standards thank you to the school boards and senators who stay silent that will help us decide than in the next election lastly thank you to the parents who stand with me in opposition thank you thank you jennifer hicks peru welcome i'm a homeschool mom and thank god for that as i would never entrust my children's education to people who don't understand that it is appropriate to teach science to our kids but medicine should be practiced by doctors medically accurate education is not necessarily scientifically accurate

164gender roles are defined in the standards as attitudes and behaviors that a society considers appropriate for males or females i question why the word appropriate is putting quotation marks here the quotation marks around the word appropriate in the standards more than imply that what the standards seek to teach is a view of gender roles that questions and devalues the attitudes and behaviors of societal norms in the context of a discussion of gender it is much more than social pressure which guides the norms traditional roles of males and females masculine and feminine are rooted in the science of reproduction a biological process which in humans requires a biological male and a biological female gender roles are an important part of the process of sexual reproduction in humans and are largely defined in nature and expressed through

165differences in behavior as guided by hormones such as testosterone and estrogen biological sex and gender expression are strongly linked together and the truth of this can be found in the fact that those who seek to transition their gender often do so through the use of hormones that guide the human reproductive process masculine roles are associated with biological males and feminine rules are associated with biological females by society for a reason the biological process of reproduction in humans depends upon it what the hell standards propose to teach to children does nothing to offer them any clarity or truth instead these things are made even murkier when children are taught about gender identity defining the standards as internal deeply held thoughts and feelings about gender and we know that gender roles as defined by the standards are

166in a derogatory way that denigrates and belittles perceived societal norms i would encourage you to rewrite how it is that generals are defined by the states thank you ally amber parker welcome amber i think you skipped me i was after jennifer it's allie french is next jennifer hicks finale correct would you restate that oh she was jennifer hicks the next one was allie french correct that was allie french she was jennifer i'm allie okay okay all right i'm just so worried about it guys say that again sorry i apologize okay all right so my name is ali french i'm from omaha we have a lot of people here today and that is wonderful i can tell you one thing without a shadow of a doubt every single person in this room supports good schools that

167foster smart and successful students yet we've reached a point where you a government agency are stepping outside of your scope and creating division amongst our communities where there ought not be because it's not your job until every child in this state can read write and our proficiency scores for core academics are the top in the country any other topic is a waste of taxpayer dollars and outside the bounds of your responsibilities teenagers want a lot of things that's why they don't make life decisions that is why the parents are legally responsible for them just because they don't like their parents answers does not equate to not receiving the information or a lack of safety in the home we all know we all were once know it all teams who thought we knew best some of

168us make mistakes but the goal of school is to teach kids to be able to be productive citizens even if they make social mistakes we all already learn to be accepting we all already receive education on health and sex education if you didn't know it it's because you weren't paying attention not because it didn't happen okay where was i at okay and the new health standards aren't going to fix that you can't force people to be nice and unfortunately people have the right to be stupid if you're not getting the education you need at your home from your parents that is why the various groups that were represented today exist that doesn't make it the responsibility of public schools so do your job and quit trying to implement health standards it's that's not your job

169and frankly we don't trust you who decides what's misinformation you guys already have a lot of it out there expert worship doesn't equal facts or development or science based just because they say so doesn't make it true these are the same experts that have conducted sexually arousing studies on infants i believe amber parker is next welcome amber i wish i could say welcome but this is a travesty i kind of feel like when i read the history books about the jews some jews thinking they're going to paradise and it was a nazi uh hitler's military taking them to be exterminated what i'm about to say is going to go around this nation because this is a wake-up call every single one of you i pray that god's hand appears before you this night to write

170on a wall or right now as we're here why because children's innocence how dare any organizations come forward and say that their adult privileges override children's innocence there is a time to be angry and sin not jesus turned over tables and i'm telling you there are pedophiles in the state let's talk about the bike ride cover-up alisha owen why is my heart passionate because out of your own boys town they were being such trafficked to politicians larry king registered with what the democrat party to the republican party oh and by the way people in just started dying now you tell me why the state of nebraska allows obscene materials by law and the state legislature to be shown in our public schools in our libraries because there are pedophiles and they want to rip away

171and i want to tell you page 39 explained that all people including children have the right to tell others not to touch their body when they do not want to be touched pedophile analyze state and federal laws related to age of consent child pornography sexting and sex trafficking grade two time thank you amber kathy hoboro it's kathy hokeboar in bellevue welcome while working on my teaching credential one of my research paper assignments revealed some remarkable evidence that relates to the current situation my assignment was to identify what non-educational factors contribute to academic performance and specifically test scores the simple result of my research was not gender socioeconomic status or ethnicity the big standout reason for good test scores was parental involvement when parents have to give permission for a child to get an aspirin from

172the school nurse but are not informed when the child was tested for an sti damage is done to academic achievement by stealing from parental involvement when students are told your parents weren't correct in telling you your gender damage is done to academic achievement by stealing from parental involvement when students are told either directly or by implication we're going to fix what you've been taught at home damage is done to academic achievement by stealing from parental involvement consider the angst a child experiences when what is taught at home yields a bad grade at school and if he reports what is taught at school as right there's trouble at home likely the child will not report what's being taught thereby doing damage to academic achievement by stealing from parental involvement when schools counter what parents have taught

173concerning consequences for behaviors damage is done to academic achievement by stealing from parental involvement for example the health standards lack reporting the increased suicide rate for transgender individuals or the possible infertility after abortion or the decreased lifespan of those who participate in same-sex sexual behaviors instead of fixing these health standards please leave out non-academic content thank you kathy mark gill i'm mark gill i live in lincoln nebraska um i'm not from nebraska i chose nebraska when i retired from the military by choice because i enjoyed living here i am uh becoming less enchanted with nebraska as time goes on did i not have so much family here i probably would have moved to another area i'm disappointed in the fact that we even had to argue this for so many months the fact that it

174even came up on the agenda i'm appalled at that to those of the lgbtq sorry i can't remember all your letters community i don't have a problem with you i don't hate any of you the same god created you that created me he held the same value for you as he does for me regardless of our views so i want to get that clear right now there's no hate involved in this the only thing i hate is this godless agenda that's being pushed upon our children what i hate is having our authority challenged and trumped by organizations that we ask to take care of our children educate them not indoctrinate them okay you all have my comments in your email boxes because about one o'clock this morning i said them so i'm not going to

175go through those but i'm going to speak off the cuff for the heart right now back to 1958 i was reading last night over the standards uh the perfectly normal as i read the text on there i flashed back to 1958. five years old standing in the barn on my uncle's farm being molested by an uncle who had molested numerous of my cousins three of those cousins are dead at their own hands now drugs took are taking the the lively of theaters hi thank you mark thank you i lost time someone took took time [Music] thank [Applause] so you guys aren't interested to know who was speaking while he was speaking kirby because you guys asked several questions of other people standing up here that didn't seem to pertain to anything and now you guys

176are going to sit there silence while somebody was speaking over him kirby person you didn't realize nobody's gonna stand for this anymore right i'm asking i'm asking for 30 seconds back on the clock [Applause] [Music] don't sit there and shake your head at me you guys all work for us kirby wilson you were dressed kirby kirby wilson please [Applause] [Music] any longer anymore i must have the extra time to ask other people [Music] [Applause] give him give him give him 30 seconds mark you have 30 seconds thank you [Applause] [Music] that five-year-old boy in 1958 who was repeatedly molested every summer that my family went on vacation carried that childhood shave all my life nothing in this csc would have prevented that from happening but as i read your text you want to teach the

177cse based on i heard the same thing from him i love you this is normal but don't tell your parents i live with that until until the age of in my 40s i finally confided in my parents time thank you mark thank you um president president welcome oh president nichols may i just ask for a point of clarification oh i i just wanted to clarify for the sake of everyone that nobody up here was speaking into the microphone that was causing that and i don't know what caused that interruption but it wasn't from anything up here uh so just find it well i just i remember in the beginning of the meeting you guys had to ask everybody to turn on and off their microphones as they were speaking so if nobody was up there

178was speaking then how do we get a microphone in there and if you guys have the ability to cut microphones on and off kirby it's your time kirby my name is kirby wilson i'm from kearney nebraska our nation's motto is in god we trust and he has never made a mistake besides the ten commandments god gave us over 600 civil rules to follow in his instruction manual called the bible your first draft trampled all over those and proved that your first choice was not for the benefit of our children but rather to force a communist agenda into our state standards by hiring extreme activists to create those standards w cleon skousen held a law degree from george washington reserve university served as the chief of police in salt lake city retired a university professor worked

179for many years as an fbi agent in 1958 he wrote a book called the naked communist in which he listed 45 goals of the communist number 26 on that list says present homosexuality degeneracy and promiscuity as normal natural and healthy your first draft followed that perfectly number 40 says discredit the family as an institution encourage promiscuity and easy divorce you nailed that one as well number 30 says discredit the american founding fathers present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man your placement of the 1619 project and other suggested resources on your anti-racism and equity resources paid from your website are perfect examples of the effort to implement that goal number 17 says get control of the schools use them as transmission belts for social socialism and current communist propaganda soften

180the curriculum get control of teachers associations put the party line in textbooks the nebraska state legislature only mandates that you oversee math reading science social studies and writing granting your self-power that you are not authorized to have to oversee fine arts phys ed health education etc is a great shot at implementing number 17. i ask you to scrap these standards entirely and give control of the schools back to the parents local districts and communities who truly hold the best interests of our children [Applause] amy wilson [Music] [Applause] we are out of control we need to continue this meeting amy wilson [Music] good afternoon amy wilson from kearney nebraska we are here welcome we are here again to talk about the health standards but actually we are not because what you are proposing is not a

181health standard at all it is an indoctrination or an ideology of socialism or marxism health involves respiratory system nervous system brain function how arms legs eyes fingers and toes works this is not what your health standards are about so i don't care for draft one i don't care for draft two or anyone that you propose i oppose it so the so-called health sex crt or even your history standards are an indoctrination and are pure evil excuse me and they are intended to be pure evil god has is using this for good though at any time you could have said we see that the majority of the parents schools teachers and local school boards do not want these kinds of standards in their educations so we reject them being elected officials you should listen to the

182majority of the people you represent but you don't do that i'm sorry but you don't do that so didn't do that so god has used this time to wake up the community and start taking back our children's education and protect them from this type of evil indoctrination in our public school education so i am not only telling you i don't want any standards you propose but that i would be happy to approve your resignation i am sure that our children are going to have to deal with evils in our schools that is why as parents we need to prepare them with god's word of truth so they can stand up and say get behind me state satan i will continue to pray for each one of you and i want you to see right and

183truth i have also included for each one of you standard or from the 1900s education uh tests i dare anyone of you to take this i guarantee all of you will fail because we're not teaching math we're not teaching writing we're not teaching reading you're failing you're failing our kids you're failing our future thank you thank you amy kathleen health good afternoon my name is kathleen kauth and i'm from omaha all of you i looked up all your resumes all of you have long histories of teaching or caring for children many of you have selflessly worked with children who are at high risk or who have been abused deborah neary you are a foster mom to eight kids which is amazing with your backgrounds it absolutely astounds me that you would even consider these health

