001who knew there was a star in the community about it you are [Music] good evening [Music] good evening and welcome to this board meeting i have a couple of requests right as we begin uh the first is one in light of safety and concern i please ask that you keep this central corridor to the exit as wide as the doorway so if the folks on the aisle could move their chairs and the second is now i'm talking about and it you can certainly stand inside the room i apologize that we don't have the space for everyone to stand outside the room i also need to try to keep this doorway open uh for fire exit as well um so if you're in that doorway and you can come inside i appreciate everyone who has turned
002out tonight so i will call this meeting to order attendance nordic here olson here d peterson here jay peterson boss ward here all present thank you please rise and join me for the pledge of allega and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you again uh in our agenda items at this time we have visitors to be heard before we move into that section i do want to comment that we will call for public comment on item b of new business the second reading of the policy on gender equity and inclusiveness and i will also call for a separate public comment on item d which is a discussion of library book selection as they appear on the agenda the agenda did have a
003tanger happenings in the interest of time we are not going to have that particular report this evening and so at this time i will ask if there are any members of the public who wish to address the board on any issue on the agenda that is not item b or item d and in doing so please note that there will be no action taken on this item and please refrain from using the names of personnel or students in the district [Music] seeing none we'll move on to our approval of the agenda we do have one change to the agenda that i believe was sent out but we'll make the announcement for the public we have an item g which is the hiring of two individuals and since they were not released earlier they are under
004new business uh and not part of the consent agenda uh mr alvi are there any other changes no none board members any changes okay so i do need a motion to accept the amended agenda adding item g hiring of new personnel motion to approve the agenda by rachel second and jim all in favor signify with saying aye aye aye opposed nay abstentions agenda is approved uh second item is the indication of conflicts of interest i've reviewed the agenda and have no conflicts this is rachel i have none jim i have none carol i have none shane i have none very good that moves us on to our consent agenda items this includes the approval of minutes from the past meeting any open enrollments the publish new hires resignations and bills just for the public's knowledge
005all of the consent agenda items do appear in the minutes so you'll be able to see all of this but we don't discuss them each individually are there any items on the consent agenda that anyone wishes to remove and move into new business oh okay so we need a motion to approve the consent agenda motion to approve the consent agenda by carol second second by shane all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye oppose nay abstentions consent items are approved that brings us to unfinished business mr alvi facilities review yes um this evening we're happy to report that we've done our first public meeting for the new elementary school we had that on november 1st we had a listening session at the middle school we had a good discussion with the public some staff
006as well as access with our architect to show some of the upcoming features take feedback about the potential building some of its constraints and potentially some of its you know potential for the future needs of the district then on november 5th we also had our building committee do a school visit to harrisburg where we're able to see two of their newest buildings and so our committee members include administrators staff from the district as well as usd faculty and parents and those folks were able to attend and ask questions of the folks in harrisburg about their two latest buildings uh in november 9th tomorrow our architect will meet with our school of people from both austin and jolly as well as our custodial staff to gain feedback about the potential building that's coming their direction we
007continue to have our weekly district meetings for the progress reports of the district's building we also have a aggressive time frame that would include getting our drawings done in november december with final board approval coming in january and then hopefully to let out bids in february march for the building project to hopefully begin in the summer of 2022 so there's a lot of exciting things happening with the building committee and those folks that are part of that and once again we'd encourage anybody in the public that might have questions or concerns just reach out to the building principles or myself at central administration and we can give you some feedback and try to answer your questions if you have anything to offer on the new uh elementary school so exciting times and we're really glad
008to kind of get this ball rolling for the good of the students in our community can you comment on the extent to where so we we still have kind of the initial draft layout that was just a potential draft is are those being changed or when will there be changes reflected based upon community input because i've heard that like well you know there's specific concerns about this but it's still in the draft it's like but if the draft is still a draft you know when will some of those things be reflected um in your packets the board packet you saw the most recent rendering of that drawing and it's a something that we can place on our website for more public input as well but we are we are addressing those things that come up
009to us so again if somebody is seeing a draft that they're having questions about they should contact one of us about that uh but at this point the architect has put in all of the classrooms all of the specials all of our team teaching specif facilities our special education and resources rooms gymnasiums admin school nurses so most of the flexible space is is taking solid shape by now so um we will make sure that this is continues to be updated on our website but really at each of these weekly meetings this continues to get fine-tuned i know that there's been multiple concerns raised about the special ed room not being in a place where it has eye level windows is that something that's still in the works of being addressed to try to find a
010space where people are at all day that don't have the eye level windows that is still being discussed but to be honest it'll there's going to be give and take with this design if any design there's going to be somebody that's in the interior walls of this building and as we've explained throughout the process it's our architect architect has created a um a cantilever window system that has lights that are windows and natural light that comes in above the ceiling level so it would either have to take the place of a first grade second grade third grade classroom for example or we have to use the space in the middle with team teaching special services resource room art room and flexible space so something in those building design will have to give with only getting
011cantilever lighting versus window side at height window light okay yes uh really no new news to report there the same data that i sent out last week to our patrons into our our school board we had two active cases in the district last week and at two active cases were in the high school so of our 1450 occupants in our buildings we had two cases item a uh our fall enrollment some good news absolutely uh we had speculated this along the beginning of the school term but officially the last friday in september is the actual count date that schools received their official count of students that are coming and going in their district our district count numbers were 1344. so we are up 85 students from last year uh and may so pretty pretty excited
012about the fact that we've grown by that and there are some challenges when you have 85 new students in the building but they're certainly some great opportunities with having that many new students in the district as well and we don't need any action on item a nope just an fyi okay that brings us to item b the second reading of policy gender equity and access we do have i will now call for public comment i have all of the names for people who've signed up and when i'm finished with that i will certainly open the floor we absolutely wish to hear from as many and all of you but in order to do that i will ask that you please try to keep your comments to three minutes at about five minutes we're going to
013try to we will put a hard stop on that in the interest of making sure everyone has an opportunity to speak before i call the first name i do want to make one additional comment and that is i've had the the opportunity to do a couple of interviews and i'm disappointed that one comment in particular has never made print and that is this that i am and i have said this to media outlets i am incredibly proud of the passion and the concern that the community has shown and the civility with which they have discussed a topic that in other parts of the country has resulted in name-calling and physical violence i think we can continue to be an example for the rest of the country of how you address and talk about issues such
014as this so with that first person who signed up tonight ryan church when we get to that well ryan's approaching if we get off this please do state your name it's always helpful to restate your name when you uh approach the podium the microphone that's green is the one that's on ryan the podium is yours ryan church well i hate to be the first one to contradict you doug because up until about three hours ago i was the sponsor of a petition in vermillion to oppose this bill or sorry this policy since i put my name to the opposition of this policy i have been called a transphobe i've been called a homophobe i've been told my ideas are filled with hate and violence i just want to make that very clear that i am
015not a transphobe i'm not a homophobe i do not have hate or violence towards anyone in this community my idea used to be to live and let others live this policy started off as just an equal bathroom rights issue i was 50 50 on the matter i had no real strong opinions one way or another somebody wants to use a bathroom they should be allowed to what i have a severe problem with is this policy has morphed from just a bathroom equality issue into something much larger we're now allowing students to share beds with each other on school trips we're allowing children to shower together in non-gender specific bathroom shower or locker room showers they're changing in the same locker rooms and that's what i have a problem with not because trans binary cis etc
016i have a problem because i feel that that disrupts children's innocence while i don't believe many will take advantage of this policy i think we've seen across the nation that there are some that are evil they do have evil in their hearts they are mean-spirited and they will attempt to use this policy to exploit our young ones i'm a father of two in this school district my children are very young so they will be in this school district for a very long time i do not want their innocence destroyed because we can't stop people from threatening with lawsuits because they don't get their way thank you [Applause] [Music] lindsay jorgensen good evening my name is lindsey jorgensen i am here representing myself and my family and not my employer the only reason we are having
017this conversation is because we collect birth certificates upon enrollment you do not know what is on my birth certificate and i don't know what is on yours you assume my gen uh you assume my gender because of the way i present and the way i look we need to afford these students the same courtesy for this reason i continue to be in full support of this policy thank you [Applause] mike phelan my name is mike phelan um the board members thank you for your time and effort in addressing this policy and this issue this uh past couple months um i am the parent of two young children in the district as well um and i strongly urge you to vote in favor of this policy at the beginning of the school year the board was
018asked to live up to the non-discrimination language already part of your policies gender identity is protected characteristic in that list the board at the first meeting quickly agreed that the current practice was not living up to that standard at one of our first meetings on the issue jim mccullough urged you to act quickly to approve a change noting that the district was open to a lawsuit a lawsuit it would very likely lose across the country district and appellate courts have decided in favor of transgender students seeking to use restroom and locker room facilities that align with the gender identity they insistently consistently and persistently affirm school districts on the losing side of those cases have had to pay millions in penalties and court costs the department of justice's office of civil civil rights specifically lists
019denying transgender students access to appropriate bathrooms as the type of thing that they would spark an investigation for them mr mccullough told you that a policy like the one that you're voting on tonight was the prudent thing to do it is also the morally right thing to do in an option that lets all students in vermilion public schools know you support them you've heard from experts in this field that gender affirming school policies save trans kids lives you've heard letters read on behalf of multiple trans students and their families about how current policies are hurting them you've heard from students who have had who have transgender friends tell you that they support this policy because they know it will help their peers mental health those of us supporting this policy have shown you the research
020on why this policy will protect our district's children we'll keep all children in our district safe on the other side you've also heard from parents worried about keeping their children safe and that's admirable all of us here want safe kids in our district but there is no evidence to suggest this policy will add any danger for any student transgender kids are not monsters looking to assault people in the bathroom to believe those arguing against this policy means believing that our schools are rampant with kids who are itching to assault somebody in a bathroom but also that they're being stopped by a little plastic sign on the door and those two things don't make sense to me together i believe the students in our schools are good they're not assaulting each other other places they're not
021going to jump into the bathroom and start assaulting each other states and cities and school districts all over the country have had gender affirming bathroom and locker room policies in place for quite a while now the actual evidence says that these policies decrease violence the entire state of iowa has had a policy like the one you're considering in place for more than a decade without issue those of you who work at large companies know that in the bostok versus clayton county supreme court decision last summer companies have been forbidden to discriminate against transgender employees and we have not seen a large outbreak of violence perpetrated by transgender individuals next saturday november 20th marks the transgender day of remembrance that honors transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence the list of names
022on that list regularly reaches numbers that would break your heart 37 people in our country were killed last year specifically because they were transgender and that's not including a large number of suicides from transgender students and adults who didn't have the support of their communities i stand before you tonight as i stood before you every meeting this year on this topic because i want next year's list of names to be shorter i don't want a single vermilion kid's name on that list i want i urge you to vote in favor of this policy letting transgender students in our districts know that they are loved they are supported and they are valued in vermilion thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] leslie garish good evening my name is leslie garrish and i'm a community member i have two
023little kids who are not yet of age to come to the school district but we can't wait to be tannertr soon um so i'm here tonight to support uh you in voting yes on the policy that's presented to you after last week's meeting i was a little discouraged and some of it is because of the rhetoric and all of that that's being broadcast but really i was thinking they don't really know how much support is out there and that's on us right we have to tell you we have to be here we have to show up so um it's easy for me this is an easy decision for me right um i think this policy is reasonable it's straightforward it's lawful but it's so many things that make vermilion what it is it's welcoming it's
024empathetic it's understanding this is vermilion we just don't tolerate each other's differences we welcome them and we celebrate them so i made a petition i was it was 7 a.m on wednesday i was at the sioux falls airport i made it and by the time i landed in chicago i had 300 signatures and since you've heard a lot of anecdotal research and evidence here's some data for you as of today we had a thousand and we had over a thousand people sign before i walked into this room and now i don't want to tell you all these people live here because that is actually not the truth so what i did this weekend with some help from my friends and colleagues is um i made you a breakdown of what i know about the people
025who signed this petition so i did this i updated it at 2 30 so this um these numbers have changed as of 230 we had 975 total signatures that number's now over a thousand at that point we had 191 community members almost 90 percent of them were parents of kids in the school district um and that number is over 200 at this point at that point that i can identify we had 130 usd students sign and i don't know all the usd students but there's a lot of other people on that and their names are all here for you this is a really exciting number that i want to tell you we had 24 as of earlier today vermillion public school students sign this petition they are current students they are your number one constituents
026we had over 30 vermillion public school graduates sign this so people who live elsewhere perhaps but graduated and there's some really interesting comments in the comments section that are also provided for you a lot of the other people that signed are alumni of usd their former commun community members there are potential people that wanted to move to vermillion there are people that perhaps wanted to go to usd for school there are all sorts of people that sign this and yes there are people who are just really passionate about this issue that live all over the world that's signed as well and i mean that's exciting but you want to see the people that are going to be impacted by this and i understand this i do have five copies here and i'm happy to bring
027them up to you so i want you to look at that i want you to have some data and some understand who's actually in support of this issue i ask you to be brave i ask if you brave like these kids i know this isn't easy you've sat through a lot of really long meetings um but i ask you to vote yes and the last thing i think you need to hear because it affects every single other comment is that trans boys are boys and trans girls or girls thank you very much [Applause] sandy mcewen good evening members of the board i am very happy to be standing in front of you tonight i am a member of the vermillion community i do not have a child in the district and frankly i wasn't going
028to speak because of that but as i have followed this policy and this policy conversation and i have followed it very closely i was i was struck by a couple of things that i just thought were important to bring to the board's attention as you were thinking about this proponents of the gender equity policy have provided you with a raft of evidence that this policy is needed but opponents have also given given you evidence that this policy is needed over the last several months you have heard parents express their fear of transgender people they have told you that their children are afraid of transgender people being in the same bathroom with them they have told you that they believe that transgender children being in the same uh that transgender gender sorry children and their parents
029are making choices that are contrary to god's will so much that they are at risk of eternal damnation why is this important we are not born afraid of transgender people this is a learned response so what we know is that these children have been taught to be fearful of transgender people fear breeds contempt contempt breeds demonization demonization and dehumanization read violence parents of transgender transgender children cannot stand in front of you and tell you how they agonize over how to keep their children safe and healthy because to do so would be to expose their children to make them poster children for this issue and to risk their health and safety the decision you have before you is only difficult if you ignore the actual dangers and buy into the myths and misconceptions about what it
030means to be a transgender child and also if you buy into myths and misconceptions of what public bathrooms are like in my 50 years nearly on this planet my god i can't believe i'm nettle i have never seen another person's genitals in a public bathroom that creation there there are a couple of issues that i think are really important because there are misconceptions that have been brought in front of this board over the course of several meetings that just need to be set straight the first one is that creation and implementation of this policy is somehow precipitous this issue was first brought to this board's attention in may of 2017 when community members and experts begged this board to put together a policy for transgender children and the board chose to do nothing this was
031also reported in may 2017 in the vermillion plane talk imagine the hypothetical transgender child that started school in the school year of 2017. she started kindergarten and went through it without a policy she went through first grade without a policy she went through second grade without a policy she went through third grade without a policy and will now complete at least half of her fourth grade year without a policy in place there are kids who were in eighth grade at the time you were first asked to address this issue who will graduate from school may be having two months of a policy in place and that policy is just a respect for their identity a respect for their identity in school if we could just pause for a second and think about that aside from
032family what more important place is there what more important environment is there for you to have your identity affirmed and respected than in school every child deserves that you are not being precipitous in passing this policy indeed with all due respect this bot this body has been derelict for nearly five years in addressing it the second misconception is that this policy has somehow been sprung upon the public without due consideration and opportunities to be heard in addition to the fact this has been an issue that this board has been aware of for five years this board has been holding public hearings and discussing this policy for months it was discussed at the following meetings august 24 2021 item 3 722 and august 27 plain talk piece was published on it on august 30th it was
033item 5 8 22 and a september 3rd piece was published in the plain talk on september 22nd it was item 110 22. on october 12th it was item 8 12 22 on october 15th another piece was in the plane talk about it about it and on november november 2nd 2021 more community members provided additional public comment on this issue before you passed your first reading these meetings were public the meeting agendas and minutes were published and easily accessible to the public and at the november 2nd meeting this board deleted portions of the policy for reconsideration after the new year which means you're going to start this all over again in january and now here we are again discussing this issue with the public there is nothing new surprising or out of order in the method
