001good evening and welcome the whole pack community to our regular monthly uh board meeting february 17 2022. i'd like to ask the board now for a motion to open the meeting trustee mccracken second [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all once again schools community welcome uh we have a we have a really nice agenda for uh uh for you all this evening um put the glasses on so i can share that with you um we didn't uh we didn't receive any communications on the on the agenda items but we have something very exciting and we're very excited about so so we have under new business uh i need a motion
002to accept the uh advocacy statement provided uh for uh by our very very uh aggressive and very uh well astute ad hoc advisory committee second second the board of education hereby approves the statement put forth by the ad hoc address advocacy committee and will be reflected and available on the msd ms mcsd website excuse me so what i'd like to do right now is i'd like to introduce our our quarterback and uh and feature running back of the ad hoc committee uh ben delulo and tanner mccracken have a presentation for us okay [Music] okay so we're going to try to make this so if you were paying attention back in september this committee was established by the board of ed on september 28th of thank you thank you why did we put why didn't we
003put this committee together okay the board well the purpose of the board of superintendent will be committed to monitoring federal and state education initiatives and we'll advocate for policies that are in the best interest of our district the ad hoc committee was tasked with aiding the board's efforts in getting advocacy from the district and the community on december so we started as into september we met twice and on december 21st the board approved an advocacy statement for local control for new york school districts which stands for safety and the best possible education experience for our students calls for answers on which metrics and signs will be used to switch from state coping mandates to local control accomplished already statement mail the state county and town representative that was done at the end of december so
004as the quarterback or the running back thank you all right uh i'm really proud of thank you turn around so i'm going to turn it over to the ford well i don't know what position you're the specialty uh he's our he's our expert he's um in the albany town track thank you thank you trustee delulo and yes as you all know i proudly serve in state government i work up there in the legislature and i was happy to give some insight to the committee on what does it take to actually properly advocate because there's a lot that the school board controls and superintendent controls but i think what's come clear to all of us in this era is there's a lot of powers above us that we can't control there's a lot of frustration and
005concerns we cannot control so what this committee is all about is how can we take those concerns and opinions and channel that energy correctly and we as a district want to provide the public those resources so this is just the first of many efforts that we're going to be able to do as a community so trustee doolittle talked about the committee and the statement but there's more than just a statement from the board going up to the governor and our representatives now we can get the people involved we have strength in numbers and that's what our plan is all about so what can you do to get involved if you believe in this statement you can write a letter to our representatives you can call our representatives call their offices and of course you can
006share in social media tell a friend to get involved we're going to talk about what those resources are and how you can use them but you can see there on the slideshow on the right side is a graphic that was made by one of the committee member's wife his wife made that graphic and it's wonderful so we're also going to make sure we're getting those out on social media so i am going to bring it down to our ad hoc website okay so on the district website i'm going to show you how to get to the end of the slideshow we have our website with resources and down there you'll find a letter template a phone script and the contact information of our government representatives so i now like to call up committee member maggie
007traynor she's going to talk about what the letter is and how you use it so can you remember [Applause] um yeah so a group of us that are on the other hand committee uh subdivided up to work on different things i worked with a group of members behind me to put together the letter so what tanner and ben were saying and this is what's truly important and again i should be speaking to you guys but i feel like you know this i'm telling you people in the room um so all along throughout the pandemic in period whenever you have an issue you contact your assemblyman your state senator what we've done because we feel like we've lost local control during this pandemic and who knows what the future brings right now it might be masks
008and possible vaccine mandates but in a year or two from now who knows what the next thing is so this is a tool that we've created and when you go on the website and see the letter is generic so it doesn't go into details about what we want control over there is an area in the letter that you can put in your personal piece and write that in we've made it super easy for you you don't have to recreate the wheel you can print the letter out email it however you want to use it and put your your individual piece in there now the most important piece of this is that if we just get on social media and complain or talk to our friends it does nothing it's an election year uh we have
009parked them up for re-election we have new assemblyman people coming down the pipeline it's strength in numbers you have to send this letter out as jack will talk you have to make the phone call if you don't do it it means nothing they'll pay attention if there's hundreds and hundreds of people contacting them they're going to pay attention so that's all i have to say about the letter piece and i'll let jack speak to the phone script [Applause] so again like maggie said uh we had a great team uh then we had two meetings and we were able to accomplish a lot in two weeks we really we stayed a lot later than any of us wanted to stay but we were really serious about getting this done uh we asked the school district to
010work with us and now we have we have an advocacy committee but now is to get this committee to work as a resourceful of all the residents not just us we all need to work together on this that was one step now we need to work together as a district and a community we need to call our elected officials who are up for re-election and let them know we need their help but it doesn't stop there we need to always keep in touch with them we shouldn't just interact or hear from them when it's election time they work for us we elect them all year every year not just when they're running we need to call like tanner said we need to call pete harker who's up for re-election uh suddenly kevin byrne who's going