184standards which are essentially grooming children for sexual abuse united states versus chambers the 7th circuit court of appeals noted that child sex sexual abuse can be accomplished by several means and is often carried out through a period of grooming the court recognized that grooming refers to deliberate actions taken by a defendant to expose a child to sexual material the ultimate goal of grooming is forming an emotional connection with the child and reducing the child's inhibitions to prepare the child for sexual activity and i love to think that all of our teachers are good people who would never do this but as i was talking to my son about speaking today he said oh yeah remember mr cobalt in beadle middle school who was arrested he and his wife were arrested for sexually abusing their foster

185children it happens it happens with teachers people aren't perfect and giving teachers the the rights to teach this to children opens the door that i don't think we want opened your support for these standards indicates either a serious lack of understanding of how they will be setting children up for abuse or a deliberate attempt to create generations of children who will be more easily abused either one of those reasons is absolutely abhorrent at what point did you decide to abandon your long histories of educating and protecting children and decide you want to help indoctrinate and sexualize children do you fully understand what these standards will do to confuse children time thank you tammy riley welcome tammy thank you can i ask before i start do you each have a copy of what i handed out

186it would have been a sheet like this and then just one page and we'll need to get a copy thank you thank you um i'm kami riley from norfolk and i would like to ask each one of you to think of a child in your life that you love picture that child in your head as i talk today okay because this needs to be personal for each and every one of you just like it is for all of these people out here we've already talked about the early introduction to pornography is making children more desensitized to things like incest and rape it's grooming 101 they need your child to be used to and open to talking about sex so they can make them believe that rape and ancestor normal there's nothing wrong with it and

187since the teacher will be teaching all of this terminology and different sex acts such as oral and anal then it can't be bad right okay so my question to you is are you each one of you going to allow the board that you are a part of to aid in that grooming how do we stop you these books are like how do you make a baby these books are the material that will fall under the health standards as meeting requirements being age appropriate just because it has some factual information in it doesn't mean it's age-appropriate if you look at this book they make it so kid-friendly um the penis says hello and the vagina says come in isn't that cute can you not just hear the first graders giggling can your penis talk mine can

188at recess when the little boy says at recess mom emily said i said my penis says hello emily is anybody home her vagina said yep come on in so then we she got really fat we had a baby and time thank you um the next two presenters will be finished thank you i'm the father of six kids i've raised three females and three males in this state and i'd like to say as we all speak about education there was a woman in here earlier donning a mask wearing symbols by the fbi known as pedophile symbols and we are in a board of education and we have police officers in that room are you uneducated on those symbols or do you just not care that isn't my question and i'll go ahead and continue on with

189the rest of it not that any of you seemed like it's going to matter to you whatsoever as you not look up from your computer sam is it are you sam yes sam we've already started the clock on you what your time has started yes oh time started when you came to the podium thank you it's fine with me you guys don't care what i have to say anyways it's obvious you have a ritual right to sexual pleasure even if mom and dad don't agree with it right because that's how you're going to create the next line of division let's send kids home to tell their parents that what you're trying to teach me is wrong because my teacher at school whom i trust and who i'm believing in says that you're wrong so now

190i'm going to stand here at your dinner table and i'm going to tell you that you're wrong because of a board of educators decided that it was in their best interest to teach my kids what i thought was right and what i thought was wrong i tell you i raised six kids they are all normal kids they are all gonna grow up they're all gonna pay taxes like we're supposed to and you people with your indoctrination and this agenda this is over with we can print off stuff all day long we want we could stand here read it to you it's obvious you don't care so what is it going to take how many of us do need to stand up how many january 6 do you people need to see i'd suggest you start

191paying attention thank you sam dorothy ranter welcome dorothy wow it's a hard act to follow this is a worldwide indoctrination to sexualize our kids you cannot deny that little kindergartners do not need to know [Music] other kindergartners body parts they know their diapers have been changed their parents have been teaching them how to go potty what are you thinking each one of you you have children you have grandchildren foster kids we didn't have this in school we did have some sex ed starting in seventh grade okay i understand that there's a group of people who want it do you not know this is worldwide we're here to protect the innocence of our children the health and innocence of children and the fundamental rights of parents to direct the education the health care and the upbringing

192of their children i don't know what i can say to each one of you to make it make you listen i know you've got a lot of voices in your head right now but seriously planned parenthood they kill babies why would we use them to educate our children seek us thank you dorothy fred richter brad richter welcome brad thank you maureen i appreciate it my name is brad richter i live out in the middle of nebraska by grand island and you've got my presentation i'm gonna deviate from that okay i'm gonna talk a little bit from the heart like some of these other people the one thing that stuck to me with some of the earlier presentation presenters was that kids are dying could you speak closer to the microphone i'll try to there you

193go kids are dying okay that's what was said earlier kids are dying because they're screwed up okay they get screwed up by watching too much of the tv and the garbage has spread out there okay when i did the math from the numbers of the people that are here that spoke earlier okay you're talking across the state of nebraska one child in every grade in every school system one child okay when when i first read the standards i went to a school meeting up in northern nebraska where they were talking about the teachers and what was going to be needed in the school in the future okay the number one thing that come out of that meeting from that group of people is about 45 peach most of them are educators and then the local

194citizens okay the one thing that come out of there was who's going to teach our kids in the future our teachers are retiring they're getting out okay this was adding fuel to that fire that meeting okay 30 seconds my point is i know another person who's in a guidance counselor position in a school okay her hair is going to be white as snow and she's a young woman because she's dealing with kids who have problems now here's my proposition for you guys rather than push it down our throats okay rather than do that why don't you find a solution to where you can take this guidance counselors find the let one person per grade in a school system that has an issue and get it to somebody that's a professional that can do this do

195you understand what i'm saying [Music] then stengel we need a solution ben stangle i offer you a solution welcome back good afternoon my name is ben stangle and i'm a mechanical and nuclear engineer from blair nebraska and alumnus of unl this morning someone posed a question asking if the recent hot button topics distract from each other the answer is no they're a tip of the iceberg they don't distract from what we see they distract from what has been happening all along because subversive ideology saturates most school subjects already we've heard today that many folks feel their trust in this institution has been violated but maybe it's been misplaced to begin with what do i mean by subversive ideology biology has no bearing on gender or sex or a baby's life math is under attack with

196no wrong answers science fails to answer the cause for life and consequently invalidates the purpose for life social studies demand celebrating any lifestyle accept the traditional and demand shame if you are not a minority medicine elevates doctors as gods in this one time only existence devoid of an afterlife finance fosters debt enslavement athletic sports replace family suppers art celebrates chaos vulgarity your children can have health procedures and psychological therapy without your knowledge i could go on and challenge everyone to make your own list we have a problem big problem it's damning religion psychology i haven't even mentioned history or that boys are competing in girls sports the topic today is the tip of the iceberg a distraction but a fortunate manifestation of what already exists folks thanks for fighting don't forget you can win the

197battle but lose the war don't lose your children my message isn't popular you've lost a lot of ground don't lose your children get them out take back the children [Applause] gina gina frank hi welcome can you hear me okay i i put your card down before i picked up the other one oh that's okay um i was gonna say something if you didn't get to me before they finish we're good um so i would encourage you to listen to the youth who spoke earlier because they are the ones who are living through this right now who are growing up in this world um i would like to point out that all of the red kerchiefs that you see around the room are from an organization that boldly has a hitler quote on their banners and

198i'm happy to send you that banner i would encourage you to also think about the organizations that you are listening to when it comes to these standards because the the catholic conference is a huge um opponent of these standards and what have they done they have um they they have harbored sexual abusers for generations they harbored murderers who murdered indigenous children and then buried them in mass graves at these at these schools and with that since um i'm going to use the rest of my time to quote taylor swift you with your words like knives and swords and weapons that you use against me you have knocked me off my feet again got me feeling like i'm nothing you with your voice like nails on a chalkboard calling me out when i'm wounded you picking

199on the weaker man well you can take me down with just one single blow but you don't know what you don't know and i will send you my actual um testimony through email so thank you everybody thank you [Applause] okay [Applause] against nebraskans we at this time the board is going to take their 45-minute break for lunch and we will return at 110. we will now resume our public comment the next 16 are aaron newheisel cindy guthrie peg fong michelle scheel crystal davis justin thiel alexa thiel dallas asher sharon clenecki ross stala nancy stala kelly lepler rosemary ray diane kinnan amanda ristin pamela frex please come forward erin newheisel welcome erin thank you my name is erin newheisel and i'm from o'neill nebraska if i was naive and i was to look at the second

200draft i would think it was okay most of the controversial terms have been removed however what we're left with is vagueness which leads me to believe that nothing within it has really changed and i've listened today to various teenagers and others claim that sex ed is necessary and they're not happy with draft number two because it took out what they wanted in draft number one but i really would like to ask them did you read what the first draft was proposing for my six year old and my eight-year-old my sons are ages eight and six and they'll be entering third and first grade i'm appalled at the terminology used in the ideology taught within these standards at these grade levels it's not only inappropriate but it's grooming and even though the controversial terms are taken

201out the vagueness that remains within the second draft opens the door for teaching the same ideologies without accountability i don't understand how educated adults even thought that proposing us draft one to begin with was a good idea not only does six and eight-year-olds not need sex ed period they certainly don't need to be taught radical sexual terminology that makes them susceptible to predation the fact that we were even presented with the first draft leads to seriously serious concerns about the credibility and integrity of the writers and discredits future draft as we're no longer able to trust the judgment of those who wrote them as a mother of four children i entrust my children to the public school system nine months of the year to teach them academics they need to succeed in society however make

202no mistake i'm the primary educator of my children especially when it involves more morals matters of faith and matters of sexuality and that is in no way a burden to me the proposed ideas are propagated by private special interest groups hungry for money and power at the expense of my children's safety and long-term well-being they spin it as fostering acceptance and saving lives in order to elicit an emotional response and to conceal the true objectives within the true objectives of these prophet driven corporations time thank you aaron cindy guthrie welcome cindy thank you my name is cindy guthrie from kearney nebraska i'm a wife mother of four grandmother of eight i'm a christian i'm a pastor's wife and i'm a very concerned citizen of nebraska i oppose both draft one and draft two of the

203proposed health standards and i want to share with you the reasons why i've been married to my husband for 38 years a marriage relationship can be challenging at times under the best of circumstances but knowing that god designed marriage to be between one man and one woman and committing to a relationship within that framework provides the best opportunity for a successful marriage i do not believe that this biblical view is encouraged or supported in the draft standards my husband and i raised our four children within the framework of a biblical marriage and family our grandchildren are being nurtured within this same framework and they are developing into caring responsible children i do not want their public schools to circumvent the roles of their parents as the primary educators of these precious children they are problematic

204standards in every strand of the proposed health standards we've lost our trust that you as a board will do what is right and good and these standards must be scrapped as a christian as a pastor's wife i oppose the proposed health standards as a wise man named solomon wrote in proverbs for lack of guidance a nation falls but victory is one through many advisors also the way of fools seems right to them but the wise listen to advice as followers of christ we are to boldly stand for his truth and we are instructed to not conform to the world there are many more examples that could be cited but my point is this i know that you have heard the voices of those in opposition to the standards that you have proposed but have you

205listened draft two of the standards has not gone far enough to address our concerns your goals as a board have not been made clear and you have lost our trust as a system as a citizen i'm concerned that the state board of education has overstepped their legislative mandate and are trying to circumvent the voters by drafting these proposals mandatory sex education legislation time thank you cindy welcome pig thank you my name's peg fong i'm from kearney i am a wife i am a mom of four children and a grandmother of 16 grandchildren i am a follower of jesus christ i work as a private consultant i'm a con constitution coach with the patriot academy i'm an american and a patriot and finally i'm a concerned citizen and that is why i'm here today according to

