001thank you commissioner it's june 4th and it is 907 a.m good morning and welcome to the june state board of education meeting board members please engage your microphones before speaking and turn them off when you're done speaking and please turn off your cell phones thank you live web streaming is available through the state board of education website www.education.ne.gov state board agenda item one call to order the june board meeting will now come to order patricia tim and debra neary have both contacted me in advance to let me know that they would both be absent from today's meeting agenda item 1.1 roll call andrea please call the roll patty google's present jacqueline morrison present deborah neary patsy co johns here lisa fricke here maureen nichols here robin stevens here patricia tim commissioner bloomstedt present sixth president
002too absent thank you we do have a quorum agenda item 1.2 the pledge of allegiance please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all agenda item 1.3 information regarding the open meetings act is posted as you enter the room from the main hallway doors the opens meeting act is also posted on the state board of education's website www.education.ne.gov state board just so you all know at 10 30 i have made a decision for the board to take a 15 minute break at that time agenda item 1.14 coveted 19 meeting protocol ryan four and actually i'll just cover that so i pretty much covered the safety things today obviously the hotel
003um i believe that they have their masking requirements based on vaccination otherwise just try to be safe and give people the room that they need thank you agenda item 1.5 the commissioner's report on health education standards process commissioner yeah and i'm going to be able to uh uh first of all welcome in uh uh corey eppler and lacey peters i think they're gonna be able to participate by zoom so we'll see how this goes anyway that's always the technology side i wanted to start with uh a little bit of kind of perspective obviously on where where we're at and many of you know and been following very closely uh the efforts on the health standards the health standards themselves were released as a draft in march all or many of you know that board members
004obviously as we've gone down that particular path our intention all along has been to make sure that we listen to the public that we hear the concerns that we hear that the ideas the things that can make uh this particular draft better and so we continue to do that and and do very much appreciate the kind of the efforts underway i wanted today to be able to present and this is by the way just for everyone that's here and for the listening public generally this is actually the first time we're having the discussion with the full board we've only so far really taken public comment we've had a bit of a chance in the committee in a committee report but i do very much appreciate this chance to be able to talk through some of
005this uh with folks attention here um i am going to uh maybe have corey i forget who's going to display the slides up there because it's not me apparently so uh i'll have uh have someone put the slides up the other the other primary thing so we want to walk through a little bit today of where we're at in the process what the timeline kind of looks like give you a good sense and give the board a good sense of kind of what we've talked about so far our attention somewhat to the uh details of the public comment and we're still actually analyzing that there's been a lot of public comment but we're going to walk through some of what those themes are let's talk a little bit about the expectations for the writing committee
006as we kind of proceed and where we go and i know the committee then will lead a bit of a a dialogue on on you know kind of what those next steps are so again appreciate that very much and we might be having some technical issues as i don't see this slide yet so i can't but the the crazy part in the long room is i can't see down to the folks that are that are working on it so can you hear me yeah we can hear you corey okay this one [Laughter] so essentially i walked i walked through the goals corey and i if you go ahead and start on the portion related to the the comments so far commissioner his connection is not stable and that's why he keeps dropping out is lacy's
007stable i can share my slides yeah yeah go ahead lacey thank you ah technology you gotta love it [Laughter] why why do i feel like i'm in the charlie brown adult all of a sudden so right uh corey i might just ask you to disconnect for a bit and see if you can call back in and lacey and i will start indicated uh we have had a great deal of public com hey drew do you want to go ahead and just text him in the background lacey and i'll wing it we'll see how we do so lacey do you you're able to advance slides we can't hear you lacey i'm going to vamp a bit so the uh the the reality for the state board's conversations on pub on the things that we've heard around
008around public comment overall right there's the types of things you expected many of you have written many of you filled out the survey um you know preliminarily we're looking at all of those different emails that were sent to us all of the survey results trying to look at the type of feedback right that we've received and there was a lot of feedback around what's the community's role what's the parent's role what's the do teachers really are they really the right ones to be able to provide those partic those particular insights right and so i think it's really important that folks understand that we understand how to kind of right-size those various roles of what's most important and how the standards work overall and so if we're able to get corey back he'll do a much
009better job of explaining kind of how standards generally work for the department of education but what i want to make clear is that we've been listening there's there's concerns about several different things and and laci i might have to go to the next slide if it's working anyway just several different things and that's pretty small even i have a hard time reading it but but honestly the engagement with family engagement with parents engagement with the schools and communities the recognition of what are really kind of private things different than different than we might have experienced with math education right some people don't think about math education and the role of parents but there is a role appearance right and we have to balance all of those things out in the education system overall so we're
010really trying to be cognizant of the purposes of that feedback and understand that some of those things were problematic concerns about what we some folks said age-appropriateness we might say developmentally appropriateness making sure that that gets aligned and making sure that that work is really done now it's a lot it's a lot to put these standards together by the way and for folks who have been paying pay attention we have not adopted health standards in the state of nebraska before right so this is a first effort and again designed in a first effort was here's the here's the first draft we definitely will have a second draft right that and we're going to encourage your participation in that one of the things i believe that the committee really wanted to also recognize is this chance
011to uh gather this input go back to the to the to the writing committee be able to put in the types of things that we've been hearing from folks and when we come out with that second draft we expect your comments as well right we hope we've hit the mark a little bit in the in a sense that is we're finding those balance points and that's where we go and so that's very much the intention of that lacey do you want to hit a little bit about the writing process for me as well i did not do as well as corey but that's how that goes so i although you could understand me so that part was good absolutely so the analysis of that public input and those themes that we just showed as well
012as a full because that was preliminary data and once we have a full report we'll have a better notion of how those themes were represented within the public input but that all of that feedback will be used to inform the development of draft number two some of the following types of changes may be included so this could be changes to the structure which include re-evaluating some of the standards eg's are examples that were provided indicators and strands overall changes could include removal and or addition of topics such as adding a greater emphasis on parental and caregiver roles or removing certain words phrases or content some of the changes could also include rewarding topics words or phrases that might be confusing such as reworking an indicator to better represent the intent of it that is appropriate
013for that grade level some specific considerations for draft number two based on the preliminary data and feedback the nde has heard through public input include reinforce the importance of families guardians and caregivers in health education as we mentioned this may be done through specific wording within an indicator implementation resources or removal of certain items evaluating the content and indicators to ensure developmental appropriateness across the entire document with special attention to the elementary levels looking at the overall length of the document and examining repetition and number of indicators as well as examining the level of detail within each indicator and ensuring that the specificity of those indicators is consistent and appropriate across all content strands and standards and then also reevaluating that each indicator is measurable and directly measures the standard it is associated with so
014the nde and standards writing team will begin work this summer on revisions and edits for a draft number two the goal then being for draft number two to be publicly available in early fall and once draft number two is made available to the public a revised public input survey with a simplified design will open for feedback then commissioner i'll turn it back over to you yeah thank you and we'll see if dr eppler is available now too but uh the role of the the department of education and setting standards and we've actually heard this like when i go back and and even in the concerns that have been raised by uh folks in this particular moment that people really do look at these standards and use these standards right i think that's actually a really
015important thing for for the board i think there is sometimes where folks may say well they don't have to adopt them but i've heard from plenty of school folks too right about the importance of getting this right to ensure that they're able to balance the the local decision making part of this puzzle with the needs of families and children that are in their in their in their care and in their regular attendance and just also even with our our non-public schools and how they use those and so we've we've taken this opportunity to learn quite a bit about how that process works and i think that's really important so i'll see if corey's with us if not i i will continue to do more can you hear me i can thank you corey okay i'm
016going to keep my video off i apologize the internet and rule area isn't working very well this morning so i i did just want to reference the nde's role in developing content area standards and one of the things that we've worked over the last several years was to create a consistent process for the development and or revision of all content area standards so the process which we've used to develop the health education standards has been consistent with other content area standards and our hope with content area standards is that they do reflect knowledge and skills that students are expected to learn in a given content area and one of the things that we've heard from our school folks is that they appreciate the standards as they really do help set this trajectory for the type
017of knowledge across all grade levels because what we know about knowledge and how knowledge builds is it's very complex so the standards allow for the ability to our to have our writing team our nebraska educators really to develop knowledge that has a clear scope and sequence um that also becomes more in-depth over time the other thing that you'll see on the slide and it's hyperlinked and we can make sure that it's in the agenda is we have developed a content area standards reference guide i believe it was developed in 2017 and we're in the process of revising that this this reference guide articulates the why behind content area standards it outlines a general framework for the revision of nebraska's content area standards and then also identifies some of the quality components that we seek to
018ensure that our standards include as well so yeah thanks corey and one one thing i will just add that i know we've had conversations in the committee the importance of that process for all standards area again back to and we're going to talk just a little bit about the purpose of the health standards and we can move to that next slide but the the the reality i think for us as a board is trying to make sure that that's used that our process is actually appropriate for the content areas that we're we're also addressing so admission right maybe this process didn't the process that worked for math maybe didn't work exactly the same for health standards right so we're trying to be cognizant of making sure that we're taking our time to adjust for that
019process to ensure that we get the proper engagement too so lacey i'll turn it over turn it over to you for a little bit of rundown on the health education side yeah so the goal overall for health education standards is really to help motivate students to maintain and improve their health so this can be done through advocating for themselves and others preventing disease forming healthy relationships and avoiding or reducing some of those health related risk behaviors and it's not just for now but also for their future and throughout their lifetime so as cory and dr eppler and commissioner mentioned the standards create a framework for students and in this case it's to acquire health related knowledge and skills that skill development is huge across multiple dimensions so this looks at physical mental social emotional etc
020necessary to maintain and promote lifelong health yeah and thanks lacey and just one of the i'll just kind of go to this point and then end and turn it over to uh back to the president but that the the reality for us as we can continue to do this work it's it is with very much the intention of protecting kids and being aware and we've had all sorts of comments about oh this is going to go this way or that way right we're attentive to all those types of comments um wanting to make sure that ultimately this is for the well-being of students across the state of nebraska that we do that well that the partnerships between parents and families and communities that that's really part of that process and so those things are all
021in our mind as we continue this work and continue to move forward so i appreciate very much this opportunity to kind of give a little bit of run down sorry for the technical difficulties but i'll turn it over to maureen then uh for for the next part of the conversation thank you commissioner and thank you to dr eppler and dr peters i think that helps to give a good narration for the for the public agenda item 1.6 is the aquest teaching learning and serving domain committee discussion on health standards on the health standards process chair lisa fricke thank you madam president as chair of the teaching and learning committee i thank all of you for being here and if you've emailed me or contacted me in some way i think we've all been you know
022doing our best to respond the teaching learning committee continues i'm going to read this i don't want any technical problems so i'm going to look down at my notes but continues to monitor effort and progress to gather public input and provide guidance for the second draft of the proposed health standards to make sure key areas of concern are addressed in the second draft today the whole board for the first time will have the opportunity to be engaged in the next steps i would be remiss if i didn't thank the nde staff and team for continuing the effort to gather this information tons over ten 000 potential data points so i i don't know how they get it all done but they do in a timely and orderly fashion so remember the process is intended to
023gather input and that's you all and we encourage the public to continue input after draft two changes will be happening and your concerns read it if it's not addressed let us know if there's something else let us know this is a team effort for every single student in the state of nebraska to be healthy and safe in a way that is developmentally appropriate so we encourage that in input and i want to ask my fellow board members do you have any questions about first of all the process steps next steps or about the report that i just gave well this isn't actually my report it's kind of an introduction to the entire board conversation so if you have any questions about the process or next stop the next stops oh boy next steps i'm not
024even helped with technology so anyway uh process or next steps we'll focus on those two areas so madam president i turn it over to you board members dialogue i'll i'll start i would say that as early as our april board meeting we directed the commissioner and the department of education to start thinking about and moving toward a draft two because we were hearing important comments from the public about things both that they supported as well as things that they objected to in the first draft so that notion of um the first draft being the only draft was an incorrect notion so as as long ago as april we've started moving toward draft number two in terms of i guess the way at least i've been thinking as a board member and i will admit for
025me and i i don't want to speak for other board members but for me certainly the process is working as it's intended to work though it has been a painful process i think sometimes out of pain comes important decisions but this process is in motion it is working the way it's supposed to feedback has been gathered it's being analyzed and we're moving toward our next draft as lisa said i think it's really important for everyone to watch for draft number two that's the way that you can determine if the concerns you have have been addressed or suggestions you had for including additional information in the health standards if that's happened because you have the opportunity then to through hopefully a more simplified survey to provide input or to continue communicating with us as individual board
026members so i i think we have all learned as the commissioner said that the standards process that we have used consistently may not have quite been the same process that worked for these standards but that's what learning is right we all we all learn as we go through processes and i think as a result of the health education standards we will make improvements to our standard development process in general as well as specifically related to the health ed standards robin first of all i really appreciate what mrs gobles just stated because uh she's right on um i just uh wanted to re-emphasize a couple of points and and the question that comes to me not regularly but someone is where do you stand where do you stand on this and and i have a a
027canned response as soon as i get a document that is worthy of our debate and our discussion you will know where i stand i know that that doesn't necessarily uh hit home with everybody and that it's really acceptable but that's where i am i feel that i need to be open that i need to listen and that is the process that we are in right now uh just to again follow along with what mrs goobbles uh so eloquently pointed out and and it came to me uh when uh well really it's been in my mind for some time but it really came out to me when uh we did the pledge and i and it's it's the second time that i've been involved with uh a pledge that was said with such enthusiasm and uh
028uh heart felt it wasn't just something that we did at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the meeting or whatever and it reminds me that there is so much more that unite us than the difficulties that we have and i i i know that we're we're having difficulties right now and mrs goebbels pointed out but ultimately are we are together we are united there is much more that unites us than what tears us apart and too many times we get focused on only the negative or the differences and i want to continue to emphasize there is much more that unites each and every one of us i'll do this just so i don't forget uh no outbursts if possible so we appreciate that regardless when other speakers go even if we all
029liked it right that's okay so uh uh just no outburst please jacqueline i'm excited that we get the opportunity to talk to you guys about this so i just wanted to go over a couple of things whenever we have public comment it is our board's rule that we are only supposed to ask points of clarification so if there is something that is said that we don't understand or that we want clarified then we can ask a question but it really doesn't give us an opportunity to engage or to have true dialogue with people in the audience and i know sometimes we want to but it really is a policy that we have that we can't and so i don't want anyone to think that as we're sitting here and listening we don't want to talk
030to you and we don't want to dialogue or to respond it's just that we have not amended that policy and part of public comment is really to give us an opportunity to listen to you and so the points that we ask should be to clarify something that you said but it's not because we don't want to give you a platform or ability or opportunity to express or to dialogue with us we're limited in our in our own rules so i just wanted to tell people that so that you kind of knew know a little bit more about why we're sometimes so quiet or silent up here it's because we're listening the other thing i wanted to say is it pro it might have come out here already today but as i was going through the
031process of the health standards i was confused about some things and i've heard a lot of those same questions kind of coming we had me and another board member had a town hall earlier this week and i saw some of the questions that came out and i think one of the questions has been about who made up the writing committee who are these writers and also the advisory committee and i just wanted to kind of clarify that there are two separate committees so there is the writing committee and there's also the advisory committee and the writing committee is actually you could find this process online or other through other means but the writing committee there was an application that went out to educators throughout the state and their subject matter experts so either if they're
032teaching physical education health education some type of health education throughout the state and then people actually applied to be on the committee through an application process and the department has a rubric and based on their experience their education level their knowledge their previous experience with writing and things like that the applicants are kind of i don't want to say graded but kind of ranked and then it the applicants are chosen for the writing committee so i've i personally have just seen a lot of questions about that process and what what it's entailed so i just kind of wanted to be a little bit more transparent about that and let you guys know what i have found as i'm as i'm receiving questions from you i forward them to the commissioner to someone in the department
033of education and say these are the questions i'm getting can you help me out and so that's just some of the answers or knowledge that i've got so hopefully that's helpful to people who are here and i thank you guys for coming actually i do sorry i push the button nope you're on so i think lisa asked make sure the green light's on jaclyn hello uh lisa you did ask one question and so one of the questions i did have that people have asked me of the committee is in going to the second draft will people be added to the drafting team or to the advisory team that were not there before so that's one question that i do have and that would be directed to the commissioner so now is mine working all right
034it's still a bit underconsiderate i think the writing team one of the other things with the writing team is that uh and again i'm back to where our typical process had been and so we're kind of looking at how we can do that and ensure that we're engaging other folks in that process so it's actually pretty hard to assemble a writing team i mean i i hate to tell you but and i'm gonna maybe say it this way that it's one of those challenges people don't just sign up we don't pay people you know money or anything in particular to participate in that and our state laws do say that it's nebraska educators that are participating so we'll find some way to open it up for for that also i just want to add like
035on the advisory in other ways and we've heard you know concerns that certain folks weren't engaged so we're looking for some other things to kind of add to that process to ensure that there's other voices that at the table enabled to be part of that another key part is our engagement with the committee overall and we'll continue to do that with the teaching learning committee for the board to make sure that we're falling back there the board members really are representatives of the people right and i i want folks we take that very seriously and i know the board members do too and so they'll continue to provide that input and i appreciate the question i don't know if i answered it super directly but that's what i know right now patsy first of all
036i also want to thank you for all being here and i want you to know um i've had some people say well you you've already made up your mind you you know what you're going to do and so um why would you know why would we bother to come and say what we think and tell you what we're worried about tell you what we appreciate about it if you've already made up your mind and so i'd like to assure you that i am conflicted about so many things in this i have grandchildren and i love them with all my heart like so many of you have told me and so um i want to make sure whatever we do is good for them i spent my whole life in a classroom and some of the
037people out here even my students from the past and i assure you that my goal in education was always to do what was right and good for kids and i haven't changed that motto just because i became a skateboard member that's still very very important to me so now here's a little challenge to you in all of the time that i've been on the state board i've never seen crowds like this [Laughter] okay so i think that's amazing so i want to challenge you to be lifelong participants in our process because we have language arts standards coming up which i happen to teach we have fine arts standards coming up which i happen to teach and i have this strange belief that all of the academics are very important to the children of nebraska and
038so i challenge you to come back to the public meetings the public comments and tell me what you think at those as well because you are the voices we need to hear and that we appreciate and i know it's not easy to get off of work i know it's not easy to travel i was up at four this morning coming in and so i understand that so but you made the effort today and i want you to continue to do that so thank you all my heart says gratitude gratitude to the people of nebraska lisa thank you patsy and jacqueline patty and robin for your comments and your questions that's very important and each one said something that is truly a part of this process and in this process of your input i can already
039tell you the intent because of your input is to simplify the survey for draft two and also for the proposed health uh standards changes to good morning thank you changes to the actual health standard or standards process and that's coming about because of your questions and your input to us in emails so thank you and this isn't a report but thank you for the opportunity to get the entire board engaged in the process and next steps agenda item two public comment period 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 again to the members of the
040public who have attended and who have signed up to speak agenda item 2.1 request for 10-minute special appearance we have one 10-minute special appearance today judy henning has requested and been granted a special appearance to comment judy welcome you have 10 minutes hello and thank you for allowing me to speak on behalf of the nebraska school librarians at this board meeting welcome to kearney i am judy henning i'm a professor at the university of nebraska at kearney i'm coordinator for the graduate school library program i teach teachers who are trying to acquire their school library endorsement i have three different programs two master's programs and just an endorsement program with approximately 100 graduate students enrolled currently i have taught for 38 years i retired in and 31 of those years i was a school librarian
041so i know what it's about i've been there and i know how it works so the biggest problem we have is in our name when you think of a librarian the first thing you think of is the antiquated person that's sent behind the circulation desk be spectacled and a bun in the back of their hair and checking out books that's just not what we do i wish i wish we could change our name but however our national association back when no child left behind became legislation unfortunately they were contacted and they said so what are are the library people called well in nebraska they're called media specialists in iowa they're called teacher librarians in texas they're called school librarians their information specialists all kinds of things well we need one name well in the process
042no child left behind was passed and there was no language for school librarians and school libraries when that was passed and it was pretty devastating for our our community of librarians in our perfect profession so we were not going to let that happen again and what we did was we in 2010 they decided i wasn't on this committee but they told us that now professionally as a national group we are school librarians and i remember coming back from that national conference and meeting with my kearney public schools school library team and i said well just so you know now you are school librarians and there was a grumbling amongst the group and one of my middle school librarians said but judy we do so much more than a librarian and she's right so just so
043you know the reason we've kept the name one of the main reasons is for that money uh obama did the race to the top funds which we didn't qualify for because of charter schools but later on when when he passed the elementary and secondary school act and every student achieves act did include the language of school librarians so if there is federal money available for schools and school libraries they will be included in that language so what is the role of a school librarian our school librarians empower learners to be curious conscientious digital citizens thinkers enthusiastic readers skillful researchers and conscientious digital citizens this is the work of trained certified expert librarians not paris or volunteers so what do school librarians do i've got about eight main things that they do and i want i
044have given each one of you a copy of this handout it talks about the research that shows the importance on of school librarians on academic achievement and i want to especially show you the top in red you will see a link to a presentation that was done by stephanie scurdla green she took my position at kearney high school and is an outstanding school librarian she at the end of this school year presented to her administration she does it every year i did it back in the day too telling them exactly what they did what she did in that past school year so if you want to see what is what an outstanding program looks like you can go to that url i have made it a bitly so it's pretty easy for you to type
045in and see what stephanie has done i'm going to refer to some of her statistics here but there are so much more so one of the first things that school librarians do is collaborate with classroom teachers on learning projects now research shows that learning increases when you have student student-centered projects and when you have each student working on a a project that can kind of can be chaotic in the classroom it helps to have the school librarian in there helping with individual student questions in the in the slide presentation that stephanie created she had 140 lessons that she taught collaboratively this past school year she also had 625 classes use the kearney high school library learning commons another thing school librarians do is we teach students to be good consumers of information in an age
