001thank you we will begin in about five or six minutes but i just want to you all pass the table if you wish to speak tonight there's a forum still out there but if you change your mind if you don't want to speak now you change your mind a little bit later you'll have an opportunity to do that and if you fill out one of those wow foreign so now okay um is one [Music] foreign yes good evening everybody they're calling us needing to order the sauce school district board of directors and special needy just a reminder our mission is motivating and preparing all students to reach their greatest potential we would like to start things with the pledge of allegiance if you ever want to please rise the flag is in the south end
002zone or excuse me west end zone i pledge allegiance i shall is it so i will begin uh director will murder director keith stephen dr john barnett director diana director dennis king and i'm bob schnedden the chair um also note that in destroying super canada is here and wanted to follow his assistant first item on the agenda after that is approval of this eb's agenda so directors you have it before don't ever speak all right motion has been made by director barna to approve the agenda as submitted is there a second all right ricky pimple up with a second thank you very much any discussion hearing none we'll ask all those in favor of approving the agenda please say i was opposed please say name all right motion carriers moving on now to the main
003object while we're here tonight 3.0 is public employee input and this will allow folks an opportunity to address the school board and we do have a time limit of three minutes per person uh in a completion of a comment card at the table there before we get to that i just i just wanted to make a little mini speech if you don't mind i'd like to welcome you all thank you all for being here a couple things before we begin about how we conduct the meeting and public hana first of all i just ask for courtesy for all speakers just as you wish to be heard other people was to be heard as well if someone says something you don't agree with well that happens sometimes but please extend them the courtesy of allowing them
004to speak without being interrupted uh it is traditional for the sanchez school board to not respond directly to comments at the time we make them we we already have an agenda item on our meeting for next wednesday night to discuss what we have heard both in email comments uh and mail comments and what we hear from you folks tonight so you will be heard all the directors have been receiving the email comments as as they come in and we will be discussing them and take taking the action next wednesday night if if we find it necessary as far as comments that you wish to make the only limitations we have really our time three minutes we have a lot of people here we'd like to get through everybody uh is a little cool out here
005so there's a countdown timer right there and as you step to the microphone if you just state your name you don't have to go through your address and you're going to just take your name and as soon as you state your name mr skodak will hit the timer button and the timer will begin counting down when it gets down to zero i ask that you wrap up and complete by the time it gets to zero uh having done this for a number of years and a few other venues i'm not really hard-lined about hey that's it shut up get off the stage uh when it gets down to three o'clock or three minutes if you're not done and you're wrapping up i will tend to give you the benefit out and give you a few
006extra seconds but please at three o'clock three minutes three o'clock right got three minutes please expect to be done if you do have more things that you want to say and can't fit into three minutes write it down and submit to us in writing via email if you're doing tomorrow we'll get plenty of time for us to review before the meeting next wednesday just to add the mission i would ask you to speak as if your mother were here listening she would want you to be curious and speculative if you don't think your mother was the type who would do that expect please speak as if my mother were here uh finally the process is gonna be you filled out a comment card at the table she came in uh and i'm taking them ask
007me and receive them so that's the order i'll be calling them uh if you didn't fill out a card and you hear somebody say something through the early part of the evening that you would like to speak yourself you're welcome to go fill one out and we'll have you on the end of the list but i will call speaker to come to the microphone which is right here in the center and if you just state your name and you'll see as soon as you state your name mr g you will have to start on that if you're the on deck speaker i'm going to be calling two speakers at a time basically i will call our next speaker and i will let you know who the next person in line is if that person would
008please make your way close by so that when one speaker gets done we can move quickly into the next one and when you do speak please remember to speak directly into the microphone not everybody does that on a regular basis and it's easy to turn away from the microphone or forget it's there put speed directly into it you don't have to yell it's what you can adjust that mic stand up or down as necessary uh generally we will not respond to you or speak to you however i do reserve the right to say you know at the end if there's something that i think we'd like a little clarification on i may ask you a clarification question uh but please don't take a personal client to do that just because i'm not sharp enough to
009figure out the first time you say it uh in the interest of time one trip to microphone per person this evening please and you may not yield your time to anyone else so your time is your time and don't feel obligated to if somebody says something that you had intended on saying exactly the same thing don't feel obligated to repeat them you know you can say a bill on that guy right there um we don't have a specific time length uh set for this meeting uh but i'd like to remind everybody of the old adage about the years the brain can only endure and process as much as development will allow so thank you all for being here and showing the interest in the health the welfare of our kids and i would like to