206the patriot academy's biblical citizenship course there are seven mountains of cultural engagement business government family religion media education and entertainment each one of these mountains have been engaged in a silent war it's time we recognize it today we are here to do battle on the educational front this board has presented standards that should not even be considered as standards a standard should be of the highest quality reliable trustworthy and beneficial to the people who are being held to that standard the information woven in your so-called standards in draft number two is not at all beneficial to our children you are attempting to indoctrinate children into marxism while establishing a victim mentality for everyone except for white children for white children you want them to feel the weight of the abuses that occurred long before they

207were born you are calling all white people white supremacists this does no one any good it keeps dragging up the past that should have been left in the past we are reinforcing the chains of slavery that was abolished over 100 years ago you are not helping the people of color by doing this you're not being honest by utilizing textbooks that tell only part of american history you sow discord between children when all they want to do is just play with other kids you give them a burden that is way too much to bear finally you're not exercising wisdom i've lost all confidence in this board and will be seeking for your removal from office scrap the standards thank you [Music] michelle all right michelle m-i-c-h-e-l-l-e-s-c-h-i-e-l are you michelle michelle okay michelle so michelle is not

208here crystal davis welcome crystal thank you i'm from franklin nebraska my name is crystal davis and i am reading this on behalf of michael connolly 2020 do candidate for nebraska governor as he is currently out of the country he writes crt and cse two topics causing outrage among the nebraskan parents so i need you to stop for a minute legal counsel would you address the speaker state law lb 83 requires that anyone speaking in public comment has to identify themselves you've identified the speaker here as opposed to anonymous so madam president i think this person can continue okay all right you may continue crystal i may continue reading yes thank you maureen can i have that time back i'll give you two minutes i don't and here's a scott i don't know that i heard

209if we are going to accept that she's speaking for someone else i don't know that i heard where that person is from so just a matter of consistency how about i'm reading for my friend i'm from franklin nebraska my name is crystal davis my friend is out of the country currently at this moment so crt in csc is what my friend writes two topics causing outrage among nebraska parents and millions of parents nationwide and the outrage is justified there is no time to fully cover these topics comments are superficial at best let me set the stage for one i remind you my behalf of my friend for government school injury employment we get asked what ethnicity we are we are told to choose between asian black hispanic and white we this is where the first

210problem is we shouldn't separate based on their where our ancestors are from or what our skin tone is years ago my friend was working at a military lab decided to check his blood protein several of the blood protein types were exclusively proteins of africans even an asian blood proteins in the collection they ran a few different tna types and turns out he's part sub saharan african and it seems that his ancestors got on a boat forcibly and ended up in the caribbean islands eventually finding themselves in north carolina probably where pirate black beard sold his black pirate friends for the government there in exchange for a safe haven this explains where his great-grandmother's name came from gracie workman work man get it according to crt his long arms along with the tight curls on his

211sideburns when they grow those curly hairs from his nigerian heritage are victims his high bridged and straight oppressive nose and his really white skin it's oppressive but wait his nose is from his swedish side of the family swedish farmers who fled the oppressive king in the 1800s are oppressors let's look at his white skin that's his irish side of the family who came over on ships as indentured servants slaves the white skin of his irish slave ancestors thank you crystal thank you justin thiel welcome justin justin teals st laborie matt on july 29th you held a press conference after the release of the second draft of the standards you stated that every student deserves to be represented in the standards what about my girls my girls who will unequivocally find their identity and purpose in

212relationship with jesus christ something tells me that that demographic will never be represented in your standards but that's okay that's my job your job is to educate the kids and as we've heard today not doing a great job during that press conference you were also asked if you expected the controversy surrounding the standards and your answer was for me personally no i don't know how someone in your position can be so disconnected from the constituents that trust you with their children it's beyond me so let me help you gain a little perspective say you and your family are in walmart and i approach you and i start talking to your children which you have because you said that in the press conference so i start talking to your children about anal sex and masturbation you're

213going to call that guy behind you immediately and rightfully so but because it's in a classroom you think it you get a free pass absolutely not that guy should be called on you for putting this in front of our kids and if you ever saw me again you would avoid me like the plague let alone let me spend any alone time with your children that is how the majority of nebraskans see you now untrustworthy predatory and dangerous you only have yourself to blame you presented a second draft but that draft is just as bad if not worse because now the people who haven't been following this think it's okay scrap the standards and while you're at it resign [Applause] thank you justin alexa teal welcome alexa thank you my name is alexa teal i'm a

214mother of three and proud wife of the man you just heard from and i strongly oppose any form of these standards and believe they should be scrapped entirely commissioner on july 11 you sent a letter to the nebraska school administrators in that letter you stated that though the health education standards were drafted in a similar process as other content areas it clearly did not serve us well in this instance so i'm curious to know which other content areas had the input of radical activists which other contents were copied and pasted from a global indoctrination agenda which other content areas were pushed and financially backed by planned parenthood i'm guessing the answer to those questions is none and that you are trying to save face with the school administrators in the letter you also stated that

215you are not familiar with critical race theory the guy who also promoted the 1619 project on the nde website and can't send an email or make a public statement without using the word equity wasn't familiar with crt i'm not buying it finally you said that concerns related to crt are now becoming a significant distraction to the necessary education work ahead get used to it because as long as you try to teach children to judge people by the color of their skin and not on the content of their character we will be distracting your letter was filled with half truths and whole lies you nor the board can be trusted with educating our children scrap the standards thank you alexa dallas asher welcome dallas my name is dallas asher i live in omaha in 1966 i

216joined the marines and did two tours of duty in vietnam one day on our chapel service a single missionary lady in her early 60s spoke to the marines she had been working with and teaching a tribe of mountain yards in the mountain area the lady spoke lovingly of the people in whom she worked in 1967 the ted offensive shook the whole south vietnam for a few weeks there was a large amount of bloodshed her village had an encounter with the viet cong the vietcong disrupted the village and demanded that the young men follow them and take to take over the existing government her voice began to fall her eyes filled with tears the young men that would not follow the vietcong were marched outside the village and shot then the vietcong came back in for

217the young pregnant women they took their knives and slit the bellies of the girls and letting the babies drop this happened over 50 years ago but i still see her tears and feel her sobs i'm telling you this because i see a parallel on what is happening in vietnam and now nebraska i wish i could say i was wrong in comparing you to the viet cong but the cong had an agenda steeped in marxism and communism they chose to control the people by violent takeover because you have not been listening to the majority of nebraskans you are attempting a similar takeover you are not slating the pregnant women's bellies but you are paving away for the boys and girls which often lead young people to the lobbies of planned parenthood abortion clinics where they themselves

218sacrifice their young you are forcing compliance of the national sex education standards through promotion of cse and crt there's no difference between those ideals and the knifes in the hands of the viet cong you are using them as weapons in your roles as supervisors of education remove the entire set of health standards you are they are infested with cse and crt we are held highly accountable thank you dallas thank you sharon flanecki sharon clenecky welcome thank you thank you my name is rox dala stayla i'm a lifelong nebraskan and i live in grand island i'm a married father of three white male if you can see christian and heterosexual you'd probably call me cisgender i believe in traditional marriage and there are only two sexes male and female i also believe that you have to

219be highly educated or indoctrinated to believe otherwise if a rancher tried your new sex standards on his cows he would be bankrupt this kind of ridiculousness only works in academia it doesn't work in the real world i live and work with a lot of blue-collar people ranchers people like that nobody's ever expressed the need for our schools to expand their their education of you know this kind of stuff now you are trying to bully the average hard working nebraskan with your new woke ideology you guys are the bullies i'm not a racist i've never had slaves america didn't start slavery we ended it this is only causing division it's not helping anybody everybody is now a victim they're not going to be able to produce anything it is not the job of the public schools

220to indoctrinate our children it's your job to teach them reading writing arithmetic etc educate not indoctrinate thank you [Music] thank you rock nancy stala good morning mine or afternoon my name is nancy stala i am from grand island nebraska i'm a business owner wife and a mom of a cute little two-year-old boy i'm urging you to totally drop these standards also the equity lens material what we call critical race theory which you had in the first draft and now you sneaked it in social studies guidelines it needs to stay out i'm here to protect my little boy his future friends and our future nebraskans my heart is broken over this my opinion matters and should make a difference 75 percent of my property taxes are paid to the public school system not the fire department

221or sheriff's department and certainly not private schools or school vouchers public schools get most of my property taxes do you represent me the taxpayer without even talking to my two-year-old little boy this equity lens that you're pushing sees him as an oppressor a racist and teaches him to hate himself and other white people he is the big bad oppressor because he is white it teaches human worth based on race sexuality choice and religion choice the number one target is white traditionally married christians why would you teach kids to bully my son and his friends my son and his friends will succeed by their own good life choices not because of the color of their skin sexuality and religion choices character is what kids need self-control how to work together hard work diligence respect and to

222succeed in life by making wise choices this school board is overstepping and this must stop thank you nancy thank you nancy kelly lefler kelly lepler rosemary ray rosemary ray diana kennen diana kinnan amanda ristin pamela frex pamela frax the next group of 16. there we go thank you theresa carey mark barton bartlett bartle nick alyssa martin martin ronald rester carla butler cheryl hankinson gwen easter frantion blythe oscar blumstead jane quincy christina hilaire janet johnson mark bonkowitz susie wilkinson dr jane hansen please come forward teresa carey mark bark barkneck mark alyssa martin alyssa martin patrick martin ronald brester ronald welcome ronald thank you hello my name is ronald brester and i'm a resident of lincoln uh today i come to speak to you as a peer as a parent as grandparent our family unit in the

223united states is under attack from every direction in our society all of your previous testimonial discussions really come down to the lack of respect for that family unit as it exists today the social and sexual issues in our society should be left to the family unit to discuss when their child is mature enough and mentally able to understand and deal with them it is not a one-size-fits-all scenario and should be forced on our students it can and will cause more distress and damage to our children than it will be a benefit to them when crt comprehensive and sexual education are taught when they may not all be ready for that information at the same time as some of their other peer classmates this should and must be a parental decision as to when and under

224what circumstances these issues are discussed and taught to their children basic freedom of choice please please as a peer parent or grandparent find it in your heart to do the right thing and completely ban crt and cse from our k-12 schools and leave these discussions within the family unit where they belong in the privacy of their homes for the last 18 months of coven 19 we have heard almost on a daily basis to minimize the risk so please protect our children and minimize the risk of exposure to these inappropriate topics in school thank you thank you rhonda [Music] carla butler excuse me i'm out of order here i'm sorry cheryl hankinson my cards got all mixed up that's fine thank you for the opportunity to address you today my name is sheryl hawkinson and i'm

225from cambridge nebraska formerly from lincoln nebraska i am a former school psychologist and i taught human services at southeast community college for 23 years and i'll refer to that as scc from now on i taught child development i taught adolescent psychology i taught counseling skills and i taught human sexuality to college students when i started teaching at scc students came out of high school prepared for attending college they also came prepared for entry-level jobs they could express themselves clearly in speaking and writing they could do the basic math but slowly things have changed over the years students were graduating from high school not having the basics that they needed to succeed in our program or in entry level jobs at that point we started requiring and the college started offering remedial math and remedial english