011for county executive and tell them it is imperative if you believe what we are doing here it's imperative for them to support us and get the information we need to make our own decisions as a district we need them to fight to give the district control over coder protocols anything that's now and in the future like maggie alluded to we pay the script and follow it is key but you can add a personal story if you want and you're encouraging it as a personal story because that's how you really sell something is by making it your own please get involved no one can do this alone it took eight of us to get this it's gonna take the whole community to really get this done and make sure we all share these scripts and flood
012our elected officials these resources like tanner said will be available on the website please share them as much as you can if you really truly believe in what we're doing here i thank you [Applause] thank you so much to both of the committee members and they led the groups of drafting these documents but you can see all the committee members here and those that are not here these are residents these are parents that dedicate volunteered their time to help draft those with the two committee members that spoke to it's not just the two that spoke it's everyone standing here that really worked to make these resources available we're going to close with talking about why this is so important it's not about i it's about we it's what we can do together as a community
013and that's what this resource is all about one letter shows up to a senator's office way different than if 200 show up that's how you get your voices heard as a community and you're looking at your representatives right here there's not enough vocal control that's what we're talking about we're talking about metrics to know how we can best govern our school district so if we all do that together then this advocacy plan can really work so let's get started so this is where you can find the resources we just talked about so the link will be available i did talk to the superintendent we're going to make the link available but if you go on the manifest central school district website go to the board of education tab go to board sub committee tab and
014then you'll see the ad hoc committee there and when you click that link it will bring you to a page that looks just like this if everyone can see and on there i can scroll right here we go on there you can see on the right hand side are the resources we were just talking about so i'm zooming in on the right hand side there's the letter to our senator p harkin who's our state senator our letter to assignment kevin burn and the phone script and on the phone script there is the contact information for both of their offices now why just them because we have congressmen we have your county representatives with the governor because for this plan it's a state government mandate so we are targeting our state representatives down the road other
015plans we might be targeting other representatives depending on what level of government but the reason why you just have those two elected officials is they're our voice at the new york state level we're asking them to advocate to the governor for our desirable control and metrics so on there is the pdf you can always copy and paste the text onto one of your own files but there's also a link to download the word version you can download it print it out mail it out and on the phone script you have the phone numbers to call one other thing that's important to note and this goes for any level of advocacy we have added this nice blue tab that says click for elected officials and i just want to take a quick moment to thank our
016district clerk melody malaka [Applause] so i'm here to click this link this will bring you to a site where these are the elected representatives as you can see there's our congressmen our u.s senators these are representatives that represent our district there's a lot of names we see on tv we see online this shows the manpac residents who actually constitutionally represents our district so we know we're reaching out to right people so if you have another issue that you're passionate about at an individual level we now have easy contact information for you to use okay so to bring this to a close i want to again thank all the committee members the board of education our fellow colleagues and superintendent de carlo truly for your support in these efforts so thank you so much so this
017is not this is one thing one advocacy and it's incredibly important it's incredibly timely and i just want to say that we're not going to stop with this issue there's other issues down the line they're going to be more important i'm sorry more timely and also a very different so for example we've been talking to the superintendent about some of the financial strains that the district is under with certain other demographic changes that are going on not only in our district but entire state so this will not stop here with this particular issue so we will be bringing this and this committee will see this committee in the future doing other things so these guys are sort of these are the ambassadors all right so if you have something that you want to talk about
018come to us or you come to them and we'll bring it up to the committee so there is an avenue for you to get your word your thoughts through and you know we can stand up you want to give us comments it's great that's america but we have given you a platform here to do something very tactical and very specific which doesn't always happen so again thanks to tanner thanks mr capone thanks to the board for supporting us [Applause] excellent excellent job gentlemen excellent job an excellent job this is the way this is as i said to echo ben's thoughts and tanner's thoughts this is the way that we get involved with the privilege vice president sabino had to step out for this evening but he and i were on a uh we're on a
019zoo uh with uh with senator pete markham on friday uh with other uh uh board representatives and uh and uh superintendents from our neighboring from our neighboring uh our neighboring towns uh that he represents and uh i gotta tell you it was a pretty pretty intense uh it was pretty intense phone call and i think uh our zoom and i think uh there were a lot of great great points that that he'll be taking back to his office in his constituents so we'll go into some more turn the screws a little bit and keep the pressure on so always thank you very much excellent work so we're gonna move on uh to uh we have we have some housekeeping that we have to do um so what i'd like to do right now is could
020i get a motion to accept our treasures report for december 2021 so trustee mcdonough second [Music] december motion to accept the warrants for december 2021 motion please trustee mccracken second second second trustee michael martin all in favor revenue status report december 2021 a motion to accept please senior trustee lucy massacre second second trustee mcdonnell in favor all right and finally our budget transfers for uh december 2021 a motion to accept please so can i get a second please trust him all in favor i would like to turn it over now to our man in the trenches our illustrious superintendent of schools mr anthony de carlo and his superintendent's report thank you president um as you know a lot of things have been happening in january the start of the year and there's a number of