046of fake news this is really important giving students strategies to be able to go out and decipher whether or not the information they are reading on the internet is true or false we also teach students to be good digital citizens these students are anonymous and oftentimes this can can cause problems so digital citizenship is a crucial part of our curricular education school librarians are also responsible for teaching the nde english language arts multiple literacy standards school librarians are responsible or facilitate the school reading program establishing a culture of positive reading in the school is so important in many schools the school librarian is the technology integration specialist and in many schools the school librarian is an instructional leader who leads teacher professional development and the school improvement process now now that you know what the
047librarian does let's look at the research and i have some research briefly there if you want to look at it i also have at the bottom my contact information if you have any questions three studies i want to point out to you studies conducted in 23 states confirmed the presence of an endorsed school librarian leads to a measurable positive difference in student reading achievement scores so school librarian correlates with increased reading scores data from from more than statewide studies suggest that students earn higher standardized test scores in schools that have a strong library program strong library program increased standardized test scores and finally a national study using fourth grade reading scores documented that losses of school librarians are associated with declines or inferior gains in reading scores while gains of librarians are associated with improved
048scores now that you know what the librarian does and what research says about their positive impact on academic achievement you need to know what this librarian strives for school librarians strive to teach skills that are essential to developing future ready citizens the role of the librarian as indicated in the nde approval rule as it is describes a person who checks out books and supervises the library space i tell you if that's all the librarian does they're way overpaid because a para can do that so this is an antiquated vision of a school librarian while certified librarians are excellent at matching student readers to excellent books checking out books is far more important work school librarians are teachers first and foremost with with that said i urge the nebraska school board members to carefully consider the
049proposed accreditation policy that only requires a half-time school librarian in a district i realize this will not be voted on today but you must be informed of the potential negative impact on student academic achievement if school librarians are cut in force please make the requirement for accreditation the same as it was before we need more school librarians not less if we want to keep our reading scores high and achievement scores competitive we need to teach school administrators how to use their school librarian to make them an important member of the educators striving to increase student academic achievement now i'd hope to ask for questions from you about this and i hope that uh and uh i was told that you don't take questions usually from the 10 minutes so um i just want one of
050the questions that comes to me as a provider of teachers with their school library endorsement is there's just not enough of them out there they just we just don't have enough people who are endorsed well i can tell you one of the reasons why this was an advertisement for a school librarian that came out in december of 2019 it was for the 2020-2021 school year this school is accepting applications for a properly endorsed halftime school librarian position successful candidates must meet state of nebraska certification requirements with library endorsement great idea duties include meeting yearly rule 10 library requirements time sorry teaching appropriate age level time sorry time anyway they did everything in there from the accounting and so on it was a um it was a particular ad that i would qualify for but my
051children would have to be starving for that me to apply thank you judy thank you i do have two questions for her just plain two points of clarification i'm sorry so we got this great handout and i know that you said there was a url link at the top did you want to read that so that other people would know where to go to get this information yes this is the stephanie green's slide presentation about what her school library has done this past school year it is http colon forward slash forward slash it's a bitly b i t dot l y forward slash carney with a capital k high with a capital h library with a capital l and report with a capital r with no spaces and then my second question is i know
052you didn't get to finish but if you wanted to send us that advert the advertisement that you were reading and didn't have an opportunity to you could forward or email it to us as well so we can review it okay i would love to do that thank you thank you so much jacqueline nazi um board members i have a copy of that advertisement so you won't have to send it i get it okay so any other questions and i'm sorry i went over i didn't quite see your one minute thank you thank you judy 2.2 we will now move to our public comment period those wishing to speak signed in at the table outside of the meeting room we have how many that signed in i believe we had 148 that signed in we might
053not get to all of them i'm just saying okay we have 148 public comment cards turned in and the public will speak in the order the cards were handed out upon arrival point of clarification commissioner are all 148 on the health standards no there i believe there were six i'm i'm looking for a signal yeah six that were on other topics i think primarily library okay and then the remainder i well i assume anyway we're on pursuant to board policy b9 i moved to limit public comment to two minutes per person to include the six individuals speaking on topics other than the health standards and the first 75 individuals speaking on the health standards joe i have a second um is there any further discussion by the board lisa madam chair if um i don't
054want to attempt to do the math but if everybody had two minutes to speak that would be how many hours it does because we have other business that is essential almost five almost five hours and it would be five hours at least with space between this is a board meeting board is deliberating so be almost five minutes or five hours i'm sorry and the last time we went i believe was four and a half hours we were in kearney it was four and a half hours we gave two and a half hours of speaking time and they were right at 70 people that spoke two minutes each okay and it was basically the same when it was in lincoln right at the same amount of time robin did i see you want to speak uh
055i i just wanted to say from a consistency standpoint this is exactly what we have done in the other in the other two processes and so i i just think consistency and fairness to those who presented in our last two meetings other board members have a comment so the motion on the floor is pursuant to board policy b9 i move to limit public comment to two minutes per person to include the six individuals speaking on topics other than the health standards and the first 75 individuals speaking on the health standards andrea please call the roll i have it sorry i have a question marie oh i guess i'm sorry i should have addressed this earlier i'm just have people already indicated what their topics are that they are speaking on was that indicated for every
056person who signed in it's on the card to indicate and so six people indicated that it was i believe on the library the rule 10 changes and the rest my understanding is on health standards okay that was my question andrea please call the roll stevens yes nichols yes freaky freaky no co johns yes morrison yes google's yes niri tim five yes one no two absent motion passes thank you andrea members of this public will speak for two minutes each i will announce the names of the next of this of the next eight speakers so that they are prepared to come forward the first eight and we have chairs up front folks yeah come up to the front when your name is called okay i'm going to do six in the first group so that the
057library standards can all pardon me set it down well that was okay thank you okay um you do not have the right to put these six library concerns ahead of over 100 other concerns [Applause] you're out of order [Music] [Applause] [Music] you ma'am can we go ahead please we're gonna have to go we won't be able to get any done and i just i we're really trying to do our best and i think most people know that [Applause] yes i drove for four hours to get here many of us drove across the state you said you wanted our comments that's why we're here to participate [Applause] the board this is our meeting and we're doing the very best that we can to accommodate you can't is it too want to hard the previous motions [Applause]
058the people who work for the public schools to speak what they do and not want to have to teach i'm willing to do that keep in mind some of the 148 may decide not to speak or somebody else repeat what they would say so you may have less than that are we waiting 20 minutes for you to find six people so we can get them ahead of the lonnie you want to proceed for six people yeah so the first six people first six people jeff young amber stevens alana stevens marion holstein james clark and gary needham jeff young welcome jeff thank you appreciate the opportunity i'm here to talk today about critical race theory in the discussion of these standards and in the public conversation at large the terms critical race theory or crt and
059marxism have been tossed around enough to lose most of their meaning this board has confessed confusion around these terms as well so i wanted to provide a brief overview to start as you should know marxism was a socio-economic theory that effectively sought to reallocate power and wealth from the haves to the have-nots and which was characterized primarily by cat class struggle karl marx envisioned a society in which the working class would rise up overthrow the ruling cap class and government would no longer exist classic marxism was adopted into two major systems of government communism and socialism decades later critical theory emerged as the next evolution of marxism critical theory sought the same basic goals of overthrowing power but expanded the number of group identities to be considered into an approach that was significantly broader than
060simply economic classes critical race theory began to rise in america in the 1980s again advancing the same marxist agenda but this time with a focus on race or skin color rather than economics the effects of this worldview are too widespread to cover in a two-minute comment period however the board can review and educate it itself with relative ease if it chooses to do so the bottom line is that critical theory judges and ranks individuals based entirely upon group characteristics and attendant stereotypes it explains human behavior as a foregone result of membership in various groups and devalues both individual responsibility and individual achievement it is by objective measures the most bigoted divisive and racist worldview in existence today and whether this board acknowledges it or not it is dripping from both these standards and this body's
061ever more radical approach to education as a whole thank you [Applause] thank you mr young [Applause] amber stevens thank you amber maureen i'm sorry jacqueline i'm so sorry and i know that this is your your your role so we we did not make a statement at the beginning about applause and i i do think that that's important to address at this time do you want to address that hold on again just for the good of of the order just try try not to do those outright expressions right we've gone through some things already this morning and it's a little tough for us to maintain our focus as best we can and i just that's all i ask just a little bit of that regard thank you welcome amber thank you my name is amber stevens
062and i'm here today to talk about trauma-informed schools and how it relates to critical race theory nine years ago we adopted two children from the foster care system they have significant developmental trauma and are also black i have stand here as a representation of thousands of children and their families across nebraska who have experienced experienced developmental trauma in their young lives the long-term effects of this type of trauma on young children is damaging and even if they get adopted into loving families the trauma states they spew their internal chaos all over the family leaving destruction in their week ptsd for adoptive moms is normal and divorce is common among these families as well these families also face horrors such as suicide and sexual abuse these families like mine are helpless there is no help for
063us no respite no mental health services that actually work it truly takes a village to raise these children and school is a vital part of that village we rely on teachers teachers to help us parent our children they are crucial to our network of support when i see schools trying to be trauma informed training teachers giving children the aces test changing harmful practices communicating with parents and doing all they can to help families like mine i rejoice at that so when i saw a letter from the nde commissioner saying that they were going to treat racism as trauma i knew i had to come today to advocate for families like mine to say that experiencing a microaggression or even full-on racist experience which we actually have is the same as experiencing developmental attachment trauma is
064not only a gross understatement it also completely invalidates all the experiences that my children have gone through regarding their early childhood trauma if you move trauma-informed care away from helping those children who have developmental trauma your italian families like mine that they don't matter their children don't matter and their village is no longer advocating for them critical race theory is a danger to trans-racial families and especially to the vulnerable children who have experienced attachment trauma i have researched extensively and to tell black children that they are victims to white children is dangerous it pulls threads out of the very fabric of families like mine who are not only transracial but are trying to overcome the effects of developmental trauma if my black children heard that their own white parents are oppressing them as well as
065their white siblings why should they keep trying to bond with us all of our work our hard work over the years can be obliterated because of crt please do not do this you are leaving vulnerable families like mine to cast along the wayside which is nothing to help the black children who reside in these families thank you and amber your uh documents will be sent to each of the board members thank you alana stevens welcome alana i'm eliana stevens and i'm 11 years 12 years old i came here on my own to talk to you about critical race theory from a kid's point of view these are my own words and feelings not my mom's i have two black siblings and they are in two different school systems in nebraska i don't think it's right
066to teach my siblings that i don't love them because they're black by teaching that you're not only destroying everything that we we've ever taught them about relationships but you're also telling them that one race is better than the other and so we're just going back to thinking that one type of race is better than the other it's not good to be separated into groups because of our different thoughts our opinions their skin color we're all equals and we have been created equal so why should we try to divide ourselves it makes one group of people feel more powerful than the other that leads us back not to nazi germany when people were turning on their jewish friends because they were jewish it i'm not saying it's going to get there but it might and we
067should fight against this while it's not that big of a deal we don't want to end up like germinated divided and weak according to the chart i found being taught in california schools a white man is an oppressor only because he's a man and he's white are you saying that the white men on this board are oppressors even though i'm a female and according to the critical race theory i'm in an oppressed group i but i feel no oppression because i know that nobody can can do anything to me as long as i hold my head up and not stand down to somebody who wants to push me down if we're saying i'm i'm oppressed as a girl then how am i standing here right now talking to you people who are truly oppressed like
068the jews in germany didn't have the opportunity to speak like i am i am not oppressed thank you welcome marian thank you the nebraska indian education association acknowledges the original inhabitants of this place the pawnee the otto the missouri the ponca and the omaha people who since time immemorial hunted fish gathered and were stewards of these lands for native peoples the spiritual ties to mother earth transcend human frailties the need to have personal ownership or the need to take more from mother earth than given back president nichols board members and commissioner bloomstead my name is marion holstein and i'm the executive director of the nebraska indian education association we exist to support all nebraskas in learning the accurate history of the indigenous peoples of this continent for example the majority of americans do not know
069the influence of the iroquois confederacy and the great law of peace that was the foundation of the u.s constitution senator mike lee's book from utah written out of history shares stories about can kanessa toga an iroquois chief whose words taught benjamin franklin the basic principles behind separation of powers details on how benjamin franklin studied with with the iroquois may be found in uno alumnus bruce johansen's book forgotten founders in addition to learning about government strategies from indigenous people they also learned about military strategies that were used in the american revolution i'm a please i'm pleased to announce and invite everyone to the national indian education association's annual conference in omaha october 13 through 16. in nebraska we are developing an indigenous institute to support front-line staff and schools across nebraska as they teach about indigenous
070people time thank you marion james clark welcome james thank you i'm not here to talk about the libraries i did sign up to talk about the libraries i'm here to talk about your performance i'm here to talk about the nebraska department education performance it seems to me we're trying to reinvent the wheel here and a wheel only works if it's round doesn't have any flat spots and it's well balanced i don't see this these recommendations these standards as being well balanced they do not serve the majority i spoke with my state senator this morning he says he has the ear of the governor he says these standards these recommendations this type of narrative is going to be taken up by our legislature i applaud the states of idaho oklahoma georgia tennessee texas have all passed
071legislation to banned this type of stuff in our public schools the states of north carolina arizona louisiana iowa missouri new hampshire rhode island and west virginia have bills pending you people need to look at yourselves in the mirror you need to really think about what you're doing here you work for us this venue is paid for by us and all of your expenses are being compensated by nebraska taxpayer dollars i support and i will encourage any and all petitions to remove each and every one of you from your board positions thank you thank you james gary gary needham gary need him welcome gary thank you for the opportunity to speak today uh the state board and educate of education and nebraska department of education i believe are reaching beyond their authority and showing a disregard
072for citizens of the state they've initiated this posture in current board position statements and have extended most recently in the accountability approval accreditation accountability rules after outlining the nde constitutional responsibilities and position statement s2 the board states beyond this authority the state board seeks to ensure the education system including the nebraska department of education is taking charge of its roles and responsibilities to provide leadership and enhanced support systems in the state clearly through that the board is saying that they're willing to step outside their authority defining this overreach as leadership in an attempt to dictate sweeping reforms combined with current federal education regulations local control boards will virtually disappear and undermine both the nebraska and state constitutions removing freedom from the classroom and making it nearly impossible for you to be capable american citizens as
073responsible adult officials and elected representatives when we're faced with the choice between the constitution and the regulations our responsibility is to choose the constitution unfortunately with the time restrictions i cannot expand on this statement more verbally but written statements were submitted i would like to provide a contrast to this thinking early in my career alan november challenged me with a talk entitled who owns the learning and his point was that only when students take ownership of their learning would they actually perform to the potential the current board position statements and rules have made it clear that nde will own the learning and that that local boards will not and local schools will not have the authority they have had in the past i appreciate your time and i would appreciate a different philosophy in your
074next draft of the revision process thank you gary the next group ashley german tammy riley paul hazard amy martinez jenna i'm not sure i'm having a hard time reading the spelling katie mclemons riley ross dr sue greenwald ashley welcome ashley hello i am ashley german i stand here to insist that you do not create statewide health standards based on current nebraska legislation the legislature already has statute 79712 health education this statute states that provisions shall be made by the proper local school authorities for instructing the pupils in a comprehensive health education thus creating a statewide standard is in violation the creation of statewide health standards goes against statute 79701 and these statutes dictate that schools teach reading writing mathematics science and social studies statewide health standards would directly violate the above mentioned state statutes it
075also disregards statute 79725 the duty of teachers this statute says teachers are to present instruction with special emphasis to common honesty morality courtesy obedience to law respect for the national flag the united states constitution and the constitution of nebraska respect for parents and the home the dignity and necessity of honest labor and other lessons of a studying influence which tend to promote and develop an upright and desirable citizenry as well standards are to be measurable the only conceivable way to measure the understanding of the following proposed health standards would be show graphic images starting in kindergarten how does teaching he 871d develop a plan to eliminate unintended pregnancy uphold morality or respect for the parents in the home the state board of education has not been charged to create such a standard and has been
076charged to ensure the teaching of reading writing mathematics science and social studies creating a statewide health standard is in violation of nebraska law and against your directive thank you also tammy riley [Music] [Applause] i believe i'm next i called your name i'm sorry you're here applause thank you i'm kami riley from norfolk um i want to talk to you today i want to approach this just a little bit differently we're just starting this today and i need you guys to really hear me you look at you look at us and you say you're listening i get it but are you learning from us these people have spent countless hours of their time they could have been doing many other things and needed to be doing other things in their families they have taken the time
077to learn what crt is do not tell us that it is not involved and just ignore everything it is involved i sent you emails as i'm sure everybody here has asking you questions i asked what critical race theory was nobody got back to me except two people and the response that nobody answered the question first of all the response that i did get was from robin stevenson stevens excuse me thank you very much for answering you admitted i have not done a massive amount of research on crt most of my limited research was found online okay thank you you don't know what crt is i appreciate that i appreciate your honesty i'm assuming that the rest of you are probably in the same position if you aren't if you know it then have dialogue with
078us tell us what you know if you're not answering our questions by email we're going to assume you don't know and how can you be in the position to make these decisions if you're not fully knowledgeable so please put on your learning caps today do your research okay you are not being disrespe respectful to us by not you have to do this i had also sent a video to watch time thank you thank you paul hazard [Applause] well thanks guys hey uh you know there was a great comment that was made earlier and i think it was by patsy uh you said you don't ever see groups like this and i come from a law enforcement community and in the law enforcement community we call that a clue okay that's not a shot it's not
079a shot it's the truth i'm a father of three i'm a proud resident of kearney i'm a former member of law enforcement the best men and women i know miss nichols this is your district pay attention last time i focused on pedophiles and this is absolutely a pedophile's dream it is but you know what that's on record i'm not going to go there this time last time i sent an email to all of you i received one response from mr stevens i appreciate that one and his response actually got me thinking because he said are you saying that speakers should actually identify who they are uh yeah i am there was two speakers that spoke in they laid out an entire resume last time when they spoke and their resume was everything they've accomplished pretty
080good stuff conveniently left out they're on the list of people giving input for this recommendation who are they liam hurtin rodriguez please look up his bio you will see activist you guaranteed me there was no activists involved mr stevens please look up abby swatsworth out of nebras she's in out nebraska she spoke conveniently left that out mr commissioner you wrote an email to the state department of education or to the department of educators and to the superintendents supporting a website that redirects people to 1619 for the critical race theory and it wasn't until last month that you updated your website to have it show full disclosure we don't necessarily endorse all these but for a year you did so i bring this full circle to say this okay so you can't manipulate the truth because
081if you didn't know the speakers that were speaking last time that's a problem you should know who wrote these standards or who input and if you did you acted like you didn't so stand up if you want this gone not another amendment stand up if you want amy martinez welcome amy welcome my name is amy martinez i'm a mother of two and also a physician assistant on may 7 2021 this board listened to a second round of public comment related to the first draft of the newly proposed health education standards being considered for adoption in the state of nebraska many members of the public are here yet today to offer another round of comment while we understand we are still talking about draft one this board has promised and is required to take public comment
082into account in developing these standards and while individual standards may change most of the comments i've heard made to this body have been generally applicable to the purpose and the direction of the proposed standards and will presumably remain applicable to the second draft absent major revision even so major revision is what is required and we appreciate the opportunity to come back here and your commitment to actually hearing the voices and the concerns of your constituents rather than simply performing your duties outside the public eye during the last hearing various board members expressed confusion over comments from citizens concerned about the use of comprehensive sexuality education or cse and critical race theory crt in your public schools repeatedly members of this body asked where those phrases appear within these standards as if confused about the source
083of the concerns being expressed it's unclear whether this board's confusion stems from its inability to conceive of the natural consequences of the standards it adopts its willingful ignorance of both the consequences and the origin of the standards or blatant intellectual dishonesty in refusing to publicly acknowledge what is abundantly clear to thousands of nebraskans that have followed this process so far for elected officials in the state of nebraska entrusted with our great responsibilities for the state's most valuable resource our children none of these alternatives are acceptable however it is our sincerest hope that this purported confusion stems from a simple lack of research and not more serious misconduct related to the public trust thank you jenna jenna thank you welcome jenna thanks my name is jenna durr and i'm a physician and a mom today i
084speak on behalf of protect nebraska children coalition we are a grassroots coalition of more than 15 000 members in nebraska and we represent the interests of tens of thousands of nebraska families and the numbers are growing our mission is no secret it's in our name this coalition is comprised of members from all different walks of life and we are not a political entity we are moms and dads neighbors and concerned citizens united in the belief that our children are worth the fight and that our school should be institutes of learning instead of recruitment grounds for indoctrination into a particular world view we are nebraska our coalition stands for children and for the protection of their safety health and innocence we believe families are the building block of our society and the parents remain the primary
085educators of their children we believe in protecting the fundamental rights of parents to direct the education health care and upbringing of their children because we believe that is what ensures the best interests of our children are protected we want our children to be educated with curriculum methods that are accurate developmentally appropriate peer-reviewed and effective at improving education outcomes we believe that nebraska has great teachers and capable children that when properly equipped are able to rise to the biggest challenges in life with confidence we want our children and every child in the state to have the opportunity to attend a public school where they will be taught to excel in all areas of academia free from the pervasive influence played by politics in the world at large specifically because of all the things we stand for
086we stand firmly against the radicalization of health education standards in a manner that elevates social theory and ideological positioning to the same level as actual truth and well-established science we stand against the sexualization of our children from a young age and the encouragement to ignore biology in the favor of controversial and fluid social constructs of gender we stand against the overt focus on sexuality at the expense of core competencies and we will stand strong thank you [Applause] welcome katie thank you good morning board before i get to my prepared comment i do just want to address a couple of things the first is this i know i and many others commissioner bloom said would love an explanation as to why when two special appearances could have been granted only one was granted i know protect
087nebraska children did apply for one as well as many other speakers and organizations and so we'd love an explanation for that decision the other thing i'd like to address is during board discussion uh prior to public comment um it seems as though the focus is on draft two and i can appreciate that we as a public have draft one so when you hear statements about draft one do not disregard then we are talking about standards if standards any standard in draft one that leads to cse or crt is on draft two then these statements apply to draft two my name is katie mclemons i'm an educator and concerned parent today i also speak on behalf of the protect nebraska children coalition we believe that children and all schools should strive to be safe and inclusive
088to all students and that each student should be provided with the same opportunities for success without regard to their race nationality sex lifestyle or political belief we are engaged citizens parents educators grandparents medical doctors subject matter experts attorneys clergy and business owners we speak for thousands tens of thousands of nebraskans who will no longer stand by silently as our education system is subtly transformed from an institution of math science english and history to a recruitment field for social change through radical political agendas for too long this board has operated in relative obscurity almost to the point of being able to propose and pass standards that are abhorrent to most citizens of nebraska but we see the trajectory and we are moved to action because politics have no function in ensuring our children are well educated
