Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting

001i'd like to please call to order the board of education meeting for saline area schools october 26 2021 at 6 30 pm if you could all please rise for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everybody for coming hopefully we have enough enough space and chairs we really appreciate you being here and giving us your thoughts we have a agenda this evening that i know includes our life skills um proposed curriculum and i know a lot of people have comments on that and i thank you in advance for taking care with the subject and students um and being respectful and thoughtful of our um our

002special education students and life skills students um dr latch he had an announcement right uh thank you for wearing asks per the mask mandate from the washington county health department mass are required in any school building in ciliary schools at any time this board of education meeting is included in this mandate and mass are required unless you are speaking in public comment at the podium failure to comply is a violation of michigan's public health code and could result in a misdemeanor and or civil monetary penalties thank you as usual we get started with our public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that the students will be given priority to speak on

003any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into the consideration of the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be made i cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student secretary estep if you haven't done public comment before secretary estup for a three minute three-minute public comment at 30 seconds left she will put up the yellow and when your time is up she will put up the red we have quite a few public comments tonight so if everyone could do their

004best to please respect finish your sentence finish your thought and then we can move on to the next individual who would like to speak as always we take students first in our district i'd like to call alexis uh liang student alexis did i pronounce your last name okay lion okay thank you and you'll toggle the mic on when you see the green and then you can start whenever you're ready oh there's a button that says yep there you go so as a student at saline high school i would like to ask why it it's okay for students to be able to get planned parenthood phone numbers without their parents even knowing like as a student i know it can be rough but that i don't think that should be allowed because many students go through

005a bunch of different things and just because they're going through this they should want their parents informed in this and they shouldn't be excluded especially if they feel more comfortable at school that may be another concern that needs to be taken a different way thank you [Applause] next we have uh we have four individuals that had contacted dr latch and myself ahead of this meeting with a request for extended public comment and we granted both of those requests um we received raylyn davis's first so she will she will go first and she is joined by tim courtois tim am i pronouncing that correctly so how extended public comment goes is they will receive 15 minutes together and they they can distribute those minutes however they would like at one minute left uh secretary estep will

006show the yellow card and at the completion of the 15 minutes she will show the red card um and then we will move on to the next one so tim whenever you're ready okay there it is okay thank you uh first i want to thank raylen davis for being willing to share her comment time with me i want to make it clear that raelynn and i are not working together in our comments but since there was only one spot for extended comments opposed to the sex side curriculum being considered jennifer stevens suggested that it would make sense for me to ask greatly if we could split the time so i asked raelynn and she was willing to split her time with me my name is tim curtis i am a licensed professional counselor specializing in

007sexuality i completed the sexual health certificate program at the university of michigan i spent many years working directly with issues related to sexuality lgbtq issues and gender identity i'm also a current member of the sex education advisory board one of two members who voted against the approval of the curriculum now being considered i want to briefly highlight for the public and for the board a few of the reasons why i believe it would be unwise to approve this curriculum for the school district number one this curriculum may not be in compliance with michigan law some public comments at the scab public hearing brought up specific credible concerns about ways this california-based curriculum is not in compliance with michigan law these concerns were not subsequently discussed by the sab and therefore were not addressed or refuted

008in any way number two this curriculum violates the values and preferences of a majority of parents in the school district we have a responsibility to take into account the values of the community when we did ask the community for comments 65 of the 115 comments 57 were strongly opposed to this curriculum there has not been a sufficiently comprehensive survey of the families in the district regarding their preferences for sexuality education so the public comments are currently the only thing we have to go on i submit that it is possible to choose a curriculum that serves our students is less controversial and doesn't blatantly violate the values of a significant portion of the community we are supposed to serve i hope the board will not choose to ignore the preferences of a majority of the families

009in the district number three the teachings about gender identity in this curriculum are one-sided and problematic with growing evidence that they are inadvertently harmful there is a fierce debate in our society about how to best support children who experience gender dysphoria or identify as trans this debate is far from settled in current culture the language of inclusion is sometimes leveraged to miscast all different perspectives on gender identity as transphobic this is inaccurate on the contrary there are different opinions and perspectives about gender that are non-discriminatory and are fully inclusive and respecting of the rights of lgbtqia plus persons of course we reject transphobia and want to provide an environment that is safe and caring for all students in the district this does not however mean the only way one way of understanding gender is acceptable

010families in this district have differing perspectives on how words such as gender identity boy and girl should be defined for some boy and girl refer to biological categories for others boy and girl refer to an internal felt sense of identity this curriculum unequivocally declares the latter of these two positions to be the only acceptable view this marginalizes anyone who continues to view boy and girl as biological categories and this in spite of the fact that historically it has been the norm even for trans persons and those who support trans rights to acknowledge boy and girl as biological categories it would have been the norm for example for a trans woman to say the following i know i am biologically male therefore i am a man it is more comfortable for me to present myself to

011the world as a woman and i should have the right to do so being a trans woman does not mean that i am really a woman it means that i am a man who is choosing to act and look in a way that feels feminine to me to decrease my dysphoria and increase my joy this would have been the mainstream trans supportive viewpoint up until just a few years ago but this curriculum treats that viewpoint as non-inclusive and not worthy of consideration we should be cautious about the downstream effects of subjectivizing and relativizing categories that until just a few short years ago were broadly considered to be fixed and biological as a mental health professional i can attest that there is growing evidence worldwide arising from recent comprehensive evidentiary reviews in the united states the

012uk finland france sweden australia and norway suggesting that gender identity teachings such as the ones in the three-piece curriculum are resulting in harm to young people especially to special needs kids these teachings are relatively new they are popular in some circles but have not been sufficiently vetted scientifically and medically at best it can be said that the jury is still out specifically the evidence is showing that number one these teachings tend to inadvertently push kids too quickly toward transition this particularly harms young gay children who are often dysphoric by foreclosing an important period of identity development leading them to pursue irreversible medical treatments number two this teaching fosters confusion among young people sometimes creating gender dysphoria where it would not otherwise have existed kids are learning to misinterpret normal discomfort associated with pubertal development as

013evidence that they are transgender the result is compounding distress increasing their dysphoria and anxiety number three these teachings are particularly harmful to kids on the autism spectrum such kids have difficulty with abstract reasoning the gender-bred model and associated definitions cause unscientific notions of being born in the wrong body to emerge as kids conflate the language of gender identity with expectations of what that should mean for how the body looks those are difficult hairs to split and autistic kids are proving to have an especially difficult time splitting them this is the fault of the teaching itself because in the teaching biology is sometimes treated as distinct from gender identity and other times as needing to be brought in line with gender identity kids on the autism spectrum are disproportionately responding to this teaching by assuming that

014they are trans and that they must pursue irreversible medical treatments as minors in other words the very students who are the most vulnerable are responding to this teaching in ways we don't yet fully understand because these trends are so new and fast moving as a result many in the mental health community around the world are recommending that society hits pause on canonizing this new ideology and adopting a more cautious patient and science-driven approach the school district should focus its sexuality education on established medical facts rather than prematurely canonizing controversial and unvetted teachings it is possible to find sex education curricula that are inclusive of lgbtqia plus persons and that are not rooted in a harmful and medically inaccurate gender ideology fourth reason for opposing this curriculum the curriculum violates the values laid out in the

015saline area schools dei statement that statement reads saline area schools embraces diversity and inclusion as it strives to provide a variety of perspectives for students to consider further all students should be able to reflect and consider alternative viewpoints that exist within our society regarding gender identity this curriculum does not represent acknowledge or respect a variety of perspectives it chooses one viewpoint on this controversial topic and canonizes that perspective as the correct and only viewpoint this is by definition indoctrination which therefore also violates the school board policy 2240 regarding how controversial issues should be addressed in the school district this marginalizes students and families who have different values and deprives all students of the opportunity to hear a variety of perspectives lastly number five the suggestion that those who disagree with the values in this curriculum

016should simply opt out is offensive this suggestion marginalizes those students and the values of their families i ask how would proponents of this curriculum feel if a different curriculum one that violates their values was chosen and they were told that they shouldn't be upset because they have the right to simply opt out of it i expect they would not consider this to be a satisfactory solution to their concerns let us instead find a curriculum that is truly inclusive one that honors the diversity of values in this community and focuses on teaching established medical and scientific facts about sexuality rather than declaring a controversial ideology to be the one true and acceptable opinion thank you for your time and consideration tim thank you for your comments um folks uh raelynn still has the the time left

017and the clock is ticking so we want to be respectful everyone's time whenever you're ready reelin okay um i have a powerpoint i presented for you guys tonight and i don't know if i'll get to it i had different thoughts going through my head as i was coming here today um i want to start off talking about the family unit the family unit is the most important institution of the society it is not the schools and it's not the churches the families that these have these special needs kids sent to them are one of the most special families here i mean i cannot i i have kids with with needs but there's nothing compared to some of these families with down syndrome with severe autistic with with tons of other mental and physical abilities and

018i and we should be protecting and helping them and supporting them this curriculum does not do this what this curriculum does it teaches a left wing belief system and encumbers them with adult cares these kids are often the most innocent the purest the happiest the friendliest and often the most inclusive and yet we should strive to be more like them and instead of trying to make them more like us this curriculum is is a belief system and it's one the ques one of the questions i've had is why i've been fighting this so hard and because i really do believe that it goes against my belief system and yes even though my child may not be directly seeing these slides my children will be growing up in the society and in this community and and

019with these people and wherever this comes in it will affect more than just those kids who are taught and i firmly believe that if this comes in because i've seen what the what we currently are being taught our kids and what this curriculum teaches it is like teaching oranges and apples and there is no reasoning that i can think of being an engineer while you would teach two groups of kids completely opposite information when it comes to reproductive health and sex ed and so the only thing i can think of is this is a back door approach to get this in to the whole community and so one of the other reasons i'm here is that i don't believe this is only going to affect 120 kids i truly believe it will affect all 5

020000 kids within the next few years if the community cannot stand up and say this is not what we want this is not the celine we moved into this is not who our community values we want to support and protect these kids and families again i think we can find a sex ed that we can still teach these kids to be um learn about their bodies and to learn about their reproductive health and we don't need to sexualize them and they don't need to see pornographic figures and there's other ways to do this then to do it one of the things michigan model for health is the sex that we currently teach they just came out with a 20 20 version that has been more modernized has anyone looked to see whether or not this

021curriculum could be adapted to our special needs kids because it is already has more images and more modern techniques than the our current sex ad from 2012. there are i know there's schools in grand rapids who made the national news because they created their own sex ed and for special needs there's resources out there they're michigan based they're not california law based california law and michigan law are literally at the opposite spectrums when it comes to sex ed and reproductive health and that's one of the biggest problems with this curriculum is it does not meet michigan law because of of how it's designed to teach um quickly if you look at your packets i do believe that celine is breaking the law um i have three minutes left right susan so we'll start the start

022my my video here i'm going to quickly go through this so that some of the public can see what's going on face id here okay um so for the review so basically i have filed a formal complaint i believe you're breaking law i'm sorry dennis you didn't have one i gave it to channel 4 news um uh because of the reality of both this how the sab is operating and the curriculum um if you vote today or if you vote and prove this you guys are risking two million five hundred thousand dollars if i am right now again that will affect all the students in selene not just the 120 kids the special needs if if i am correct in this and and so next slide um quickly on abstinence-based versus comprehensive um abstinence-based does

023not mean it's only been listed one time in the curriculum it's about the whole tone and overview of the curriculum we currently have an abstinent based in our high school this is comprehensive it does not just comprehensive it does not just teach reproductive health it wants to literally teach everything under the sun and that's part of the things i've been going against um let's get that slide we're gonna go to the next one um so here's my policy first of all this is your policy the board shall establish a sex education that determined the terms of the service the number of members to serve and the membership selection process including whether a board is secret or whether it follows open meetings act we do not have this in our policy you have followed state law

024but you have not decided so there first of all step one is the board needs to fix this policy and tell us what's going on with their scab we have asked for the names of the board members of the committee members last refuses to tell us three years ago he did it is not his job to determine whether that is a secret committee or not that is the board's decision in your policy to do that we have no way of verifying whether things are made up because he won't tell us there is a huge transparency issue going on and without trusting the school this is a triple blind secret committee this cannot continue on in saline parents have the right to know who is making their choices for them who is recommending and if they're

025represented and to speak up if they're not and even after the makeup was determined to be illegal latch added two students that he refused to let the seb refuse to let those students vote on it this is an illegal curriculum from an illegal committee um one of the other things next slide um is if you look at the law it talks about a section on what the s-e-a-b um jobs are to do and then talks about a board's job it is the board of a school district she'll hold at least two public meetings on the proposed revisions so until you guys you guys listen to the community on this uh sex ed then you guys will be breaking the law it's not the cab's job it is your job it's your responsibility um section five

026that talks about the ciab is a school district that provides a class so the law again policy languages are very clear in doing the different things the other main thing i have again the cab's job is to establish goals and objectives we don't have them last quick slide those are just ann arbor's and lance's goals and objectives our goals and objectives are we will respect inclusive we're breaking the law thank you rayland all right thank you um we we have a lot of a lot of public comments and um i wanted to thank the audience for i i think i understand applause aren't usually part of a board meeting obviously we've been allowing that and people are passionate about their views um but i wanted to thank people for for listening to both of them

027and i would like to ask for respect for our next two presenters as well um because um everyone should be safe here to to to say what they would like to say daisy sherman and kelly van single and so just a reminder secretary e-step will do the yellow card when you have one minute left of the 15 and then the red card at the end if you could just complete your thought and then um and then you'll be all set so whenever you're ready just toggle the uh mic on it's on so okay okay yeah and yeah that's fine all right hi i'm daisy sharman i have twin sons in seventh grade one of my sons is autistic and in the life skills program at saline middle my son cannot comprehend the general education sexual

028education curriculum i would like to say that first i do have discussions regarding sex and health with my son that is not enough he needs an actual curriculum that can help him understand better at the conversations being had at home both of my children deserve a high quality education that fits their needs this curriculum for sexual education for special education students fits the needs that my autistic son has good evening i'm kelly van single and i have two daughters living with autism ages 16 and 19. their teachers have been waiting for an accessible sexual health curriculum to use with them and their classmates my daughters are not able to participate in the gen ed sexual health curriculum due to their social cognitive sensory and language learning challenges this specialized curriculum that our trustees are now

029considering is very needed and it's long overdue we'd like to begin with sharing some of the statistical realities that people with intellectual disabilities face according to the national crime victimization survey completed by the bureau of juris justice statistics the rate of sexual assault against people with intellectual disabilities is more than seven times that of the rate of people without disabilities among females with intellectual disabilities the rate is about 12 times that of those females without disabilities and i really do not want my two girls to become a statistic we have been hearing a lot lately in our community about visual supports and symbol supports while the district has been considering the approval and use of this adapted sexual health curriculum the use of visual supports is a research-based best practice teaching strategy for those living

030with communication and cognitive challenges when implemented appropriately visual supports allow students with special needs to access the general education curriculum according to a 2000 journal art 2006 journal article by rao and gaggy visual supports and symbols help to make abstract concepts more visually concrete and understandable for those with learning challenges visual supports and civil supports are used daily in our life skills classrooms symbols are a lifeline for individuals with communication disabilities enabling unique learners to understand the world around them and to express their thoughts and needs symbols help students develop as communicators and readers empowering them to understand information to voice opinions to make choices the visual supports that are included in the p3 curriculum are copyright protected they are really only solely intended for instructional use by special education teachers and for special education

031students with the permission and knowledge of their parents and guardians the visual supports are not meant to be taken out of context they're not meant to be isolated they're not meant to be reprinted for unintended purposes it's misappropriation and personally to me it's very offensive what i like about this program is that it showed a delay in the onset of sexual activity and it increases student parent communication around sexual health issues that to me is very important other objectives of the curriculum including learning refusal skills for students and also helping to create positive attitudes towards abstinence this curriculum isn't just about keeping my son from becoming a victim it's also about educating him about appropriate and inappropriate touching and behavior so he is never labeled a predator 16 states are already using or reviewing the

032curriculum as of right now this curriculum has nothing to do with red states versus blue states as you can see from the graphic positive prevention plus is about giving the students the tools and knowledge to understand their bodies and safety surrounding their own reproductive and sexual health positive prevention plus curriculum is already under consideration for implementation and or is already being used in at least five michigan school districts but we are choosing not to name the district specifically to respect the individual consideration adoption and implementation processes by those school districts and their respective sexual education advisory boards this graphic and that of the previous slide is to offer perspective on the misinformation that p3 is only a california-based curriculum from internal professional development conversations and discussion amongst our life skills staff members it's important to

033note that a hundred percent of our saline life skills education teachers support the need for an adapted and modified comprehensive sexual health curriculum to use with our approximately 120 life skills students the recommendation of the pre-three curriculum to be considered for approval by our board of education trustees is the culmination of three years of work three years of work studying reviewing and vetting potential curriculum products p3 has been reviewed by our most experienced special education staff in collaboration with the cab we would like to share a quote with you from one of our life skills teachers for the last five to seven years i've heard parents say they'd like a reproductive health curriculum that teaches all students especially those with special needs information that will keep them healthy and safe i've worked with students that

034have special needs my entire career and this is an area we could do much better in i am in support of a curriculum built for my students that takes into account their specific needs this quote from a life skills teacher speaks to the specific needs for a multi-sensory instruction that includes visual supports not found in the currently used gen ed curriculum curriculum excuse me a very important aspect of this curriculum is that any or all of it can be opted out of parents get approval of all modules before implementation if a parent doesn't want their student student learning about anal sex they can exclude that from the lesson nothing about this is mandatory but if we do not adopt this curriculum the life skills students will continue to go without any health and sexual education

035this curriculum can be tailored based on the student's iep everything about this curriculum is able to be adapted and modified per the individual student's iep each module can be focused per student need or excluded per parent desire for example if a student needs to be taught an individual module multiple times in order to understand it that can be accomplished as well as if a student isn't ready for a certain module it can be delayed until later in their school career when parents and teachers agree it is appropriate to be introduced to each particular student we'd like to now share with you some quote infographics that we've gathered from life-skilled community members from their parents on this slide we we read from a middle school life skills program from a single mother i realized that basic

036human development and sexuality can be an uncomfortable topic for some people but discomfort over openly discussing these important issues only puts my son and many others at a much greater risk of harm as a mom this is not about conservative versus liberal religious versus secular democrat versus republican this is about the safety of our children this is from a mom in the student in the sms life skills program while we believe that parents are the first resource for our young adults and children we fully trust the recommendation of the cab and support those who are advocating for the adoption of this sex education program for our young adults it will help all of us this is from a parent of a student in the young adult program all students have the right to learning in

037the way that is least restrictive for them and that meets them where their communication needs are this is from a parent of a student in the young adult program our students deserve and are legally entitled to a full free and appropriate public education our board of education should focus on the unique and complex needs of this very specific group of students and their families and adopt this curriculum for life skills and yap students this is from a parent that had a former student in the life skills program my son is part of the vulnerable special education population that opposing groups want to keep innocent what he needs instead is a structured program that reinforces self-care socially acceptable behave behaviors and recognizing abusive behaviors in simple terms he understands from another parent in the young adult