021events that are coming up so i'd like to take this opportunity just to uh reflect on some of the great things that have happened over the last month since we left back in january i want to take this opportunity to thank mr kazukria and his team ms kelly kischeck miss margaret fox for the outstanding middle school stem fair that took place here on friday january 28th you know an incredible day of projects of learning and sharing of teamwork of camaraderie and exploring uh the students just did an absolutely incredible job and i think it's part of the uh the strength in our science technology engineering and art and math programs here at uh mayo pack central school district and it really starts here um and then it feeds its way up until the high school
022um and you'll be hearing during our budget presentation about project lead the way that has been instituted up at the high school and has started to make its way down here to the middle school and these kind of programs really fit into work real world practices and what you're going to be seeing more and more of in the years to come is how do we get real life experiences into the hands of our kids when they're here in our schools those type of project-based learning and this starts here at the mantec middle school air stem fair so i want to congratulate all that were involved in all the winners um during that time frame so congratulations to all also um at the kotona museum of art up through next next week sunday february 27th i'm
023going to invite you to to look at our show from seniors around the hudson upper hudson valley um we have many man pack high school seniors work that is there so you are next week it's closed on mondays but if you're available please go up and see the amazing artwork from our seniors at the young artists campaign for this year once again manpac high school in mesa apex central school districts as an honor mr scott rizzo um was named as a new york state master teacher um he's in uh his fourth year at benefact high school and to receive this honor which is very selective by new york state to participate in the master teacher program as a credit to uh mr scott rizzo to the department to the high school and i know you've
024been following along on what's been happening in our science department for the last number of years but we have kids that are that are coming forth with incredible um experiments they're taking place in research uh competitions throughout the east coast throughout the country and our kids kids continue to do incredible work and mysterism is a part of why that happens so i don't want to congratulate mr scott rizzo when we look at sports when we look at what's happening with sports and we're getting down to the playoffs and we've had a a number of great things happen this winter season and i'm going to say the word i believe because i don't want to i'm not 100 sure but i i think i pretty much i'm sure i think this is the first time in
025mayor pack high school history that our boys and girls basketball teams went undefeated in league play both 10 and hope that's an outstanding accomplishment and because of that the girls and the boys are the fourth seats they've got buys into the tournament the girls will open up on saturday here at mayo pack high school at 6 00 p.m against the winner of head hunt and ryan also on saturday we have the man pack is hosting the section one cheer competition and those winners will go on to the states that starts saturday at 10 o'clock also at man tech high school um and i want you you hear me hearing mayor pack high school uh you know has this these championships payback costco has the following championships it's a testament to our athletic department's testament to
026our coaches it's a testament to this board of education and the community we are really well respected throughout the hudson valley for hosting these tournaments hosting them in a manner that is professional um that is collegial that is inviting and welcoming um because a lot of districts won't block their way to do it but we do and i think it's it's something that really talks about who we are as a community so i want to thank all those who are involved our hockey team starts their playoffs tomorrow night 9 15 um versus nyack tavern z also we have a section 1 champion wrestling 145 pounds champion angelo centro will be competing in the the states coming up um also uh george johnson jr and nick kreko also qualified to compete in new york state championships
027on february 25th and 26th up in albany we wish these young men all the best and we also have a gymnast we are uh leo graf who qualified for the new york state gymnastics championship up in buffalo on march 5th and then we have gavin mourinho and alyssa marzaga who qualified for the new york state bowling championships and that will take place on march 12th in syracuse so as you can see great great winter season we continue in the playoffs and then some of these individual and team championships with which solar bar may affect athletes the best in the next weeks to come so congratulations to and before all as as i'm sure you can be aware next week we are on our mid-winter break um if there is any breaking news that does happen
028um i will make sure to get information out to you who knows ladies and gentlemen from day to day what happens and what doesn't happen but you know if you saw my spotlight i've been very clear once the mass mandates are lifted it will be optional i think it is uh we need to be respectful of those who still want to continue to wear them because they may have some issues of themselves or at their home and you have to be respectful for those who may want to wear that whether those teachers staff um students that's a family decision um you know but i think you know so everybody waits to see oh what's the call i'm gonna say once the the mandate is lifted i'm letting you know now that's what's gonna wind up
029happening so uh again who knows if it'll happen next week in the following but i want to wish everybody a great mid winter uh recess hopefully those of you who are going away enjoy relax if you're not going away and you have a staycation um relax and enjoy and hopefully the weather will get great you know when march comes and we'll have a mild march and you know be able to continue on and having a very successful school year so thank you all very much and back to you uh president obama thank you anthony thank you very much for your uh for your informative report as always um what i'd like to do right now we're going to jump out over to committee reports uh finance med uh trustee vasa would you please update us