034by which this policy was proposed and then the last thing and i promise i will make this very quick um that there is some question aside from what is the law and what is your duty with regard to this policy is the final misconception your primary function is to craft and enforce policy for the school district you have been unequivocally alerted by legal counsel that the current district's practices are in derogation of the law schools are places where we teach students about their responsibilities as citizens about the rule of law and about the importance of doing the right thing a school district that is not complying with the law is not teaching those lessons perhaps worse it is actively instilling distrust and disdain for local government in the hearts of kids who are not even
035old enough to vote you need a policy administrators and teachers need guidance this is not a hard decision children are in danger the district is violating the law you have a duty and i appreciate very much your willingness to do it thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] donna schaefer i'm donna schaefer i taught in the vermillion school district for 23 years i'm experienced with elementary children i'm afraid that we are so concerned about one group of children that we are going to neglect the other group it's exchanging priorities and it's not keeping everybody not thinking about everybody in this situation i i can i can tell you for instance um i was a tomboy i could beat the boys in running i bloodied a boy's nose but not once did i consider myself a and i'm
036not saying that what i am saying is if i would have gone to the bathroom with the boys bathroom they would have beat me up if i if they would have come to my bathroom i would have been upset whenever i would approach the bathroom when the boys bathroom at school they were just so old just could not stand the fact that i was going to be in the bathroom or any girl would be in the boys bathroom and vice versa and i'm saying yes we do need to make a places for the those children who are not certain exactly what their gender is or i think their gender is different than what is uh noticeable and i think we we have done that we have especially in the high school in the middle school
037and we maybe do something more in the in the elementary grades but we do not i just don't think it is fair to the majority to make it possible for the minority to do make them more comfortable because then these are the other ones will be uncomfortable i think you really need to think about that there are things that bother children that don't bother adults and we need to think about children as being children and not being an adult and um i have an uh grandson who is gay and i love him dearly but he also appreciates me and gives me the ability to think what i think and he loves me anyway and i love him anyway it has nothing to do with that but i really truly believe that there are going to
038be a lot of kids in the elementary department that will sit there and wet their pants rather than go into a bathroom where they think there's going to be a boy in it or there's going to be a girl in it and i think we need to give consideration to that that's all [Applause] mark daniels i'm really grateful to come here mark daniels is my name um i have a student in the school system i've had five others who've gone through the school system and i'm really grateful to be here i'm grateful for people who talk in considerate ways with each other you know who share different viewpoints and opinions and you know i've really been impressed with the school board and your efforts to address the different voices that have been here heard in
039the and the superintendent as well i mean i think it's really amazing i think we're really looking at some issues addressing security and privacy for our students that are really issues not even related to one's gender identity i mean i think students have been having issues for years and years to go into showers and not have some students not have privacy and so i think we're really making wonderful progress of course i'm here i want to support the policy i think it's remarkable what you've done you know we started my first meeting was on the anniversary of the march on washington and i wanted to share i think this is a civil rights issue i mean this is the this i mean as nice as it was and thank you for the wonderful uh um
040support numbers we had but i don't think this is a vote i mean i don't think this is a we put it up for public policy vote this is this these are moral civil rights issues about how we treat one another and we don't vote on which groups we treat one way or which groups we treat another way we treat people with dignity with respect we value each person and and so i'd like to just suggest that the board really take that into consideration we've been spending a lot of time in our country over the our history trying to correct some of the mistakes we've made over the years and trying to provide opportunities for all of our citizens and i just want to encourage us to do that same thing and i want to
041once again say thank you thanks [Applause] [Music] tony armbrust thank you ladies and gentlemen for the school board for what you do for us we appreciate what you do for our children i'm very concerned as a father about this policy and the safety of my kids and not trying to malign anybody but there's a lot of fear there's a lot of things going on in our nation that have pointed to this is opening the door for abuse bad policy opens the door for abuse we've talked about well our staff are going to police better our staff are going to do more our staff are busy giving our kids the best education possible they can't be everywhere they can't be everywhere and sometimes we we uh confuse the fundamental differences between a young man and a
042woman young men have sexual drives no matter how they dress or how that you know they have sexual drives and there's going to come a point maybe it's not the first year maybe it's not the second year where that's going to take over and something's going to happen somebody and this you guys are going to be accountable for that that's that's on you i love these kids i love all all people from the series of my heart but we have an identity crisis and we've lied to you and told you that your gender can shift you can change gender that you weren't given you weren't created with a beautiful gender that god gave you and he loves you just the way you are you can't change it and we've created an identity crisis where we've
043told kids you can change you can be whatever we want and we've created an epidemic in our nation an epidemic of suicide of depression of death because people don't know who they are and this school board by our policy by what we do what we say we're speaking we're saying that's okay and what's it's gonna do to all the kids who maybe are firm and who they are it's going to confuse them more and say well maybe you're not who you thought you are maybe god didn't make you this way maybe you were made in this image and oh and and so we have this epidemic we have this crisis and a lot of people are dying many people are taking their lives but we have the answers it's bad policy that opens these doors
044and this policy is based on fear it's based on fear of we're going to sue you if you don't do that that's not a healthy policy that's not a good way to go about it and we don't want that we don't want anybody to lose their life but we want truth we want truth and i'm i'm here i felt very compelled to speak truth that your gender does not change god made you in a certain way and he loves you very much but we're not going to find who we are and who we're created to be until we're walking and what we're created for and so if i'm pretending to be something i'm not i'm never going to find happiness and we're speaking this message to all of our kids well maybe you're not what
045you're creating maybe you're not what you're and they're going to be confused and they're going to be frustrated and they're going to go down paths of darkness that i have counseled and worked with many people to try to come out of and get free from well there is an answer there is an answer to the freedom that we seek we know there's a freedom but it's not available in this policy that we're pushing this policy is going to can further further confuse a generation and speak lies to people and children and so i encourage you to reject this policy [Applause] liz develder keeping this very short um i'm fully in support of the gender equity and access policy this policy affirms that the vermilion school district supports all of our students it is important that
046we support all diversity in our schools race color religion disability and gender identity thank you to the board for your time on this important issue i'm sure it has not been all joy thank you to mr alby and the principles because you've been working quickly to make changes and plans for things in the future and and thank you for putting in all of that work everyone wants and deserves privacy in restrooms and locker rooms it is not just transgenders uh or transgender um individuals uh please vote for the gender equity and access policy [Applause] catherine burkland good evening my name is catherine burkland thank you for the time tonight i wanted to thank you for serving on the school board my comments are directed at you i will not spend your time tonight trying to
047convince all of them that they should think like me i believe that you value all children in the district i truly believe that i truly believe that you do not agree with those who would insinuate that transgender students shouldn't exist i don't believe you think that i think you think that trans kids are tangers the same way all kids are teenagers i truly believe that you think that they're us i believe that you understand the fiduciary and legal obligations that are facing you i believe that you understand civil rights law and you've had legal counsel and you understand that your job is to provide an experience for all students that does not require revealing private information by wanting to use the restroom i believed you when you said you wanted more time to learn more
048we've been talking about this for a while and you asked for more time i believe that you used your time to do that i believe that you looked at the cases that the other side has used that the opposition has given you as a cause for why you should oppose this i believe you have evaluated whether those cases have merit to be included in your discussion or not i hope that you have used your ability to read their statements and notice the number of times that they use the word those kids rather than our kids because trans kids are not those kids they're not those kids who happen to not know what they're doing they're not those kids who just want to be in class and use the same bathroom there are kids they're tennis
049lastly excuse me this one's a little hard for me but i've done this sort of thing where you have to sit and make a hard choice and i expect that you have your decision already made up i would expect that you did i don't expect you to show up to a meeting like this and be able to change your mind that's not how you should make decisions on the spur of the moment i hope that you have done your research i hope that you have talked to lots of people most of us here tonight came to say our peace we came to have our three minutes we came to be on record as a supporter when our children ask us if we stood up when their classmates were being targeted and excluded thank you for
050your time [Applause] sarah taggart beyond uh sarah taggart beyond the fact that this policy denies biology and science forces people to use language and action showing conformity to an ideology with which they may not agree and promotes the belief of gender identity as the belief of the entire school the more egregious results of this policy is that it places at risk all students trans students as well as the general population students have sex based rights to sex exclusive bathrooms locker rooms hotel rooms and beds female students rights are not subordinate to a male student's desire to be seen as female nor are male students rights supporting it to a female's desire to see be seen as male the compromised position this policy would place students in should outrage all parents for the parent that teaches
051their kid of the importance of modesty and sexual morality putting a student in a bathroom or locker room with one of the opposite sex completely undermines their teaching to allow students to be exposed to the anatomy of the opposite sex violates their rights their safety and their dignity and while showers in the locker rooms may at some point be remodeled to become private nothing prohibits students in the common area of locker rooms from walking around undressed the overnight accommodations guidelines being pushed forth by this board are shocking for members of this board to not only approve but to encourage students of the opposite sex to sleep in the same room and share the same bed is not just evil but criminal you are absolutely setting these kids up for failure and putting them in a
052position where very few uh students would feel comfortable students put in this position may lack the courage to express their discomfort due to pressure from teammates to simply go along to put a biological female in a bed with a biological male at a school-sponsored event could not be more wrong do i need to describe all that could happen do i need to describe to you what could be alleged to have happened i'm sure proponents of this policy will agree that these students persistently consistently and insistently identify as the gender of of others in the room that does not make them the same sex as others in the room nor does this give them the same biology and what about the gender fluid who may not reveal this tendency what about the transgender homosexual the thought
053of putting a biological male with a biological female um in the same bed uh thinking this is okay is completely complete shows complete apathy for girls and utter disregard for their safety and while society why while as a society we see more attention paid to the sexual safety of girls i am equally concerned about the compromising position this would put our boys in to allow encourage and promote having three boys in a room with a biological female and one of them sharing a bed with that female shows complete neglect for the well-being of both sexes it would take just one false allegation of sexual assault assault to ruin that boy's life it would take just one evil action by a predatory male to deeply harm that female and i might add in an effort to
054maintain privacy of the transgender student these mixed sexed hotel room arrangements can all be done unbeknownst to the parent and student and this could all happen because an ill-conceived policy shoved forward by agenda-driven members of this board tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the safety and education of our children you choose to push upon us an ideology and ideology with which the vast majority disagree and place our children in a situation that could damage their lives blame for any altercation that would occur from this policy is to be put directly on members of this this board who vote for this this is as shameful as it gets and let me also point out that this undermines parental rights by imposing no obligation on the part of the school to inform parents of a student's change
055in behavior regarding sexual identity is negligent keeping secrets from parents is a tactic of that is a tactic of cults and abusers and should never be the practice of a school district this policy violates religious rights rights is an offense is an offense to the large majority of families in this district and forces them to conform everything in this policy is about accommodating and affirming the transgender student at the expense of the general population this policy is one-sided and does nothing for to protect the rights and safety of all students thank you to board members rejecting this harmful policy i urge those of you who voted for this policy to vote the other way to tonight please consider focusing on improving current practices upgrading facilities and put and and put no policy in place thank
056you [Applause] todd nelson excuse me todd nelson i am here tonight in opposition to this policy uh legal counsel has previously said uh this board needed to slow down this process yet those comments were immediately met by board members saying it needs to needed to be hurried up during school board debate prior to this election that created this current school board no questions were asked about creating policies like this no statements were made by candidates admitting this is the agenda that would be immediately pushed no other school in south dakota is doing this yet some on this board say it is so urgent we have to schedule special meetings to hurry it along because there is no other option but to act now same bathroom policy was put in place by another school board in
057virginia as a result a biological boy took advantage of it and raped two girls tragically at different schools um this uh these assaults were a direct result of the opportunity this policy creates that so many of us fear as parents the lives of those two young girls in virginia and the lives of their families are forever changed in a horrible way when a child experiences this trauma they suffer a lifetime of issues these include higher levels of depression guilt body issues nightmares flashbacks difficulty in building trust fear intimacy ptsd sleep disorders anger feelings of powerlessness shame self blame eating disorders anxiety denial sexual problems and long-term relationship goals there are these are the direct life long effects you are potentially opening up for my girls and every other child in the vermillion public school district
058there would be nothing stopping incidents like this from happening here as a father of girls i can only beg you to end this tonight the comment has been made by this board is scared of being sued by transgender students i respect everyone i do not fear trans people that's respectful um i fear the opportunity that this policy creates for bad people to take advantage of it that is what i fear as a father of two girls uh by far and that's really what it comes down to uh this process has been sloppy and hurried some on this board have ignored legal counsel advice and completely disregarded public concerns i pray there are three of you that will stand against this and vote no thank you for your time [Applause] if i could request the i
059want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak and the 15 to 30 seconds of applause between every speaker doesn't help accommodate that so next doug can i make a comment you may comment we've heard several people comment both in public comment time and in emails that we've received mention of the case in virginia i think that we know more about the situation that happened in loudoun county it's my understanding that the incident happened two months prior to a school board adopting a similar policy it's my understanding that the parties had had consensual sex in the bathroom twice prior to the incident and that this there was a student that was raped and the male student has been found guilty it's my understanding that that situation has nothing to do with transgender or restroom
060policy so i just want to make that clear as we continue with the public comment phil pick the perfect person to end the applause for thank you good evening and thank you for taking the time to hear me my name is phillip twiliger my wife lisa and i have lived here for the past 16 years and have two children in the school right in the school district right now i should start by strongly suggesting that this board take the advice of its attorney he can surely advise you appropriately i suspect his advice will include that discrimination based on gender identity is sex discrimination prohibited by federal law that should be enough but i certainly understand the personal nature of the issue so please allow me to speak briefly personally too we like most parents do
061our best to teach our children to respect themselves and others we research parenting techniques we reward good behavior we give consequences for bad behavior but what is the most effective parenting technique it's teaching by example i admit this is often the most difficult techniques technique for us parents we want our kids to eat healthy but we don't always eat healthy ourselves we want our kids to be friendly with everyone but then we adults demonstrate hatred towards people based on political affiliation religious beliefs or some divisive topic may we please for once demonstrate respect and love for ourselves and others by setting the example for our children i cannot in good conscience tell my children that they should love and respect everyone and then advocate the ostracization of people based on gender identity i have a
062friend who expressed concern with the difficulty of explaining gender identity to her children i presume others share this concern please consider however that children are perfectly used to being taught new things in the grand scheme this is a very easy one the kids can and do understand this topic it seems to me that children are predisposed to being caring and accepting of others it is we the adults who teach them by example how to exclude insult and hate let's lead by example on this one please adopt this policy thank you for your time thank you it's better we're getting there glenn pulse hello blood pulse i just want to say there's been so many good points made today i'm not going to rehash a whole bunch of them but one thing i do respect about
063the vermillion community is their diversity i love it that's why that's why i live here and continue to live here i love the different ethnicities the different groups of people i love all the conversations that we can have without coming at each other's throats i love that and i think that even with this situation tonight i think that discussion should continue i raised three girls i have a granddaughter that is in the vermillion school district right now the policy does concern me as as it's written i think the when we raise our children and if everything's applied like it normally is in vermilion i've got friends of every gender of every every type you can think of in this room and i have customers too i'd love none of them any more or less than
064the other and i think when we foster that environment in our school and our community a lot of these policies are not needed that's that's my personal feeling do i think students need protections yes but i think that the focus should be on providing privacy in our schools if it's needed and i do believe it is needed in the showers and the bathrooms and then overnight stays and i think any bullying that would happen because of a transgender issue or or not should be addressed immediately and vigorously because everybody deserves a chance i love all these kids equally it doesn't matter to me whether they're gay straight transgender i don't care i love them equally across the board and i think most everybody in this room does also and i think when we foster that
065environment we don't need a policy like this so i would just ask that the focus be on updating the facilities to accommodate rather than exclude i have nieces and nephews that as strange as it may sound sometimes they they feel guilty for being a boy or a girl with the current environment the current discussions you know they ask questions about other possibilities we should not have to be ashamed to be a boy or a girl our identity shouldn't be a shame it should be celebrated and i think by providing the opportunities in the school for privacy and to prevent bullying and to give everybody access to what their gender is should be and when i when i say gender what it is when you you're born a male you're born a female until you reach
066a certain age that should be where you participate in sports in locker rooms in bathrooms so i encourage the board to strive for the privacy in the school in a new school is being built in retrofitting some of the other schools to provide that privacy i'd urge you to vote no on the policy thank you thank you [Applause] caitlin collier first let me say thank you to all of you are sitting through this i i know you ran for this office and this is what you agreed to take on but there are always these issues that i'm sure that there are a number of you who are thinking man i could be home watching 9-1-1 on fox right now so thank you for being patient with all of us my name is caitlin collier i
