OCPS | 2026-02-17 School Board Work Session

001Well, good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Orange County School Board's work session which has been scheduled for today, Tuesday, February 17th, for the purpose of discussing guidance on constitutionality, protected prayer, and religious expression in public education and secondary schools. I'm sorry, public elementary and secondary schools. The p public will not have an opportunity to participate in today's work session to provide public comment because it's not a regularly scheduled schoolboard meeting. No action will be taken and there will be no open public comment period. Thank you all so much for joining us here today. As a reminder, board members will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during the meeting so we can discuss so we can focus on the matters immediately in front of us. To my fellow board members, district staff,

002when speaking, please make sure your microphone is turned on and speak directly into it so our YouTube and Orange TV viewers can hear you clearly. We will now pause for a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance. And now for the pledge. Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we begin, let me note that we have all members present except for member Felder. And member Felder, I think will be joining us shortly. Yes. All right. With that, Dr. Vasquez, I will recognize you. Thank you, Madam Chair. this afternoon we will hear from general our general counsel on he will be providing guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in

003our schools. And so with that I will turn it over to Mr. Pomearini. Thank you Madam Superintendent, members of the board. the reason why we're here today, is on February the 6th, the United States Department of Education issued their new, guidance document on constitutionally protected prayer in public schools. And there was a change from previous iterations of that document and it did introduce a new scenario that we need to discuss as a board and determine how we're going to handle it going forward. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to break this up into three separate parts. And I apologize for the length of the PowerPoint, but I thought it was appropriate to go over all of the standards laid out in that document as well as state statutory standards before we get

004to the new updated guidance document because this is an area that is quite frankly I get a lot of correspondence on from outside entities about what is and is not allowed in our public schools. So, I wanted to make sure we all had the same frame of reference going forward on this so we all know what the standards are and what the new guidance document is from the Department of Education. So starting with the Florida statutory standards, this section 102205 says that DOE each year shall distribute for informationational purposes to schoolboard members, superintendent, school principles and teachers, the entire religious expression in public schools guidelines published by US DOE. So that's why we're here is because this document has to go to it's gone to the superintendent, it's gone to US school board members. after

005today's meeting, it will go to our principles and to our staff after we I've gotten some direction on you from in the one scenario we need to discuss. Florida also passed what was known as the Florida Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act. They did that a few years ago and it and it establishes religious liberty for students, parents, and school personnel. It says that they won't be discriminated against on the basis of a religious viewpoint or religious expression. And we have to treat student voluntary expression on a religious viewpoint the same as any other student when they're making an expression. And we can't discriminate against a student because they express a religious viewpoint. So that is a standard that is laid out by the state. coursework. Students can express their religious belief in courseworks,

006artwork or other written or oral assignments free from discrimination. the standard here that you all need to be aware of is you have to be able the students expression has to correspond to the content and the material that's being taught. So I give the quintessential example that I give is if we are doing a unit in biology class on evolution and a student does not reflect the standards that have been taught and instead says that hey I believe in creation and they I don't believe in evolution that would be not protected because the student has to reflect the material that's been taught. But otherwise in poems if they want to say who's a person that inspired you the most and if the and if the teacher says or if the student says that's Jesus Christ

007right that is protected the student should be graded on his or her expression what they write in the same manner as any other student saying the person who inspires me the most was Derek Jeter my favorite baseball player. Those have to be treated the same. You would grade the essay based upon content. You would grade basic grade it based upon grammar, all of the traditional things that you would do. But the one place where the student has to reflect the standards, especially is in a biology unit with respect to evolution versus creationism. That's the one area where it can't points can be taken off. a student may also wear clothing, accessories, and jewelry that display a religious message or symbol in the same manner as a stu secular types of clothing. Meaning if a kid

008wants to wear a shirt that says Jesus is my Lord and Savior, that is protected in the same way that a kid wearing a New York Yankees shirt would be protected. Can we Can we Can we go back? I'm sorry. I saw the perplexed look. I know. I'm like, okay. Okay. So, hold on. There's Sorry. Okay. So there's a part of our academic standards that relates to evolution and the student doesn't believe in evolution. Then then what is it they can say and can't say? I don't so the student would have to say the standards that have been taught with respect to evolution in the class they would have to reflect those standards back. They could not, you know, if they're saying what what is the evolutionary process? How does it work? They would have

009to reflect what has been taught in our class rather than saying I don't believe in evolution based upon my sincerely held religious beliefs. I believe in creation that can be taken off because it's not responsive to the standards that are being tested and being discussed within the class. when when you say it can be taken off. So, I'm just I'm struggling I'm struggling with the fact that regardless of how I feel about evolution, I do think our students and everyone has a right to have a different belief about evolution. So, it sounds like they're being penalized, but I think I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. So I'm not we're not penalizing you because you would have the belief in creation versus evolution. Right? If what's being tested or what's being assessed in the biology class is

010the evolutionary theory and you are supposed to reflect your knowledge of the evolutionary theory as is being taught in class. If you do not reflect your knowledge by saying I don't believe in it, I believe in creation. we can take points off for that because that's not fitting within the standards that are being taught within the class. Okay. So, I've got a test and I've got A, B, C, and D and I have to I have to pick the letter that corresponds with what's being taught. Yes. Okay. Or if you know it says or if it's a it's an essay question and describe the evolutionary process of pick your animal here, right? and the student instead of describing the evolutionary process of that animal describes I don't believe in that I believe in creation that's

011not reflecting the material that have been taught in class and so from that standpoint you're not responsive to the question in that particular instance that's the one instance I can think of is biology where that would be acceptable to mark off for a student reflecting their religious belief rather than what's being taught in the science class. Is there is there a way that the student can indicate this is the answer based on the information I've been told? So the student can say you know in the answer the student could say I personally based upon my sincerely held religious beliefs believe in creationism rather than evolution. However, the answer that has been reflected in the material with respect to evolution is d and so as long as they reflect whatever the evolutionary standards were, they would

012they would get credit for the answer. But it'll be clear to the student that they do they do not have to profess to believe something that they don't believe, but they do have to acknowledge the information they've been given and be able to give an answer consistent that this is what I've been taught. Albeit, I don't believe it. Yeah, I believe that's the case with our with our teachers. And I mean, if there I would suspect that our teachers, if they saw an answer and encountered an answer that was just I don't believe in evolution. Yeah. They would have a discussion with the student and say, look, I understand and I'm not taking away from your beliefs at all. However, it did. Your answer didn't reflect the material that we were taught in class. This

013is going to be boy, this is really going to put a lot of and I don't mean it in a negative way, burden and responsibility on our teachers to really clearly understand what they can and can't do. Not that it hasn't already been a challenge, but I'm just recently I several students have told me that they literally can't say, "Oh my god." and I don't I haven't tracked that down to see if it's true, but there just is so much I don't know concern on both sides of this issue about what you can, can't, should, or shouldn't do that I don't know what the process is going to be of fully informing our teachers. But we'll keep going. I just think Dr. Vasquez, that's going to be the district's biggest challenge. go ahead. so not

014recently but in the past we have had work sessions. I think they were referred to as legal 101 where those were primarily targeted for our administrators. But we certainly can hold sessions or put out information for teachers to be able to hear it and then give them an opportunity if they have questions because I do agree this is going to I think create some anxiety but more importantly they want to be able to understand what they can and can't do and allow. And I'm just I'm sitting here and for me to be stumbling and struggling with this and you wouldn't probably the rest of the board would be surprised right now that I'm that I'm kind of gagging oh how how I interpreted it and it had less to do honestly with religion although I

015have my own strong beliefs on religion and it had more to do with the rights of of students to believe what they believe and not feel like they have to leave their beliefs at the doorstep because that's not that's not what our country is all about. So, thank you for clarifying that for me. Thank you. And I do plan part of the reason in doing this in in the manner in which we're doing it. I wanted to have the standards laid out here in a public meeting there. The PowerPoint's going to be available so it'll have the standards there. So, any teacher who's concerned can obviously look at that. I plan on putting out a memorandum after we're all said and done here that lays through these standards that we send to our principles that

016we'll ask our principles to forward on to our teaching staff so they know the rules of the road as well. And I actually just sat through a meeting last week with Deputy Superintendent Martinez and his staff about planning for training over the summer with respect to legal issues for our principles and assistant principles. This is always an area of inquiry that our folks have. I've done this training on religious issues in public schools numerous times during those legal training. So, I think it's time to dust it off again, especially in light of this new guidance. Okay. All right. So subsection four of the statute a student may pray or engage in religious activities or religious expression before during and after the school day in the same manner in the same extent that a student may

017engage in secular activities or expression. Students can organize prayer groups, religious clubs. All of this has been protected under federal law. the state has recodified it within state statute. So it's there. this next bullet, the second bullet here is the one that's going to be engender, I think, the most discussion going forward. a school district may not prevent school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the school day if such activities are voluntary and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel. So, this bullet was targeted at if you all are familiar with see you at the poll day where students would go out and pray. in the past because school districts, not just ours, all over the country

018were concerned with seeing a teacher praying with students before and after. They believed the reasonable observer could think that the public would attribute the prayer to the school and the school district and so it would be a violation of the establishment clause of the constitution. This statute was meant to codify that teachers and school personnel have the right to participate in that type of activity at reasonable times before and after the school day. activities that are student initiated. So the guidance that was given by the US DOE 10 or 11 days ago expands on this a bit. So I will go into the difference between the state statute and what the federal guidance is later. But I just wanted to make you aware of this statute because it's going to come up later. And this

019is the subsection five is basically the limited public forum. Think your graduation speeches. This is language we already have in our policies that you know if a student speaks that we can't discriminate. Did Did we Did we skip over section four? I thought it was just me. Oh, you know what? I my my finger was heavy. I'm sorry. My apologies. Oh, I hit I hit the arrow a little bit too hard. All right. subsection 4 continued. school districts shall comply with title six of the ci title seven civil rights act which says we don't discriminate against employees on the basis of their religion. we have to make accommodations for our employees religious practices so long as it won't cause an undue hardship with respect to to our ability to operate our schools. So there's a

020case law that's developed on that says, you know, if folks need a day off for religious their religious observances, they would get to do that because it's not an undue burden on our ability to operate our school system. but that is a standard that is been applicable to us as employers for since 1964 actually. And then a school district shall give religious groups access to the same school facilities for assemblies assembling as are given to secular groups without discrimination based upon the religious content of the group's expression. So this is our facilities use agreements. This is a religious group wants to come in and rent our facilities. If we open our facilities for rental to secular groups, think you know, Boys and Girls Club, Little League, then we cannot discriminate against religious entities who want

021to, rent our facility. So, this provision just ensures equality of access. The United States Supreme Court has held that when you open your facilities for rentals to the general public, you can't discriminate against religious entities who want to rent your facilities. So this is just codifying what US Supreme Court law says. All right. Now my heavy finger has gotten us to the correct slide. subsection five of the statute. This is the limited public forum section. This is the graduation speech section. This is already reflected in our graduation exercises policy that says you know we provide a form in a manner that doesn't discriminate against a student's voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject. So the quintessential example is graduation speech. If a student wants wanted wanted to thank God you know

022for their success in high school, we could not prohibit that expression if the student is otherwise able to say I want to thank my family. I want to thank my friends. I want to thank my teachers. you can't discriminate based upon religious content. you have to provide a method based upon neutral criteria for the selection of student speakers. Obviously that's our validictorian our saludiatorans are that's the neutral criteria upon which we allow speakers to speak at graduation student government president etc. Ensure that the student speaker does not gauge engage in obscene vulgar offensively lewd or indecent speech. if you remember, for those of you who have been on the board for a little bit of time, this, we have a provision in our schoolboard policy that says if a school is going to prohibit any

023speech that they believe to be obscene, vulgar, lewd, indecent, that, speech has to be given to the office of legal services, so we can assess it for the member galler does remember it very well. That's correct. we have to review that to ensure that the students first amendment rights are not being violated based upon viewpoint discrimination which is unlawful. So, you know, in the five or so years since we have had that policy, it's never come back to us, thankfully. And I'll knock on the wood here that we don't have to ever decide that, but if we ever had that situation, our office would be responsible for reviewing. And we have to state in written and oral form that the student speech does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position, or expression of the school district.