038program the school district has a responsibility to assist special ed students with their growth and development sexuality is part of that growth educators should have the appropriate resources and supports to modify and adapt program this from a mom in the high school life skills program here's mine there it is i got it i have read questions from people in and outside of the community such as why can't the parents teach am i wrong teach their kids at home if they want this type of curriculum why do they need visuals this isn't appropriate for children this is pornography and several other ableist comments that quite frankly i find offensive first of all i do talk to my children about sex i answer any and all questions that my neurotypical son has asked me i'm honest and

039respectful and meet him where he is at i do not exclude my autistic son from these conversations he is often in the same room listening to everything being discussed but that is not enough he needs an actual curriculum that can help him to understand better the conversations being had at home and actively participate in them maybe this curriculum is not what some desire for their child and that's fine that is their choice taking away my choice for my song is wrong i'm tired of my son being a pawn in this argument most of those opposing this do not have a child that qualifies for this curriculum most of the arguments people have stem from propaganda being put out that is purposely false and misleading because so many have admittedly not reviewed the curriculum for themselves

040i am standing here as a mother of a 12 year old autistic boy that is non-verbal and a visual learner asking you to approve this curriculum he is someone who needs more than just his parents helping him to learn he needs his whole community sorry and that community consists of me his dad his brother and his teachers he doesn't have the same community that so many other 12 year olds have of people who have kids in the school he doesn't have friends like his brother does he also doesn't understand social cues things that are implied and he doesn't learn like a neurotypical 12 year old having a child with special needs is a is very difficult at times but it is also one of the most rewarding things i have ever done in my life

041when my son laughs it's amazing when he smiles it lights up the room and fills my heart he is the reason i'm here tonight speaking in front of a crowd yet again something i hate doing but i'm doing it because there's nothing more important to me than the health and safety in my of my children and i will never stop fighting for them thank you the last slide that we have is an example of symbol supported text it's how many of our life skills students are able to work on literacy experience discussion and participate in daily classroom curriculum it is also how many of them would be able to say thank you we all say thank you to our teachers who work tirelessly to team and collaborate for our life skills students and families we

042cannot do it without you and thank you for listening thank you daisy and kelly thank you for your comments and thank you also to um to our public for being respectful of their time as well i appreciate that um i'm going to move forward with the next portion of the agenda for public comment that we take 30 minutes up front i do have a stack here i'm going to take the first 10 i have 13 so those three will go to the second public comment and any others that are collected by betty yankee sitting in the back by the time we get to the end of um by the time we get to the uh time for second public comment um we take these in order of received and number one is arlita greer parent

043d-e-i-a-c arlita is that how i pronounce your name yes actually you got it right okay thank you so just a reminder um secretary e-step for the three-minute we'll show the yellow at 30 seconds and then the red card if you could just complete your sentence or thought and then be respectful of the time here thank you thank you this is a statement that was written up by the diversity equity inclusion advisory committee for the saline area schools dear celine area school board of education on behalf of saline area schools diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee we wish to express our full support and faith both in the research that has been done by the sexual education advisory board and in their proposed positive prevention plus curriculum for celine's life skill and young adult program students

044the mission of the dei ac is to create an educational environment that is diverse equitable and inclusive of all of our students this curriculum is extremely important for the education and safety of our special needs population the current absence of an adequate and appropriate sexual education curriculum for the life skill and young adult saline area school student population represents a serious concern for equity and stands in the way of the goal of inclusivity we urge the board to approve the sexual education advisory board's proposed positive prevention plus curriculum we believe it is a necessary step in protecting this vulnerable population by teaching them what they need to know in order to better understand their rights and how to deal with life as adults with their special capabilities respectfully the saline area school diversity equity and

045inclusion advisory committee including members arlita greer melissa zasik kenyatta hughes laura washington lauren hornberger shannon washington kate schmidt tiffany alexander terry pickett danita warren bridget sparks amy teslin heather finch and corey bellot thank you carlita thank you for your comments um second is david hayward parent i didn't expect to be uh appearing so early in the running order um i'm here to speak in favor of the um policy the curriculum that we've been hearing about i hardly need to reiterate everything that was said in support already this is an evidence-based curriculum which is already being used throughout the country in a number of different states both similar to ours and different from ours its effectiveness has been demonstrated in published research in various uh respected academic journals sexual education is particularly imperative for this group

046of students because they are at such high risk as we've heard and education reduces that risk in some this is exactly the kind of program that we should be aspiring to in the district it's something that's tailored to the specific developmental needs of a group of students and it's something that addresses uh needs that are unmet um hardly seems like we should need to have this discussion um i didn't expect to uh to go further but since we've heard a lengthy digression already about the existence of transgender people and what uh is or is not appropriate which seems to be a very tiny tiny proportion of this uh curriculum nevertheless um we've heard a lot of of uh misleading and inaccurate statements both today and in previous meetings regarding transgender issues and i feel the

047need to use a bit of my time to address that first of all we are not new transgenderism is not uh transgender and non-binary identities are not something that has uh sprung out of some kind of uh uh progressive hive mind um on the contrary these uh cultures across the world on every single continent and throughout recorded history have recognized the existence of trans and non-binary identities um we are not new we're not the product of social media we are not the product of ideology um secondly our identities are not pathological and it would be harmful not to uh provide students with correct information about sorry i'm almost out of time and the fact is things are not as simple as we'd be led to believe by what we might misremember from our sixth grade

048biology classes and uh in fact trans and non-binary people do exist and their reality deserves to be heard in the curriculum throughout the schools thank you david thank you for your comments the third public comment we have is tiffany alexander parent hello i have limited time so i'm going to speak fast i have to say i'd like to say i was surprised but i'm not that when we talk about back door things how we just use the back door to swit to uh bring in a whole bunch of transphobia um so it seems like that maybe that's what really this is about uh so first of all i'd like to talk about from many of the parents that i've spoken within this community as somebody who has advocated for special needs kids in this community

049many families it's hard for them to come here they can't always get child care and they can't always bring their kids so sometimes you don't hear from them for accessibility reasons uh one parent urged me to encourage you to open it back up on zoom so that they could speak um so i'll start with that secondly i want to say the level of misrepresentation here is amazing first of all when i got here i spoke to people who thought they were coming here in order because the school sent out a leaflet to be here at 5 30. i had to explain no that is not the school that sent that out that encouraged you to vote no against their own board a lot of the information that's out there is grossly inaccurate so let's start

050with that uh we've heard that this is a leftist ideology we can disprove that because this has been used in states and is currently used in oklahoma and georgia hardly leftist bastions so first of all let's start with we don't make decisions based on false information and misrepresentation the apart the part of this curriculum that even has anything to do with gender inclusivity is so small bringing that into this is is it clearly just shows you where the mindset actually is and it just comes back to transphobia now i'm gonna get personal for one second which i had no intention on doing the whole point of this is to protect these kids now when i was 12 i was raped by two men and it took me over a decade to process that that's what

051happened to me um i didn't even process it as rape so i never reported and i am that was when i was 12 i'm almost 43 it is far too late for me to report so if that happened to me and i don't have these learning challenges what is going to happen to these kids if they do not have concrete accessible curriculum we know this works because it's evidence-based and peer-reviewed and when i say what's going to happen we've already seen what's going to happen on that screen they're much more likely to be sexually assaulted i encourage you to please pass this thank you for your time tiffany thank you for your comments um our fourth person is amanda k parent okay all right thank you tiffany for which i am very pleased to read

052okay dear board i am writing you as a parent and professional the sexual health education curriculum for life skills and young adult students and my basis for supporting it i have lived in the sas district since 2007 my two daughters are in the district at the middle of high school and have been in the district as active students since my oldest started kindergarten in 2011. my children will graduate from saline my primary reason for moving to and living in saline is because of the schools this curriculum does not affect my children but i would support it even if it did however the primary focus of this letter is for me to provide my professional opinion for you to consider i am a licensed clinical psychologist by the state of michigan i have been licensed since

0532011. i worked for the government for the entirety of me and my licensed career and focus on treating underserved populations i worked for the center of forensic psychiatry as a forensic psychologist for nine years the forensic center is the sole maximum security psychiatric hospital in the state of michigan in my work at the forensic center i evaluated defendants accused of crimes for competency to stand trial and legal insanity i also worked in the treatment of individuals adjudicated as incompetent to stand trial not guilty by reason of insanity on one of the mail admissions units michigan's legal system and state hospitals have become holding areas for far too many michigans mentally and intellectually disabled due to the lack of proper mental health resources throughout our state we have in many ways let our most vulnerable citizens

054down more times than i can count i have either evaluated or treated an individual who committed criminal sexual conduct against persons with mental disability or have treated and evaluated individuals with mental disorder who were accused of perpetuating criminal sexual conduct most of these incidents speak to the ways in which we have failed these vulnerable citizens the american psychological association speaks to the need for sexual education for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities sex and intellectualdisabilitiesapa.org is a great resource research shows that individuals with these disabilities show far less understanding of sexuality than their adolescent and young adult peers a lack of sex education makes this population more vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies stds individuals with these disabilities are 4.6 times more likely to be sexually abused these individuals also need education in self-advocacy skills to be

055able to communicate what they want and deal with challenging situations this curriculum should also provide information for individuals with mental disability to have positive attitudes about sexuality to empower them in their decisions it is worthy to note that often individuals with disability struggles with abstract thinking and need curriculum and education that is as concrete direct and as visual as possible this is also true in trying to restore individuals with cognitive disability to competency to stand trial we parents school administrators teachers all have a duty sorry i didn't get to finish but i think you understand her point thank you for reading [Applause] our next commenter fifth is dave rosenfeld resident and former parent hello my name is dave and my pronouns are he him his i just wanted to voice my support tonight for the

056new positive prevention plus curriculum that is being recommended by our sex advisory board for students in the life skills and young adult adult programs i myself do not have any kids with disabilities but i have several friends and loved ones who do and they unanimously and vigorously support the adoption of this professionally developed and evidence-based curriculum as was the case with the transgender and non-binary students policy this is another situation where on the one hand you have the majority of parents of the students who are actually going to be most impacted by your decision asking you to do one thing and on the other hand a very small group of very loud community members is demanding that you do the opposite and once again i ask that you center the voices of the compassionate parents

057when making this very impactful decision i personally am blown away by the sacrifices these parents make and the unconditional love and dedication they have for their children i cannot fathom how others are unaffected emotionally by their circumstances please please help these wonderful parents keep their wonderful kids happy and safe by adopting the ppp curriculum and if i have a minute that's all i had you know planned to say but like one of the earlier commenters i just feel compelled to respond to to some of the things that were said earlier about transgender students i wasn't planning on talking about trans under students tonight because that was last meeting this is about the the life skills curriculum and that is only a very very minor aspect uh gender identity is a minor aspect of that is

058my understanding uh but i just i feel like i have to respond the gentleman earlier who claimed to be a therapist of some kind uh talking about the evidence you know what he sounded what he said sounded very scientific it sounded convincing if you don't know any better but i'm here to tell you that i know better because for the last seven years since i first found out that my middle child might be trans i have been seeking out all of the best evidence all of the best scientific you know i've read all the best scientific literature all the best educational literature about best practices in education uh when it uh with as it's related to transgender students and i can tell you that virtually everything he said about that subject was false there's a

059mountain of evidence that proves the contrary to what he said and that evidence is only growing every day thank you dave thank you for your comments um number six is cheryl girvin celine parent i'm going to be reading for cheryl sling board of education trustees my name is cheryl girvin i am a resident of saline where i have lived for 15 years i have a son who attends saline high school i am writing to you today to speak in favor of the proposed positive prevention plus sexual education program for the life skills students in the saline school district who attend either saline middle school saline high school or in the young adult program i am asking each of you to vote yes to approve the adoption of this curriculum your affirmation your affirmative vote for

060adoption of this policy will help educate those students in selene's special needs population by providing them with a form of communication they understand written spoken or imagery in order to help protect themselves from sexual predators aid them in independent living by empowering them to administer self-care and to avoid criminal consequences by educating them as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in today's society this vulnerable population of saline students need the support and protection of the sling area schools board of trustees administration and teaching staff please use your vote to help ensure this policy's adoption by saline area schools thank you cheryl girvin i also want to take a time to thank betty yankee for all of her dedication and work here in saline schools i know this is really tough for you

061viva thank you for reading that comment [Applause] our seventh individual is donald calucci uncle and resident thank you i will be very brief because i would otherwise just be parroting what we've said before i came here uh before i moved to salinas several years ago i was you know interested to hear about california law house kind of like demonized i was a practicing attorney in california for over 25 years and do not find the culture here all that different even though i was in san francisco right in the heart of the bay area where i practice and private practice in the city attorney's office and one thing i found in san francisco is it was a haven for a lot of trans and trans folks and lgbtqia in general because they were fleeing fleeing the

062communities where they grew up where they were not received where they did not get support where they did not get what they needed now again this is just on the gay trans issues and not the special ed but this pro california is it's not the people's republic of california it is demonized to be if this policy came out of there it's a good one as seen by georgia texas oklahoma arizona not left-wing bastions and it is needed to shield kids from predators so they know when they're being improperly approached or touched to give them health education although to teach them how to behave when in public what not to do so as to be targeted as predators or perverts or whatever and it is really just for 120 kids here that's been portrayed in opposing

063comments as the thin and thin end of the wedge that will bring it throughout the entire population of students and there's no basis in fact to believe that and there's also some questions about the legality of this there were just vague questions about this whether you know this might be compliance with california law or some other jurisdictions but just an open question about whether or not it complies with michigan law without any statements that it is not or a reason that it is not its allegations and there was some allegations that this policy might be in violation of the board of ed's own policies but again the board is in the best position to evaluate that and thank you for this time donald thank you for your comments um our eighth individual is timothy adzinger

064previous parent hi thanks for the time uh this is a shortened version of a letter that i sent at the board about two weeks ago i am the parent of four children now adults who have gone through the saline school system one of whom is anna adsinger my daughter who just graduated from the young adult program a year ago after becoming aware of the proposal to adopt the the p3 curriculum for special needs students the latin phrase cui bono or who benefits came to mind it's not clear after reading the details how celine's special needs students or their parents or guardians would benefit from this approach to teaching sex education i tried to think of the most basic and most non-controversial reason one might propose teaching sex ed to special needs students and i came

065up with to ensure that special needs students and teachers have a common platform from which to learn about sex but even this simple assumption is faulty a standardized sex education curriculum assumes that special needs students are at similar intellectual emotional sensory physical and even spiritual levels as parents and special needs teachers know the special needs community while often lumped together is much more dislike than a like if there ever was a subject that required precise individualized instruction it is sex education in the special needs population while teachers and parents do their best to adjust various curricula to meet the vast range of capabilities of special needs students via the iep process the subject of sex education is so individualized and sensitive as you can see by the attendance here at this meeting that if one

066were to aggregate the ieps after they were all completed the original curriculum would be totally unrecognizable therefore i recommend that that that these students be exempted from sex education regardless of the content of the curriculum thank you for your time timothy thank you for your comment um our next commenter is michelle teichert parent taxpayer from the saline parents group hi thank you so much for your time tonight um i want to begin by thank you for this opportunity to speak and thank you for taking the time to listen as you can see we are not a small group we are here tonight in force to try and show you that there are many voices in this community and that all of them need to be listened to um i'm here tonight to speak about the

067sex ed program and to ask you to please consider a different one as i've been listening to the needs of parents who have been speaking tonight it's very clear that a new program is needed a program that really speaks to the needs of the special education students in our community but this is not the program we need a program that complies with the goals and the values that are in our community both the hopes for a more compassionate inclusive one as spoken by parents on one side and one that is more factual and more more sensitive to the true needs of individuals as this is spoken on the other side we need to we all need to feel heard and listen to we need a school board that's made of members who truly listen to

068each of us and not just to their own opinions i've not always felt listened to as a member of this community and i hope that you will please please take the time to listen to each of us who are here tonight even though not all of us have gotten a chance to speak at this podium tonight please listen to the scores of people who are standing that you can't see because there's not enough room please listen to the people who can't be here tonight the parents of the special ed students who wish they could be here but can't please also consider that our children are also pawns in this decision it's not just the children who are who are experiencing um needs for special education please consider that we don't make decisions based on misreputation

069misrepresentation or false ideas and we're trying to convey truth we're trying to convey the truth about what we believe we're trying to convey and respect the truth of what others believe as well we want a program that ministers to the needs of the 120 kids but one that's been more carefully considered one that complies with the goals of this the michigan state department of education and one that is cognizant of the fact that even though this curriculum has been developed and others excuse me accepted in other states it's not been accepted by the entire state it might just be one city in georgia it might just be one city in texas it might just be two school districts in oklahoma please don't generalize please don't call us uncompassionate please don't call us transphobic when what

070we're here for is a desire for a better curriculum but not this one thank you so much for your time thank you for your comment um number ten uh this will be our last person in um in the first public comment section suzanne edsinger parent and previous seab member my name is suzanne atzinger parent of four children that attended salinari schools my daughter anna received special special education services from preschool through young adult program leaving in 2019 anna is a visual learner i am not in favor of this curriculum i respectfully ask the board of education to vote no on the proposed positive prevention plus curriculum positive prevention plus is a comprehensive sex education curriculum i am stuck on one question as it relates to the process why are we reviewing and recommending a comprehensive

071curriculum when saline area schools has historically been an abstinence-based district since at least 1997 when my family moved to this district i have inquired and the explanations i have received have not been satisfactory let me be clear i am not faulting any specific person or the sex ed advisory board i have served on this board in the past and i appreciate the difficulty of the role and purpose of the members of this board i do know there has been some jumbling of terms definitions and approach at the michigan department of education level related to sex education curriculum as a result this is causing confusion misinformation and a lack of transparency at the saline area schools level there is an entity that goes much deeper than the michigan department of education that is highly motivated to

072push through the agenda of a comprehensive curriculum at all costs this entity is planned parenthood planned parenthood does not have the best interest of our children and mine there is a sexual indoctrination through planned parenthood comprehensive type sex education comprehensive curriculum was created in the 1970s by dr mary calderon who was the medical director of planned parenthood because of time limitation i have laid out some rather bold statements there is no way i could expand on these statements in three minutes that is why i am utilizing one of the norms of our newly adopted saline bridge disability the recommendation to engage directly i have invited any member or all members of the board of education to discuss further i also invite anyone in attendance that is interested in what i have said that is confused

073by what i have said or is in disagreement of what i have said to engage directly with me by utilizing norm number six of the saline bridge disability which states we assert that the setting for conversations matters we will make every effort to engage others directly and not through social media which tends to make the conflict worse so i welcome the opportunity to face to face com conversation genuine authentic and civil dialogue my contact is at singer at comcast.net if you don't have time to write that down please find me after the meeting thank you thank you suzanne for your comment um that concludes our first portion of public comment and i wanted to thank everyone again for allowing each individual member of this community who wish to come forward to feel listened to thank

074you very much um moving on to response from previous public comment as you may guess we have been receiving a lot of emails most of them are about the proposal that we'll be discussing tonight so we will we will get into that shortly we also received a lot of emails and support of the passing of the transgender and non-binary students policy so from last week so thank you for that and we have been engaging in dialogue on crossing walk signage and staffing on woodland drive near heritage school and woodland meadows school and we thank our friends with the city of saline and the saline police department who are taking it further in follow-up so thank you to them moving on to item number five please revisions or approval of agenda i'd like to please entertain