010begin with our first line sherry harvey sherry are you here oh uh and following sherry will be marshall benton so marshall if you could just lurk about close by when sharing this deficit thank you for the opportunity my name is sherry harvey i live in florence i do not have uh kids in the district but i was a hiring manager fort hewitt packard hp for many many years and i want to make the following observations i believe that oregon dropping academic requirements for graduation will put oregon high school students graduates at a severe disadvantage when interviewing for jobs i believe that students will not be taken seriously when applying for scholarships for college or for jobs based on oregon's reputation before they even get to their individual achievement i guarantee that districts in some other
011states plus china and india will be putting out superior students making impossible for scientific students to compete and number two i realized it was different difficult for all of us during copic but from the view of a citizen in florence it appears that your actions are 95 for the state and 5 for the students and i think that as an autonomous school district it should be 100 for the students [Applause] immediately behind mr denton is brian lockington thank you for allowing me time to share my thoughts on a couple of subjects my name is marshall denton and i am the resident of who arts i do not have kids or grandkids in your district but i do pay the school district over 200 per year through my property tax bill therefore because of this investment
012i feel i have a right to express my thoughts seeing what was discovered in natoma school district in northern california recently where one of their teachers gabriel geitz was indoctrinating his communist antifa extremist ideas on his students right under the nose of the faculty and administration if it wasn't for the group project veritas exposing this in an undercover sting it might still be going on in another incident recently in southern california a teacher kristen pitzen at the back bay high school was seen instructing her students to salute the gay pride flag in lieu of the stars and stripes my questions to questions to the board is this number one have all teachers and administrators been vetted to the degree that we in the community don't have to concern ourselves with this type of behavior number
013two i would like to be assured that posters and banners advertising black lives matter antifa rainbow flags pro-choice or any other level liberal left-wing unpatriotic advertising will not be allowed to be displayed on any school property lastly can you commit to me that crt diversity equity training social emotional learning or other like subjects will not be a part of the district's curriculum and also that you will work towards accommodating combating the practice of making it mandatory to have students who are masked since there is no science to support their use strange why science is taught in schools but not followed and i'll leave a copy of this [Applause] [Music] good evening i appreciate this meeting in person i would like to share a couple of points first masks don't work they don't work masks don't
014work we all wish they were a solution to this vital disease but they are not they don't work neither do the cumbersome mitigation efforts we are all engaged in a cdc study published and subsequently buried in may 2021 of 169 schools covering 90 000 students from november 16th to december 11 2020 concludes that there is no statistically significant reduction in the spread of covet 19 achieved by these efforts not masks not plastic barriers not cohorting not hybrid learning models not social distancing not directional hallways not upgraded ventilation it doesn't work but they don't work we wish they did but they don't second acknowledging that our district has local control and actually exercising local control are very different things i'm asking as a parent that the board takes the steps necessary to assert local control and
015untie your own hands we will support you in this part of that local control i ask to be a raising of the educational bar when we lower the standard or get rid of getting rid of it all together we are not doing our kids any favors the opposite may be true we are not preparing them for life doing hard things is good for them it is the role of the board to guide and promote the education of students in this regard i request and expect that the board will protect our students from dangerous curriculum specifically on referring to critical race theory and all of its tentacles that lead to the indoctrination of our children in one excuse me if one studies crt's roots from frankfurt school to harvard law school into the social justice movements
016and education of today it can be easily recognized by its fruits which fruits are that of marxism and anti-liberty crt is divisive and counterfactual with many regards it needs exposed and rooted out i do not interview the task you have in front of you i volunteer to help where i can although i will volunteer for teachers and staff alike in conclusion a quote from dietrich bonhoeffer silence in the face of evil is itself evil god will not hold us guiltless not to speak is to speak not to act as to act ladies and gentlemen of the board trust that courage is contagious we will support you as you support us as parents thank you board of directors i want to acknowledge that much like winning the people behind me we understand the situation that you
017guys sit in we understand that the state holds a lot of strength we understand that your funding is tied to the state you understand that many things um are limited of what you can do my frustration as a parent though has come when we were all preparing to return to school and we were told by our governor that we were going that our district was going to have local control on how we were going to return to school only for her to pull that back at the last minute leaving boards across the state scrambling to change their plans just like you i'm sure i had to do my frustration level though peaked when i saw boards and superintendents across the state start to push back publicly start to stand up for parents rights within their