024For those of you who see the graduation programs we have, you will see that statement in the graduation programs. subsection six of the Florida statute is the department of education shall develop a model policy regarding the limited public forum. If you all remember last year, we were informed by the state that we had not adopted the policy and we're like that's correct. We haven't. that was clearly should have been done and this board adopted that policy on April 22nd of last year and if you remember that's the policy that is promulgated by the state and the statute says each school district school board shall adopt and implement the department's model policy. So we had to adopt the policy as is and the policy is essentially a restatement of the statutory language. All right. So, we

025have just gotten through the Florida standards and now we're going into federal cases. And I go through some of these federal cases because a lot of these cases, in fact, the vast majority that I'm getting ready to go through are referenced in the US DOE's new constitutional guidance that they've put out. So, I wanted you to understand what the cases say and what they are as we discuss that further. My assistant and I got creative. So we decided to put the first amendment in the old English text. So Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech. Any of these religious issues generally are going to talk be talked about in the context of prohibiting the free exercise of religion and abridging

026the freedom of speech. And you'll see that over and over again in the cases as we discuss it. we have to be neutral in the treatment of religion showing neither favoritism towards nor hostility against religious expression. That's United States Supreme Court case of Good News Club versus Milford Central District for the guarantee of neutrality is respected not offended when the government following neutral criteria and even-handed policies extends benefits to recipients whose ideologies and viewpoints including religious ones are broad and diverse. So if we are going to allow certain amounts of certain speech on campus that's not religious, we can't prohibit speech on campus that is religious. We have to be neutral towards both of those types of speech. you all are familiar with the Tinker versus De Moines case from 1968. That case says students

027and employees don't shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. And then the other case, the Santa Fe Independent case from 2000. Nothing in the Constitution, as interpreted by this court, prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the school day. The Florida statute mirrors the language from this Santa Fe case. So, examples of protected student speech, we talked about see you at the poll, right? So, that would be protected. Students reading the Bible during independent reading, students praying during moments of silence or before or at lunch. Students can pray before or after sporting events. Again, students can reference religion in their assignments subject to the one caveat we had about reflecting the material that has been taught. So, there are some

028limits. the Santa Fe case was a case that in which the school district adopted a policy to allow students to vote on whether to have a prayer before football games and it would be over the loudspeaker at the football stadium. and if they so elected, they would elect a student council chaplain to deliver the prayer. So the Supreme Court considered this case and said the school board's policy and the pregame prayer to were an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by the school board. It said in the con the Supreme Court wrote in this context the members of the listening audience must perceive the pregame message as the public expression of the views of the majority of the student body delivered with the approval of the school administration regardless of the listener support for or objection to

029the m the message an objective Santa Fe High School student will unquestionably perceive the inevitable pregame prayer as stamped with her school's seal of approval. So the court has been very specific that we cannot have prayer pursuant to an official schoolboard policy over the loudspeaker at p at public events such as football games. It would it would apply like plays or other similar types of events like that. Student performances can have a religious component so long as religion does not predominate. So when I first started dealing with this, I would get questions where, you know, 12 out of the 15 songs at a winter holiday concert had a religious component and would that be acceptable? And so what we said is you can't have it predominate. So if we said half of the songs, let's

030say you had 14 songs, if seven of them were religiously based and the other seven were not, that's not predomination. So that's how we've dealt with this. And we also allow students who have sincerely held religious beliefs that would be offended by participating in the concert with religious songs to basically voice that objection and get alternative assignments. So like many chorus classes have participation in the winter concert as a component of their grade. So if a student said that conflicts with my sincerely held religious belief to sing those songs, we would have to provide an alternative assignment. so the student could get graded. So that's the contours of the student first amendment rights. And now we're going into the employee first amendment rights. And the first part of it was school prayer as led by

031the principal, the teachers, some sort of adult employee. So back in 1962, the Supreme Court had the Engle versus Vital case and the district was required the principal to recite that prayer almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee. And so he had to recite that prayer as we've stated here before school every day. And students sued saying that would be government establishment of religion. And so this was the first time the court had addressed this. Okay, good. my fat fingers did not advance it too far. this is the first time the Supreme Court had really delved into this topic. So they went in and they started by looking at the history and they talked about the very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many

032of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom. If you remember England had an official church the Anglican church and many of the first settlers who came over here from England wanted to have religious freedom. So that was one of the things our first amendment was designed to protect against the establishment of an official religious practice by a government entity. So after the discussion of the history, the Supreme Court said look the first amendment was added to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the federal government would be used to control, support or influence the kind of prayers the American people can say. that the people's religion must not be subjected to the pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office.

033And so under the amendment's prohibition of government establishment of religion, the government is without the power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as the official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religion. So the school board had a practice that said you will recite this prayer every day and that was the practice that the court said no that is impermissible under our first amendment. And one of the concerns about the state endorsement of religion was the course of effect on non-believers and the adverse effect effects on religion itself. So the court said, "Look, when you have these types of of public prayers that are mandated, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. but the purposes

034underlying the establishment clause go further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. So the court was saying look you keep them separate because you want religion to remain strong and you don't want the indirect coercive pressure that comes with having to recite one party's officially official prayer. you know and I struggled whether or not to give this example but I'll give it. So when I was in high school here, we would go down and pray before my baseball games and I before our baseball games and so I was raised Catholic and we had the version of the Lord's Prayer that ended with the power and the kingdom, the glory forever and ever. They amen now

035that wasn't part of the Catholic tradition, right? And so that always left me in adherent to Christianity as oh that's different than what my religious practice is even though we were two sects of of Christianity right and so you can imagine if if a if a child feels uncomfortable with you know one verse in the Lord's prayer that's not recited what another child who doesn't adhere to Christianity at all say your Muslim students and students who don't have religion at all and are raised by their parents not to be religious, what kind of coercive pressure that would be. So what the court cases say, especially with children, especially with children, the younger the children we have, the more susceptible to that coercion they could be. We want to make sure that the minority religious groups,

036if they're to have freedom of free exercise of religion, we can't coersse them through government action to reciting prayers of another religious group. So that's part of what the court was worried about when they said no public prayer in or no established prayer for public schools. So fast forward about 23 years. So there was a statute in Alabama which was almost identical to the old version of the Florida statute which says we have a moment of silence and the moment of silence could be used for silence meditation or for voluntary prayer. Right. and so the court said, "Can you as part of the moment of silence establish the requirement that it can be used for voluntary prayer? Do you by law get to have that ability?" And the Supreme Court said, "No, it's that's unconstitutional

037endorsement of religion." It says, "The addition of voluntary prayer indicates the state intended to characterize prayer as a favored practice. Such an endorsement is not consistent with the established principle that the government must pursue a course of complete neutrality towards religion. So you cannot have in statute that the moment of silence be used for prayer. Now Florida has 1034.45. It used to have that the moment of silence could be used for voluntary prayer. They have since removed that requirement from the statute. As a matter of fact, it now says the principal of each public school shall require teachers in first period classrooms in all grades to set aside at least one minute but not more than two minutes daily for a moment of silence during which students may not interfere with the other students participation.

038A teacher may not make suggestion as to the nature of any reflection that a student may engage in during the moment of silence. So, Florida has removed the portion of the statute that says the moment of silence can be used for voluntary prayer. It has since rescued itself from this Supreme Court case that says by including voluntary prayer in the statute, it's an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Can we stop here for a second? Yes, ma'am. on occasion when we have just recognized an employee that has passed away, I know I've in announcing the moment of silence, I don't know the exact terms I've used every time, but I know there are many times when I've said something to the effect of, you know, your prayers. I what I will do that, you know, I will

039keep the families. I don't know if I use the term prayer or not, but very clearly communicating that this is how I'm going to spend my time. I don't think I've told everybody else how to spend their time. So, are we okay or do I Yeah. No, no, you are perfectly okay doing that. As a matter of fact, there are different rules for public schools than there are for town meetings. There's a case called the town of Greece versus Galloway, which says starting government meetings with prayer is part of the nation's history and tradition. and therefore it's not violative of the first amendment. So by you merely mention that I'm keeping an employes's family in my prayers. that is in no way violative of any constitutional provision and trust me had there been an issue

040I would have I was communicated and you would have come across the dis and no gagged me but no but no I would have communicated but I thought okay you've been respectful but you still would have told me before I got out of the building. Yeah. No, that is 100% acceptable under the law. Okay, Douglas, I Good afternoon. Okay, good afternoon. Sorry, I'm talking too much. I have to highlight. I am not very clear on the moment of silence for the school. Can you please again reiterate what you just said because I'm not very clear. Can they do it? Oh, okay. So a student or a teacher may use that moment of silence at the beginning of every day if they would like to pray silently to themselves. They are more than welcome to do

041that. Okay. That what the what the statute is saying and what the courts are saying is you cannot suggest the state by adoption of a statute can't suggest that the moment of silence be utilized for for prayer. Okay. They but they can adopt a moment of silence and then leave up to each individual in the room how they choose to use it. Perfect. You know, you could some folks could meditate for the minute. Some folks could recite the Lord's prayer to themselves silently during that minute. All of which is permissible. It just can't the state can't by statute suggest using it for prayer. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. Okay. All right. So, this is a case that wasn't discussed by the US DOE in its more recent guidance, but it is a case that

042is directly applicable to all of our employees and because it comes out of the 11th Circuit and I think we need to discuss this one. So, Hollowman versus Harland was from 2004. We had a teacher who opened every school day by asking if any of the students had prayer requests. She would begin the moment the silence with let us pray and end it with amen. And the teacher did not tell students they were free to leave during the silent prayer. And the teacher also let students read out loud out of the Bible to the whole class during the moment of silent meditation. So this was in Alabama in 2004. I always make the joke that most constitutional law in our circuit comes out of Alabama. Sorry about that for our friends in Alabama. the 11th