075a motion to approve the agenda as printed items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and where the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further i'd like to entertain a motion please to approve the agenda as printed first by dennis thank you second by candace thank you all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 uh moving on to student showcase uh julian downey our student representative to the board of education would you like to take it away uh so today we have the cad club here to present um for those who don't know we have a very strong cad club they've received a lot of awards and compete in a

076lot of competitions and have won quite a few so we have max stewart carter harris and colin bloor here to present hi welcome everybody always good to have students um the mic might still be on so if you see the green light you're ready to go whenever whenever you desire to hello my name is max stewart and i'm here with carter harris and callum bloor and i'm here to present about the saline high school cad club next slide please thank you uh so what what is cad uh cad is an acronym that stands for either computer-aided drafting or computer-aided design this includes 3d solid modeling on a computer creating drawings or blueprints for the parts that you model as well as architectural drafting which includes creating floor plans for buildings and rendering them in a

0773d environment next slide please what do we do at cad club at cad club we collaborate and help each other with both assignments in class as well as creative personal projects we hold student-led discussions about problems that we encounter along the way we also have the ability to work independently on other assignments that are not collaborative and we also inspire our peers and students to excel at what they do and to try new things cad club also presents the opportunity for students to compete in competitions such as mites or skills usa next slide please so in cad club we can do 3d printing and basically what that does is just you can make something on the computer and turn it into real life so you don't have to start a computer screen when you make

078your projects so it's a lot more hands-on and what cad club does with that is it's a lot more accessible to the cad clip kids 3d printing was usually just accessible for second hour manufacturing students but now cad club members can 3d print their projects next slide please so how's it going so far we've had a great success so far um what we're doing right now is meeting one day a week kind of as our formal meeting and then we're having open labs every day so it's very flexible and we're trying to give the most people the opportunity to participate even those that don't necessarily have a cad class in their schedule or have the opportunity to take one of those classes about 48 students signed up right now and we're kind of really getting

079into it now so we're happy with that in the next slide so max briefly touched on it a minute ago but one thing i'd really like to emphasize is competitions and the opportunity we provide students to compete through cad club you can see a picture from the last time we competed as a class not from cad club because it didn't exist yet at uh might in 2019 um if you're going to the next slide so mites is the main competition that students have the opportunity to compete in through cad club it's the michigan industrial technology education society and what they do is each and every year they host a project-based competition for students across high school middle school to compete in the competition is very project based with students given a lot of creative freedom

080for pretty much to do whatever we want um the categories are broad so things like single part assembly drawing like rendering 3d models or animations too so really students can create anything they want well some more examples of some of those things in just a minute so uh once again this is something that was previously only available to students who took the year-long consortium clad class and this is obviously not something that all students have the opportunity to do it's a class that's had a waitlist for a number of years and just something that many students don't have three tries to commit to that so really we're trying to promote the accessibility of students to compete in these competitions through cad club for really anyone that's interested in going to the next slide so um

081this is a competition we've done very well in in the past and we're proud of that um you get plaques for it for first second and third place at the state level the last time we competed which was in 2019 we got 56 of them so we're pretty proud of that across a wide range of categories we've done very very well for the past few years and we're excited to give other students an opportunity to showcase their skills because even those that aren't taking year-on-classes really are competitive at this state level compared to other schools with the skills they're learning in class and in fact club on the next slide uh so here are some examples of what students are creating uh not just in cad class but also in the year-long cad class if

082we go to the next slide uh so the first picture is um something that turned into mites of what carter just touched on a minute ago they got uh that got turned into mites and i think it won it got a plaque but it didn't win first place also the second picture on the top right um those are working draw or just drawings we are very good um at making drawings look very hard or very hard drawings look very simple as i meant sorry um but yeah we were very good at that and i think those also won uh some plaques so they came first in the state the bottom left is an animation of a vertical twin steam engine it has somewhere near 50 to 60 parts you can find these in old cars

083but um yeah it's very impressive i think all of us made this last year as a team in four but one person could do this easily still yeah just add on to the vertical twin steam engine too that i reckon could win in mites but this was just a project that we did in the class and it was very impressive um at the bottom right is a bowling alley that our um architectural pad students have made this bowling alley was actually modeled off of a real bowling alley i don't know where it was i'm not an architecture student so i wouldn't know but it's really impressive i think and it wouldn't be possible if our teacher wouldn't have gotten very um powerful computers this year we can run a software called illumion and this basically

084just makes it very easy or not easy but more accessible to make higher quality buildings cleo the next slide here are just some more drawings and pictures of things that have one in mites or states in the top left you have a pool table that was modeled and took a long time to make a very long time and it won in states uh first place in um a single part uh realistic rendering next to that to the right of it you have batman so what our teacher does is just gives us a project and we can make anything we want and this is another creative project they gave us this was also entered in the states along with everything else on here uh it didn't win somehow right but it was uh very close i

085think everyone thinks it should have won bottom left is a 48 tooth spur gear this was a project we did last year and it is very challenging all of our class got it correct even with missing dimensions on the drawing we collaborate a lot on that so we got it done bottom right another architectural cad drawing this looks very impressive this is an airport where students went to go to an airport for a day for a school trip and modeled off of a real airport and it looks stunning to me next slide please okay so of course bring it back to the compass too if we want to go back to the next side um the first three of these i kind of like to tie all together into one which is collaboration critical thinking

086and creative innovation so really whether it be the um projects we create for mites where we have basically creative freedom to turn in whatever we want or some of the broader projects in class that we're given um such as like broad things like create a musical instrument make a pez dispenser make a go-cart um where we're basically just given that and then the internet is our resource to figure out what we want to make it on so we really have a lot of creative freedom to do what we want and critical thinking required to how do we take this and turn it into a 2d and 3d model with that too um through critical thinking collaboration um there really is no one way to do a cad part even the more technical parts that we

087do in class and certainly the creative projects there's a million different ways to model them and it's really a challenge in itself decoding what these 2d drawings are actually supposed to look like in 3d took a lot of collaboration between the students to figure out what how did you model this how did you model that and really helping each other and deciding as a class what the best way that we're all going to approach something is beyond this too uh touch on digitally illiterate not only are we using just computers to do cad we're using the same software to the same national standards that are used in industry across the country so students really can build up their skills they'll be helpful future jobs future cad classes in college and really a plethora of other

088opportunities and more than anything too it's just a community we do as much hanging out as we do cad and it provides just an opportunity for people to get support from those with a bit more experience than they can if they're struggling help others if they like doing that and just kind of hang out have a good time while we do get i think we have one other video just kind of to tie it together [Music] okay really really well done excellent excellent job anyone um any trustees julian have any any um comments for our students oh yeah i i could see michael like underneath your mask you're salivating i have a 3d printer in my office i can't live without it and i can find all my computer cables now because of some of

089the projects i made i just wanted to say in ninth when i was in grade nine or ninth grade however you say it here um i remember sitting at a drafting table in high school and making these little you know just starting the basics i was 20 years too too early for computer assisted drawing and when autodesk came out with the first computer assisted drawing program i i realized if if i had just if i'd been born 20 years later i might have had a different career and i just want to say congratulations on all the work to bring those students in they may not they might not be in the actual full year sw the consortium classes but they'll certainly get inspired to maybe carry on and take more classes after they left high

090school so thanks very much for setting that up i really appreciate that thank you thank you i'll just add on to that real quick um although kind of you touched on hand drawings um it's kind of often the threat of punishment used if um we're late with projects as a class but it's still something we definitely do one of our most uh successful mites categories every year is doing hand drawings um for parts for assemblies for models and it's something some students really enjoy and have a great opportunity to win plaques with hi guys all right so it sounds like you have a tremendous you kept saying my teacher my advisor who who is this individual that we should recognize uh steve vasilov he's the cad teacher at the high school he's really done great

091he gives us a lot of freedom to kind of do what we want and really figure out things at our own pace well bravo and i will tell you the thing that it stands out for me when i look at the pictures when i look at the things i look at all the things that are available to our students from a technology standpoint and a lot of the community has helped us to support and to do those things and what have you so i'm so glad that we have these opportunities to be able to provide these real experiences for for these students who are obviously excelling and doing wonderful things um you said might so 2021 mites is there i assume there's a competition and where is it going to be so we're just kind

092of starting picking drawings and everything right now and we basically more work on them in class or cad club and then our kind of submission deadline is in the spring i believe early april and then they'll kind of just get all loaded up uh taken and judged and then we'll find out the results few days later and then my last thing and i've done this for other groups too do you want to make an appeal for any type of assistance or funding or any kind of thing that you might need to make those things happen our teacher would definitely want us to take advantage of this but um i don't know we've been really lucky the past few years to get all brand new computers um for the chad room they're all brand new machines

093for a manufacturing program and a grant from the foundation um last year to purchase all the 3d printers so we've already been very fortunate um in supporting what we do that's the foundation for saline area schools for anyone looking for ann hurst isn't here so i'll give them a give them a shout out thank you for mentioning them thank you can i actually add on to that um our in our min year-long manufacturing class we just got four brand new machines which are really expensive so i'm really thankful that people actually want to give us the machines anyone else oh yeah jenny just wondering if you're planning on um pursuing any the three of you if you're planning on pursuing using these skills um it seems like a class of 20 20 22. so the

094future is looming so uh wondering if you have future plans in this area so i guess i can talk well sorry uh yes i am pursuing mechanical engineering in college and i'm very excited about that um i also just got an opportunity for mr vassal off too to have an actual part-time job in high school doing exactly what we're doing in class it's what really is a he has people coming to his class every year and really students can get a job out of high school doing exactly what we're doing um in class so it's an opportunity for everyone who wants one uh i actually graduate next year so i don't know what i'm doing well congratulations to all of you thank you good luck thank you thank you everybody thank you really really well

095done um moving on to item number seven our scheduled report on continue to learn plan for our 2021-22 academic school year dr lodge well i'd like to start by thanking carter max and callum for that wonderful presentation and just generally the work with the cad club and it also shows the great support we have for our career and technical education program here's students that are taking advantage of being able to participate in the consortium at the cte programs also potentially accessing career opportunities through that and we talk a lot about the importance of real life learning connections to the compass we really see that here from a presentation like that so thank you very much so tonight the salinary schools continue to learn update we're going to start with our covet update and then move

096into a presentation about our wonderful kindergarten teachers and program so we start here we look at where we're at throughout the county we're still in that high transmission phase but we have seen a decline lately and i did i have gotten some inquiries from parents and community members about how wausana county is certainly doing better than many of the areas across the state which is wonderful to see we're still in that high transmission phase but we're in a better spot than many of the areas within the state and then people have asked the question about well where are we going with this transmission phase and and just to confirm that i have been in communication with the washington county health department in terms of these transmission phases and their intention is that if when we

097were to move into a more moderate phase that it would take 14 days before they would then allow districts to move into their continue to learn plans which to refresh ours would be that in low and moderate phases we would have mass optional so i just want to point out that this is where we're at now but the intention is that we would get to implement our continue to learn plan if we are to move into some of those other phases okay next slide please this is really good news this is our dashboard we continue to do very well unlimited number of covet cases and limited number of close contacts you look at this quarantine chart and what you're seeing is not a lot of activity unlike some other school districts around us that have

098struggled in keeping buildings open with with a fair amount of spread in a number of cases the community as a whole is doing an excellent job of mitigation strategies and i want to commend everybody for working together to make sure that we are working on our primary goal which is to keep students in school five days a week and we're feeling very successful with that at this point we go to the next slide i do want to point out we're moving into a potential different vaccination phase and people have asked me about is it the school district's duty to promote the vaccination process the well the answer from the mdhs is is yes and the way in which we are doing that though is making sure that there's opportunities for students to get vaccinated however

099we are certainly not pressing on our teachers for example to be asking students hey have you been vaccinated or not we are we are providing opportunities and we'll continue to do that as it appears that fda is getting ready to approve potentially today the vaccination process for five to 11 year olds and that we already are in conjunction with the washington county health department to offer vaccination clinics at heritage being our designated site for parents who want their students to be vaccinated so i just wanted to provide that update as we move on to the next slide we'll get into our teaching and learning and the compass i've been putting this slide up each time because i want to point out that our goals for the year will remain the same in terms of focus

100on the sas compass we saw a great representation of that tonight from our students in presenting their cad club and how that provides connection personalizing educational experiences providing social emotional support and these real world experiences so we're trying to make certain that all of our presentations are focused around those key goals so we go to the next slide this is where we're going to talk about kindergarten today and for those of you who have been in education for a while you know the critical importance of kindergarten it's really where the foundation is laid for so many students and it's a difficult time for well for students transitioning sometimes because some students are coming in with very limited knowledge which is completely fine in terms of maybe not knowing their letters yet other students are coming

101in with a base knowledge of already being able to read some and so our teachers do an excellent job of differentiating in fact if you want to watch differentiation and action go visit a kindergarten classroom to see exactly how that's playing out we talk about foundation skills and reading that's a real key building that phonemic awareness making sure that our students know some of these basics that are important to put all the skills together to become readers and if we go to the next slide this talks about how it's important that we're learning sight words we're also looking at movement movement is proven time and time again to better support brain activity and make sure that our students are having opportunities to use movement and learning and our kindergarten teachers do an excellent job of

102that with opportunities for song and so forth if we go to the next slide we look at writing in our writing program again it talks a lot about foundational skills because that's what we're trying to do we're trying to lay the foundation so that students can become proficient readers and writers that all starts at the kindergarten level and you look again it's it's familiar first and last names capital lowercase letters building on words and sentences at this level a lot of that has a connection with drawing and again movement if we go to the next slide we talk about how the kindergarten teachers have done a terrific job in integrating technology we saw a lot of that last year in particular but a lot of use with ipads especially when we were in hybrid and

103virtual learning but even now we're using ipads quite a bit and we use programs such as rad's kids that's to provide reading opportunities for kids at different levels e-spark in terms of using reading and writing reading and math in terms of e-spark and building more of those foundation skills and then see-saw is our management platform where teachers do a terrific job of integrating lessons and activities in there then we look at our math program everyday math is the curriculum being used kindergarten through sixth grade we talk about repetition exploration building a base here a lot of that is done through playing math games we spoke about the importance of movement playing games getting the students interacting together that's very important part here and that using manipulatives hands-on to start teaching math counting and so forth

104and our kindergarten teachers do just a terrific job of that and i want to commend them for laying the base you know we look at um carter max and callum and you know that there you look at their proficiency um as young adults and being able to operate in such a terrific manner at the high school that those skills are laid at the very very beginning we talk a lot about proficiency in reading and writing is the is a critical nature before third grade because that's building the base to be able to access all those compass skills that those um that that max carter and callum were talking about earlier and so just want to commend our kindergarten staff all our elementary teachers however today we just really wanted to focus on kindergarten as the

105importance of laying foundational skills questions susan um can you clarify on well two things um clarify on the washing off the next phase so the low to moderate so it's a mass or optional is that still the age certain age age range well it would be after the vaccination process would be allowed for 5 to 11. so we've stated in our plan that once that phase once we move through that phase and the opportunity to have been vaccinated in that five to eleven-year-old phase is complete then we would open up the mask optional possibility at the low and moderate transmission phases across the board and and that's the potential when those cases drop below 100 cases per 100 000. okay so the opportunity the time frame that they would have been vaccinated by correct yeah

106you'd have to wait till that window um is exhausted in other words the the time between a first and the second dose and then and then whatnot where um you would then say okay now the entire population of students is eligible for that phase if it were to occur and that's what we had built into our continue to learn plan oh and then sorry my second thing all of the kindergarten stuff that uh you're talking about is my kendrick gardner's everyday um experience and learning to write her name and bringing you know doing the popcorn words and things like that so um they do a lot and um seem to be enjoying it so which is great that's what we want to hear other thoughts other thoughts or comments for steve okay i'm really happy

107to see the kindergartners back in the classroom yeah that's great to see yeah thank you thank you okay moving on to our first our action item number eight um because we don't yet know who who the treasurer may be i'm going to entertain a motion please to a point a treasurer for saline area schools board of education so we can open up that conversation candice thank you jenny support thank you discussion michael would you like to this was the policy that you brought would you like to do that um or pass it if you do no no i'm i'm i still strongly support the idea of uh having a treasurer um and i and i've made the case to a few folks that we only have three meetings left so i wondered why but of

108course we do have an overriding policy that says if we have an opening we need to fill it and i get that so um uh if we do vote on a treasurer today fine no problem i'll i'll happily play play along and and vote but we will have to redo the process again in uh organizational meeting the second tuesday of january so that's fine yep i totally agree with everything that michael just said and we had some conversations on this um after our last meeting i went and read our policies and read our board operating procedures and um want to thank the policy committee in advance because we're finding things as we go through this year that that they can take back and have discussions on and uh i know we talked about that so

109i appreciate that if i could just add yeah we were trying to create a um an evergreen policy something that would last you know for ages and i really didn't want to write in the policy that this will be effective on such and such a date so um if we had then we might have just you know bypassed this and for the next three meetings and not had a treasure i think having how many years has a saline area school's been in existence without a treasure i think i think we can last three more meetings but let's let's go ahead and do it then if if we're all in favor of doing so we'll follow policy right um and i just wanted to to explain something that i had also received a question on process

110because um our process was a little bit different when we had our last election in january we were in covid um well not that we're not in covent now but we were deep and coveted we were 100 remote meetings um so masb had given us some guidance at that time on how to do um a roll call vote which you probably remember we used to roll call vote on everything we would change the order of that per their suggestions um so we're kind of reverting back to our operating procedures and policies on how we lasted elections in um [Music] was that 2020 yep um so the typical way is we would have a ballot the ballot has every individual's name on it um and it has a place for us to write our name at

111the bottom so open meetings act does state that we will not have secret ballot those are red tabulated by the secretary of the board of education and um one of the stipulations of the policy is that the treasurer should be on the on the finance committee and so i was asked about that so i just wanted to give a little bit more information so the president does select who sits on the different committees so anyone is eligible for this position if it was a sitting officer they would need to say that they wanted to move if someone wanted to recommend somebody for the for the position they would need to accept that recommendation so if it was somebody that wasn't on the finance committee now that person would then move on to the finance committee

112and then i would um i would move some committee assignments around so someone had asked about that so i just wanted to to bring that out um the current uh finance committee is brad dennis and myself any questions or comments on anything that we've said yeah brad well then in light of that um i would like to move and recommend that dennis valenti be named the treasurer of the celine area schools i appreciate his leadership as the chair of our committee i personally appreciate the things that he has taught me about finances and jennifer as well as being part of the team with me and i think he'd be a great treasure and i would recommend him as the appointee support dennis do you accept before we move on and see if there are any

113other well with that great endorsement i accept thank you all modesty um is there anyone else who would like to self-nominate or anyone else who would like to nominate another individual to this role seeing none we do have to ballot vote but susan's job might have just gotten a little bit easier right um so if you can just take a moment and pass it to susan that would be great and then she can record that for the minute all right and susan if you want to read it off so all trustees um voted for dennis valente congratulations dennis uh long time finance chair i think i think it's a perfect fit for you and um i think it's especially appropriate that you are the first treasurer and in the history of saline area schools because

114um it's uh it's been a lot of work and we appreciate you so thank you um so what we need to do now is yeah michael is anticipating me so what i would like to do now candace and jenny made the motion to appoint a trustee and now i'd like to have the permission please um a recommended motion to appoint uh trustee dennis valente as treasurer for saline area schools board of education okay we'll keep the motion by candace in the second by jenny all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero congratulations dennis it it's a short tenure but it's going to be wonderful i'm sure i'm looking for well it's an important one right now um moving on to number nine discussion items life skills sex ed