226i believe that the state board of education has lost sight of the mission of the public school system which is illustrated in legislative law 79712 which i won't read but it basically says you're to concentrate on preparing students in math science social studies and foreign languages when it comes to health education you are to according to 79712 the only director you've gotten is is health education is to talk about drug abuse and use and some about intellectual disabilities teachers are being asked to take on subjects that that is not part of the mission time thank you cheryl gwen easter welcome gwen hello good morning i mean good afternoon um i'm from my name's gwen easter i'm from omaha nebraska um i'm with the early childhood interagency coordinating council and the african-american mission i am not

227here on behalf of that commission or that council i am here to ask you to stop the sexualization of our children these health standards need to go it is not the school system's job to push wealthy organizations school unions planned parenthood lgbtq radical agendas upon our children we do not want your misleading surveys and reports to influence our children your job is to focus on math reading writing financial literacy and all history including black history god is not confused he created male and female god loves all people he loves all people and we want people to know that we want people who have chosen to live the gay lifestyle that jesus does love him but we only can give them what he gave us and that is healing deliverance peace love and joy and hope

228we have to give our young people hope you all are causing confusion when you when you tell children that they can change their identities god did not create them to change their identities god didn't create us to be lustful god hates sin period fornication homosexuality adultery all of it is sin in god's eyes until we turn back to god and give our kids over to god that's when we'll see the healing the deliverance of children and our families our families are broken and hurting because we're trying to exclude god we can't he is our creator he created all of us and that's what we need to be teaching our kids teach our kids to love each other teach each other to respect each other i'm a child care provider i will not help you confuse

229children i will not do it so i'm asking you guys to stop this time let it go thank you [Music] [Applause] friend franken blithe my name is fanshawn blyth from lincoln i'm here to oppose these health standards i want to thank governor ricketts for standing up for our children as of today 53 school boards across nebraska that have signed unto the protect our kids and school resolution sad to say lincoln public school has not and i'm sure never will teachers need to teach math science reading writing and how about a second language board members stop the indoctrination the lgbtq xyz whatever community is less than two percent of the entire population unfortunately they are loud and proud and have a voice because of the news media draft number one was the evidence and proof of

230nebraska parents that the sexualization of our children's through c s e and the use of medically biologically inaccurate information is a primary goal of the nde today parents can still see this primary goal in many vaguely worded standards and some standards that still directly promote these ideologies draft number two is simply a watered-down version designed to trick parents to reduce their vigilance over the nde parents were burned by the draft number one standards and and cannot trust the nde with its current state board members commissioner and employees they must be replaced stop the standards and district 5 6 7 and 8 2020 is coming thank you for answering carla butler welcome carla thank you i'm from lincoln just moved here a few years ago it is perfectly normal is the sex ed study book that

231is being used and it's visually sexually explicit it is abusive abuse comes in different forms which includes visual physical and verbal and i'm sure you all have seen this entry-level porn book do you have children do you have grandchildren do you want your children seen this and taught this you know your children better than anyone else so you know when some children are ready to see and when some children are not you know when some children are ready to hear and you know when they are not so parents should have the right to choose when where how to teach their children you and we need to know what's best and we do know what's best for our children too much information too soon can affect our children like in psychological emotional physical ways which would

232cause shame anxiety fears poor self-esteem bed-wetting promiscuity excessive modesty and the list goes on this sounds like state sanctioned sexual abuse on children and lawsuits here they come do you realize that the highest defending sexual abuse is 12 to 14 year old males and 93 percent of them will repeat now another interesting fact is that sex abuse lawsuits have increased tremendously so watch out those lawsuits are coming here if you continue to make these decisions parents want to be primary educators of their children and therefore it's a win-win thank you carla thank you carla your time is up thank you your time is up oscar bloomstead hello i'm oscar blimpstead and uh i originated from the south west corner of howard county northwest of grand island and my parents originated for both ends of sweden

233and sorry sweden is now socialist but general president george washington said the christian training of our youth is very important for the future of our nation and in 1811 our supreme court said whatever strikes at the roots of christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government and our constitution is the law of the land and what is not vested is not vested congress is vested as lawmaker the courts are only vested to defend law and our constitution not to legislate from the bench and and uh marxist indoctrination karl marx was a parasite on his friend's father's capitalist business but his idea of parasitic government appealed to others he was a worst example of humanity of his six children three died of starvation and two of suicide even though at one time he received five

234hundred dollars switzerland the money back then and uh then john dewey educator studied marxism in europe in 1928 that's over 90 years ago then introduced humanism into public schools through the national education association time oscar thank you thank you [Music] jane kinsey welcome jane thank you jane kinsey from lincoln nebraska with watchdogs of lincoln government i am also a licensed clinical social worker in practice at the present time i am here to speak against these standards because i think the board has been caught up in the chaotic thinking of the present time we've heard sad stories of rejection of people who are uh have announced that they are a minority and that is very sad however schools and education cannot change that nor can these standards there are people who are devoted to bullying to

235prejudice to racism whatever negative behavior that there is and this these standards and education cannot stop that that comes from the home and if we don't back up the home we're don we're sunk they it is the bedrock of any society and when you start tearing down the family and its values and taking away their power and their authority you are doing a doom to your society the schools have taken up too much of the prerogatives of the family we need to get back to the bedrock purpose of education i'm sure you have done this with conscientiousness but i implore you as many of the people here have jane thank you very much turn back from this christina saint hilaire welcome christina good morning president and members of the board and guests my name is

236christina santeller i am a nebraska resident for the last 17 years i'm the mother of five including four high school and college graduates and a six-year-old i would like to start by thanking you for the amendments made to the first draft of the health standard i'm grateful especially for the many times students are encouraged to seek the advice of a trusted adult or parent in the new draft i do feel more changes are needed and would benefit the students and families of nebraska i strongly disagree with the push to entrust children's education on sensitive topic topics like puberty sexuality and mental health to teachers especially in a co-ed setting this is the parent and the guardian's job schools perhaps could instead reach out to parents to families and guardians encouraging them to tend to such

237topics in the safety and privacy of their homes draft two of the health standards still usurps parents rights to educate their children on these topics with third and fourth grade children learning about and discussing in some depth the physical and emotional changes that occur during puberty and talking about the stigmas of mental health fifth grade students discuss sexual assault and how to report it and are supposed to identify personal hygiene products such as sanitary products and athletic supporters will girls be separated from boys in these proposed classes or will be they lumped together to discuss topics that are uncomfortable even in segregated groups i would also be interested to know in detail how teachers are expected to broach the topic of safe and unsafe touch with kindergartners and first graders time thank you christine janet

238johnson welcome janet thank you very much thank you for taking time to receive my comment my name is janet johnson and i am a resident of papillion nebraska and a constituent of the papillion la vista school district i would like to go on record that i am strongly opposed to the nebraska department of education health curriculum standards i was strongly opposed to the first draft and the second draft and many of the people here today have stated eloquent arguments so i won't go into that but there are other reasons also that i would oppose these standards these guidelines are first unless burdensome and an invasion of families privacy why are they unnecessary because the nebraska state board of education was never commissioned by a legislative body to provide these unwanted guidelines as far as the

239individual school districts are concerned they are well able to do this it's as if the nebraska state board of education has deemed the majority of parents as unfit and therefore deemed that this board is the default provider of this very value sensitive training in children this is an example of expanding bureaucracy too many layers of government it is enlarging government and therefore enlarging the burden on teachers school districts and especially taxpayers once in place it will continue to grow thank you mark bonkowitz welcome mark thank you good afternoon board members my name is mark bonkowitz i'm a former farmer from sydney nebraska i live in omaha now i thought it was just good to review it's been almost five exact months since the nebraska department of education announced draft one health standards so this is

240a brief summary of the people who have come out in opposition of it it's not a complete list but it's a partial list governor pete ricketts 30 state senators matt innis who's given over a dozen presentations with 150 to 200 people per presentation the nebraska kathy conference that represents 250 000 people across the state a nebraska family alliance represents 200 000 evangelical christians across the state the protect nebraska child coalition 20 000 members and that's just since april nebraskans for founders values with thousands of members across the 93 counties in nebraska in addition you've had thousands of parents who've opposed oppose draft one and i'm sure you're getting a similar amount of feedback on draft two so i just hope and pray that you're listening and you can hear that the majority of nebraskans are

241opposed to draft one and draft two thank you mark susie wilkinson welcome susie thank you hello i'm susie wilkinson from kearney and i'm a mom a wife a grammy and a former liberal when i was uh in my liberal stages i would agree and with every single thing that's been presented today but in my journey from going left to right and my observations and my life experiences taught me showed me that these liberal ideas only lead to destruction and confusion it's a lot of experimentation that you're trying out there on our children to see if your ideas will work and make a better a better world and very many times year after year we have to okay the new math standards they didn't work our scores have gone down let's go back and redo them

242i just want to tell you that if you can maybe examine some of those liberal standards that i examined in my life i felt it was like i was doing a lot of mental gymnastics trying to make square pigs fit into round holes and they don't work and they don't fit so i'm just asking you to please listen to moms and dads who love their children more than a teacher anybody ever could and then consider scrapping these standards i'm not going to go into a lot of the other things that have been spoken today they've been done by rock stars eloquent speakers already and we're almost to the end of your time but i just thank you for sitting and listening to all this all day and i we appreciate your consideration thank you susie

243dr jane hanson dr jane hansen the next group rachel gervase reagan simons judy king dan sheer susan coffey the fishbed i oh here we are ray ray ryan moran and linda carney please come forward rachel jervas reagan simons good afternoon i'm reagan simons i'm from omaha nebraska as the family goes so goes the nation and goes the whole world in which we live st john paul ii i oppose crt and sex education in our schools because they don't value the dignity of each human person i would love to sit down with every one of those high school kids that spoke earlier and just tell them your identity does not come from your gender your sexual preference or race your identity lies in the fact that you are a beloved son or daughter of a god

244who created you for a purpose and he has a plan for your life that's your identity and that is your inheritance kids in the ops school district are only 30 percent proficient in math and science one fourth of incoming freshmen will not graduate in time but the nebraska department of education knows that that's why you consistently give them a needs improvement rating every year which is the lowest score possible nebraska schools can't even teach kids the basics so please forgive me if i have zero trust in you talking to them about race and sexuality i'm trying to raise my boys right so many of the lgbtq speakers earlier honestly have issues with their own parents and the nd is not going to fix that by cutting parents out i have the privilege of working with

245a group of schools and our strategy is to equip parents not teachers to have those difficult conversations with their kids parents are the primary educators and caregivers not you be honest clearly this curriculum was written by pedophiles i can't tell you the kind of hellfire that would rain down on the person who would read my six-year-old a book like the one that was shared earlier or someone would try to doc indoctrinate them by telling them they are a victim or a presser based on the color of their skin i teach my kids the way of martin luther king so they'll judge people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character the way they see the world and humanity in god's creation is beautiful i don't need people like you coming

246along trying to steal their innocence and correct them corrupt them with this garbage stay in your lane you're not the parents i'm the mom scrap the standards thank you reagan judy king you can teach me anything you want to teach me i would take all of your education so with my kids so and my friends my friends kids i'd love anything that you can give to us to make us more intelligent um i'm not bi i'm not stopped from god you know saying that you have to learn certain things i'm open to anything that you can teach me and i hope that you can continue to do that and i think that you're all intelligent enough to have your teachers teach us what we need to know and and i'm sorry for what you've had