030on financing everyone here okay good evening everyone finance met on february the 9th uh in attendance was myself superintendent apollo uh treasurer's risky assistant superintendent senator rohesi with trustee daniello and myself we've had discussions regarding the 2022-23 state aid we talked about a capital project where they're finally at and what the next phases would be there were some discussions with governor not tax cap we want to come on that and then we have a discussion regarding our stimulus funds that the district's received we have upcoming budget meetings that are posted on our website and our next meeting will be in march thank you thank you trustee um human resource committee met on february 9th uh in attendance superintendent mr dicarlo assistant superintendent for human resources deborah legato who is dave perfaro mike simone adam sabino
031and myself uh the fruits of that labor if you've heard me before uh are contained right here and uh and it's a it's a heck of a heavy lift with the retirements and resignations and filling filling teaching spots and roles and coaching coaching appointments and so on and so forth i can't thank this committee enough for all the work that they do but but it really comes down to you know to anthony and debra and her team and uh and so again the fruits of the labor are right here and thank you again we have another committee report um i think that's it for the committee reports what i'd like to do right now is we have a donation uh from the uh yearbook club uh trustee uh senior trustee vasa would you mind reading
032the donation sure thank you resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the board of education hereby accepts five thousand forty eight dollars and eighty three cents from the main park high school economic department for the purchase of the 12 foot free standing scoring [Applause] that's for sure a motion to accept the donation uh tanner mccracken uh second please executive listen to software all in favor aye and thank you for the yearbook for the yearbook club for that donation it was well overdue uh the uh i think the um the existing one there will be repurposed i think it's gonna be you know slightly renovated we'll move that to the other gym so we can have scoring in both in both the gym so it's a very exciting time right now uh with that
033we will move to uh to make a motion to accept uh this evening's consent agenda can i have a motion please to accept this evening's consent agenda senior trustee loosened us off for a second please second second trustee michael martin all in favor and now the most exciting part of the evening uh we're going to go to our we're going to go to our resident comment portion we have a number of people um that we want to hear from this evening um you know how difficult it is to uh to get the mirror to get up and uh and speak in front of the school board and on television and so on and so forth it's aggressive we have a few we have quite a few so what i'd like to just remind everybody is
034is if you could just to around you know two to three minutes which is what we've always been trying to do try to keep it to three minutes and really try to stay on point okay i know it's so easy to check and i just spoke about this jack i call you right now but you know you get passionate and then what happens is you start to you start to kind of vacillate a little bit so you know throw up have a couple of bullet points we're not the end we're here to listen please address the board and uh and what i'll do right now is i'll ask melody to bring up our uh to bring up our first question for this evening come on down [Applause] hi good evening it's been three weeks since
035the last board meeting during that time the high school disclaimed about 54 books to students about diverse and or potentially controversial topics our students are practicing the skill of independent inquiry our students are choosing to read about abuse african american life asian american life ambition book burning bullying censorship children of alcoholics civil rights coming of age dated family violence foster care grief and loss happiness high school historical fiction homelessness identity japanese american life lgbtqia plus love murder narrative non-fiction overcoming adversity politics and government prejudices racism resistance to oppressive governments religious life romance self-realization survival totalitarianism urban fiction and war among others this list is not representative of every member of the high school student body rather it lends itself to the individual members of the high school when considering that it makes sense that some
036of the content might offend upset or disappoint or just not appeal to at least one person in the building but does that mean that all of these books should be removed from our collection does that mean we should limit students independent inquiry does this mean we should censor topics that might make some uncomfortable but may save the life of another tonight and at future board meetings you may hear from people from the people who will feel the impact of this censorship the most our students you may hear students asking questions expressing their feelings and hoping that their passionate fees to the board to create a holistic holistic picture of the absolute necessity of keeping books about sensitive topics on our shelves please please support mayopaq's diversity equity and inclusion initiative as described in superintendents of
037carlow's most recent communication to the community where he emphasized the importance of meeting the needs of each and every student something he admits that we fall short of he asks that we help meet our mission with a focus on the phrase each and every student faculty member staff member and visitors or schools should feel welcomed appreciated respected and that they have a voice this is what our students ask expect deserve and according to the 1982 supreme court decision of pico versus the board of education are legally entitled to finally i'd like to address a statement made at last month's meeting that included an excerpt from a quote by prolific author political activist nobel peace prize winner and holocaust survivor elliot when considering the words spoken it is important to understand who said them and the
038larger work from which they came like many of the excerpts from the books that are currently being challenged in our community and throughout the nation excerpts need context because without it they have little meaning during his nobel executive speech he proclaimed meanwhile we must always take sides helps the oppressor never the victim silence encourages the tormentor never been tormented sometimes we must interfere when human lives are in danger when human dignity is in jeopardy national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race religion or political views zach plays must at that moment become the center of the universe thank you [Applause] it had said you know they were going to be given up to any students who wanted them and i did um ask um under the facebook
039post how would you decide how students if students wanted them and nobody answers me um so i told my children to politely decline the test when they were given out i just told them to tell their teachers no thank you we don't want any tests and i did explain to them why you didn't want them i told them that hey you got you all had copied less than two months ago i'm not going to test you again if i'll closet b i'm not testing healthy children c i told them if you're sick i'm going to take you to the doctor i'm not giving you one of these tests and i told them that nothing in life is free these tests aren't free somebody is paying for them so if we're not going to use them