115advisory board curriculum proposal as as presented to us by dr lodge okay thank you yes so we're going to talk about positive prevention plus we're going to start looking at at the timeline of of where we began it was mentioned earlier that this has been um this curriculum has been being looked at for approximately three years and that it stemmed from special education special education parents that have life skills students asking for uh an alternative curriculum to support their students and we spoke earlier about the number of students we're talking about this is approximately 120 of our 700 special education students specifically in our life skills program so when we look back to fall of 2019 there was an effort from that c ab to look at some different curriculums including the three r's curriculum

116flash curriculum and the p3 curriculum machine model didn't have a special education populations component at that time as they move forward when you fast forward to the spring of 2020 i can back up one just just a bit okay um looking at that there was the 2016 version of the p3 curriculum and that was selected by that current cab to be the best choice for the students when we move to the next slide we move to fall of 2020 into spring of 2021. we had the code pandemic setting and a new c app was now selected and we had a c app that was transferring out ending their terms and a new group was coming in and so that group felt it was appropriate to look at the latest edition of the 2020 version of

117the p3 curriculum and that was purchased for review then in march of 2021 teachers had been reviewing the curriculum presented the current c app with the opportunity for each member to review the curriculum in its entirety in the addition being reviewed for mde compliance then we moved to may of 2021. ciab had many discussions about the curriculum and collectively decided to move that forward to the public hearing process the two public hearings that occurred this past summer now we move forward to the next slide we looked at the public input from those hearings and within that window of time when those hearings were going on and this is what we found that parents of the life skills students 92 percent were in favor of the curriculum those that were submitting both electronic comments through our

118electronic communication form and making comments at the public hearings themselves now the majority of special education parents which were not including those life skills students were also largely in favor of the curriculum at 73 percent the majority of non-special education parents submitted feedback indicating 60 opposed the curriculum and a majority of residents that didn't have students in the district but were residents of the district submitted feedback as well indicating 88 opposed the curriculum that's data that we gathered during that window of time when we were working through the hearings i wanted to present that in its entirety that that's what we gathered during that phase so we go to the next slide anna we then start looking at the p3 curriculum itself and you look at the various lessons that are involved i'm not going

119to read every single one but you see that there is a variety of different lessons here that are have potential to be taught to try to make sure that they are supporting the students and having a well-rounded sex education curriculum that does support their unique needs of having cognitive impairments and looking at the specific population in its entirety when we move on to the next slide we talk about eligibility for the curriculum and i stated this before the students that are eligible rest within the middle school high school and young adult programs life skills students and the cab heard those pleas from parents saying we needed an alternative curriculum felt that it was very important and necessary now the cf also heard feedback during those hearings and did discuss the removal of certain aspects of

120the curriculum as a whole they decided against that because of the belief that the teachers needed the full array of tools and then they could individualize the instruction for this population moving on to the next slide we do value community voice and that we wanted to make sure that we were responding to what was being said and heard and did have those discussions about concern over stick figure imagery and gender identity and the ciab then honored those voices by creating a comprehensive companion document that would go along with the curriculum so that it outlines and details every aspect of each of the modules and lessons so that parents would be presented with greater detail to make certain that they could make educated decisions about every aspect of the curriculum working in conjunction with the teachers

121themselves so that's what we're referring to when we say companion document if we go to the next slide we talk about who will deliver this instruction because it's not all our special education teachers currently we have two teachers at the middle school level two at the high school level and five in our young adult program so we talk about the life skills staff would be provided professional development in the spring and summer of the student services would also host when we say student services molly garcia monica ellis they would help support a q a session with life skills parents at the middle school high school and young adult levels to make sure that there is understanding of how this curriculum works and that they're able to answer those questions in addition they'd communicate share the

122checklist the companion document and speak about opt-out options for any parts of that curriculum that parents were uncomfortable with and that would make certain through training that staff is fully qualified to teach sexual education by state of michigan requirements and we talk about these a to k requirements these 10 additional michigan specific requirements so we go to the next slide we also thought about all the questions we've received about community concerns and the ceb has responded and has looked and and researched and i have as well and we want to go over some of those community concerns so one of them that was expressed tonight is that the visuals themselves being you know are those appropriate for teaching sex education to students now this is a quote from lori beckhover laurie is the primary hiv

123and std consultant in the state of michigan from michigan department of education which i consulted with a fair amount throughout this process and in short effective instructions so i highlighted this part in yellow effective instruction for this population needs to be simple clear concrete functional consistent repeated successful successful levels successive levels and we also talk about that the sex education does need to include images because of this population's needs to be supported by social stories and the way in which they learn on a regular basis didn't want to create an artificial teaching environment by removing images because it would be very inconsistent with the way that students in these programs learn so we go to the next slide we wanted to show some examples and this was previously shown i i know by one of

124the groups doing public comment but i want to go through this again that it's common practice to provide symbol and picture based instructional materials for this group of students so taking them out of this environment and not allowing visuals would be a different way of instructing than the students are used to and so this combination of words and images is part of the regular routine within the life skills program if we go to the next slide we've heard about the curriculum being legal and it's been suggested that it is not legal i completely disagree with this assertion we've reviewed the curriculum we've discussed it at the mde level and with the education consultant have determined it is compliant and legal there's another element that's been talked about that is somewhat confusing i want to clarify

125that that's the there's 10 additional elements listed in michigan law it talks about there's a certain number of items that must be taught throughout a child's educational career and that is the interpretation from mde so this idea that all 10 of these elements listed in machine law are taught every year for every student all the time is not how mde interprets that language and that's again talking about that a through case section so i made sure to confirm that these a through case section for example it over the course of the time that the students are in the life skills program for example could be taught when it's appropriate based on the student's age and cognitive ability that they could be covered at the various grade levels throughout and specifically confirm that they don't need

126to be specifically included in any curriculum resource recommendations such as ppp and i put an example there specific michigan law about adoption that would be integrated into the training that the teachers would go to and then they would determine how to integrate that into the curriculum and that it isn't illegal to be doing that as confirmed by the michigan department of education if we go to the next slide we talk about the processes being followed by the c app in moving this uh this curriculum proposal forward the cf is compliant and has followed steps necessary i've addressed it multiple times with both our legal team at troon and our md mde hiv sti consultant like i had referred to earlier laurie beckhover and have confirmed that we have done a very thorough job now the

127one area of not having a student wrap on the cm hat cub has been addressed but we've also confirmed that there are plenty of cabs across the the state as confirmed by lori that have positions that sometimes are going unfilled and that uh sea abs are seeking to fill those an example is a clergy member that sometimes cubs have to work and they're still operating without a clergy member they continue to work on that now we have since filled the void for the student reps and then i specifically reached back out to legal team and mde and said does that invalidate work that is done before and they said absolutely not you've now added you've now gone back making sure that that part is taken care of and then you move things forward if we

128go to the next slide we talk about this being an opt-out program versus an opt-in program and the idea is that the belief is sex education here is very important so our default position that students receive this important instruction and that michigan law does provide that opt-out option which we have discussed and put the companion document in place to make sure that those options are very clearly stated for our parent base if we go to the next slide we also have heard that teaching students about sex encourages more sexual behavior or could do that there's actually a strong scientific consensus that providing people access to information and services regarding sex and reproductive health isn't linked to these increases and there's a number of sources i included one here if we go to the next slide

129there's also been discussion about the curriculum being abstinence-based and this was discussed in addition at the mde level and spoke about abstinence-based can be supported in a comprehensive curriculum but what's really important at the mde level per discussion is what matters most is how we're defining the terms we use and we will be defining the curricula employed that teaches abstinence is best and the only method that is 100 effective in preventing pregnancy and stis and our teachers can be repeating that in various places throughout the curriculum to enforce that that is the understanding as we move forward with this curriculum if we go to the next slide i want to provide a few more important points the first is power of attorney for students that are older for example and may not be able to

130make their own decisions about the curriculum as they are over 18 that this we would follow and comply with legal document documentation granting that guardianship and power of attorney for educational decision making in addition the portion of the three piece curriculum that outlines california law will be replaced with machine law and i pointed that out with those a to k components any elements that are missing in there would be supplemented and i have confirmed that that's perfectly legal to do the third one all right we can't jump back the three p curriculum is provided to the senior school's version that does omit the the part that would talk about abortion we will not be teaching any aspect of abortion in this curriculum and nor do we do that in any of the general ed sex

131education curriculum too i mentioned the companion document earlier earlier that's to be seen there if you'd like to take a look at the link we're not going to do that now but do want to assure you that it is comprehensive in terms of going over each of the lessons and providing detail regarding that if we go to the next slide so here is the recommendation that the school district and the cf consisting of 15 members and two non-voting reps on october 6 met and voted in favor of recommending the p3 curriculum with the companion document that i just mentioned eleven seat voter members voted in favor two cf members opposed and lisa and tim asked me to use their names to publicize which we have done and they'd like their dissent publicly noted which is

132fine and we have done here they've also provided an opinion that was sent to the board of education two cf members which are the students are abstaining as being new members to the committee if we go to the next slide this cab respectfully submits the ppp plan for special populations curriculum with the companion document to be approved for use for secondary level slain area schools life skills and young adult program students did want to point out the dissenting opinion of two of the cf members which includes a few of the points of concern which are there's a component on gender identity and the science on gender identity is not settled yet the ppp curriculum violates values of community members the curriculum doesn't represent the majority views of the community that's the opinion of the two

133dissenting members of this group if we go to the next slide i really would like to thank the cf this is very challenging and stressful work they put tremendous effort into this and demonstrated outstanding collaboration even though not every member was in agreement with the curriculum so on behalf of the schools i applaud their efforts to bring this curriculum recommendation forward questions um were you gonna come back over here yeah i'll do that um thank you and just i i can't imagine and susan and brad were our liaisons or rr liaisons to the the ciab so i will be particularly interested in things that you observed or comments that you have from those meetings but wanted to echo steve's sentiments for the dedication and for the the work that they did um for all members

134whether they were um in agreement with the proposal or whether they were not in agreement with their proposal so thank you um before we go to comments i did want to kind of set the table with a few things we have been receiving a lot of various emails and i just wanted to state a couple facts about about this before we kind of get started um and just reinforce the point this is for the life skills students um steve can check me if i'm wrong but we have a little over 700 special education students roughly 720-ish this is for approximately 120 of them that are the life skills students we did receive a lot of emails to the board thinking that this was for all 700 plus students and that is not the case it

135is also for no students in general education um an another comment that we had received a few times um seemed like this would be a new thing to be teaching reproductive health and sexual education in saline area schools um that has been done for decades so this is not a new step to start start teaching sexual education or reproductive health so i just wanted to make that clear and i just wanted to i appreciate the the professionalism and the respect and the care and thoughtfulness earlier around comments i just want to remind everyone that we're talking about students here these students are 12 approximately 12 years old to 26 so we have a wide range of not just children various stages uh in there and they're growing up and and they deserve our respect and

136our support in our comments and conversations tonight both in public comment and at the table so thank everybody in advance for that because i know how much this team up here loves these students would someone like to start with any questions or comments susan yeah so as you mentioned brad and i served as the board representatives on the sex advisory board i wrote up a tiny piece here i'm personally proud of the sex ed advisory board they are a dedicated group of people and have shown their commitment in serving the board and the district a lot of time and energy has gone in to see abs recommendations that we have here before us i trust and fully support these recommendations and hope that the board will put their trust in them here today by adopting

137the curriculum i also want to point out at the last meeting before the group took the vote and again we didn't vote on that we more observe and take in and so the two students reps were present and actually it was their first time there and they engaged in the conversation and um i was quite impressed and excited to to have them join us um so and and they understood and i know that they're you know wouldn't want to put the pressure on them to make a decision as well um on that with the group for that evening but they were there and i'm excited to have them continue on thanks anyone else like to make a comment question dig into a particular topic yeah if you don't mind i guess i'll speak also to

138my experience as a part of ciab i will tell you first of all i want to thank them for for welcoming me as a is a new part of their their committee and what have you this year you know i i was looking for a number of items in the seahab and in this curriculum specifically and i could tell you that i am entirely satisfied by the answers that i received by the work of this committee it was thorough it was done well i applaud them um you know i i think that this curriculum provides equitable access to students who need sex ed curriculum tailored to them like that was something that was important and i think it's achieved here um i believe that our educators right who are who are in charge of doing

139this work partnered with us and told us this was the best curriculum that they could they would choose for this work um i value that and so that was important to me as a as a teacher myself and also just as a member of this team as a member of this committee i that spoke to me they advocated for it they advocated for the visuals we in these meetings we had hard questions asked about these visuals and the reality they said is these are necessary for meeting the needs of this targeted group of students and you know steve talked about effective instruction for this population needs to be simple clear concrete and functional consistent and repeatable and i just think that that accomplishes that we did listen to the community it was important to us

140as a team and so i want to applaud again i the companion documents are really well done and really well thought out and really respectful of parents and wanting them to have information about these modules and so i it's personalizable and i want to make sure that i talk about that i don't see this as you know opt-in opt-out i think i see this as personalizing for every single student and the needs that they need and so that was important to me as a part of the team and then the last thing i wanted is i wanted legal compliance and and and steve will know that i am i've been kind of bad all about that right i've asked you and asked you and asked you and asked you and you know when coupled with

141professional development and coupled with professional development around a through k you know his presentation tells me that we're buttoned up on that so that's for those reasons as a part of this seab team um i i recommend this curriculum to the to to this team yeah jenny go ahead i have just a couple of questions um of clarification um first of all i was really glad to see the the um documentation from mde and our legal team that that it is legally compliant um second as as president stebbin um stated um steve mentioned the feedback that we got during the feedback window in august i think it was during the two hearings and um we've received countless uh messages um of feedback from the community since then so i i think that um you know

142we've we've listened and we've heard a lot from the community and when when we say that we've listened those comments often cause us to then ask further questions to dr lodge have you have you talked to mde about this particular piece or has the ciab addressed this particular piece so those those public comments do cause us to dig deeper so that we can be more informed when we're sitting here tonight i do have a couple of questions steve that i hope that maybe you could answer or someone from from um this yeah maybe someone at the table can answer so one of the things that you said on slide four five you said that students have the potential to be taught these 13 lessons and it's my understanding that um this is different than so

143say for example i was i was a fifth grade teacher so i was certified to teach reproductive health in fifth grade we sent a note out ahead of that like two week unit saying this is what our fifth graders are going to be learning about over the next two weeks and parents could opt in and opt out this curriculum is different in that it is individualized for each of the students so they may or may not have these lessons one-on-one or in small group or in whole group and it is determined by by the members of their case management team and their um caregivers or power of attorney is that correct right that's correct and that's what i was getting at with the a through k michigan laws is that it's important that they're getting

144that address through the breadth of the curriculum throughout all the years that they're in saline area schools but you know it's it would likely be unrealistic for students in every grade level to get that whole you know all 13 lessons and then integrate the 10 aspects in that a through k so the interpretation from mde is that is the span of the curriculum that's covered over the their time period that they're in salinary schools and is done at uh you know age-appropriate cognitively appropriate level like you mentioned and that's why it's so important that the teachers who really know their students can consider what is the appropriate level for each of them so the a through k just to verify but the a3 a through k has to be offered but that caregivers could opt

145out of that and that would still be legally compliant right i mean those are the elements of the curriculum that need to be offered and taught if there is a parent that doesn't want a certain element taught they they would opt out of that yeah okay that's correct and then i think this was um addressed at one of the um hearings but i just wondered if you could touch really briefly on when the opt-out happens so um it's my understanding and so correct me if i'm wrong but it could happen at a number of different occasions so it could happen at an iep meeting or team meeting it could happen before later in the year before a module or a lesson is taught or component of the lesson is taught is that correct yes that's

146correct you you know we talk about that companion document for example let's say that a teacher who's teaching some seventh grade student said that we're going to be working on these three modules during this window of time then the parents would consider you know what specifically in those three modules might they object to and then they could opt out at any time for any part of that okay then the last thing that i just wanted to say on this is that um in education we talk a lot about developmentally appropriate practice and our teachers in the life skills programs and our leadership in the special education department are experts in the development that is different for many of our students in the life skills and young adult programs and so when we're thinking about the

147um necessary components of a curriculum that is specific to this population the images that are included in my opinion are both necessary and consistent with their um with their genera with the education that they're receiving every day so i um i think you've answered all my questions thanks i just wanted to build off two little things and one question before we move on and i see michael no if you can go next um the companion document has been mentioned a few times and obviously there was there was a link there is that something that will be available to the public yes it certainly can be it it is comprehensive in nature in terms of covering all 13 of the modules so certainly that can be shared and then i just wanted to agree with something

148jenny said um we have been receiving a lot of emails about during the hearings um but but really in the past few days um i actually went through them all today and i've been replying as the team knows um i i i would note that 88 of them were in support of this curriculum i like data um michael did you have something or candace and yeah we can go back and forth whatever you want i get to go first um i just want to point out some some of the some of the folks on this board know a bit about my background i started off as a special education teacher many years 20 years before google put it that way and i think i i was just calculating back of the envelope i think i've

149written about 100 ieps and enacted that many uh over that time and i thought i knew my stuff until i taught a small in a small classroom in rural ontario and i had six students all boys and uh in a life skills program and i absolutely discovered i did not know their needs and i was gratified to have a master teacher uh work with me and i won't go into the details but i'll tell you just a tiny little bit about some of these students i had a 13 year old boy who regularly soiled himself i had a student on the autism spectrum disorder i had another student who was a selective mute i had another student who had a traumatic brain injury from a firearm incident and these are the sorts of students that

150i had to deal with to work with their life skills and understanding everything that puberty was sending their way and they were not i also discovered getting much support and help from home uh i thought i knew what i was doing i absolutely didn't and this master teacher showed me a few things and i won't go into great detail i won't go into any detail but she did share that having clear communication easily communicated lessons for the students was absolutely absolutely essential so when i came to reviewing the the many binders of the the positive prevention plus uh i was absolutely not surprised by anything i saw and the thing is we saw this list of the 13 titles which is which is great but i i just want to say each one of those

151don't skip over them and focus on the one aspect that may feel blunt uh and and awkward and uncomfortable and something that you might very well opt out of the first section was about social emotional learning and i said okay i get that emotions uh protection assertive communication all this is essential and the special ed the the students are special the parents of students with special needs get this right away then there's issues of nursing public versus private behavior absolutely i get that um types of sexual contact that's a little out of my wheelhouse but then there are guidelines that are excellent and extremely supportive and uh a lot of the lessons deal with gaining control over your feelings that and and the mix and the mash-up of things that happened during puberty again i'm

152these are things that all kids need special needs students even more so and the very and then there are lessons about how to be a friend there's nothing terrifying in that and a whole week spent on hygiene products what products to buy when to buy them when to use them i mean a simple chart for how often should you put on underarm deodorant how often should you shampoo your hair things like that that's what we're talking about with this curriculum they do eventually get into what to share in public communication skills all the things that we embrace and want for all of our students here and especially those 120 special needs students the and i i just want to stop at this point to say thank you steve for addressing our questions we i know