043circuit ruled that the teacher taking prayer requests from students was an unconst was unconstitutional and subjected the teacher to individual liability. So the court said praying goes sufficiently beyond the range of activities normally performed by high school teachers and commonly accepted as part of their job as to fall outside the scope of the teachers official duties even if she were using prayer as a means of achieving a job related goal. One of the statutory things that a teacher was supposed to do in Alabama was to try to get students to be good moral citizens and human beings. And the teacher said, "I'm using prayer in order to help accomplish that goal." And the 11th Circuit said, "No, that is a jobrelated goal, but you can't use prayer out loud in order to do that. That's

044an unconstitutional endorsement of religion." And I always train our teachers with respect to this because not only was the school district held liable here, the teacher and the principal who allowed it were also sued individually and the court said they were also subject to individual liability as well. So this is one of the things that I want to keep in in mind when we discuss the US DOE's guidance this case. And then finally, we're going to take a little bit of time to go through the most recent Supreme Court case of Kennedy versus Breton School District. this was the case out of Washington State that was decided Oh, wow. It's about to be four years ago. The time does fly. so the very first paragraph of the case laid out what was being decided. And

045I think it's very important to understand what was being decided here. Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks. Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Breton School District disciplined him anyway. It did so because it thought anything less could lead a reasonable observer to conclude mistakenly that it endorsed Mr. Kennedy's religious beliefs that reasoning was misguided. So the key things that we need to pick up here is he was doing it at a time when he was allowed others were attending

046to personal matters checking their their phones for scores making a reservation at a restaurant and he was doing it while the students were otherwise unoccupied meaning he wasn't having having students pray with him. Okay, that was what was decided in this case. Now, it didn't always start out that way. From 2008 to 2015, the Mr. Kennedy was praying with his players. he was offered prayer in the locker room for the team. He offered postgame speeches with religious references. Several players asked to join him during the prayer, and he's like, "This a free country. You can do what you want." Now, Kennedy did say he never told students they had to join his postgame prayers at midfield. and the school district apparently didn't know about it for seven years, but they found out in 2015 and

047they requested that he stop the locker room prayer and they stop the postgame remarks that had religious references and Mr. Kennedy did so. Mr. Kennedy said, despite the fact that I'm doing that, he sent a letter to the school district through his council that says he had a sincerely held religious belief that compelled him to offer a postgame prayer at midfield as thanks. And so he emphasized that he wanted to wait until the game was over and the players had left the field and then walk to midfield to say a short private personal prayer. And he told everyone it would be acceptable to for him to pray when the kids went away from him. Right? So the court says, this is what he told the school district, the court says the school district responded that

048instead of accommodating Mr. Kennedy's request to offer a brief prayer on the field while students were busy with other activities, whether heading to the locker room, boarding a bus, or perhaps singing the school fight song, the district issued an ultimatum. It forbade him from engaging in any overt actions that could appear to a reasonable observer to endorse prayer while he was being paid while he's on duty as a district paid coach. and the district did so because they thought that would be a violation of the establishment clause for him to be praying while he was on duty. So, three separate games he offers the prayer at midfield. in the first instance, he offers the pray, but players from the other team came to join and members of the community came to join him while he

049was doing the prayer. On October the 23rd, after the game, he kneelled to pray on the 50ard line with nobody joining him. And then on October 26, Kennedy prayed alone. While he was praying, other adults gathered with him on the field, not students in that instance. So the district then put out a Q&A document to their public because by this time this was a media frenzy surrounding this. You know, it was on the news all the time. So the district wanted to let the public know what they were doing and what wasn't happening. So during their Q&A, the district admitted that it possessed no evidence that the students had been directly coerced to pray with Kennedy. the Q&A acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy had complied with the district's instructions to refrain from his prior practices of

050leading the pregame prayer with players and the leading players in a postgame prayer immediately following the games. but the district said we can't allow him to engage in this public religious display or else the district would be violating the establishment clause. The court said that the district burdened Kennedy's first amendment right to free exercise of his religion when it did not renew his coaching contract based upon his personal prayer. So the court says look a prayer a plaintiff may carry his burden of proving a free exercise violation in various ways including that a government entity has burdened his sincere religious practice pursuant to a policy that is not neutral or generally applicable. Should a plaintiff make that showing, the court will find a First Amendment violation unless the government can satisfy strict scrutiny demonstrating that

051it would had a compelling state interest and that it was had narrowly tailored means to meet that compelling state interest. So in this case, the court was essentially saying that the practice of the school district was not neutral because it allowed coaches to talk with other people, to make look on the phone for sports scores, to make reservations at restaurants, and that was perfectly permissible. But because coach Kennedy used his free time to pray, he was penalized where the other coaches who were doing the other things like making the reservations and checking the scores, they were not penalized even though they were ostensibly on duty and they were all supposed to be monitoring the kids on the field after the game. So he was treated unequally because of his religious practice. Now, I'm going to

052go through three separate provisions of the opinion because the court was very clear that Mr. Kennedy was disciplined because he was praying quietly to himself. It was a personal prayer. It was not because he was praying with students or allowed to pray with students. So, Mr. Kennedy was giving thanks through prayer briefly and by himself on the playing field at the conclusion of each game. He indicated will he was willing to wait until the game is over and the players have left the field to walk to midfield to say his short private personal prayer. And the court said the district disciplined him only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his players after three games in October of 2015. So they were making it very clear that he was praying quietly without players.

053Again, that Mr. Kennedy offered his prayers when students were engaged in other activities like singing the school fight song further suggests that those prayers were not delivered as an address to the team but instead in his capacity as a private citizen. So the fact that he was once again praying without his players was an important factor in the court's decision. In short, Mr. Kennedy did not seek to direct any prayers to students or require anyone else to participate. His plan was to wait to pray until athletes were occupied and he told everybody that's what he wished to do. It was the for three prayers of this sort alone in October 15 that the district suspended him. Again, not that he was praying and inviting others to pray with him and having his players come pray

054with him. He was suspended because he prayed on his own without the players. The court concluded as follows. Respect for religious expression is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic, whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance, doubly protected by the free exercise and free speech clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on the mistaken view that it had a duty to fair it out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy was granted judgment.

055So it was his brief, quiet personal religious observances that could not be prohibited. So those are the cases that lead us to the updated guidance on constitutionally protected prayer in public schools. So the new guidance utilizes various Supreme Court cases not directly dealing with prayer but they are used to clarify the larger legal framework governing the relationship between public schools and matters of religious faith. I've sent you the guidance document previously. So you when you see guidance page four, that's where it's this statement was located. And so the cases that the court that the guidance cited actually are the West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnett. That's the case that said allowing parents to opt their children out of recitation of the pledge of allegiance based upon their religious beliefs. So Jehovah's Witnesses as part

056of their sincerely held religious beliefs do not allow their children to pledge allegiance to assemble like the flag. So the court said you can't burden their religious exercise by forcing them to stand and recite the pledge. we have Wisconsin versus Yodar allowing Amish parents to opt their children out of compulsory education laws based upon their religious practices their religious practices and their students attendance after 8th grade so they can go work on at the family home and on the family farms. And then we have the recently decided Mmood v. Taylor that was decided last year by the Supreme Court saying requiring parents the ability to opt out of certain curricular instruction. In this case, the Montgomery County Maryland School District had curriculum that included LGBTQ story books and the court said that parents needed to

057be given the ability to opt out of those that curricular instruction based upon their sincerely held religious beliefs. So they the US DOE's guidance says we've taken all of these cases into account to account for the parents rights with respect to how their children are educated and their ability to direct their children's education. Okay. So the guidance then goes into specific scenarios private religious expression by students. again this is confi this codifies Supreme Court case law. It matches up with the Florida statutes that public school students can pray privately and quietly to themselves whether in class at an athletic event before a meal. students may also pray in a speaking voice on the same terms as other students might engage in non-religious speech and but schools need not allow students to pray in ways that

058violate ordinary class rules and interrupt class instruction. So if a student wants to pray out loud before class begins, perfectly permissible. If they are praying out loud in a way that interrupts the teacher from teaching class, the school can in fact prohibit such practice. Religious expression in student groups. Student prayer might also occur in student groups. Public school officials must permit student prayer and support the student groups on the same terms as it supports non-religious groups. schools should not prefer secular student groups to religious student groups or discriminate among religious groups of different faiths. So this provision sort of mirrors the in fact it does mirror the equal access act that says we if we allow student clubs in secondary schools i.e. middle and high schools then we have to allow religiously based clubs and

059we can't discriminate on the basis on on the fact that they are they are religious to not allow them. So, it used to be called Campus Crusade for Christ. Now, I think it's called Crew. You see those those clubs at all at many of our schools. The Equal Access Act says those students have just as much right to have a club as any secular student group does. Religious expression at school events. Public schools may not sponsor organize compulsory prayer at official events such as ceremonies, assemblies, graduation, or sporting events. No person, student, teacher or otherwise may deliver such prayers on behalf of the school or in such a way that attendance at the prayer is mandatory. However, public schools must parti permit the participants in such event including teachers, other school officials and employees the

060individual right to engage in prayer and to join one another in such prayer provided that they do not thereby coers participation or speak on behalf of the school as an institution. So this generally aligns with the Florida statute. but I do this is where I remind that the Florida statute especially as it relates to employees says that their participation is before or after the school day if such activities are voluntary and do not conflict with responsibilities or assignments of such personnel. I get a little bit more leerary of when they are supposed to be supervising students of allowing them to to do that. Now, the Coach Kennedy case said based upon the facts of that case, there was times after the game where they were engaged in their own personal activities. But during assemblies, graduations,

061sporting events, when those are going on, generally our employees are there to supervise students. So, this is part of what I'm going to be seeking the board's guidance on. And I'm sorry, comment or question. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I have a quick question cuz I think it's fairly common like when we open a new school or I think we even do it at the state of schools that we'll have a benediction and usually the benediction is a prayer and we do it at schools during school time like if that's when we're cutting the ribbon or whatever. So, I just I'm trying to understand how that would be permissible. So state under these guidelines state of the schools is different. So I will tell you and I and I think I copied you all in

062this email. We got a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation complaining about the prayer at the beginning of the state of the schools and to which I responded back that is a publicly noticed meeting of the school board where all the members are present and under the town of Greece versus Galloway case they are we are expressly allowed to open those types of meetings with a prayer. So that state the schools set that any meeting where you all are meeting as a public entity I have no problem with that if we are and I have not been to school openings and that's something I should do. However, if we're offering prayers there that might be something I want to take a little bit closer look at especially if we have children present and I

063don't know that we do or not. We did it when at East Lake, but that was many many back 2005 because when we when we cut the ribbon for East Lake, we did do a benediction. Okay. I was just cur I have a problem with the benediction. I've just always wondered like because there have been in the past and my kids are older so I'm I'm certain that it's not something we do now that we did do a benediction. It was never an issue but I was just curious how it fell into these guidelines. Thank you. Yeah, that would have been something I would have taken a deeper look at had we still had that practice. Okay, John. Yes, ma'am. one of the things you're going to want to take the board's pulse on is