067have lived in vermillion for most of the last 40 i think the last time i counted 44 years uh i've had two of my my two biological daughters go through this school system and uh since one of them just turned 40 you know that goes back pretty far a foster child a couple of children who could not be accommodated in the foster care system who lived with me for a while i have a granddaughter over at the middle school i've been an attorney for over 30 years i'm actually as most of you don't know a formerly ordained minister i had this crazy idea that maybe the church would be a nicer place than a courtroom who knew um but i also have something else i want to bring up i was not born in south
068dakota i was born in the south and until i was 12 you know until i was 19 years old that's where i lived most of my life in the south so when i hear words like accommodate when i hear phrases like we just want to be fair and they're not thinking of others i think of separate but equal because i was living in the south when that was a policy i started into sixth grade when segregation was ended in the southern community in which i lived and what is horrifying to me is that i can remember very clearly many of these same phrases being used and you doubt at all that it's a civil rights issue i don't see how you can last friday i went to a memorial for jim mccullough who i have
069known since about 1978. you had the capable intelligent advice from probably one of the best attorneys who ever practiced in this state a man with a remarkable ability to read and to understand law and he would never have suggested that anything that he recommended to you anything that suggested that you could be putting yourself in a place of liability would be anything other than the absolute truth we seem to have a little problem in this county with people wanting to get sued now i realize we don't have enough lawyers in vermilion but if you're thinking that maybe some of this kind of behavior of encouraging lawsuits would bring some more on you may be right i'm just thinking maybe we could just go to the law school and ask a few of them to come
070and practice here but that's up to you thank you [Applause] dennis johnson well you can tell by the color of my hair that my children went through the vermillion school system a number of years ago but i haven't lost interest in school board policy although i haven't taken a part in public discussions of that there have been a lot of good things said tonight i think on both sides there is one aspect though that has not been discussed at all and so i'll limit my remarks to that one thing and that one thing has to do with the policy with respect to sports activities one of my children was a daughter and it was a great thing entitled for her when the title nine came in and they had you were required that girls be
071given the opportunity to play sports in the same way that boys were but they were separate you didn't put girls to run against boys you didn't put girls on the football team you didn't have girls competing with boys i have a a sentence or so of information here that i think is quite relevant the fastest female sprinter in the world is american runner alison felix a woman with more gold medal medals than usain bolt i presume you know those names usain bolt male uh probably more metals than any other male but she has more but that was competing against females her lifetime best for the 400 meter run is 49.26 seconds based on 2018 data nearly 300 high school boys in the u.s alone could beat it i suggest that a policy like this which
072is being proposed where we have sports activities where the person who can compete in sports according to their own identity as seen by themselves you're permitting and encouraging people to describe reality on their own reality is what they say it is there is no such thing as reality other than what the opinions of these people are it's an intellectually indefensible position and if this policy goes through coming back to the sports activities again then it'll take time but you're going to have a lot of daughters who would have otherwise achieved a scholarship who would have received trophies and improved her leadership skills that will no longer be able to do that and why why in the name of equity it's not equity you have to recognize that there's a difference between men and women boys
073and girls if you don't well you're just not paying attention [Applause] okay laura hello my name is laura wiemers i'm standing up here today to ask you not to vote for this policy when the idea for this policy was first presented it spiraled into investigation for the school district the board and the parents members of the community and parents of students within the district have been addressing the board since that time and many questions have arisen i ask you not to vote for this policy because questions that these community members and parents have asked have yet to be answered some of the questions include what will these bathrooms look like will there be changes to the bathrooms that parents with non-transgender children will need to discuss with their children if someone were to be violated
074who would be to blame where will be the accountability what is the actual ratio of kids that want this what would happen if someone is sexually assaulted by another student or even an adult have you asked teachers and administrators how they feel about this if we instituted a change of policy how would that look a supporter of the policy asked what if we expanded to three bathroom options to include female male and gender neutral and why is that not an option will the students be surveyed so their opinions on this matter can be heard will someone be in the bathrooms and locker rooms to ensure safety if this information is supposed to be kept confidential and others shouldn't know when someone who is transgender is in the bathroom at the same time as someone who
075is not transgender how will the staff be kept informed of which students can use which bathrooms what does the communication look like informing the students and parents if and when this policy passes the majority of these questions came from individuals opposing the proposed policy but leaving any questions unanswered leaves parents like myself whether in favor or not with a lack of trust in the board and the district as a parent of children who attend vermillion school district i am concerned with discussions that have been had amongst the board in direct relation to the policy things such as the school not sharing information with me if my child goes to the school counselor about something if my child wants to go to the school counselor to discuss his gender identity and request special accommodations naturally i
076will be saddened that he did not feel he could talk to me about it but i would be more concerned that the school per the wording in this policy would allow for him to make that choice independently and be accommodated suppose my child was suicidal and the only person they chose to speak with was their school counselor for the discussions that have been had both by the board the attorney the school would not need to inform me as the parent unless i requested the documentation the legal age to vote is in place for a reason we did not ask the kids to vote on the recently passed school bond for construction of the new school why it's their school why not let them vote because this was a decision made because they are still learning
077finally i need help understanding why the urgency of changing this practice into a policy i know there are some people who want this passed right away but leaving questions unanswered and items not addressed indicates holes or potential flaws in the policy people wouldn't have so many questions if the policy was worded in a way that satisfies all students which for you as board members are serving please do not vote for this until all questions have been answered all voices has have been heard and all of our children are thought about thank you trish entrepreneur i'm sorry trish yeah it's nice [Music] i was actually going to pass but i kind of came up with something now because i'm just disheartened by how our community is right now it's so extremely separated by this topic it
078is a huge extreme topic for it all i put on you guys to somehow change or do something with this policy that brings people in the middle because this is not going to work you said the numbers are higher for this for public schools right now students i pay for that to get lower you know i've already heard of people wanting to move and i would hate for that forever million so there's just got to be something to just kind of bring things a little closer for each person each side so that's all i have to say charles phillips my name is charles phillips i want to thank you first off for taking the time to let us all speak and uh for everybody coming this evening um i've been a little bit of a
079different take from what everybody's saying tonight and i think first thing that i can say that everybody here everybody here in this room can agree upon is they want nothing more than the safety of our children trans gay bisexual straight doesn't matter they're our children and we want them to grow and thrive i am speaking in a postal or opposition excuse me and a couple things that have been said tonight that kind of jumped out i apologize i've been taking some notes here um one of the things that i've heard on the opponents to my belief is that you know a lot of people who are against it are so concerned about someone who's transgender is going to assault my eight-year-old daughter in the bathroom that's not the case i'm not concerned about that i'm
080concerned of exploitation i'm concerned of people who aren't transgender who decide to utilize this policy uh going along with that i'm concerned about exploration these are children a big part of what i want to talk about today is i want everybody to think back we've all been to high school we've all been to elementary school in one form or another unless we were homeschooled um i was brought up saving transgender kids lives i was doing a little bit of just taping here something i'm gonna share with you guys here that a lot a lot of people know my friends do know is i've actually been diagnosed bipolar about 14 13 14 years ago i went through high school as an undiagnosed bipolar disorder type 2. i've made horrible choices in my life and managed to
081turn my life around because i was not capable of making correct ones uh not hurting anybody but i've made choices in my life because of this and a little bit research according to a couple of things i've seen i mean trans community 2020 lost around 350 people that's horrible 2020 over 353 bipolars committed suicide not counting to all the other deaths why i bring this up is i went through this and i can speak from this going yes there was bullying a big guy i got bullied for being fat boy for being different bullied but my family my parents my support structure taught me to be proud of myself i think that's what we need to do with these children these children being everybody not these transgender these straight these children in our school districts
082need to be taught to love themselves when it comes to the restroom policy stalls i guess i think it's a little bit redundant to have a bathroom you go in and then have another bathroom to go in that's separate uh yes females have skulls men males have stalls too for number two but the shower rooms why go into a shower room just to go into another room we've got separate rooms based upon your genitalia i'm not going to say gender i must say genitalia we've got this already this is spending more money on something for feelings and i'm going to bring that up the law doesn't care about feelings facts don't care about feelings nobody cared about my feelings and i had to grow up and go okay that's the way this world is no
083one's going to coddle me and i don't think we should coddle these children i think they should be educated and that's the purpose of the school and the school board i think this is a huge decision i think the overnight stays is ludicrous and again it to me it's more than taking advantage or tax exploration why put something in that why make something harder than it has to be i'm i'm not transphobic i'm not homophobic i'm not i i don't personally my belief is i don't care as long as you're happy be with whoever you want to be with be whatever you want to be i mean i had four inch tall spiked blue hair when i was in college and piercings because i thought that was going to make me happy it didn't it
084was a farce teach our children to love each other love themselves and provide assistance when need be but don't i would not have wanted anything for the school to change a darn thing just because i have my own mental disorder that's me i have to take care of it i don't want you or you or you to go out of your way because you're worried about making me feel comfortable this is my life i have to be happy with myself and that's what we need to focus on not intermingling genders into restrooms and changing rooms and overnight stays support our children love our children and teach them to love themselves because doing this i'm sorry i i understand the the link to segregation in the past i'm not talking about segregation integrate everybody should be
085integrated that's fine go to school together go to class together do sports together but it is the intermingling of genders in situations where lack of better term nudity could come into play i i think if i would have walked into the females restroom when i was in high school just because i used to think because i honestly thought i felt like being transgender at that point in time when i was in high school i would have been expelled on my rear end faster than you can say lickety-split but you know what i didn't want the world to change for me thank you thank you i am getting a report that our live stream is down do we know if that's back up okay um okay i we will continue uh with the public comment that's
086here um dondolin i will be very brief you might have noticed i'm old so i don't have kids in school but i'm still interested in the school and in the community and i'm in favor of this policy it strikes me that most of the comments against it are based on fear and i i'm sympathetic to that but i think it's misplaced and so i hope you will adopt the policy thank you [Applause] harvey opp thank you for this opportunity my name is harvey pastor here in vermillion and uh seems to me in this time of history we have a lot of people who want to be progressive for the sake of being progressive and it's gone against human history obviously i believe the bible is the truth it's enduring it's everlasting it tells us the
087true history of the actual history of the human race and human nature it also tells us how government is to restrain evil it tells us about the immoral acts that human beings are capable of it's not just mere possibility these things happen it's been said we were concerned about just fear and so forth and we want to protect everyone wants to protect all our students yes on both sides all of them but it's not just a possibility what in spite of what was said about loudon what happened there of course is that now it's said that a judge found this boy guilty of sexual assault and he entered masquerading as a girl then if the policy of of transgender inclusion was not there and he entered a girls restroom masquerading as a girl he's committed
088he's committed sexual assault and found guilty of a judge for that how much more then will it will the doors be open to that with this policy if you approve it how much more it will happen it will happen in time no doubt about it and your names if you approve this policy will be appended to that will be go down in history as those who open the door for this who made it possible instead any government as i said is to restrain evil i urge you to be careful and to do what is right we don't need this policy human beings have understood male and female throughout the centuries throughout millennia it's not hard to understand and if you're going to say well we should just open up the restrooms for our students whoever
089can come in why are we doing that with adults you know i don't hear anyone clamoring for that in the public restrooms and so forth you know we care more about a few clamoring for something that they're confused about quite actually i need counseling about than reality again it will happen and your names will be to it if you vote for this policy when common sense and truth returns to our culture if you vote against this and want to protect all then your names will be on the right side this is a blip in history that will pass common sense and truth will be upheld you know that i think you know that all we know that in our hearts please vote no against this proposed policy thank you april carville i'm sorry hello i'm
090dr april carrillo i use the pronoun she her hers and i am an assistant professor at the university of south dakota i don't know if i made that clear last time but i want to this time because of the concerns over the comments last week although this policy would not affect our campus there are some students as you can see who are very concerned about the comments that were made last week so i want to let them know that one person and some people do not represent the whole we are not a monolith we are many and there are some of us who do not align with those beliefs i am one of those people last time when i was here i was pretty relentless with the facts i went one after the other and
091i brought the ones that i brought fact supporting trans bathroom policy which study with studies that showed that they pose no danger to cisgender students they help trans students they prevent suicide and unequal education outcomes the reason that i brought those was that often the opposition as what's been said tonight is that the opposition says that we are um that we are using fact they're using feelings a set of facts when that's not true i am an academic which means i am trained in reading studies and understanding how to figure out if they're credible or not despite if i like the outcome i study lgbtq issues with the criminal legal system i specifically focus on gender identity that is my bread and butter so when i bring you studies and what i can tell you
092i've looked at them i looked at these studies that have been weaponized against trans youth and i can assure you they are all one step above pseudoscience i would be the first one to admit if they were not but if you have any questions or concerns i'm not that hard to find so feel free to email me if you want to discuss further now another thing i want to address are the contradictions when you use the social construction argument against gender identity gender identity cannot be socially constructed and rooted in biological essentialism what i mean is that you cannot accuse trans kids of constructing their own identity but then also say that the gender you are born as is what will dictate the rest of your life this logic says if you are born female
093you will be a woman be in the kitchen be a secretary or teacher work and have children when that's not true despite the fact that will be good despite the fact that there have been large-scale gender equity movements that have gone so far to break down those barriers and gender roles but yet here we are applying them to children sex is a biological apparatus where gender is psychological which means that it happens in the brain there are two different things in one person that will parallel each other also if gender was not socially constructed we will be bound to the rules by our biology which we as humans do not experience every person who was assigned female birth in this room does not have the same job goals likes or would even date the same
094people there is no nature that is independent of social context especially in a species like ours that is based heavily on social interaction i lastly want to give great thanks to all the parents students advocates and community allies who have come here consistently to support the very children whose mental physical and emotional well-being are being debated in this room this is necessary but hard work there are actually two members of this very school board who've been unfairly targeted online for their support for a policy that enhances civil liberties in a state where we center freedom expression and the american dream where is that if a child cannot even go to the bathroom in peace thank you bridget diamond welch hi my name is bridget diamond welch i wanted to speak today in support of the
095new gender equity policy as a mother of a child in the vermillion school district i've been continually impressed by how caring and considerate the teaching teachers and staff are my child is neurodivergent and has many difficulties in adjusting to the school schedule the teachers and staff have continually worked with him and my family to make sure that he's respected heard and feels cared for and is safe i would expect that the school its teachers and its staff would want the same for all students this policy that is what this policy represents and ensures that all students are safe and provides them with the ability to have their bodily autonomy respected i encourage you to continue showing the best of vermilion and our community by passing this policy [Applause] emma i'm going to apologize i can't
096read your last name i know it starts with a p yeah my handwriting sucks sorry um hello my name is emma prouty i am a senior at usd finishing my undergraduate degree many here might recognize my last name i am from elk point and was in vermilion more times than i can count vermilion was this fun cool place that i got to come and play my instrument or sing and be around people that i felt were similar to me and had same interests as me my parents or many parents here tonight planned to come up and talk about how unfair this bill is to the majority or to the straight cisgender children of vermilion while it is important to think about them and worry about their safety and their comfort nobody is being a voice
097for these poor children who are uncomfortable every single day nobody is sticking up for the kids who don't know what it means to be themselves or who don't feel safe doing that or feel comfortable doing that i am here to be an advocate for these children i'm here to tell you about the uncomfort they face every single day it's not uncomfort it's not just uncomfort at school it's uncomfort in their body in their home in their family or even in their friend groups they are uncomfortable every second of the day because they either don't know who they are or they don't feel comfortable expressing who they are because they know they will not be accepted i sat and i watched the two-hour long meeting last week to the man who talked about the things we
098learn in kindergarten being the most important things you'll learn in life this is not diminishing that it's adding to it how important is it to learn you can be whoever you want to be in life and you need to be accepted for that and you want to accept accept other people for this as well how is that any different from what we learn anyway treat people the way that you want to be treated how would every single person who got up here today and talked about how these children don't deserve a bathroom how would they like to be treated in the same aspect would they want the same treatment that they are giving to a child to the university professor that got up here and talked about how we need to be put up with
099children are not people that you put up with lgbtq youth is not a group that you put up with we are humans we are siblings we are daughters sons we are children we are not a group that you put up with this is not a matter of tolerance this is a matter of looking out for children i work in a place where i see the end result of people getting put up with i get to see what they get turned into instead of community members how would you like to see one of these children that you say you have to tolerate turn to meth or cocaine or alcohol how would you like to see one of these children that you put up with try and commit suicide because they feel they need to be put
