School Board Action Meeting: April 26, 2022

001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting sergeant arms or designee has the front lobby been attended to and are the doors open thank you we witnessed it here jordan i think some people want yes i'm going to pause we're going to pause this meeting for just a moment so that parents who need to catch up with their children thank you for being here and we appreciate you sharing your children with us this evening and on another housekeeping note you may have seen this out in the lobby we have a qr code that will take you to the feature items for the board agendas they'll be posted there's one in the room and there's one outside as well okay prior to the start of this evening's meetings we have

002been enjoying a performance from thais elementary school choir this group is under the direction of mr stanley gavin this wonderful group of young musicians is raising funds and preparing to perform at disney please give them another round i know their gama pleases we took the pause we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential in the district vision to be a world-class school system approval of the agenda this evening agenda includes invocation presentation of colors and pledge of allegiance recognitions public comment consent action items which include two items under board office four items under academic services five items under business services two items under human resources one item under information system and

003seven items under operations board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda i move to adopt the agenda thank you miss vaughn i'll second thank you mr fisher and please record your vote miss roman i don't think it's coming up and debbie oh yes yes thank you miss morgan i was just getting ready to state that thank you and board member kathleen morgan will be participating and voting by phone this is this evening's pursuant to board policy 1.11 i know miss patricka will be joining us shortly and it's not coming up too second it by miss fisher but we cannot vote because it's not up it's bond with the initiator it's not showing up i don't know if anybody else is okay showing up oh it is everybody else showed up now it is

004hey ms roman you rece you heard miss morgan said i apologize for the wait okay it's a 6-0 motion passes tonight we have miss fisher will lead us in the invocation after which miss giovanelli will lead us in the presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance mrs fisher please introduce your guest for the invocation thank you pastor patrick miller is a native of florida and was called to start nations choice church in cape coral florida november 19 2017. nations choice church is an independent nominee non-denominational multicultural church pastor miller was called into the ministry in 1996 he is a retired army airborne ranger and while serving on active duty planted three churches these churches were in alaska afghanistan and miami in 2014 pastor miller was declared a golden apple teacher of the year by

005the school district of lee county he currently leads junior rotc operations here at the district office pastor patrick is an active member in the community and he has coached local high school teams to state championships this demonstrates his commitment to excellence and to being active in our community he is the newest chaplain at the cape coral police department as of april of this year patrick is married to angelia and together they have six daughters welcome pastor patrick please stand please rise amen amen dr savage board members distinguished guests family and friends i am honored to lead this invocation on behalf of the cape coral police department as one of their newest chaplains let us pray dear heavenly father we thank you tonight for just being able to be here to give you glory and honor

006we welcome you we invite you into this meeting we invite your presence into this meeting lord we ask that you would encamp your angels around our young people our children lee county lord this county means so much to the people to this nation this is your county these are your people lord we ask that the agenda items lord god that we call for unity as we come together as one seeking a common goal a common purpose and that is the education of our children lord god for we know that they are our future and we thank you that you're protecting them each and every day lord we ask that as we leave this place but not from your presence that you will lead us and guide us protect us on our way home and lord

007we give you the glory and honor whatever is said whether in word or deed to you be all the glory in jesus mighty name amen mr giovannelli introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for the pledge of allegiance tonight is staff sergeant brian brown army instructor from riverdale high school staff star sergeant brown served 23 years in the army in numerous assignments and retired as operations sergeant for the first lighting battalion this is staff sergeants brown's third year at jrotc instructor in the district thank you for your service sir thank you ma'am presenting the national college tonight is cadet major jada estep jd estep is a member of the national honor society the ib program in which she maintains a 4.52 gpa cadet estep has participated for the last three years in the

008jrotc program and has attended several parades community service projects and service learning activities and leadership camps cadet estep is a cadet s3 operations officer at riverdale high school jrotc she is actively involved in the jrotc drill color guard and junior academic leadership bowl teams and has served as the commander for the color guard team which competed this year at the state competition please join me in reciting the 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 okay please be seated thank you mr evanelli this evening students representative is ambrielle ambriela calliste a member of the district student advisory committee ambriela is an 8th grade student from mariner middle