064the issue of whether or not the employee engages in their freedom of speech when it comes to religion during school hours, before or after, if kids are present, along those lines. Yes. Okay. That's absolutely something I'm going to be taking the board's polls on. You'll see. It'll be very clear when I get to that bullet. You'll summarize. Oh, yeah. No, and it'll be very clear what I'm going to be asking you. Okay. To do. So, I'm I'm back to my fifth grade. I couldn't read fast enough to to get to the questions at the end, so I'd read the questions at the end and then try to find the answers as I read. So, I'm just I got you. What's the question? Thank you. I have a question. Yes, ma'am. I think I did remember

065when we went to Lake Luna for the event, there was a chaplain who prayed. I think he prayed right before we had breakfast. Yeah, the state say the schools. Was that? No, that was not the state of the school. I don't think it was when we went the first time when it was opening. Yeah. Is that allowed? Yeah. No, state of the schools bec like I said because you all were we publicly noticed that meeting because multiple of you all were there. Okay. And there's a specific Supreme Court case that says town of Greece versus Galloway that says you can open public meetings with a prayer and that does not offend the first amendment because we have a long tradition of doing so in public meetings dating back to the founding of the country. So

066that Yeah. So that can that is permissible. Yeah. as long as we are all there and yes. Okay. Yes. comment or question from member Felder. Thank you chair. I just have a question. You may have mentioned it but at all of our football games I've noticed maybe not all of them but a great majority of them the football players usually at the end of the game they all on the field praying. Now, is that okay? Because it's now the activity is over because I mean I see it all the time. So, and so now I'm going to go back to a little bit of history here. in 2014, we got a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation with regard to the prayers at Apakka High School where coaches were leading their football players in

067prayer. And that at that point that was clearly something that the law did not per permit. So what we said is coaches should not be leading or participating in that prayer, but students if they wanted to gather themselves at the 50ard line and pray amongst themselves, perfectly legally permissible. All the Supreme Court cases say students in either by themselves or as a group can pray before after the school day sporting events before sporting events and after sporting events. No constitutional issue there. The constitutional issue would have been had the coaches been leading the prayer. Okay. So, I've gone to some games and I don't remember whether or not the coach actually led the prayer, but I do know the coaches at end of the game, my schools, at other schools, they go to the goal

068line whether they won or lost and even schools that at some of the state competitions, I've seen them. I don't know. I didn't hear whether or not the coach led it, but I do know the children, the football players, they were in prayer. They were at the goal line. So, you're saying that's okay. So, that's last year. So, let me break these out into three separate and distinct practices, right? Students praying by themselves, perfectly constitutionally permissible. coaches as a group going to like right by the goalpost praying amongst themselves voluntarily just the coaches perfectly constitutionally permissible. the practice of the coach leading the students in prayer even under the I believe the new guidance that would be constitutionally problematic because that is that is them establishing religion for those students and I as again as

069I said earlier I don't recall hearing any of the coaches actually leading it but I do know they knelt down with them and then I've also seen where there have been outside people you know come in with the students But I I can tell you that I've just known the students. I've seen them. But you're saying that's constitutionally okay because they're doing it. How you going to stop them from doing it? we have given guidance in the past. we've that I'll use an example. We had a couple schools and Deputy Superintendent Martinez will remember this from his time in the high school office where again our friends from the Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote us letters saying hey you have you have an outside chaplain or a team chaplain leading students in prayers right and

070we've had to go to those schools and say you cannot have adults leading students in prayers that is constitutionally impermissible so to the extent that's occurring ing that would not be in align alignment with the guidance we've given on what the law has been and what we believe the law continues to be that's that is the coaches leading students in prayer not good now coaches kneeling down next to the players okay so if you've seen coaches kneeling down next to the players but not leading the students in prayer then that Florida statute kicks in that says says that coaches can participate in student initiated prayer on a voluntary basis so long as they don't I believe what's the language coers hold on I want to make sure I'm exacting on this it was coerced hold

071on a school district may not prevent school personnel from participating in religious activities on grounds that they are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the school day if such activities are voluntary and do not conflict with the responsibilities and assignments of such personnel. So a coach kneeling down next to the players as they lead the prayer probably going to be okay. Okay. I just want to just mention this last thing. times have really seriously changed. I guess obviously we know that because I distinctly remember at Dr. Phillips High School in 19 I got there when it opened in ' 87. I can't remember. They had a championship basketball girls basketball team and there were there was a series of about five killings at the school in one year. Heart attack a wife

072of a coach had a heart attack. track kid had a heart attack a lot. And so one of the star players, the times have really changed. One of the star players, she and her boyfriend, they were looking at a gun or whatever. Anyway, the gun went off and she was killed and times have really changed. And Mr. Spoons, God bless him, is not here anymore, but he called me from my room and said, "Miss Felder, I need you to come in the office and I need you to pray." And I prayed. I was at school and the entire basketball girls basketball team and we led them in prayer. Times have really really changed and I understand that. But I just wanted to mention the fact that's probably why we're going through what we're going through

073now anyway. Prayer is out. But nevertheless, that's my personal opinion. I'm glad to hear that because and I'm glad to know that we are being as specifically as we can in terms of what can happen in terms and then when that Marjgery Stone Douglas situation happened on February 14th some years ago, February 15th, we had a like surprise at Edgewater fire drill. Nobody let us know. And this was the 15th of February. This Marger Stone Douglas thing happened on the 14th. I let my kids out. I didn't because I didn't know was fake or not. They said, "Mr. Fel, we need to pray." But again, this is 2026 February. So almost 10 years later, so times have really changed. But I do appreciate the explanation you've given us and the the laws so we can

074really be really clear on what the laws are, you know, and what they are in terms of and then people's rights as children. But again, let me reiterate, I did not see a coach lead. I did not even see a coach say the prayer, but I did see students, football players on either sides, you know, pray whether they won or lost. I saw that. So, I appreciate the information. Thank you, chair, for allowing me to speak. Thank you, member Felder. member, I see you queued up. I know we have two more sides. Do you want to save till after we're done or is this right now for this slide? Question. Okay. Go ahead. This isn't my other line of questioning, but this is just relating just to the jumping to the school personnel. So, just

075because we're talking about this specifically right now, are you know could So, the way I'm understanding it is school personnel could let's say like meet for a prayer breakfast right in a school that would be okay. If school personnel could do that, yes. Not with students typically, Right. And if they're coming to a prayer breakfast, if they're if it's just like say it's the six coaches on a football team and they want to have a prayer breakfast amongst themselves, that's perfectly permissible. But no one from district leadership could be there speaking, right? District leadership could be there in a voluntary a voluntary capacity to do it. Now I so let me give you an example of maybe it's why why it's not the greatest idea in the history of the world. Right? I had a

076case probably seven or eight years ago now where a principal actually organized a prayer group at one of our schools and he invited teachers and staff to to come pray with him. And there was concerns like you know we had a complaint raised against that particular principal because one of the instructional personnel said hey I didn't go to the principal's voluntary prayer group and I got a lower evaluation than everybody else. So it is one of those situations especially with subordinate you know you know higher ranking employee with lower ranking employees having a prayer group that one person's you know voluntary prayer is another person's coerc prayer. I mean that's exactly what I'm asking. Yes. Yes. And so it that is very fact specific and I can't guarantee that some employee wouldn't make a claim

077with respect to that. Now it's a little bit different if you have six employees like in my in my example six coaches who are all teaching employees. One can't affect the job status of another. One can't affect the evaluation of the other. Right? So that is less problematic and less coercive. But especially when it is a manager subordinate employee situation, there is the possibility that a subordinate employee could allege that they were coerced into doing it. That was my question. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Any other Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. what did I just All right. religious expression at school I think we just did that one. Sorry. religious expression at school events continued. again this is the rule that says if we allow students to speak at assemblies graduations on neutral criteria student

078initiated religious remarks must be treated the same as other permissible speech. And this is the example. If the validictorian wants to thank God in her graduation speech she should be allowed to do so. She must not however require the assembly to bow their heads in prayer and thank God with her. student speakers should not be selected on the basis that disfavors religious perspectives and viewpoints. And the guidance goes on to say, when student speakers are selected on the basis of neutral criteria and retain primary control over the content of their expression, that expression is not attributable to the school. where public school officials are speaking in their official capacities or substantially controlled the content of student speech. Such speech is attributable to the school and may not include prayer or other specifically religious or religious

079or anti-religious content. So we don't typically and in our policy we say that the students control their speech other than you know for the no obscenity, no vulgarity, that kind of stuff. And if there is a question about whether or not the speech violates that, that comes to again to my office for review. And that's all delineated in our policy IKFB title graduation exercises which we revised after the university high situation from a few years ago. Okay. religious expression and assignments. public school teachers may not require students to pray or otherwise affirm religious beliefs as part of a classroom instruction or written or oral assignments even if it is part of an otherwise secular lesson. And teachers must be allow allow students to discuss their religious beliefs in presentation, homework, exams, or other assignments free

080from discrimination based upon the students perspective or lack thereof. Such home and classroom work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school. This is again the example of you know do does the answer on evolution reflect what's been taught as part of the evolutionary st the evolution standards right if for an example a teacher's assignment involves writing a poem the work of the student who submits a poem in the form of a prayer for example a psalm should be judged on the basis of academic standards such as literary quality and neither penalized nor rewarded on account of its religious perspective. This again aligns with Florida's law with respect to classroom and homework assignments. And now is the one that I'm going to

081need guidance on. This is the change that has been made. Religious expression by public school employees. Public school teachers and other officials and employees do not forfeit their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate and need not pray behind closed doors. They must be permitted to pray while at work on the same terms as students unless such prayer acts to coersse others into joining or forming their prayer or functions as the official speech of the school as an institution. Visible personal prayer even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer does not itself constitute coercion. But teachers and other school officials and employees should not deliver prayers on behalf of the school or in context that students cannot opt out of. For example, a teacher may bow her head and to say grace before

082lunch and students may join her in grace, but she may not instruct her class to pray with her, pressure them to pray with her, or create an atmosphere in which students are favored if they pray with her. teachers and other school officials and employees like students may also dress in accordance with their religious faith. the bolded and underlined statements here are definitely changes from previous guidance. It now allows teachers to pray and if students voluntarily join them it is not presumed under the guidance to be coercive in nature. However, this is This generally comports with the statute, but it does go beyond the Florida statute and which states employees may participate in student initiated prayer before and after the school day if such volunte activities are voluntary and do not conflict with responsibilities and assignments

083of personnel. So, Florida statute says employees can participate with students before and after school. The guidance offered under this case under the by US DOE now says employees can pray during the school day and students may voluntarily join them and it's not necessarily coercive. Here's the thing I cannot guarantee. Of course, it's not coercive until somebody alleges it to be coercive. Exactly. Right. And so I could see a situation, especially with younger children, that an employee voluntarily begins to pray before class, they shouldn't be doing it, in my view, during class because we've hired them to be instructing during class rather than praying, right? But if they do it before class and students come up and begin to to join them in the prayer, you know, it may be okay until a student's parent comes