153we gave you a lot of them some of them were very in the weeds and very uh detailed but you you you knocked it out of the park very clearly uh not just in your presentation tonight but in through your calm and deliberate answers and when you didn't have the answers going off and investigating so i want to thank you but however we vote on this i wanted people to know where i'm coming from this seems to be an absolutely appropriate for this particular group of students and i say this as a former special education teacher you know once a special ed teacher you're always a special ed teacher i think dr molly garcia might agree but and i'll just leave it at that for now candace did you want to go i should have

154gone first michael do i have your thunder well some of it no um i i did also have a chance to review the curriculum and really took the time to look at every page and i wrote down you know page numbers and specific references to some of the lessons because i think it is important that we do our due diligence and we're not just coming from our beliefs or you know what we think should be but that we also have facts to back that up and that was really important important to me i listened to public comment i did attend one of the public hearings i did read every single email that came in to us up until sitting here this evening and you know talk to families that that have students in the life

155skills and a young adult program and i think that that was important for me as well just to understand uh from their perspective uh why this is needed and and why this approach um works for for their children um not to repeat some of the the items that that trustee mcveigh just raised but i do just want to point out a few things from the curriculum that i think is are important to to note one there are abstinence reminders throughout the curriculum i did notice that and that that it was mentioned specifically as the only 100 sure way to avoid infection or pregnancy etc so it was it was very clear that that was reiterated throughout um there were also listings of considerations before engaging in sexual relationships so there was and speaking to an

156adult was was first so that coming back to talking with someone about um about this was important considering your family and religious beliefs that was listed as one of the the options and what they could should consider being in a long-term relationship etc permission which is really important also in reading about the statistics in terms of uh being more vulnerable to abuse and um sexual assault and and things of that nature there were there were clear lessons on page 329 of the curriculum for anyone that wants to go back and review um there were escape plans for various scenarios so thinking about how you get out of the situation um there was there was a long exercise on red flags so really understanding what some red flags might be um and i i noted the

157the red light green light activity where they could say you know here's here yes this this is good this is you know this this is something that we should be mindful of um so a very clear and easy way to to understand that and how to make healthy choices so all of that reading through all of that made me feel a lot more you know comfortable with this curriculum and feeling like it is something that um that teaches valuable lessons that that this group of students that all students need but this particular group of students needs in this way and it will help them to keep them safe to help them understand their bodies better and to be able to navigate their their way out of situations that may be harmful to them so for

158all those reasons i am in support of this curriculum and appreciate the work of the ciab and and all the community for your comments because it did make me dig deeper into you know what this truly was so thank you thanks candace yeah dennis go ahead all right yeah i've also gone through all the curriculum talked to parents involved and uh done my due diligence and you know my role up here is to provide you with my best opinion and counsel that certainly will differ from many others at times my role is not just to tell you what you want to hear for if i were to ignore my best opinion counsel convictions merely tell you what you want to hear i'd be doing you all of it disservice i strongly believe we need a

159specialized curriculum for our special needs children when i look at the totality of the p3 curriculum i believe we can do better here i believe celine can do better no no it's not p3 is not the only curriculum i would like to see other curriculums presented to me i that's my opinion i know it's in the minority here but i have to give you my convictions my honest opinion thank you and i want to also look it i know how many hours the seahab put in on this and i greatly appreciate it you know you don't get paid for this i know you've put in a lot of effort in we have a difference of opinion here i'd like to see what those other curriculums are all right thank you thanks dennis [Applause] differences of

160opinions and diversity of thought is always welcome here and here um so i appreciate that um i i wanted to first of all have to follow up on something michael said because um i think when i think back about all of these comments both both for and against it's about five percent of this curriculum maybe a little less um and 95 of this is are things that michael mentioned around friendship um personal hygiene please don't take that for granted if you have children um bullying human trafficking and things like that so i would like us to have a little bit more of a discussion i'm going to poke you on on the gender person and then on on some of the visuals and then some of the gamification within the curriculum i had the opportunity

161to spend a lot of hours with the binder i also talked with parents of life skills students because that matters the most to me what do they think our staff opinions matter greatly as well since they will operationalize any policy that we that we put out there and one of the things that i was really glad that i did is i spent some time talking with um with monica ellis and molly garcia who had up our student services group so our heads of special education so our life skills students as well as all of our other ones as well and and and something that i came with a list of questions after listening to parents and reading all of these emails and one thing that i thought about a little bit differently after that conversation

162was we talk about this incredibly generous and wonderful population but we talk about them a lot of times with these facts and figures about them being um possible victims of abuse right totally legitimate data um but the flip side of that came up in a couple of my conversations and it came up with monica and molly about we we need to protect them from for a different a couple of different reasons number ones we don't want them to be the victim of abuse but number two we don't want them to be accused of abuse as well and i hadn't really thought about that a lot before so um you know i'll just i'll just get into it there are a lot more pieces of content and visuals around masturbation in this curriculum and i ask

163questions about that um i read the gen ed curriculum again you know to brush up on that and and it's not there as much and and i learned that a lot of times you know you know it's it's a sensory thing and then you could probably explain this a little bit more but it's happening and it's it's something that they need education on particularly that because they don't understand social cues and what's what's what's socially and legally supposed to be happening in in public and so some of the times they might engage in that behavior at target or at the grocery store or or wherever wherever we happen to be right and and that can happen in front of other people that take action against those children um and and and kind of label them

164as a predator so i look at this from those two different angles right so we're helping them to not be victimized but we're also protecting them from legal situations so i thought that that was an interesting aspect of this that i i didn't get the first time kind of looking at all of this and looking at the curriculum and so i thought that that was a really um really important thing to pull out um i did have a few questions i wanted to talk about vape a little bit if we could talk about um you know that right to education like this so the students right now um in the life skills curriculum the the gen ed curriculum is just not acceptable um it's it's just not and um i like brad like the law

165and always kind of go back to that when i look at things i start with the law and then i build off of that so i was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about fape and about what role that kind of plays in giving these students a curriculum unique to them sure right it's it's uh certainly important that uh students have that right to education and that it it meets their needs and i and i think that's an important part here um we're talking about a sex education curriculum that meets their unique needs and you brought up some of the things that students are going through they are going through puberty and having all those feelings and emotions just like any other students and as they they get older a lot of

166those things that are happening for our entire student population are happening with this group of students but they need to be educated differently on those things public and private for example is something that this curriculum addresses and i think it is important that um to to follow fape that that we are considering what is the most appropriate uh curriculum for this specific group of students and to that point jenny brought this up a little before and it came up in my conversation with monica and molly too because i was kind of under the impression when i was given the opportunity to review the binder okay this is what they'll get you know that's that's kind of what i was thinking and and what i what i learned and if you want to add on to

167any of this is that it's it's a partnership between the parent or guardian and um and the student and the staff to kind of say okay let's take a look at this binder let's let's um let's kind of match this with the iep let's let's infuse the two together and um and and come up with a unique plan because quite honestly from what i'm hearing 120 students could have 120 different implementations of this curriculum is what i'm hearing so do you want to talk a little bit more about the individualization and kind of any communication paths and i know we touched on a little bit with the companion document but i thought that was an interesting point that it's it's it's it's going to be taken in pieces i guess is something that was unique

168to me and i know jenny brought this up a little bit too yeah as it relates to communication you look at the two life skills teachers at the middle school the two at high school and the five in the young adult program it's very important potentially even more important that they're having individual communication with families on a regular basis because the educational element is happening significantly at both school and home and so it it is important that there is constant communication and that would be no different with with this program it would be discussed there would be opportunities like we had mentioned earlier of monica and molly would hold a q a session to make sure that parents do have a very informed view of the curriculum to be able to ask questions and then

169work directly with the teaching staff after they are fully trained to make sure that they are implementing the curriculum on an individual basis that best meets the needs of the unique group of students and there's no question that that would continue with this curriculum like it does on a regular basis in those programs i have a few more but i don't want to monopolize if anyone wants to jump in here if you have additional questions um one of the ones that i had was there's conversation around abstinence-based and comprehensive and what the differences are and how that translates to life skills students um is there anything that you would you would reply in in saying that um the comments that you highlighted in the deck about this not being abstinence-based enough is there anything well

170i mean i i think it certainly is an opinion of what is abstinence-based enough um what i was trying to point out is that we are going to be stressing abstinence throughout the program and as we train and talk to the teachers to reiterate that point at many times throughout the curriculum will be important and our teaching staff is very capable of doing that and supporting that you know certainly abstinence is the only 100 percent way to prevent pregnancy and stis and and hiv and we want to make sure that that is stressed throughout the curriculum just like we would be doing with the general education curriculum so comprehensive is a term being used to show that there is a lot of curriculum that's being covered doesn't mean that we cannot be supporting abstinence-based in

171its intention as we plan would plan to do yes susan go ahead i know that was a question that had um come up that we had gotten via email and public comment um with i know the terms kind of you know change um one of the things that helps me to understand because it is state law to teach that you know abstinence is the only 100 percent way to to not get pregnant and then to prevent stis and hiv so that's that's going to be the same with this and the same with our current curriculum which we were asked to go through as well the books were from 2007 14 years ago and 2010 11 years ago our current curriculum is also state law right um that we follow that uh 100 abstinence and also

172has some comprehensive um things as well because at the state level you're teaching about stis and hiv as well so some of the items that were brought up about um anal sex and oral sex guess what it's in our current curriculum there aren't pictures but it's there and talks about protection and um so yeah i just wanted to point that out but absent absent sorry abstinence plus is usually a term um that's that's starting to be um used when i was looking into it um so if that helps you know this is primarily but then we're also going to teach the rest of that curriculum whether we call that comprehensive or not i mean yeah that helps i just wanted to add two things the first is that the word comprehensive has been used um

173and and defined um tonight in public comment um as a way of describing um a sex sexual education program i just want to point out as someone who's been in education for 21 years that we often talk about curriculums as being comprehensive we have a comprehensive reading program we have a comprehensive science program we talk about comprehensive in a way that um that that clarifies that all the needs of the students that this curriculum is intended for can be met through this through this curriculum so i just want to point out that just because something is called comprehensive um does not necessarily tie it to an organization um that has been mentioned tonight the second thing that i just wanted to point out is that i i know that there are that there are other

174programs someone mentioned tonight that mde has a new 2020 version i also want to clarify that the mde 2020 version is not a curriculum for special education students it is a general education program so that is not what we are discussing here tonight the experts within our community the experts within our state from mde and experts from around our country have spoken about this program in particular being being having the ability to meet the needs of this particular population so in my opinion saying that we can do better doesn't make sense so to me this is the program that i think best meets the needs for this particular student i'm if if someone wants to clarify further and tell me what they mean by we can do better i'm open to hearing that in this

175discussion i'm not sure that that was something that i didn't understand sure i i see here that the uh see i've considered uh the programs the three rs curriculum and the flash curriculum those are also special needs programs i'd like to see those how those differ from from what we have here i think we can do better i i think that's fine um i i just want to reiterate that we have committees for a reason we have a policy committee we have a sex ed advisory committee so that they can vet all of these programs and then bring them to the board so for me personally i am going to trust that the work that has been done by the board and by professionals has been enough to vet this program for my for my

176own personal opinion well you know if that's the case we really don't need to exist if we're a board we can just simply get a rubber stamp here i'm just asking questions i want to see it no no i i unders i understand that what i'm saying though is that if the if the seb has reviewed all of these curriculums we don't necessarily what i'm saying is that they have they have done the work with all this curriculum and with our staff and they have pushed it forward you can have your own opinion that is completely fine and i admire you and i respect you deeply i wanted to know a little bit more about when you said that we could do better what's missing from this program that's all because i am trying to

177really listen and be open-minded and to hear like what would you like to see in a program that's missing in this curriculum that's all sure if some of it is what's what's in the curriculum i would like to see how i think it needs to do more to protect vulnerable students i i really do i i think that's one of the things that it needs to do have a greater you know concentration on and less on what is in there yeah steve is that something um from from um the teacher's perspective um more to protect these vulnerable students is there is there something that can be discussed in the classroom do you have any any thoughts on that in enhancing these conversations that are happening in the classroom with ppp or any thoughts there well

178i i i will echo what uh trustee miller is saying here i i do believe that the c abs role is to review curriculum in this case they spoke about three different curriculums that that were reviewed and so i'm i'm trusting their judgment that based on their review of the p3 curriculum that it is doing enough to protect this vulnerable population of students thanks um oh yeah right go ahead and then i'll i have a little question then ask it and i'll go after you um this is totally changing gear so we can come back to anything that's been been discussed but um i i would like maybe a teacher can help me out here or a former assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction when we had a lot of emails and some of them would

179say this is evidence-based i'm looking at one it's it's there's data from the american journal of public health the us department of health and human services it's an evidence-based based programming curriculum um and then i read something else that says this is not an evidence-based so i was wondering particularly maybe for you or one of our teachers to discuss what does that mean um and and and what does that mean in the lens of pvp yeah i can touch on it from that example i was providing earlier that we were pointing out that that teaching about sex to students is not increasing sexual activity that's based on studies that's based on multiple studies that they have looked at a variety of different sex education programs throughout the country and have determined that based on their

180research and evidence that that's not the case so that's that's how we talk about evidence-based that it's based on practice and research and effectiveness oh yeah yeah brad go ahead well the science teacher i mean definitely says yes yes yes like data so when something is evidence-based to me it means it has data and research to back the the curriculum to back the things that are presented etc etc and so for me it's rooted in you know data such as was presented by steve earlier so i i follow that that's what i would say also if i was saying about quote-unquote evidence-based it is data it is research to back it and its effectiveness say one of the biggest pieces of evidence that i've seen is it's evidence-based meaning that the curriculum the teaching methods

181the modules the lessons the way in which they are delivered is based on um evidence-based practices and teaching um teaching practices instructional practices but i also think that the one thing that that we know about this program in particular is that upon implementation there has been data to support i'm trying to find the number right now in front of me maybe somebody else has it written down i think someone said that um there is i'm trying to find it in my notes i'm sorry but there is evidence to support that the kids who have received this instruction from this program have benefited that there has been less incidents of sdis there has been less incidents of undesired pregnancies there has been less less incidence of of the percentage of victimization i'm trying to find that

182number and i cannot find it if somebody else can find it in their notes but that was something that um that also speaks to the efficacy of the program thanks i appreciate it i mean it's just you know sometimes we get opposing views on email so i just wanted to kind of um kind of bring that out yeah brad or candace both so i'm changing gears a little bit too so one of the things that i have heard repeatedly and i'm asked this question of you dr lotter at least just ask you for this explanation is that um there is a a lot of people who are concerned and think that because we're adopting this for 120 of our most at-risk students that this will become our curriculum for our district so can you reiterate

183for anybody who may you know not be what our process is for adopting a sex ed curriculum and what we would have to go through in order to be able to do that process we wouldn't be able to just bring this next time as a as an adoption for our district so could you reiterate like what that process would look like sure so the p3 curriculum is for this specific population of students to better meet their needs if the cab is now moving forward with looking at other curriculum for general education students for example they would need to go through that process of looking at multiple different options for curriculum having review having discussion at sea at meetings and then at some point if there was agreement on which one they would like to entertain

184and move forward they would bring that forward to the potential of two hearings so the board of education could hear and review it it also would likely go through program review where they would be looking at the different needs of the district potentially giving a parent survey to ask we've done that in the past surveying parents and community members to see for example when is it appropriate to first start teaching sex education that was largely what determined that starting in fourth grade there would be elements of sexual education started that was based on survey information from a program review and so it is a process it is not you know the c ab looks at this curriculum and says that we're going to adopt it thanks for bringing it up brad i had that on

185my list too and i think that that's a really important one that this just the juxtaposition of looking at the gen ed curriculum side by side with this many different elements and there should be right because it's it's a totally different population and um you know i definitely struggled with struggle past tense current tense with some of the some of the content in this that i i would not want to see in a general education curriculum but when it's presented in in such a way for this population in understanding and hearing more about how they learn it strikes me differently um so i i i do want everybody to hear that that that this in no terms means this this is going to go into the general education curriculum this is for 120 ish life

186skills students so thank you for bringing that up because it was on my list as well yeah candace um so i know that 92 percent i believe was a near presentation 92 of the light skills um parents supported uh this recommendation or this curriculum was that accurate that was feedback during the window of time when we were going through the hearings and also seeking electronic feedback via that form to submit input it's not taking into account um information that's been coming in recently it's largely based on i think justin want to mention the month of august when we were moving through those two hearings and seeking feedback both from public comment in those hearings and through that electronic feedback form any other information that's been gathered since then is not reflected in that presentation got

187it for for families that are in that eight percent or whatever the the percentage is um what what assurance can you provide them that if if this moved forward hypothetically that if they wanted to opt out of the curriculum that their their student their child would not see the curriculum would not be exposed to it in any way if they had concerns about that yes that's right what i what i do know is that our life skills teachers are extremely caring of their students they love their students and they also have a very good relationship with parents meaning if parents are objecting to any part of the curriculum or any of the modules they will work together to make sure that students aren't exposed to those parts and will do so in a way that

188respects the student and make sure that they can move forward with maybe certain elements of the curriculum but not all and i have great confidence in our life skills teachers to be able to do just that i would like to add in reviewing um you know the the emails around uh during august and um the feedback that we did get um through the survey i noticed a lot of people who were opposed and had concerns um pretty much didn't want sex ed in the schools at all so i think that's important to point out um with the disagreement it just wasn't the particular you know um that that's based okay i'm not talking to the crowd so um so yeah that was a lot of um stuff that we received and what i read um

189so that's an important factor in not talking about the specific special ed curriculum here um or um sex ed in general so i could layer on one one thing candace with quoting the statistic and the 92 because i had said about 88 of our emails over the past few days were in support um i don't have the exact number i mean we can we can go back and look um but it was remarkable the number of life skills parents that was in that 88 i mean it was i mean i'm sure it stood out to everybody um the other thing that stood out to me within the past few days is the professional careers of the individuals that were commenting so some of them were life skills parents and they were a health care professional

190or a clinical psychologist or um or a teacher or um you know or were staff that would be teaching this or or or could could potentially be be teaching this um so that was just something that i noticed in these last few days the the i guess i would say the quality of the comments just because they were sharing personal stories as well and so that that resonates for me no excuse me no thank you so um yeah oh and then brave yeah oh go on that i was just um kind of if we're done with questions and rounding up conversation okay yeah and i i want to i want to review i i know let's go ahead brad so i want to speak to candace's point for a second this is my observation as

191an educator i teach in a different district but what i tell you is this i when i talk to my friends who are special education teachers they talk to parents more than i ever do i mean they are in just constant communication with parents it's almost there are some students who require that on a daily basis how they going to get to school how they going to get home all those kinds of things are just normal things for special education teachers to do so i'd be very surprised i guess is the word i would say to to say that our special ed you know teachers wouldn't be in just constant contact and constant communication with with parents and families that's just my observation as a as a general a teacher um i wanted to just

192make a comment about kind of the gamification and repetition of the curriculum i thought that was an interesting conversation that i had with molly and monica also on how these students learn and what they what tools they currently have and how they and we saw some of those of those tonight um i guess one question i would just this isn't necessarily for steve but it's kind of for the table so we've we've all seen the images that have been discussed uh here tonight and and on any email but i also noticed that there were um uh flash cards so you could cut out different different things and so i'll just put it out there there were things like brush your teeth or hug and and oral sex and anal sex were on there and so