009school she is active in her community and school serving as the president of her school student council team leader for their tv production and editor-in-chief of the yearbook and the triton buzz school newspaper she participates in local athletic athletics playing for the florida future 8th and 9th grade girls basketball team as well as the ladies trains basketball team at mariner at mariner ambriela has a deep curiosity for learning and enriches herself at school by taking advanced classes while maintaining a 4.0 gpa good job after high school israel plans to pursue a career in sports broadcasting or sports management as an agent please welcome ambrielle question next on the agenda board members please join me down at the pit as we go through our recognitions we're going to go down okay i believe i'm first good

010evening everyone it's a big crowd okay i would like to invite dr carl burnside is he in the building and please come down and join me dunbar high school is proud to announce that it now has its third first place world champion i'm going to repeat that it's third first place world champion and second place as well world champion in addition dunbar now has its 24th and 25th certaport mark microsoft office specialist florida state champions a lot to say give them a hand when i taught high school i taught the microsoft program so i know how hard it is to get that many first and second place people andrew and please tell me is it chung okay andrew chuang saladin earned first place in the world for microsoft powerpoint 2019. carson mulvey earned second place

011in the world the world people for powerpoint 2016. isabelle is it lou isabelle liu earned the 2022 minecraft office specialist florida state champion for powerpoint 2019 and carson movie earned the 2022 certified microsoft specialist florida state champion for the world 20 for the word i'm sorry 2019. both andrew and carson competed in the microsoft world championships on november 11 2021 andrew successfully placed first in the world championship for powerpoint and collectively earned drum roll please ten thousand dollars plus a microsoft service pro carson placed second in the world for powerpoint 2016 and collectively earned five thousand dollars and an xbox one i wonder which one he's most proud of out of all six competition categories andrew and carson were the only united states winners to place in the top 10 in the world can we

012say world and i have to take just a moment to explain to you some of these certifications i used to tell my kids that when they took the certification test they might tell you to capitalize something but not use this particular thing and i said they must have these little minions hidden somewhere and they're told we've got to hide these things in six places but we're going to cut off three of them so you have to find where to find it and not use these three things sounds confusing ask these guys the school board and the superintendent are pleased to recognize and extend congratulations to andrew schwang and carson mulvey unfortunately isabel lou was unable to join us tonight but congratulations to her as well woman power all right so thank you so much first

013carson thank you congratulations and you're going to go down there let's give him a hand and andrew truong right i'd like to invite our fine and performing arts coordinator dr jason tomaszewski to join me at the podium please the florida music educators association allstate music conference was held january 12 through 15 2012 in 2012. boy i'm decade behind here in tampa elementary middle and high school students from the lee county school district attended and earned all-state recognition and awards in various areas okay so we have lots of people and we're going to do this school by school do you have the cover things for okay and you're going to get a nice folder for your certificate and your certificate ladies and gentlemen who earned this will be mailed to you okay so you'll have something

014to hold in your hand all right so we're going to begin with the allstate elementary chorus if there are any school administrators and musical teachers in the room please join us when your school is called please audience hold your applause until all students from the same school have been called all right we're going to start with patriot elementary school and alice yaki anybody from here they are just got them now okay thank you from tanglewood elementary school taryn garmathi penelope kerbin alethea nicholson and victoria quilty would you please come forward is perfect all right three oaks elementary school we are honoring amelia dan hartog mary holden emma obario come on forward congratulations thank you and now we have a student from villa's villas elementary sophia aloy sure next we honor students from the sanibel school