089in safe learning environments yet the agenda of this board appears to be driven by political ideologies under the guise of education but no more we are watching now and stand ready to ensure the public is aware of the actions taken within this body unlike the standards under review we are nebraska and our voices will be heard we will not waver we will not surrender and we will not be silenced thank you thank you riley riley ross riley i was riley i have riley ross welcome riley thank you good morning board education members your role in the nde is vital valued and essential to the public school system i believe that god has appointed each of you for such a time as this and there are many that pray that you operate in wisdom and listen
090to sound counsel during this time i'm grateful for all the people in this room and behind the scenes who are dedicated the education and raising of our children continuing that you take into account the spiritual mental and emotional help of our children in writing these standards there are many that acknowledge that there is no authority except that which has been ordained for god he rules and reigns over all so lord i pray for robin i pray for patricia johns i pray for lisa i pray for patty for jacqueline for maureen for deborah and matthew the way these decisions are more than you can handle i ask that you have a clear picture of the gospel i actually will receive a stark revelation truth and i pray this truth set you free from the weight from
091the worry and the opinions of everyone else in this world when you're tired and weary take on an easy yoke and a light burden as they yield to you as you're visiting spoken to in times when stress and pressure at its highest i am asking for holy spirit inspired drafting and giving dreams and visions in times when you're not expecting it we understand here in this room that our battle is not against you so we bless you and we honor you for listening with your ear and opening your heart thank you thank you riley dr sue greenlaw dr sue greenwall [Applause] welcome dr sue welcome to carney my name is dr sue greenwald i'm a pediatrician and a grandma the transgender lifestyle is being sold to kids for profit clinics as well as online providers
092that serve multiple states continue to pop up like the hottest new trend surgeons and physicians are being schooled in transgenderism political figures and the entire education system are pushing it as though switching gender is glamorous and fun and they are making a killing financially the taxpayers are paying the price through medicaid and obamacare mandated insurance payments cross gender hormones are one of the biggest money makers because once you get a young child on these hormones it becomes a lifetime for them of medicine doctor appointments and blood tests they cannot stop the hormones in 2016 planned parenthood was offering hormone therapy in only a few of its clinics but within three years it became the second largest provider in the united states they are sterilizing thousands while profiting including billions of dollars in government grants hospitals
093are also driving the industry the boston children hospital advises advertises that it serves ages three and up with their hormone therapy and surgeries the nebraska medical center advertises full service for all ages and genders one wonders how many genders they serve in the u.s there are approximately 50 clinics offering cross-gender hormone treatment specifically for children and adolescents not adults for adults there are there are probably 50 clinics in some states i looked up texas and in one city there were five clinics where you could get your hormones other financial backing of this lucrative depopulation industry has come from big pharma who's profiting directly and foundations with names such as clinton gates soros buffett and pritzker among others i predict that this will exceed the oxycontin [Applause] [Music] i indicated earlier that we would take a
094break at 10 30 but we're going to do eight more before we take our break mark bockowitz judy derr darryl please please no burst thanks justin teal roxanne tillotson brad richter mike meyer paul fredericks people have rights block people have rights transgender people outright all right all right [Music] [Applause] we're going to take a break right now we're going to go ahead with our break justin teal roxanne tillotson brad richter mike meyer paul fredericks welcome mark thank you my name is mark bonkowitz i'm a retired farmer from the city nebraska area i'm a father and grandfather i want to address the confusion this board has shown in its questions responses and publications since draft one has been released there has been explicit denial by the board that draft one had comprehensive sexuality education or cse
095included in it the board must understand what the tens of thousands of nebraskans are referring to when we say that cse is part of the proposed standards i will read just four standards first grade for six year olds he one seven two d define gender gender identity and gender role stereotypes so right away for six year olds you're going to confuse them with medically inaccurate information 5th grade for 10 year olds he 573e explain the significance of the physical changes in puberty and the potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender why would we introduce the concept of hormone blockers to 10 year olds 6th grade for 11 year olds he 671e identify factors that are important in deciding whether and when to engage in sexual behaviors what a teacher would
096be strategizing sexual decisions with their 11 year old students that is shocking and not even legal nebraska age of consent is 16 years of age and it has to be with someone 19 years of age and older seventh grade for 12 year olds he 771e defined vaginal oral or anal sex and their relationship to std and hiv transmissions children go through puberty at different stages and have different maturities this leaves no room for customization and the exposure of these concepts to children parents should be handling these sensitive subjects not the school thank you judy derr thank you mark good morning my name is judy durr i'm here to oppose the proposed standards these standards would lead to developmentally inappropriate curriculum and lessons which would only hurt our students social emotional and physical health i want
097to share with you a story um on behalf of a northeast nebraska parent who has to remain anonymous recently a four-year-old little girl was told by a preschool teacher that well girls can be boys and boys can be girls and this little girl got into trouble and was reprimanded for looking under a classmate's dress during school and when her when her mother asked her about this she simply said i wanted to know if she and if she and her classmate matched she was confused and she was worried this little girl was given medically and accurate information posing as education and was shamed and embarrassed with natural curiosity and confusion followed passing on any number of the harmful standard included standards included in the nde's first draft will work to constrain local school boards and embolden
098some teachers such as these of course not all who would use their classroom for indoctrination on the current sexual and political trends rather than medical facts and developmentally appropriate healthy choices we must not forget where passing these standards would lead in 2009 oregon implemented similar standards throughout the grade levels and subject matters in oregon today there are third graders being told they can change their sex middle school students being advised on how to stop the onset of puberty with hormone blockers and in some cases female students being transported from school property to receive the first dose of a chemical abortion all without parental knowledge or consent the stakeholders in nebraska are not ignorant they are aware awake and watching and will not allow the innocence of our children to be sacrificed contrary to the current
099narrative we are on the side of compassion we are on the side of age and developmental appropriateness we are on the side of scientific evidence and facts and we are on the side of medical accuracy we urge you to not move forward with these proposals thank you for your service and for your time thank you judy daryl park welcome daryl hi my name is daryl kargash he says i am a very concerned grandpa my grandkids are precious and pure the bible has been taken out of schools already now i stand against the infiltration of political agendas into our classrooms the vast majority of public comments offered in support of these standards has have focused on issues related to reducing sexual assault and domestic violence these issues are important and should be items of concern to
100this board unfortunately the currently proposed standards are not reasonably calculated to achieve these goals and claiming that they have been drafted for that purpose is incredibly misleading in effect this board has asked the public to focus only on the one or two individual standards that promote the health and safety of our children and ignore the multitude of standards that are promised upon controversial unscientific and politically charged ideologies this is unacceptable this board has claimed that it's here to listen that the public comment period is taken seriously and will play into the decision process on what standards if any should be adopted at the same time this board has released clarification points in an apparent effort to discredit the the opposition to the standards the board member from district 7 despite concerns both voiced by fellow
101members thank you daryl justin teal as the previous gentleman was uh trying to articulate the board across the line when i decided to issue a document designed to discredit valid opposition to the proposed standards even more egregious at least one of the members of the board went even further by proactively sending out his thoughts and defense of this draft to local newspapers across his district in that letter as in multiple emails sent to concerned constituents this board member doubled down on the points set forth by the points of clarification document he then went further stating and i quote i do not know where these thoughts are coming from but whatever individual or organization is spreading these false narratives they need to stop it continues to cause division that is harmful to all of us end
102quote additionally towards the end of the last month's board meeting another board member referenced churches not once but twice as sources of misinformation these statements from public officials are simply unacceptable it is tantamount to outright suppression of citizens by a government official to these board members and to others it will certainly become evident throughout this process that the false narratives you find so discouraging are grounded in documented truth the divisions among us existed before the public comments came in on these standards and they will continue to exist as long as the public bodies like this one persist in ignoring and discounting opposing viewpoints without due consideration the most egregious harm however is this board's attempt to strife meaningful public participation this is a favorite tactic of authoritarian governments in third world countries and propaganda campaigns
103engaged in by fascist regimes to vilify and disenfranchise the opposition of free citizens these tactics have no place in nebraska and certainly have no place in the board that sets the direction for the education of our children see you in august roxanne tillotson roxanne tillotson welcome roxanne thank you yes as i said my name is roxanne tillotson and i'm here today to oppose draft one and any draft of proposed standards that includes radical sex standards or the divisive racial equality standards i oppose these themes in any draft that might be prescribed because i want all children in nebraska protected from premature exposure to explicit topics and want to promote familial jurisdiction over sensitive and politically charged social issues believing all students and families should be treated with respect is not political we can all agree
104that all people should be treated with respect because they are human and human kindness must dictate our daily lives however to say that views on lgbtq issues and traditional family values are not politicized would be wholly inaccurate as evidenced by the two major parties political platforms no school staff or any public school should seek to indoctrinate students towards one side of any political issue let's consider standard he 372-a demonstrate ways to promote dignity and respect for people of all genders gender expressions and gender identities including other students their family members and members of the school community on the surface this standard sounds good however inherent in the standard is the application that teachers will be instructing students in how to view this issues embedded within this standard the issue of sexual deviancy versus traditional sexual
105views this does not allow the student's right to make a value judgment for him or herself plus it would violate the parent's responsibility parents not teachers have the ultimate responsibility to direct their child's worldview teaching respect and kindness is where state indoctrination should end love respect and kindness can exist aside of outside of perfect agreement this is exactly why the code of ethics for teachers in the state of nebraska prohibits school staff from using their position to indoctrinate students into one political worldview the standards come from the nde should not violate this code of ethics to do so to be unethical thank you roxanne brad richter excuse me my my name is brad richter i'd like to address the first portion of a statement from the propaganda document put forth by the commissioner on may
1067. specifically and i quote the proposed draft of the nebraska health standards education centers is not a mandate from the federal government end quote i don't know who has stated it was a federal mandate personally i'm not aware of the government hasn't mandated such standards but this begs the question if the federal governor is not behind the driver behind the agenda then who is why does the nebraska department feel the need to move for the current framework to create unnecessary health standards who wants the types of standards whose agenda is being promoted perhaps the answer to our question lies within the state state agenda of psychists which is i quote sex ed for social change additionally this board has protested any characterization these standards have been written from the involvement of political activism instead pointing
107to owner list of writers however the while plagiarism may be the best form of flattery lottery it never nearly always leads the trail and certainly did in this case a close review of the draft one reveals 36 of the line items were effectively copied and paced from the national sex standard education standard draft and promoted by cycus whose tagline is the very definition of activist organization among his skulls are explicitly to make people have a right to comprehensive education achieve social justice inclusive of sexual and repeated rights cyclists also needs to reshape culture and their social narratives their sexuality and just sex and reaperability health and reproductive health and it's actively working to dismissals dismantle the system of power not only as cyclists and active forces active organization is made up of and supported by
108additional activist organizations such as advocates for use answer planned parenthood and glycine among others this is who is responsible drafting for drafting the objectionable health standards whether direct or because the writing team copied and pasted to sanders what's worse however is that the nebraska standards sprint past cycas standards in being even more explicit anti-time thank you for allowing me to speak mike meyer [Applause] welcome mike first of all for all of you that have a number that you fear you won't be able to talk to these guys and that's not to let you off the hook but we're going to record you outside so you can get on record okay um you're throwing me a curveball because i was ready to time all the times you're gavin was down like last time and dressed you
109down for it dog on it now i had to come up with something on the on the on the fly uh john adams has one of my favorite quotes of a founding father our constitution is wholly inadequate for other than a moral and a religious people cse and crt is a demonic plot to teach out morality from our children i wish you would reconsider even considering it there's i couldn't agree with the police officer more there's no place for a consideration this is horrible i yield the rest of my time thanks thank you mike paul frederick [Applause] my name is paul fredericks and i would like to address the statement written by the commissioner from the may 7th nde meeting and i quote the proposed draft of nebraska health standards was not written by an
110activist a writing team of nebraska educators were selected to submit applications the list of nebraska educators participating on the writing team has been made publicly available end quote after review of the writing process there's been significant concern regarding transparency indeed when this was discussed amongst the board members and the commissioner at the last nede meeting no one seemed to know or to be able to clearly explain the process or whether any venting was done more to the point there is no transparency to how many people applied to be writers the selection criteria other than school size and whether content or belief based bias was purchased perpetuated by design furthermore what was the role of the subject matter experts in the process and what feedback did they provide obviously the writing team did not draft the
111most objectionable standards from scratch as evidenced by the repeated instances of language copied and pasted from the national sex education standards which by the way were put together by proudly activist organizations one of which literally touts social change through sex education as its driving principle i'd like to remind commissioners and the board that according to the oxford advanced learner's dictionary activism is defined as the activity of working to achieve political or social change especially as a member of an organization with particular aims an activist in turn is a person who campaigns to bring about political or social change or stayed another way one who advocates or practices activism during the writing did the writing team plug in the national sex education standard language into nebraska's draft one or was that done by someone else and
112by whose direction more importantly aren't all these questions to the board should be asking instead defending draft standards which allow and defend propaganda like the points of clarification thank you thank you paul the next eight speakers angie klein neil dutenhofer kip van winkle rana fredericks dr tim stratton richard turner teresa cook and nan kino i'd like to make one point of order that we believe and decline that this meeting is in violation of the nebraska open meetings act as section 84-1412 you're out of order are you angie are you angie welcome angie good morning i am angie klein from bellevue nebraska and today i want to be very personal with you i'm a former homosexual i lived in a lesbian relationship for many years and today i stand before you as a changed woman i
113am married to a man i have children and i'm very fulfilled when i struggle with the feelings and emotions that constantly bombard in my mind while i was living as a lesbian i am thankful i did not encounter a curriculum and doctrine indoctrination that would have kept me caught in something that is known to increase mental distress or mental illness i didn't grow up with a sex education that allowed kindergartners to decide what sex they wanted to be contrary to what their biological sex was i didn't grow up in a time when i was fed the lie that being a tomboy was not something normal and being forced to identify as a male because i love dirt more than i love dresses i'm so glad in my whole class in high school i did not
114have to struggle with thoughts that maybe my sexual orientation needed to be explored with another girl all these things are proposed in your first draft of the new health curriculum standards i know many people that have embraced a homosexual lifestyle and i have transgender friends that have transitioned to the other sex and then transition back to their biological sex most of my friends who have embraced homosexuality male and female all have lifelong health consequences from embracing this lifestyle some of them will never have children and all my transgender friends who took puberty blockers will never have kids all of them will never have kids because they are now sterile yet we want to say to young children choose your gender choose your sex and we will help you achieve the next goal goal and that
115is puberty blockers i plead with the board this morning do the homework before promoting this destructive curriculum in our classrooms i've studied the cse for over two years now i come from a very liberal state of minnesota and i've seen this thing in action ask yourself would you want your kids your grandchildren partaking in this curriculum our legacy is our children and we must protect them neil neil neil neil newton hopper neil welcome good morning my name is neil dettenhoffer and i'm a business owner and father of nine uh when i read the commissioner's handout from the may 7th board meeting i was confused because instead of directly addressing the most controversial standards in question he instead chose to list positive themes included in draft one i quote the proposed draft does include the knowledge
116and skills related to sexual abuse prevention dating violence prevention and body safety education the proposed draft does include content to help students develop healthy behaviors decisions and skills with an emphasis on increasing protective factors and reducing risks end quote these statements sound great and i think most people can support the prevention of sexual abuse and dating violence we can also agree that developing healthy behaviors decisions and skills are noble goals so i'm really glad that the health standards have some positive themes but it also includes radical anti-science political ideologies age-appropriate inappropriate information and invites curricula with an obscene explicit and over-sexualized approach let's read several of these objectionable standards first grade for six-year-olds define gender gender identity and gender role stereotypes third grade for eight-year-olds demonstrate ways to promote dignity and respect for people of
117all genders gender expressions and gender identities including other students their family members and members of the school community fourth grade for nine-year-olds differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity fifth grade for ten-year-olds explain that gender expression and gender identity exist along a spectrum explain the significance of the physical changes in puberty and the potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender and finally define and explain in for 11 year olds differences between cisgender transgender gender non-binary gender expansive gender identity confusion these are some of the standards you must address your reassurances are patronizing at best and suspecting the worst thank you neil gib van winkle yep van winkle good morning welcome kip hello my name is kip van winkle i am an elementary i'm a local elementary teacher and father of
118six according to the may 7th propaganda sheet written by the commissioner i quote the proposed draft of the of the nebraska health standard education standards does seek to promote dignity respect kindness and compassion through equitable health education for all nebraskan students end quote this sounds so good but through the lens of critical thinking nebraskans can see these proposed standards are truly unable to accomplish such lofty and noble goals first let it be noted that desirable outcomes of dignity respect kindness and compassion are already being addressed in the character development programs available through anti-bullying curriculums implemented in nebraska schools second the health standards do not meet desirable outcomes for the following reasons dignity is not shown to students families and teachers who do not wish to adopt the activist values promoted to these standards dignity is
119robbed from students with varying sexual awareness as they along with all their classmates are introduced to sexually explicit ideas and images prematurely this robbed a child of his or her childhood with no consent from their student respect for individual students and families personal beliefs rooted in culture religion and experience is disregarded in these standards respect for vulnerability of developing children under the influence of adults is deemed inconsequential by these proposed standards it is not kind to sexualize children early in light of the research and scientific data that demonstrates measurable harm perpetrated on children when trusted adults expose them to explicit sexual material beyond their cognitive and emotional maturation it is cruel not compassionate to create a situation within the classroom where students have been previously abused will be triggered to relive their previous trauma and
120as a fifth grade teacher and i spend seven hours a day nine months a year with these young people they are not ready for this thank you thank you rona fredericks hello my name is ronna fredricks i am a grandmother and now a great grandmother and am i i am here today because i care about the health and the well-being of all nebraska students and that is precisely why i oppose the health standards nebraska's current health education framework guides districts in educating students in healthy decisions and lifestyles the purpose of health of health standards are not needed unless one considers them as a vehicle for further furthering the politicized agenda it should be deeply concerning to all nebraska citizens that in order to teach the standards as written there will be some sort of curriculum
121that will be taught and used to assess the comprehension of the student when we consider how these standards would would be taught and how students comprehension might be assessed we arrive at the graphic nature of the curriculum that would fulfill these standards which brings me to the statement from the commissioner on may 7th the state board of education is not approving a sexual education curriculum textbooks or instructional material it is intellectually dishonest for the board to pretend its actions don't have consequences the adoption of these standards by the nde and ultimately by school districts across the state will necessitate necessitate the purchase of curricula and instructional materials that are that are approved for the purpose of meeting the standards shockingly the same group that developed the standards have also developed corresponding curricula and instructional material
122that implement the standards so let's look at a couple of the standards many are that many are concerned about for example how do you assess a kindergartner in relation to h e k 7 2 c define and consent and identify how to clearly say no perhaps perhaps involved entering dr tim stratton welcome tim those who stood by martin luther king were on the right side of history those who opposed his message were racists today an ideology that is antithetically opposed to the message of martin luther king is creeping into nebraska schools and many including some on this board seem completely unaware of this evil at best or are complicit in it at worst the popular term for this evil is critical race theory crt but often masquerades as so-called social justice equity anti-racism or systemic
123racism crt has its roots in marxism from the scholars at the frankfurt school in germany close to a century ago this is the same marxist philosophy that led to the deaths of 100 million people over the course of a century making hitler's holocaust pale in comparison one particular board member here today has made it clear that these standards were not highly influenced by political leftists well what do you mean by highly why would this board allow marxists or those who oppose the message of martin luther king to influence what is taught in nebraska schools even a little bit marxism and racism are evil and allowing even a little bit of evil to influence the children of nebraska is evil this board member wrote that these standards were not developed by ideas of critical race theory
124well what a strange coincidence that these standards use the exact same buzzwords which are included in the mantra of critical race theorists well let's write this off as a crazy coincidence if that's the case this board should have no problem deleting the controversial language associated with crt indeed this board should have no problem incorporating language making sure that marxist ideas opposing the message of martin luther king will not be allowed in nebraska schools james lindsey notes that according to crt martin luther king was both wrong and naive white americans can never judge blacks by the content of their character they can only judge them by the color of their skin you are either for martin luther king or against him don't be a marxist don't be a racist don't be on the wrong side of
125history oppose critical race theory thank you richard turner come to you as a retired school teacher subject is recognition of critical theory the tenets of critical theory including any anti-wire racialism and rejection of capitalism and individual freedom at fully being embraced by a rapidly growing number of individuals in this country critical theory out loud outright rejects logical empirical data and the science of oppressive and vulnerable and scientific concepts that are valid in living experiences this is not only a radical departure from the goals of american education it is actually an expression and a rejection of logic and reason of scientific it is nothing less than an attack on the western civilization while critical theory has been influential in many of the areas of our society its proponents rarely ever identify their belief by name instead
126it terms social justice equality privilege are used to describe the applications many of these terms are indicated of a much different meaning than the one might first expect for example social justice is not concerned with justice to the terms of due process or other well-established hallmarks of the pursuit of truth rather is the term met to incorporate the vague ideas of redistribu distribution of wealth and privilege power resources from the haves to the have-nots including while necessary by force simply equating is no longer being viewed as simply being fair and imp impartial time thank you richard theresa cook good morning welcome theresa thank you um this board has expressed confusion about what crt is and insisted that crt played no part in the development of the proposed standards instead the board has pointed to its
127very own equity lands as providing the framework i want to draw the board's attention to the several aspects of that first the labels of crt or critical theory are not nearly as important as the concepts upon which those world views are based the equity lens this board relies upon incorporates the lingo and aims of crt despite never mentioning it explicitly explicitly under the consider headline the first step in looking through the equity lens is to consider all of the different categories into which people may be classified next the user is the user of this tool is to consider systematic systemic barriers to success and historical inequalities after consid consulting with various constituent groups the ultimate goal is to promote equity through the various other considerations related largely to group outcomes like many aspects of cli
128critical theory much of the sounds inanet on the surface a deeper look however evidences that this body's view of equity is pulled directly from the pages of a plethora of sources driven by overtly crt related dogmas on the nde's website educators are directed to numerous resources for anti-racism and equity for the purpose of promoting equality equity racial tolerance empathy and inclusion by addressing the historic and systemic marginalization and racist actions that have plagued underrepresented populations this site goes on to list resources like the 1619 project which aims to reframe u.s history as one of slavery and oppression time thank you teresa nancino [Applause] welcome thank you i'm from nankino from creighton nebraska and i've taught kids from preschool to junior high and i'm sharing a response to bloomstead's letter on critical theory on june 3