040we're not going to waste resources well my two children went to school and politely defined the tests they were told to take them home my daughter was told to put it back in her book bag and my son was told well take it in case you change your mind i came here to return my tests but when i walked in the door i was handed probably about 40 or 50 tests from parents to give back i think this shows a clear message that we're done jumping through hoops for our kids right to breathe thank you [Music] okay good evening everyone thank you for having me so i'm going to jump on board with what she just mentioned about test case sensitive subject for everybody i understand that but my concern is yes there was no
041clear message as to how these test kits were being distributed kids were sent home with them but if they were told again not to take them they were forced to take them i have an issue with teachers telling my children that they need to be tested when they come back on monday after break that's not acceptable that should not have been a message that was given to a to an elementary school student so if you can just have a conversation with the teachers that's something that shouldn't even say um our children are taught to respect authority at least i know i teach my children that my children are not going to deny a teacher when they ask them to do something so if i told my child not to take it and a teacher says
042take it home you need to take it they're going to take it that's how i raise my children so if a child asks if the child says to a teacher i'm not taking it a teacher should not be forcing me on them my other question is in the middle school the students that were denying to take the tests home i was told their names were being collected can you ask me can you answer my question as to why the names are being collected um i i i wouldn't know but i will make sure that we get you that we get you an answer first i'm hearing that so i'll make sure we get you in the answer okay thank you welcome kate how are you peter and tony um here regarding two things the first
043is um i just kind of wanted to update on the cafeteria status for elementary schools i don't really understand the ins and outs of mandy so i'm really here just looking for the help on understanding that is there a difference between the math mandate and the social distancing um requirements because it's my understanding that the cafeteria in elementary schools aren't being used because you guys need the extra space for gym classes in order to safely social assistance so i mean it just seems like everything is at max capacity now when i was calling some private schools before my son started um in the fall because i was worried about morgan i know a few schools told me that they weren't doing anything with social distancing so i don't know if that was a may apac
044thing or a state thing um but i am hoping that maybe we could get the cafeteria back open after one degree so i was just looking for a guidance on that and i also have a letter from my five-year-old uh written as besties with the picture uh hoping and asking you guys to open up the cafeteria do you want to go onto my segment okay sure so my second thing and i wasn't really sure if i was going to touch on it again but here i am um i know we've taken some steps forward regarding the library books i've had my meetings with the principals and submitted all the necessary forms and stuff for review and mr carlo earlier this week you told me that you guys were in the midst of forming a committee
045to review the books so i'm just curious as to who's going to be making up this committee um if the board is ultimately from what i understand now before you guys are ultimately responsible for where whether these books stay in the schools they're in um so i hope that some board members would be on this committee and be reading the books themselves i'm also curious if the books are still going to be available to students during the review and um i feel like i'm reading the dead words here um but i guess it has to be said again about being a book banner um i know the library now has informational handouts on their desk i'm told about book banning i really don't know where to go here um it's a topic verse context thing
046and i know maybe there's a miscommunication between the concerned parents and the librarians as far as what we're looking for because i feel like if they actually saw maybe some of the emails that we've been exchanging and what what what i'm asking there wouldn't be this like divisive book um so i mean again a majority of the books well all i'm asking for is that the publisher is a recommendation recommended age is 14 and above they shouldn't be offered to 11 year olds so um again maybe again i don't know what's being told to the librarians but maybe if we can have a little bit um a little bit clearer communication maybe which i won't be called book banner non-stop um okay that is it that's great [Applause] simon january 28th just as the school
047day was beginning you sent out an email to all mail parents informing them of your decision as superintendent of the district to not acknowledge the state supreme court's decision that ruled mass mandates as a civil rights violation as a result we heard from quite a few angry parents that wednesday during the board of education meeting some of them aren't here i came to that meeting was shocked and nobody decided to bring up the fact that you like broke the law in the high school i was possibly the only student that refused to wear a mask i was sent to the office where i had to be able to verbal abuse from the secretaries and then proceeded to have a pleasant conversation with dr lawrence and one of the aps they said that you were just
048following orders and just doing what your attorney told you to do and that they couldn't do anything about it i found it rather ironic and i was commended by dr lawrence for quote following the core values of mhs and being a risk taker too bad i was starting with punishment for being a risk taker i guess no one really values that after all but let's not forget about it who really came after me that afternoon the students i'll tell you some of the things that they sent me on social media that that you're in nothing that student use the wrong door stop trying to be some kind of leader you're effing delusional wrong you're again you think you're some kind of revolutionary leader when you're not this person needs the right words thank god maybe
049instead of using money to buy coveted test kits we can use it to teach sophomores how to write properly and debate respectfully you had a chance to prove that you would side with parents over the state you had a chance to be an example and be a risk taker an email was sent out that morning claiming that this is that essay had been put in place when in fact it wasn't done until the afternoon i believe that i speak for not all definitely not all but many of the students when i say that we are sick of being reprimanded about wearing masks when almost everyone here knows that cloth masks aren't effective before this day was in effect i attempted to organize a walk out on social media on one of the coming days that