015allison taylor o'brien and aubry wilson thank congratulations very much so okay from north fort myers academy for the arts rebecca brown eloise hall diana martinez-reyes fiona mullen and ava nightingale congratulations thank you well we have another honor for north fort myers academy for the arts and this is middle school treble chorus isabella brugge i'm sorry bergman muniz jessica padron candice bombre ella cumberson culberson i'm sorry veronica durso isabella hall emma bambree mia dorso and jasmine murphy i've always wanted to say come on down did my best you guys are gonna be in front of us hello thank you boy how do i go after that okay that was awesome no you don't want me to sing each year the lee county supervisor of elections office invites all public high schools to participate in its high

016school voter registration challenge since 1999 this outreach has been successful successful in the registration of thousands of new young voters when a high school responds to the challenge issued by the elections office representatives provide voter education presentations after which all eligible students are invited to register to vote this year the following nine lee county high schools participated cape coral high school cypress lake high school dunbar high school east lee high school estero high school ida s baker high school island coast high school lehigh senior high school norfolk myers high school from september 2021 to february of this year the supervisor of elections office was l was able to register 691 new voters and update the voter information of 152 students the school board and the superintendent are pleased to welcome mr tommy doyle lee county

017supervisor of elections mr juan diaz community education services director and ms gabriela aguirre communications specialist who will announce the first second and third place winners of the this year's high school voter registration challenge please join me gentlemen thank you thank you for having us here to make these awards i'd like to thank a few words of course we invited all 15 high schools nine allowed us to do some in classroom and some virtual i'm going to blame that on covet so i want to encourage dr savage and school board to encourage all our principals to allow us to come in and do a presentation in the schools personally so as you can see the top three place getters on this voter registration drive were the three schools that allowed us then do a total education

018program it's a short program and we teach the students the importance of voting how to vote we take the intimidation out and we make it fun for them and this gives these three schools pride in what in that voter challenge and next year we'll do all 15 high schools and we'll have over a thousand new registrations so i want to let introduce juan diaz my community education director he will present the awards to the high schools k1 europe you sir it is worth emphasizing that the winning schools were the first to respond to our invitation to participate in the challenge and in addition they were the only ones that allowed our team to provide voter education presentations in their classrooms and auditoriums now i would like to present the winners with their respective trophies which

019they can keep and display in their awards window at their schools in first place with 346 registrations which is 22 percent of the registered students able to register we have lehigh senior high school we have principal jackie corey social studies department head john cheffoletti and teacher haley mcculloch in second place with 126 registrations which means 11 percent register we have cape coral high school we have assistant principal leslie cornwell and teacher and voter registration coordinator ashley kohler and in third place we have with 106 registrations which is nine percent registered is lee county high school we have here principal melissa robbery and teachers and hester and robert moore all the time there we like he's go wow congratulations thank you guys same time we're going to just take a moment so that if anyone would

020like to leave they're more than welcome to leave we really appreciate you and please everybody give them another round of applause okay the next on the agenda item is public comment miss kathy dupree bruno please address the item of public comment thank you and good evening madam chair and board school board policy and superintendent school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff located in the hallway outside of the boardroom the rules concerning public comment are posted

021in and will be made from the microphone where the podium is in the back of the room please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues abuse of language is prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper during the public comment time is prohibited speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone for board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers we will take recesses as necessary if there

022is not decorum in the chambers per board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20 2 minutes if there are 30 and one minute if there are 31 speakers or more the maximum time allowed for public comment is one hour 60 speakers you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone i will call your names five speakers at a time please follow the staff's direction when lining up madam chair there are 20 speakers that wish to address the board this evening three minutes per speaker thank you thank you miss dapri bruno please make sure you have completed a public comment card if you intend

023to provide public comment this card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to staff for follow-up the cards are located with staff in the hallway is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the board but did not fill out a comment card please raise your hand okay mr prairie bruno would you please proceed with the public comments madam chair thank you will the following individuals please line up and go to the back of the room where the podium is denise nystrom jamie miller sergio cruz john matey sharon mateen good evening denise nystrom for over a year we have been told that your decisions are not politically based yet at yesterday's workshop meeting governor desantis and the laws that he passed were mocked by your consulting group not only