1292020 in direct response to the death of george floyd dr bloomsdead issued a letter to nebraska schools administrators in which he stated that quote the role of education is a system for change and improvement and quote the letter is thick with references to concepts that are prominently featured in the crt worldview including the recognition of quote generations of racism disenfranchisement and marginalism end quote and the goal of creating space to genuinely and intentionally embed racially diverse perspective perspectives into our conversations and actions why is there a need to embed race is every aspect why is there need to embed race into every aspect of education is there a particular educational outcome that is served by this approach does two plus two ever equal anything but four regardless of the race of the student providing the
130answer should the historical scientific fact be rejected for lack of racial sensitivity where does this approach end bloomstead continues that the conversation about racial inequities must occur everywhere to prepare our students for the future what is the conversation is this something more than a cover for pushing the idea of systematic racism which is a hot button political issue that is the that is sharply debated among academics and members of the public alike why does bloomsdid insist that we must promote active anti-racist teachings and leadership and commit to culturally relevant standards time thank you nan thank you [Applause] [Music] the next speakers are kay nelson patrick martin nicole norton nicholas norton john lowe jennifer thomas peggy fong kay nelson she's not here are you okay no okay patrick martin my name is patrick martin i'm here
131as a taxpayer and parent to voice my opposition to all radical sex ed standards and any standards containing the terminology and buzzwords associated with critical race theory on may 7th the propaganda sheet was written by the commissioner available online and to those in attendance at the board meeting stated i quote health education programs are designed to motivate students and maintain and improve their health advocate for self and others prevent disease form healthy relationships and avoid or reduce health-related risk behaviors end quote certainly this sounds good and i agree some of the proposed health standards are fine and might lead to some positive outcomes however as written the proposed draft also indoctrinates students for one side of controversial social and political issues a public school should be a safe place from social engineering parents should not
132be worried that their tax-funded school is teaching values to their children that groom them towards one political world view over another in fact according to the nebraska professional practices commission which can admonish and reprimand teachers and even revoke their teaching certificates states that teachers i quote shall not use institutional privileges to promote political issues end quote this is found in principle three number two of the nebraska professional practices commission code of ethics for teachers the proposed standards of hg372c instructs the teachers to discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender role stereotypes may influence behavior this standard along with others clearly seeks to promote one view of political politicized issues thus violating the previously noted nebraska teacher code of ethics schools and teachers should maintain instruction in academic excellence and abstain
133from values instructions that venture into conservat controversial issues stick to kindness manners and civic duty and leave the rest of the prerogative of the students to students families thank you thank you patrick nicole norton hello my name is nicole norton and i am a concerned mom of three when i heard about the proposed health standards i thought they'd truly be about health however when i had time to read through these standards i was shocked and horrified to see that social and political activism laced throughout i read through the different grade levels and could not believe what this board had presented to the public as acceptable i would like to read just a couple of them the many standards of grave concern and ask you pay attention to such buzz words as bias racism stereotypes systemic
134racism sexism classism etc in eighth grade discuss and describe the various isms racism sexism ageism heterosexism ableism classism and their impact individ individual and societal analyze how positive or negative stereotypes of an individual or group can be unconscious and may lead to discrimination and prejudice in high school evaluate and explain how some laws and policies are viewed as tools of systemic racism in second grade define and discuss examples of bias stereotype prejudice stigma in third grade define prejudice and discrimination discuss stereotypes and racial bias in media and books for example heroes bad guys characteristics roles those are just a few the innocence of our kids is at stake we need to protect that as long as possible instead of stripping it away i had a conversation with my nine-year-old son the other day about some
135dear friends of ours who have a little african american little girl they adopted and then they had one of their own who's caucasian and in passing i mentioned the adoption of this little um little after african-american girl and in amazement he looked at me and said she's adopted that melted my heart we teach our kids to love others period instead of filling their minds with ideas of how to put people in groups and all the ways they could be different we need to protect that innocence of our kids thank you nicholas norton welcome nicholas thank you uh you don't have a statement in front of you for me because i wasn't really sure what i was going to say until i got here i think that everybody can agree maybe we take take a breath
136for just a second and agree that our schools should be a reasonably safe environment for our kids hopefully we can all agree that we're trying to raise children to become adults that are taught a fundamental respect for everyone regardless of their race their color their creed or any of their beliefs you know that we raise our kids to be kind to others um dr tim stratton mentioned martin luther king and that got me thinking um it got me thinking a little more about dr wyatt t walker who was a chief advisor to dr martin luther king jr and a giant in a civil rights movement and and dr walker warned specifically about ideologies that classify people into groups and he specifically called out crt neo-marxism post-modernism but but i think the the focus is that
137he expressed that there are too many quote-unquote remedies that are taking us in the wrong direction emphasizing our differences instead of our similarities i want to read a quote from dr walker i believe he has passed on now but he wrote an article about six years ago in which he wrote the answer is to go deeper than race deeper than wealth deeper than ethnic identity deeper than gender to teach ourselves to comprehend each person not as a symbol of a group but as a unique and special individual with a common context of shared humanity to go to that fundamental place where we are all simply mortal creatures seeking to create order beauty family and connection to the world that on its own seems to bend too often towards random randomness and entropy i think those
138are powerful words that we can all consider today and i think uh you know i i challenge this board and the writing committee to the extent any of them are watching that as we move forward in this process let's focus on on individuality let's focus on individual responsibility individual achievement let's build a community where our kids can love each other they can affirm and build each other up they can respect each other without having to adopt particular political views i think we can keep those things out of the classroom and still raise responsible children that become contributing members of a loving society as adults that's the challenge that i think we all have everyone in this room as a parent as a professional as an educator and members of this board so thank you time
139thank you [Applause] jennifer thomas jennifer welcome jennifer oh thank you i've seen it implied from the board that we don't understand what is and what's not in the proposed standards i assure you we do and we don't want it for our kids or for anyone else's instead of making this a battle of semantics let's all agree that the proposed standards contain what is widely known as comprehensive sex ed and critical race theory the board's denial of that basic fact would be ignorance at best and an outright lie at worst i'd be glad to email you hundreds of supporting documents if needed there was not one individual allowed to give input into these areas who represented my views or the thousands of others you've heard from who are not okay with this you had a goal
140as evidenced by the objectionable cse and crt material already on the nde website and you chose people who would help you accomplish it for example the professor of all things lgbtq an activist lgbtq leader and someone who spent 15 years at planned parenthood i would submit that someone who promoted an organization that thrives on murdering our children did not deserve a seat at the table deciding how to educate them [Applause] you say that these are age-appropriate sure if the goal is to indoctrinate our kids to a leftist anti-american anti-equality racist view sexualize our kids and have them believe that their sexual choices have no spiritual implications the push for this liberal progressive ideology is what i call social terrorism where we strive not for freedom of speech and religion but a you must adopt my
141beliefs or else our language has been hijacked and we can only use words that have been approved by the leftists it's now courageous for biological males to compete against females in sports it's okay to separate and judge based on skin color and not character murdering children in the womb is called health care police are the enemy and rioters looters and criminals are called heroes we have to come before the board of education and beg you not to sexualize our children i believe there has been a very clear attempt to silence our voices thank you and i ask can you hear us now john lower welcome john thank you thank you for being here today thank you for coming to kearney i am state senator john lowe and i represent district 37 which carney is in
142the middle of thank you for choosing kearney thank you for facing the mothers the grandmothers and great-grandmothers i hear the fathers the grandfathers and i suppose the great-grandfathers and looking in their eyes and listening to them listening to their point i've handed in my speech because i was not going to get through it anyway so you all have a copy of my speech and thank you to the senators that are there listening online least five listening online at this time or viewing it through their internet thank you to joni albright senator from northeast nebraska and senator dave merman from hastings and kearney kearney county area for being here today to represent their constituents these are the people of nebraska they're talking to you they're asking you please do not do this it's important to us
143it's important to nebraska it's wrong simply wrong [Applause] your job is tough as an elected official i understand that and thank you for stepping up and to perform a job now do what the citizens of nebraska wish you to do thank you for being here and i really appreciate appreciate this time thank you senator peggy fong peggy welcome peggy thank you board for being here today thank you senator lowe rat poison contains 95 food and only 5 poison yet that 5 is sufficient to eradicate a serious rat problem those of us who stand opposed to this draft do so because we believe that you are attempting to feed our children poisonous information concealed in the fine print of the sex education social studies in other areas of the draft we find doctrines of planned parenthood
144critical race theory and the 19 or 16 19 project we have identified the ideal ideologies of marxism communism and owenism which actively seek to destroy and further divide america the devastating effect has already been seen in other states and nations we have been forewarned to watch for these things you must understand that to approve this draft without full transparency is not acceptable in my opinion this board has restricted our first amendment right to free speech by out by asking for written submissions or speeches in person our words and thoughts are naturally limited you offer no transparency and we are not getting the answers we need from you frankly it appears as if you have a predisposition toward the draft and against opposition we require full disclosure from our elected officials that won't happen unless we
145change the forum i strongly request that we hold town hall type meetings in every district so that every concerned citizen can ask questions of you whereby you give us answers meetings like that would eliminate the appearance of you having a harmful agenda and would show that you are taking seriously your constituents concerns if you choose to ignore this request you will confirm our suspicions that you are acting in bad faith toward our children we have the right and responsibility to protect our children is given to us by god and we will do everything in our power to do so thank you peggy [Applause] the next group dorothy renter jennifer hewn elissa martin trent delahunt judy karmazin keith tillotson greg brown senator dave merman please come forward dorothy renter welcome dorothy thank you if you want
146to know what water is why shouldn't you ask a fish we often get so completely immersed in our own environment that we take things for granted and think they're normal as state board members of nebraska's entire educational system there's probably nothing each of you know more about than education miss google's you were one of my instructors at northeast community college in the early 90s nearly 30 years ago how many years have all of you been in the trenches of education teaching in the classroom administrating serving on local school boards and other educational committees i'm sure many many years and we thank you for that we thank you for your service and yet i'm here today to declare that what is being proposed as normal in these educational standards is anything but normal so perhaps just
147for a moment i can get you to be a fish out of water all we're asking for in our health standards is abstinence approach abstinence-based approach not abstinence as one of many choices of contraception we also want a sexual risk avoidance approach that encourages and promotes sexual delay as the best and healthiest choice for all teens all teens regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity not one in which 10 year olds are discussing sexual intercourse or 11 year olds are learning how to evaluate when they're ready for sexual behavior including oral and anal sex choosing and teaching the best in sexual health education also must include refusal skills we want children to be taught how to stand firmly against sexual temptations and how to clearly refuse sexual advances advances we don't want them to be
148taught ways in which they can participate have you even considered what a playground monitor is expected to do when these children start practicing what they've been learning in the classroom regarding their genitalia time thank you dorothy jennifer hewn [Music] jennifer hewn hi welcome thank you my name is reverend jennifer hewitt i'm from kearney man you guys have a tough job thank you for the work that you do with all sincerity thank you for the work that you do in serving the teachers and students of nebraska schools thank you very much for your efforts to listen in a way with all diligence the arguments both in favor of and against these proposed changes to the nebraska health education standards when considering new changes and directions it is my desire to have an open mind regarding the
149changes and to evaluate our options so after reading the proposed health standards and adopt and researching curriculum which would meet them should they be adopted i found a few things i was in in agreement with i find it very difficult to stand opposed to teaching children how to brush their teeth how to protect their hearing or even how to safely handle chemicals another element i did appreciate seeing included was in these proposed standards is the teaching of abstinence is a valid method of pregnancy prevention however after reading the proposed health standards and researching curriculum which would meet these standards it is my opinion that the type and number of elements that i disagree with outweigh the elements i view favorably therefore i am strongly against the proposed standards as they are currently stated i have
150submitted a written statement and a list of 80 specific concerns for your consideration and revision thank you thank you thank you alyssa martin welcome melissa thank you my name is elisa martin and i'm a lifelong nebraskan a taxpayer and a former public school teacher turned business owner entrepreneur educator and parent i believe that teachers are critically important in shaping the future of our society teachers are the individuals that spend the most time and have the most significant impact on the children in their charge so we need great people to teach unfortunately over the years more and more responsibilities and expectations have been piled on our teachers now they not only educate children but they also provide emotional support and even ensure that basic needs such as food and safety are met add the challenges of
151the past year with teachers having to learn completely different methods of teaching on the fly to the mix and you have a recipe for burned out exhausted teachers it's no wonder that an astonishing 54 percent of teachers surveyed said that they are somewhat or very likely to leave the teaching profession in the next two years nebraska is already facing a teacher shortage and i have the details on that in my written statement implementing the proposed health education standards or similar future drafts would only compound this problem as many teachers find these standards reprehensible and diametrically opposed to their personal morals and values in the past month i've spoken with numerous friends family members and colleagues who are currently teachers who said that if these standards were implemented they would find themselves at the moral crossroads
152of leaving the education system thank you trent welcome trent good morning see you on the screen good morning i'd like to introduce you to my eldest child maverick he's four and he'll be entering kindergarten next year in 2022. as his father it is his mother's and i's responsibility to guide him in the ways we should go we are to protect him and his innocence i question bringing him here today due to the sensitive subject matter he would be exposed to but it is the exact subject matter that is being proposed to be ingrained within our children we are being told to teach this little boy right here about consent at five years old i wouldn't even elaborate as he progresses each grade we know what is proposed culture wants our children to be exposed trust
153me they are there's these subject matters are in the media news television music and politics you name it they're exposed but not at school that is a place we send our children to educate facts not opinions and to be protected while we are there let my wife and i guide him in this sensitive subject matter and for those who say not all have this guidance at home well those parents are relying on culture to raise their children and so yes they will still be exposed to the topics and at hand just fine without the need of our education system meddling in as well this is why we cannot stand by quietly and allow the cse health standards to progress any further it is based upon opinions and experiences not facts if it were to progress
154you will find a number of families pulling their children from public school systems a school systems that my peers and i have great and rewarding experiences within please listen to the majority of nebraska residents not the noisy minority there are more avenues for them to push their agendas just not in our public school system thank you thank you trent [Applause] judy say thank you welcome judy good morning thank you my name is judy karmazine from given nebraska i am speaking today as a mother and grandmother i am retired senior litigation paralegal specialized in black mold my pro bono work in la and orange county california involved preparing children both boys and girls to testify in court who had been molested and raped it was difficult especially for the young ones to understand it was not
155normal or their fault when california passed their common core bill which contained this kind of sexual education for grades kindergarten through 12th grades it became more difficult because they were taught by their teachers graphic sex sex parts and acts in their classroom and given homework god gave the children the knowledge to know right from wrong don't take that knowledge from god away from them by passing draft one or two children did and do not need to know explicit body parts or positions to know it is wrong in order to stop the abuse or testify in court my father sexually abused my oldest sister she was seven years old i witnessed this at five i was my innocence was destroyed at five i still told my mother it was stopped don't take the innocence away from
156our children [Applause] dr martin luther king said dream of character above color and you're making color above everything thank you thank you judy [Applause] heath johnson welcome keith and i'm keith tillerson a resident of carney i'm a former junior high science teacher and my instruction included the teaching of the anatomy of the human reproductive system i'm opposed to the proposed health education standards and asked the board to withdraw these proposed standards thank you keith greg brown [Music] [Applause] welcome greg thank you good morning my name is greg brown i live in kearney i'm the father of two adult sons who graduated from public school in nebraska i have a phd in the biological basis of health and human performance i'm a professor at the university of nebraska at kearney my comments are mine today do
157not represent an official statement at the university i've provided all sorts of expert testimony and you can see in my written document my professional qualifications so i won't bore you with that anymore but i want you to know that i am well qualified as a scientist and as an educator we've been told that these proposed health education guidelines are based on science but where nowhere in these proposed health education guidelines does the term male female boy girl man or woman appear how can you teach science and health without teaching about the important health differences between men and women we are also told that they're science-based but yet the science on puberty blockers has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation the limited existing research is subject to bias and confounding and the use of puberty blockers
158to treat mental health issues is very low quality due to the possible permanent negative side effects of puberty blockers and the poor research on these drugs the high court in great britain has decreed that children under the age of 16 cannot give reasonable consent to use these drugs the karolinska institute in sweden will not use these drugs except in clinical research trials on children under age 16. i seriously doubt whether this science was considered in the drafting of these standards therefore i reject i suggest that all of these standards be rejected and based in real science thank you thank you greg senator dave merman senator dave berman welcome senator thank you and thank you for your service i represent seven counties mostly to the east south and west of kearney and hastings and glad to
159be here i got many emails and i think my constituents can voice my concerns better than i can so i'll read those parts of some of those emails i would not be able to allow my children to attend public school any longer with a clear conscience if i knew they were learning these things at school the state board of education is denying the existence of comprehensive sex education critical race theory within the standards even nde's own website has sources such as portland oregon and what they have done in their school system with the words institutional racism in the link shared the approved national standards for cse are word for word with much of the nebraska proposed standards i am not in opposition to those that choose to live a different lifestyle than my family does
160i actually believe they should be loved and accepted as anyone but that doesn't mean we should celebrate or love what they do i am concerned at the hyper sexualization of children and sex is this the school's place to be actually teaching of all things sex to our youth i believe schools are wonderful places for our children to learn reading phonics spelling writing math accurate history science etc i do believe kindness and acceptance of others different from ourselves and even topics like consent can be taught without sex being the focus even even as adults we do not need to know the details of what goes on in other adult sex lives why would we expect children to learn in-depth sexual material at a young age so they can accept others i fear that making sexual activities
161normalized at school will lead children to be to be groomed by pedophiles to take advantage desensitizing children to sexual matters and offering sexual material is one of sex offenders first steps in grooming a child normalizing all sex for all ages and especially teaching our youngest and most impressionable population of elementary schools too much too soon on these matters can lead to experimentation leave it leave it up to the parents discretion as to what their children learn regarding these matters so morality can be inserted into the conversations in ways that the family's structured belief system support thank you senator thank you very much [Applause] [Music] the next group is janiece van winkle suzanne mcdonald sue rickley stephanie norton teresa carey kathy adams kathy larson jordan martin and bernie got shirt janiece van winkle welcome janiece thank
162you my name is janiece van winkle my husband and i are educators in kearney we have six children four of which were adopted through the foster care system my parents also fostered for 14 years i've seen firsthand the effects on a child's life as a result of being neglected abused or sexually abused one case i recall was an eight-year-old child who had been sexually assaulted by her grandfather and placed with our family she continued to explore sexually with our family pets in the hall closet her life has been marked by terrible decisions and poor choices all stemming from those early childhood traumatic events and awakening sexual urges too early those incidences with her grandfather derailed her whole life foster children are referred to as trauma children they've been through a traumatic or series of traumatic
163events and has rewired their brains it is a long long road to recovery if it's even achievable these health standards are setting children and youth up to be traumatized by normalizing sexual activity when i hear you talk about this health standard passing all i see are a staggering amount of trauma children being added to a very taxed and broken foster care system these standards would not protect our children but harm them and unlike other children in the public school system foster children do not have the option to opt out or homeschool there is no plan b for them i firmly believe this is a battle between good and evil i'd also like to add to the men and women who spoke so passionately at the last meeting for these standards to be passed i disagree
164with your stance as i listen many of those spoke out of a place of pain from past events in their childhood but pushing a sexualized agenda on our innocent children won't undo what they endured this is not the answer you're looking for i sincerely pray you find healing and wholeness thank you for your time thank you denise suzanne mcdonald [Applause] welcome suzanne thank you i want to begin by thanking you for the opportunity to speak today regarding my objections to the proposed health standard revisions my name is suzanne mcdonald and my concern today is for my two sons boaz and toby both of whom have down syndrome and are non-verbal i am unsure if you have looked at the ramifications of these new standards from my viewpoint my boys are fully included with their typical
165peers so they would be learning this information right alongside their classmates with my boys both having cognitive delays i have two major concerns my first concern is for their safety as it stands right now due to their disability they are already seven times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse if these proposed standards are implemented i believe the chances of this occurring would multiply exponentially if children as young as the age of nine are learning about sexual feelings what is to stop them from acting upon these feelings with a peer who cannot say no and is unable to tell anyone what happened then by the time they're in middle school like my son toby they're learning about same-sex attraction while sharing bathrooms locker rooms and showers with my non-verbal cognitively delayed son again unable
166to say no unable to tell anyone what happened it may not even have the level of understanding that what is happening to him is rape this is my biggest fear my second concern flips the scenario children with disabilities are visual learners i'm assuming these proposed standards are will contain many visuals seeing these pictures given their cognitive delays and lack of discernment could cause them to believe that it's okay for them to act out these sexual behaviors as you can see as a parent of children with disabilities these proposed health standards are extremely concerning to me and therefore i propose that all standards of draft one that lead to explicit sex education must be eliminated and draft two of these standards thank you thank you suzanne sue ripley my name is sue rickley i'm a mom
167a grandma a teacher and a lifelong nebraskan i strongly oppose these health standards they are not health they are not a standard not for positive growth today however evil is called good and good is called evil truth is said to be lies and lies are believed to be truth our constitution was born out of great division and massive lengthy dissension by leaders who finally agreed to pray for god's direction then they came together and quickly produced what we still have today for 200 plus years people around the globe work and dream of coming here for opportunity and freedom which we are about to lose completely that is without intervention our original documents identify rights given to us the people by god rights that cannot be taken away or given to another government exists to protect
168those rights but we're upside down we need officials representing and serving constituents not their own special interest groups our children are our treasure our responsibility and our future today i publicly repent for the decades of decline of our moral fiber and conscience to the place of why we are here today i have and will be praying for god to forgive our sin and heal our land thank you sue stephanie norton hello welcome stephanie thank you thank you for being here for being willing to listen um i am a mom and a grandmother and a retired educator i look at faces as i look at you and i see some of you are very uncomfortable with things that have been said today you should be we are too as a former teacher i remember how hard
169it is to get teachers to give up their time to develop standards to help get this written i understand that as i talked to teachers though in the last few weeks that's not so much what i'm hearing as i'm hearing a fear well if we don't teach these standards if these are past and we don't teach them i don't have a choice i won't have a job i need my job i love my job i love my kids um we don't need to put teachers in that dilemma we've talked a lot about the explicit wording of the standards and yeah it's not appropriate i taught middle grades a lot of middle grade students fifths except they're not ready for this and they certainly are not ready to hear it from their teacher their coach their
170whoever at the school that's not appropriate if they need to hear that their parents decide when that should be not the board of education i am concerned for the public trust as you can see um many people are concerned about this and that reflects on you and what are you doing to to retain that trust i'm concerned for my teacher friends who are still in the trenches and i'm concerned for my grandchildren i don't want them exposed to this i have grandchildren rage in ages 5 to 16. not not on my time thank you stephanie [Applause] theresa carey teresa carey welcome theresa thank you thank you for your time um just a few words i want to share i have three beautiful precious grandbabies um and i cannot sit back and do nothing if they
171are going to be indoctrinated by this racist ideology ideology that's called critical race theory or if they're going to be taught the perversion of comprehensive sex education thank you thank you kathy adams welcome kathy thank you hello my name is kathy adams i'm a wife mother of four grown children grandmother of nine grandchildren which are six girls and three boys and a great grandma of a beautiful little girl i'm retired close to 45 years of working in the medical field as a nurse and a phlebotomist daycare provider eldercare and education as a para and at yrtc some at the same time and i'm also a taxpayer and a voter i come before you today as a concerned citizen and in opposition to all you are trying to promote in education including the attending toward cse