084and says, "Hey, my kid felt coerced into doing it because they thought that their grade would depend on whether or not they prayed with the with the teacher." we've just had a situation that Deputy Superintendent Martinez and I had to deal with with a teacher in one of our elementary schools during the moment of silence offering a an out loud prayer and instruction didn't begin until the prayer was done. and we had to instruct the teacher to cease doing that because it was not an appropriate leading of prayer. In fact, it was inappropriate for her to state a prayer in front of the children and not permit anything to be done until the prayer was done. And so, this is where I'm going to need guidance. and the guidance quite frankly the Kennedy case the

085reason why I kept repeating all of the lines that said this was personal private prayer was to differentiate between what the Kennedy case actually said versus what this guidance said which is the students were otherwise occupied in Kennedy and they weren't coming up to pray with the coach or the teacher under this guidance teachers during the school day can have can begin praying and students can come up and start praying with them. That is completely different. Right? So I'm trying to figure out where to land on this and what to recommend to you and I think I've landed here and these are tough constitutional issues and you know these are always issues that engender public controversy. If a teacher wants to utilize the guidance that have that's been laid out here in by the US

086DOE that they pray and students can come up and pray with them as long as it's not coerced. I can't guarantee that somebody's not going to make a claim against them that it was in fact coerced. Right? And so I can't guarantee you that if they were sued that they would be able to get out of the claim by saying, "Oh, it was purely voluntary." That would be a purely fact dependent determination by a court. Right? And the other thing here is if this is the teacher's personal prayer, by definition, it is not an action of them as a school district employee. So if they were to get sued under their personal for their personal prayer, we as the school board wouldn't provide counsel for them because they would be acting in their own personal

087capacity rather than their capacity as an employee. Right? So I think where I want to land with the guidance that I give is while you are free to follow the guidance of that has been profered here by the US DOE, we cannot guarantee that you will not get sued by a parent claiming that is coercive in nature and because it is purely personal rather than your public employment that we will not necessarily provide counsel for said practice. Now, that's what I need guidance from this board on. It is a very difficult circumstance. It's a that's the best guidance I think I can give, but I am certainly open to your comments and how we want to deal with this. But one last there is actually one last can I do this one last slide and

088then Yeah. Okay. discipline and harassment. Public schools are entitled to maintain ordinary discipline and are required to protect students from targeted harassment even when the harassing student or students claim a religious basis for their actions. Schools should be careful, however, to distinguish general expressions of religiously grounded beliefs from targeted harassment from targeted harassment threats or advocacy of unlawful physical violence towards individuals or groups which may create a hostile environment. speech that reflects sincere religious belief and does not constitute targeted harassment, threats or advocacy of unlawful physical violence, even if it offends, is typically protected speech. So the example here is, you know, my opinion, your religious practices are horrible because of A, B, and C. that isn't targeted harassment necessarily, that isn't a threat, that isn't an advocacy of unlawful physical violence. So even though

089my statement that I think your religious practices are not correct and are not right, it's offensive to certain people to hear that, but it's not necessarily something that is actionable under the first amendment. And I put the code of conduct act of hate language in here. If you all remember, we went through this and our discussion about acts of hate was the first amendment component of it, of course, which is, you know, your statement about my religion may offend me greatly, but unless it is threats of harassment, threats of or battery, fighting, damage to property, if you remember the flag that we dealt with as part of that act of hate discussion, unless it's that generally speech is protected. even if it's offensive. So that's the standard that's been laid out here. And now I

090am done and I would love the board's guidance on All right. Let's start with member Salamanca. All right. Okay. So help me understand why we're going beyond the before and after school. Like why are we doing this during the workday? Like why are you expand why are we more expansive than what state and Kennedy are the this example the one that I have up on the board here has gone beyond the Kennedy example in my view because it is talking about Kennedy again was right that's what I'm saying why but your recommendation as we go into the school day no no my recommendation is not that what I'm telling you is the guidance would permit that, right? If I was looking at this on a pure clean slate, I would hear to Kennedy and the

091Florida statute fullbore, right? And say Kennedy was talking about a coach's voluntary personal private prayer after a school football game. Mhm. And the Florida statute talks about participating in student initiated prayer before and after the school day. And I would say during the school day from bell to bell, you know, you can have a personal private prayer on your own, but if you start praying and you start having kids come up and join you, I would not recommend that. I think that runs us into establishment clause problems. but for this guidance. Now, you could have a teacher that says, "Hey, this guidance has been promulgated by this US Department of Education and I'm entitled to follow it." Okay? Right? And so from that standpoint, if they are entitled to follow it under their argument, I

092think the best we can tell them is to the extent you follow it you're referring to, can you be explicit on what it is? it to the extent you follow the guidance promulgated by the US Department of Education which is this particular the statuary from the beginning I'm just trying to track which one during school it's the during school portion if you if you adhere to that guidance that says you're allowed to do it visible personal prayer even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer does not itself constitute coercion if you follow this guidance and you decide to engage in visible personal prayer and students join you. I cannot guarantee that some parent may not bring an action against you saying your stuff is coerc. I get that. But is that statutory or

093is that just the recommended guidance that the state that's just that's just US DOE's guidance to the DOE guidance? Yeah, this is I'm sorry and I thought I was making this clear and let me make sure I'm making this abundantly clear. Yeah, I'm just trying to link where what comes from what. Yes, this quoted material. Yes. Comes directly from the US DOE's guidance that they published on February 6th. Got it. This is taken verbatim from that. Got it. Okay. Cuz earlier it was the Florida stat. So I just making sure that was it. Okay. I mean yes. So I have I respect an employees ability to do this in their own time. The school day is the school day is instructional time, right? We have specific times in which it we know a teacher instructional

094staff is meant to be an instructional time versus not an instructional time. I mean we we were very explicit on when that is. So to the extent that we are now talking about the school day and times when folks can have personal time to do what they want to do personal matters period that I would have the expectation that's where that lives right so personal matters broadly speaking including religious freedoms exist within that world where I start having Harburn is like during instructional time what is expected based on their salary based on bargaining I'm thinking of a teacher or an administrator right that is where I have a hard time so to the extent that we can be very explicit about personal matters and personal time right and versus instructional or work time I I

095don't know how we do that, right? But it's that that is the diff. Let me take high school. High school is probably high school and middle schools are the easiest example of this, right? So you have 4750 minute long classes. So from bell to bell, we're expecting teachers to be providing instruction, assisting students in understanding materials. So that time we're expecting that they should be taking it up doing the work that we've hired them to do and to engage in direct instruction of the students. Right? So there's the four to five minutes between classes that we don't necessarily have teachers have any sorts of duty and for contractual reasons. So we can't have teachers engage in more than three hours of continuous supervision. So let's say we have a teacher who has four consecutive classes

096without a break and if we expect them to like watch the watch the hallways Yeah. then they are going to violate the three hours of continuous supervision provision in our contract and we'd be in violation of the contract. So that period in between classes is their personal time. That would be the time when ostensibly they could engage in personal prayer if they wanted to do that. If a student comes up to them in between classes and they see the teacher engaging in visible prayer and the student joins them, that would be their personal time. I completely understand. So I get all the examples. I think what I'm speaking to here is and this is the Hullman versus Harland. Right. One of the reasons why the teacher was subject to individual liability was because it was

097found to be outside the scope of their official duties. Right. And it was during instructional time. It was outside of official duties. Right. We have contracts. We have employment agreements. We have official duties stated. That's correct. We have instructional time, non-instructional time stated, bargained. It's documented. Right. Yes. So I I know that we're not tracking every minute of a stu of a teacher and this is not just teachers, it could be administrators and whatnot, but to the extent that we can be clear that we want this to still be part of official duties or not official duties and timing, I think that language is important. So for example that it's our expectation that between you know the first bell and the last bell of a class that a teacher will be engaged in instruction activities

098could be a clearly stated expectation. So they know that is not their in fact their personal time at that point. Yeah. I mean if if we have in contract or unemployment agreements that folks have personal time for personal matters somewhere then fair what they do with that time is obviously what they do with their time. I think all of this is recommended guidance right we cannot everything is still going to be factbased case by case basis so I understand that's absolutely correct but my recommendation is that the more explicit we can be about what is your expected role and duties that are aligned with both your employment contract many times bargaining right like we there is a lot of back and forth and bargaining around what time goes to what there should be alignment right

099in that and so that's one the other one would be to the extent that this is guidance making it clear that this is voluntary student participation in the case where there is student participation that students may not be penalized in the case that they are engaging or not engaging in voluntary student participation of making those two very explicit that if a teacher is like in the case of Kennedy it's clearly part of his ritual it's part of what he's doing before after games there's a lot of examples of when folks might engage in prayer absolutely respect that but to the extent that it is impacting students making it explicit to students that one it is voluntary to whether you participate don't participate voluntarily or not studentled or not you cannot not be penalized by this.

100I think it's important and the reason why I think it's important is especially in our younger students. There's a power dynamic. This is an instructor. They are like you said responsible for their grades, right? So employee to employee I understand principal to teacher there might be power dynamic as well, right? But in a classroom a teacher and student absolutely has an inherent power dynamic. Yeah. And so we can't assume everything is case by case, but we should be explicit that if that is a practice or a ritual or prayer that folks are participating in, one, it's the right to do so. Two, it's not I don't think we should assume that they are coercing anyone because they're doing that. So I completely understand the Kennedy situation, but there's still power dynamics and there should be

101guidance on if this is something that you practice within your right and within your personal time. There there's some disclosures or explicit things that have to be clear to the classroom about such a thing. and to the extent that we can also be explicit about the personal liability that comes with what they do outside of time that might be actual part of their contract, instructional time. I think that's also fair. So, I understand the guidance. I get it. I think we just have to also provide our own guidance on how that is about because students and parents are not going to really know what this means if we just leave it broadly to the rights. But understood. Okay. Before before I call on the next speaker because pretty much I think everybody is queued up

102on this and rightfully and thankfully. So, I do want to make sure I can see there's at least like three possibilities. I'm wanting to make sure I understand where you are because one possibility is bellto bell and what you do before that bell and after that bell is your personal time and if students join you before or after the bell that's their prerogative. The other was John was pointing out there is personal time throughout the day that you can use to make a doctor's appointment. should you be allowed to use that time to pray? Yes. In the event that children students are joining you is that okay or not okay that's different question than bell tobell. So on that second part teacher, I'm on the second. You're on the second. That's I think any time

103that we allow for personal matters in the schedule day in a contract in an employment agreement, there's no reason why suddenly religion shouldn't be part of personal matters. Okay. I wanted to make sure cuz I was absolutely hearing not sure that John you were Yeah. hearing each other and I'm just going to keep trying to keep track of this as well. No, I think I was understood. You got it. Okay. Yeah, I got what me was saying. and if there's a fourth permutation, we'll work through that. Member Gallow, you're next. Thank you. Pardon me. Right. Right. Where are you? Thank you, Madam Chair. so just so and I appreciate the clarity that the chair just mentioned, but my understanding of your ask today is do we keep it as is because we have provided guidance

104according to the Florida statutes has been very clear to our teachers and staff or do we move towards the guidance from the Department of Education federally, right? Like that's that's what we're look because we do have guidance. We already have guidance on what we currently do that matches Florida statute. What you want to know is we have new guidance from the US Department of Education that is changing that guidance and do we want to move forward with that guidance or do we want to keep the guidance that we presently have? That's that's part of it. Yes. So statutoily that's why I pointed out statutoily there is a difference between what Florida statute has said with respect to participation with students versus what the US DOE's guidance is. Now, by state statute, we have to give