024that what was said was click bait fake news with regards to house bill 1557 and fake news is not appropriate or acceptable and it was indicative of a political agenda the divisiveness that exists in the district has to stop and it starts with the district leadership setting the tone for the culture that they want to create in the district it is not acceptable especially in the field of education to create an intolerant environment someone needed to interrupt your consulting group and to tell them that their behavior was unacceptable this is disappointing and i can only hope that dr bernier can influence the culture and we can build bridges moving forward in fact i thought that dr bernier was going to be in attendance tonight and i wanted to hear him say that i welcome him

025and that i'm hoping that he will establish a well-working collaborative relationship with the board and find a way to bridge the gap between the board and the community thank you good evening good evening my name is jamie miller and i am piggybacking off of denise i'm absolutely appalled by the unprofessionalism from capital strategies consulting group referencing hb 57 as the don't say gay bill instead of its rightful term of the parental rights and education bill shows extreme bias and it should have been corrected immediately by somebody on this board you represent all children i'm also disgusted at the amount of discussion among the board members the board attorney and capital strategies to find loopholes to not follow the law if you want to find loopholes we will find patches because you guys represent all children

026and all families in this district for the last two years we have shown up to school board meetings begging and pleading with you to protect our children and to make changes to your policies you shut down schools which force parents to attend virtual learning with their students you hunt up posters in schools and now you're on record as saying you don't think parents have a right to be involved in their children's education excuse me education you didn't listen so we went above your heads we partnered with organizations we partnered with legislators and we got our voices heard and i'm thankful for each one of them having to create new policies and procedures because of the new laws is repercussions of your actions thank you good evening good evening sergio cruz good evening board members parents

027students and fellow community members as we draw near the end of autism aware awareness month i find myself here tonight being the voice on behalf of my non-verbal son elijah who attends oak hammock middle school advocating on his behalf and indirectly others like himself after many roadblocks and misleading information we were able to acquire an augmentative and alternative technology device for my son this device has become my son's voice in his perceived absence of one the device is an ipad with a communication app installed on it called go talk now after many trials and hard work by many members of his iep team and outside therapists we were finally able to unlock a few puzzle pieces and keys to success in utilizing the device and ultimately building an effective and functional way to communicate to

028others however for the past year year and a half we've lost our momentum in progress the regression was not solely on the lack of face-to-face therapy services but ironically something seemingly much smaller than that after many times of periodically bringing the device in to be backed up and updated by the i.t department we had found our son's device restricted and important features of the app restricted after a year plus of inquiring as to why there were restrictions or simply what happened and after giving the staff administration and district representatives ample time to reproduce the response it wasn't until yesterday morning that the assistant esc director finally produced a policy which they said the i.t department was leaning on or referencing to in order to rationalize the restrictions the policy is called sipa the children's internet

029protection act which to briefly paraphrase is this basically in place to seemingly protect our children from accessing obscene and explicit material to give a brief break round background my son uses pictures on his app to communicate the pictures of the built-in app are generalized generalization pictures which weren't really successful for my son and we found out that he needed picture specific photos which the only way we were accessing that through the app was through the internet search well they're saying that basically the internet search is a risk to sipa and mind you my son had had the ability to fully utilize his device for roughly two years before the sudden change which led to amazing and hopeful documented progress so i'm here today seeking a resolution and help to bring back the ability to take

030full advantage of the apps features and abilities i believe the current ada laws idea laws and even the cipa policy provides justification for this reasonable accommodation i be i believe along with countless professional data assessments teacher observations that it is needed to be able to achieve his highest potential and have full access to a free and more importantly appropriate public education i hope to leave my contact information behind to hopefully receive some assistance and resolve thank you will the following individuals please line up sharon mcgill robert roper kathy stout raeanne barron christine barron just to say a couple of things my name is john mady and i think we've got the greatest country that's ever existed in the whole world and i think that we need to go back to our founding fathers and find