247to go through with this crowd out here because this is a busload of people that are queuing on they i have my time back respect please okay uh they're qnons no maskers no vaccinations they voted for trump and trump lost and i'm sorry about that but you're going to have to deal with it [Music] they don't believe in science they shouldn't even be in this room with all of you and catholics have the worst pedophiles that there are in nebraska we're we i fight the pedophiles if you want to fight pedophiles go after the catholic church um some of the people in this room were at the insurrection on january 6th and they're going to try to stop you from doing what what you're supposed to do and you need to stand up for democracy

248and keep teaching us everything we can we need you you need to be strong during this period just like all those other people that held like the police that held off that insurrection you need to stand strong and do the right thing there are people out there that will fight with you not these people back here they're not american and they're they are time thank you judy fight for democracy [Applause] dan scheer dan shearer welcome dan thank you uh how did i luck out to follow that um my name is dan i'm my name's dan scheer i'm from saint paul i'm vice president of the saint paul school board and you guys all look like you're tired of hearing all this but you brought it all all all yourself so you have to listen to

249it i appreciate you all being here and listening um we had a law passed a couple years ago that required every public school district to have a committee on americanism it was called the american civics committee and they were supposed to meet twice every school year to discuss the curriculum with the teachers and the staff and we have been doing that at st paul public schools now for quite a while and we just had a meeting last february where we discussed critical race theory and it had been on the internet all over for a long time and we had a long discussion about it in february and then in july i get a email from our commissioner saying i think his quote was i like you was surprised to even hear about critical race theory

250now either that's not the truth or it's hard to believe that a man in your position would not have heard about it when a small farm boy from central nebraska has been talking about it for months so i'm wondering if maybe you just got caught and didn't want anybody to know that you knew about critical race theory and we're hoping you could sneak it into our curriculums but as you can see the public has found you out and we're watching [Applause] susan coffee susan coffey deb fishbach thank you hi i'm deb fesbeck i'm from lincoln here and i'm against the standards as well as crt today i'm here to do what i was taught to do when i went to public school be open to learning yet question everything so i would learn to be

251bold to own my own words these are my own words encouragement hope for a better tomorrow a love for our country learning from history elevating one's thinking personal responsibility being kind structured through a schedule friendship honesty and consequences these are the traits that were taught along with reading writing and math skills the values and skills that encouraged a oneness amongst the kids we learned was emphasized not yet demanded we danced through social fitness learning where we fit in fought to use our talents towards the things that truly mattered whatever that may be per individual circumstance but i always felt we knew our current fate was not final we had opportunity to come from a source of abundance not fear today we are encouraged the opposite we are fundamentally teaching children to be a constant state

252of fear on one hand and yet grooming them for the most horrific disgust that could happen to a child by manipulating their mind through pornographic pictures that have been stated appropriate because they were drawn as cartoon for children's better understanding what are we doing the schools are being used to breed division a lack of love and empathy good teachers are not correcting bad behavior because they have been conditioned to be scared of a parent that has the opportunity to have them fired or put on leave to repeat offenders abuse are cloaked in the safety of the teachers union not to lose their tenure the public school system has bowed to the demand of federal government when prior to 1965 was a state and local issue the leaking of control over schools started slowly after the

253civil war continued through world war ii to the firebrush burning rate of involvement we see today do not teach our children fear give them a face we can see an exuberant smile of hope and a diligence for learning that is what we send our children to school for be bold own who you are the confidence understanding and clarity do not mock the parents that put their children within your stance ryan morin ryan lauren welcome hello thank you would you put the microphone down towards you got better yeah i am here from o'neill nebraska hulk county specifically and i graduated in 03 and the things that we learned in school i felt was sufficient enough for sex education everything i learned prepared me it taught me to prevent sex it taught me that we got stds

254and what to do with them and i knew everything going on within my body and if i didn't understand they pointed me towards a counselor or to talk to my parent i don't think it is the teacher's job to do that there's a lot of beliefs in well all of it's not very good but every child is different i also have a child that's autistic that would never understand any of that and putting a picture in front of her would teach her something she shouldn't know and she wouldn't understand it was wrong and there's nothing in there to prepare children with mental handicaps how to deal with that either and so i think each individual mother especially mothers that have children that are handicapped should be able to speak to their children about that on

255their own it shouldn't be up to a school board or anything else and if the school board can't hear that then we don't need one linda carney linda cardi welcome linda thank you we saved you to last yes yay thank you members and representatives my name is linda carney from omaha planned parenthood of omaha was working its money very hard here today i personally recognized four or more individuals here in the front row in the second wave as i saw them at planned parenthood where i'm a volunteer on the sidewalk offering women real solutions to real problems that planned parenthood does not offer um so it's interesting to see dressed in the same clothes even interesting to see him here hard at work today don't shove your standards down the throats of all keep choice

256at home where it belongs not in the classroom as a proactive mom i provide sex ed to any and all students outside of the school hours where it belongs my biological motherhood supersedes the creighton university professor psychology degree woman who spoke earlier because i have the right to educate about sex ed as my kids trusted adult without others misguiding them it's absolutely been proven today that your standards are grooming 101 to make them used to talk the talk and walk the walk as a teacher a mom a healthcare worker for 30 years i am called like you to be the best version myself today and every day i teach sex out outside the school hours as i mentioned anybody can and hopefully they do and that means providing truth and beauty to my family and

257community and that's not found in the draft it still needs to be totally scrapped as a primary educator of my children i reject your draft and again we have it's been spoken and been heard by defeating cse repeatedly we will not stop speaking up and demanding that you provide truth and beauty we are the majority that you are elected to represent this concludes our public comment period agenda item 3.2 written public comment we have written public comments submitted from several members of the public the written public comments are linked in the spark data systems for each of you these written comments have been made available to the board members prior to the meeting agenda item 4 the board will take a break at this point of our meeting we are at agenda item 5 discussion

258of the health standards and as your president i'm on information overload and normally i would never say what i'm going to say that i just need to go home and digest everything that's been said today that's that's just how i'm feeling right now commissioner i'm going to turn it over to you to add any comments and we'll go from there yeah and again thanks for uh the additional you know public comment public input today the the reality for us last week of course we opened up a survey to take additional feedback from from the public so i want to encourage folks to do that we did discuss in committee yesterday about kind of the timeline in which we would try to do uh try to accommodate so we can gather the input on this we

259did have a very good discussion about how long do you leave open a particular survey to be able to do that in a meaningful way will we find additional new information that will come from that survey and certainly we want want to encourage folks to do that here over the next week we really want to start analyzing the additional feedback instead of waiting like a very long time to try to analyze the feedback that comes in starting by let's say the end of next friday i think is the date that we would want so that's friday the 13th anyway and so ensure that we can go down that particular path um i i see deborah has a question i just want to i mean basically i don't know what the the desire of the committee

260chair is i know we had talked about a little bit of dialogue but i didn't know if there's anything else that the committee chair might want to add to that so lisa didn't know lisa i do think that that week of input from the public on new information that we need to look at from the public moving forward to make our decision um in the near future uh did you want me to go on with the plan can can i ask for a point of clarity or order what what part of the agenda are we on item four i think we are on item 5.1 well hold on wait when did we move or not go forward with 4.1 i'm missing i missed that that part there is no 4.1 yeah there is that's it's

261the discussion so on my oh it starts i see discussion of health standards for and then 4.1 was discussion item so are we on the line says let me go back we're looking at a different version apparently so yeah it's the same thing though discussion discussion of health your number four is correct all right if it's on discussion is it not the one that's uploaded in spark no yeah yeah yeah i think it is it shows up as four underneath here because i think we had in a different your printed version had they had something else mine mine is printed fine we just have a numbering issue there so on the printed version and so what what item are we on we are on discussion of the health standards and that would be on your

262spark agenda item 4.1 okay thank you you're welcome so i need to know if you want me to proceed as planned if you would like to i would all right well the teaching and learning committee um met yesterday and we gave our committee report at that time and now i'll open it up for discussion from board members about the health standards so uh who i would like you to call on people as they raise their hand i think it would be good if we had the teaching and learning committee folks speak first okay robin uh just a again i'm i'm a little bit like jacqueline okay are we saying that we are continuing i i'm hearing from the president that are you saying to go ahead or are you saying that we should stop now

263or i i i i was just happy it's my desire i i'm on overload so i probably won't be sharing anything today okay but the rest of you are welcome to share all right let me ask this i'm hearing um that from you madam president and i i respect what you're feeling because i i'm on overload as well i'm glad to have listened to our constituents and encourage them to go online and and those that aren't here to give input through a survey or email right now we've had a long day we've listened and now i need to know if if you're feeling the way our our dear president is feeling and you want to assimilate everything that was said today because we had several people that were here sharing information with us it's probably

264close to three o'clock and i need to know from my committee what your wishes are would you like to come back to this discussion at a later time at i am prepared to share if nothing else with uh the other members of the of the committee how i am feeling at this moment all right and i hope that we are giving given the opportunity to as we process what we've heard today as we look at what we're going to hear in the surveys i hope that i have the opportunity that if indeed my thoughts at this moment change i would be given that opportunity as well but at this moment i am ready to share with the other seven board members and obviously for the people who have remained or anybody who's watching online yeah

265so so that at least they know where i am and i need to and i appreciate that i need to know from my committee members so um patty will you share your thoughts at this time um i'll defer to robin sharing first but i believe it's very important for us to i don't see this as the end of the discussion no but i think it's critical at this point that we have an open honest discussion about where we are with the health ed standards all right and so that was the plan um madam president i am great with that all right because i was a little wondering if you wanted to change the direction so we're going i think i'm reviving now okay well i'm glad you got some oxygen there so um going on

266as planned um so we'll begin with our committee members robin please sure and then i have visited uh with our esteemed president and asked her for maybe just a few extra minutes uh i hope that she doesn't put up the stop sign on me but anyway uh i i hope that everybody will uh allow me a few extra minutes um and these and i want to emphasize that these are my comments okay not necessarily intended to be anything more than that i've been an educator for 40 years 38 in nebraska 18 years as a teacher and coach 22 years as an assistant principal principal superintendent during those years i always knew nde was helpful but i generally ignored them and at times i just found them to be an annoyance and as for the state

267board of education i only knew that they existed and really didn't know too much about them approximately three years ago that changed i was honored to be elected and still feel that way today to the state board a representative of the seventh district and i soon realized that nde was not only helpful but crucial to the education success and like the state board of education and its members nde is made up of people yes real honest to goodness people who care for children and educators while partnering with parents guardians to do what is best for kids as we all know health standards have overwhelmed us we've just briefly talked about that again but this stress has not stopped in my opinion the decision-making process a process that has basically been followed to create nine successfully

268used standards used by our schools to provide whether you want to believe it or not a world-class education for the children of nebraska and that's not because of us it's because of the teachers the administrators the parents and all of those people that has made this a world-class education and i don't care what i hear from those out there it is a world-class education most recently april may june and july the state board and nde have followed the process and under the leadership of the board excuse me under the leadership of the department of education thanks to them has created draft number two with nebraska health education standards based on thousands of emails even more surveys hundreds of letters countless phone calls public comments on and on nde has done what we the teaching learning