100up with yours close-minded ways are the reason that the suicide rate within the lgbt is as high as it is and if you need someone to teach you maybe come to a spectrum meeting maybe open your mind but this is not children are not something that you need to be tolerated with we should be tolerating you and your point not the other way around to the man who talks about segregating children we've been here before society has done this before if this is where we go i hope you're prepared for the number of students who get bullied beat up and severely hurt because they just want to go to the bathroom you also talk about the 90 the 90 have been protected their entire lives this is about the 10 percent that have not seen
101protection at all to all the people coming and making a point about having gay friends or no gay people when i came out this was thrown in my face i came out and had a family member look me in the eye and tell me that they had gay friends and they wished that never they never wished that upon their children this is not a point showing acceptance and love is the point to me this bill is hopeful it gives hope to the people who are against this bill you are the problem thank you for your time i urge you to pass this bill [Applause] mason all right so i'm gonna try not to get wound up um because the more i sit here i realize that me doing what i'm doing right now could very
102well put me at um some safety risks um so a little scary my name is mason luddig many also know me as beanie as my students and classmates are here my pronouns are he him i'm a graduate transfer student at the university of south dakota i'd like to mention now from some of the comments that my last where i got my bachelor's degree was a catholic college and i was fully accepted at that catholic college i'm in the pursuit of my sixth degree and the first of two masters that i will have completed by may of 2022 i'm also a thrower for our track and field team a member of spectrum and also a coyote crazy alpha this is only a small list of my accomplishments and the elements of my identity you may be
103asking yourself why is a college athlete attending a school board meeting involving a secondary education policy the reason i'm here today is because this pro transgender bathroom policy is a personal matter i am an openly transgender college athlete female to male without my own confirmation i can almost guarantee not one person in this room or those who watch this would have assumed otherwise i'm kind honest trustworthy dependable and most most importantly hard working though i cannot represent all the transgender people i'm here to well i i am here to extinguish the fear people have towards people like me i took the time to watch the entire two and a half hour meeting held last week within the first 20 minutes i felt everything from anger and frustration to sadness and defeat i come from a
104small nebraska village of 375 people my school was a combined elementary middle school and high school there was an average 400 students and my class consisted of 39 people by the time i came out the first time as a masculine presenting gay woman i was the only openly lgbt individual in our entire school i knew from the young age of two that i was different but i didn't have the language to understand who i was until i reached high school yet i continued to hide this continued until my senior year of college where i decided enough was enough i was lucky to have a strong support system for my friends teammates and family though i have built myself a firm foundation and support system i have experienced many hardships being a part of the lgbt
105plus community i've been bullied harassed threatened and encountered encountered many situations where my physical well-being was in harm's way and at this moment i kind of worry about it too more often than not these experiences are almost exclusively tied to the use of the restroom to the man who is concerned for their children not understanding what being transgender is of a four-year-old little brother who i love dearly who proves this issue null and void i have never explicitly explained to my brother that i am transgender only describe myself as a brother and a boy he notices that i keep my shirt on when i swim or that i play softball instead of baseball yet he understands on our way to pick up our other siblings he asked me bean boys play baseball and girls play
106softball i won't get into that side of it but yes i said yes buddy that's true unprompted he goes well i know you play softball but i know you're a boy that now five-year-old little boy understands boys and girls come in all shapes and sizes as much as he looks up to me i look up to him he inspires me to be the best man that i can be from for the gentleman who is concerned about unmonitored bathroom use sir i respectfully i'd like to say if i am asked for a genital check or id check it would come with a physical reaction not so pleasant why because even before i came out as transgender i was followed harassed and threatened going into the restroom still to this day i look over my shoulder before
107i use the restroom if it can if i can help it i always go in groups if someone enters a restroom i will wait until they leave i have had security guards at bars follow me into the restroom stop and question me i have had women yell at me as i go into the restroom i have had security called after i've entered the restroom i have even had a few peek into my stall all because they are supposedly afraid of who i am when in reality they are perpetuating the very behavior that so many have claimed is the issue um and what are they are scared of no predator pedophile or rapist cares about a sign on a door i do as it it could very i do these things a very well sorry um
108i do this as it these things as it could very well mean life or death now i have an answer to your concern of kids not feeling safe or comfortable using the locker rooms or restrooms going so far as to hold it until they have reached their restroom at home this is a daily expensive experience for transgender people or even those who dare to present opposite to the sex that they were assigned at birth i'm almost done promise um i've been doing this long before i came out as transgender even when i had long hair and still identified as a female i was mistaken as a man i constantly weighed whether i wanted to be beaten up for being seen as a man in a woman's restroom or being a woman caught in the men's
109restroom as both are very possible voting no on this policy policy eliminates safe access to the bathroom for all kids opposers of this policy say create special bathrooms or categories i see a quick way for bullies to identify the kid that doesn't fit in i see that kids who don't feel safe at home to be who they are become visible victims of physical mental emotional and even sexual assault because they are outed by their peers all because they need to use the restroom it is a basic right no kid should risk an accident utis embarrassment or even harm to answer nature's call i ask for the sake of all kids who are like myself pass this bill to set the president a precedent that we too deserve a safe access to basic necessities such as
110the restroom thank you for your time jacob skelton hello a few more people and we had the last few meetings but that makes it fun i guess um thank you so much for your time i'm jacob skelton as you guys already know but at our last meeting i stressed concern regarding the safety my my children who are part of the school district uh reviewing the revised policy i still have some of the same concerns and some questions as well so i wanted to bring those to your attention so on the um the actual policy itself under the procedure section does the accommodations stated also apply to those that are competent in their identity or those that don't identify as a transgendered person so there needs to be more focus on that group and it seems
111like this focuses on just one select group however the policy does not address those who may feel unwelcome or unsafe because of the policy so therefore i was had the question i had was will the school make an accommodation so a biological female would not have to use a restroom for a or a locker room for a violet with a biological male when we originally started that was one of the issues that was brought up as some of the facilities if somebody wanted to use their own restroom were farther away from the other ones i was just curious if that would be presented for those that don't feel comfortable because of the policy being enacted as well obviously no harassment or anything should take place at any restroom so it's not an issue of that
112as just with the policy you're going to have people that are going to feel uncomfortable another question i had how many individual restrooms and individual locker rooms does each school plan to have my fear is if there's a lot of students that want to use those facilities it could create a bottled neck or issues in regards to so many people wanting to use them and being able to serve them well a question i had under the procedure as well can you put a measurable number to consistently asserted gender so i know that this was previously brought up but i couldn't remember if it has to be stated like once a year once a month how often could that um that change just for consistency specifically the issue has been brought up about the gender fluid
113situations that would cause a lot of concern for a policy like this and then would those who consider themselves part of this group also be allowed to use the the bathroom of their choice as far as those part of the gender fluid or would they fall under a different category as well so under the confidentiality section i had a question specifically who are the staff who will be allowed to know the identity of the students that identify different than the way they look i don't have an issue with things being confidential i think that is important my concern though is if there's just a few people say like one or two people in the entire school that's very hard to make sure things go according to what what we want to have happen so that's
114putting a lot of risk and responsibility on the person that has that knowledge in addition to whatever job they originally were hired for before this policy was in place the question i had on regards to overnight stays so i'd just like to clarify if i understand correctly per this policy those voting for the policy are in approval that they are allowing a biological male and a biological female to share a bed at a school function i just want to make sure that that was if i understand that correctly as a parent i have a lot of issues with this and can't believe that that's even being discussed as a parent i love my kids i don't want to put them in situations that would be unneeded risk for them and then in those situations i
115don't know how it works right now if there is an adult in the picture as well in regards to those rooms or if it's just the four students or how that looks that would be a way to kind of help make sure things don't happen that shouldn't happen so prior to this proposed policy we did have a practice that i felt was working very well and not perfect and we've made some adjustments based on some of the analysis that we've done so i appreciate the work that you guys have done but having a policy versus a practice does that now increase the liability if something does go the way that we don't want it to go so i think it's wise to look at the loudoun county as a case study nobody wants that you
116guys don't want that i don't want that nobody wants that but just considering the how that policy played out i know the policy came after the the incident but that type of a policy creates this opportunity for somebody that wants to abuse it and we don't want that so i hope and pray that this is not vermilion's future this policy opens that door and so i ask that you please reject it um thank you again for your time and the long hours and for everything thanks brandon steenholt hello my name is brandon steenholt this will be my second time speaking which is sad i have to speak again it will also be my last i'm talking to you all and i strongly ask on behalf of so many parents who won't speak on this for
117various reasons which which some i don't understand when it involves their kids being manipulated and misled but i will be the majority's voice i'm glad that i can do this to glorify god in him only because in the end he is all that matters not your feelings or emotions feelings and emotions lie so i'd like to start with this there are two genders male and female transgender is a lie to society to deceive it's a myth it's not real the facts are there you can't change your gender and you if you think you can your parents are failing to raise you first when i spoke i rambled off the top of my head and realized how i how one-sided this is so where is the confusion well it comes from misleading parents who don't care
118about anyone but themselves and their feelings and their emotions which come from a woke leftist liberal agenda which is huge in our college which is where most of you work go to school or have a lot to do with as you talk about changing stalls and bathrooms you don't think that our taxpayer dollars have to pay for it which we hard-working parents don't want that at all don't ruin our kids because you're brainwashing yours to state kids should get to choose their gender as garbage at that age and any other there is a reason we have age limits for voting drinking and serving in the military it's because at that age they have developed maturity at the ages you're saying kids can change their genders when they're not even close to being mature plus it's
119impossible you are the gender male or female which i've heard it so much tonight in this room that's why i'm so shocked we're even talking about this that it's can change their genders when they are not even close to being mature plus it's impossible okay and so your brain doesn't tell you one day that you can be a girl it or a boy that's a load of crap and was brought up last week and this week is not a fact is misleading it's a lie a lie that has continued to get stretched we do everything we can to lead our kids on godly standards and people tear that down parents try to take god out of the schools but want to put so-called trans and lgbtq into schools and push a woke agenda on kids
120innocent kids you want to shove down their throats homosexuality and think that is okay or it is okay to change genders why do i stand here and be prideful and shove down your throat that i'm straight and know my gender so why do you and many other business owners and so call so-called parents say and try to promote trans and homosexuality down our throats it needs to stop promoting sin and misleading children is wrong it's not parenting you are not parents you are failing your children and their peoples and other people's children who might look up to you and trust you only god and god alone created all in his image you can't change that you are not god and you're believing the enemy satan's lies and he is blinding you and deceiving you with
121this hate and separation ask yourself as an adult are you glorifying god i'm sorry but i'm going to be truthful about this yes truth hurts but what you need to hear is this and it needs to make you wake up make you uncomfortable because being comfortable is dangerous and leads to destruction i'm so glad i'm a man with a set and a backbone to call it what it is and it's evil sick garbage and so wrong so last i leave it at this instead of funds for this how about we start funding for teachers who know health and can teach correctly if you have a penis and balls you're a man and if you have a vagina and boobs you're a female that's that no changing it and no questioning it so back to you
122are you going to choose off of lying feelings and peop be selfish or are you going to stand against evil and do what's best for our kids say no to this save our children and protect them like so many parents are trusting you to do thank you so we have been taking comment for about an hour and 40 minutes now i am going to call for a seven minute recess at which time we will return for 30 more minutes and that will be the end of public comment so we will stand in recess until 9 pm at which point we'll have 30 more minutes you [Music] thank you for your attention i will call us back into session and again uh we will put a hard stop to public comment at 9 30 so that
123the board has an ample time to discuss and take into this end the next speaker on the list is casey tubbs it is casey isn't it i was trying to okay hi my name is casey tubbs and i'm a junior here at usd i'm here to speak to the board as well as to everyone else in this room i'm from southern california and i came to vermilion hoping at hoping that as an as then closeted member of the lgbtqia plus community i would be accepted for who i am especially since south dakota isn't known for being the most accepting state in the nation um i am now out and a proud member of the lgbtqia plus community and i found a second home here in vermillion but i was disgusted when i found out of
124the hateful reactions to the current proposal and to see that trans students are being openly discriminated against by many members of their vermilion community i went to public school a lot more recently than the majority of the people in this room so i thought it was important to bring light to this policy from a student's perspective school should be a safe place space for children regardless of their identity i cannot believe that there are adults in this room who want to prohibit children from being who they are i ask the board and everyone in this room to remember that trans rights are humans rights and something as simple as using the bathroom of the gender you identify as should not even be a question trans kids are often bullied and shamed for their identity and
125voting against this policy will only reinforce the hatred and exclusion that some of them are shown every single day let's show our support for these kids please stop this hatred and misinformation and start treating trans children and trans young adults as the students and human beings that they are if this policy does not pass then vermillion is not the accepting and loving town that i thought it was i support this policy and i urge you to vote in favor thank you [Applause] morgan lorenzen my name is morgan lorenzen and i'm a junior here at the university of south dakota i'm also an elementary and special education major let me tell you i am very passionate about teaching and what i'm going to do actually if you guys didn't know my student teaching application is due
126on december 1st which i'm super excited for earlier this year my plan was to choose vermilion as the district i would teach in however now i couldn't be more opposed as a future educator i will never allow myself to teach student teach or intern in a school district that does not advocate for inclusivity and diversity i will not create my classroom in a school district that does not allow students to identify as they are that is not inclusive and i'd be absolutely ashamed to be in a school district like this if this school district votes against this policy then they are aiding in a school climate that does not appreciate diversity and inclusivity i speak for myself and other future educators on this matter usc has a huge education program the vermilion school district will
127become low on student teachers and educators if this policy passes because no one wants to work in a school that throws the minority students to the side for their own benefit if dr dr monica iverson who is one of my sped professors has taught me anything in her classes about life and teaching and everything in general it is that i can't advocate for my students if i can't advocate for myself and i can't advocate for myself if i can't advocate for my students this is me standing right here advocating for my school future school district my future classroom and my future students thank you [Applause] gerald jacobs i just want to make a few points based upon talking with people in the community and based on a letter that was sent out widely yesterday protesting
128this this proposed policy one of the things the letter suggested was that there can be no such thing as transgender people because god created people male and female and i would there's a number of snarky comments i can make about that but i'm not going to but i wonder how those same people who believe that deal them with hermaphrodites who are born with the sexual organs of both genders and that's simple fact they exist so did god make a mistake or did somebody else create them i would suggest that they have to think about that a little bit the other thing that i i heard presented quite a bit was fear that people are going to fake being transgender in order to be able to go to different bathrooms and different showers and i i
129think that represents a total misunderstanding of the life of transgender people i was a clinical psychologist for 38 years and i dealt with a lot of people who were transgender uh and uh similar kinds of issues but it is not an easy life and the research clearly indicates that is a very very difficult life for transgender people in general the latest research that i've seen is from the american academy of pediatrics a pretty respectable medical organization who studied thousands of transgender youths and the more than half of the the males reported that they had attempted suicide that's a lot about 30 percent of the females had attempted suicide and that's a staggering number and so the day-to-day life of transgender people tends to be very difficult maybe not for every one of them but for
130a lot of them and i would suggest to you that i've also seen transgender children who were in very loving and accepting families who also attempted suicide and so it's not just the issue of whether or not the parents are accepting the the other point i would make is indeed this will not suddenly make all the stress go away from kids who are transgender or not and i hope that you will also institute policies that address education of children about these issues and make sure that you're instituting policies preventing bullying because bullying does go on it will go on and this is not going to end that magically i just a comment i heard at the break i thought i would mention too i had to travel a great deal in my work and i
131i've worked in 46 countries and in many of those countries the restrooms are unisex men and women go to the bathroom the same place the same room using the same facilities and they even have uh attendants that are male and female that don't stick with the same gender restrooms and that's been going on for a very long time without particular problems so it's uh it's not a new idea and i would urge you to pass this and respect the civil rights of our children kelly stone thank you as a mother of two vhs graduates who now can be their authentic selves i encourage you to vote yes for the transgendered bathrooms both of my children never felt safe to identify differently in our school district k-12 as their mother and a dedicated special education teacher
132in our district this was a difficult road for me to navigate one of my children was suicidal with the amount of stress depression and anxiety that i'd that identifying differently has caused them it is not an easy path in our society especially in a small town in south dakota if we can help make all our students feel safe being our their authentic selves imagine the difference it would make in their lives their education and their future careers when allowing students to use a bathroom that they identify with a powerful message would be sent to them from our district one of my goals has always been to make a difference in the lives of my students one of acceptance and understanding regardless of your race color creed religion natural origin gender disability ancestry sexual orientation gender
133identity our age thank you [Applause] davida russell hello my name is davida my pronouns are she her and i am going to be brief today that's a thing all right so i have a child in our district and the gender equity and access policy has my full support our children have suffered long enough under the current discriminatory practices so it's time to vote yes and give all students of vermilion the basic level of human rights and decency and respect they deserve cindy game hi my name is cindy game i raise four children in this district and i have two grandchildren in the district and i'm keeping this simple i've been watching the entirety of the school board meetings online related to this issue at least seven hours worth the basic policy that is being adopted