105out the US DOE's guidance to all of our principles and teachers and inform them of it. But it doesn't necessarily follow that in a conflict between either a state statute and the guidance or federal case law and the guidance that the guidance would control. It's still just guidance now. So that so we do have to provide this document to all of our employees. That was that's what the Department of Education asked us to do. Yeah. So, do we have to listen to them? I'm I'm I'm not I'm just asking. No, no, it's it's state statute. So, the Department of Education shall each year distribute forformational purposes to all district school board members, district school superintendent, school principles, and teachers the entire guidelines on religious expression in public schools published by the United States Department of

106Education as updated from time to time. Thank you. I appreciate that. That clarifies. I have a couple of questions. so in the updated guidance from the Department of Education, are they allowed to pray out loud? It says visible personal prayer. So visible to mean would be you can see it. you know, there there will at least be something like this, the the sign of the cross, some sort of verbalization of amen. I would assume that it didn't go beyond visible, but to me, if I'm analyzing that, a teacher's praying out loud and kids are seeing it. Because if a teacher's just bowing their head, a kid might think that they're just thinking of something that they have to say in class, they wouldn't necessarily be thinking they were they were praying. So to me visible

107would mean the kids are seeing that it is a teacher engaging in prayer and it could probably include verbalization of it. But this two sentences down this is verbatim language. Yeah, that the guidance clarifies for example, right? And talks about the teacher and it says say grace grace. So just teachers are always hers here. But yeah, thank you madam chair. We have male teachers just for the record. Oh that's fair point. That is a fair point. We do have male we do have male teachers. under this new updated guidance, would a teacher be allowed to ask students, would you like to pray with me? I still think that the answer to that is no. Okay. Okay. so here's my here's my thoughts. I kind of agree with member Salamanca. I think we need to be

108explicit in our guidelines. I you know we do have the moment of silence that's one minute that's in our statute anybody including a teacher who wishes to play pray quietly and silently can do so I use our moment of silence at the dis to pray before every meeting that we have I do it privately no one here on the board knows if I'm praying or not praying we als they also have lunch the majority the vast majority 99% of the time teachers are going to go either in their classroom while their kids are or in the cafeteria or they're going to be in the teachers lounge. They can pray in a teacher's lounge. That's their own time. They have a planning period. They can pray during their planning period. They can pray after school. That

109would be appropriate. We can have we have seen a lot of TPUSA clubs kind of bubble up. That is a perfect place for kids to go amongst their peers and do what they need to do. So I think this is kind of a slippery slope because everybody's religion is different. When I was I grew up Southern Baptist and the Lord's prayer that I said at Southern Baptist is completely different than the prayer I say as a Catholic. I you know tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. So when I go to get my ashes tomorrow what they're going to talk about is Matthew 54.6 six, which tells us to pray silently, to to pray with humility, to pray quietly so that we don't draw attention to ourselves because that's what Lent in the 40 days is about. It's

110about private prayer. It's about walking in the desert with Jesus for 40 days and reconnecting with your religion, reconnecting with with with God and with Jesus. So, I wouldn't want to pray because I'm Catholic and during Lent, we're taught to pray privately. I mean there's and I could go on scenario by scenario on why I think this is a bad idea. If someone decides that they want to pray to Satan, is that allowed? You have to treat all religious sex the same. Do we really want satanic prayers in our schools? Are that related to our impressionable kids? And I and I agree with member Salamanca that there is a power imbalance in that kids innately, especially the younger kids, innately want to please their teacher. They want to be the teacher's pet. They want they

111want to be included. And so if someone starts praying, they're going to want to be a part of that no matter I mean I think the satanic would confuse a lot of kids. so I and I just think there's a reason why we have separation of church and state. I believe everybody gets to worship the way they want. You know, you mentioned the Jehovah Witnesses. They can't like they would they would be offended if a teacher even just bowed her head to pray because they I mean they're offended when we they don't do celebrations. So there's a lot there's just so much to consider when you look at different religions and whatnot. And what if there the person is praying during Christmas and you have Jewish students and they don't believe in Christmas? What what

112about Easter? Like there's just so many instances where I could say that there would be a clash of religions and we're here to educate students. Our only job is to educate students. And we've had many conversations over the last several years about schools not raising children. And if you want to raise your children in a Christian home, then you raise your child in a Christian home. If you want to take your child to church to learn about Jesus or Christ, then you take your child to church and they learn what you want them to learn about the religion that you respect and that you believe in. And I think it needs that's where it needs to stay. So I you know I know that we have to we have to offer this up to everybody.

113We absolutely can do that. but I do believe that we need to offer guidance and people need to understand what could happen if if they have a child in their classroom that isn't okay with the teacher. I got emails when we did the when we did the resolution for the day of prayer. I got emails. They were like, "You shouldn't be praying." And I'm like, "It's a resolution. You don't have to pray. We're not making anybody pray. We're just saying you can pray over public schools if you wish to do so." It was very benign. And I still got emails on that. anytime. I talked to a reverend two weeks ago and he said he goes please whatever you do he goes I mean this is a reverend that says you need to keep religion

114out of schools and he a very devout man and you need to keep religion out of schools because that's something that a parent should do. They should go to Bible study. They should do it on their own. And I think that's the way I just think that's the way we should continue to do it. But I don't I think there's plenty of times if someone wants to pray that they can do it. I don't I don't think I don't like the guidance that came from the DOE of education. I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, member Gallo. I usually try to wait until the end, but I'm queued up. So I think I largely a agree with both member Gallo and member Salamanca. I still have I'm still

115a little unclear on a few things. So, we have to provide the guidance. as we've done sometimes where we have to incorporate something into our policies, but it didn't come from us and we clarify that this is not our guidance, it's their guidance. That's that's where I would want to be in terms of communicating that there they have potential liability because it's not supported by statute. I'm okay with that as well. I think I suspect that we would still well I'm sure if somebody were to challenge a teacher, they're going to be challenging us as well because the teacher works for us. So we still have liability. I think the one area that I'm I'm not clear on and member Gallo in terms of the teacher being able to use their private time and member

116Salamanca. So, if they're making a phone call to make a doctor's appointment, that's they're doing that on the private time and they're sitting wherever in the classroom or someplace where the students are, that wouldn't be an issue. But if they're praying and the and students are they're present with them, but it's still technically on their private time, which I'm not sure sure what those times would be before. No. So, okay. May I? Okay, go ahead. So, yeah, teachers have their their individual planning time. They have I'm talking elementary level here. individual planning time. Then they have the time when the children go to specials. They have the time when the students go to lunch and then they have sometimes they have common planning time contractually. We have that. So, so during those times, yeah, the

117students are not typically present with the teachers. So this example that's given where the teacher is bowing her head and saying Grace before lunch. We wouldn't have a scenario where the teacher is on their private time where the students are with them before lunch or during lunch. during lunch. Okay. Yeah. So, this is the one area that I struggle with a little and both of you have used the term power imbalance of power and wanting wanting their teacher like them. I mean, I also elementary school is I think it's more than wanting your teacher to like you. I think it there's just for so many of our kids, there's so much respect for those teachers that in inherently I think that's going to have an impact on them differently than any almost anybody else they're

118going to come in contact with. And so I think that's the part that I think is inconsistent with what we are supposed to not just as teachers but in terms of leaving our children free to make their own decisions and to follow you know their own path. I just such a I just think I just think back on some of my teachers and like they walked on water and you know if they said boy I'm going to turn left at this next light I'm I'm going left with them you know and if they're going to turn I just anyway so I would really be uncomfortable if they're praying and students are joining them in that prayer And as a parent, I think I would have the same feeling if the religious beliefs were totally contrary

119to my own, which is a little hard for me to imagine. My husband's Jewish, I'm Catholic, you know, I have a wide variety of friends. I don't those religions are different, but none of them are offensive, but I think that there could be. And I think anyway, so that's what I think. So, can we do that? is that could that be one of the options which is here's the guidance. You would you there is some potential liability because it's inconsistent and you if you're going to have if you're going to pray during school you pray by yourself and not with students. We could give that as guidance, but we could be we could have somebody come to us and say, "Well, that conflicts with what the US DOE's guidance has just been, right?" And so,

120they may claim it is a violation of their First Amendment free exercise rights to do that. So, that's why I struggled with it. Yeah, I understand. I get it. Okay. All right. we can't ban our teachers from going to lunch. Oh, no. They might have a contractual problem with that. Yeah. Okay. member Bird. Thank you, Chair. I think that we're kind of where you are John because we the state statute is pretty clear and our policy around that state statute is pretty clear right now where it says before and after school but yet we are also required to hand out this guidance. So, you know, I mean, my recommendation would be you hand out the guidance with an asterisk. Please note this differs from current Florida state statute and our policy. Therefore, you can put

121in your little blurb about potential liability. but at least you've made them aware that they have this guidance from DOE. but I don't think we can make any, like you said, I don't think we can make any recommendations. So, I think that they have to kind of read into that what they're going to read into it, right? But I you're not looking for any board policy change, and we can't really change our board policy anyway because it's based on Florida statute. No, I'm not asking the board for a policy change. I I wanted I want to give our teachers information so they can make their own judgment. I guess that's the easiest way for me to say it, right? Which is here's what it is. You know, understand that if a parent alleges it's coercive,

122this might not necessarily protect you from liability. And you know, you know, you use your judgment accordingly about what your practices want to be. That's sort of where I'm want to land on it. Okay. I agree. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Member Bird. Member Vanos. Thank you, Madam Chair. so if we are going to issue guidance to our teachers, they think we need to if they see both of these two directives. I mean, I guess, you know, my first question would be when I look at the guidance, you know, how how when it says students would need to be able to opt out, well, what does that mean? So, does that mean if a teacher starts praying in a classroom, how does a student opt out of that? So, the way I would suspect

123it would work on an opt out is a teacher would say, "Hey, you know, I'm getting ready to pray to myself. Nobody needs to join me. Nobody's going to be penalized if they don't join me or if they nobody's going to be rewarded if they do join me. That's how I would think that would work. You know, we're sort of treading new areas here because for the last at least 60 years, this would not be an area where we would have to make that kind of opt out. But the student would still have to stay in the classroom. That would be the difficult part because we'd have to we have to have continuous student supervision. So we couldn't put them out in a hallway where they are unsupervised. Okay. So that would be one thing

124I think we'd have to clarify or or describe. and then also it talks about the students cannot be coerced. So what would a parent need to show to demonstrate that their child was coerced? Part of the evidence I would think would be, hey, you know, I I my child saw every other, let's just say I'm the only, child who's a Jehovah's Witness in a class. And I'm using that as an easy the easiest example I could think of. I saw every other child going to voluntarily pray. And I and I don't do that as part of my religious practices. So I felt like if I didn't do that, I wasn't part of the group and I felt pressure to go be a part of the group. I would think that would be part of the

125evidence. The other part would be, let's flip the example I gave earlier of the principal and the teacher who the teacher saying that they got, you know, a lower evaluation. Let's put it in a classroom setting. My grades were all A's and B's before I before the teacher started praying. And then after teachers started praying and I didn't join, I started getting C's and D's and the my quality of work haven't hasn't dropped off. Now that's very subjective, right? But that would be the type of evidence I would think that would possibly demonstrate coercion. So this to me sounds like it would be a lot of claims that parents might make that we are determining whether their child was coerced or not in evaluating. I don't necessarily think we would be the ones determining it.