031out how this country really got started our founding fathers founded this country on god's word and we ought to follow that same thing i understand there's we're supposed to be voting on prayer tonight that's the way our country got started when they fought the most powerful country in the world at that time england was the most powerful country and we fought them and won our freedom it's an amazing thing that the declaration of independence that over half of the men who signed the declaration of independence were pastors and i think that we should be able to do that in our country in our schools and in our classrooms and i think that you should allow the bible to be taught in school we may not always agree on every teaching that the teachers would teach

032but if the bible were taught we'd be a whole lot further ahead and i want you to know too that we are still getting our troops together our pastor troops together in their churches and we want to make our board to be christians we want we don't want our board to be godless people who don't care about our kids we want our board to be christian people who do care about our kids and we're still coming you have patience and we'll be here we're going to get these seats thank you good evening sharon mcgill first off i would like to thank the board for figuring out a way to try to accommodate people so they weren't having to turn around in their seats to view the speakers as some people were having an issue with

033so thank you for having it up on the big screen next i'd like to thank the academic services department and curriculum advisory committee for all of their work on the math books the only and for including kids in the process as well and there were some suggestions made about how it might be changed a little bit in the future but my big concern was after the comments yesterday in the workshop about the sunshine loss and the students participation and having students participating in vetting those math books is there any kind of conflict of interest there that with the sunshine laws and something to consider next is the day of prayer currently kids are allowed one minute of silence in their schools they can use that time for prayer they can use that time to meditate

034they can just use that time to reflect and maybe just be quiet we all know how hard it is for a five-year-old to even be quiet for a minute but i don't think it's appropriate for the schools to expect that kids are going to pray in school i don't think it's appropriate if they want to take that current moment of silence and use that time to pray so be it but it just appears to me that with all the religions and ethnicities in this district that it could alienate children rather than pull them together if they don't bel if they don't have the same christian values if some of the kids are jewish or some are christian maybe some are you know are not taught religion at home which is the parents choice but you

035don't want to put them in a situation where there's in a group and kids are praying and they're sitting there going okay what should i do what should i do and that they can become intimidated so i just think that minute of silence that's in place already is appropriate for that thank you good evening kathy stout how are you all tonight i just want to say something i just want to thank each and every one of you if you were really interested on may 5th which is the natural national prayer day i'd like to discuss that a little bit further the reason why i love where i live is because i fell in love with our community it doesn't matter what religion you believe in it doesn't matter what race you are you know that

036you also relate to or know i have multiple friends and family in all cultures including religion too and i'd like to share something with you that i fell in love with in this community it wasn't just the community but it was where i saw the love and the affection and that was the church that i go to not only that all churches and most churches actually have something that's a youth group that a lot of the members of our society of our children go to and they love the youth group absolutely my children shine from that and i believe in that and that's why i want to reflect back on may 5th it is absolutely okay if a child should pray sometimes we need that little encouragement from ourselves and why sometimes they pray because

037right before they take a test you know even before they go to a sporting event it's okay it is absolutely okay for our children to pray at any given time it doesn't matter what time the day it is or it doesn't have to be loud it could be quiet and it can be very subtle it's very important our society to believe in something that we truly believe in and it does come from where the parents so i just want to say please consider and vote for the national prayer day it is absolutely important for all of our children to pray and thank you hi my name's ryan and i'm in and i'm six and i'm in kindergarten i want to tell you something i love jesus and i don't want you guys to take the

038prayer out of my school i want to tell you this first john c 16 for god's will the world he gave his only son whoever leaving him will not perish by eternal life god bless you god bless america i'm christine barron i'm next it's okay don't cry could you go ahead and please restart hi my name is christine barron and to follow this how upset she is just to know that possibly god could be removed from her life is just completely upsetting i am here to say that honestly she's in a christian school right now she does not have to worry about that i praise god every day for people that moved mountains to create the hope scholarship and step up for students because guess what my kids are riding free until they graduate that's