134is one that focuses on protection of all students the board has heard the public's opposition with mostly its concern for safety and has listened and acted in a manner that can only be described exemplary i've been pleased as they obviously care about our children with this issue of safety and have made many changes to the original document to address those concerns the current situation does not necessarily respect privacy whether transgender or not and changes will be made with the passing of this policy that has been uh discussed thoroughly as far as i can tell the other point i'd like to make is that transgender students tend to be very sensitive about this life they've entered they are no more deviant than any other individual in society they simply want their privacy as all of us
135do this policy is giving everyone a better situation if your problem is the existence of trans and transgender individuals then that is a whole other topic and the school board is not here to address that specific issue the board has listened to the people and is adequately addressing the safety concerns that so many have had i stand by the policy with its recent changes thank you [Applause] isabelle and i apologize i can't make out the last name uh hello my name is isabelle young pardon she they um i want to say that i am um i graduated from vermillion in 2019 so we love the tannagers and i'm also a current usd student so also go yotes um and as someone who has come from this community i understand the lengths that the school board
136and the school district has gone to to help support all of our families and i really appreciate all of the work you guys have put in and i want to stand here in support of this bill as another step forward to continuing to help support our families and our students um especially those students that don't feel like they have a space where they can be safe or where they feel like they're belonged or where they feel like they're mad their education matters um i also would like to address a few of the claims made by um parents um so some people claim that children aren't like they're vulnerable and they can't understand all these information but i found that children are always the most accepting which we've heard from other people here so i don't
137need to go super in depth in it i also want to commend all the people who spoke to um but i think what causes that confusion is when we force children to look at things through such a black and white way but clearly life has shown that it is more dynamic than that um i also want to talk about the fact that um when it comes to overnight stays that's another thing i wanted to talk about um i think we're ignoring the fact that if a trans person is in a room filled with other cisgender people they're gonna interact with them just as the other cisgender people do you know because there are students too and if if you assume that just because a penis and a vagina or whatever are getting into a bed
138together that sexual relations are going to happen that's on you that's not on trans people that's not on lgbt people we are simply just existing and want to be a part of things just like everyone else um and it's also coming from an incredibly heterosexual standpoint considering the fact that it doesn't even come to you i realize that this is going to sound bad um but it doesn't even come to your mind that if two women or two men are in a bed that something sexual is going to happen but also consider if you're on a school trip there are two other people in that room they are not going to let you have sex in that room i also know that there have been a lot of concerns about sports and i don't have
139all of the facts on me but a lot of students that do participate in sports do things like puberty blockers and hormones that make it so playing with their assigned gender isn't always fair either um and i'm not here to come up with like solutions for that like love y'all um um but at the end of the day what it really comes to is that people are coming here from their own um bias that comes from i'm not trying to make claims about religion either i i appreciate all of your guys's religions and i appreciate the beauty that comes from religions but i think we also have to respect the separation of church and state as well and that these bills should not be motivated by religious bias and persecution thank you [Applause] becky sanderson
140hi my name is becky sanderson i have three kids my oldest is a preschooler i honestly wasn't even sure that i wanted to come when i got home my husband's like do you want to go to school board meetings tonight um and i i didn't actually know that i did um he's much better at talking than i am and i know that he has spoken before and it's much easier for me to just let him do that um but as i was holding my four month old and looking at her i realized that if if these were my kids and my kids needed somebody to stand up there that i would hope that someone would be up here for them too so um i'm here i'm in full support of this policy and i hope
141that you vote yes [Applause] so we have 11 minutes of public comment if there is anyone who would choose to speak please approach the podium state your name actually if you are willing form a line and we'll get as many of you as we can hi my name is zaydia abbott i was raised here i went to elementary school here i went to middle school here and i graduated with the class of 2020 from vermillion high school and i can say that i know what it's like to have the vermilion school district discriminate against you in a way that does not benefit your education i know what it's like to stand in a room with students and teachers and have those same teachers hear people take my name which is previously stated is zaydia and
142have have them hear them say have students say that my name is slavia or that and have the teachers in that room accept that as something that could happen because it does not change their educational policies it doesn't change their lessons plans how i feel doesn't change your lesson plan but the fact that i should have the people have to stand up here and ask the community to respect the safety and the well-being of their students so that they can grow and be educated in a way that makes it so they are set up for better futures is ridiculous it is your job to make sure that not only the students in those buildings are safe but that they feel like they are listened to they feel like they have every single resource to set
143themselves up for success they do not need to explain their identity to you and they just need to pee so let them be sorry i have a cold so if you can't hear me you know make sure you state your name i'm anna bottasini i graduated last year from vermillion high school i went from kindergarten all the way up to senior year all through vermillion school district and to be honest i don't think anyone would care if a trans student walked into a bathroom to pee as someone else dated nobody looks around and is like hmm oh i see genitalia no you're in a bathroom you're there to pee and get to class there's five minute breaks you don't have time for that also to say that there's only two sexes as someone already previously
144mentioned denies intersex which is just a biological fact um along with the fact that gender has been proven to also be scientifically involved scientific american wrote an article titled stop using phony science science to justify transphobia which pretty some much sums it up so by the time we're in high school and middle school we also all know what people look like when they're nude pretty much we know that people don't have the same genitals and that's just normal so if we're in the locker room nobody's gonna freak out all of a sudden they see something also we aren't looking at each other in the locker rooms or nor when we share rooms on class trips i don't know where that idea came from but we're mostly just chilling there i don't know um the loss
145of innocence is another thing i was kind of talking about with the we already know about human anatomy it's not a shocker or anything a big point i want to make is that a lot of people have come up here and mentioned religious things and you're entitled to your religion but that has no place in any school board as there is separation between church and state unless you're at a private school so there is one that mentioned basically that transgender homosexuals but we are currently not having issues with homosexuals already in there i went to school there for ages i was in the theater department there are a lot of homosexuals there um when and we made it to state several times spent hotel rooms with them no problem as for assaults maybe we should
146teach our children not to assault others more than focus on those who are being assaulted don't punish trans students for what cis students do to take advantage of as a sexual assault survivor i do not fear trans students in the bathroom i fear people who see trans students as rapists because that is not true and it is just denying the facts if you can show me some evidence that says that the majority of them are going and raping people in the bathroom be my guest but i have yet to find anything to prove that also i just want to finish off by saying if all human lives have value which most of us believe then denying trans students fair treatment which we know reduces their suicide rates is in fact openly being against valuing human
147life thank you [Applause] hi i'm carol and i want to thank mr johnson we're dealing the with the sports issue i have a daughter that rang on long distance from 3000 meters all the way to a half marathon and the majority time ran with the guys because in the interest of time you ran them together she never would have won and she was a five-time all-american in college so there is a difference whether you have gender blockers or not so when it comes to sports there is a difference that needs to be dealt with and when i came to the first very first meeting it was all about being free to pee and why should that matter where you pee and now it's overnight accommodations and it's sports and it's not letting the parents know
148what the child is deciding in school is that really the route you want to take take the responsibility of the parents away from their children i'm a parent of three of the three cutest grandchildren in the world hands down and i would i would ask you do you want to take that responsibility away from me as a parent you never stop being a parent and for my son and his wife from their children that is their job not yours to keep it from them and their job to help their child deal with that and hormones rage no matter what from junior high on i remember junior high it's been a while but i remember it i remember high school and putting mixed sexes in a room whether they're transgender or not it doesn't matter that's
149opening a pandora's box and then look at i've heard about all that you want to transgender prevent depression and suicide how many people have transgender still commit suicide want a transgender back because that's not the answer to their problem they transgender because they thought it would be the issues they weren't given counseling ahead of time they weren't given all the options they weren't told you're going to have healthy body parts removed you're going to be given chemicals and you're going to be sterile and then when they get transgendered they want to go back has anyone done a study on that and looked at the facts of that you want to make sure these young people are given all the facts given all the opportunities everyone is loved everyone is respected and that includes the parents
150who are ultimately responsible for the education and the welfare of their children not you thank you [Applause] jennifer phelan um i want to thank the board for your work putting this policy together i am in support of the policies passage and i strongly feel that this policy shows students and families that the vermillion school district stands and is ready to do the work in supporting all of our students it stands behind the notice of non-discrimination that's in the policy manual a no vote tells all students that their self-determination and defining their identity is not supported by the district there are transgender students in the district there are transgender students in the district that parents administrators and board members don't know yet there are transgender and non-binary students in the district who have not told anyone
151yet there are transgender and non-binary students who don't even know who they are yet and by passing this policy it's a way to stand with these students it indicates to it indicates that the district they're in not only says it's inclusive that there's substance behind that assertion and if students come out or they need support the school is a safe place to do it the national education association the national association of elementary school principals the national association of secondary school principals the american school counselor association the national national association of school psychologists all support the policy we're talking about actually the policy that is written is very similar to the one that is from the nea from what i've read from reading it and looking at our policy just as we turn to resources for
152best practices on curriculum and other risk aspects of the district this topic should be like no dif no other we go to the resources we go to best practices this policy supports all vermillion school districts present and future in their self-determination and knowing who they are and being safe being themselves while they're in school thank you so much for your efforts on this policy [Applause] hi i'm joe vito mowbry uh i'm in support of this policy because speaking as someone who came out of the closet in 2007 who is to my classmates who is outed by my high school principal to my mother which resulted in me being kicked out of my house moving into the house of the person who sexually assaulted me having to spend the last two years of high school in
153the house by you guys voting now on a policy like this it's telling lgbt youth that you don't care about them that the school system that should be there to support them should be there to make sure that they can grow up in a sheltered life won't have that so i would urge you to vote yes on this because you don't know what your student's home life might be like whereas when i told my high school principal that if she owed me that what happened what happened and i had to deal with my mom got my lifestyle disgusting so please vote yes because your students lives matters and you don't know what's going on at their homes [Applause] so i can before you begin i see four people in line can i uh ask you
154to be extremely brief so that we can get through those four the board can then enter discussion certainly [Music] good evening and thank you for your time my name is aaron vlossman i'm a senior at the university of south dakota a registered voter here in clay county and i'm strongly in favor of the policy at discussion i won't do any of the throat clearing about caring for all students in the district because i believe that that should be inherent to everyone at this meeting i don't need to prove that to you all while i am originally from watertown my family has a deep history here my father was raised here my uncle raised three teenagers here and my father and his brother both went to jolly elementary school when we discuss the gender equity policy
155and the rights of transgender students where it's writ large it's important we discuss how we got these bathroom rules in the first place and what efforts this board is trying to solve first terry cogan a law professor at the university of utah notes that initial gender segregation came from a wave of public policy designed to provide women with a safe space which included things like separate spaces and libraries separate train cars and separate bathrooms building codes that were largely a product of this time adopted this same segregation and bathroom policies are the only societal holdover of this issue this was not founded in a societal effort to ensure equality it was quite literally thrown into building codes and we have defaulted on that chance decision ever since it is in no way a radical idea
156from for us to depart from those ideas but second and most importantly safety in the status quo is compromised every single day we don't move forward on this legislation trans students are not the people committing violence they are the target of violence and research backs this up a study done in 2017 by the williams institute found that 70 percent of trans people reported experiencing denial of access verbal harassment and even physical assault only in an attempt to use the restroom protecting the legal rights of transgender people in the school district is the first of many steps toward ending this cycle of violence and if you care about the children in our community then you need to care about transgender kids concerns around this bill have largely revolved around the safety and innocence of cisgender students
157in the district irregardless of the fact that these are children we're talking about if there is a real fear that our public schools will be infiltrated with predators then it's time we become tougher on sex education standards and school security if you value the innocence of children then you should vote to preserve the innocence of trans students as well finally i care deeply about this community the love vermilion has shown myself and all of its permanent and semi-permanent residents each each year is nothing short of admirable and inspiring as the school board it is your job to pass that same love on to the students in this school district it may not seem like a lot to each of you but approving this policy is an act of love and kindness your vote is an
158opportunity to tell students that they are loved that they are cared for and that they are visible something each one of you chose to pursue when you ran for the when you ran for election for the school board i ask you to remember that goal and please vote yes in favor of this [Applause] i have never speaking at one of you spoken at one of these things before so bear with me to keep it quick my name is ryan halligan i am a student here at usd and there's one specific thing i am here to talk about i in support of this policy fully i spent 13 years of my life wrestling boys i was born a girl i identify as a female now i thrived i gained leadership skills i gained respect i gained
159you know physical you know i got stronger i got faster there was never a point in my life where being born a girl in a male sport was bad for me except for when the parents were bad for me all i ask is that especially when considering these sports things and this policy as a whole you look at your students as individuals and let them participate and behave and identify with what makes them happy and i guarantee you there'll be a lot of positive change [Applause] hey everybody sarah lampert thanks for extending the time so we can close up the comments i'm a resident of vermillion uh history and gender studies faculty at usd and committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive educational culture here in vermillion i'm speaking as a private citizen but my
160perspective is shaped by my professional expertise and my experience i want to thank you for drafting this policy um as i have shared in other contexts i believe strongly that vermillion school district needs to follow best practices nationwide and regionally by adopting an affirmative and inclusive policy the safety and inclusion of all of our students particularly our most vulnerable students should be our priority in my 10 years as a professor at usd and elsewhere trans students who have taken my classes and shared their experiences with me testified to the importance of an affirming inclusive educational environment um as a historian i am well aware and well versed in a long history of gender diversity and the diversity of societies right what kind of society do we want to be one that embraces and supports transgender
161folks or one that tries to exclude and marginalize them many of the fears voiced by opponents of such a policy are not based in reality but based on fear and ignorance or isolated cases that do not meet the very parameters of our policy so much opposition to inclusive transgender parties are based on stigmatized stereotype rather than sound research and the experiences of trans students the actual evidence is clear that inclusive policies make our school safer for trans students and do not endanger non-trans or cis students there is no transgender issue here transgender children are not the problem we have an inclusivity issue and fortunately we are in a position to support and pass an inclusive policy and i thank you for doing so [Applause] so thank you for the time my name is megan jarko
162so as katherine birkland already said i hope that you all and i'm sure that you have done your research and based on evidence and you've made your decision on it i would just like to officially state my position on this so as a parent of two children in the district i hope that my children will always feel safe and like they belong when they're at school please vote yes on this bill [Applause] thank you i will now open the florida board discussion on the policy as its current draft form i think there are a couple of questions that have been raised throughout the throughout the comments today and at previous meetings that might be might be worth addressing um one is that there is absolutely still the ability for any student that wants additional privacy
163or does not feel comfortable in the gendered bathroom options to have the individual bathroom and to have access to that there have been concerns about you know the the inconvenience of that to those students that's the same inconvenience that that we're currently asking our trans students to endure but this is one that's not based on identity but based on their choice about where it is that they would feel most comfortable there's also been some questions about how we think about gender fluid and non-binary students which are a distinct difference within within this subset of how we think about transgender students and gender identity in a world that is binary it is a reality that our non-binary and our gender fluid students have to out themselves to really exist in the world as their true selves
164they don't really have the option of passing with the rest of their friends and protecting that privacy because if you say you're non-binary that you know in order to exist as a non-binary student in a very binary world that's a very different thing than having a transgender girl that is known to all of her classmates as a girl or a transgender boy who is known to all of his classmates as a boy this policy is primarily designed with those latter students in mind in those conversations with school officials those non-binary students that they're they're going to most likely be comfortable in either the bathroom that aligns with the gender i signed at birth or in one of those separate facilities that's a different conversation than sort of thinking it's we're not creating a opportunity for
165people to make up their minds every day and go back and forth and switch back and forth the policy clearly states this needs to be a consistently insistently assertive asserted gender and so i trust our administrators i trust our principals to have those conversations with families and develop options with those families that make the most sense for where that child is and for what's going to be the safest for them in that situation i also have a i have kids in our district i have a daughter in high school who's also an athlete i care very much about her safety i wouldn't be in support of a policy that i felt like would threaten her safety there have been lots of people who've asked about what you should tell your children in regards to these
166changes and i would say that we should tell them the same thing that we've always said when you go to the bathroom you go to the bathroom when you're done you wash your hands and then you get out of the bathroom you don't look over the stall or under the stall because that's an invasion of somebody else's privacy nobody should be looking over the stall or under stall at you because that's an invasion of your privacy and if someone does you should tell somebody and that pretty much covers what we need to cover and i don't know that that that doesn't change because of this policy changing i appreciate so much all of the thoughtful comments by both supporters and opponents of this policy i think that your input has made this policy better from