193i guess my my overall question would be i understand the reasoning and the discussion that we've had around imagery and how students are learning but i was just wondering your thoughts on um because i really like the the repetition within the modules to help their learning i like the the green light red light i really like that as well um and the flash cards for what's done in public and private or or i think that's in the particular section around sexually transmitted diseases what can you get an std from and what can you not so i was just wondering what your thoughts were because those were words versus images and um i don't know if this came up in the seab conversations like how is that different than the images i'm not sure what you're

194talking about yeah so so if we're talking about imagery and how how these students learn which is absolutely what we should be talking about there are images of various things that we've we've heard about tonight and that we've we've heard about in emails and the staff that i also trust is telling me that these these are the tools that students are used to using their visual learners right but my question would be i get that um but in the std module for example you can cut out um flash cards but they aren't images they're words they're text based and so i'm just i'm just wondering like is it too far to have oral sex on a flash card if there's no imagery and we're trying to like um kind of hear community feedback and we're

195trying to think about how these students learn like is that something that struck you because that struck me because it wasn't an image and i was hearing that conversation about how the students learn but that wasn't an image so i don't have an answer i'm just kind of throwing it out there oh i was just gonna say i'm not an expert on um special education um but i but i am um my title actually technically is expert in my in my current role as an educator so i just want to say a couple of things one of the things that sometimes is difficult for adults to understand is the need for repetition for students so when we're talking about adult principles of learning even sometimes we have to explain as somebody who is providing professional

196development for for teachers we sometimes have to explain that while the repetition might be monotonous might be boring for you that it is necessary because of the development of of the student so when i saw that the game and the images i made or the game in the words it maybe didn't strike me the same because that game is part of that repetition of images that they've already seen so they've seen the images they've heard the words they've seen the images they've heard the words and now this is an extension of that so i'm i'm wondering i i would be wondering if the curriculum writers had determined that at that point there had been enough repetition with the images that the words were sufficient thanks jenny yeah i don't have the answer i was just

197kind of throwing it out there because um it was something that that struck me yeah brad did you have yeah so i would reiterate that right while the life skills teachers did say how important the visuals were i would say that my experience as a as an educator would tell me that it's good also to have differing mechanisms and different ways of of teaching right and so like these are all part of a toolbox that's available to our life skills teachers and so i would say that that game and that activity is one tool that would also be available to our educators if they so needed that to be able to effectively teach the curriculum to this particular population that i guess that's what i would say and i would agree with you brad i'd

198agree with you too jenny that this is all these are tools no curriculum is perfect and when this comes up for review again i'm sure a lot of the same issues will come out and by that time i would not be optimistic that this particular curriculum would also have evolved and developed and uh and you're right uh jen uh trustee miller that that it's a it's a tool that can be used and by the time you get to the flash card stage you've probably gone well past the need to start off the conversation with images right so it's just it's a yeah that's all i have to say about that any other any other comments questions clarifications i'm just looking through my notes um i think the only thing that i haven't said so far

199is um this is really needed like um special education whether whether it's this whether it's another one and whether it's you know whatever it's just the general education population reproductive health and sex ed curriculum is just not serving our students um it's not it's not acceptable and and so i think it's it's way past time that we we serve them in the way that they need to be served and protect them in the way that they need to be protected both like i said before both um both understanding what is socially acceptable and legally acceptable to protect them from victimization but to protect others from misinterpreting because they don't understand yeah johnny just a point of clarification on that point that you just made and maybe steve can speak to this but um it's my

200understanding that it is not possible under the current board adoption of the general education sexual sex ed programming it is not possible for us to adapt that where in other cases we might adapt curriculum to meet the needs of our special education students but because of the way the law is specific to the adoption of this general education curriculum we couldn't then say for example modify that curriculum to meet the needs without having it go through the entire process and basically having our sab or teachers rewrite the program is that correct right that's correct so you look at the when we talk about the general education sex education curriculum for example let's say fifth graders there are some special education students that are accessing that curriculum and then their teacher consultants for example may help

201them access it but it is still the same curriculum that the other general ed students in fifth grade are going through it's not completely changed as would require you know two additional hearings and so forth okay i'm just looking down this way any other comments questions julian you do not have to say anything you are more than welcome to anytime of course you okay i don't want to put you on the spot um your voice is always welcome at the table uh susan then brad so after your question i'm ready to take action tonight and would like to make a motion um so i think we're there here or i think yeah okay so bread did you have a question or a no no i don't just comment this question okay so so susan what

202i'm hearing is you would instead wish this to be an action item versus a discussion item we could take action on any discussion item right i'm just clarifying the request yes it it's already been yeah discussion but i i would like to motion um move um yeah do you want me to say it now or oh yeah i mean maybe this would be helpful if if i clarified why it's a discussion item why i put it on the agenda as a and would that be helpful too or i mean i'd like to say yeah i don't know that's fine i know i know yeah i know yeah go ahead no i mean just for public and then and then of course you can you can continue so um so obviously steve and i create um

203board agendas together um because because i facilitate the meeting i did place this on the agenda as a discussion item um for a few different reasons um and that's not to say that i'm not interested in hearing more about the intended action or the desire to take action i just wanted to give my thoughts um on on why i did that so the first thing i would say is that this is the first time it has officially come to the board i know everyone has been really studying this since august i'm not i definitely know that um but this is kind of the first opportunity for the public to kind of engage with the board um on this topic so that was that was one of the reasons another reason was i wanted i wanted

204to to have more time for folks if they needed time to digest or i didn't know what questions were going to be asked at the table or what our discussion would be and so i didn't know would steve need to go back and get more data would he need to go back i mean you can't anticipate what's what's going to be asked at the table so that was another reason um i wanted there to be the opportunity for two rounds of public comment um because i know we've been receiving a lot of emails and again i'm not saying yay or nay one way or another i'm just this is why it was put as a discussion item i thought it could also provide us a safe space to talk about everything that we wanted to

205talk about and not feel the pressure of action kind of like we do with a policy when a policy comes the first time and then we have a discussion and it goes back so i just wanted to provide my my rationalization for why i put it on as a discussion item and all seven of us can um decide with that yeah no i'm not saying that that you know majority rules were a democracy um but i'm just giving my justification and why this was put on as a discussion item well so i guess i'll i'll say that you asked where are we at right you want to know kind of that i'm comfortable with voting tonight i could go along with that i do want to mention that in august we had two public hearings

206we offered an opportunity for a survey we've had every board meeting committee meetings opportunity to speak publicly i believe we've given updates and possibly presentations i believe there's a presentation this summer on an update by superintendent lodge as well so we've had multiple conversations on this and probably hundreds of emails at this point um i don't know is there more information that you all are looking for or not everybody who's had a chance to uh excuse me excuse me excuse me i'm asking a question too and i believe i have the floor thank you i'm concerned and this came up this afternoon that not everybody has had the opportunity to speak because we have two public comment sections and some people didn't even arrive here until after the first one was over that's why i'm

207a bit concerned about voting at this point until everybody's voice has been heard so that's my opinion so are you yeah no i i i agree i agree so yeah this is this is not a time for public comment this is this is a board meeting where we're having a discussion at the table with the content that's been um provided to us tonight so i appreciate you being respectful of that um jenny did you or candace have any um any commentary i would agree with michael that um i mean i already stated that's why i put it on on the agenda as a discussion item i i would agree that um i always believe in hearing um hearing the two rounds of public comment i actually requested from president stebbin to not to not have

208the 30 minute limit tonight because i knew that was going to be a concern and that did not happen so the three there was only three right that we would have heard about agenda items yeah i don't i don't know how many forms betty has i i can i can speak to that too so my interpretation of our policy is that the first 30 minutes with the exception of extended public comment which we had too is limited to agenda items students fers so i was adhering to policy because if policy was to be changed it would have to go through a process so i was sticking with the policy no disrespect to the request but i was trying to follow the policy of the 30 minutes for the first public comment portion and we we

209have board business that we have to attend to regardless so how if we bring it back next time and people feel that they didn't get to speak on the front end because it was limited how far do we go i mean we're never going to accomplish anything at that point yeah the the intention um as i as i put forward in the um the housekeeping email with board agendas the intention was to do action on this um on november 9th so i i think i think susan is asking for for a consensus here on on if folks would like to vote on this tonight or if folks would would like to to stick to is that what you're requesting to to see where people are at i thought that's what we were doing okay i'm

210i'm just saying so i let's go down the row right i mean is that fair okay brad i'm looking at you sure i told you i'm i'm comfortable with voting and i'm comfortable with listening to public comment and voting next time i want people to feel that they've been hurt and that they feel that they we've been fair with them but at the same time like i am comfortable with voting okay do you should we go one way or the other do you want to pick one i'm sorry i'm comfortable with voting okay so you you yeah i just want to make sure that i understand what you're requesting okay dennis yeah i think it's important for people to be heard i don't doesn't sound like it's going to change things but you know people

211want to be heard and i think they should okay susan do you want to say anything but i think we know yeah i think we've put a lot months and months and months of work into this um the process says to again two public hearings we did that and then it comes to the board i'm ready to vote okay um i i would prefer to to have all public comments here heard and um and vote at the next meeting so that's 2-2 michael i'm a little uncomfortable with the way this is happening right now but i do want to hear what people have to say before we take a vote okay candace i am comfortable voting uh this evening i do feel like we have given the opportunity for public comment at the public hearings

212and also we've received hundreds of messages via the public comment through the scab and via email i i do absolutely want to hear from from our community so i don't want to make it seem like i don't but i but i also feel like we've given ample time for public comment on this topic michael did you have something else before i went to jenny your finger's on the trigger there it's on the speak button um just to clarify though people have had opportunities they've also had this evening to speak as well and fully anticipated that they were going to have the opportunity to speak during the last policy committee meeting we we bent over backwards to ensure that we created a policy for public participation at meetings that was that made sure everybody had an

213opportunity to speak at any point changing the rules at this point mid-meeting and saying no you're not going to get a chance to speak because we've already kind of decided is not fair it doesn't seem to me i'm one idea that was floated earlier was let's all let's have all the public comment before and then vote but we didn't announce that or have an opportunity to get that announcement out so sadly that one that ship had sailed before the meeting even started so i still go with the idea that we need to have to listen to everybody i don't understand what you mean by that we change the rules we're changing the rules we're saying no we're not going to have public comment we're not going to have the second half of the public comment

214on this issue on this on this agenda item because we didn't get a chance to finish it all at the beginning is what i'm hearing so there are there are three people but we didn't change that we're not we're not changing anything you're saying we're gonna vote they're saying we've got a bunch of people in the audience who would like to speak on this particular issue pro or con but we're going to have a vote before they've had a chance to speak even though they fully expected to have the opportunity to speak and waited through our this whole discussion right that's how i'm hearing it and if i'm wrong if i'm hearing it wrong i'd love to hear well at a public meeting a public body meeting we could take action anytime that's true yeah

215there we can okay but do we want to do that at the risk of having the public that we serve ticked off at us because they didn't get a chance to speak and they already eat the people the flooding already know i'm not going to be voting i'm going to be voting in favor of this when we get there but i do want to have everyone's voice heard at least and it's not going to be that great an inconvenience i'm getting a little i'm getting comfortable being called all sorts of names via email thank you uh and i can put up with it i'm developing a very thick skin but i have also been reading all those letters and listening and you've been sharing those emails with the rest of the committee as well the

216board so if it needs another two weeks it needs another two weeks i want to give jenny an opportunity okay all right um i i want to give jenny she hasn't had an opportunity to speak yet thanks so two things um if the policy needs to be reviewed so that we hear all um comments about the um about the agenda at the beginning i i i'm okay with that we can review that in policy committee in the policy committee we could review that um i'm not comfortable with changing that mid-meeting tonight because we didn't state that earlier i do think that we have given a lot of opportunity for public feedback and i'm not sure that we would get any different feedback that would that would spare votes as michael stated but it is a

217part of the the process what i would like for us to consider though is that this is the first piece of curriculum that we are reviewing as a board of this seven this is not going to be the last and i don't think that we um i i would like for this to not set a precedent that all curriculum needs to have two meetings for review so if that is the course that we are taking this time because clearly there are people who have felt that over the last three months that they have not had ample opportunity to share their comments and we are a public body so i am willing to hear what they have to say as michael said even the name calling however i do want us to pay close attention to

218the precedent that this is setting i do not want us to take two board meetings a whole month to review every piece of curriculum that comes across her table so i'm okay with waiting i would have liked to have taken action tonight because i do feel like action tonight would have allowed for the wheels to start turning toward professional development that is necessary to start implementation of this program but as i understand this would not be implemented during the 2021-22 school year so i think giving another two weeks to hear public comment i hear both sides of it but i also hear what the public is saying and that we can't change midstream in maybe if i could add to that is it okay if i could add to that too we can always and

219the board president can always and we can always as a board say we'll listen to more public comment shift things around and take a vote take action on this after we've heard the public comment move things around i don't see any reason why not if there are three people left to speak let the three people speak and then put it to a vote i maybe if that's if it is three yet i don't know that's what i was going to say so yeah yeah i agree is that if that's possible yeah i'll i will i'm going to reiterate that as well like i would love to do that okay betty can i just check in and see if we have additional public comment but we don't know if everyone's dealt okay thank you um 16

220is what she said so that that makes 19. if they're all here if they're all here that's that's absolutely and we're going to be here to listen to it regardless correct that's right that's right so what i'm hearing here is that we're going to move forward in this agenda is that what i'm hearing okay susan do you have any comments okay after public comment is that what we're saying i i don't think anyone has made a motion for that to occur yeah so so brad go ahead we're using can i make a motion to do it that way can we move public comment then if we feel compelled make that action item to vote i want people to be to be heard right like i i respect you coming to the meeting i respect your

221time i respect all of that so i might be ready to vote but i want to hear what people have to say so can we do that well i think it would take so procedurally i can answer that procedurally you you can add something to the agenda with a with a motion and a second from trustees um and we would need the exact wording and location of that so procedurally you could do that well then i guess i if it gets voted on it gets voted down i motion that we move the public comment for tonight forward in our agenda or we create an action item whichever way it's easier for the vote after public comment which i guess which one is the way to go it sounds like you're saying that you'd like to

222press pause on the discussion of of the curriculum and instead have a public comment section and when that's finished return to the discussion and then take action on it as susan as secretary easter suggested is that what you're saying that's that would be appeasing to me does that work for you um susan or um we could add the actual motion the recommended motion behind public comment instead of putting it back to discussion sure yeah yeah just to move number eight until to after number 13. okay so brad you'll need to word this you'd like to entertain a motion and enter here okay i motion that public comment item number 13 be moved to now in the agenda as part of the discussion item under the life skills sex ed advisory board proposal could i also

223note that we shouldn't be taking any additional public comment notes and papers ms yankee thank you yankee sorry okay so i have a motion on the on the floor from trustee gerby to move item number 13 um between items 9 and 10. is that correct betty and susan are noting this for the minute between nine and ten yeah okay brad is is that is that the correct language yes okay so it needs a second to go to vote second okay so brad susan uh all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay name uh motion carries six one how many names uh i think it was just me is that yep okay all right can i move to recess okay so susan moves to recess for 10 minutes gotta go to the bathroom okay and

224seconded by dennis um so let's just can we just say all right we're in recess till 1002. thank you okay we're gonna get started as soon as michael mcvay comes back to the table and i see him approaching okay so we are back from recess 1003 um so what we did just before here we moved the second portion of public comment between number nine and number ten so um i called for the other submissions and betty brought them to me we always take students first um so alexis lyon i pronounced that correctly this time if you can approach so just to remind everyone the same the same rules apply three minutes alexis and secretary estep will show you the yellow when you have 30 seconds left she'll show you the red if you can complete

225your thought or sentence and i guess i would just say i know there's a lot going on and emotions are very high i would just thank you again for being respectful of everyone being able to have their opportunity for public comment i do have a large stack so we're going to want to definitely be respectful of everyone's three minutes no matter what position they might take on any topic okay alexis whenever you're ready so i wanted to touch briefly on what you guys discussed last board meeting as well with the policies for you guys will not like stand for bullying towards transgender and people of none that don't agree with i guess they just have different views on what they should see and like that but i want to know how that is going to

226be like taken to action when you guys can't really manage normal bullying verbal harassment and reverse discrimination celine right now because for the past few months i've been told to kill myself that my opinion isn't valid that i am an embarrassment to celine schools and that whatever i say is always wrong even though everyone has their own opinions for a reason and everyone's opinion should be respected no matter your view or what you agree with so i just was wondering how you guys are going to be able to accommodate both sides all right thank you alexis um so i'm now getting into i these are all copies of the forms that are white so that should be um a parent guardian community member etc um it is very possible that some of this these folks

227have left already so what i'll do is what i did in the august meeting if i call the person and they're not here i will put them towards the back possibly they're in the restroom etc um so they will have an opportunity at the end i'll call them a second time so the next person is catherine kelly parent good evening and thank you for your couple of minutes i wanted to say thank you so much for all that the school board does and i am a parent of three children and i was so appreciated that um the education they got for sexual education starting in the fifth grade that i applied to be on the sex education advisory board i was selected for the board i didn't realize that our names were kept private so

228i am publicly saying i was on the s the c ab and um an adapted curriculum for the special education students was not on our original agenda it came to us from parents of special education students and special education teachers they were begging us they were pleading us with us please the curriculum that they had to teach the special education students didn't work it wasn't adaptive so that's when this at the cm started to look into the different curriculums it's a hard job we listened we didn't have an agenda that's not the cab's job the cab's job is to gather information from parents from teachers and make recommendations to the school board so i can't believe it's been this long that's we're finally looking at a possible way for all of our students to be

229empowered to learn to keep their bodies safe to learn how to act with others and so i just ask you to please seriously consider if not this then what curriculum if not now how long do we have to wait five years was when i joined the c-ab and parents were calling special ed parents were calling for a curriculum and i'm sure there were years appearance before that every student deserves to learn with the tools that they learn best with so please consider voting tonight thank you thank you catherine um we have next we have lori eben former parent lori aben okay i'm going to come back to lori oh i'm sorry i didn't see you no that's okay sorry go ahead lori whenever you're ready my name is lonnie oh i'm sorry i'm i'm sorry

230i thought that was an hour and not enough i apologize good all right thanks for letting me speak tonight on a topic that could be a major turning point for the children and families of our entire community i'm going to get right to the point a question that is pressing to me is this why wasn't the community the entire saline community informed on numerous platforms such as emails regular meetings and social media sites why weren't we informed of the content and the intent to pass such a radical curriculum i personally only found out about this this past week in a few short days i managed to gather 10 people who had no clue of the direction of the sex ed curriculum for the special needs program and what i'm guessing will ultimately become available to

231the general population of the entire saline education system how is it that 10 selene residents hadn't heard of this agenda if i can find 10 how many more are clueless to your agenda or is this what you want also i'm sure i'm sure i'm not the only one here who knows this but i'll do the honors of filling everyone in did you know there is cartoon porn when i heard of this i did some research and found that there's a terrible play on disney characters and even dear old santa claus so my next question is this would you allow your child to watch cartoon porn i mean after all it's a cartoon right so it's no big deal kids love cartoons if your answer is no you wouldn't allow your child to watch these types