039740. that's 21 000 a year taken out of your school so that my children can get the education that i my god-given rights choose that my kids can serve the god that created them to where they find peace and they know their value is not in these schools it's not in bullying it's not in anything other than god himself and what what else would you want in the school other than a religion that is to profess love we are told to love one another that is what our children should be learning our children should not be learning about crt a separate room for lgbt no everybody everybody's got a place according to god he loves each and every one of us and we as parents should have the right to allow our kids to come

040in and freely pray we the lady before kathy spoke and said there's silence no that's why i removed my kids two of the public schools here in lee county do not offer a moment of silence that is up to the principal to remove that and it was taken out and then secondly is the fact that okay we're worried about alienation well us christians are being alienated why is it we have to conform to everyone else we have the freedom and we expect to have that freedom and if you don't we're going to pull all our skids out kids out so parents if you don't know about the hope scholarship see me i don't get paid i don't make any money i have free literature and i'm here to tell you it was easy free education

041any school of your choice don't be afraid to step up we gotta be to change parents guardians we are here to make a stand for our children this is not for them to dictate to us what our kids are allowed to say do and feel let god tell them how to feel and let god tell them how to act that's when you're going to see a change in this world so please don't be afraid to say oh i can't home school or oh i can't afford to pull my kid out there's tons and tons of lutheran christian whatever religion pull your kids out act on your right and let them pay the price by taking money from their pockets thank you will the following individuals please line up olivia baron elena baron megan howard tara

042jenner kim hawk robert roper yesterday i watched the live stream of the meeting i think it was a workshop i was in such disbelief i was horrified i was so disappointed in the way that meeting was conducted i had to watch it again today to make sure i wasn't misinterpreting what was said based on the comments of the board the superintendent the attorney your paid political lobbyists made yesterday for nearly four hours you are clearly in no position to be proposing a new student code of conduct at this time you are not ready and the document does not reflect the new laws that take effect there's no reason to move forward unless you intend to pass the student code of conduct before the law takes effect i hope that's not the case setting aside the

043new laws the current student code of conduct does not accurately reflect the current policy of the board that allows the district to place a child it is experiencing gender confusion with a gender affirming only counselor without the parental advice permission or notification this process has to stop put it in writing put it in writing exactly what you're doing let the public figure out if that's what they want or not but to leave it out of the student code of conduct for another year when you know what you're doing is wrong it's not being very transparent it's not being accountable it's not being compassionate the current policy has almost resulted in the deaths of two lee county students one in high school one in middle school stop the process this is more than a moral issue

044it is a matter of life and death hi my name is olivia i am in second grade i don't want you taking prayer out of my school that's how i talk to god first john 4 14 the father sent his son to be the savior of the world god bless you and god bless america hi my name is megan howard i'm the mom i'm an 11 year old from cape elementary and i wanted to thank the board for hanging in there in a very difficult year and all the hard work that you do and for some of us it's really just been the last few years that we've really gotten involved involved in seeing everything the board does and all the work that you do it's really nice to have all these kids here but

045i want you to be very careful when you're considering a day of prayer we have a really varied population christian muslim catholic and i'm hearing over and over again this very aggressive group of people talking about the love but their message of love is not coming across in the way that they're speaking they're very aggressive and it's certainly not coming across in the way that we've seen some of our students marginalize this year and we have a separation of church and state for a reason and to think that just because people don't want that connection does not mean that you don't have faith it doesn't mean that you're an atheist i happen to have been raised in the christian faith my father was a minister for 30 years i could recite all these bible verses

046as a child we read the bible every night but we did it in our home we went to a public school we had that separation we already have a moment of silence you are going to marginalize kids that have different beliefs not only that but you're setting up the school for litigation and i as a taxpayer want my money to be spent educating our kids compensating our teachers and our bus drivers getting new equipment i don't want it to be fighting the multitude of lawsuits that we are going to see coming from governor desantis's bills he is a lawyer he is going to waste so much of our tax money so please remember what we're here for for the kids and try not to get drawn into this political phrase so that we're delivering a