018district unfortunately we got crickets from our board here and that has literally disappointed me what i'm looking for from our board is to stand up and support parents rights parents rights to choose if their kids go to school with masks or whether our kids what our kids sit through curriculum likes i know for me mass choice is not a political thing mass choice for me is being able to decide based off of the information that i have if the right thing to do is to send my child to school with a mask i can tell you right now when i spent the latter part of last year watching my nine-year-old come home with black eyes broken out cheeks bleeding cheeks bloody noses from wearing a mask because i can't even use a laundry detergent that
019has any scent or anything in it because she is so has such delicate skin so the first day of school of course i pick her up today she flops in the car and says daddy my cheeks hurt and i had a headache and so for her being in a mask for all day for the first time a long time was very rough on her as a parent i should be able to choose whether she wears a shield or a mask or a mask at all and that's what i'm asking this board to stand up for is our rights to be able to make that decision based off the data that we have i know for me i've done lots of study on peer-reviewed articles about the advocacy of masks i've heard everything from they're just
020a piece of cloth to you know you name it but i can tell you pediatricians around the country are waving the flag of the disposable mask the ones that we give our kids um if they end up swallowing your mask in the classroom or whether they forget their mask at home those masks are the ones the pediatricians are concerned with the most because they're so cheaply made and they're made so quickly that they're afraid of the cellulose that they're breathing and all day long those masks are intended to be worn 20 or 30 minutes at a time not all they want we know that these kids have a hard enough time sneezing into their elbow and now we're seeing kids sneezing directly into their mask because it's covered so everything in that mask is coming
021coming through there so we know that mass are not ideal for young children the science shows it's ideal for young children we can see where as adults that maybe that might be something a little different but let's reconsider let's fight for uh parents rights and rights mate and mass choice and we do support you guys in fighting with us so thank you thank you and following jennifer will be adaf fowler well good evening i'm jennifer wagner i have 15 year old twins uh sophomores at the high school who have their first day today i'm also a cyberself graduate and treasure my society's law experience very very much i'm here tonight to ask you to take a stand as a school board for local control for the school district for the sake of our kids our
022district has become a rubber stamp for mandates and policies driven by the state of oregon and school districts should not be treated as one science fits all there are school boards throughout oregon who are pushing for local control right now and we can be part of a powerful movement for local control by linking arms with other districts to make changes to how we do things in oregon schools it is time for change and the change needs to include you it needs to include us the mass mandate should be a local school district decision and there are many other decisions like these that we need to decide locally this will require our school board to be more than a rubber stamp for the superintendent the governor and the department of education and to find a way
023to engage with families to determine what is best for our kids locally we need transparency hard discussions public disagreements dissenting votes strong backbones leadership and engagement as we determine what is best for our kids as we move forward in the cytosol school district postcoded the time is now for this kind of change i've been engaged with our school district for years and have seen firsthand how parents voices have been stifled i hear discussions in school board meetings about what will the union think but i do not hear what will parents think after going through months of a formal complaint with the school district i concluded that parents and families do not have a voice often here i asked paul burns before he retired where do parents go with their ideas questions and concerns and you
024really couldn't answer me my formal complaint went through all the proper channels and legitimate concerns none of which were proven wrong and in the end it was clear that parents voices don't matter protecting the status quo and sweeping things under the rug were more important and all this does is it hurts our kids we as parents know what is best for our kids and after seeing the damage done to our kids during coven we're ready to take back the control over our kids education that has been lost for too long you should not be afraid to meet with us as a group or individually as our elected officials you should want to continue continue to meet with us much like you're doing tonight please start by listening to us tonight and take a public stand
025against statewide mandates and formally asking as a board for local control even though your school board said in an email that my concerns were clearly political i'm here to make it clear that nothing about this is political this is truly about my concern for our kids all of our kids and our future thank you very much this power will be normal and i would like to suspension we only have more speaking and request so if there's anybody else who has not spoken we would like to uh ronnie has the form down there so is howard good evening thank you for this opportunity to speak publicly my comments will be brief and to the point i am a retired school teacher i have worked in education for many years and come from a family of educators