167the beginning and i think that you know we're going to have facility changes that are going to make a lot of students feel safer but i hope that you will continue to ask questions and that we will continue to do our best to try to answer those questions because i think those questions are legitimate and i hope that over the last several meetings that we've had about this we've done our part to address those as they've come up other comments board members questions the folks have reached out to me and their biggest concerns are one not necessarily restrooms and where people go to the bathroom but those that have talked about the parent confidentiality or the parents not knowing and i get it some households won't so i don't have an answer but i want
168to bring it up maybe discuss that and also a lot of people reach out have a lot of concerns issues with that overnight accommodation and have we really thought it through so see if other board members want to comment i think it's possible if it's possible that maybe scratching and having more discussion on the overnight accommodations potentially when we do talk about the locker rooms give some more feedback on the overnight accommodations as well as the procedure i still think if there's a way we can add in that communication among i think it was one of our first drafts that we had regarding um including the family as being key i think that would be just another word that might help people feel more comfortable perhaps communication among the students school and family is key
169i think wasn't that one of our first drafts carol um we included that it was key we didn't include that it was required right but we took out family before i guess i guess i see i um would guess that most situations are going to include the parent i anticipate that most of the conversations that would happen between a counselor or an administrator and a student about one of the situations that we're addressing here is also going to include the parent but there may be a situation like has been described where there is not support for the student and in that case appearance would not be required i feel that that is an important part of our policy and it's my understanding that that is the legal advice as well of keeping in our policy
170the question is that true legally is that what we you know that where we gave the example and i get both sides so it's the restrooms but it's the question that if a student identifies with a different group and we don't tell the parent and they came to you damon or others we said no we would not tell the parent because that's what a lot of concern is on that parent confidentiality or parent right where we make them sign to go on trips but not this yeah thanks for for the question since last meeting we we did a little more checking with this and you know we received a lot of feedback of course from our community so it gave us an opportunity to look at some of the requirements with ferpa and what parents
171are entitled to what's an educational record um brent may have has some more to to add to this but opinions differ on this situation depending on who you talk to i spoke to two attorneys uh this week who said absolutely it is allowable to share with parents they are not you're not obligated to share information that is deemed at school but you have the opportunity to you would be in no violation to do so so that is really one of the things that we heard loud and clear at last week's meeting was the concern of confidentiality from parents and i think part of the draft policy may have been misunderstood when we talked about confidentiality the confidentiality of the student's status is what is most at stake here we want to make sure the kids
172that are involved are not outed by staff members or other students in the building communicating those without those students wishes it wasn't an intent to keep anything from parents so parents uh were never meant to be out of the loop with that discussion so i think that the board would have the latitude to um ask us to or make it a practice that if we're asked as part of our policy our practice with this that we would in fact work with parents on this issue now we do that with different issues this day as just everyday business and school if it's a safety risk for a student if it's some of the examples we heard in our in our testimony today then we would have to weigh that conversation and decide if we would be
173willing to uh talk to a family about as an issue that might bring a student at risk but like carol mentioned all of the situations that we've faced in the last four or five years on this topic the families have been highly engaged and always been involved so it would be a very rare situation that a student might come to us in confidence and ask us not to tell a parent at which time we would have to weigh that as as a district and say based on the students fear from being ousted at home or physical violence or something like that we'd have to consider that but as a practice it would be something that we could and should inform parents of i believe damon some sum that up quite well however you are under
174no obligation to inform the parents of those conversations unless they are memorialized in an educational record for instance child requests name change an infinite campus a parent calls up and says hey i'd like to know about my child you you're absolutely required to disclose that information however as damon outlined there just having a conversation with damon or any other administrators or staff you know i'd like to keep this between us because i'm worried if i go home i might get abused or any other safety concerns so i think it'd be a significant disservice if you have a bright line either way bright line of that we're not going to tell parents about the child status or we absolutely are going to inform parents of the child status so as a practice i would recommend just
175taking it on a case-by-case basis to properly address each situation i'd agree that it's important that it's important that we have the discretion that the administrators have the discretion to be able to deal with the variety of risks that might be entailed there that are hard for us to foresee for every possible student and so i think we have the expectation that the vast majority of cases parents are going to be advocates for their kids and they're going to be a part of that conversation and that's certainly been the instance and all of the cases that we know about but having the the ability in a situation in which that child might be put at harm to not share that information i think is is consistent with how we think about the the safety and
176the resources we offer our students on a whole variety of other fronts when it comes to the things that we might know about them at school that their parents might not know in terms of the overnight stays i feel like we did a good job in our last meeting of talking about how we can accommodate parent preferences for their students to avoid the situation if that's really important to them i think that our policy that allows students to identify who they want to room with these are the same kids that they've had sleepovers with at their houses they're the same kids that they've done other things with that that gives the flexibility for students for parents who are really concerned about this issue to um to navigate that in a way that makes sense and
177it gives the trans students an ability to navigate that in a way that makes them feel safe and comfortable too so i don't see a reason to wait on that i think that the reason we're waiting on the locker rooms and the showers is a very specific revision to facilities and so it's it's not because we haven't had adequate time to consider that it's that we're waiting on construction changes and so i wouldn't want to lump the overnight stays in with that because that's not something that we're waiting on facility changes to change it's something i think we can move forward with at this time so i'm going to comment on both of these i and i mentioned last time that i had some reluctance about parental rights i certainly understand and know that there
178are instances where it is in the student's best interest to keep that from the parent however i think that creates a very dangerous circumstance for the student and i do think we could create a policy where i mean we i believe i don't that when the parent is supportive of this identity it will be a the best possible scenario when both the parent and the district are supportive if the parent is not supportive then i i do have some concern that if we are we could be putting that student in more danger because i think it becomes harder and harder to demonstrate that consistent insistent persistent identity if they are having to change back and forth i don't know exactly what the solution is and i think if there's a case where we suspect or
179fear abuse then we should be involving other professionals to make that and so i guess i would like to see this absolutely go through with parental consent we already know south dakota high school activities association participation procedure form that you have to fill out which south dakota high school activities already allows uh transgender students to participate in the sport that confirms their identity but it does require a parental signature to do that and so in that instance we would have to to comply with that part we would have to allow it so i guess i would like to see us discuss that and maybe come up with some way to find a way to create that exception so that it is truly an exception in that rare instance where the student is in danger the
180the overnight accommodation my concern there is really with our i think appropriate level of trying to ensure confidentiality and i i have pondered how do we create this environment where we don't run the risk of outing a student who doesn't want to be outed and that's even true if they have a room by themselves it starts to raise those questions so this is one where i i ultimately really hope we get there i'm just trying to figure out the procedure to get there so it's really those two issues for me i think the first one is easily solvable the second one i'm going to continue to hear discussion despite the comments you know about our minds being made up and i think they're always leaning one way or another but it's when you hear the
181discussion of how can we do it that it really ultimately pushes me in one way or the other i think uh i'll just piggy back to what shane had talked about earlier she she hit it right on the head we had brought up concerns last meeting about students underneath the broad umbrella of transgender and it could be binary could be fluid and i'm sure there's a lot of other pieces to that puzzle but i think our potential policy at this point does address that it acts that asks that you have to persistently consistently and insistently identify the the identity or the gender that you identify with so in that terms a student who might be in the position of binary or fluid that is is having some of these other concerns would not be eligible
182for this policy they haven't they haven't met the first tenant of the policy which is that you have to have an affirmed identity at this point in my view the the board would we would we would treat that as when we're looking at accepting this uh student's request for the restroom change or this family's request that they they wouldn't have the the first tenant down which is the fact that they aren't consistent um if i understand some of those things correctly a binary or a fluid student could be trying to make these decisions different ways at different times so i think that we need to realize that this particular policy deals specifically with the persistent insistent and consistent identity that the students identify with and probably have the support of the families um 99 of
183the time that's been our our experience and if the policy works as intended nobody else in the district knows that it's even happened and that's not meant to be under the table or confidential it's just like a lot of other business that happens in schools which if we have a student who has aids or has some other um situation in their life the rest of the students and the staff aren't necessarily entitled to know those things for the health and well-being of the student we can make these things happen and make them successful for all students so i'm i am confident that the policy as it's written con identifies or takes care of the issue of the questions raised at last month or last week's meeting with gender fluid students or students that might be
184binary um so i think that we've addressed that in the policy my concern would be continue with what we've talked about with overnight accommodations over the last week we've taken numerous questions on how would that look and i do agree that at this point i prefer we have more time to deal with that i don't know what the end result could be but right now again we don't have any students in that particular situation that we need to make that decision tonight because we don't have any need for those accommodations coming up in the near future that's not to say that we don't need to address the issue but we need to work on finding some solutions that would make people comfortable does that include more private rooms does it allow kids to pick their
185roommates what happens if kids want to pick their roommate but parents don't don't agree with the choices of the child you know those are all things that uh we we need to really grapple with before we pass that part of the policy so that's my thoughts on those two issues i'd like to follow up quickly on your comment doug i would just like to advise that i have serious reservations about the district outing individuals with no legal obligation to do so and so i realize you'd like to create a policy and then create an exception i think it would be better dressed as a practice as opposed to than explicit policy can i ask a question of the policy committee my understanding and there have been a lot of apparent questions about this too about
186the expansion of this policy and how it went from originally being about bathrooms to being a more broad policy and the way in which that happened was twofold my understanding is one it's through legal counsel and understanding what would be what would be a policy that would stand up legally given the current decisions and guidance that we have and second was seeing what the policies looked like in other places and so looking at iowa looking at lamar's looking at other school districts that have had a similar policy in place for a long time and account found success with it and this is where the bulk of our language has come from and so that's where it expanded to make sure that we were meeting our legal requirements for being non-discriminatory and also adopting best practices
187that could be identified is there any do you have any recollection or memory of how how they dealt with the overnight stay since i presume that that's where it came from or is that something that we could reach out to find out more exactly what what the practice looked like to go along with that policy to make sure that it was something that parents felt comfortable with we didn't didn't do an extensive um have a lot of conversations uh with with those folks uh namely because they haven't experienced it as well they've had the policy the the schools that we've talked to in iowa particularly have had those policies for a number of years but they didn't have situations where they had state qualifying teams or [Music] oral interp or something where that combination came
188together so i'm sure if we found enough schools we'd eventually find somebody who's had that but the particular schools that we were surveying and talking to across the borders had the inclusive policy but have never had to exercise it and that's similar through their through all of their policies it's a k-12 policy but they haven't experienced that at the elementary level they've experienced at the high school level so even though they have policies that are k-12 they have different experiences than we're having in our district but that i appreciate that shane that's kind of what my point was is there's going to be somebody who can advise us on that and would that be the fact that they added more rooms or the fact that kids got to pick their partners uh what did that
189look like to make that transition easier i would like to be able to find some solutions to that if we were given that time in those conversations that you had with districts in iowa where they've had these policies for 10 years is am i remembering correctly that you did not have any conversations about problems they had issues they had anticipated problems didn't come to fruition am i remembering that correctly yes yes uh the the groups that i had talked to they had many of the same concerns that we're addressing tonight and that they're public addressed with them as well and thankfully they haven't experienced the adverse reactions that that they were anticipating so they've had they've had i guess a good experience with that up to this point and the language of the iowa policies
190as far as the overnight accommodations is the same as the language that we have put into our policy you're correct yes and we don't have we don't have any known instances in the next couple of months of a case where this is going to be tested before we have the chance to work that out so we don't have any current students who are going to a state championship who have identified as transgender that we know are going to test this out before we can seek that guidance correct no known you know participants at this point that we would be concerned with thank you so my feeling would be that if if it sounds like it's the the practice that needs to be sort of how does this what does this look like when it's implemented
191when it comes to overnight stays not the policy itself that needs to be figured out and so given that we have some time to do that and there aren't any current situations i would still feel comfortable passing the policy as written and then knowing we need to figure out exactly what that piece looks like in implementation in a way that addresses parent concerns that seems reasonable to me as well what is legal counsel saying that would you rather have a practice laid out versus a policy first or any comment because if something came up next week what would we do if we still have to hurry up and i'm going to leave that up to the board we just heard from superintendent alvey that there are no known instances in which that's going to come
192into play doug is a point of order is there a way to have a separate vote on that piece yeah i actually pondered this i mean only in the i couldn't come up with one to be honest i i thought about in terms of the amendment process but the first and second reading doesn't require a formal motion and vote on amendment process um so i mean there isn't i mean it's outside of the the straw poll approach um and i i respect now so i'm now sharing my opinion i i respect exactly what you said shane i think we're thinking the same thing i'm thinking of it from the side of does it need if we're not dealing with it does it need to be included particularly if it's inclusion is going to hold us
193up that's that's the other thing i mean i think ultimately we have to address it and that was why i know policy committee put it in here because it the idea was to to deal with everything at once rather than piecemealing this out over nine months or something like that i'm just thinking damn i think we do have a trip coming to disney don't wait for show choir but that i think is february march yeah spring spring yeah that is correct we also have to address what i think is the other issue of how comfortable are we or what where are we on the parental involvement language because right now it's it's vague at best i'm not sure doug if you need to to clarify that if the expectation is that administrators exercise the same
194candor they do and every other decision that we deal with on a day-to-day basis that if students come to us with this concern we will be sharing it with parents absent a physical or safety concern for the student just like we would if they a child came to us with an abuse allegation if they came to us with their concerns that they've experimented with drugs or alcohol you can't tell my mom and dad that because i'm going to be in trouble there's some candor that's being expressed there between student and and counselor or principal but for the large part we are working with parents to make sure that they're informed of their child their minor children and what's happening with them at school and i think that's important so absent that the board tells us
195that you cannot do that our administrators are trained to do that because we are constantly working trying to improve transparency to parents make sure they understand what's happening at school absent a physical safety concern for the child uh of course so that's that that needs to be vetted out into tonight's discussion so you do not think i i i'm asking you to speak a little bit on behalf of other administrators but at least for yourself you feel comfortable engaging that practice with the wording that's here because we do this every day already this is really no different than the the issues that we face in our buildings every single day with kids and our administrators are professionals are trained and they've got uh expertise in dealing with sensitive issues and good judgment to call in
196the professionals if necessary to take it to the next level if there's concerns of abuse or any kind of other safety concern for the kids so in my eyes this is just another hand partnership with the parents so i think it should be there i don't think it needs to be written in draft form we don't do that for any other case in our district the principles just do this day to day question on a practice statement if if a child came to you and they're not to the counselor they're under 18 and wanted to in the school district identify with the gender they want how would we handle that well the very first one of the very first tenants of your thing is that the student has to have a persistent and consistent insistent
197uh documented um identi identity so if this student is really going to have to be able to demonstrate that they're going to have to provide some documentation as part of this process so it won't go to the restrooms being open to students until we've gotten to that phase once again we've got parent involvement yeah so if i ask for documentation or the principal were to ask for documentation they would have that's part of this tenant of getting as part of the request for this this identity to use the restroom for which they have their assertive identity so in my view that they have to have that part of it has to be taken care of with family or their physician or whatever documentation that they're using so i don't think that that really comes into
198play unless a student is trying to not communicate this concern with their parents at which time we'd have to weigh that if that's a safety concern for the student thoughts on that in terms of comfort with practice or comfort with more with stronger language and parental involvement so are we saying that as the policy is written we are accepting the discretion of the administrator or the counselor or whomever the school representative we're accepting their discretion with regard to communication with the parent and we're accepting their discretion with regard to making sure that the accommodations for overnight trips are reasonable if you're asking me i i think that the the overnight accommodations is is is not at play it in my view that that's that's not part of this discussion tonight it's it's too far of
199a reach for us to accomplish tonight unless you plan to be here tomorrow morning at nine when the next meeting is supposed to take place that's that's a big big topic it's a big ask of the people out here to take take and do that tonight my view is that that gets removed from the policy and we we deal with that down the road if you want to pass a policy on restrooms tonight the restroom policy in my view is we will inform parents and we will get parents to be partners in this unless the safety of the child is at stake at which time we would handle it with a different stroke and that again the the transgender student who is meets the qualifications of your policy would be gained given access to the