172and crt as a part of your goals i question where your hearts are at in all of this is our children's welfare really your number one priority or could it be something else entirely having nothing to do with children but entirely with your standing as one of the state boards of education i hear your number three after all our culture is quickly changing from a faith-based one to a ubu nation without morals the parts of culture are symbols language norms values artifacts and indeed all of those parts of culture are quickly changing due to the shutting out of the truth being taught as god would have it taught genesis 2 21 24 remember is the intention of our creator verse 24 says for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
173united to his wife and you will they will become one flesh that's from the niv god's intention was not you do you with however you see yourself as being in any way you want to be with to you to find finding pleasure or by yourself at the time in chapter 3 of genesis we see the fall of the first husband and wife because of pride lust and wanting pleasing to the eye from there it has been downhill ever since children quickly learn things however with a thinking a lot of thinking errors and in my opinion we need to be very careful how with how adults teach them and which adults are teaching them here is where it comes to an experience of someone near and dear to my heart a 17 time thank you kathy
174thank you kathy larson good morning my name is kathy larson i'm a retired teacher with undergraduate degrees in chemistry biology and elementary education during most of my 33 years teaching i taught human reproduction to my life science classes in seventh grade all of us here have a vested interest in providing a superior and safe education for our nebraska children as a teacher i always felt like i was a third parent because if you're a good teacher you love those kids and you care for them and i wanted every adolescent in my classroom to know the facts about reproduction so no one could mislead them because of ignorance personally i refer to these standards as health and sex standards because that's what they are some nebraska citizens that sought to view the limited curriculum available for
175these standards were legally advised against saving them to their computers because they could face pornography charges my question to you board members is who's going to teach my little innocent do i dancing granddaughter my doe-eyed granddaughter in her first steps to this state-endorsed sexualization no teacher who loves children is going to be able to do it so who are you going to get to replace them it will have to be someone who's comfortable in sexualizing children personally i began thinking about how could i find a private or the funds to fund a private education for my children and grant my grandchildren as citizens we've been told participate let your voices be heard for many of us it's the first time we have heeded that call we nebraskans are imploring you to please hear our prize
176thank you kathy [Applause] jordan martin welcome jordan jordan martin correct yes welcome hello my name is jordan martin kearney resident certified teacher educator pursuing a master's in sped special education wife mother of five four of whom are still at home in the april board meeting board president maureen nichols opened the discussion of the health education standards and previously heard comment by sharing that the board received over four thousand surveys responses over two thousand comments through the nde website and numerous personal emails to individual board members i propose that the online form did not have any accountability you cannot guarantee that the 4 000 responses were only from nebraska residents also in reference to curriculum and standards non-educators would not know what would know what to expect a history text or math text to look like
177so when those standards are listed they don't question how the information will be presented to the students in a text or curriculum i as an educator read the standards and began questioning what these criteria would look like in practice for example in kindergarten students are most often taught whole group any worksheets or activities involve pictures in fact most lessons involve pictures manipulatives of some kind so what would teaching the proper names for sex organs look like in a kindergarten classroom would pictures or illustrations be involved i agree to an extent that children need to know their own body with proper names however i question the appropriateness of whole group teaching this sensitive topic would be better suited for small group or individuals whole group teaching of privates clashes with the entire concept of privates the
178structure of the classroom may not be an appropriate may not be an appropriate means for reaching the un underserved and at risk thus while my incoming kindergarten age child has known that she has all females that she and all females have a vagina i strongly disprove the notion that teaching the same age children the same thing whole group is developmentally appropriate i think we have to be fine thank you jordan [Applause] bernice duck shirt bernie i'm sorry i apologize for uh scribbling my name my name is bernie gachesky and i'm a father of three and have nine grandchildren first let me make it clear that i do not hate anyone and i believe that in general we all have the right to live our lives in accordance with our personal beliefs however broadly speaking i
179think the biggest problem with your proposed new standards is that they elevate unproven theories to scientific fact all these new theories might make some people happy they will alienate just as many if not more citizens of nebraska while seriously infringing on parental rights more specifically i would like to address the commissioner's points of clarification document the second half of the statement which reads the proposed draft of the nebraska health education standards is not a mandate from the federal government and is not part of a worldwide plan to sexualize children does the nebraska department of education presume to speak on behalf of every individual or organization from which they reviewed information or used source documents to create these standards does the nebraska department of education really presume to speak with authority as to the plan of
180the authors and groups that funded them for example it is fairly simple to look at all worldwide organizations and how they are connected to the most controversial standards found in draft one the international planned parenthood federation a locally owned globally connected civil society movement who does the ipa ippf partner with the united nations have any of you looked at their international guidelines on sexuality education they were published in 2009 and who is connected to the ippf naturally planned parenthood and according to an article from planned parenthood's history of of uh sex education in the us i quote comprehensive sex education is increasingly world recognized worldwide as a human right and then there is cecus who published an article the title says it all sikas stands with planned parenthood which brings us right back to the
181proposed nebraska standards in draft one the very standards of most concern are practically copied and pasted from the national uh sex education standards and sikhs is one of those thank you thank you bernie the next group please come forward dale greenwald natasha johnson kimberly maddox mark schoenbacher chad galepsy karen lind aaron peterson val hyde please come forward dale greenwald welcome dale i'd say good morning but it's afternoon so good afternoon uh my name is dale greenwald i'm a retired educator of 35 years 31 of those years we're here in kearney one of the finest educational communities in the state of nebraska when people ask me why it is the best i often responded by explaining the tremendous support which i received from the kearney community our stakeholders whether they be business businesses youth organizations churches
182but most importantly parents trust teachers to deliver meaningful objective curriculum it has been my experience over the years that 85 parents attended parent-teacher conferences with me when i was asked about what was being taught why and the direction the curriculum was headed i was always able without hesitation to look them in the eye and tell them the answer the reason for this was i believed in it as an educator if i had been hesitant or unable to believe in a curriculum it would have destroyed the trust that those parents placed in me and created an awkward if not toxic learning environment for the students when subjective curriculum is introduced it creates doubts from our stakeholders which in turn diminishes community support for public schools i oppose this health curriculum for the divisive nature that it
183would create in many if not all school systems in the state of nebraska it puts meaningful objective education the respect educators currently receive and most importantly student learning at risk thank you thank you dale natasha johnson welcome natasha my name is natasha johnson i am a third grade teacher here in kearney and i am a concerned parent as a third grade teacher i am extremely uncomfortable teaching standards in this draft for some for example describe the functions of basic reproductive body parts describe physical changes that occur during development body hair body odor body shape define sexual orientation just to name a few i can only imagine the questions that this might bring up that i can honestly guess most if any of my kids are not ready to hear not only does this make me
184uncomfortable when i think about the thought of having to teach these i feel my rights as a parent are being violated it is my choice as a parent to teach these things to my kids if and when i feel the time is right and i can guarantee you how and when i teach them is going to look different the fact that we are even asking teachers to do this is wrong and it's going to put us in a position that it's not our place to be in the parent should be able to choose when and if these things are taught to their child thank you thank you natasha kimberly maddox welcome kimberly thank you my name is kimberly maddox and i am a concerned parent i have heard some of you ask what this would
185look like if it is put into effect and i want to shed some light on that so on the topic of comprehensive sex ed daniel davis interviewed two parents from rocklin california on the daily signal podcast in 2019 these parents met at a school board meeting and while out of school facilitated lesson on transgenderism in kindergarten refer to standard he172d and see the path we are headed down they talked about how the curriculum went from two or three videos to show the kids which the parents would get to preview to a 13 lesson curriculum given each given in 45 minute periods that's almost 10 hours of information there's no way for parents to know everything their kids are being taught here are some of the things that was found upon these mothers digging deeper into
186the materials that were given the lessons were given in a three-inch binder of 13 lessons the teachers also have access to slides that parents don't see when they go into the office to view the curriculum in order to view the slides you actually have to have a code so most parents aren't seeing that material and that's where they found some of the most objectionable things parents also don't understand that there's a list of resources that the kids are given and if you follow those links you go down a rabbit hole that leads to some pretty shocking things there's a sexa dual tool kit that's available to teachers to use and present to their students where they have whole pages on sex toys they teach kids about the different materials of those sex toys and what
187they might be made of they tell kids to be sure to clean them before passing it off to a partner moving from one hole to another they also have a little box at the bottom with a picture that says if you don't have money to buy sex toys cucumbers carrots bananas make great dildos it is obscene there's a lot of interactive lessons which is really concerning there's one lesson for seventh grade where every kid in the class is given a card of their body which either has an opening or body fluid so some kids have a card that says vagina anus or mouth time thank you [Applause] mark schanbacher welcome mark my name is mark schambacher i am a physician who practices in nebraska and i want to direct my comments towards gender education and
188dysphoria several recent initiatives from europe looked at gender dysphoria both the swedish agency for health technology assessment and in the united kingdom the united kingdom study noted a marked recent increase in adolescents presenting with complaints of gender dysphoria for which they had no explanation and that's i'm quoting them on that they did not know why this was happening gender ambiguity is often a normal phenomenon in a developing child and in the vast majority of cases it spontaneously resolves with the child identifying with their chromosomes females xx for those who don't know males x y if however we introduce doubt and confusion over gender identity through our media our educational systems we can interrupt the normal spontaneous resolution and replace it with ongoing gender pathology we all we are all to some extent susceptible to the
189power of suggestion and children with their vivid imaginations and innocent nativity can easily fall prey to this this likely explains a significant part of the recent increase in the incidence of gender dysphoria we are unintentionally or intentionally i don't know increasing the problem couple this with the evidence that shows little or no benefit from medical and surgical interventions for gender dysphoria as reflected in the recent decisions by european countries to curtail medical treatment of gender dysphoria in children because of unfavorable risk benefit ratios and we have a situation where we are potentially creating a pathologic state for which we have no statistically proven beneficial treatment as educators i would hope that you would strive to live by an old latin saying that we physicians learned in medical school and i wish more physicians would abide
190by primum no nasra first do no harm [Applause] [Music] i was listening and i think i would you emphasize i'm so sorry i'm going to get this right and i don't want to misquote you you said that children were presenting with an increase in dysphoria however they did not know why and you emphasize the word they and what i couldn't understand is if you were saying that they being the children did not know why or they being the people who they were presenting today it was the researchers okay so the researchers did not did not have an explanation as to why they saw this sudden increase in gender dysphoria and then when you said we are seeing increases were you referring to it was it in europe or america like where were you saying that
191the increases were being this was in europe okay okay and this was at the same time that they found that the risk benefit ratio treating children was not in favor of continuing treatment and so they've curtailed those treatments while we are proceeding ahead they're actually backing off the puberty blockers and that was alluded to by an earlier speaker okay thank you i just wanted to make sure i understood you thank you thank you thank you chad welcome chad thank you hey my name is chad gillespie i'm from kearney and i'm the father of five boys and i'm here today to speak out for their future as i stand in strong opposition to these health standards board member stevens he was gracious enough to give me a little time to speak with him after the last
192meeting and i thank you for that it was good to hear your perspectives and to have mine be heard talking back and forth with each other let me give you some takeaways from that discussion first of all i think it needs to be said again i know and hopefully everybody can understand these health standards are a framework that curriculums can be built around and i don't want people confusing those two things unfortunately the curriculums that have been developed to meet these health standards are loaded with progressive liberal teachings including comprehensive sexuality education and critical race theory we had a couple other speakers bring this up too that those curriculums are they're tied together with those two destructive ideas board member stevens said that data he wasn't sure why anyone would bring up critical race theory
193because it's never mentioned in these standards but once again these standards used language and phrases that just opened the doors and invite in critical race theory and comprehensive sexuality education to be taught in our schools and this twisted concept relies on social constructionism it elevates storytelling over evidence and reason and it really rejects the concepts of truth and merit i don't think it has any place in our schools going forward mr stevens also points out that on this board's very own website the 1619 project is highlighted and that has direct ties and correlations to critical race theory i can tell you that if these standards are put into place it'll make a difference for my kids and thousands of others across the state who will have their innocence robbed their identities questioned and their minds
194sexualized most of these concerns that have been brought forth by the people advocating for this could actually be addressed in schools through their existing standards anti-bullying campaigns and special initiatives designed to help make our kids be kind respectful and compassionate citizens time thank you chad karen lind welcome karen thank you my name is karen land i'm from kearney i've been wondering what is really behind these sex standards i know we are not fighting with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places during some research i came across a figure of a false pagan demonic god dating back to the 1300s this image is of a hermaphroditic figure with the head of a goat woman's breast and an erect male phallic symbol later this figure was adopted
195as the official symbol of the church of satan in 2015 the church of satan unveiled an eight and a half foot granite statue of this pagan god with the addition of two children why would you have two young innocent children gazing up at this horrific figure this says everything and tells me exactly what and who is behind these standards that you are trying to push on our children satan comes only to steal kill and destroy and these sex standards are meant to do just that kill steal and destroy our children's innocence and purity and indoctrinate and seduce them into accepting the lgbtq lifestyle and every other form of wickedness as normal indoctrinating children with sexual orientation and gender identity at these early ages only leads to confusion and permanent damage to their developing minds and
196bodies a quote from a kindergarten book says i have a girl brain but a boy body this is transgender no child has these kinds of thoughts unless some adult puts them there this is indoctrination as individual board members pushing this agenda you fall into one of three categories you're naive you're deceived or you know exactly what's behind this and are part of it children are innocent and it's our obligation as parents grand and great-grandparents to protect them as a lifelong citizen of the state of nebraska i say we say no not in our state thank you aaron peterson welcome erin thank you hello my name is aaron peterson i'm the administrator at faith christian school here in in kearney nebraska i'm extremely proud to be a part of faith christian because i see every day
197the opportunity that we have to partner with parents to deal with difficult issues and that's my call on this this board and moving forward with this that we follow that god-given mandate for parents to be the fault the educators of their children my primary concern i wanted to address today is the connection between these standards and curriculum that will be adopted the purpose of content area standards is to set academic goals based on content the opportunity for local districts to select curriculum is irrelevant since cr concerns are based on the content that is already predetermined by these standards the description of human growth and development strand of the current draft includes the following rationale quote human growth and development programs are developmentally or that are developmentally culturally age appropriate medically accurate and unbiased have been
198proven to prevent the or reduce risky behaviors while i have a number of concerns about this statement and its relevance to these standards as proposed i'd like to focus on the idea of bias you have heard a number of controversial indicators that i won't repeat at the moment but i wonder and i am concerned how any of these standards uh do anything but promote one biased political opinion and i asked the question doesn't this bias then in fact cause harm to student growth and development according to that previously listed rationale also listed on the nde website one of the purposes for standards is to create continuity across the state with these standards being so divisive as you can see today i question how these standards could potentially uh do anything but create not be able
199to create um continuity across the state but further division time thank you so much for your time val hyde hello my name is val hyde i was born raised and currently live in north platte nebraska i'm here to speak in support of age-appropriate complete and inclusive health education standards representation matters from a very young age i knew that i was very different from my peers it didn't become a huge issue until elementary school when gender roles started to be enforced it wasn't until middle school that the pressure to conform to one gender was just too strong i was sick of being teased and bullied in high school i had long locks of curly hair and wore makeup none of this ever felt right to me but i didn't see any other option until college i
200remember my first class that spoke on gender binary and how gender roles and norms can be completely arbitrary i was finally beginning to feel validated for all the feelings that i felt when i felt like an outcast your mission states that education equity is defined by providing each student meaningful access to the educational resources they need at the right moment at the right level and with the right intensity my college education was the first time i felt represented in an educational setting imagine if only that affirmative inclusive and validating education would have started in elementary school imagine if my peers also had access to that edu those educational resources so they could understand and support me my peers didn't want to treat me differently students should not have to wait until college or motive out
201of the state to have an affirming and inclusive education quite frankly some kids don't make it that far because they decide that existing in a world that does not value who they are as human beings is just too great a burden to bear i'm speaking today as a non-binary human for are those kiddos that cannot speak for themselves because representation matters your leadership is needed now more than ever i urge you to please pass health education standards that create inclusive school environments because representation matters thank you thank you vale the next group uh jenny bonta jd bata tom martin i'm just taking those for now jenny welcome jenny thank you my name is jenny bonta professionally i'm an advocate for victims of sexual and domestic violence i could sit here for my allotted time and
202try to explain to you the importance of approving comprehensive state health standards and how much those changes would impact preventing sexual assault dating violence and trafficking for youth in our state i could elaborate on how those proposed health standards could shift and improve sexual social and emotional health and academic outcomes for our youth and in turn our communities and state but today i come to you as a mom my two children are enrolled in north public schools neither of my children fit the mold of what our society says is normal and the current nebraska public school environment has not always been easy or affirming for either of my children my son was recently diagnosed with autism he loves with his whole heart and thinks kindness will change the world he loves disney princesses and all
203things that sparkle i have to constantly reaffirm him for his likes his identity and his joy my daughter has been ridiculed with homophobic slurs and asked daily to affirm her gender by peers and teachers since seventh grade she has had to face discrimination from teachers and fellow students because of her gender identity and sexual orientation while her strength is usually unwavering i know there are only so many times i as a mom can say you are loved you are perfect and you deserve to live your truth currently both of my children spend a good part of their day in an environment that can quickly dismantle and embrace any self-value they have developed the burden of creating a firming environment falls on the children and others who are forgotten and mentioned in current teachings they have
204to advocate for themselves daily for others to understand understand their value the mere fact that i'm before you all today asking to please not exclude my children from the educational standards and for your help in creating affirming positive safety for them thank you jenny thank you jd fonte hi my name is jaylee bonta i'm a senior at north high school currently the sex education offered is different throughout the country and some places don't even have much of anything these gaps are leaving young americans uninformed about basic anatomy health healthy relationship skills and safer sex practices on top of this anatomy on top of this lgbtq plus youth face their own challenges sex education materials often assume students are heterosexual or cisgendered this not only prevents lgbtq plus students from learning the information and skills they
205need to stay healthy it also contributes to the climate of exclusion in schools where lgbtq plus students are already frequent targets of bullying and discrimination as a lgbtq plus student i have first-hand experience of this discrimination i've been misgendered called homophobic slurs and even asked if i'm a boy or a girl it's tough in this world especially if you don't fit the norm prop without proper sex education my peers and i are learning what we should learn from school from tv movies social media and even having to look stuff up on the internet and we all know where that can leave lead with an all-in-exclusive sex education program students will get the correct information they need to succeed in healthy life and it would help lgbtq plus students feel more welcome in the school environment
206along with it we will help prevent dating violence help us develop healthy relationships reduce teen pregnancy and stis and stds it's up to the teachers parents and administration and you to ensure that the change in health standards and make sure youth get the education we deserve and help us make better choices i know many parents and teachers may not be happy with these changes but it is very much needed for all of us students thank you thank you jd tom martin thank you my name is dr tom martin i'm a professor of philosophy in my 35th year at the university of nebraska kearney what we have before us is not as a curriculum that is not a health curriculum it is a current sexual ideology it is marxist and its very basis it denies any
207reality of inherent human nature and by that i mean man is made in the image of god male and female he is made it quickly focuses upon gender identity a social construct created by social scientists one does not do some research in 1960 robert stroller an american psychiatrist and psychoanalyst borrowed the term gender from john money a psychologist and sexologist from new zealand who introduced the term gender identity and gender role into theories regarding the influence of social constructs on gender the theory of gender identity when taught as health knowledge can easily be summarized on teen set talk a website for children gender isn't about somebody's anatomy it's about who they know themselves to be there are different gender identities including male female transgender gender neutral gender binary agender pan gender all or none of
208these a combination of none we are treating our children as though they are a playstation and they're going to use their sexual orientation and emotional feelings for what we feel is good is their identity they will be made in their own image and that is what we're putting forth in order to have health standards it is necessary to follow the science in the proposed health education program the physical reality is that every cell in the human body holds either x or xx pair of sex chromosomes the genetic markers for males and females human sexual is binary to ensure the reproduction of our species there is no third sex and procreation involves the production of living souls made in the image of god and this has all been pushed aside and this is marxism a complete
209takeover from the top down on how we are supposed to form our children [Applause] we would gladly forgive you if you'd be so welcome kathy when's the timer start okay i'm here today to specifically rebut some of the statements made and the points of clarification issued on may 7 2021 the first is that the draft was not written by activists and the list of educators participating has been made available through my research the list of educators was not made public until after the draft was written and published even though it was requested prior to that i know this through personal experience as well as from those individuals in the legislature and other departments who might have contacted you also failed to represent that the educators who wrote the first draft had to undergo equity training
210prior to the draft much of that presentation was credited to the great lakes equity center while much of that training had solid components a little dive into the great lakes website provides resources that offer a very unique i dot ideology including teaching lgbtq themed literature in english language classrooms followed by their rainbow book list ally week educator guide affirming gender in elementary school many of these were provided in cooperation with glsen all these resources seek to alter the truth about the human person secondly you quite carefully crafted the statement to not include the advisement you received by experts activists like liam hurton rodriguez abby swatsworth about nebraska lisa schultz of the women's fund of mayor of omaha a board member of friends for planned parenthood and an asec member just who were the advisors that
211have basic common sense on the flat out dignity of simply belonging to the human race and who know that parents are the first and most important educators of their children on their self-worth and their sexual education when appropriate and guided by human nature and right reason who scientifically know that boys and girls are genetically made as such i have personally called some of the members on the advisory team to ask what input they gave to my surprise some of them gave none perhaps the list should include only those who did give out input thank you thank you kathy amy amy lowe stephen fraizel beth vivelecka tim peterson welcome amy thank you i am a mother of seven an educator and a disappointed nebraskan i am refuting the points of clarification from may 7 2021. specifically
212planned parenthood and black lives matter are not funding or helping to write the standards those groups may not be directly putting pen to paper but they most definitely have influenced the draft the nde and the women's fund of omaha are listed as wise legacy partners a direct quote from the nde's website states wise funds supported continuation of a long history of providing technical assistance training and resources to school districts statewide who seek assistance in implementing sexual health education initiatives wise also funds is funded by the grow foundation which helps to fund planned parenthood two of the growth foundation's focuses include sex based education and reproductive justice they partner with organizations to increase districts capacity to deliver sex education and they the funding they fund work that recognizes the root causes of reproductive inequalities and seek
213social change particularly organizations led by women of color and or queer and trans people of color the guiding document for the human growth and development portions of the health standards is the national sex education standards edition 2 which includes two contributors who are directly affiliated with planned parenthood sonia norsworthy and elise hermann more than half of the other contributors have ties to gender issues that document published by fawz is endorsed by gender spectrum glsen race forward racial equality tools pflag and others wording on many of the standards are directly cut and pasted from the guiding document into the draft black lives matter and planned parenthood may not have put money directly in your bank account but they most certainly have influenced the outcome of the draft this point of clarification is false and this only