269and service committee has asked them to do and that is to create health standards so our students parents guardians educators grandparents and patrons realize that we are listening and responding it may not be the way you want us to respond but we have listened and we have responded based on not our analysis of that information but the analysis of the university of nebraska and we have set the second draft based on that analysis when i signed on the dotted line and took my oath as a member of the state board of education i knew there would be tough decisions and i believe we're pretty good at handling those decisions but that doesn't mean i'm not human i'm definitely imperfect it has bothered me to be labeled and compared to nazis communist and most recently viet

270cong labels comparisons hurt but hurt does not equate my discouragement more than ever i am committed to the process that has taken us to a second draft and while i am not a proponent of a third draft if that is where the process leads us i am willing to live with that however it is my belief that an up or a down vote should take place on the second draft sooner rather than later as we look at our great state the unicameral the executive the judicial branch our board of regents locally controlled county commissioners city councils school boards all have a decision making process so why do we need health standards i've heard that question many times why do we need them we're not required to have them we weren't required to have four of

271the nine that we currently have but you know what they've been pretty successful and i'm going to share with you a little story and i could share with you many stories that have indicated that standards are good i had the opportunity because of this position to interview six decorated career and technical education teachers all decorated because i knew standards is a big issue and almost a nasty word i asked each of them have you used the standards that were set forth by the state board of education without exception each answered yes with explanation and enthusiasm cse regardless of what we want to believe right or wrong c has cse has nearly been removed from draft number two crt i attended two of the governor's town halls the governor was mentioned as he should be as

272he's taking a real lead in this i attended two of those meetings they both exclusively focused on health standards in the grand island town hall at least two occasions the governor was asked questions related to crt on both occasions the governor said this this discussion is about health standards i appreciate what the governor said in gothenburg town hall the crt was never mentioned the focus was totally on hell standards and i believe at this time we should follow the good lead of our governor that being said i believe crt needs to be discussed but health standards should not be used as the vehicle to explore that topic there will be more discussion on this not in the health standards fighting and fixing you know the saying fighting is more fun than fixing the process established

273by nde should be the beginning of turning that saying around saying fixing is much better than the fighting numerous times and i have heard today scripture quoted irregularly my daughter sends me daily devotions recently she sent me a scripture paul's letter to the romans in romans 15 verses 4 and 5. a bit of background by the way the jews and the gentiles weren't getting along very well paul wrote the scriptures were written to teach and encourage us by giving us hope god is the one who makes us patient and cheerful i pray that he will help us you and me live as people with each other living in peace end quote thank you madam president thank you well said robin well said all right sorry um moving on with uh 4.1 discussion um patty would

274you share your thoughts please i'd be happy to thank you over the past four to five months there have been numerous opportunities for self-reflection and through that self-reflection i have found myself constantly asking important questions and the first question is what is my philosophy of educa of public education what purpose do i believe public education serves i know my philosophy i know what i believe the purpose of education is but what i see in listening to and and hearing public comment responding to emails is some of the angst with the health ed discussion is really centered around people's differing beliefs about the purpose of education now i i believe first and foremost that education needs to prepare in nebraska nebraska's children to have the essential skills they need in order to be successful individuals i

275think that includes health education but i am not certain that i believe that comprehensive sex ed needs to be part of health education i will be very honest about that and it comes from my my philosophy of education along with that and tied to that has been the question of what responsibilities and how much responsibility can public schools take on not only for educating our children but for raising our children and i say it that way because having been in professional education for my entire career 30 plus years what i have seen over the years is the expectation for the department of education for public schools to take on more and more and more responsibility not just for educating youth but for helping raise them i understand why that has happened because we have children

276coming to schools today with needs that we did not see even 10 years ago i think as educators there's always the belief that children need help and we're a service we're a service group as educators so if kids have needs we try to meet them if they're not being met anywhere else but i think it speaks to the necessity of not expecting public education to do everything for everyone and that we need to rely on our communities we need to provide support for parents so that they can continue to help in the raising of their children a third question that has surfaced more recently over these past few months is just will equity be attained by having standards and i started thinking about that when the commissioner had the press release press conference related to

277the release of draft two and as i really thought about that it took me to a conversation presentation yesterday by dr eppler related to the english language arts standards and the notion that standards standards are statements you know statements of what we believe students should know and be able to do but standards don't change behavior you know as he noted with the english language arts standards from 2014 the standards were there but that doesn't do anything if you don't have changes in instruction and you don't have changes in helping people figure out how to learn i believe equity is important i think we need to make certain that through systems of education children students all students have the resources they need in order to be successful right that they have equal opportunity and access that

278is not an evil notion that's an admirable notion that all of us need to aspire to that we want everyone to have opportunity but i'm not sure that equity really is served through standards particularly i guess what i would call individual equity you know that kind of equity for me comes through relationships with individuals every every individual is unique every student i ever taught was unique a unique person and i believe through relationships caring people in education and in the community come to know what the needs of that person are and they work as diligently as they can to provide the resources to help that unique individual regardless of what group that person identifies with or is put into that it's it's a personal relationship it's a desire to help a person an individual succeed

279finally i've had a lingering question and it was a question that was on my mind today as i was listening to a number of public comments there were comments related to trust not being able to trust the department of education not being able to trust us as a board trust right now is very fragile in our society and if you think about the components of trust it's a complex concept right it involves communication consistency competence honesty and you could probably think of several other components that comprise a sense of trust i i will honestly well i i hope i'm always being honest but i will acknowledge that i believe over these past five months though it was unintentional that we as a board have done some things or not done some things that have contributed

280to people not being able to trust us or we have fueled mistrust that was already there i think it is critically important that we work to restore trust and i believe the only way we can do that is by bringing some kind of closure or resolution to the health education standards i i would hate to see all of the health ed standards scrapped if you read those standards there are numerous things that students learn that are of great value from injury prevention to prevention of disease to nutrition those are concepts that are being taught currently in schools in nebraska as part of health ed but i also know that we are at the point that we need to we need to have resolution to this there needs to start to be a healing process and

281we need to work to regain the trust of people in this state i'm also struck by the last couple of days in particular [Music] how i have a sense of erosion of trust even among us as a group that saddens me i we have so much important work to do that we need to come together we can have differences of opinion it's important for us not to all have the same ideas but we need to we need to have trust in each other we need to have open honest conversations with each other thank you for sharing your thoughts i appreciate it um maureen you're on our committee um are you up to sharing some thoughts thank you um robin and patty very eloquently echoed many of my thoughts or brought some new ones to mind

282for me so i appreciate that i want to go back to an analogy i used with my with within the teaching and learning committee and i continue to use it because my family uses it all the time and sometimes i have to say it to my friends there are two sides to a pancake i want you to think about that most people in here like pancakes when you pour the batter on the griddle that first side gets cooked for quite a while until those bubbles all come up and that's the clue that you turn it over and once you turn it over it doesn't take very long to finish cooking it and since march the sight of the pancake that i have heard is the loudest part that we have all been hearing since april

283the other side that doesn't get cooked very much they also need to be heard and i have shared in almost all if not all my emails that i have returned my my line of my my desire and and my true pledge in being a board member in being a friend and being a parent is to represent all children and all means all and you can't have nobody wants to eat that pancake until it's cooked on both sides and that's how i see where we need to start the healing process of saying well we might not all like pancakes but most of us do and i want both sides cooked i want to represent all students i taught for 26 years some very close friends of mine are former students i knew when they were fourth

284graders that they were so-called different their parents were able to acknowledge it most of them i'm facebook friends with i learned early on in research that 10 percent of students in every building slash every district is quote unquote different i guess is the word i graduated in 1970 51 years ago yes i look like it the wrinkles i was able to attend my 50th class reunion last month i graduated in small town classmates 36 belong to that side of the pancake that doesn't get cooked very much and guess what i love them one of them being transgender i have not seen since 1978 when she was my mother's head nurse when she had a hysterectomy it's now he he's never come to a class reunion before and we meet every five years he was there

285and i hugged him i gave him a kiss and i said i'm so proud you're here and you know what he's darn good-looking um two of them have passed away and we memorialized them but we didn't say they belong to a different group i didn't even know it didn't even know about one of them does it matter to me no it doesn't but i just needed to share all that because all means all to me i heard students i heard young people today and i like the word that somebody used they are our future we need to be listening to them and i think we would be surprised how much they are yearning for the information that were in our original first draft while i know i could not have voted for that first draft

286it was too explicit there are some words that i felt could have been left out but i thought overall it was good i've done a lot of checking with administrators around my area one of them i checked early on in april and she said um they're what we need this is a very large district the district where i taught for 26 years and where my daughter had a pretty good health education i called her earlier this week and i asked her have you had a chance to read the revision i have can you share with me what you think maureen they are so watered down they are watered down she said here in grand island our curriculum is so much greater and she said we have data to prove that the teen pregnancy that we

287have in junior high we have the data to prove pregnancy is down stds are down we have the data with the health department that says volumes to me and this second draft is missing a lot of that and i said that before i even talked with her and for that i feel badly i talked with the superintendent yesterday in my district and he said maureen i'm from the dark ages but before i went into administration i was a junior high teacher and i know the things that we were teaching in junior high and i feel pretty good about them i really couldn't tell you what we're doing in elementary or in senior high but what i told my board in april was or in may rather when there was going to be a second draft

288they weren't anti the first they weren't even going to talk about it they wanted to see what was going to happen and he said i looked at them and i said we're going to wait to see what that second draft is and what they end up adopting and we are going to take a deep dive into making our health education slash sex education so much better and he said i'm going to do it like grand island did it the community grand island brought the community together of parents and important individuals in that community and said we need health standards tell us what we need their pregnancy is down since all of that started it's a community family school community partnership every community is different different cultures in different communities but i can tell you that

289in chapel nebraska in omaha in plain view ten percent of their students in their district is different and i want them to be seen and heard in those standards the one thing that's always bothered me and i'll come to an end here the one piece that has always bothered me it's kind of two-fold i hear religion brought up i feel like i'm a pretty good catholic and i've been told numerous times in emails i see that you're a catholic you attend blessed sacrament if you pass these standards you are a sinner and shame on you i believe in church and state being separated and i thought that's what what our constitution says separation of church and state so with my catholic religion i do try to remain very neutral because i have to represent all

290kids just like president bush had to represent all kids just like president obama just like president biden got to look out for everybody we're america and vera uh i i have to tell you so many of those emails talked about their their christianity their quotes which i'm great with but then to finish up with saying i don't want to talk about transgender i don't want to talk about lgbt i may offend some people but i don't see that as being christian i keep i kept hearing that today i love them all but you know what they don't want the word lgpt lgbtq or whatever you want to call it in there and my question to each of you is is that a dirty word back in 1970 it was a dirty word a young man

291from grand island the other day said our culture has changed our world has changed so much just in the last 10 years and i added in the last 51 years so we need to keep those things in mind just like the superintendent said to me yesterday maureen i'm kind of old school but he knows he has to represent all kids and he was meeting in a day-long workshop with glsen blenson he said they have marvelous materials to look at that made me feel good so i'm just going to end with that patty brought up the importance of the nde the pandemic brought out to me to to know that administrators looked to the department of education and the commissioner for help starting at the end of march he held weekly zooms from across the state

292those administrators were thirsty for his information the department was way ahead of everything and already had stuff online for them and people are saying we don't have any trust in you well the districts do have trust in the nde so robin i'm like you way back when i didn't know much about the department of education even when i was a young teacher but 25 to 30 years ago i started paying attention when i got to know my local representative and here i am today and i'm proud of it that's i'm going to end there i want to thank the members of the committee for sharing their thoughts heartfelt thoughts thank you robin patty maureen it's been a tough tough time these past few months we want to do what's right for every single child in