232of cartoons then why are you okay with a stick figure on steroids imitating sexual acts as suitable for the ultimate destruction of the innocence of our children on a personal note as i screamed in the back earlier five months ago my daughter and son-in-law whom are both selene alumni welcomed their first child a beautiful baby boy i can assure you they will more than likely take that little boy fishing and explain to him what was once referred to as the birds and the bees my point it's not your job to teach sex ed to our children with pornographic images even if it is a stick figure on steroids porn is porn tonight i implore the board to vote no on adopting the california sex ed curriculum in closing i don't think anyone is opposed to

233creating a curriculum that parents can feel comfortable with in the special needs program but i fear that this specific curriculum will ultimately be adopted into our everyday educational system and that is what i do not agree with and fear the most thank you for your time thank you for your comments uh next we have teacher greg erickson excellent thank you i will um put a pass on his then um next is uh louis barnett parent thank you hello board hope hope you guys are doing great um hispanic his history month was um i know it's weird um september 15th through october 15th uh if you looked at celine schools at twitter you wouldn't know um a little disappointed that the dei board didn't cover that and it makes you feel marginalized and that's what we

234should really try to avoid marginalizing any group so let me get started here we've been told that experts have looked at this se board and that everything looks good it's been vetted yet one of the persons that was in the sea board had to sent and first hearing from him he was accredited in dealing with some some of the issues or subject matter now we don't know what the makeup of the rest of the board is and uh it was said that it was 2 12 in favor we were also told that 88 of parents are in favor of it being passed so it's really important to be transparent and i think that's what we're missing here if this whole process would have started being very transparent we'd be in a different place and i'm

235very grateful that the board decided to listen to the rest of the people because when you marginalize any group that's just a recipe for disaster and that speaks volumes to seeing how many people are here that there appears to be a lack of transparency so i don't know how the vote's going to go but i mean i really do hope that there's more transparency and people are made part of the process and i also would encourage that when the sport the board speaks to parents it doesn't make generalizations saying that all these parents are just hateful or whatever i mean i expect better from the board to just have the high ground so um that's pretty much it just please listen to everybody don't marginalize anyone thank you lewis um next we have parent justin

236kuhl proverbs 3 29 says do not plot harm against your neighbor for those who live nearby trust you and don't pick a fight without reason when no one has done you harm we are all sane logical reasonable parents here so why would the national school board association ask the department of justice to investigate parents as domestic terrorists it's absolutely terrifying that you would seek to censor and silence us and even more frightening that they agreed to do so with no data study or evidence of any kind to back up such an absurd claim as you can see from tonight's prosthetics protest outside there are a lot more people who find this disgusting and wildly inappropriate more than you would care to acknowledge the fact that the fact that the sex education advisory board is still

237in the shadows and known to no one as proof that you can't be trusted and don't care about parents input at all why do you even have these meetings all you do is pat each other on the back like some sick contest of who has the best fifth place participation ribbon you act like you care about inclusion and equity while you do ridiculous things like cancel the word halloween or let girls into the bathroom with my son do you want your very own loud and county scandal how safe and equitable do you think the girls feel in the bathroom after one of them was forcefully sodomized no one wants to talk about the downside to all these policies well you say that was an isolated incident no it wasn't patrick pierceville madeleine harks katie dolatowski

238darren agey christopher hambrook all took felonious advantage of those policies and raped young women in homeless shelters and restrooms look them up so why should anyone continue to trust and re-elect you you've obviously lied to us about your intentions and your motives and as i said before if you really think we're so stupid as to believe you'll keep this curriculum confined to special education you're wrong i've had small and large business owners contact me in support but in private because they're afraid of being canceled because that's what you do if you boycott sanction and divest enough of the right people while shouting them down and calling them a racist sexist homophobic transphobic bigot you'll just keep getting what you want that is the evil playbook from the left and the saline board of education is

239following it to the letter you do realize that's what actual terrorist groups like hamas and the taliban do correct so who's really the domestic terrorists here in this room your mass mandates don't make sense your transgender policies don't make sense and your new pornographic education most definitely does not make sense pictures of kids masturbating and how to clean it up pictures of vaginal oral and anal sex we are not letting you teach that crap while also affirming homosexuality and transgenderism the same breath that is not your job your job is to listen to the community and put our feedback into practice all i see you doing all i see is you parroting the news and telling every single conservative parent to shove it or sending us cookie cutter email responses to the blm flag hanging

240in the high school you don't care what we have to say so we'll find someone else who does this board is a detriment a malignant plight who wishes to turn our kids into sniveling androgynous thin thin-skinned sheep who don't question anything take offense to everything we've had enough we are telling you we don't like what you're doing and we don't like what this board has become [Applause] okay just a reminder we have a large stack and we want to make sure that everyone is heard if we can please stick to the three minutes um parent paul drobolowski did i pronounce that correctly tropolovsky thank you okay thank you yeah i am a past parent of a student who had special needs who passed away two years ago um but the main point i i have

241to make is um planned parenthood is in this curriculum there's a phone number that might that will be brought up later that that leads right to planned parenthood and there is mention of abortion in this curriculum um i have experience in reaching out to abortion-minded women in front of planned parenthood in ann arbor i've been doing that for about 10 years we do it lovingly we never force our our comments or our beliefs on anyone we just ask them if they need help i have seen um in plan this planned parenthood in ann arbor is 10 miles from celine roughly um so we i my that raises red flags with me because planned parenthood is the largest abortion facility in michigan three thousand they do over three thousand abortions every year um that numbers the

242numbers are increasing they have put over two million dollars into their new their facility on professional drive in ann arbor in the past year they've put a lot of money into this why to increase kids to come in to get birth control this is their this is their model planned parents model bring kids in or come into the schools show sex or show that how to how to how to have sex it protects in a protective way but they know that they're gonna they're gonna fail the contraception will fail and and and they also want kids to come into planned parenthood we see many young young pre-18 children coming in when that fails their big money maker is abortion over 3 000 every year with this new addition new revamping of their of their building

243the numbers are going to increase largest abortion facility in in our in the state of michigan um we are so you are essentially allowing our special needs kids with the phone number in the curriculum to give them a call and they are going to push abort most likely will push abortion on them once if the if the uh their contraceptive fails um top ten reasons keep playing out of our schools they promote promiscuity they fail to reduce stds they promote bdsm i i can give you some i have a number of copies here they don't trust parents they fail to report rape they deny basic science life in the womb they fail they fail minorities they are more political than medical um they have a big lobbying that only favors pro-abortion people or politicians they

244are corrupt the number one issue for me is that they end the human life in the womb and we as a board you need to understand that and they are in this curriculum comprehensive sex ed is from thank you thank you paul for your comments next we have thomas frederick parent and former teacher tom's down here all right i'll circle back um next we have kathy drobolowski saying that again parent i thank you for giving me time to make some comments i'm the parent of a special needs child who's no longer in the school system but i have questions and concerns about this curriculum as a member of the community and especially i have a lot more questions and concerns after hearing some of you on the board speak the big thing of course is

245some of the content and i'm not talking about the hygiene and just the basics of daily living i'm talking about the fact that it's like a blatant how-to catalog the pictures that are in there aren't tied to anything that says you know if this is happening to you tell a trusted grown-up it's just showing you things how to do it how to do everything and one of the board members made a comment that she wasn't too crazy about the pictures and wouldn't want regular ed seeing them or having this type of a curriculum but it's okay for special ed and i don't understand why it would be okay for special ed it wouldn't have been okay for my son i could tell you that and i would not have agreed to this lesson seven module

246four is um where the phone number is for planned parenthood that my husband mentioned and it doesn't even specify that it's planned parenthood it just gives a number a toll-free number why doesn't it say that it's for planned parenthood why why are we hiding it and what else in the curriculum is hidden that we don't realize under pregnancy choices it says abortion is an option and i thought abortion wasn't supposed to be offered i have questions about the stats and the current curriculum not serving our student and other curriculums that apparently weren't looked at i'd like to know what are the stats were are our special needs population are they being abused at high rates is that why this is all of a sudden something that we're looking at i also i'd be interested in

247seeing the stats about that comprehensive sex education doesn't increase uh sexual activity but it decreases i've seen peer-reviewed studies that show the the total opposite so overall i really worry about this this curriculum i know we can do better than this and i ask the board to vote no and to please research other options thank you for your comments next we have um parent um uh young adult program christian christina laronis christina laronis um my daughter is 25 years old and she is in the young adult program and i want to thank you so much for everything that you've said tonight i was i thought i was going to cry through most of the night this is so badly and deeply needed by our children and young adults she's 25 so she falls off the

248cliff soon that's what we call it the parents at age 26 she will no longer have public school available to her though she needs it i wish that this had been available to her in the seventh grade it's all well and good to think of our kids as the most innocent angelic and um you know harmless people that need to be wrapped in a blanket of protection but while all that is true she is innocent and angelic she's also feisty and sassy and she's a human being and to think otherwise is to otherize our children our young adults their people their people too their people first and i believe that this curriculum recognizes it i want to thank trustee gerby for his comments about this being a matter of equity for our students this is

249providing them with education that's that should be offered to to everyone including our young adults in a way that they can receive it i want to thank trustee estep for her comments and um chair stebbin for being so brave as to use the word masturbation so frequently in a board meeting thank you because we life skills parents have to talk about those things a lot i want to thank trustee mcveigh for bringing up your experiences which are our experiences our kids aren't necessarily going to be able to understand the general ed curriculum and they need this so badly i want to thank you trustee jones for what you said about how it explains an escape plan this is protecting our kids in so many ways and trustee miller for your experience as an educator as

250well everything that you've said tonight and i think even even trustee valenti has acknowledged that we do need this education for our life skills students i don't think there's any question about that this is beyond important thank you for moving up the public comment i don't want to wait another two weeks she had to be in zoom all last year we need this now she falls off the cliff at the end of this year i'd like to have her have this available to her thank you very much please vote yes christina thank you for your camera next we have local church member kirk demars good evening thank you guys the board members that gave some push back and allowed for this public comment to move forward and at least be heard even though like a

251lot of folks on the crowd field the the decisions already made but we appreciate you listening to us uh i would say that we could have done a motion about three hours ago to move down to the theater with the amount of crowd we had in here that would have probably been nice maybe if you're anticipating a bigger crowd to maybe move to a larger venue especially on the issues that are hot you know hot topics that you anticipate uh i'm from i think i've mentioned to you guys last time i was here it was my first time with you i'm from a smaller school district my kids aren't actually in this one uh and they actually hold their board meetings in their their arts theater so i mean that might be something to think

252about at least when you guys are anticipating a bigger crowd uh i would i would push for you guys to vote no i'll just get right to the business i i would push to vote no i'm going to say some things that maybe some haven't said but a few have i think this curriculum is perverse i think it's wicked i don't think this is good for children i wouldn't want my kids in this curriculum and yes there are a lot in the community that fear that it will go beyond and it will go into the gen ed population uh like many things that have started in our society they've started in this increment and they grew so um that's a fear and i think it's a legitimate one by by your community uh i guess

253include myself as you know i attend church here and my church has been here for a long time um quite honestly i think at best this i deem this curriculum as child abuse at best um and as i i looked at i proved some of the material that i was able to look at as a youth pastor in your community if i were to teach some of these things in that kind of context that would look that would be totally inappropriate okay and at least for myself as a parent i'm going to speak as a parent here not as my youth past rule but as a parent i think this content is totally inappropriate to be taught in the school systems and no i would not put my myself as one of the eggs in

254the basket of anti-sex head okay so i want to be clear on that i just feel that the images like most people are very uncomfortable with comfortable with very inappropriate um but i appreciate you guys having this this public comment again i know that took a lot from some of you guys to push back i appreciate the the scent that we've heard from some board members that are not in favor of this i appreciate you speaking out on that as well because i know you're not in the majority here we've listened to a lot of comments tonight we know the ones dissenting are not it wasn't well heard so appreciate your time guys thank you for your comments kurt next we have taxpayer um four kids four kids graduated from saline high school diane irwin

255thank you i i appreciate the time to talk to you um tonight i i felt like the um emails that i wrote were not well um answered and i was very frustrated so thank you for letting me talk tonight um my main concern is you know i like the idea that there's you know personal hygiene and all these other things that we're talking about that i think is very essential for special ed children and very necessary i do not think that the sex ed part should be part of the school system it's the responsibility of the parent the parent is supposed to be supposed to be the one to teach about sex ed it's a to me it's a very private thing and it's a very personal thing it's a sacred thing because because sex

256is a sacred thing it's not just to be uh talked about the way it is in in this curriculum um i'm in favor of the parents being able to have these resources so they can show these pictures to their children or whatever whatever kind of handouts that they can have i think it's important for the teacher the the parents to have that accessibility and i think that that you know is more important than a teacher i don't think it's the teacher's place to talk about something that's so sacred and so so special and so holy thank you thank you holy um sex is not between two men or two women sex is between a woman and a man that are married and that's the place where sex belongs and you can i don't hear back

257there but i'm sorry the um so that is my my feeling that it's important for these special ed i'm so sorry that these special ed parents have to go through what they go through and like someone said earlier today that they are angels these children are angels and their parents are saints to do the things that they do to protect their children and to teach them but however i think and i feel that this is the parent's responsibility and they should have access to these things and not the general population or the teacher's responsibility thank you diane thank you for your comments um next we have parent taxpayer uh jennifer daniel oh i'm gonna mispronounce this isaac male i'm really sorry if i mispronounced that it's jennifer jennifer mail thank you she couldn't be here

258tonight so she asked me to speak for okay thank you okay so this is her public comment i'm sure i missed the deadline to have this read but uh we we have we had something come up and cannot attend tonight's meeting but i want to the board to be aware that that there are far more than a handful of parents that do not support what this board has been doing i would like to start by saying that in no way am i against sex education and meeting the needs of the population of students this new curriculum is supposed to meet i am concerned however that this particular curriculum goes way beyond the scope of what a school should be teaching students regardless of their needs the subject matter involved in this curriculum should be taught

259by the parents teaching a child to masturbate giving them a phone number to planned parenthood and illustrations of sexual positions should not be taught in schools to blame a school system and their curriculum or in their arguments lack thereof for the concerns about what would could happen to their children if they don't learn all these things is ridiculous for a public school system to think it is their job to teach some of these topics is also ridiculous parents need to step in and teach their children as well if a parent thinks that these lessons need to be taught they should be taking this on themselves sure it may be excuse me uncomfortable but this should be this should be a lesson taught in the home listening to both sides parents of these students know what

260their child needs to learn knows excuse me parents of these students know what their child needs to learn this so provide that information to the families and have it taught at home it's evidence they've seen the curriculum because they're 100 in support of this as a parent i would think they would want to have full control of teaching their children lessons such as these i would also like to make known an additional objection i have regarding this curriculum i object to the secretive approach of the board of education and the administration with regard to the makeup of the seab committee the board and administration have refused to disclose the names of the seabee committee members and when pressed on the subject told stakeholders that they could submit a foia for this information i find this

261secrecy contemptible and again in violation of the quote standards of practice specifically quote communicating openly honestly and transparently end quote and quote demonstrating trust and respect for others at all time end quote had the board or administration made this information available to the public as it had for the two previous seab committees their violation of state law might have been discovered and corrected sooner avoiding embarrassment and delay at this time i ask that you disclose the names and roles of each board s-e-a-b member i'm sorry at this time i ask you to disclose the names and role of each member of the seab committee thank you for your time todd and jennifer male thank you for reading in the comments next we have taxpayer matt thomas [Applause] just stay up here whenever you're ready i'm

262sorry next time i'll jostle them around so they don't they're not one after the other okay here's my public comment uh thank you for the opportunity to come here and talk to you i really thank you for um including the public comments before you make a decision i think it's vitally important that all parents who want to make a comment before this board that they are heard absolutely heard before it goes to vote you're our representatives and you should hear our voices and this is where our voices are to be heard right here so here's my public comment i object to the recent activity of the board of education sexual advisor committee seab committee michigan state law mcl 380.1507 subsection 5 states that the seab committee shall be and shall include pupils of the district

263this committee has been in violation of this law from the formation in the fall of 2020 through the seab public meetings on the proposed curriculum revisions state law is very clearly defines who must be on the scab for the time that the committee's makeup violated state law it was not legally an scab committee during the 2017 proposed revisions to the sex education curriculum the scab was again again in violation of the same state law at that time the proposed revisions were abandoned and that illegal seab committee was dissolved at this time i ask that you act in accordance with your newly adopted quote standards of practice specifically that you adhere to quote operating with the highest ethical standards and dissolve the illegal seab committee and invalidate all the work performed by the illegal seab committee

264i'm sorry i keep reiterating this because i have emailed this the school board on this issue i i have received responses and those responses say oh we'll remedy it you can't remedy it by continuing with the progress that the illegal seab committee engaged in you have to go back i don't understand any one of you could have nominated yourself as the seab committee gone through the whole process and then in the 11th hour brought on the other members that you would have needed and rubber stamped as someone else has said this as a as adhering to state law what what has been referred to as the seabee committee should be referred to as the so-called scab committee the illegal sea biddy as sea committee the supposed s-e-a-b committee because it was not by state law

265it was not an seab committee i i don't understand how you can violate clearly called out composition of the seab committee and move forward so again i ask that you that you reverse course and begin again anew just like you did in 2017. thank you thank you for your comments uh next we have parent amy sontag is amy here oh i'm here hello hello everyone good evening my name is amy sontag i wanted to speak this evening to bring a sense of hope and love into our community it seems very needed tonight at this moment i wake each day to a bright and beautiful day ahead i take every opportunity to bring light into someone else's life i teach my children every day to always see the good in people even in the individuals who

266are so mean don't seem to care or are angry i believe there is goodness here in saline area schools i would not have moved here with my beautiful family if i did not see this i believe what drives all of us is our choices in our choices is goodness i also believe that all of us are here because we want hope love and a good education for all of our children see this is the thing what you see as being good may differ from what i believe is good or i see as a good thing this sets you and i apart from each other this is a healthy thing which with our differing beliefs and opinions we can create a bountiful and joyous community what we all want however i am also certain that our

267homeostasis is unstable and unbalanced there is a divide between our community if you think there isn't you haven't been watching and listening closely over the past year we really need to work together to close this gap we need to stop putting what is best for some in front of what is best for all of us we can do this i do have faith in this community i believe we can work together listen to each other most importantly and get back to the basics my children your children all of the children deserve this i challenge you to think about a family that doesn't believe in what you believe in how do they feel what is important to them what do they put their trust in the answers to these questions might be different than yours they

268are still important they should still be loved they should still be part of our community we need to stop using politics to drive our decisions and put the education of our children first i understand that our children need to learn more than just science technology engineering arts i could go on and on and on in the classroom however a line needs to be drawn on what our children learn at school and what is the parents responsibility to teach them at home i think each and every one of you need to look deep into your hearts and sleep on this before you make a choice thank you amy thank you for your comments next we have parent john osnas hi um i know it was stated earlier that somebody thought a lot of the people speaking

269tonight didn't have children that were going to be affected by this my husband and i are here and we do we have twins that are freshmen in high school and they're both in life skills class um i have a daughter who is non-verbal who requires help with almost every physical task she does her twin brother is verbal um they both have autism they were born with the chromosome abnormality um he loves life he both of them do um they probably they probably experience more joy in one day than many of us do in a lifetime many children are born with disabilities that lead to many difficulties in this world but i truly believe god created these children with his perfection in mind a heart and mind that experience love at its purest level and who