214makes me wonder if there is even more involvement than is at first a parent thank you thank you evie stephen welcome stephen thank you my name is stephen frizzell i'm here to refute the points of clarification from may 7th 2021 i address that the proposed draft is not a mandate from the federal government and it is not part of a worldwide plan to sexualize children i would like to believe that statement could be reassuring however it is not if it is not a mandate then why are we even here addressing sex education why have this process at all it was mentioned earlier that the draft was largely influenced by an input from wise are you aware that only two state departments of education are included in their legacy partnerships only nebraska and oregon is that
215the company we wish to keep the acronym wise says so much working to institutionalize sex education that certainly sounds like a broad sweep to me in addition the national sex education standards edition 2 from the fawz group is a collaboration of advocates for youth answer and seekers the mission of cecus is to promote the institutionalization of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools simply by going to their website you will see the following advancing sex ed first social change since 1964. within the clicks of the website you will see that cecas is also deeply devoted to developing legislation on both the federal and state level don't get me started on the board of directors for seekers i'm offering you a list of many of the board in their bios and but give up when i saw
216the board member from black and pink of omaha posting information on international sex workers day no bad horrors just bad laws finally from sikas i quote sikhis works to create a world that ensures social justice and reproductive light rights tell me how you can honestly state this draft is not part of a larger nationwide and yes a worldwide plan thank you thank you that welcome beth thank you um i am a parent uh of 11 a grandmother of 27 and an educator i am here to further rebut one of the points of clarification issued on may 7 2021 i will address the point stating quote the state board of education is not approving a sexual education curriculum textbooks or instructional materials this includes the book it's perfectly normal this book is not being approved nor
217considered as a valid resource by the state board of education or the nebraska department of education unquote i am pleased to learn that it's perfectly normal will not be gathering an endorsement from you of course since your goal is to have local boards decide on how to implement the standards this might seem to get you off the hook if the groups that assisted in writing the national sex education standards which are readily verbatim in the nda draft are providing our providing curriculum and instructional manuals we are going down a very nasty pornographic filled path for our children the only curriculum and materials that could be plugged into the draft standards are inappropriate groups like anser sikas and advocates for youth all call their work sex education and all provided input into the national standards one
218of the collaborators answer has the mission to provide quote to provide and promote unfettered access to comprehensive sexuality sexuality education cse for young people and the adults who teach them the group answer quote began using the power of peer-to-peer communication in the publication of its award-winning teen written sex etc magazine and website which allows teens to directly access accurate and developmentally appropriate sexuality information unquote let me tell you the content real life videos as well as cartoons are not pg-rated one of answer's core initiatives is to quote grow and evolve its signature teen written publication sex etc to ensure its continued relevance and viability by incorporating video content and developing an innovative new curriculum that centers the teen's staff writing time thank you beth that's teenagers writing curriculum tim peterson welcome tim thank you thank
219you for uh allowing me to speak i'm tim peterson i'm a licensed mental health practitioner and a pastor my son when he was 18 was stranded coming home from college he needed a hotel room because he was 20 not 21 he could not sign for a room because the world of commerce learned from education teaching that a young people's brains are not fully developed until sometime in their twenties they have the capacity to make decisions such as contracts and decisions impacting their future the nde is willing to violate these accepted standards of neurological development in promoting k through sixth graders to make lifelong life-altering decisions regarding regarding sexual orientation and preferences i've been a mental health provider since nineteen ninety three i have worked with hundreds of sexually traumatized children a report of child abuse
220is made every ten seconds according to the department of justice one in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually assaulted by the time they reach 18. the teaching of sexual explicit material proposed by the nde will re-traumatize many of these children with sexual abuse history there has been nothing spoken of from the nde regarding the negative effect of this type of explicit teaching to children who have been been abused and nothing spoken of how they suggest schools are to address the damage caused by explicit sexual education i'm asking you as a board to commit to the integrity to own and be accountable to the basic neurological development of children and to honor and protect the abused and wounded children that attend our schools every day thank you thank you thank you tim
221next group alyssa crufffield jonathan hastings ryan bruna jason martinez marge kirschner gerald kirschner kelly brady and amanda risting oh i'm sorry alyssa welcome melissa hi my name is elisa crifield i'm a parent a board member of a local private school here at faith christian school and a college educator and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak and i don't have a whole lot of extra to add to the argument or anything i'm strongly opposed to these health standards um i just want to say also for those of that have come to speak in opposition i know i respect your voice i i it hurts me that your children have been bullied and that is not right and i do hope that we can continue to address those types of issues of treating everyone
222with respect and not bullying anybody right and so we are doing those kinds of campaigns and i i appreciate that um i do want to say you know that even though life is confusing you know and and we're you know talking about these issues that they should be addressed at home um my cousin her daughter is what might you would say a tomboy and you know she just living in the the culture that we're living in she's confused and she said you know i like boy things does that mean i'm a boy you know i should be a boy you know and these things are private and they should be addressed at home um and also so i don't have much else to say but i do have to say for those of you here
223if you are looking for an alternative to these health standards we do have an excellent education at faith christian school and we do have financial grants based on financial need so that is an alternative option to this to these health standards and if you're interested go to www.fcs.carney or fcscarney.org thank you so much thank you alisa jonathan hastings jonathan hastings obviously obviously i'm not jonathan but he had to leave so i'm filling in for him i'm barbara rosenthal i'm a nurse i'm a mother of two grandmother of four and uh concerned um the purpose of the lower education is to teach kids how to be functioning adults by math reading science and grammar schools should be able to teach only the students about objective truths not subjective i have recently been to a quite a
224few meetings about discipleship biblical citizenship and it's been very enlightening of our what our founding fathers have put forth and it's um not exactly what what we are doing as a country today um our founding fathers you may be familiar with this um we're very clear that our country will not survive under the moral country unless it's a moral country to survive because without being moral you don't you don't these laws don't mean anything and uh in exodus there are four things that we're supposed to lick elect our officials god fearing honest able-bodied not taken to drives or to bribes or covetousness and we have to be sure and include those four things god-fearing honest of truth able-bodied and not taken to bribes just look at our leaders is that what it is i don't
225know about this particular group of bodies that we're in front of but our cu our legislation our congress are they fitting those four from exodus and it's exodus 18 19 to 21 if you want to look it up but anyway i think we need to start from the beginning and that way it would help us get on the right direction thank you very much thank you brian bruna welcome ryan thank you borden good morning my name is ryan bruno and i'm a soon to be father in preparation and standing before you today i have tried to do reflection in consideration for both sides of this issue regarding these proposals particularly the standards teaching gender fluidity and all the proposed gender identities and my heart began to break i began to see the deep pain and
226hurt in the eyes of individuals that feel trapped inside their own body or the boy who has been ruthlessly made fun of because of his homosexual attraction and that is a living hell i can now see why many individuals would like to see these standards passed they don't want to feel the pain anymore that they have felt for so long and while there isn't an easy answer i don't believe the particular standards teaching gender fluidity sexual orientation and all the different gender identities is the answer when i was a young boy i was exposed to pornography at a very early age and because of that out of sexual curiosity i had a sexual encounter with another boy and had i been taught these different concepts when i was in elementary i think it could have
227really set me on a um different trajectory that i think would have really been harmful for me and i'm a happy heterosexual married man with a soon-to-be child on the way there was a study done in sweden conducted over 30 years in sweden is very supportive of the transgendered and they the study concluded with this and i handed you that study this study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality death from cardiovascular disease suicide and suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalizations and sex reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population this highlights that post-surgical transsexuals are a risk group that needs long-term psych psychiatric and somatic follow-up the answer is real true loving biblical love first corinthians 13 4 5 says this love is patient love is kind it does not envy it does not
228boast it is not proud and it does not dishonor others and we must not dishonor those that think or believe differently than that ryan jason jason martinez welcome jason thank you good afternoon hungry board so um at the last meeting i heard multiple points of clarification as a group you challenge that cse and crt are not in the standards mr stevens even wished that this letter was on everybody's seat we ought to have something in every daily and weekly paper that clarifies some of this while i have seen nothing in the last month other than a copied and pasted email i see your leadership as inept and derelict at the last meeting opponents were often asked for points of clarification in a dismissive manner to validate their statements in contrast proponents were often coddled by
229miss neary i hope that you're seeing us miss code james ranted to basically tell the public that we were misinformed because we may have received information from church or other organizations as if the ndes of the people cannot do our own research and draw conclusions from sources outside the e and d e or approved organizations such as cecus perhaps rather than pondering if the public should as you said get their information by flying a plane from across the sky you should ask if the school boards are supposed to drop their curriculum from thin air point of clarification if anybody in this room thinks that you're at the holiday inn you're all lost and confused because you know what we're actually at interstate subdivision ky lot e two nine partial seven thousand the public will not
230be fooled board members and commissioner although you can continue to try and hide the elephant in the room this is crt and we are at the holiday inn lastly miss morrison in an interest of transparency to have to feel like we were included this would be a very wise approach going forward the executives in this room us the voters the people demand that you hear our message time we are your boss time jason thank you marge kirschner welcome marge thank you good afternoon my name is marge kirschner i'm from minden first i want to thank governor ricketts for bringing the proposed comprehensive sexuality education curriculum to our attention it has opened the door to the workings of this board and the plans its members have for the future of our schools i stand opposed now
231to all drafts of this proposed curriculum the members the members of this board are elected officials who appear to be no longer interested in serving the majority of their constituents the goals and policies that the commissioner the board members and their associates are promoting are not in alignment with the moral values of this state and in fact are in direct opposition and what most disturbs me is that you folks seem to be making these policies with impunity previously we have looked to this board for leadership with the proposal of the cse curriculum and the inclusion of critical theory ideology stated in your goals and policies we have witnessed a break in the pattern of your decision making we no longer find your decisions trustworthy and i would add that as you work on more curriculum
232in a broader spectrum we are going to be watching and we are going to be here i encourage each one of you to reflect on both the spoken and the written comments from your constituents i encourage you to begin making decisions consistent with the conservative culture of this state in order to achieve continued educational success i thank you thank you marge carol daryl welcome carol thank you uh i oppose this draft version of your proposed health standards you may may remember last month i did a brief flyover of critical theory it exists to divide us as either oppressors or oppressed it entered america and your minds through our university system i remember the principles being pushed on me as a student in education classes in the 70s you may not all be conversant with critical
233theory but as a professional educator you have been stealthily indoctrinated with its nefarious precepts the very appearance of the word equity in your standards betrays that foundation this board is proposing content standards that are far from the values of the majority of nebraskans critical theory actually predates marks and angles it is spawned by the spirit of the angel of life another name for satan satan has been working this planet america since before its inception 19 15 16 19 remember what happened in 1620 uh he is beautiful brilliant and patient there are only two teams you can be on his team or you can be on god's team this board is a constitutional board according to the constitution you are impotent without the unicam because your duties and powers are prescribed by the legislature therefore my
234prayer today is that the governor of our great state will call the unicam into an emergency session for the purpose of suspending this board's duties and powers until the state legal authorities can conduct an in-depth investigation on how and why this board has undertaken to implement standards which have twice been rejected by the unicam and therefore the people of this great state this i ask in the almighty name of jesus christ thank you kelly brady kelly brady welcome kelly this is amanda do you say amanda kelly welcome kelly thank you kelly professional parent grandparent i don't have a degree but i am smart i found a coincidence why is this being proposed now i can tell you biden has earmarked billions of taxpayer dollars for schools that adopt cse and crt why can any of
235you answer why why do you want this in our schools it's not good for our kids it's not science it's absence of science science is not fluidity gender is not fluidity math is not fluid we have right answers and we have wrong answers there is a letter here from the indiana attorney general the proposed propriet priorities are thinly veiled attempt to bring our state classrooms to the deeply flawed and controversial teachings of critical race theory in 1619 i find it very disrupting that i saw you commissioner promoting it and saying we should teach this our children it's been rebunked it's been refuted it's not fact it's storytelling do we want to teach our children truth or ideals i know what i want i want the best for our kids we deserve it they deserve it
236do better make nebraska important for our kids to be proud of thank you thank you kelly amanda welcome amanda thank you i am amanda ristein from gothenburg nebraska my husband and i are raising our two boys east of gothenburg on our family farm i published a letter to the editor in our local newspapers reviewing district 7 representatives letter stating his observations from the may 7th state board meeting myself and others would like to share that letter with you today i am writing in regards to the state board of education publicly stating that cse is not in the proposed health standards first cecus invented cse on ceca's website you will find their tagline is sex ed for social change and a publication called national sex education standards core content national sex education standards were one of
237the national resources used to create draft one of the proposed health standards if you don't believe it you can find it on nde website how do we know the proposed nebraska health standards contain cse i'll give you a couple examples and if you need more let me know national sex education standard define gender gender identity and gender role stereotypes propose nebraska health standard defined gender gender identity and gender role stereotypes national sex education standard differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity propose nebraska health standard differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity word for word nebraska's standards mimic the national sex education standards which by definition is csc take the time and do the research before falsely educating our community thank you for your time thank you amanda the last three the last three speakers carmen
238keith diane kennen and rebecca gronwald carmen welcome thank you i'm carmen keith from gothenburg nebraska i'm going to continue to read the letter that was published in response to district 7 representative observations from the may 7th state board meeting i've been asked by several individuals why do you want all the state standards scrapped there is quote good stuff unquote in the standards first i agree there's good information included in the health standards i believe most of the good stuff is already being taught in our school system we have a school system that takes the time to see what our students need and is usually steps ahead of other districts gothenburg public schools recently had strategic planning committees with one focusing on social slash emotional well-being we don't need the state or government telling us what
239to teach secondly activists for cse have twice tried to pass bills in the unicameral in 2011 lb 192 introduced by senator brenda council sought to require cse in nebraska in the press release was the quote planned parenthood of the heartland officials support 192 end quote in 2013 lb 619 introduced by senator ken haar also sought to require cse in nebraska senator harr's wife was the director of the regional planned parenthood organization at the time both of these efforts were unsuccessful therefore i'm saying scrap the standards our nebraska state board education acted like sneaky snakes and are trying to implement these standards behind the scene we've all seen it happen right before our eyes they create standards and slowly add to them beyond behind parents backs the damage is done before parents realize what is going
240on thank you for your time thank you carmen diane welcome diane thank you very much first of all i would like to say that i'm greatly saddened that i am standing here today i'm sorry that society has degenerated to an all-time low and i do i am very sorry for people who are struggling with their identity but i have to agree with what has been said before god has made us male and female i don't think he has tried to trick us in any way if you're checked you're either an xx or an xy there's nothing else out there and so like i said i am sorry for anybody that is struggling i do feel like by implementing this that we are going to create a lot of confusion um i have spent over 50
241plus years as a licensed medical professional part of that time has been in school nursing i have seen things come and go i have seen problems with introducing things to to children who are not ready for them i do i think that lumping people and children together as all being developmentally ready is wrong um i also would like to end of amanda's letter and i quote from her letter we have been told that these standards were written by nebraska educators such as teachers school nurses administrators esu leaders that definitely give us the warm fuzzy feeling on the nebraska department of education website they have provided subject matter experts i have again done my research and find several things interesting two of the experts have cse as part of their credentials that yes that means comprehensive
242sexuality education experts well they didn't hide this per se it just wasn't brought to our attention and they continue to say cse is not part of the health standards all of the experts they have listed have roles that they play exam example several of them work for nebraska d h h s u n l n d e and physicians etc so i would like to say that there will be a time and i am sure that every knee will bow and we need to consider what we are teaching our children and maybe uh their in our influence on them uh please read matthew 8 time thank you [Applause] rebecca welcome rebecca my name is rebecca gronwald mama 4 and gymnastics coach remote learning in spring 2020 opened my eyes to how complacent i had become
243in the education of my children we chose to homeschool this year while working to take a more active role in the education offered to our kids as we've researched and followed this health standards issue i have several concerns many of which have been voiced already today on may 7 2021 as concerned citizens gathered in this room to express their thoughts surrounding the proposed health education standards this body had already begun a counterintelligence mission in the form of a two-page statement entitled points of clarification nebraska health education standards draft one the issuance of that document and the timing of its creation are highly irregular and very concerning in a free and democratic nation the ability of the public to comment upon matters of public concern addressed by this body is enshrined in both statute and administrative
244regulation this is an important step of the process that is meant to ensure the board examines all angles of an issue before establishing policy related to the same it is even more vital for this board to give due attention to concerns of stakeholders when considering any changes resulting in radical changes in philosophy these proposed health standards in particular certainly fit the bill as a philosophical shift a fact which cannot be denied by anyone in this room issues of sexuality and the proper role of sex education are often controversial and predictably lead to conflict on both interpersonal and political basis which we have seen today in the current socio-political climate those standing in opposition to any idea particularly with regard to sexuality are regularly shamed bullied and cancelled by their none for their non-conformance even in
245face of likely backlash in this tens environment dozens of individuals have reached out to this board with similar concerns related to the genesis and content of these proposed standards unfortunately it felt as if instead of listening to what was being said the board was engaging in a smear campaign to discredit the opposition as a mom that is striving to return her kids to public school to their friends to their teachers that love them well um it is discouraging for me as a mom to feel that i may come to that position where i have to tell my baby girls that they are going to stay home with their mom and that loves them so much because i have lost the faith that i have in their educators to look out for what is best for
246them thank you for your time thank you rebecca that concludes public comment agenda item 2.3 written public comment we have written public comments submitted from several members of the public the written public comments are linked in two documents in the spark data systems these written comments have been made available to the board members prior to this meeting agenda item 2.4 the board will now take a break for lunch the board of education is back to finish the rest of our business meeting today we are on agenda item three the commissioner's report commissioner you have 3.1 through 3.4 yeah and thank you so first item is just uh our consent agenda process tonight um i don't believe we have any items have been requested to be removed from consent agenda so we'll proceed with that um
247uh i have the report on rule so within within your uh your materials is the report on rules i'll just quick quickly go through it we have a hearing draft approved for uh rule 24 and in in fact they well i might be right i think we've got hearings scheduled for also um potentially depending on your action today on rule rule one uh and then also my eyes are not as good as they once were uh rule 28 and then uh again rule 24 coming up so so that's what i have on the report on rules and again that's in your materials uh any uh any report i don't think there's any report from dr4 so i think we can bypass that one and then statewide assessment which i do think we have a report
248so i am counting on technology and then uh yeah jeremy henniger will join for that jeremy are you able to share your your slides that you wanted to share i am can you see them i believe so i guess behind us we can see him yep okay very good so uh we're here with you today um actually first i want to take just a moment to personally thank educators from across the state for all their work and service this past year also thank you to the nebraska department of education and all the staff that works there and thanks to the statewide board of education and all the work that you do we you are appreciated um assessment so today we have three action items before you um about the new contracts for the next year
249for our assessment vendors so we're asking that the board authorized the commissioner to contract for summative assessment activities from act drc data recognition corporation and nwa we provided a high level summary of the deliverables of each of those contracts and that is in your board materials today in addition we wanted to give a brief update about the statewide assessment window from this last spring and uh update on our uh timeline for our ins gas growth or our um uh our uh through your adaptive um excuse me our three-year adaptive testing model that we are in the middle of transitioning to um so for spring 21 we really did have a successful administration of all of our statewide assessments in scat summative inscass act and inscas alternate when possible those assessments were shortened and added additional
250flexibility for districts and schools to be able to test students during the pandemic one particular note in addition to all of the other strategies that we used we also provided a covet waiver so students could only test in person for a number of reasons we did look at remote testing but there are plenty of uh issues around that in that that possibility um but but students can only test in person this year so districts are required to either have a score or a not tested code for each student in each uh assigned area and so new this year hopefully just this year we had a covid waiver for students if their families had a fear of covid possibility of coming in contact with kovid and did not want to bring their students in the districts
251were able to mark a coveted waiver and we are able to track that information as we go forward so we know we had additional uh students that did not participate in this year um typically nebraska tests about 99 percent of their students only a few students each year are not tested for for whatever the reason may be but but um so they're counted as non-participants um this year we know that that percentage because of the covid and the coveted waiver is going to be between a half a percentage and a full percentage um so still really good we we're going to have most of our students tested um for in scans general and in alternate we know that that's about 8 000 students that were will be not tested in that category of covid waiver
252um additionally um reporting this year uh we've decided that we're going to put together a special report that report is going to be key in offering context for anybody that wants to look at the data so the data from this year really should not be compared to last year or or previous years i should say or future years for a number of reasons and if you do any comparison you need to have that additional context so this special report um will be linked to the nep but not on the nap directly the the nebraska educational profile this information will offer a great deal of context starting all the way last spring in 2020 of march and kind of documenting what happened with schools and being released in the cancellation of those assessments in spring 2020
253um and we'll go through uh the hybrid learning and all the learning uh systems that happen during this year um also document the shortened tests and all the accommodations that we did to try to get as many students tested this year as we did um and so that will provide important context before people get into and dig into or analyze that data going forward additionally that that site will host our research studies we were partnering with a number of uh entities to do research around covet impacts and all of those research studies when completed will be published along on this special report page so as we go forward um it'll be a one-stop place for everybody to look into data that's related to covid and and try to unders to try to better understand all
254of the pieces around that um please know that we're still in the cleanup phase we we have lots of data records that we are going through and trying to clean up to get the most accurate data that we can it is a a little bit messy process at times but we we try our hardest to make sure we have clean data when it comes time for reporting um and so just know that anything that i'm sharing with you today are estimates and they are not final so i may say something today and later on we may find out that that number is a little bit different than what i think it is today as we continue to go through the the the numbers and and the data cleanup processes so we know right now that
255approximately 90 percent of students across the state in the third year cohort of high school that take the act or are supposed to take the act did in fact participate in that assessment this year um that covid waiver was an option um to put for a not tested code we haven't seen all of that information yet but we do know that we had test results for over 90 percent of the students in that third year cohort so most of our students in the state were able to take the test and we'll have those results um sent to their homes directly from act and will be a part of the reporting as we move forward and typically that number is about 99 of the students and so there is gonna there is a a big impact
256there um one thing that i'll say about covet waivers and the impact in general of what of the students not tested is even though we know that it's a small percentage right so between one and 0.5 and 1 or maybe higher here for a ct is that number is not equally distributed across the the state right so one district might only have one percent of students that had coveted waivers but another district in another school might have a much higher percentage so even though the overall number is fairly low it may impact certain districts and certain schools to a greater extent and it also may impact certain grade levels or certain content areas as well as we move forward in scat general in grades three through eight we know with that we had over three