050week then someone on who i have added on social media proceeded to go and tell the administration that i was going to plan a terrorist attack an administrator called my mother to make sure that there was no protest taking place and that they didn't want anybody to get into trouble so thank you so much thank you so much for being for creating a compassionate environment of risk takers and problem solvers what we are being taught is how to be obedient no matter how random illogical immoral or damaging the rules may be history is my favorite subject one thing that has been taught in history is that no good can come from a society that teaches blind obedience to power thank you rebecca rebecca good evening my name is rebecca lazar and i'm a senior at
051manchester high school as well as one president of the gender equality club my club members and i are here to discuss the issue of censoring our school's library this issue is not just in may effect it's sweeping across the nation many parents are afraid that schools are overstepping attempting to parent children rather than educate them however we students are afraid too we fear a future where the truth is washed away a future where history is altered just for the sake of comfort removing important books from library shelves does not erase the need for them and the conversations that they create in reality it isolates different identities and silences voices that we need now more than ever you can take marginalized groups out of school libraries but you can't take them out of our schools much
052less out of the country just because you don't like what someone has to say it does not mean they cannot save that is the beauty of living in america we have the freedom to speak our minds share our experiences and read the books that we choose we are not here today to tell anyone how to do her job as a parent rather we are here to allow the school to continue its job of educating the next generation as a member of that next generation i can only hope that we will remain free to read and free to learn hi everyone um hi everyone my name is maxine vandorvik i'm the secretary of the general quality club at baypack high school and i'm a sophomore on a list of literature that came out at the december
053mcsd meeting was the work beyond magenta transgender teen speak out a book written by suzanne copeland that chronicles the experiences of transgender young adults through a series of interviews and photographs it is an amazing resource for questioning with adolescents to learn more about gender and sexual identity along growing up however this book has been challenged by many districts because of some explicit content we do agree that some of the content can be categorized as mature for younger readers but it does not make sense to mend so many enlightened stories because of some graphic retellings readers have the ability to skip over these pages and still get the full experience of the novels books like beyond magenta offer a place for comfort for our nature's agents teams as well as to help educate the country as
054a whole overall we must ask ourselves what is more important a potentially controversial scene or the ability for a child to be comfortable in their own skin thank you [Applause] hi my name is molly decker and i'm the co-president of the gender equality club at manbac high school i want to be an english teacher when i grow up so as you might guess literature is really important to me we're here today to protect our right to choose which books we do or do not read i've spoken to some people who have read some of the texts in question and many are asking why why are these books being questioned and the reason for that is people don't remember a single piece of profane language when they read a book the truth is profanity is part
055of our reality if the other has done a good job writing their vote all that you're going to remember is the message that they're trying to get across we understand that some content may not be appropriate for school libraries we ask you to trust our librarians to make these decisions i personally am part of the queer community there's a reason i'm telling you this it's because i still remember the first book i read with the gay person in it it remains one of my favorite books to this day because what that guilty did was making me feel seen it made me feel like a person in middle school in high school you don't always feel like a person you feel like a pariah you feel like a reject you feel like an outcast but because
056of this book that had someone like me in it i felt seen i want everybody to have the opportunity to feel seen no matter what they believe and who they are thank you thank you [Applause] step on up welcome i have a question about awareness i'm sure that when i say what i have to say no one's gonna be aware that this happened uh my child came home from school and uh they told me indoctrinator posed a question to the class what are unvaccinated people a student raised his hand and answered pro-choice shot back at the student in a raised voice no they're trump supporters they are the ones refusing to get the vaccine but that's good the government has a plan to let all antibacters get sick and die let's talk about conspiracy blackouts
057huh good let them die kill the enemy he said my child was confused and surprised that a teacher would advocate for the deaf people for simply not wanting medically or for their choice not to be vaccinated with an experimental vaccine that you can still get the virus anyway we have family members that are vaccinated we have family members that aren't vaccinated so to hear this from a teacher bothered my so for this sick twisted freak to label family and friends as an enemy and should be killed i find that quite disturbing do you think so i asked what class this was here's the answer i thought to myself what's the correlation vaccines was this indoctrinator explaining how big pharmaceutical industrial complex and government prostitutes used fear to lie in their pockets but then i realized
058that truth and logic is not a principle to an illegitimate male order president and his horrific managing of the economy that there was nothing to talk about so he turned his anger on the fellow americans students and their families hi my name is um i did have something prepared to speak but i received a letter from a student that wanted it to be read so i'm going to hold my comments tonight um to read this letter dear mr dicarlo i really want to say that i want school to be normal again i watched videos of what school was like from when my mom was in high school in the 1990s i want my high school years to be like that they had dances activities etc i don't want my high school memories to be that