293the state of nebraska not a few not some every single child deserves to be recognized taught so that they have the resources and the opportunities they need to be successful whether they choose a career college and especially to be successful in life my dad was in the military for 36 30 years i was a teacher for 36 but one thing i learned traveling to different locations whether it was in great britain japan it didn't matter my father said before each move and explaining where we were going we're going to a different culture we're going to a different place i want you to accept their traditions respect them as people and you might see the brits driving on what you conceived to be the wrong side of the road look at it is not wrong but

294look at it as different and i think that it's really important that we look at the whole child their nutrition their physical activity keeping them safe from abusers keeping them sec safe from sex traffickers we need to come to closure on the health standards after this week of input we all want to see what people have to say more about the second draft and make a decision maybe in september or october but nde and the state board have really imp other important work to work on we need to revise rule 10 we need to look into so many other things that are are mandated and so i hope that as we move forward we respect one another and we keep what i said before and as my colleagues have eloquently said whether they said all

295children or like i said every single child needs to be treated the same and respected and taught what they need to know to be successful in life and i guess we're moving on so i'll open it up to i'm turning it back over to president nichols to maybe get input from the other okay it's time that we hear from the four members that are not on the teaching and learning committee if they choose to want to speak vice president co johns well i'm not sure that we are as prepared as you were but as i sat here and listened i realized that i've been taking notes throughout the whole the whole day and i've been thinking over and over and over again as we explore what the health standard should include just exactly where i

296stand on them and today cemented some very important life philosophies for me and i always have this little mantra in my head before i present when i'm really worried about what i'm going to say and i learned it we've all talked about church but i learned it at church i was a lector and even though i was a speech teacher when things really mattered to me i got very nervous and so when i'd go up i'd always say to my maker i'd say remember this is not about me this is about the people out there and your message so if i'm a little nervous today the mantra came back to me and so i decided to go right away so i taught for over 40 years and i taught in arkansas missouri and georgia and

297finally back home in nebraska and in rural and urban schools and i want you to know that it was the greatest honor of my life to be a teacher and when i retired i walked out into the parking lot and said to two of my best friends i think i want to be on the state school board and i said would you help me and they said yes and for me that took a lot of courage but i really looked at this the presentations today and was so astounded uh by the courage of the young people that came here today to speak and i kept saying to myself i hope we as a board have the same courage that those young people do did today because coming to speak to this group that is supposed

298to be elite we all know that we're human and ordinary people but to them the state school board sounds pretty pretty big and to come and stand in front of us and tell us exactly what they felt and not just what they felt they didn't deal just with feelings these young people didn't they dealt with facts and statistics and data and personal references and stories and i couldn't help but think wow some of these people are presenting uh pres are doing presentations that are so much smarter than we are because they've done their homework they're not just working with what aristotle would call pathos they're working with uh lojos too the facts these are the facts now that's not to say that there wasn't pathos in it but i want us to have the same

299courage as we represent them robin we did make a promise when we decided to become part of this board you and i have talked about that and to live up to that promise is a matter of courage for us that those kids displayed today and our promise was we said that we would educate and protect our students educate and protect and we did not say that we would educate and protect some of our students we said we would educate and protect each and every one of our students so today as i was listening to those young people these are some of the things that i heard from them of the marginalized groups that made me think that draft number two is inadequate draft number one i felt like needed a few minor changes in language

300as well maureen but compared to draft number two i i thought it was the better draft and what i heard from those young people was that young men were learning more about human development and health standards than young women were and young women were being left out in a lot of things and so they were more vulnerable to things that were happening lb lgbtq 1a students were more vulnerable and what i heard from them is and that we have not talked about is that in order to learn in school you have to be free from trauma and if you've studied education lately you've heard the word aces and what happens with that is that if i come to school and there's been trauma at home fighting and all of that sort of thing then uh

301or i don't have a place to sleep or i don't have enough food that kind of trauma makes it impossible for me to learn and so those children come to school and not only do they have trauma from their families they come to school and face other kinds of trauma within this school and then there was one young lady that talked about being latino and uh having religion um get in the way of knowing about her her own identity her own beliefs her own sexuality so we heard people expressing these young people expressing the roadblocks to their identity and to their sexuality so um i i thought we needed to take a look at that i really believe that they kept repeating these that family status and sexual orientation and gender differences needed to go

302back into the document and i believe that's true some of the adults talked about um the little child coming from the biblical quote but i feel like our responsibility is also to the little child the middle child the high school child and that the students that we looked at and listened today listened to today were all children of ours every one of them that needed to be needed to be educated and protected by the state board of education and the nebraska department of education one young woman said another failed child she told her story and she said another failed child and she said then she lived the rest the rest are a good part of her life with shame because of her ignorance and so there is nothing worse than ignorance when you're trying to

303face the world and trying to solve problems as a young person and so anything that we can do to uh prevent uh the anecdotal pro the anecdole story that she told of what she faced by getting rid of ignorance we should do that one last thing that i wanted to say was that in the discussion of this with our audience one gentleman said i hope you consider the thousands and thousands of people who who are represented by the people who are speaking here today we have 247 schools or 42 some place 44 schools kind of fluctuates in nebraska and we received information from 50 schools and um our a lot of the people that spoke to us represented uh one or two or three groups and so i think there are a lot of other

304people that we have not heard from so i want us to keep that in our mind and i also want you to know this that in those 40 plus years i taught thousands of students so numbers are important but they're not necessarily all important and i wish we could be like those little children that were discussed today here and that is i watch all my little uh my two little granddaughters and all of their little cousins and that sort of thing play and they don't care about labels they only care about each other and as teachers i think that we need to have the courage to do what is right and that is to educate all children to their full potential as best we can and to prepare them to have good lives to be

305able to live in this world debra or jacqueline i can go [Music] so i wrote down my comments which is something i really do and so if people were wondering why i was looking at my computer today it was because i was writing down some things to say crisis and confidence those are words that they said came from our commissioner the process did not serve us well another quote that they said came from our commissioner and i want to say if you think that there is a crisis in confidence among the public and the nebraska department of education i want to make it clear that there is a crisis in confidence between me and my fellow board members and moreover me and the nebraska department of education when the standards were first rolled out i

306support it and i defended the department of education i believe that the department of education sincerely wanted to be transparent not political and to get this right and i told people my words to the people of nebraska that in the second draft i would make sure that we did just that yet in the release of the second draft i was proved wrong and everything that the public felt and said i felt it too last week on monday the 26th i received a text from our commissioner that stated i could access the health standards online and that they would be reviewed by the teaching and learning community sorry teaching and learning committee there was still review to be done but i should plan for a public release next week that would have been this week indicating

307i had a week to review and consider the second draft on tuesday the very next day while driving to kearney for the nebraska department of education day conference i received a subsequent text from the commissioner stating that he hoped i had had a chance to review them because they were now planning to make the standards public on thursday rather than wait indicating i only had 2 days to review them however i didn't even have 2 days to review because when i walked into nde day on wednesday the superintendent sitting beside me said they had already received a copy and the most controversial topic that we've been dealing with for the entire year i got less than two days to review which means in reality i don't think people cared about my opinion so as talking

308right now to me is performative because if staff truly cared about what board members thought or if other board members on the committee cared what i thought my thoughts would have been more important than rushing this through because of a request from schools while i'm sad that we've spent so much time on these standards these standards have shown me the flaws in our own system because i can't think of any other place where a board would allow someone that they hire to go around them not seek their opinion in an effort to appease other stakeholders that's the definition of political something i've told the public we would not do but what bothers me more than the lack of transparency in this process is the complacency with my board and how it happened because i shouldn't

309be the only person upset by this it seems consistently that when we ask a question about our authority or something that makes people uncomfortable we're asked well aren't you a governing board or are you a policy making board and should you be getting into the day-to-day operations of the staff my understanding is that some board members have also been told that we better be careful with our actions or else the legislature could take away our authority these in my opinion these types of comments are inappropriate and frankly make me uncomfortable and in fact i spoke with several of our state senators this week on both sides of the aisle and i can tell you they're more concerned with the actions of the department and the administration of this process than they are with us as

310board members they're concerned that we as a board haven't exercised more assertiveness with authority that we've been given so let me remind my fellow board members where our authority comes from the state department of education shall be comprised of a state board of education and a commissioner of education the state board of education shall have general supervision and administration of the school system of the state and of such other activities as the legislature may direct we are the state department of education along with the commissioner additional legislation says the state board of education acting as a unit shall be the policy forming planning and evaluative body for the state school program another statute the commissioner shall under the authority of the state board of education shall act under the authority of the state board of

311education the commissioner shall have the responsibility for carrying out the requirements of law and abort policies standards rules and regulations and for providing for educational leadership and services the board's policy standards rules and regulations yet i have to hear constantly from fellow board members about what the commissioner wants or what staff said but what about us what about what we want and who we were elected to serve my frustration is not with the people who are courageous enough to come today and speak out about how they feel i applaud everyone who came here no matter what side of the aisle they are on my frustration has been with this process and the lack of transparency among the department of education in this board as one small example we were told that the university of nebraska

312and lincoln data would be evaluated taking in all of the surveys that were received about these hands standards we would look at them we would consider them going into the next draft and do you know when i received that report two days ago a week after the standards were released which means we didn't have an opportunity to even see the report before they were released so if i'm being honest no member of the teaching and learning committee reached out to me to ask about my opinion on these standards no writer on the rewrite committee spoke to me no list of proposed changes were sent out to me as a board member i'm not comfortable saying it's not my job and that my only job is to approve or not to approve we are legislatively the

313policy forming body of this department along with the commissioner as far as where i am personally i vacillate i go back and forth on one hand i have kids constituents depending on me to be their voice and to get this right and when i ran for this seat i promised all the lgbtq plus youth and families in my district i would fight for them in fact at my kickoff there was a lgbtq plus child who introduced me and the majority of the support for the first draft came from my district my district by and large were supportive of the first draft and like marine i believe all means all we have to look out for all children and some of you may have been here earlier some of you might not have been able to

314see this if you're listening online but there were children some young people who walked in and they sat in the front rows and people got really upset that they were sitting in the front row and there was a crowd behind them who was upset to the point that they came and started yanking papers and signs off the chairs and as those children and young people got up and went to the back of the room other people came and filled those chairs and immediately it came to my mind the pictures of the little rock nine pictures of little ruby bridges walking into schools for the first time to integrate those schools where they were different and there were large crowds in opposition there were people who didn't want it people who were afraid but just because

315the crowd was the largest it didn't mean they were right and when we look back at that now we know we were on there were people on the wrong side of history there were people who didn't want integration they wanted segregation because it was uncomfortable and it made them afraid and so when people say they have the loudest voice or the most people it doesn't mean that's always right now the other side of me wants to table this entire discussion about health standards because i am not confident in the process i have not been confident in the process because how can we expect the public to trust us as a board if i as a board member don't even trust this process i want to pass something from my district because the kids in my

316district need something they're begging for something but i don't know that this process got it right so where i am personally on this issue is i want a third draft i want to see a third draft but i want to see the process right thank you jacqueline debra thank you and i just want to thank all of you uh who have stayed this long like oh my gosh thank you and especially to uh senator albright's staff who's here thank you all for being so involved in this process and i want to assure you that i'm the last person right to comment so we're almost over but i do want you all to settle in because this is going to be long this is my very first opportunity to say anything about the standards i spoke