257hundred thousand successful tests administered for english language arts and mathematics and our science field test this year if you remember uh last year we had to cancel the science field test so we weren't able to get that done so it pushed pushed back the delay it delayed the implementation of the operational test by an additional year so we were able to do the field test this year and operational tests for science will begin um in spring of 22. um our enz general participation we have more complete data on this that we're able to look at right now um so participate participation estimates are are thought to be above 95 percent like i said nebraska typically tests about 99 of our students in our public schools um we're still we're likely to hit 95 percent or
258or higher um for for the the in scass general three through eight um but we don't have the complete data yet so we'll look forward to presenting that information on on that special report in the future uh when we have the the concrete numbers for that um what we can tell you is that that 95 percent is going to be better than most states in in in the united states um in some places those numbers are going to be much lower um including a couple of spots with that it might be zero percent participated so um we feel good about uh how we uh went about doing our testing this year and and uh the cooperation of all the districts and schools as we work for to try to test one hundred percent of our
259students still in this year um so in in gas growth transition so in the uh in october of 2019 we announced that we were moving to a new assessment model um we're uh innovating uh in in this space and and kind of leading us hopefully the nation and in this innovation process so this new model this through your adaptive um assessment model um that we announced at the time we've had some delays in that implementation because of the the pandemic obviously and so i have just i'm gonna do a brief bit about that that transition again just to catch everybody up again and then kind of update that timeline um so as i said in scass growth is what we're naming this it reflects an innovative assessment that really prioritizes teachers and students and the
260information that they need the instructional information that they need um and and kind of it actually goes towards interim testing in that that information coming back almost immediately for teachers and for students to continue to adapt learning as they go um instead of focusing only on the summative piece at the end of the year it still does that summit of peace for accountability purposes for statute requirements but it focuses on that instructional piece first it is a hybrid of our current enscass summative test and map growth map growth is a widely used interim assessment we pay for that um for some actually for all of our districts in grades three through eight prior to that contract 86 percent of our districts were using map growth and currently over 100 uh actually not over 100 you
261can't do that i should know that as a you know a statistician and stuff um but 100 of our districts are actually using map growth right now so it takes those two tests and creates a hybrid of those two um moving forward um it really does create a more balanced assessment system one that that works towards multiple purposes and will ultimately um bring about less testing in the spring so right now um our sp our many of our students in grades three through eight are doing uh our summative test our in scan summative but they're also doing map growth in the future it will do both things at the same time and so therefore we'll have less testing for those students um this is the the updated timeline this year we did the shortened test
262and that was help help us to do research that we needed to move forward with this design you'll see next year is as a preliminary transition we are going to have a pilot in the winter and then spring assessment once again and then in 2223 we'll have a fully operational test of this through your system the nscas growth system um also in this graphic you can see the number of studies that we have to do to make this transition so as we make this transition each of those research studies needs to be successful in the information that they give us so that we can continue to move forward as we blend those two tests and make that a unique system for nebraska for nebraska students and nebraska educators um so we just wanted you to
263get an updated timeline there um hopefully we'll have a chance to share with you more about ncas growth um as we we move forward there we are getting ready for the distribution of other communication resources probably around administrator days later this summer so um that's all i have for you today thank you for your time jeremy and i just appreciate the work that our assessment office has done this year it's actually fairly remarkable to think um really across the country that folks kind of look at nebraska relative to the model that we had around assessment so good work jeremy and team and and all the schools and everyone involved it's been quite a year and uh quite a successful year honestly and thanks thanks for your hard work patty um just a question do we
264have any idea of approximately when the assessment special report will be published uh i we don't know for sure we we are working on the timeline for that um usually it's around august that that would be published and so um as always we work to get that information up as soon as possible um but there's a lot of pieces especially with three assessment vendors and the three assessments to try to get that information ready for publication oftentimes our districts have preliminary data well before that public release but there's a lot of quality assurances that we go through to get that as soon as we have that date we'll make sure that the board has that and that districts have that information thank you lisa um jeremy just a couple quick questions how many schools are
265going to be a part of that pilot and i'm assuming they both are rural and urban is that correct absolutely we're still actually working on the participation uh rules around the the winter pilot um what we know is that we need a certain amount of data to inform our processes um we're working with districts right now to try to determine the best participation method um so it could be we haven't finalized any of it is what i should say um just because i don't want to confuse things but we are working with an advisory committee to try to figure out how to impact instruction time the least and but still get the data we need to move forward but it definitely will be a representative sample um otherwise the data isn't what we needed so
266it should represent um all students in in all kinds of demographic ways but also in urban and rural as well so we'll definitely make sure that that that whatever sample is needed is representative of the state um to make sure we have good data to inform our processes thank you any other questions from board members seeing yeah thanks again jeremy and that concludes my report agenda item 4 special presentations and discussions and we have none this month agenda item 5 the president's report and that would be me i just want to share a few things with you our national association that we belong to the national association of state boards of education their annual meeting that's taking place in october it has yet to be announced if it will be held in person or virtually
267but i'll let you know as soon as i hear anything um and nasby has in in their annual meeting they give out several award recognitions and last year we submitted two of them and um one was for dr rachel wise but she was not eligible last year for it so uh i actually um had ryan who did all the work for us as a board uh he put together uh the the recognition pieces the the nomination forms uh and yes dr rachel wise we nominated as for the distinguished service award and we nominated senator patty pansing brooks for the policy leader of the year award for all that she has done for education and students across the state in the legislature so i look forward to hopefully one or both of these being winners and
268i just want to thank ryan again for all of his work and putting all that information together and it's this thick with pages and i will forward to you the nomination form so that you can see what all was submitted i think it's really important for you to read what what we've sent in nde is in the process of revising our essa plan under the direction of lane carr on staff and thank you lane for doing all this work but it's taking lane is taking charge of building broad coalitions of support around our aquest system of classification and designation and he's putting together a group of stakeholders and he asked me to have a board member be representative on this advisory group and i have asked lisa fricke to be our representative and i know
269that she will represent us well and i was pleased that she said yes to this so thank you lisa we look forward to great things in your group and the last thing is well before i do this last piece i just want to thank again the staff for all their work and having this meeting held out here it takes a lot of work it takes a village to get this put together and uh so thank you thank you all for having to come out early and put this and make sure it went over well transition in thinking about our work as a board i've come to realize we are in a major time of transition for our board but not just for our board but for the whole department of education and i'm often reminded
270that transition if it isn't painful then we aren't making progress and commissioner i want you to know that with the move to the new building site it's been painful at times and we're going to get there but you're making progress and we're seeing signs of being able to come out of the pandemic it's been a huge transition for everyone involved in the state and the nation and the world but for our schools there's been chaos and dysfunction in trying to get things up and going so that our students have equity and access to all the resources that they need and it's not been easy but i continue to be so impressed that i believe it was all but one school district started school on day one in person they might have had hybrid models as
271well but most of our school districts were in person from day one until the very last day of school i believe we are a forerunner in the nation on that and i know the commissioner shared with me that other states have asked how did you do it well it's that grit and determination and great teachers and administrators so there's been that transition and um we're dealing with the state health proposed standards that we've never had before we are now in the review of the english language arts standards we are in the deep dive of the changes in accreditation approval and accountability folks this is a lot of change transition is all about change but we want that change to be positive and good and i know that each of you your plates have been just
272as full as mine in the last two or three months with our work and have put in countless hours to ensure that we have quality education and equity again for our students for all students transitions in life and work can offer opportunities for discovery and for this reason and more it is so important that we as a state board of education pull together and stay unified to always keep our students best interest at heart so i leave you with that but thank you for everything that you have done agenda item six consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda i move to approve the consent agenda madam president okay motion was made by patsy is there a second oh second motion made by patsy and seconded by patty per board policy there
273is no discussion on the motion to approve the consent agenda andrea please call the roll morrison yes google's yes code john's yes freaky yes nichols yes stevens yes niri tim six yes to absent motion passes thank you andrea agenda item standing committee reports agenda item 7.1 policy committee patty you're going to report for pat tim i am thank you madam chairman the committee continues discussion of the reorganization of the state board policy reference manual state board bylaw b12 which is policy development state board bylaw b10 hearing officers state board bylaw b8 parliamentary procedure and rules of order and state board bylaw b15 board minutes at this time the policy committee will be scheduling subsequent meetings meeting or meetings we're not sure yet which before the august state board meeting business meeting to discuss the restructuring
274of the policy reference manual and to prepare bylaws b10 b8 and b15 for action items at the august state board meeting that concludes the policy committee report thank you patty board members is there any discussion on item 7.1 bylaw b12 policy development seeing none board members is there any discussion on item 7.1 point b uh state board bylaw b10 hearing officers seeing none is there any discussion on item 7.1 c by law b8 parliamentary procedures rules of order seeing none board members is there any discussion on item 7.1 e board bylaw 15 board minutes seeing none that concludes all of that thank you patty agenda item 7.2 the legislative committee robin would you provide a report from the legislative committee meeting yes thank you madam chair uh before i get into to my report i
275think it's important that i uh uh say to the policy committee thank you that's one area that i am i struggle with in in trying to get my mind excited about re looking at policies so uh i just want to thank that committee for all their work and since i'm thanking people uh talking about the legislative committee obviously i'm always excited about uh my committee and and the thursday morning meetings uh that we had via zoom led of course by dr halstead and so i also want to thank him for all the work that he does not the least of which a couple of those reports that you see on your uh in spark on the legislative committee 7.2 uh are well actually all three of them are led by him and two of those
276three he stayed up he told me late last night in order to get those completed for our preview today just some very quick overview especially of the priorities that we had for our legislate our legislative bills i listened to the to the senators the state senators and the excitement they had about all the things that they got accomplished this year and and they should be uh excited and they should be congratulated but what i'm really excited about is all of the things that we had talked about and we had put on as priorities and now they are becoming legislation and and so i i can enjoy as the state senators did our uh priorities too were met with a lot of very positive results i will not go through those those are all on spark
277for you to look at but again just really excited about that and then uh all of those committee are all members who are not part of the legislative committee make sure that you read the 21 22 legislative and regulatory's priorities that we are drafting we spent a fairly substantial amount of time we being legislative committee spent quite a bit of time uh in looking at the priorities not only our legislative but our regulatory priorities but that is information that we are presenting to those people on the board who are not members of the legislative committee so please find some time between now and i believe june will be asking you to approve those excuse me august i will be asking you to approve those priorities and not only approve them but we are looking for
278your input that's really important to us just to give you a real quick uh overview of what we have done thus far and it's pretty minor stuff really uh but before i do that uh i patsy i remember we were having a conversation about the word that we used to uh encourage ourselves to to reach high aspirational and so that became our uh mantra if you will at our meeting in which we set these uh priority or excuse me made these changes so the the word from the legislative committee will be aspirational and i'm excited for that some real quick things um beyond uh beyond being aspirational uh is that we're looking at changing college ready to post secondary ready uh just to be more consistent but again we're just throwing that out there for
279people to look at and tell us whether or not we want to do that this was this particular thing was already mentioned but it was a big part of our discussion and that is looking at the possibility of changing rule 10 and 14 to approval accreditation and accountability so that depending on whether that all gets passed you'll see some significant changes with those tournament with that terminology uh some things that that never go away on this uh committee or at least they haven't gone away since uh my part of being the chairman of it the education preparation and certification and praxis so that will continue to be part of our discussion i think that that pretty well concludes my thoughts but i turn to i see uh dr halstad is over there i see patsy
280i see uh lisa if there's things that you think we should that you want to uplift please do uh you can go towards the uh towards the president yeah let her patsy thank you madam president yeah i i thought it might be important and i know brian to bring this up too but that we discussed it that it might be a good opportunity right now to look to change the practice to a portfolio or to a test that actually tested what people were going to be doing in in the classroom or some other form to model after states around us that have gone to different forms of practice especially for the fact that we do not have many students or teachers of color represented across our state and they uh the people the the students
281that are working to go into education that are marginalized by that or by poverty seem to not do as well on the praxis that nebraska is doing using so since the governor has shown a interest for the first time in a portfolio we thought maybe we should jump at the opportunity and see if we could do something and i think it was um brian that said with all his wisdom that um we could wait until the next governor came in and see um if that person would be interested in it but maybe we shouldn't take the chances maybe we should go with the opportunity right now to better serve our students in nebraska by better serving our future teachers i just want to add that that is music to my ears i'm not sure if
282the general public realizes how difficult that practice can be for students who want to be teachers it has certainly kept many many students from not being able to enter the profession and we worked at it a few years ago but the governor wouldn't go for it and so it's exciting to hear that he's interested in looking at other ways but i just really want the general public to understand that to take the initial praxis is 300 think about the students out there that don't have 300 dollars and who failed the test by just one or two or three points and then you have to take it again we just don't have that kind of money laying around so this is really music to my ears and i hope that you will really push the button
283on this the other the other thing that i don't think people understand is that the students are tested in three areas and they have to they have to pass in all three areas and so let's say that i'm a fine arts teacher and um i'm pretty good i'm pretty good in science and i'm great in english and all that sort of thing but i'm not so great in math um and i'm not ever going to teach math this is real this is for real so anyway i might go in and fail that math test several times and not and i would not have had the money to go back and take it when i was in college i would have had to quit and i loved teaching so i think that would have been a
284disaster for my whole life so um we we need to find a better way of matching the test to what that's what the teachers are going to be doing and i'm excited to i hope that i hope that we are more successful than we were the last time patty just a clarification are we talking about the test that is used as students are trying to enter professional education programs because i'm kind of hearing a little bit of that but i also thought we were talking about the praxis content tests which people are required to take in order to be certified so i guess i just want to make sure we're not embroiled in that i wasn't real clear on that so thank you patty yeah it well it's actually i don't know brian wants to
285come up to try to hit this but our basic skills test is where we've talked about before which is the entry into the profession and and i really do believe we need to look for a more affordable route the portfolio piece i think is a good idea and certainly i've had that conversation with the governor before you know which is one one angle on it i think there's other ways that we should be looking at and so we'll we'll dive into it and i think the intent of this uh you know kind of our regulatory priorities that's one area that we definitely want to spend time on i believe that concludes my report thank you robin okay agenda item 7.3 the commissioner's appraisal committee and i am chair of that and so i will provide
286a report from the commissioner's appraisal committee meeting but first i want to thank the three and the two other individuals beside myself board members on this committee which is past president pat tim and current vice president patsyco johns so i really appreciate their leadership and working with this on all of this um the appraisal committee reports that the commissioner has proposed the following goals for 2021 2022 for himself one being to lead conduct complete the strategic plan review and to create an nde policy office and engage with appropriate policy leaders partners and stakeholders the appraisal committee recommends that the board renew and approve the commissioner's contract of employment with the following as the major revised terms extend the contract period by one year increase the annual salary by two percent on july 1st 2021 and
287again on july 1 2022 and to provide 40 hours of vacation leave to use or lose by june 30 2022 and that concludes the appraisal committee report we do have one motion item but before we go to the motion are there any questions that you have for the appraisal committee patty i'm i'm just very interested to hear commissioner you're thinking about the policy office and you know what what's the purpose what's the rationale what's the goal yeah a couple different things number one where i guess maybe as uh president nichols has talked about some transitions we're always trying to think a little bit ahead about the capacities that we're going to need to do well i think our work obviously with the legislature is obviously important work and so part of that's in that arena
288part of our work that's really important is with the you know certainly our federal reporting all those different side parts of it over time these things kind of get separated out within the agency and i'm really looking forward to make sure that we have synergy there i will use also as an example standards like i believe it's time to kind of really dive into what that standards process looks like for different engagement and so really being intentional about that there's someone in the agency responsible to tie those those elements together so it's not you know completely clear yet i put that in there because i think there's a need for us it's probably something i would have loved to been able to work on in this past year but i added uh really with this
289this feeling that if we can build and organize those capacities number one we can serve the board members better in the policy work that you want to do to be a little bit have a little bit more foresight into how we how we actually start the rule making process how we start other processes to make decisions make sure that the information is coming in make sure that the public input processes are working well for us it has been a challenging type of year but even if i think back to last last summer i think uh you know we were also having to answer a lot of questions about what happens in the midst of a pandemic and again that that that information across an agency is kind of scattered in a lot of different rules
290and so i think if we built that and and and i'm not really looking for like a lot of additional staff it's just rethinking how that would be organized and who's responsible for what parts of that and then uh lead that through through essentially through my office to ensure that's being done so so that's my thinking on that front thank you any other questions um i just want to share that um in your spark you will find a copy of the commissioner's agreement that we'll be voting on so if you haven't had a chance to read it please do so so is there a motion on item 7.3 a the commissioner's employment patsy thank you madam chair i moved to approve the employment agreement between the state board of education and matthew as that l
291or i on him a glass of sun there's an l okay matthew l bloomstead is there a second second motion made by patsy and seconded by lisa is there any discussion on the motion robin yeah i just i i just want to uh emphasize uh that we spent a lot of time on this in our uh looking at the appraisal instrument that was put forth to evaluate and that that uh instrument came back very very strong and we discussed that in our last meeting and i know all of us know that but sometimes i'm wondering whether the people out there understand that well we aren't just all of a sudden saying yeah let's go ahead and do this that we spent a lot of time in executive session and time outside of the executive session
292in our last meeting in which we looked at the evaluation instrument with great detail and uh and i guess i'm pleased to point out that the commissioner came back very strong in each of those uh each of those areas and i can't even remember now for sure how many areas there were but uh quite an extensive number so i i guess i'm saying that more for uh our people who are out there uh today and maybe the people who are uh watching so so that they're saying boy they really went through that in a hurry because th this is this isn't it it's it's our biggest responsibility as board members and we do not take it lightly and we and so i'm pleased to just say that that the commissioner ranked very high robin i
293just want to say i appreciate you bringing that up because the appraisal process that we have gone through it's much different today than it was when i came on board seven years ago it was just kind of a checklist seven years ago and it is very very thorough and i believe that our appraisal process is a role model for all of our local school districts to consider doing because they are to be evaluating their superintendent every year before contract time so and just so that the committee knows the appraisal committee or the board knows the appraisal committee we we looked at some things that we felt needed to be changed a bit on the appraisal process for next year because there was some redundancy that some of you brought up in different areas and so
294we're looking at cleaning that up and maybe going from ten different areas maybe down to eight or seven okay patsy well before we take this big boat and i think um i'll speak for all of us you can all say yeah yes that's true but i want to uh say that the um this has been a challenging year and uh the commissioner uh has worked doing his normal duties plus his duties that related to covid and sometimes we're all worried about him because we're absolutely sure he wasn't ever sleeping and uh so we want to make this vote show how much we appreciate all your work with your staff and with covid and your normal duties and we want you to know that we noticed anyone else okay seeing none the motion on the floor
295is to approve the employment agreement between the state board of education and matthew l bloomstead andrea please call the role google's yes morrison yes co john's yes freaky yes stevens yes nichols yes niri tim six yes to absent motion passes we're glad you're on board commissioner agenda item 7.4 lisa please provide a report from the aquest teaching learning and service domain committee meeting thank you madam president um the teaching and learning committee report on yesterday's meeting the committee reviewed a number of consent agenda items additionally the committee received information from staff on the statewide assessment contracts that jeremy explained to us just a minute ago and recommends approval of all three of those contracts the committee also discussed the english language arts standards and process as well as the proposed health standards process and this
296concludes my report madam president i do want to thank the members of my our committee i should say uh patty robin and maureen a great input yesterday thank you does anybody have any questions for lisa anybody have any questions for lisa or the committee you could have left that muted you know seeing none lisa is there a motion on item 7.4 a yes madam president i move to authorize the commissioner to contract with nwea for statewide assessment services for the 2021-2022 year is there a second i will second okay so motion was made by lisa seconded by patty discussion seeing none andrea please call the roll code johns yes freaky yes morrison yes neri goobles yes nichols yes stevens yes tim six yes to absent motion passes thank you andrea lisa is there a motion
297on item 7.4 b yes i moved to authorize the commissioner to contract with drc for statewide assessment services for 2021-22 is there a second second motion made by lisa and seconded by patsy discussion on the motion by anyone robin yes uh just a point of clarification that that i always ask about and and this is this is inten this test is intended for students with as i understand it's special needs um and that's a layman's way of putting putting it it's much more detailed than that but i think it's important that we understand that there are special tests for children with special needs seeing no other discussion on the motion andrea please call the roll stevens yes google's yes co john's yes morrison yes tim nichols yes neary freaky yes six yes to absent motion
298passes thank you andrea lisa is there a motion on item 7.4 c yes i moved to authorize the commissioner to contract with a.c.t for statewide assessment services for 2021 and 2022. okay is there a second second motion made by lisa seconded by patty is there any discussion on the motion seeing none andrea please call the roll nichols yes code johns yes stevens yes morrison yes mary goobbles yes tim fricke yes six yes to absent motion passes thank you andrea agenda items 7.4 d the nebraska's college and career ready standards for english language arts board members is there any discussion on that agenda item 7.4 e the nebraska health standards process board members is there any further discussion on that robin yeah uh obviously again we had a very um what would be the right word
299i want to make sure that i use the right word here informational uh meeting uh this morning and um i guess we said thanks to the people who were here earlier but i think at this particular time it would be good for me at least to say thanks for the crowd that that showed up and special thanks for those who present it i think patty always says it so well and so i apologize for butchering what she usually says which is it's sometimes messy but the process uh is working and and patty if you want to say it better you certainly can this is the way it is intended to work and while we sit here and maybe we don't like to hear everything that we heard uh it's still the way it is intended
300to work and i um i look forward uh and the sooner the better before uh the second um draft um because um i think we're going to see some significant changes in the second draft and that we can change our our topic of conversation a little bit uh not that it will be any less but i think that they will see that folks will see that we are here to listen and that we're going to be making adjustments based on our listening skills [Music] thank you robin jacqueline so i just wanted to comment about the process and i know that we say that the process is working as it's intended i will say one of the things just some feedback i would like to communicate to my fellow board members is i think we could
301be more intentional with our communication amongst ourselves about where we are with the health standards because i don't feel like we as a body have had a robust conversation about what we think about them where we are what our thought process is i know that it was considered in a committee meeting but even that i don't feel like that conversation was reported back to us about what was discussed and where the board members are so i think if we're going to talk about a process going forward and and what that process looks like or changes or ways that we could better the process i think that one way that we could do that is to really give ourselves a space or a forum for us to really discuss this among ourselves because i personally feel
302like that has truly been missing from the process and i know that we can all call each other but if we're not talking as a cohesive unit and really being able to hear what we all think i i think that we may be missing some opportunities so that's my feedback on the process and i'm certain there's someone here who's probably going to have something to say after me but that's what i have to say patsy first of all i agree with you on that part on that part of it and second of all i think we really need to go back and take the take a really hard look at the process from beginning to end and make sure that each step of the way is intentional so that we do not cause ourselves extra