200bathroom which would they identify sports is all on its own that's that's the state issue we've had five students in this entire state of south dakota since 2013. it is not a a big player in your policy tonight your big player is the restroom and do you feel like the restrooms are adequately uh could facilitate the needs of the students within the district that ask for it if so you've got a couple pieces of policy uh documentation from the parent and that we will involve parents uh in the discussion and then making sure that they've gone through the application process or the documentation process and once that's accounted for then discreetly that child is is getting to use the restroom for which they identify and again if this is handled correctly you guys don't even
201know about it happening and the folks out here don't know what's happening because we've got students and parents and faculty working together to discreetly handle these students needs behind the scenes and again that's not to hide anything it's to follow the law and to make sure that we are meeting the needs of all the students in in the district i think i think if we if i feel like i'm in the situation of like deciding which rights we will discriminate on and versus which ones we won't at this meeting right and sort of like what are we willing to cut in order to to get a vote on ensuring that they have access to some of the things that they should have rights for based on our non-discrimination policy versus not others so that part
202makes me feel um uncomfortable i think that as you know until we address the entirety of the original draft which includes locker rooms and showers and overnight stays we are still um we are still in a situation where we are not fully biting by our non-discriminatory policy and so i think that it's on us to continue that work to make sure that that gets done we have very specific reasons why we're not doing that on the facilities to make sure that we're able to update those facilities to everybody's comfort level in the meantime if it is the will of the board to wait on the overnight stays to figure out the logistics of that i think that i can be okay with that to but i still feel like we need to recognize that we
203are still discriminating on the basis of gender identity by not providing equal access in the meantime and so we have to be working very diligently toward bringing the entirety of the policy up to date does that mean you want to vote on the whole policy as written or well i mean ultimately it's a second reading so there is that vote uh what we can do in a second reading is make these changes um to remove things and i you know i i understand exactly what you're saying shane i unders i also i don't want to hold up any of this because we're still working out a detail that we can work out and that that's what i you know i don't i don't want this to be viewed in anyone's mind like we're saying okay
204this is the concession i'm willing to give i don't think anyone's saying i'll vote for restroom equity and access if you do this that at least that's not the message i'm trying to say um i want to to get it done i feel very comfortable with the wording i still would like to see something more specific about um you know the determination of consistently asserted gender will be determined in collaboration with parent guardian and designated school official um whether or not there's if you want to have that extra language and i do respect what brent has said about maybe we don't want to have that language in there but that's i do feel strongly that there is we have some parental obligation um and not in the sense of a legal obligation but in terms
205of a collaborative educational obligation to make sure we create the environment and i think that's what it does and i also remember this is where you know that forgive me for saying this but the ghost of jim mccullough is echoing in my mind about the difference between will shall and must when it comes to writing policies and i know there are varying degrees of what they require you to do thank you for that doug i would just follow up with that and i would use permissive language here no mandatory language of shell right this is permissive in the sense of you know we're going to handle it on a case-by-case basis and we're not necessarily going to provide explicit notice to each and every parent in every instance [Music] would you feel in for adding
206back in the language about parent and guardians as a part of the conversation would you still feel comfortable if we included the language of just absent absentee concern for student safety absolutely yeah so is that language that i mean that feels like a minor modification that's still intent with the original first reading of the policy that's just providing clarity um and that's so is that language that can be provided just adding back in parents and guardians and then putting apps into concern yeah it does it does to me because it actually i think is describing exactly what damon said the practice would be under the current wording so it's just clarifying the current wording do we have that under procedure previously yes so right now we have the determination of consistently asserted gender may be
207determined in collaboration of any of the following parent guardian counselor building administrator and physician so perhaps we can simply add a line in there that indicates absent a compelling concern for safety the parent or guardian will also be included in communication i would advise against adding that language can i ask why will mandatory language i think if you add back the language communication with the school parents let's check the prior draft where you have the collaborative approach is key i believe that addresses the practice that damon discusses as opposed to outlining a mandatory requirement again i feel like the vast majority of these situations are going to include the parent or the guardian and i don't know if that makes any difference at all but it seems that it will be a unique situation in
208which we would not be communicating with the parent i agree but i have to advise against creating obligations that are more restrictive than federal law so based on the advice of our legal counsel are we comfortable moving forward with it as is understanding what the practice within the district will be regarding communication and how it will be enforced i'm comfortable i would expect that um well i guess you all could expect that i may come back to the next meeting with some suggested language to modify this immediately um i also do think we should withdraw the overnight accommodations for the time being i mean if we're going to come back and start to modify it let's i mean that's shane your question was can we do this in pieces um we can by doing things
209like that i agree i'd like to do more on the parental rights and overnight accommodations but that can be done through subsequent amendments is that what i'm hearing i think the parental rights can be i feel i'm confident with what mr alvey has said about how they will handle the practice the wording allows that we'll expect that to be the case we've heard lots of people talking about practice being important but adding the overnight accommodations back in can be done through a subsequent amendment that's what you're saying yes just like the locker room yes just like the locker room could be done at the same time if we feel comfortable with it i i'm not trying to be a guiding chair so i'm if we're talking about a change like that and i don't i'm
210not trying to put the words in anyone's mouth but the motion would be to approve the second reading with the following amendment removal of section overnight accommodations just to clarify then from what i've heard then is that the practice of informing parents would be the standard that our administrative team would be held to that we would also be looking at i'm sorry i'm looking at my notes here looking at um you know the the each student case on a case-by-case basis under the umbrella of transgender long as they've met the portions of the policy about consistently persistently and in insistently identifying then as long as they've met that threshold as well as the working with parents then that's the discussion that would get passed in tonight's reading if we did that minus perhaps the the
211overnight accommodations to be adjusted later in my that's how i understand it okay so that we are we're in just a free state right we are voting on the procedure section with the express understanding that we are not prohibiting you from communicating that to parents um and that the wording may allows you and then you're telling us that would be the practice that addresses with our full faith and trust in you that it would not be shared in if there were any concerns about student safety in doing so just as you would and not on other issues that you've dealt with thank you absolutely um i know from the some concerns and calls that that i had taken this last week those were three very distinct issues that parents had concerns with there's still some
212more concerns there that probably uh folks addressed this evening but those those three things were were specific calls i had taken this week on that concern so thank you okay so is there understanding of what we would be approving so my my uh very long ago uh direction on parliamentary procedure is that the chair doesn't make motion so so moved i'm sorry who's that chain yes okay so can i restate to make sure that i understand so the motion is everything but we're pulling overnight accommodations the ammo yeah the motion is to adopt policy jok as written removing out the section on overnight accommodations to be reconsidered with the locker room shower discussion at a later date once we've figured out the logistics of that okay i have a motion to approve second reading as
213amended second so motion by shane second by carol so as i indicated to the board earlier and i now indicate to the public given the clarity of the vote on this i will ask i am calling for a roll call vote so we will simply call i will call your name in alphabetical order same order we do the attendance and you may vote yay nay or abstain so shane yay rachel nay me yay jim nay carol yay [Music] [Applause] so the policy has been passed with those understandings under procedure and the room will revisit the overnight accommodation so at this time there are no overcome overnight accommodation expectations ha question then would be the informing of parents uh as to when this would start when would you like us to communicate this tomorrow and i
214uh yeah thank you okay item c classified wage increase uh financer help mr alvi i don't know who would like to address this one uh we'll start and then finance can jump in wherever they need to as we had been talking about with our policy committee as well as our finance committee throughout the summer our district would like to propose an increase to our classified wage earners because of one we've got a dedicated group of professionals in our building uh on all of our buildings and as well as trying to stay competitive with our our neighbors uh we would like to advocate uh for a 50 cent an hour increase to all of our classified folks starting immediately as well as some differential for different job uh classifications for different folks in different positions so
215we have that outlined in your your proposed package before you and we did approve this through finance i don't know if they have any questions or things to add to that but proposing an increase for our classified earners i was wondering if the finance committee had any discussion on back dating it to the start of the school year for those increases we did not on that but we just we're looking at more from now going forward for both retention and increases we did not discuss that explicitly but i would not be opposed to it i think we capped it at a total dollar amount so if we proved it tonight there wouldn't be enough there wouldn't be in the funding we approved a set dollar amount and then let kevin and damon allocated how they
216saw fit for retention and i'd rather keep it the same to approve it go forward you okay with that shane yeah i was trying to remember i felt like that the total spent came in underneath of that it came in underneath of that cap that we approved but i don't know if there's enough left to be able to do it okay there wasn't because what we we spent to the max where you gave us so let's make a motion do you want to clarify for the public what that total dollar amount was for the general on the special ed fund sure the calculation for that and this included the sdrs and the taxes so basically the benefit portion of this included as well as the wages was 26 512 dollars and 80 cents from the
217general fund and 436 dollars from the special education fund um do we have these all in one line item here yes and we also had consideration for increasing the substitute pay for both these teacher subs and subbing for an ea these are usually represented in you know a per day but we actually have our substitutes on the time clock so we pretty much have to do it on a per hour basis to boil it down from to per hour currently subbing for a teacher is twelve dollars and fifty cents uh the discussion that we had had would be to move that up as close as as it would be to 125 dollars per day which would be an hourly rate of fifteen dollars and sixty cents and then uh moving the subbing for an ea
218from 1125 up to what would be an approximate um comparable percentage up to 13.75 um to to help bridge that gap there as well any discussion on keeping the sub pay for teacher and the ea a little bit closer together not so different uh is there that much difference of duties i mean there's some difference in duties we've had that discussion we haven't vetted that out to because we've had experience on both sides of this discussion both kevin and i so we haven't vetted that out if we would encourage that what we don't want is for our uh substitute pay to be skewed so greatly over your salaries of your classified folks and that's that's what would be the potential if we went to the full 125 a day for our classified subs now we
219fully understand that this is obviously is something that the board would support moving forward immediately with the idea that hopefully the governor has a great budget proposal for us in december which opens up negotiations for further discussions come normal negotiations time this isn't is obviously something that takes place currently um and maybe kevin you could just share how we would plan to pay for all of this uh the largest uh dollar impact that we've got to our current budget was represented in what mr alvi had mentioned earlier tonight with our fall enrollment being up 85 students obviously has a very significant impact on our budget both in those student accounts for the general education general fund funding and also on the special education side as well so i guess as long as we like we
220like rolling admission or average rolling averages unless it benefits us and then we'll take the money right i'd like to thank the finance committee for for doing this and recognizing the hard work of our classified staff absolutely um so this can be considered as a single vote item at the end so the motion would include a raise for the wage from this point forward for 12.50 would it be this pay period or would it be hours starting just happens to be today as the start of a new pay period so yeah and where yeah good timing excellent and that will include actually either the new item the two new hires the information at your desk has them at 12 but they would go to 12.50 okay item d so this is the library book selection
221and i will again call for public comment because this was a public raised issue todd would you like to speak come forward please long nights one of the positive things about this i've had a lot of conversations with people i've never met i'm friendly with parents have talked maybe opposite sides of the bathroom policies but that's a positive thing one of the things parents from speaking with each other talking to their kids more about maybe some specific questions at school there's some books that have been presented in our library system that's i i know it was brought up last week but i don't it wasn't brought up with examples and i have examples i bought as a parents that heard about these books i bought some and i read a couple um first one's called
222a good kind of trouble um i'm just going to take some parts throughout this book daddy talks a lot about what he calls white privilege mama chew on my lip for a minute watching the blue and red lights get farther away do the police hate us black people hannah told me that black kids sit on the basketball courts hannah is really weird about race stuff not only does she tease me about having black friends she is she only has black prince this this book is in a school of second graders i forgot to mention that immediately uh the school that this uh book is about has a it's called is named after ralph waldo emerson um daddy smirks at mama they're teaching the dead white men a lot earlier these days huh of the things
223you'll be taught in school are from a certain perspective dead white men's perspective i believe if you are alive now which is this is referring to ralph waldo emerson this is a teacher talking to students in a class setting they use teachers to have these conversations with large groups of their classes with young kids i believe if you're alive now he would be strong supporter of black lives matter movement again that's a teacher saying that some people are confused about why businesses get vandalized in protest that can seem wrong but i'm sure what i'm not sure what is right way to act if people in your community seem to be unfairly targeted by the police mama and daddy don't want me watching the videos of black people getting shot or choked or beat up by
224police but there's been so many of them i can't help but see them some i wonder if miss jacobs is right would ralph waldo emerson support black lives matter even though he's a dead white man hannah stares at her phone for a minute he's a brother she asks all shocky voice so i say hannah hands me the phone i'm surprised he's black i didn't know you would be down like that i'm gonna try to skip some cause it's late i'm tired and you're tired too uh janice isn't black she's white black is constantly capitalized when you refer to race white is not in this book so something else i noticed uh chapter 25 is entitled black power in every chapter there's a black power fist this is a class or a school with second graders
225when a black person gets shot and nothing happens it's like we don't matter and that makes me angry and yeah it makes me want to do something violence make some noise get attention it's not fair that i have to take some school days off because my of because of my list i would be afraid to live there i don't know if there are a lot of white students have to worry about that again white is not capitalized black is i'm gonna stop here you know what i think it's time this oreo that's a racist slang found out she's not as cute as she thinks she is oreo seriously i'm not white on the inside black on the outside what's your issue second book i read i've read several um i'm going to read from somebody
226who had a better summary than what i can do just by reading from it chapter 3 introduces ideas of white privilege chapter 5 promotes race essentialism and teaches children that there is such a thing as being black and being whites chapter 6 teaches kids that racist ideas in the past are tied to racist ideas of today teaching kids racial scapegoating chapter 8 teaches president abraham was actually for slavery slavery [Applause] chapter 23 gives shout outs to founders of black lives matter a lot of them on the multi-million dollar properties it mentions that which is true even though they're marxists um chapter 17 continues the crt rejection of reason objectivity and empiricalism by suggesting that because racists use math and science in the past these things aren't themselves to blame not to individually use them i
227asked for copies of records of books that have been brought into the library in my kids school in the last year but i was told these records do not exist to this day i've received nothing and communicating and talking with administration what i learned from them is there's has been zero oversight over this system and they had no idea these books were in our libraries until parents told them parent-teacher conferences on october 7th there was one display rack promoting new books to students one sided eight books one book was about overcoming america's racist society one was about children not identifying with the traditional gender roles one was about a plantation owner in the slave trade one was about stamps which i i read i didn't want to quote from its one was about a gay
228rights leader in the past which i don't have a problem with but five out of the eight books were about those topics this is a school of second graders the process to challenge books is severely flawed other than searching through the countless and constantly changing titles through the online library that on their website the only way we could find out about these is if they're brought in promoted and or read by our children which by then to me it's too late my wife and i followed the first step of the challenge process but we were ignored so we moved on to the next step without community knowing what is going on what why this was brought up last week i feel not putting pressure on this school district act that there will be none taken
229this this policy or this book issue came out of nowhere when the debate began about changing our bathroom policies and the book questioning the definition of gender was discussed with students by a faculty member my children have great classroom teachers my trust in this school system right now is damaged to parents and grandparents finally hearing why this issue was brought up last week this is the reason why thank you so it's my understanding that there are we do have four books in the review process and that they're at the point of committee review correct correct correct okay and so uh mr nelson just for review the board uh has been given um an example of the the i'm sorry he took off well basically uh yep that's all right i can catch him later though
230but for the rest of you that are they're an observation todd thanks i was just uh just sharing with the the board that they've got a copy of of the the policy that's that you're referring to and the the chance to request for reconsideration of books so uh the process now is in the hands of the principal and a committee of folks that are outlined in that policy to review that and then at which point that committee would make a recommendation within 60 days and if if nobody's satisfied with that recommendation then the board would be the final board of appeal in that process so just for you and for others you're already familiar with the process obviously you're in it but the ones that are at home that didn't know what the process looked
231like that's that's how this will work out now i understand that um the first step of the process is the it's probably the most flawed because you go directly to the person that put these books out there there's no timeline to this as far as the first step we were i think it was a week maybe that's not enough time to me it is for something this serious um to not even say yes we will get back to you yes we're working on it yes we're aware thank you for the information we will follow up nothing silence so i know you brought it up last week um but you didn't and i should have spoke up and said something last week but i'm not the only parents that know about this this is getting around
232um i feel i have a position where i can i'm willing to stand up and say something about this because uh this this cross is political lines it's about uh getting the in front of parents rights as far as setting moral grounds teaching morals to our children like i said there's a there's a there's a book on that stand about somebody that promoted for the rights of gay people and that's great they should know about those people but five out of the eight books was about that those topics in the class is second grade great the school was second graders um so i guess i mentioned that already but like i said i understand the process but the awareness wasn't there and my i feel like the awareness needs to be put out there and