059of wearing a mask and nothing fun i want life to be normal again i ask you and your staff to work very hard to make this happen we need to sue the state of new york what the state is doing to us as abuse and asking us as punishment thank you it's just the initials ar from a high school student um i i do want to add that i'm glad to hear about the advocacy committee and what is being done as somebody that has been writing to our representatives for months now it is very important for parents to do that you will find the representatives that are like-minded and those that will respond to you you'll know that they're like-minded and if you don't get an answer you will find your answer with that um
060so i do think it's very important because there were certain um regulations that were just passed under the board of regents sacca laws that went an alternate way and there was also other votes that just happened last week so i want to thank you guys i know it took a while to get it done so hopefully you know going forward some of these actions could happen a little bit faster thank you [Applause] the student know that that's purposely why we moved the snowball to march because we're hoping we didn't want to do it with that bird because we're hoping that the next couple of weeks it'll be lifted but we are looking to do these things as trying to get back to normal as that individual let you know so if you can like know
061that i appreciate it thank you with regards to what mr cedino had to what you need to do is if you have something like that you know make sure that the building principle knows about it and i think that's probably the because then we can start looking at it in a different way you feel like there's something that's that's a that's a miss go to the building principle and make sure that the building principle knows about it that way the building principle can get in touch with the you know with the powers that peak and meet with our assistants our superintendent and get a resolution to something like that coming up here and pontificating you know just doesn't really help anything because we're not here to debate okay it's gonna have to you know it
062was just a process so all i'm saying is please it's not an easy part just trust the process okay so thank you for that melody who's up jennifer jennifer come on up thank you mr dicarlo and board members um i appreciate the opportunity to come out tonight i'm not i've been at these meetings and i'm speaking tonight on behalf of a lot of other parents who i've spoken with who also are unable to be here um but we wanted to voice support for the librarians and for the students thank you guys so much for um identifying books that should be available to us our children at age appropriate levels uh the question is the kind of slippery slope that we get into that leads us to what is could be banning um we are very
063fortunate to have these professionals that are trained to understand what's age appropriate what kind of content children need as parents we're not always objective our voices are critically important but we're not always objective and we need to listen to those professionals who influence our child's development and uh you know the availability of these books has the opportunity to transform children's lives i think this was well said before um and and to be able to explore those libraries kids don't even read much these days they're on their phones all the time the fact that they're in libraries you know exploring these shelves we should be encouraging that we shouldn't be discouraging that um and if we aren't taught you know if they're not reading the book we're not talking to them they're gonna see it on
064tooth talk like we can't ban these ideas but if we make sure that appropriate excuse me appropriate literature is available to them and if there's a process by which they can explore these things we're all going to be better for it because we have to prepare them to live in a diverse world that you know the world is not made people are going to go and live amongst other people with other life experiences and books are how people experience those things and we need to trust the librarians we need to trust the processes and the professionals so i just wanted to kind of give a voice to that and i guess i'm hoping that you're going to donate these to a nursing home because certainly there's a lot of people that need hobo tests so
065if people don't want them i hope others in the community can use them and i also just want to thank the board and the leadership for doing the right thing during the pandemic um our voices have not always maybe been here on the side of appreciating the mass mandates appreciating the rules that have kept our children safe it kept our children in the classroom and so i just wanted to say that you know if you ask a kid do they want to put on a mask my daughter wears one every day and has no problem with it do they want to no do they want to you know eat broccoli no but like they have to do it and so there's things that we need to do that is in their best interests in the
0661970s i'm pretty sure they didn't look put on seat belts but we also figured out that it helped us save lives so appreciate your being willing to do the right thing and we've taken a lot of heat and there's a lot of parents in this community to support doing the right thing by public health [Applause] [Music] sarah marshall marsha hi marsha welcome thank you um i am a retired educator certification and ocean technology and first thing i really want to express appreciation to the faculty um yes it's been difficult for the kids but it's been life-threatening and they have endured they've had incredible difficulties over the last couple of years in order to continue our children's education um i think that other people have spoken to professionalism teachers have a bachelor's degrees master's degrees and
067continuing professional education all of us love our children but you have to keep in mind that our professional faculty they know hundreds even thousands of children and they have a different perspective that's important that's why we trust them to educate our kids um and as far as wearing masks if it saves the lives of our teachers and it's something that we just have to follow um regarding books i'm an english teacher and i'm a technology teacher i'm a parent of a girl who graduated here i'm very happy she's a purchase now but they have the theme of think wide open think wide open is what we need here too when you close off these resources to children these children close down they're in danger their well-being is in danger my daughter uh sparse that was
068stuck in the lava she had pictures of penises stuck in her office because she was friends with the boy who was gay who got stuck with pimps and another boy who was jewish that penny is phoning his feet we need to teach diversity in this school and frankly i've talked around the law because i'm an educator not a typical teacher done a lot of teachers training mentoring has a bad reputation uh a place where there's a problem with racism and or some of our athletes embarrassed us when they went off to play we need to change that reputation we need to help our children think wide open [Applause] chris [Applause] um thank you um it's chris howard my son is in um at middle school uh i said at last meeting i know i was