317for maybe a minute in april at a board meeting not knowing that was going to be my last opportunity to have any input in the standards and so i do have a lot to say i do want to start by thanking my fellow board members for all the time and energy that they have put into working on the standards i also want to thank the staff that led the efforts i know it has not been easy i recognize that this work was done during a pandemic and during other conditions that made it definitely not ideal i also understand there was a lot of confusion about the process because we don't have it written down and so there isn't one way of putting together standards and how we use our advisory committee because i have called

318a lot of people that have worked on standards in the past to better understand that uh and i'll own some of the confusion too oops i just lost my uh i'll own some of that some of that was just my own confusion because i've only been on the board for two years and it really does there's a lot to learn also i my apologies to jack board member morrison that you had to sit today and listen to a tremendous amount of racism i'm sorry that had to be very difficult and i'm sorry dr blumpstead uh i was really sorry that your family was threatened today and that you were personally threatened multiple times and dr vargas i'm sorry that you were incorrectly accused and attacked because you wore a colorful mask that someone inaccurately believed

319had dangerous symbolism and i'm sad about our board president who's had attacks in her own yard against her property and her pets i'm sad about all of the attacks on the department of education today as well overall i believe we have a top-notch leader who has hired top-notch staff members we may not agree a hundred percent on anything everything but i believe we have a touch not staff who cares tremendously about the youth of nebraska and if people are concerned about some of the data around achievement in our state then they obviously aren't paying attention to the social challenges that our schools have to address today schools aren't just about teaching our kids there's a tremendous amount of social work that goes into that responsibility of educating our youth and i want to thank the

320four members of the teaching and learning committee lisa robin patty and maureen i know you've all had it very hard and i know you have all done a tremendous amount of soul-searching and i don't have any doubt that your motives and intentions were good and i know you all believe that you are doing the right thing for the department of education uh by releasing the second draft if we had a vote today on the standards only because i don't believe in the process because i too have lost faith i would vote against the standards i personally would like to see a start over at a future time when we are more prepared and when we've had more discussions as a board about the processes about transparency and about our values as a collective board and

321when i come talk about transparency i i want to come back to patty's comment about trust amongst us because i believe you build trust by having inclusivity good communication transparency and accountability and i don't believe and i'm not blaming anybody but i'm just saying this process did not have those things so there was a lack of trust during this process but also i want to talk about our values as a board everyone entered into these discussions after a pandemic which caused a people in our lives we were also a new board that had not worked together in person very much and while i initially thought our values as a board were spelled out in our non-discrimination statement that we all passed unanimously in 2019. i realize that maybe that statement needs to be reviewed again

322because two of the board members that are with us now were not part of that process i we have talked in the last couple days about having a retreat and during that retreat i do hope that revisiting our nondescript discrimination statement is a major part of that discussion maybe we even need to vote again on that statement even if it wouldn't maybe even if it was only a symbolic vote but just to really understand if we even agree on what equity is i'm hoping we can also discuss some of the ways that we can work on being more culturally sensitive as a group and that we can find ways as a board to focus more on our stated equity goals i personally believe that equity is not a concept that should be relegated to one

323committee and to four board members that gets us nowhere as we have seen the equity goals that our board has passed and professed should be a part of all of our agencies processes and all of our board's decisions if we are really committed i am also hopeful that we can get together and find ways to work more efficiently as a board and study how other similar boards conduct important business i have admired what i have learned about how the board of regents conducts their work to study issues and utilize outside scholars and academics and how they have opportunities to work on challenging topics together and how they also understand the need for bold actions occasionally over the past few months i have heard from staff and board members a tremendous amount i guess what i'm

324saying is i've heard a lot of anecdotal information that's been thrown around in conversations i heard about what certain superintendents might have said or not said what certain state senators have stated what the governor was threatening about the threats to the state board of education and all of these topics all seemed to me personally like topics that took our board away from what should really be our primary focus the kids the science and what is going to make our kids thrive in the world that they're going to be living in not the world that we grew up in but the world that they're going to be living in also i want to add a data point of significance that the superintendents that have written to us and said that they oppose our standards i want

325to point out that as of yesterday i don't know if we got any new superintendents today but as of yesterday those superintendents only represent of the student population in nebraska and i want to say that again they represent 10 percent of the student population in nebraska that is not a large number of students that they represent and yet we have talked about how superintendents you know are weighing in in large numbers and and those aren't large numbers we have 240 superintendents that represent 90 percent of the population and they haven't weighed in at least not in a formal way although i know all of us have had conversations one-on-one with the superintendents in our districts even though they are not represented of the majority of the state as i said we do appear to have

326given them a lot of weight that is not proportionate to the student body that they represent i also want to add that our non-discrimination clause did not say that we should only have non-discrimination values when it is convenient for us or when we are politically supported by the legislature or when the governor supports us doing so i want to mention at this point what you said about crt not being a part of the standards and you know this isn't personal and how much i like you okay but since the governor's weighed in i i mean what people are not talking about is our health standards include entire sections about mental health and about social emotional learning what social emotional learning is is about emotional maturity and how to get along with everybody and when i

327first came on the board the whole manufacturing industry in nebraska their leader came in and told us the most important thing that we can be teaching kids to prepare them for jobs once they graduate is to make sure that they have strong social emotional skills and what that means is how to get along with other people those are crucial to being successful and i don't know how you talk about getting along with other people if you're leaving out talking about the glbtq community and if you're not we have completely erased the word racism from the second draft of standards how do you talk about getting along with people if you don't even acknowledge the fact that we do have a society that is racist and most all aspects of our life and that racism is

328racial bias along with other biases do permeate our school systems and that's not me talking that is decades of research that show that and how do we talk about social emotional learning and mental health and health standards and completely take out these words related to gender related orientation and related to racism i i don't get that um sorry now i have to get back to my notes okay um i've not read anything in the state board rules that says our primary goal is to make decisions that help perpetuate our roles as board members and i'm not saying that anyone has done that on the board okay but the antidote anecdotes i've heard throughout this process and the discussions i've had have had nothing to do with supporting our glbtq youth had nothing to do with

329making sure that we elevated conversations around racism instead of deleting them from our standards and i heard nothing about respecting the dignity of all youth these might be conversations that others had in their closed groups that nobody would share but those were not any ideas that anyone talked to me about and frankly i'm hoping that the conversations to wha why what's the word water down our second draft i'm kind of hoping that they were based on political discussions because the alternative is something that would be concerning to me that people believe that we should just erase the glbtq community erase racism from our standards i'm hoping that those decisions uh anyway i'll move on i've always believed that we as a governing body have a moral imperative to stand up for the youth that don't

330have the same supports that we all had in this room i also took this board position because i believe that we're here as board members to advocate on behalf of our youth to and understand that many youth do not have the same affirming homes that we've all had and maybe that comes from the fact that i've been a foster care parent to eight youth that i have had insights into what other family dynamics look like and i'm not i'm saying there's a lot of good foster homes i know that but that's just my lens um but it is our job to make sure youth are prepared to be competitive in the world that they're going to be graduating into and as the world herald stated in their endorsement of the first draft of the standards

331their words we should not lose sight of the need for the next generation to understand the complexity of modern society and to reject any way of thinking that makes a child vulnerable to harassment and prejudice have we done that with these standards not with the second draft i've always been proud of our board's nonpartisan approach to issues none of us have ever allowed the public see now i can't talk because it's so late in the day all right none of us have ever allowed the politicizing of the work that we did and for the longest time i'd say i didn't even know the political party of most of the people that i worked with because it's never been a thing none of us um and i want to remind everyone that and this is for

332the public because i know our board members already know this but it's important to note that focusing on equity is not a political issue even if there are some that are trying to make that a political agenda but instead equity is a moral obligation that we have and i thought my peers on the board shared that as their primary lens that we would consider when making all of our decisions because that's what we said we were going to do when we wrote our non-discrimination statement and unanimously approved it perhaps some people are going to call me naive to believe that maybe we have a responsibility to help others outside of our own circles that we should be interested in uplifting more people than just our own families our own school districts and our own personal

333religious beliefs i definitely respect the role of parents and i value their their input i wanted them to help us with the nuances of that first draft my parents sent me to catholic school for 12 years and they've played an important role in my development as a human my parents go to church every day and they're just some of the most religious people i've ever met um that's my train of thought um and even though i truly value the role of parents i also keep in mind and this is important that when we receive 30 letters a day in three days and they all say the exact same thing that isn't hearing from parents that's hearing from political machines that are putting out these talking points and going around having town halls and really inciting

334people with misinformation i have had thousands of email or hundreds anyway and i have had so many phone calls there was one day last week i put 22 000 steps on my on my watch just walking around my house being on the phone listening to constituents i mean and i know we've all done that we've all talked to our faith leaders we've all um but listen to the parents but the emails that we're getting that are all just the same repeated political talking points that that's not the same thing that's politics i also believe in science and research and i know that i can listen to both science and parents and we can still support all youth if we are willing to listen and learn and compromise this second draft was not a compromise it

335was a whitewashing through a process that i find concerning i want it made clear that the urban areas of nebraska were not represented in the discussions about these standards we did not have a seat at the table to discuss or have input into that second draft i never want to make our discussions about urban and rural but i do want to make sure that everyone understands that the urban districts were not represented in any way in these discussions that led to the second draft the districts of omaha district 8 and district 4. some of you might know we have some of the highest numbers of stds in the country all right so you can't tell me that kids aren't having sex because they are and they're getting stds and it is a huge public health

336problem in the omaha area and throughout the state also the people these same districts of omaha have the highest rates of free and reduced lunch the highest number of black youth that are going to be impacted by the removal of all the discussion about race that was removed from that first draft we also have some we have the highest refugee population um [Music] and uh let's see i'm gonna just jump ahead save you guys some all right i would hope for nebraska that our education standards would be written by parents experts scientists educators but definitely not by politicians i hope which i include us in that group that we shouldn't be writing those standards as was done i hope in the weeks ahead we have more opportunities to listen and to discuss the science maybe

337we can actually hear from real experts as i have been requesting all along i also hope that we have more opportunities to talk to each other because as i said frankly my district was definitely not represented in this process and i hope that we can as a board discuss our non-discrimination statement and our equity lens and their appropriate role in the work that we do as a board all right one final thing just based on some of the notes that i heard today um i want to just repeat what you said maureen about i do think our superintendents trust us i mean all the ones i talk to in my district have very positive things to say about nde and i also want to just make it a point somebody today was pointing out how

338we're all paid and i just want to remind people that we aren't paid we have spent the last two days in meetings and every other day this week researching talking to people responding the emails studying topics and uh we're all doing our best and i appreciate all of you i'm done okay thank you any final comments lisa chair microphone no i want to thank everybody for sharing their thoughts um very heartfelt thoughts and um moving forward this next week now through august 13th getting more input through email or survey on the website so that we can look at that study it analyze it and move forward and just keeping every single student in mind as we work through this process so thank you madam president commissioner do you have anything else to add okay agenda

339item six adjournment thank you for those who attended in person and who tuned in to the broadcast as needed a work session will be held on thursday september 2nd at a time and location to be determined a business meeting will be held on friday september 3rd at nine o'clock at a location to be determined the august 6 2020 state board meeting is adjourned you