126Right. So, I would think it would be a parent filing a suit under the first amendment saying that it's a violation of the establishment clause. Right. But they would probably come to us first. They may come to us first. . Yes. And so I think if they came to us and we started, you know, that we would say, "What what is your evidence of coercion?" And we would ask them to, you know, it would be first a conversation with the principal. Hey, I think my kid's being coerced into praying. And we would say, what would be that evidence? And the parent would offer that evidence and our parent, our principal would take a look at it, you know, and if there was an investigation necessary, then we have processes to do that. yeah it would

127generally come to us first but most of these claims if it you know may end up in a federal court somewhere being adjudicated by a federal judge and then we would have to be involved in paying legal fees to be involved in the litigation. So the answer is yes. But I will say this given the Supreme Court holding that these these prayers are supposed to be personal and private right you know to the extent that they are personal and private and they're not praying out you know in front of the class or asking the the students to pray in front of the class. we would defend by saying this is the personal private speech of the teacher of which we're not responsible and we would try to defend that way. So I would try to

128get out of it as early as I possibly could. Got it. Thank you. so you know I want to go back to one of the scenarios that we talked about a teacher using his or her personal time to pray. what if the teacher is, you know, atheist or believes in some other type of thing and they have like, I don't know, let's just say like witchy personal time where, you know, they're going to have some other kind of foundational prayer or something like that similar to to their religion that would be across the board acceptable, right? Yes. it doesn't matter what religious sect or if you don't adhere to a religion at all. if you want to use that time for some personal reflection and however your religious beliefs are, it would it would apply

129across the board. Okay. so another question relating to this is can teachers so we give this guidance can teachers expect the same level of first amendment protection if let's say during their personal time they engage in you know some of like political belief. So like is is your political belief subject to the same protection under the first amendment as religious? Yes and no. I'm sorry to give that kind of answer, right? And I apologize, but here's why. we have the principles of professional conduct for the education profession in Florida. It's the rule that all teachers are supposed to adhere to as far as their their conduct in the classroom. It says one of the provisions in there and forgive me I'm not quoting it directly but it's this sentiment that you're supposed to take precautions

130to ensure that your speech political is not attributable to the agency for which you work. Right? So if your political speech could be attributed to the school district and the school board and it's contrary to the school district stated policy, that could be problematic for a teacher in that specific scenario. We're not supposed to discriminate against teachers based upon their political beliefs. They are supposed to be able to believe what they believe politically. when and we have provisions in our collective bargaining agreement with respect to teachers that they can talk about political issues as long as the presentation is essentially balanced and fair. That's the quote from the contract. So one side believes this, the other side believes this, right? But teachers, we hire teachers and in other cases say this, we hire teachers for

131their speech and a lot of times the speech of the teacher especially on the political spectrum can be attributable to the school district for which they're employed. So they get less protection in that particular scenario. So, I'm looking at remember the case with the teacher over in Hillsboro County, the Wood versus Florida Department of Education, the one who sued about the Florida statute on personal pronouns and personal titles. And the court actually I thought that might come up here. So, I had the actual quote. So it says when a public school teacher speaks in the course of performing her job speaking to her class in her classroom during class hours, she does so pursuant to her official duties and therefore speaks as a government employee not as a citizen. The speech at issue here in

132which verbally provide her preferred honorific and pronouns wrote them on her whiteboard and syllabi and wore a she her pen fits that description precisely. And then the court said, look, it's not only just the delivery of your content, right? It's anything that basically occurs in class. It says, to be sure, the descent correctly notes the relevant case law of both our own and our sister circuits expressly permits government regulation of teachers curricular speech, but the inverse that the First Amendment forbids regulation of a teacher's in-class non-curricular speech doesn't follow. And so far as we can tell, there's no binding or even persuasive precedent to suggest that it does. So teachers do not and then they also said teachers do not cease acting as teachers each time the bell rings or the conversation moves beyond the

133narrow topic of curricular instruction. I've said this I sometimes struggle to reconcile the various decisions of the courts based upon what they say. Sometimes teacher speech, even if it's not about the curriculum, is attributable to the teacher. In the in the pronoun case, it was attributable to the school district. But in the religion case, the teacher's non-curricular speech and conduct was not attributable to the school district. So I struggle to come up with a unifying principle that I can articulate here. So there's not actually unifying principles. So because if you go off of that case, if you are not acting in instructional time, anything a teacher does while he or she is at school is implied that it is promoted by the district. Based upon that wood case, the answer is yes. And so this

134is directly contrary to that. I struggle to reconcile the two, the Kennedy case and the wood case. Okay. I mean I this is I guess I fall on the side of students you know I do not believe that students should be allowed to you know that teachers should be praying in a way that encourages students to participate. So wherever that falls in this I think we need to I understand we have to provide the guidance but I think we need to be very clear about what opt out means about what coerced means and you know make it clear to teachers that if they decide to partake in this then you know they are acting outside of of the recommendation of the school district and the Okay. Okay. I came in just the last part. So,

135we would be telling them that they're acting outside of the recommendation of the school district. Okay. And the state. Okay. Okay. That's just one step further than you could be liable. I'm not I'm not opposed to it. I just May I please? I completely understand why you take that position, member Vanos. the there is some hesitancy there for me. just because we're statutoily also required to give out the state's guidance, right? Or the federal government, excuse me. We are statutoily required by state statute to give out the federal government's guidance. Right? So to the extent that we say that this conflicts, am I implicitly violating one state statute by saying we don't think that this is the proper guidance? I I would feel more comfortable from just a legal standpoint that you know to the

136extent that your behavior is coercive of students, you could be held liable. That is more comfortable just from a legal standpoint that's 100% defensible while also adhering to all the relative relevant state statutes that we have. I think I feel comfortable saying this is what the state statute says. It's before and after school student initiated voluntary prayer. This is what you know this is when this is what this the federal government's guidance is. To the extent that a parent alleges that you have been coercive, there could be potential liability there. That is undeniably true even considering the federal government's guidance. And I think that would be the better way to go. But like I said, that's just my personal preference. I am at the board's direction. Well, that makes sense. Thank you. All right. Thank

137you. And thanks for that clarification, member Fant. Thank you. and thank you, Mr. Rarini, always for helping us understand and giving the states perspective and then also the federal guidance. it is a touchy subject because I think we've we have long since like moved away from really the true meaning I guess from the constitution like when the founding fathers were here and what they perceived many of them I would say all of them were you know god-fearing men and that was their religion and so they just didn't want somebody coming and telling them you have to be Catholic or you have to be a Protestant. and so now we've had many cultures come and not assimilate if you will. And so we have many different cultures here in different religions. so with that it is

138it is makes it a little tougher because as someone else had u mentioned we could have all sorts of things happening in the classroom then if it's a either you know Wiccan or a satanic prayer or I mean sensoria you name it there's all sorts of things that could be happening and I pretty sure most parents would not want that happening in the their kids' classroom. So, I'm, you know, veering more on the side of I definitely want teachers to feel like they, you know, they don't lose their first amendment right when they become, you know, when they're a teacher. but at the same time, we really need to be focused on education, which is why they're here. and making sure that kids are reading and writing and getting their assignments and understanding all of

139that. I it is a little confusing maybe with the federal guidance when it is talking about like the teacher bowing them their head to to pray and say grace. so when I read that I'm when I you when you bow your head to say grace don't always aren't always like praying out loud if you will, but maybe just the like folding your hands and so it's looking like that or if you're Catholic and you do the sign of the cross, some sort of notion then that the students would realize that they're praying. But then at the same time I'm trying to understand like when and in what situation are you in that you're in your official capacity and you're sitting there praying with students in the room. I I mean I know kids do have

140lunch with with teachers. I understand that. I don't know. So it is it's h it's hard because at the same time I want a teacher to feel like they have that right to bow their head and thank the Lord for their food. but also I also don't feel like this is saying that they can do performative acts. It's more about like verbal prayer. like maybe just a quiet like they're whispering to themselves. but performative act of like you know bowing on the floor or you know I don't even know standing on their chair and quoting the Bible certain things like that I just feel like it would be so we're it's you know it's a fine line th those performative acts even under the federal guidance would be impermissible impermissible I'm sorry yeah they would

141notable, right? Wait, hold on. The Hold on. The vis So, the way I'm understanding how you're describing it, let us pray, you know, and they start saying it out loud and they're doing this and leading the class in it, right? That's the that's the Hollowman case. So, that would not be allowed, right? Personal visible prayer, meaning bow your head, you know, saying it silently to yourself, not invite. It's there are fine lines and I see the looks up here of of confusion. So it's a fine line but I think if to the extent that they invite I guess this is the best way to say it to the extent that they invite kids to pray with them that would not be permissible right if kids see the teacher praying to themselves even if it's visible

142and the kids decide to come up and join the teacher under this guidance that would be permissible and wouldn't necessar would be permissible and would not be seen necessarily as coercion I'm not necessarily sure that tracks with the state statute and previous case law, but that's what the guidance says. I Yeah, I think I would like to see guidance like has been stated really just to make sure that we're following state statutes and I think our our current guidance is pretty clear. I do want to make sure that we're allowing like if a teacher, say a teacher is she brings her Bible to to class with her, all the students are having quiet reading time. Is she allowed or he allowed to read their Bible quietly at their desk? Like if there's nothing else going

143on and they don't have classwork to do and this is just part of like they're reading, they're all reading their own books. So, and I'm going to defer to the education expert up there, but generally teachers would be going around if kids are engaged in quiet reading, monitoring the class, doing something to help out, you know, assist students with, you know, if they're having a problem comprehending what's going on in the book that they're silently reading. I would expect that the teacher would be going around monitoring, but I will certainly defer the superintendent. So when children are engaged in silent reading or reading of literature of their preference. there may be some that choose to read the Bible. and that's that's been done. I've actually seen that in in classrooms before. a teacher may also

144as part of a lesson and comparing different types of literature and narrative use an excerpt from the Bible as well as other texts as part of their instruction. and so I don't see a situation where they would be directing them to read the Bible as part of their independent reading. But I children are able to do that and actually do that now. Yes. No. And I think that's not really what I'm asking is more like the teacher themselves like if they wanted to read say you're in a high school class and it's just a quiet time and they're having time after a test if you want to read something. I guess that wouldn't be a good example because they should be monitoring the class. but if a teacher had a book about I mean any

145kind of religion, are they allowed to have that out? reading that if it's a just personal like grab your a book and we're going to have five minutes of just reading your own personal text. So there have been times when a like a school may have a sustained silent reading. It may have a different name that than that and a teacher may be engaging in that. However, during the instructional time, teachers supposed to be monitoring so that children aren't misbehaving, they aren't getting into trouble. And so, while they may periodically be looking, you know, down, they really should be up and around monitoring to make sure everything is safe. But they are able to have if they want my understanding if they want to have a Bible out on their desk there's no problem with