270have a simple and true understanding of grace and forgiveness untainted by the junk this world throws at them my question for the board and administration who are going to vote on this um and who are avid supporters of this curriculum is are you 100 sure this is what is best for all of these precious and very innocent kids i know you talked about evidence but are you banking on that evidence that these students with varying degrees of disability will be better off learning about these very sensitive confusing and life-altering topics will it make their life better to know about these things in this curriculum that when i attended the um this advisory committee sex advisory committee meeting in august the administrator who was running the meeting she wasn't even able to talk about those slides

271she skipped over them and one of the one of the members called her out and she was not respectful to him that was very disappointing to me and then a bigger question i have because i have a 15 year old daughter who is non-verbal requires help in the bathroom what do you plan to do if something goes terribly wrong i think many of us have seen recently we've had our eyes opened to what school boards and administrators are doing and what they will do to push this radical agenda that's being shoved down the throats of our nation right now you will be held accountable so please make sure you are ready for all possible outcomes outcomes that could go terribly wrong think about the damage that you could be responsible for things that these kids

272could learn and please just make sure you are a hundred percent ready for what could happen when the kids learn what's in this curriculum thank you thank you for your comments next we have parent ken asner if i could make uh one suggestion for future meetings and that would simply be uh when we're out here when people clap we can't understand the thing you say it's like you're saying a bunch of stuff and then all we stop and then it's ken awesomeness i'm not sure what you're saying before that so it might just be helpful that everybody's clapping we can't hear that so my wife just said a second ago i do have 15 year old twins we have 15 year old twins they've been attending saline school since they were three years old they

273are currently in the life life skills classroom it was stated earlier this evening that all students have the right to the least restrictive learning environment because of your now pending decision to adopt this curriculum i just want to let you know that we'll be opting our kids out of the special education and would like to have them enrolled in the general education classroom i was intrigued uh earlier in hearing all the efforts to conduct surveys one of you mentioned monitoring the amount of email that you got 82 88 whatever it was positive tabulations as you evaluated the needs of special ed yet i know of no special needs parents who were contacted doesn't mean they weren't i just know of none i certainly was not one of you is my neighbor who could have walked

274across the street and asked about my kids and what they thought i would like to repeat a public pronouncement that was made earlier this evening you said this in no way should be in our general education curriculum chairman you said that i would like to encourage all of you who are here this evening to remember those quotes if you make any efforts to recall or replace board members that you remember that that was stated earlier this evening and i'd also encourage all of you out here who are willing uh who care um about discussing such delicate and vital matters like we're discussing this evening that if you care enough to do at least two meetings about such topics you should run for this direct your comments up here please i'm directing my comments to them

275thank you all right thank you for your comments um just to just to just to reframe um the trustees are correct all of the comments should be addressed to the board next comment is from celine resident and former parent uh dave rosenfeld i'm just gonna i take them in the order they were received and i want to make sure there isn't somebody who who hasn't spoken yet i should um yeah so typical typical policy is that if the person hasn't had a chance to speak first then they go first and then we come to the people who have spoken a second time i take them in the order they're received i'm sorry dave i should have looked at this um so uh craig lyon are you here um parent of students and i don't believe

276you spoke yet is that correct that is correct okay all right thank you thank you board and good evening um so i'm here for two reasons this evening one in support of my daughter whom you heard from earlier um some of the things that she expressed to you her mother and i do find very concerning so i think that the school district and i can appreciate all of you sitting on the board this evening i too have been in your position sitting on boards committees and also in public service for almost nearing i hate to say about 30 years now so i do understand the job in the position that you are faced with however in this time that we are in in today's day and age we need to take all matters sincerely and

277to heart and to make sure that we are crossing our t's and dotting is dotting our eyes the stories that we hear about all around the country the world it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when it happens here in celine some of the issues that we've talked about this evening have happened in our neighboring community in ann arbor virginia you know these are all matters that we have to take to heart and we have to vet them i understand that it's been three years that this has been discussed here um i do have some concern that i found out about it through a text message about the p3 policy i think that something like this definitely should be vetted and if some people out in the social media world are able

278to get a text to my phone with a flyer talking about this type of sex sexual education program that the school district can definitely do a much better job to make sure that it gets in my hands there's no question about that i echo on both sides of the discussion tonight everybody makes great points i have my own opinion everybody is has their right to their own opinion unfortunately you all are tasked with formulating those opinions and that is a very challenging job because you're not going to make everybody happy but we do leave it up to the school board our elected officials to be able to make that decision and ensure that you are hearing from every single person in this community in this school district because it's not just saline it's not just

279pittsfield it's not just york i don't remember what the number is but i believe it's upwards of maybe six or seven different communities that makes up the the sas area it's a large large number large square foot a lot of real estate that's made up from so i ask you to please take everybody's concerns to heart i do have a little concern also with how this was presented this evening because it is on the agenda as a discussion item not as an action item which item eight is listing action items so i would have thought that this could have been maybe 8b if it was going to be an action item rather than it being titled under a discussion item so i understand i can appreciate it's been three years um you know let's let's

280make our decisions and move forward but it's been three years two weeks is not going to kill anybody at least we hope not um that said i i can appreciate your time but please don't rush these matters thank you craig thank you for your comments um i'm just looking through this viva you spoke before but you didn't speak your public comments is this for yourself so you'd be next yeah then you would be next and point an order on that i don't think that's a policy that you're referring to um that people can't go hang on one second [Music] so item f no participant may speak more than once on the same topic unless all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard is it well i guess asking about the same

281topic if it's the same topic or not um viva if you want dave to go first that's that's fine no i didn't speak the last time i spoke for someone else that's correct yep um hi my name is viva rosenfeld um i go by she her her pronouns voters at the last election spoke very clearly that they wanted a board of education that is in favor of inclusive education so that all of our students can thrive and learn at sas those voters did not sit and scrutinize everything you do at every board meeting if they all knew that they needed to be here every time to get you to do what they voted you in to do i'm sure they would but they actually have trust that you will do the right thing for the

282kids and one such thing you can do tonight is follow the recommendation of your s-e-a-b and listen to the compassionate parents who have told you they need this curriculum and approve the ppp curriculum and that's what i'm asking you to do now thank you for your service um thank you viva dave i'm sorry go ahead i'm just trying to follow the the policy whenever you're ready um yeah i appreciate uh my name is dave uh he him is i appreciate your desire to allow everyone to feel that they've been heard um but quite frankly uh i have a feeling that there will be a number of folks who will never feel that you've listened to them unless and until you actually submit to their demands and that's not really what uh you know public feedback

283is about um as far as as far as have people had a chance to to give their input on this i mean as was just mentioned the the seab started looking into this three years ago they went through a lengthy process of soliciting feedback from the entire community regarding this particular curriculum they had two separate public meetings as required by michigan state law with opportunity for public comment on this very curriculum there have also been multiple board board meetings since then where the public has had a chance to speak out on this curriculum and they have the board has been receiving emails for months on this curriculum if i'm not mistaken you double the length of the first public comment comment period tonight normally it's 30 minutes but we had 60 minutes tonight and now

284you've done this which is commendable you know people have had a chance to be heard and i don't want you to listen to me when i tell you to when i ask you to approve this curriculum i'm no expert in this area i ask you to listen to your sex advisory board and listen to the experts and most importantly or no listen to your professional educators and special educators and most importantly listen to your life skills parents who tell you that they need this curriculum and they need it now thank you dave thank you thank you for your comments and thank you for waiting um david hayward parents thank you for listening to me again uh where to begin um the one thing that i would like to address uh in furtherance to my initial

285comment um having noticed that when the concerns that were brought forth by the two dissenting members of the sab were presented to us the uh the primary complaint that seemed to come up was about the notion that the science on gender is somehow unsettled now um to give you a little bit more about my background i have a phd and my phd is in psychology i also spent two years as a postdoctoral training fellowship at duke university studying psychiatry and behavioral medicine i've done a decent amount of research specifically in the area of lgbtqia studies although it's not my primary field and um i would like to respectfully offer a uh dissenting counterpoint quite forcefully that indeed uh the science and the research regarding uh gender is uh uh quite uh quite well well supports

286uh the the small amount of material which appears in this uh curriculum and again i think we've heard more in terms of public comment about gender than we have than than kids will hear in their entire uh careers in school with this uh curriculum i don't know why there's been such a laser-like focus on that um from from some members of this audience um i uh brevity does not allow me to share all that information with you in this setting but i would be more than happy to provide you with with any number of uh peer-reviewed references in that regard if you would be interested in uh finding those things out although i can't imagine that's going to be the deciding factor in anybody's vote tonight i would just conclude by uh thanking you for

287bringing forward this public comment period um there's a wise decision to hear the rest of the community's feedback and i hope that you will strongly consider approving this curriculum that's currently under consideration thank you thank you david [Applause] tiffany alexander hello again so don't teach kids about drugs because if you do then they'll use them don't teach kids about sex because then clearly they won't have it these are things we know to be completely false when we talk about i'm going to be extremely blunt when we talk about teaching a child to masturbate that's not what this program teaches that's not what anybody in there is teaching what you're teaching them is privacy how to keep from getting infections how to keep from getting arrested because they'll figure that part out on their own that's

288not what's being taught so when people say that that this is perverse you're teaching them how to masturbate no you're not you're teaching them how to do this safely okay that's what you're teaching no teachers in there doing anything perverse and it's an ugly accusation that they are i urge i or if anybody would like to have a discussion with me afterwards we can do that i urge you to pass this curriculum i urge you to consider some of the things you've heard here tonight or maybe that you didn't hear such as if you don't let us speak we'll riot yeah yeah they did right behind me i urged that person to go ahead and have the courage to speak up and say that they did so okay i've heard a trustee being told to

289shut up okay because she spoke for going ahead and going to vote the level of disrespect that has been paid to this board is absolutely astounding nobody here is asking for anything perverted to occur we're asking to make sure that these kids have what they need and the reality is it's okay for any parent to opt their child out and the program provides that we've heard that it's illegal your own legal team and the michigan department of education says that it isn't every complaint that has been registered against passing this program has been addressed and proven to be false evidence-based means peer-reviewed it means there's data to back up the program and the data is overwhelming these kids can't wait and they certainly can't wait based on the complete false information that's been presented thank

290you tiffany thank you [Applause] um i just wanted to do one last call for tom frederick if he is out there i i don't know if he's given you permission to do so i i wasn't part of that conversation i i don't know i'm sorry um okay that concludes um the second portion of public comment thank you i know there's a lot of of passion here for these life skills students and for all students in saline area schools so um i wanted to thank you for your that's the time that you gave each of the individuals that wanted to speak i'm going to move on to number 10 administration updates so can we now move to vote i i i just wanna make sure we do everything exactly so the last motion um the last

291motion was made by you and seconded by susan to move to move the second opportunity for public comment up between items nine and ten and so i just completed that and so i was moving into number ten yeah so i'm just wondering like if we still wanted to pursue voting tonight when do we make when is the appropriate time to make that motion i that would be up to an individual trustee who would like to call for a motion and then have a second that would not be up to me that would be a any any trustee can can call for a motion okay well i guess i'm calling for a motion then i would like to motion that we move forward with a vote for the life skills sex ed curriculum approval that we

292should adopt that we should have done yeah so okay do you want to help them out okay so what i'm hearing is trustee gerby has a motion on the table to approve the life skills curriculum we would need to talk about that language um so to proceed further in the discussion it would need a second second okay i don't know i heard susan first i know i'm better on my right side apparently um okay all right so brad what we will need is um the exact phrasing of the motion so i'm just going to write brad susan okay so trustee gerby is entertaining emotion to approve [Music] the life skills if i if i'm doing this incorrectly please tell me because it's your motion if you want to write this approve the life skills curriculum

293adopt adopt the life school skills curriculum as proposed by the sc scab as proposed by the sea beam which will be in compliance with the laws of the state of michigan or something like that or okay so that's how you wanted to read motion to adopt the life skills curriculum as submitted by the seabee okay all right so brad motion for that susan seconded is there any discussion on that before vote i do have a question yeah i think this was brought up um i can't remember which which hearing or um which discussion steve so this is what i wanted to ask you again but um i do understand that the the sab proposed that the curriculum would be presented intact so that um we didn't redline any items however i thought that i understood

294that you said that in compliance with michigan law the information around planned parenthood was removed are you asking me or steve steve okay information around abortion was removed so so i'm just i'm just verifying that if the information around abortion was removed then the information around planned parenthood was removed correct no the number was not removed i'm speaking about any um teaching of abortion any reference to phone numbers i'm not aware of removal jenny do you want to see the page the reference is to um so there's like four numbers and it's um i think uh based on um michael's going to grab it um i believe sexual violence um pregnancy which i think links to that so it's not abortion related um specifically michael's gonna pull up the exact page it doesn't i just

295wondered i knew that we had removed references to abortion so that was that was a misunderstanding references to abortion so i can tell you because i've looked at this several times um so the phone number is listed as a phone number it doesn't say planned parenthood it does say planned parenthood on the left-hand column of the same page okay thank you and michael's looking i'll look at it yeah thank you is this under teacher staff resources or is it like we're looking we're looking for it so um yeah that it's that section so the one item in question is uh the handout so it's like a perforated uh piece where it says like is it suicide prevention hotline what are you talking about yeah can i just can i just see this sorry this is

296why i knew we would want the binder um so page 309 309 it says call for help and it lists four phone numbers sexual assault runaway pregnancy sti test so that that doesn't mention planned parenthood but it's the planned parenthood phone number on the page previous page 307 it is lesson 7 module 4 on the left hand column it discusses uh california education code which obviously needs to be replaced with michigan state law which is why i was recommending we add a sentence to the end of that motion and it does list for more information on these hotlines and their services go to and it has four um websites at the third website is plannedparenthood.org so that's not a document that goes to the fit like is it this is a resource apparently good question

297yeah good question so um it's in module seven sexual relationships um yes means yes ten is permission important remind students that in lesson two we identified the characteristics of a healthy relationship etc so it is a teacher's um page 307 is a teacher's um guide page 309 is a a tear out for the students does that answer your question danny yeah yeah absolutely so it's my understanding just just to clarify and steve catch me if i'm wrong it's my understanding that um pieces can be vetoed or redlined within that curriculum i think you were asking about that but if anything is added it goes through the process again correct is that the protocol right if additions were made to that specific curriculum it would need to be going through the process so jenny just just

298to clarify i i would i would possibly be in support of removing uh page 307 to 309 it looks like 308 was blank it's the back side of the teacher guide so that would remove the two instances the website and the teacher's guide of planned parenthood and it would remove the the phone number handout it's not just permissions yeah so jenny i knew that the information regarding abortion to be in compliance with um with mde and with the um rules around um sexual education in michigan i knew that we had to remove the um abortion information and so i i had um i guess i had thought that the information around planned parenthood was on that slide and that that slide had been removed so that's why i was asking for clarification thanks i was

299referring to slides when when asked about is there a slide on abortion that would be um taught to students that's been removed okay jenny does that satisfy your question that you had oh yeah okay all right perfect any other any other comments did anyone else want to entertain the removal of those two pages from from this so i'll just want to say that i'm not um i guess what in in my opinion having a phone number or a website is kind of antiquated like it can easily be um you know those those things don't age well i guess is what i was saying so um i guess i was confused as to why yeah that was included there so thank you that's that's my reason for asking um would anyone be interested in adding a

300second sentence to the motion that could reference michigan law since we do have california law for example on page 307 that i just mentioned putting in a sentence to make sure that this is compliant with michigan loan we i mean we should be compliant in michigan and federal and state law right totally i don't think it's necessary personally i i actually would like to have it say in compliance with michigan law since it the current information that we have to view states mission it's california law i know that we have said verbally right that that is going to be a change that we make but but because we have moved this forward i think that it's important for that to be a part of the motion so that it is on record that when we

301do have this curriculum um given to teachers that it is um it is in the it is with the understanding that that those pieces will be replaced from california to michigan law i i i would agree i support the amendment that's fine okay so i want to be legally compliant that's important so susan do you you were the second so it would it would now read a motion to adopt the life skills curriculum as proposed by the seabee in compliance with michigan law second okay jenny is that is that okay okay brad is that okay okay everybody else is that okay all right i asked the people who created it first okay any other any other comments dennis brad susan jenny candice i i just i don't normally roll call but i want to make

302sure that michael yes motion to adopt the life skills curriculum as proposed by the scab in compliance with michigan law okay steve do you have anything you want to add okay um so this is going to go to vote all in favor say aye hi all those opposed nay hearing one motion carries six to one okay um i'm moving on now to number item number ten uh administration updates uh i don't have further comments tonight all right um julian i'm gonna let you go first because i know you have homework wow that was an eventful meeting but uh i guess the only update i'd give is saline football playoffs on friday playing canton go hornets all right short and sweet um any other trustees like to make comment i'm waving mine in the effort of

303time anything okay great um moving on to consent agenda i'd like to entertain a motion please to approve the consent agenda is printed the following are offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually a approval of the board of education regular meeting minutes on october 12 2021 b approval of the board finance committee meeting minutes of october 12 c approval of the board policy committee meeting minutes of october 7th 2021 d approval of the board policy committee meeting minutes of october 18 2021 uh e approval of payment of the general fund's accounts payable of october 26 2021 in the amount of three million nine hundred and four

304thousand dollars uh three sorry three million nine hundred and four thousand three hundred and seventy four dollars and fifty six cents f approval of payment of bond series three accounts payable of october 26 2021 in the amount of twenty nine thousand one hundred thirty four dollars zero cents g receive and file the finance and human resources reports h approval of neola updates to the following board policies policy number zero one zero zero definitions policy number three one two zero employment of professional staff and policy policy number po8310 public records i approval of the early graduation request as submitted by superintendent launch nj agenda or ah approval of overnight and or out of state field trips as submitted by superintendent lodge which includes field trip uh 2022 number 29 saline women's soccer team training and number

305two field trip 2022 number 30 model united nations competition so moved all right i'm gonna say say michael and jenny thank you [Music] um all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 all right moving on item scheduled on the next agenda continue to learn plan all right thank you public comment number 13 has been moved up so we are skipping over that uh next meeting the next board of education meeting will be held on november 9th 2021 at 6 30 pm we are now moving to go towards a closed session i'd like to please entertain a motion uh to enter closed session of the board of education at 11 20 p.m within 11 20 11 25 p.m with the intent to reopen open session at midnight or 11 45

306pm for the purpose of collective bargaining 8c of the open meetings act under section 8c a simple majority vote is sufficient to enter into a closed session um can i get one trustee to move please michael ii brad thank you all those in favor please say aye i've asked that they won't be closed what's that i've asked that the wall be closed oh yeah okay all those in favor please say aye aye thank you i didn't hear that um all those opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero we are in closed session as of 11 25. motion made by jenny second by candace vote with seven zero to open re re-enter open session um i'd like to now please entertain a motion to accept the saline area schools and the e-s-p-s-a-s-a-a s-e-a 2022 benefits bargaining

307agreement dated october 18th 2021 version 2.0 so moved jenny thank you support dennis support thank you any conversation on this okay um seeing no discussion uh we'll go to vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero um i'd like to please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education of october 26 2021 at 11 53 p.m so move should a nona would be brad who wants to get out of here i'm kidding you um we already did what's on the next agenda yep um brad second second jenny thank you all those in favor please say aye hi hi opposed hearing none motion carry 7-0 we are adjourned