026i speak with authority in this matter and as a taxpayer in this town of forms i'm very concerned about what is going to be included in the curriculum this fall it seems to me that the most important content should be focused on learning to read to write and to compute proposed teaching of critical race theory and gender identity must be stricken from our schools k through 12. these ideologies have no basis in fact and are counterproductive with respect to the education of our children and i offer this respectfully thank [Applause] actually i don't you any other forms so if anybody else would like to speak following ms wood please check in with vaughn so my name is norman wood i work as a licensed clinical social worker here in florence i don't have children in
027the school that i see a lot of children aged 6 or 15 and their families and i'm just here to advocate on behalf of kind of anecdotally the stories that i'm hearing that children as well as teenagers who want to wear masks to school a lot of times they don't feel safe coming to school if they don't have a mask on or some kind of detection so i just wanted to advocate for them and that's really all i have thank you very much [Applause] you were also the first one to arrive yes i was you have to forgive me i was not planning on talking tonight because i don't do this well but after hearing what i've heard i had to say my piece the scioso school district board of directors has solicited input from
028the members of its community regarding the 2122 school year the obvious issue this year is cloven 19 and how the school district will deal with this issue while written statements are not the issue i disagree with the school district hoping this in-person meeting because of the divisive nature of this topic and the many outrageous actions of a few local individuals however a decision has been made to do so first let me say that i believe the position set forth by the school district on their website is reasonable and adheres to the guidelines set put forth by lake county the state of oregon and the cpc these guidelines will help us maintain in-person attendance during the school year which is vitally important to our stern students and their ability to learn we have had the opportunity
029over these last few weeks to see the results of mass and unmasked returns to school in other states the results have shown that those schools with teacher vaccinations mass mandates contract tracing potty and other mitigations have been able to maintain in-person learning those who do not adhere to the recommended guidelines in many instances have had to quarantine thousands of students and move to remote learning this is not the result we need for our children many of whom already are at a disadvantage remote learning last year was not successful and our students want to be back in the classroom and they can't be without masks in addition requiring every employee of the school district to be vaccinated is vital to our children's health especially for those students who are too young to get a vaccination at
030this time residents advocating against masks are making a political statement not a statement about the health of our school children or what is best for them masks have been proven to be effective i trust our board of directors to continue to adhere to the guidelines that were developed and published on the school website anything less would be a danger [Applause] some comments that we received in the past week from michael allen patricia [Music] matt stone leo and sue jones and we'll get to the rest of those in a minute and now i'd like to ask donna i'm sorry i don't know [Music] i thought i would dobson up and see that i would have known well it's been a long time since i've been here this year's spot that i have spent lots of hours
031in the stadium with our granddaughters who re-enraged the school and their military is raising families now but the oldest granddaughter is homeschooling her children simply because of the things that are being taught in public education and that concerns me a lot too i voiced the same opinion as a lot of people that have spoken tonight that this gender identity it has no place in grade school for these kids i would hate to see that happen here in florence a place that we have respected the education that our grandfathers had very much and i would like to see these students coming up to have the same opportunity that they have the masks it's not political they should not be on these children all day long but the same reasons that everybody spoke about they're not the
032ones that are spreading the virus and it's been improving it's not political it's a medical thing it's a health issue and i just would like to see the education that we once had in this school district be retained and maintained for the future of these children in the future of america thank you [Applause] and richard coughlin sent us comments uh joanna hawkins sally wants cindy coolman donnelly gary brock heidi german high in jeannette jones stephanie scrambling karen radke judy pulvery rebecca gary john escher crystal hall donna milner andrew sturgill jennifer wagner and marshall denton genevieve shan ada fowler who heard from this evening ralph nichols joel marks dennis otterson david lynch ada fowler and sherry harvey at this point i'll make one last call anybody who did not have an opportunity to speak wish to
033come do so all right well in that case thank you all very much if anybody would like to comment again or if you haven't commented you can um put send an email to 97j at k12.org.us and it's on our website very easy to find and just please put a public comment in the subject line so uh when you heard comment and i as i mentioned earlier your comment will be discussed where you have an agenda item next wednesday night and so it will be on a future agenda so i'm going to ask the directors it is an open meeting however because of cold restrictions rather small we will be streamed live on youtube as we have been doing for the last year and a half or so well we may not directly respond to individual
034comments but we will discuss them and there will be there's been a variety of topics covered procedures so we'll take a look at those and they'll probably be a response to any of them that's a possibility thank you all right i have a motion to adjourn from uh director barnett is there a second second from director uh kane the stroke brings thank you all very much [Applause] security shut it off