233everybody watching um you know i don't want to say put pressure to you people but the awareness wasn't there and there was no awareness brought last week and that's that was disappointing to not see happen because you know about it and you put up a powerpoint presentation with a policy or procedures but no meat to it as to why this is brought up to you and other faculty or administrators in the school system had no idea this was going on if you're for it that's fine but it's my rights to instill morals and and when they're my kids are older they can do whatever they want but when they're in my household they're my kids they're not your kids and somebody stepped over that line and took over that role that they decided to so
234awareness needed to happen and did not and this has been weeks where i've asked for that to happen nothing so i hate public speaking i'm glad the audience is five percent of what it was earlier because i hate being up here um i appreciate the efforts if what efforts do happen i hope there's something so unless you get any more questions from me that's all i have [Applause] excuse me my name is don delaine and i was not planning to speak on this topic and i would like the opportunity to discuss with the gentleman of this week i just want to urge the board to be very very cautious about getting into the censorship business the books that he was talking about seem to me to be discussing important issues i trust the teachers i
235could i could have wonderful discussions about those books i would trust as a parent i could have wonderful discussion about those books but the idea that somehow the school board is going to get in the business saying these books are no can't be read i think is extraordinarily dangerous and i would simply say approach that at your peril thank you so i uh i will ask that the policy committee because i know you don't have much going on um do take a look at this i think the the timeline issues are something that should be added at every stage i mean right now we could hear a response to a challenge you know so we give the other party unlimited time to respond and it just it makes sense that we can take care of
236this um to get that cleaned up i actually think the policy functions well i do think the first step is appropriate because i think you know the idea there is that somebody says oh my gosh we ended up with this book in our library by mistake and it is absolutely not acceptable by any standard and you could get it done with right there and not go through the process just for the record you know uh one of the aspects that did come as a result of this discussion with todd and some others in the community was that our administrators will be much more active on the process because currently we have a group of librarians that determine the books that are being purchased with the consultation of principals or teachers or parents that sometimes recommend
237books for curriculum or whatever the is the hot topic the the great authors you know the library guilds the caldecott award winners all of the things that you've traditionally seen as invited in the library still continues today although some of those have suspect topics from one family to another i think what todd's uh major concern is the promotion of books not so much the fact that books are in the library as the fact that some parents feel that that the promotion by staff is what could have potential for abuse so we will deal with that we'll make sure that we're doing it consistently and fairly we don't want to be in the book censorship business but at the end of the day our administrators will take a much more active role uh in terms of
238what what's entering our library so that uh when they're called and says hey there's four thousand books in your library what is this one about they'll be able to to give them some sort of an idea about what those topics are so okay i just want to be clear it's not currently in policy you just have a practice that you've used right yeah that is policy that that that re that is in board district policy as well as on the low of the why doesn't it look like a typical policy um because to me this is not a policy it's not date titled when it was approved it looks like maybe maybe it's an attachment to some sort maybe share it but this has probably been the case for 18 years or more right but
239it's not in board policy my name is sharla crowl i am the librarian at the middle school the policy was approved in 2013. i don't know where it is in the board i don't have its numbers um the policy that i had that i just keep is the one that is it looks like this yes yeah i can find you the other one tomorrow i just want to add one more thing as one of the people that does the purchasing of the books and the sharing of the books with all of our students it's really really important to remember that a good library contains something in it to offend everybody okay because the flip side of that is it contains something in it that is going to appeal to everybody and we try really really
240hard to do that um the books that have been coming out in the last five to eight years that change and have shared so much more in diversity than was ever out there before give us so much more opportunity to connect with students i spend a lot of time with my kids and granted i teach middle schoolers but i spend a lot of time with my kids talking about the really important facts that books serve for both the author and the reader books serve as a window to the world and books also serve as a mirror back on yourself and if we can do that and help our students you know it's everything that we just spent the last three hours discussing for every different kid and it's really really important to have that opportunity
241to do that with all of them so i can find you the actual policy for that tomorrow i do know that it was board approved at some point any other questions for me [Applause] good evening my name is christopher heck i have one elementary aged son that will never be a part of the vermillion school system and it's what i've witnessed growing up in this community as an adult i came here to usd at 18 years old and i've been in this community ever since one of the things that i want to speak on specifically on this topic is the power of books the power of the written word spoken word is one thing spoken word is one thing entirely different than written word okay written word once it's on paper gives it so much
242power and when that power is promoted for good or for evil or for indifference when that power is promoted by an individual and it is not taken into consideration perhaps that the subject matter would be completely inappropriate for a second grader completely inappropriate for an eighth grader completely inappropriate for human consumption okay those are things that need to be considered with absolutely every topic sure books are meant to arouse the senses and perhaps to offend and to appease and all of these things and to appeal to someone's inner demons perhaps or perhaps their inner angels okay but whatever it may be those ideas need to be addressed with such delicacy a second grade mind how old is that seven eight the things that we introduce to a seven or an eight year old mind are
243going to stick with them for the rest of their lives if they're if they're powerful enough now i'm here to tell you i believe i had an excellent education i had a private christian education for many of those years but i also grew up in the public school system when that was the only thing that was available to me i went to the university of south dakota i did not graduate not that that's important but the teachers that i remember the most the ones that had the most impact on me were the ones that spoke from personal experience not ones that came from a you know a specific political or you know or socio-political viewpoint and tried to indoctrinate that didn't really exist much 20-25 years ago that seems to be the latest trend and
244it's disturbing to watch there are very very few it would seem teachers uh not specifically in this school district but just at large that have truly our students best interests in mind it just it's just from from what i can witness from my own two eyes what i what i read about in the newspapers what i see on the nightly news and you don't have to ask me where i get my news i i would like to think that i have a pretty diverse news source and but what i understand is is that in my own personal experience i should say is that the written word is so incredibly powerful and can be used for good or for bad and it's something that just needs to have more oversight it's all it really is i
245happen to know a couple of librarians in my life uh one of them is family the other is just an acquaintance and i've seen a lot of you know powerful and offensive things in libraries and as well they should be as well they should be but those powerful and defensive things don't not need to be pushed on our young minds that's something that is better addressed perhaps at the collegiate level i can honestly say that the most offensive uh concepts that i was ever exposed to were within the halls of usd i mean it's just the way that it is it's probably the way that it should be but you're in an adult mind you're a developed mind at that point and you can certainly be able to make your own choices at that point
246and it's not doctrine it's not gospel and you cannot you know when you guys make those decisions and like oh look here's our uh eight popular books that we want you to check out and like todd mentioned five of those are rather controversial subjects and certainly for somebody who's in the second grade we just it needs to be addressed more delicately more carefully at every single step of the way thank you for the sake of everybody's time the policy is found at i i a b and i i aac thank you brent is there more meat to it than just this hello my name is melody beauu i'm a student here at usd also a registered voter here in clay county um while i would agree that the written word is very powerful i would
247also say that it is included under the first amendment and i would agree with previous speakers in cautioning the board and getting into the field of censorship wasn't planning on speaking on this but seems like we're getting into some risky territory here so um just i would urge you to think um very thoroughly about your actions going forward so thank you for your time so just to clarify for the public there is no action item here there is no policy change in front of us so okay we'll move on to item e approval of the ionization project bid i don't imagine they could get a better timing to get a bid approved so as part of our return to school plan and use of esser dollars for mitigations to help keep our students and staff
248safe one of the things that our building committee and finance committee as well as our administration has been advocating for is an ionization system for our school district which would include the ability to change the molecular level of viruses in our building by adding these apparatuses to our heating and cooling ventilation systems and so we've had proposals by folks in the heating and cooling industry come and share with us different products that would help take care of those needs and we went out for bid and we did receive one bid back for the project to include ionization in every building in the district once again two of these are portable that once we finish our elementary schools we can remove these devices from our hvac systems in both jolly and austin transport them to the
249new facility and have those ongoing ionization capabilities in our brand new elementary within the next 18 months or two years when that's complete finance committee building committee mr kosher anything to add to that as you can see the the base price for that uh product would be 237 uh we would use esser dollars which is the covid relief dollars that the federal government is administered to school districts uh although i'll we'll be honest our sr3 grant which was is where we wrote this has not been finalized from the state of south dakota the schools that have written similar grants to this previous to us have had them accepted so i guess we're very confident that we'll be able to move forward and have it although i can't i don't have the documentation from the state
250before us today and yeah i guess i'll speak to the ionization specifically um i i have seen it approved in another district this is really should be one of the bigger slam dunks that they have in terms of essa related qualified expenses all right i think on this one the next one the finance committee agreed to move forward subject-to would be an approved correct any other questions the time frame for this would be we'd order it immediately and we hope that it would be installed over by prior to christmas break when the kids come back second semester it would be in place okay yeah and it's maybe just worth pointing out that it's not um it's not a system designed just exclusively for covid but it's going to make us safer during every flu season
251during every strep season during all of the things and so it's it's not a big expense for a very you know limited uh use but it's something that's going to hopefully reduce sick days all over all going forward yeah absolutely great great product sorry i don't know i know it was public earlier i i understand the issue i agreed something to help solve this but my question over and over again we talked about flute season and this and viruses how often is the hvac system in these buildings cleaned thoroughly cleaned not just the filter but actually thoroughly clean that's a question i've had somebody coming to school board meetings how often does that happen when is the last time this system was thoroughly cleaned and getting these ideas of ionization things are you considering cleaning
252the system before you put them in so they're far more effective or are you just going to put them into the dirty systems i can't speak as to the last time they were cleaned the contract that we have with our groups they do do routine maintenance filter changes and cleanings but if you're asking for every duct in every building i can't honestly say what the last time that was completely from from the hvac systems entrance to its exit if that's been done uh in recent years uh part of this we had not considered if that would be part of this bid process is to contin to clean it out completely our understanding of the ionization would be that obviously once this is started it's killing whatever's in that uh ventilation system as it's recycling the
253air because it's 24 7 recycled air so i can't say that that that we were ever promoted that that would be something that we would consider do you have some i mean suggestion or some knowledge that says that we need to do that as part of this process is that your being in school question the year last year that it was all the the virus about you know the current virus the current virus and my question is because i do have severe allergies when was the last time the buildings were the hvac were thoroughly cleaned because that makes a huge difference in airborne he went alongside all of them from in to out right were thoroughly cleaned and when was the last time all the carpeting was thoroughly cleaned because the hvac system and the
254carpeting is where everything rests correct and like i said ionization to help with all this and i know for everything that's great but it seems to me you're kind of trying to put a band-aid on it to fix it well let's put these in there because maybe consider getting hearts thoroughly cleaned getting the system thoroughly cleaned before you put these in because then i think they work far [Music] right the in terms of the carpet that's that's by twice a year all those carpets are cleaned twice a year uh in terms of shampooing and cleaning they're of course vacuumed regularly so with hepa filters in our in our ventilation system as well as in our cleaning systems we're confident that we're getting out many of the allergens but like you said some things live inside
255those duct work the ionization process is supposed to kill 99 of germs viruses as well as mold bacteria so i i don't know if the thorough cleaning is necessary but it certainly uh obviously makes sense that the cleaner the product is when it starts the more efficient it would run so thank you for that damon we could easily get a report from johnson controls on our pms that have been done over the last few years too right and i believe the high school probably received a thorough cleaning uh about a month ago yeah obviously we've that one doctor was replaced uh obviously in the area of the fire that was all it's all brand new because of that fire damage but yes okay so this one would have an action item uh as well as
256items so that was itemy item f the approval of the chiller or hvac improvements a similar proposal here uh this actually predates uh those of you that have been on the board for a while that what we've had happened in our in our high school uh gymnasium our main gymnasium is our chiller unit uh the compressor systems up there started to fail during the summer so there's four compressors that run those chillers that are in our our high school gymnasium not sure if it was a lightning strike or what exactly caused we had ended up having losing one during the summer lost one a month or so later right before school started lost the third one uh a month ago and so we've got one active compressor in that chiller unit the good news is
257being at the fact that we're at the temperatures we are we no longer need air conditioning for this time of the year but long term as obviously we need to replace that that's at least 20 to 24 weeks out to have your chiller and your compressors fabricated and installed so we're looking at next spring which would be perfect timing for our our spring and summer activities while we were in this discussion we discussed with johnson controls who runs our uh basically our systems for all of our buildings we currently do not have hvac systems that work that that are functional they were never added to our auxiliary gym our our uh wrestling room or our gymnastics room it's been a goal of the building committee in the district for the last 20 years to have
258those facilities be cooled underneath the current proposal while we're making the improvements to the chiller that's required we can activate s or one or less or two dollars or s or three dollars to enhance the system and qualify for the same dollars that we just uh talked about with our ionization so we have proposed that in our esser ii sr3 grant three grant and uh but once again it hasn't been finalized and approved we're confident it will be which will one allow us to move forward and solve a problem that the district has to solve anyway with the chiller and also enhance our capabilities in the future which is something the districts wanted to do so that being said we have a proposal from johnson controls here to upgrade the chiller the compressors the um
259the tubes all the things that are necessary to to to finish this project the only caveat is is on november 12th there will be a six percent increase on these prices so we are looking at a ten thousand dollar increase uh right now the base price for that improvement and repair will be two hundred seven thousand six hundred eighty dollars uh mr coacher i'm sorry there was options right uh we also had the ad option number one there for the vfds to help the system run uh more efficiently um in our conversation there it helps to regulate that so that it's not having to to run quite as as often or as hard when it is running and the estimated payback for that kind of an addition there which would be fourteen thousand seven hundred
260twenty dollars um the information that they provided us is that the estimated payback would be within two years on something like that as an ad so tonight our recommendation will be that that we move forward with the project immediately that we have to get the chiller ordered the district has to come up with the dollars itself to pay for the chiller regardless we would take that out of our repair budget and if if so desired if the board feels comfortable with moving forward we could um enter into the contract with johnson controls that uh under the stipulation that you know we're going to move forward with the chiller unit being ordered tomorrow we'd sign the contract and we can deduct the option which is the cooling units for the the auxiliary gym wrestling room and
261the gymnastics room and we could deduct 130 000 from the project and once we have gotten final confirmation from the esser iii grant from the state that could come tomorrow it might not come till december 1st then we could reinstitute that portion of this at the december meeting it will not slow the process down it won't hinder us from having our chiller fixed and moving forward this spring so if the board is feeling confident that similar to other schools that have done this they've had approval of this we could go forward with full approval if you would like to not be so bold as to to guarantee the the those dollars until we have them in our in our our grant approval then you could just move forward with the grant proposal should be the
262the chiller proposal minus the deduct one which is on your second page of your your packet there as well as you could add on the the f or the vfd that mr kocher explained which is an efficiency component that we will want on our chillers in the future the fact that we don't have them is a little bit dated we need to have those those chillers there so we're asking for approval either in full completion of the project moving forward or just with the chiller unit and the vfds so that we can move forward and at least get the chiller started we could we could add on the deductive act at the december meeting if the board is willing to do do so finance looked it over what do we agree to just go forward
263with everything i think we had planned to go forward with everything because of the level of confidence we had with the esser dollars and i think that we i would support the adding on the option for greater efficiency to to bring them up to current standards so that's the recommendation finance committee go for it with the vfd it sounds good to you for time's sake we'll keep going okay item g is uh the higher of uh two employees for bsa that were not included in the consent agenda for bsa cara clemmy and as an educational aide tracy gilkeson so the motion would be approving items c the wage increase the ionization bid the chiller hvac improvements with option and the hiring of these two employees so mode by jim second sorry that changed my voice
264recognition starts to go downhill after 11. um okay all in favor of uh the approving those items under c e f and g signify by saying aye aye opposed nay abstentions motion passes in the interest of time i'm going to ask the board members to look at the written reports i don't know that there's anything in there we must address uh nothing to address but uh please take a look at the board goals and initiatives we had some time frames and some uh progress reports notes there uh did want to mention too next week is american education week so thank you board for providing cookies next week to the staff so we'll we'll get those ordered up and taken care of for you and a reminder to the board that before next month's december 13th
265meeting we will meet with the legislators for uh basically a coffee and treats be prior to this meeting in the jack powell conference room here so we'll have an hour with your local legislators to talk about the upcoming session our administrative team has already had their one meeting with them and you guys will get your chance in december so thank you okay we do need to act on the financial report bush motion to accept second by rachel second by jim any questions comments mr coacher seeing none all in favor signify saying aye aye aye oppose nay abstentions financial reports are accepted and approved i will quickly just mention from finance committee we also completed our required audit of the months that we went through and so we've figured out some process things there and we
266were able to successfully get through july august and september so we're all good on that front too excellent future agenda items if you know them now holler them out otherwise email mr alve or myself we have no executive session planned for this evening but we do have one planned for thursday at 5 30. um i'm sorry i should have updated you that that uh that hearing has been the parents do not wish to have that please have one thursday at 5 30. so uh there will be no need for a future okay motion to adjourn second it's been moved and seconded to adjourn by jim and rachel all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed we are adjourned i want to thank the public for their time and their interest you so wish
267you