146that. Okay. yeah I think just making sure that the guidance is we just say these this is what our state statute is. this is what our current guidance is and that the federal government has come out with new guidance and that it is very new and that at this point we don't know I mean that when while you're under I mean really I feel like if you've clocked in and you're on your own you know we're we're here to be the teacher and you're here to guide them in reading writing arithmetic. That's what we should be focused on. but I, you know, they also if they want to say a grace before I don't know like I just those are things that it's a little hard for me to just tell a teacher like you

147can't pray before you eat or things like that. I and I don't think so like if the teachers in a teacher's lounge and they are, you know, want to say grace over their meal and if they want to ask other teachers to join them, that's no issue whatsoever. They absolutely can do that. But in the classroom setting, in the classroom setting with children, that has not been what the law permitted prior to this guidance and it doesn't that's not what aligns with what the state's current statutory requirements are for teacher participation with student prayer. So that's that's the you know where I would say the guidance has been provided by the state. You know, the main thing that you have to worry about is would your actions be seen as coercing students into praying alongside

148of you? And that could potentially be the liability if it was found that your behavior was coercive. But that's it. But that's how I would have to guide it. Got it. Okay. So yeah, I think just again making sure that there's they just understand what ours is, what the state statute and then what the new one is and that you know that we're going to follow the state statute. But I mean in all reality, our schools could definitely use a little like looking at the Lord and what you know his his guidance because I mean things are definitely we've got some serious struggles going on. but that's just my own my own beliefs. not something I would shout out at school, but you know, as you look at what's happened over the years and since

149the 1962 case, I can't say that our schools have gotten better. If anything, they've gotten worse. makes you wonder what exactly brought that about. But thank you. Thank you, member. Member Salam Mona. Yeah, John, I just I just wanted to clarify a little bit because I think the hard part of the federal guidance that I'm really struggling with is the word up there that's visible, right? Visible personal prayer. I similar remember Gallo and maybe some folks I grew Catholic again. There are some more expressive versions of prayer and some that are less, right? that it just it comes with our pluralistic religious society and when we open the floodgates of what is visible prayer that is a broad range of what can be considered or defined as visible prayer right like I have my version

150of prayer I define it as myself that's why it's my own as a private citizen what a Catholic believes is prayer what so right by now our guidance is obviously during school day right like say we're aligned with what the state is with what it used to be you know kind of keep keep that outside of the school day definitely not in a visible way right yes that's correct is I'm thinking of just there are some religions that are just more expressive and visible I'm thinking of Islam right you kneel on the floor you have a prayer there there's a particular ritual that is incredibly visible, right? And this opens the floodgate for saying this is protected. The DOE has said visible personal prayer during the school day is protected. We don't get to decide,

151right? And I think that's what the Supreme Court has been incredibly clear that the role of the first amendment is that the government aka this government institution up here the school board cannot ally ourselves with any one particular form of religion. Right? We are not going to say this type of visible personal prayer is okay because it was what it was in the founding of America and therefore we like it and this type of visible personal prayer is not okay because it was now part of founding America. They're both equally now under new DOE guidance. Fair game under that's my interpretation but I agree. Okay. Yeah. I have obviously back to what a lot of folks have said, it is instructional time. We are a school district. We're here to teach students instruction. We are

152here to have them learn the basics that makes them productive citizens. this just feels like another politically charged distraction coming at the school board and a new direction. and seems even in contradiction with the state statue and it we're like right in the middle of another religious political war and I think what's frustrating is that the founding of this nation and the reason the first amendment exists is because there were folks that were fleeing Protestant versus Catholic Europe. They did not want the government to take a strong stance on what god you should pray to. And it's not this political war of bringing in more religion or less religion into school because the reality is that you have to have neutrality. You don't get to decide which religion comes back into school and which one

153doesn't. Which is why our very smart founding fathers said you have neutrality and therefore you treat everyone the same. Either everyone's out and you have separation of state and church or everyone's in and then it's a fair game on what is visible personal prayer. And so it's it's a slippery slope. I think it's a slippery slope for those that I think gave us this guidance. I don't think that they know the floodgates that they're opening and didn't think through that very well. it's a slippery slope that I don't even think they would agree aligns with their own values, but it's okay. Not a lot of folks step into classrooms nowadays. And so the implementation of this is just very different. So I would say we're clear with our guidance. I think that the board seems

154like all of us are on the same page. This is a very slippery slope. y and we should just be clear about that. So, can I please? So, the slippery slope, I'll give you the example of it and I don't believe any of you were here on the board at the time, but we had a group that wanted to come in and distribute Bibles in the schools, right? And so we initially said no, we're not going to allow that because we had pre actually this school board had previously been sued in the 50s and 60s and we had orders prohibiting us from do it from doing allowing Bible distribution. But we reversed course and decided to allow the Bible distribution in the schools. And then we had the Central Florida freethought community that came in

155that said, "Hey, we want to distribute our materials saying that, you know, there is no God." And you know, the criticizing religion and some of those did so in very graphic terms. So we allowed some materials and not others. And then we got sued over that. And then the Satanist came in and said, "Hey, we have a nice coloring book we want to distribute in your elementary schools where they had the pentagram." And this then your predecessors on this board decided we're going to close down the distribution of all religious materials because we don't want to be in the business of of judging between sex of religions. And once we allow one to come in, we have to allow all to come in and we can't discriminate on the basis of their particular religious viewpoint.

156And so that's that's the thing here that I think you've put your finger on, member Salamancco, which is going to be there are going to be some folks who will see a teacher engaging in prayer that's Christian or Catholic or or some sort of or Protestant and then there's going to be teachers who are Muslim who would engage in their particular type of prayer and that may be treated differently by a group of parents than than Christian prayer would. And so it's a very difficult scenario that this guidance could potentially put us in. And we're just going to have to deal with it on a case-by case basis as it comes to us. And hopefully we get some sort of clarity whether it's different guidance that's more clear or the courts will give us guidance

157in the absence of it. So all right. Thank you Mr. Palmerini. Member Douglas. my experience as a teacher is that I've always been very cautious about praying in front of my kids or doing anything visible about now. They know I'm praying because I always have my cross. They know who I am and what I believe in. However, I would never just say, "Okay, let's pray together." Never. it would not even occur to me because we had different case just like you have stated earlier that happened to teachers and we've been told be careful what you're doing with your religion okay with the kids and we also know that most of a lot of our kids are not Christian they could be any other Hindu or any other religion or you know so we want to

158respect that and I think as teachers we use discernment in in front of our kids. we know not to do and of course you will have some cases but I would say that I how many cases in the years have you find teachers having all these problems you know with you know praying a religion okay I'm a Christian there's no other things I had my Bible on my desk okay if a child come and say oh you have a Bible I'm a Bible okay good but we're not going to you know elaborate on this for hours. Okay, we're going to stop right there, you know, and I told you ask me the question and we're done. Now, in regard to the statues and, you know, federal and and state, I would say that we really

159need to to be, you know, very explicit and the word visible, just like you said, and I put that on my on my notes. What we need to have to define what the word visible means because it could be anything is visible is when I go this like this is visible I could be doing that for anything you know it could be misinterpreted misinterpreted by any other kids that I'm praying but I'm maybe not praying okay what is visible what do you know that is the hard part here. I wish they would have given more clarity on what visible is or not, which I think goes back to your comment of using caution and discernment, right? And it's you always have to and you know, being married to one of our teachers, I would give

160the same advice I give her when when we talk about these types of issues. You never know how somebody is going to perceive what you're doing because your genuine religious observance to one student and parent would be coercive behavior to another student and parent. Right? And so the easiest way I think I can give advice to teachers is if you have a question about whether or not it could be seen as coercive or not, you generally should refrain from doing it because that's the one sure way that you would avoid running into an issue. Right. And I don't know how you know that's each teacher is going to have to make their individual judgment on that. But my advice is use the the discernment that you were talking about to ensure that your behavior can't

161be called into question. Right. Right. Right. And we have kids that, you know, go to talk to their parents at night. They may not think anything of it, but just related to the parents immediately can cause an issue, you know. So, we have to be very careful with that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Member Douglas. Member Vanos, thank you. Just wanted to speak to something member Salamanca said and I agreed with a lot of what she said, but when she said the federal government had no idea what they were doing, I completely disagree with that. The federal government had absolute idea what they were doing because the reality is most of the teachers are Christians. And so my concern is that the majority of the visible practices will be done by people of the

162Christian faith. And then I wonder whether we get into a situation where we are then favoring one religion over another. Do you have any concerns about that? I'm sitting here because I have concerns about all of this. I do have concerns that if it is a widespread practice and I'm not necessarily sure it would be a widespread practice but let's say it was a widespread practice at a particular school or a particular you know group of schools that you know somebody can make the argument that by you know allowing this that we are implicitly favoring one religious group Christians over another religious group who doesn't have nearly the same amount of teachers. my retort from a legal standpoint would be under this guidance, this is the teachers personal prayer and personal first amendment free exercise

163activity and it's not attributable to the school district. And I would hope that would, you know, be what the court finds if we were ever sued on that. But that would be my argument in retort that under the guidance we're giving this is not speech tributable to the government. It's the teachers personal or teachers personal speech/free exercise of their religion. And I agree that that should be our defense. I'm just pointing out that it is not only are probably the majority of teachers Christian but the majority of people who even in the example given bowing their head like that signifi that signifies a particular religion and or at least excludes some religions and that's just the reality of the practice. So just pointing that out. Thank you. All right. U Mr. Pome Pomerani. I think

164that wraps up board's input on this. So my plan, Madam Chair, if I may. Yeah, please. I'm going to draft a memorandum. I'm going to circulate it amongst the board members for their for your comments to see if you have any issues or whatnot and then try to synthesize all of that into a cohesive memorandum that we put out. I anticipate it's probably going to take me a couple weeks to do a draft, circulate it, get the comments back, incorporate the comments, and then push it out. But, that's my plan. What is your, boy, I do not envy you this task right now. while the board I think there's pretty strong consensus by this minute, but when it comes down to drafting something, I definitely think you should send it to all of us. Yeah,

165I don't envy you if you get a lot of feedback and you have to figure out how to weave that in. but and if anybody's up to the challenge, you are. So, I am so glad we had this conversation. I really appreciate you bringing this to the board. I also really appreciate the very thoughtful dialogue and input from each member of the board. I think it's been an excellent exercise of an elected body pulling together to grapple with this issue. I think my greatest concern is as we've all talked about this slippery slope and the fact that we have so much strife in the world right now between religious groups and I hate the thought of that disrupting the environment in our classrooms and the civility in our classrooms and I hope that doesn't come

166to pass. I think the most optimistic outlook is there will be lawsuits fairly soon. Hopefully none of them here and the US Department of Ed will reconsider their guidance. On that note, if there's nothing further nothing further from our deputy superintendent, then our meeting is now adjourned. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Oh, hey. Yeah. Heat.