069a little late but for the parents uh we talked about the advocacy committee and again i wanted to thank the board for reaching out uh a big thanks for that um so we're going to do great things with with that committee going forward um i just we've already talked about the test i just think that's kind of like a weird over step for the school to just kind of give tests out without uh seeing if we wanted them i mean making them available is nice it's sure some people appreciate the test but it was just a little weird so i i'm donating my two back uh to the school district if someone would like to take them home but we've already touched on that i i really i think the overall theme that a lot
070of people are feeling is just disappointment i've been speaking at these boy beings for a year and a half i've seen two teachers get up and i think it was the same i'm sorry the librarian spoke twice and another teacher spoke and one time was about masks and i'm just disappointed and it's not with the board it's with the whole system i think we're all frustrated but it's very telling to me that in the past year and a half these kids are a year behind six months behind in their education and we're not we're just not seeing teachers come up here to advocate for them i know they're working very hard i'm not here to attack the teachers i just find it very strange that um we don't have any teachers speaking up maybe this
071is not the four report but i would think at this point two years on we could have some teachers speak at one that's all i really have everyone's touch on everything um what i'll close with is you know again we talk about all many setting directions for us and we have to follow it all but he's saying but they're not here tonight right and and what is really this discouraging is that you know this is our community our children's our children go here our money keeps the school running and it pays the salaries for all the teachers in the staff it's not just the school though it's our community right when the schools were closed off to parents and maybe still are in some cases that chips away in our community when dances sports and
072field trips are cancelled that chips away further at our sense of community when children are denied attendance at their own graduation because of draconian quarantine rules that hurts our community all right all of these restrictions are robbing our children of important milestones in their life it's not just an education for them it's their primary source of community and we'd like to see it return to normal thank you thanks for college madison nappy madison [Applause] every day you see people who you used to know but now with the masks you can barely know who people are now i wore my mask every day still got coping that was healthy in gym we are all hot but we cannot take off the mask and we have no fresh air please help to make the school [Applause] [Music]
073from them i also can't breathe with them and my glasses fall back now i'm going to speak about the cold lunches i don't like that you have to eat by grips you try eating in one minute or one second the lunches are cold now because we have to eat in groups i don't like to buy now and it's not my school's fault because they're not the ones who's making us take turns it's your job to fix this we have to watch other people eat and we aren't able to also we can't even sit with our friends very much we can't sit we sit by ourselves at recess i want to talk with my friends in other classes outside and we need to wear our mask please can you help me this morning [Applause] melissa [Applause]
074hi melissa welcome hello good evening so um once again from what i'm hearing is the words of the parents are being twisted apparently lies are circulating on social media about us by students bullying us telling that we want to ban books certain books like on the holocaust as you very well know that is not our objective i don't even believe that the holocaust was ever even mentioned in one of the books to be banned ever so i don't know where these young children are getting their information but it's quite concerning i don't know if people are understanding that it's not the topic if they listen carefully to when i spoke in the past meetings they would know that i would not ban a topic of lgbt especially since my son is in that community never
075would i stand up here and say fan that topic it's the content it is what is written if you think that a sexual content is appropriate and it always has to coincide with the lgbt community that is wrong you're misrepresenting the lgbt community that is a misrepresentation of the lgbt community my son went to the harvey milk high school a transfer school in the village because he was being bullied not one book was ever forced upon them of this if anything the teachers would say don't have sex you'll get stds or you'll get hiv and died don't do it that was ten years ago so to come at to come out here and really say that we are trying to ban books based on a topic that's incorrect it's the content and if i were
076to read this right now the mic would go off if i were to read some of the content where right let's be honest because i can't say those words the mic would go off for me so if the mic would go off of me then why is it made public for our children to have access to i know children can see many things on the internet that's the parent's job to control that the same way that we wouldn't want that in the schools now i do want to mention one more thing before my time is up we are as a maypad community we don't want any type of bullying at all and that is between student and student and that is between up teacher against a student as well students should not be singled out
077for anything and that's horrific to hear i'm hoping that whoever started the bullying of us parents on social media will stop it because if anything becomes threatening then i go to the local police because you are threatening adults and then you're threatening families that will not go to the board it will not go to the principal will go straight to local law enforcement bottom line rumors start right that's that's the problem when rumors start get your facts dirty [Applause] okay okay i'm sorry [Applause] um [Music] and i just want to say this one thing quickly i've never been in the cafeteria at all this school year and i'm actually really surprised because i've never seen it before and my question is i'm kind of confused because when i was going to middle school i expected
078more school trips and fun activities and also earlier today there was an announcement on the loudspeaker that said that kids had to wait to eat because it wasn't food so when kids have to wait their food they're like starting to starve so i don't know [Applause] want these um to go away what will you do to get it away what would you do [Applause] listen everybody thank you very much for coming out this evening thank you everybody for uh who spoke who spoke this evening we know how difficult it is to uh to get up and speak but uh thank you very much and uh everybody stay safe stay safe uh in motion to close the meeting can you see this out for a second