303stress because we didn't we weren't but i used to say to my students we weren't promethean we're epimethane we're thinking of afterthoughts well that was wrong and we should have done it this way but i think if we were a little had a little more forethought from beginning to end and i don't know if that's the staff or us but uh that it would be a lot smoother and maybe uh i should say a lot better not only for us but for our constituents lisa um i agree jacqueline we've talked about it several times and since we've talked about it in committee a few times other issues have come up and i'm hoping we have that conversation soon today we started with process and next steps and i hope that that opportunity comes up soon
304but we have been you know talking about that in the committee at least three times so patsy correct me if i'm wrong but i think you were seeing the whole board a robust discussion on it well i think it's multifaceted right and one way we haven't as a board had an entire conversation about it but i also think i don't really know i mean the report that we get here at the board meeting is the report that we get from the committee and so i don't know what those robust conversations are that are happening i if you're not on the committee you're almost on the outside of how we came to the conclusion of what the next steps were going to be what the thought process was going to be and so i don't expect
305to having to be able to have my opinion solicited on everything that happens in a committee that i'm not in but in on a topic that's so at the forefront of everybody's mind i do think it's important for us to at least hear what other board members are thinking or how we got there lisa and i hope that happens soon as well and i'm sure we'll be talking about it again anyone else thank you jacqueline agenda item 7.5 patsy please provide a report from the aquest student success access and support domain committee meeting yes uh aquest student success and access and support domain met yesterday we had one action item and that was to renew the renewal of roll 11 waiver requests for esu number 13 and the committee recommended approval of that of that
306motion of the motions above and that had to do with early childhood and um i i don't see the motions above but i don't know where they are so anyway okay um there was one discussion item leading for equity and excellent sleep um the state policy network that we're still working with and the committee was reminded that they have some work to do this month to bring back to zainab and i feedback on the nde current statements and the first draft of the equity policy that we're putting together the committee had two update items the first item was in regards to conducting initial analysis of nde's equity scorecard and unearthed key ideas of focus and success from the data we were so lucky to have dr vargas and mr lane carr introduce the uh equity
307score scorecard the first draft of it to us well i bet it wasn't the first draft because they're two harder workers to make it the first draft but at any rate um the scorecard and the data dashboard that visualizes and explains proportionality and disproportionality across multiple data plot points and the committee was assigned to review the equity data workbook which i believe is another 60 page document that we need to go through and come back in in august with more opinions and discussion on what we read about that and i believe that concludes my report thank you and just for clarification the motion that patsy was talking about was on our consent agenda that's right yeah i thought it was consent that's why i was confused by that okay board members is there any discussion
308on item 7.5 a leading for equity and excellence program leap jacqueline so i just wanted to make a quick comment and i'm i'm gonna get short be short because i know we're all kind of tired but this is just in response to some of the comments that we heard today i think the word equity came up in a lot of the comments and so i wanted to kind of at least talk about our committee's perspective on equity so that people know what we're talking about or at least kind of as we're interpreting what that means and it got kind of combined today with the idea of critical race theory and this is we really think crt and equity are combined and i at least from my perspective and i i'd like if patty could also
309talk about it is i'm sorry patsy could talk about it but when we're when we're talking about equity we're talking about equity versus equality right giving every child in the classroom the exact same thing which would be equality versus making sure every child in the classroom has what that individual child needs that's equity and beyond and each child comes with a different set of factors okay so whether that's what type of home that they come from whether or not they come from a they've moved here for another country whether or not it's socioeconomic whether i mean no matter what it is whether it's a developmental disability each child has a different need and so i've always understand understood our equity or at least as we're developing it is simply about making sure that we're providing
310every child with equitable resources equitable content so that they have what they need can you talk about that patsy well i i you're you're saying it pretty well every child every day everything they need yeah well yeah i'm so used to making eye contact that i have to keep doing that okay um every child every day everything that they need and the diagram that we were presented the picture we were presented the very first time we discussed the difference between equality and equity was the three children watching the football game i thought it was a football game anyway as much as i know about that sort of thing at any rate uh one was standing and could see clearly over the fence and the next person was my height and uh couldn't get their nose
311above the fence and so there was no way they were going to be able to see it and then the other person was in a wheelchair so you could all you give each of them uh well the tall person didn't need a stool but the person in the middle me did and the person in the wheelchair the stool would do absolutely no good so equity is way different than equality and i'm sorry if it's somehow uh and i i wrote that down if it's related to what the people that spoke to us today were are so afraid of and i'm going to go back and see i i hope we don't have to change the name of it because because of that but they seem to i've that's the second or third time i've heard
312that and so um i'm alarmed when i hear something the third time first time not so much second time i my ears broke up but um today when i heard it again i thought well my i hope we don't have to change that but from the very beginning we've called it equity and i think that's a perfect example of how to explain it and i think you have a perfect understanding of it from what you said i don't know if anybody else wants to add to that or not i just i know sometimes we have our committee meetings and we talk about things and it's not always kind of i guess it's the same point i was just trying to make we don't always talk about it at the board or at the seat so
313i just wanted us to kind of go a little bit more in detail about the conversations that we're having and what that means so that um even the people who are listening or the people who are here understood that that's that's what we mean when we're talking about equity i think uh i was remiss too in my report i need to thank my committee members jacqueline's new on the committee and she's brought a lot of um let's just say she's been refreshing to us because she's made us think think harder look deeper and deborah neri is on the equity committee and pat tim and and she's kind of the opposite of you jacqueline she sits back and she's the font of wisdom and then of course our field of staff member is dana rija and
314um so it's a great committee and we're looking forward to moving on and doing more with that committee anyone else okay agenda item 7.6 budget and finance committee patty you're going to speak for pat i am thank you the committee discussed and sought further information on each of the consent agenda items including the costs and benefits of memberships in our national organizations the nebraska mtss contract with esu one was discussed noting that the fee will include all costs associated with that contract nde briefed the committee on the contract with cders specifically providing clarification on who received services which does include students from across the state cder serves students coming from a lot of different situations and scenarios that otherwise may not receive any additional support the committee discussed future funding after essa funding is gone
315the contract with esu 7 for an instructional coach for schuyler high school is a new contract which will be filled by an individual already on staff with skyler who will be paid according to the school's pay schedule the need for a coach is to assist the new administration with continuity of learning and further development of the staff nde noted that the contract for the director for school district support will be funded with general funds which should be sustainable as it is a joint effort among the sped esea and the coordinated school and district support offices the state longitudinal data system plan was discussed with nde going into more detail of the plan which is still in the planning process the committee was in support of all of the consent agenda items as an action item
316bryce wilson talked about and we'll have that action item coming up soon but the item will be to adopt the proposed revised rule one which is rules and regulations governing the audits of nebraska public school districts in that discussion bryce noted that nde covered the proposed changes noting input from auditing firms on the one substantive change it was noted that no public comments were made at the public hearing the committee discussed proposed changes and timing of moving forward with the approving of the rule members of the committee did discuss postponing approval until the next meeting but ultimately it was decided to move forward with the vote during the june board meeting bryce also then discussed the second action item that will be up and that is to adopt the proposed revised rule 2 which is
317the uniform system of accounting for nebraska public school districts the discussion was that nde covered the proposed changes noting all changes were technical in nature and no public comments were made in the public hearing the committee discussed proposed changes and timing of moving forward with approving the rule members of the committee discussed postponing approval until the next meeting but ultimately it was decided to move forward with the vote during the june board meeting we did not have any discussion related to the monthly board travel expense report or the in-state travel authorization reports there are no other items and that concludes the budget and finance committee report thank you thank you patty um patty is there a motion on item 7.6 c yes i move to adopt the proposed revised rule 1 rules and regulations governing
318the audit of nebraska public school districts do i have a second motion made by patty seconded by patsy discussion on the motion jacqueline so i would like to speak on this matter and i'm going to speak on it and 7.6 c and d together i will not be voting in favor of adopting the proposed revised rules and i want to make clear why i will not be voting to adopt them the changes that were made several of them were indeed technical in nature and so when i look at the document which i had reviewed before the committee meeting there are a lot of changes such as removing the word shall and changing it between interchanging must and shall adapt things like that there were also small changes such as rather than spelling out the words
319nebraska department of education we're abbreviating them to nd or spelling out the teosa formula now we say teosa and so indeed there were a lot of smaller changes like that which on the surface i want to say i don't have a problem with my concern more was with the process of the rule adoption and how they came to us and so i kind of went back through my agendas for the policy meeting it looks like we did not see this in january we did not see this in february it was given to us as a proposed revised rule in march that's when it came to our committee so if anyone else wants to remember what happened in march that's about the time that the health standards were released it was not on our agenda in
320april it was not on our agenda in may it was again on our agenda in june think personally these roles are very important and the reason why they're important and i think that i am having an issue with it as we review these rules or it has been about every four years and so the last time this rule was reviewed was about four years ago i think we as a policy committee and we as a board when we're reviewing these rules we should be having a robust conversation about them and whether or not they are working whether or not they're being implemented correctly and what we want to see on a macro and not just a micro level so i think by the time that this got to us and we were looking at very
321small technical changes we had not had a large conversation about whether or not this was working for the state of nebraska and i personally think that is the conversation that we should be having not read not whether or not teosis should be abbreviated or not during our meeting yesterday i asked for more time and the conversation that happened during that meeting was that we are under a time crunch because these rules had been already set for public hearing and public comment and my concern about that is what if we had had an issue with something and we voted it down there would still be a time crunch and so if every time that there is an issue with timing we're just going to say it doesn't matter we're going to move it forward because we're
322under a time crunch then i would tell the department of education to always tell us that we're under a time crunch because then we will do whatever you need us to do i am not comfortable with that and just moving forward with something and not having a robust conversation when this comes before us every four years by just saying we're under a time crunch so for those reasons and my concerns with the process there are things for instance that are happening in the district that i represent which is omaha public schools i know for a fact that it's the district in this state that has the most amount of kids that are being expelled how we deal with the funding there we have the most amount of option enrollment transfer in the state going on
323in ops there's also this category of students called unverified that they're dealing that they have so we don't know if that child is truant if they're coming to school because it's been unverified that's also part of what goes into this rule and we haven't talked about any of that and i don't really know when we had an opportunity to so when i say i haven't had enough time to live with this policy or rule or really think about it it wasn't because i hadn't read the document that was presented before us i had in fact i can read documents very quickly which is what's required when i went to law school so that that was not the issue which was implied my concern is that we as a board have a job to look at
324things not just micro but also macro and we hadn't done that so for that reason i'm voting no on this but i wanted to bring that concern to the full board and discuss it with you guys or at least have us to start thinking about those things because when the rules come to us it shouldn't just be about crossing out uh teosa and abbreviating it or making small changes and and the the last thing i will say is to say that there was no public comment therefore it's good well if things are working for people and they've learned how to manipulate a system or they the system works people don't show up as when the system doesn't work or when you change something because you're trying to make it better that's when people show up
325that's why we had over 150 people here today because we tried to change something and people have thoughts on it if you're not changing anything people don't show up so i don't know that that was very persuasive to me either to say well no one said anything so it must be fine so for those reasons i think we need to start having larger discussions about how we approve our rules and what we do with our rules and i talked to the commissioner about this ahead of time so he knew what my thoughts were so again i'm not surprising staff or the commissioner with these thoughts it's not that i'm objecting to what the staff is trying to do i'm more concerned with the process robin yeah just just a question uh for jacqueline if she
326doesn't mind okay so i just want to make sure i'm understanding you're voting no because of the process you are not voted you are the reason that you're voting has nothing to do with rule one or rule two or or i i just i and and i don't mean to be putting words in your mouth i'm trying to get my my mind around what i hear you saying sure robin what i'm saying is i cannot say that i am approving rule 1 and rule 2 because we have not had a robust discussion about whether or not rule 1 or rule 2 need substantive substantive changes we did not have that conversation however the minor changes that are being made that we're saying are very small changes which is what we're actually voting on i don't
327have an issue with those so hopefully that's clear yeah patsy's hand was a hit go ahead i'm sorry i'm sorry robin no no no i'm just butting in so uh are you suggesting that we take it back to the cutting board and take a look at it put it in put it on the agenda for your next committee meeting i at this juncture it i know where the votes lie so i would rather us if we can take a vote on it today that's fine with me but there's nothing stopping us from putting this back on the agenda to review again and that's probably where what i would request to do for going forward and i can talk to my committee chair about that robin i have a little um it would be difficult for
328me to vote against in this particular issue rule one and rule two because i have an issue with a principal uh that's i guess where i'm coming from and uh what i did i i received i'm sure the same email that that you received hey this is a kind of a last minute type of thing if you have questions please contact uh i can't remember i think it was ryan for rule one and and and rice for rule two which i did and so therefore i i felt as if my questions on rule one and rule two were answered uh and and so that's why i i'm not opposed to your idea here that hey we need to have we need to look at the process but i'm not going to punish rule one and
329rule two because i'm not happy with the process if if that makes sense with you jacqueline robin with all due respect i don't think i asked anyone to vote with me or to change their vote i was just explaining why i was what my concerns were because i was the committee member who asked that we tabled this or continue the conversation also if i could also have emailed ryan or any one of the staff members about the changes but the changes were very clear and so i didn't have questions about the changes that the staff was proposing my questions more go to how we act or interact as a board and what we see as when we want these rules when we should be looking at the rules what we're looking at when we look
330at the rules and where is that coming from is it only when the staff initiates a change or is it when we want to look at something robustly and more in depth so it's like i said i'm not asking anyone to vote with me against this or and that in fact i was very cautious to not say that i'm just this is the time we have as a board to talk to one another because if i tried to talk to the entire board outside of this setting we'd be in violation of the open meetings act and so sometimes we need to have conversations amongst ourselves and if this is the opportunity for us to do this then i felt like this was the opportunity for me to let everyone know what my concern was and
331why i was going to proceed the way i did not because i'm voting against the changes that the staff is proposing i'm not against the staff i am concerned with the way we are conducting business without putting more thought into the rules nor robin nor am i my purpose for saying this no due respect or whatever the case i'm not trying to convince people to go one way or another either you told me why you were voting the way you were i felt it was important that you understand this is the reason that that i am same thing that you were doing so all due respect is not even needed here so that's that that's my thinking patsy well it sounds like the these two um action items have not been discussed to the depth
332that a committee member wants them to be discussed uh so i i think they need to go back to the committee and if i'm wrong um commissioner or somebody tell me it sounds like they need to go madam president do they need to go back to the committee jacqueline patsy i think there's been a motion in a second so at this point we would only be voting and ryan can correct me whether or not to approve it or not i i can amend the motion yeah um but i'm just finding out if that's appropriate or if um because it doesn't sound like it's resolved the discussion hasn't been had jacqueline i i don't want to ask that at this time the committee did i believe there were four board members there three moved to bring
333it to the full board and so i think that it's fair that we have a vote by the full board i i'm i think that's fair patty i agree with you jacqueline i think it's appropriate to vote on the action items that we have but i think what we have here is the need for a larger discussion which can't take place today where that starts i'm not sure i mean i think there can be discussion about how often are rules revised and what kind of system do we have to make sure that really happens and you know what are the guidelines for rural revision i think there's a real opportunity there to have more in-depth robust discussions about rules but that's not what we're voting on right so i think it's wise to think about
334what our motion is but jacqueline then to figure out how do we proceed then with what your concern is so that that can be addressed and so that we i mean we're we're always focusing on how do we improve how do we improve our processes how do we make things better for the districts and for the students that we serve and i think this is just another case of that but that's for a another day to get started on that process from my perspective anyone else maureen can i add because she's always asked first of all i'm going to throw out something lighthearted and hopefully comes across that way i always thought rule one was we've always done it that way and rule two was we've never done it the other way right so so
335what i what i'm getting at uh and if i if i could say a lot of the times we're doing what i'll call it minus travia right in our rules and i think what jaclyn's asking for is a deeper thought process around how we come to that conclusion about those things i think she raises really good points about the um you know the the opportunity for for you to make changes in the system that we believe would be necessary and they're not all within our control right some are some aren't but without you diving into those conversations in the future we end up just kind of falling to that least common denominator and even as staff right we take our cues from from the state board of education and i'm gonna i feel like i'm
336um i was like on on the right path with my policy office role what i'm seeing for us if we're gonna move forward and have the robust conversations that we need like staff has to work different for your benefit to be able to do the work that i think needs to be done and so that's that's what i offer up i actually think it's a really good conversation so and i am a kind of a policy geek so i mean i like to throw that into the mix but a really good conversation because i it's important that you think about the depth of that work not just and not just because the agency says or the the staff are saying because we have things that we have to get done because the law changes or
337something we're trying to be responsive to that but i want to have a better process where you feel engaged in that in those rule making things and maybe you say hey look i really don't have anything this time around that but at least we've had that interaction we've had that chance for discussion so so i really do appreciate the the dialogue in this and i think it maybe it affirms uh some of those things that i've been thinking we needed we d to do it more effectively lisa um i appreciate the conversation as well in the past we've had some more complex rules uh especially around rule 20 21 22 23 24 84. um that we really did have should have had more of a process for listening to each other um before things started
338rolling and then it's like maybe we should have so um eventually i think commissioner perhaps with this goal of yours with your uh policy office was it uh that can be one of your first uh first jobs i'm thinking i'm working on that faster than i realized okay any other discussion okay the motion on the floor is to adopt the proposed review revised rule one rules and regulations governing the audit of nebraska public schools school districts andrea please call the roll google's yes morrison no co johns yes fricky yes nichols yes stevens yes tim neary five yes one no two absent motion passes thank you andrea patty is there a motion on item 7.6 d yes i move to adopt the proposed revised rule 2 uniform system of accounting for nebraska public school districts is
339there a second second motion made by patti seconded by patsy discussion on the motion seeing none andrea please call the roll morrison no google's yes code john's yes stevens yes nichols yes frankie neri tim five yes one no two absent motion passes thank you andrea agenda item 7.7 strategic planning performance and improvement committee is there someone reporting for deborah she's not here today uh well we have no action item on there so we will just move on is that okay with you commissioner unless you have something to report from it yeah i i just recall uh out you know with the strategic planning and performance improvement committee they actually reviewed with the priority schools uh within the committee those priority schools will have at some point i don't know what the exact time frame is
340a report back to the full board for discussion about that progress as we just discussed last month due to the pandemic and the challenges you actually voted last month to extend the year on the priority schools and so we'll hear more about that essentially later this this uh well later this calendar year that's the way i'll put it so okay thank you commissioner uh agenda item 8 additional business agenda item 8.1 um is there a motion on item 8.1 yes madam president i move to adopt the hearing officer's recommendation finding fact proposed conclusions of law and recommended decision in enrollment enrollment option case number 2105 rinders versus papillion la vista community schools and to adopt the order prepared by legal counsel so stating okay do i have a second on that second patsy motion was
341made by lisa and seconded by patsy i want to take a step back on this on this recommendation i did not ask first if the board wanted to go into executive session to discuss this oops oops yeah we'll bring the parliamentarian yeah bring the parliamentarian i think that it's fine you can vote it down ryan we can vote the motion down right no you can actually go what he's what he's recommending is you are still able to make a motion to go into executive session to discuss this item so so you just need to follow with the other motion of that okay that's your desire all right is there any discussion on the motion okay seeing none no maureen are you gonna do you want to go into executive session is the question i think
342the board needs to consider first do you want to go into executive session i move that the board go into executive session to deliberate and receive advice of legal counsel concerning item 8.1 consideration of hearing officer's recommended findings and decision in nde case number 21-05 rinders vs papillion la vista community community schools okay is there a second second okay motion made by patty seconded by patsy any further discussion on the motion of going into executive session robin i am assuming that that there could be some harm done to to the people uh included in this in this case is that is that the reason we're going you're actually going in for legal counsel advice on a case okay case in front of you if that makes sense all right thank you any further discussion seeing
343none andrea please call the roll morrison yes google's yes code johns yes fricky yes neri nichols yes stevens yes tim six yes to absent motion passes the board will now go into a closed session only for the purpose of deliberation and to receive advice of legal counsel concerning the contested case in item 8.1 and we will move to the back room is there a motion to come out of executive session i move that we come out of executive session is there a second was that you pat or lisa okay motion made by patsy and seconded by lisa is there any other discussion on the motion seeing none andrea please call the roll goobles yes morrison yes co john's yes nichols yes stevens yes tim neary six yes to absent motion passes and i want to
344remind you that we do already have a motion on the floor which is to adopt the hearing officer's recommended findings of fact proposed conclusions of law and recommended decision in enrollment option case number 21-05 rinders versus papillion la vista community schools and to adopt the order prepared by legal counsel so stating any further discussion seeing none andrea please call the roll morrison yes co john's yes google's yes freaky yes nichols yes mary stevens yes tim 6 yes to absent motion passes thank you andrea agenda item nine information items and reports which are contracts approved by the commissioner grants approved by the commissioner contested case update and information item notice the notification of vacancies on the special education advisory council seac these items are all information items and written reports for the board and are for
345your information only agenda item 10 the good of the order this section of the agenda is intended for board members to offer informal observations of the work of the state board board members may make brief announcements about attendance at future events for the purpose of informing other board members no business or motions or suggested actions of the board may be offered at this point in the agenda nor should board members engage in substantive discussion about other agenda items or introduce new agenda items is there anyone i do want to say that on july 14th the nebraska state education association is holding their annual professional leadership day and there are six of us that have agreed to be part of a panel presentation uh three in one in the morning session and three in the afternoon
346so thank you for those that were able to to do that volunteering more information will come out on that anybody else did anyone write down the dates that marian holstein gave us for that conference yes yes october 13th through the 16th okay anyone else i just uh i know today was a really long day for all of us i've i've been reading through some of my email and i saw people in the parking lot who didn't get to speak and i was kind of feeling heartbroken i just had a high school student who was said she was number 90 email me and say she couldn't speak so i just want people if they're still watching to know email us your statements we will read them we do want to hear i apologize if you didn't
347get to speak today but i want to just assure people to contact us because we we really do want to hear that feedback yes and i would concur that to my knowledge every board member reads their email from constituents patsy here's one thing that i think we could do that would help is we have people now who've spoken at two of uh our meetings even three three yes sorry and so we might say if you've already spoken at one of our board meetings we are going to take the people who have not had the opportunity yet to express themselves to the board because it's got to be i've talked to one person who this is the second time they're here and she got here whatever 7 45 and uh i think the people um a
348couple of them say something new but some of them it sounds pretty much the same as what they said before so i don't know if that's possible at the door to do that or not but if it is that might help yeah i had thought about that very thing so thank you for bringing that up yeah anybody else okay agenda item 11 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 august 5th at a time and location to be determined a business meeting will be held on friday august 6th at 9 00 am at a location to be determined the june board meeting is adjourned you