047good education for all of our kids whether you call yourself a christian or a muslim we just can't unless you want to start having every school provide muslim education hindu catholic jewish there's no place for it pray with your kids before you go to school pray with your kids when they come home but when they're at school they're there to learn and we have to deliver to all the kids in the community thank you hi my name is elena barron and i am 10 years old and i'm here to stand firm on my faith and i believe in jesus the one true savior that loves everyone so he died for us and i pray every day and i will never stop praying romans 12 2 do not be conformed to this world but be transformed

048by the know of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of god what is good acceptable and perfect and this is definitely not god's will for you guys to be removing prayer from our school i you guys may say i can't pray but i will still pray no matter what because i love jesus and i will not stop praying with my friends every single day although it would be great to have a national day of prayer it's honestly not enough we need prayer every day we also need to put god back in our school curriculum and we need it every day i love jesus god bless you and god bless america and i hope this gets changed well the following individuals please line up samantha zukowski amy mcnabb lou navarro

049jacqueline perez christie divilly tara jenner yet again i was asked to move to the back of the room i feel like i've been asked to sit at the back of the bus plessy versus ferguson said separate but eagle but brown versus board of education specifically said that was not constitutionally sound unless there's a overriding government interest that there's a disparity in treatment i challenge the board to question whether or not we still need to be in the back of this room i was yesterday in the boardroom twice excuse me let rephrase that in the district twice for two different meetings i was taken my photograph my id and my name was written down i was not escorted i was not searched i was not wanted nothing even though those services were available at the time

050of one of the meetings that i was attending because there was a board meeting here in this room the disparity in treatment and the circumstances make it seem really clear that the only reason it's done in this forum is because one or more of the board members seems to be frightened and they are trying to chill public comment and participation if anybody up on the dais is that concerned have one of the guards you know protect you specifically there's a guard on either side i have to pull vault over the pony wall and go through the side barricades it's ridiculous but having said that let me go on to a couple of other things i looked at the code of conduct and i noted just a numerous typos which i bet is actually just triggering

051ms patrick inordinately but in addition to that the element dealing with bullying is on page 89 but mention that the hope scholarship doesn't occur until page 99 and it doesn't even specify what the hope scholarship is about there's also a section that says that if parents want to opt out you can ask for the information on how to do that why are you making it harder for the parents than necessary just do a hyperlink and mr pre-bruno you can always incorporate by reference laws that are going to be coming into play come july and if for some reason they end up not being in play at that time then the link's not going to go anywhere it's going to show that it's no longer valid as for the board meeting yesterday afternoon yesterday afternoon the

052workshop that you had i felt like i was watching the view on hyper like i don't know what and it was four hours long i watched it from home fortunately on double speed again just like one of the meetings i was at in the afternoon where the attorney who was present they did reference the bill 1557 as the don't say gay bill i challenge you to find the word gay in that document it's about parental rights and i have i have a serious problem with the way that the board and the district actually tittered about this you know what it's not hey i'm samantha zukowski march 30th i wrote a letter to governor desantis highlighting a solution to the hemorrhage-like loss we have of instructors here in lee county the solution requires no extra funding

053which is hard to come by with all the consulting contracts heavily centralized institutions like ourselves have but anyway the reform comes in the facet of temporary certified teachers becoming professionally certified teachers i myself am on my second temporary certificate and the issue of making the role a performance-based truly performance-based evaluated process would save the loss of dozens if not hundreds of teachers across the state ending the kind of gauntlet temporary certified teachers have to go through to become professionally certified that would get rid of a lot of the turbulent classroom environments our students experience they have a rotating door of long-term subs the quality of the content delivered throughout the course is sub-par and there's a lot of secondary and tertiary long-term detriments to the community when we can't keep teachers in the classroom and

054i think that the three-year mark for teachers to okay work full-time as a teacher and then you have to take on the second full-time job course load of whether they're doing an alt-lead type program or master's credits on top of it and having a family and likely having a second job because our salary doesn't cover a living wage it's just not possible and that's every three years check your data you're going to see a massive outflux of instructors and you see their hearts broken because they've forged relationships with some of these students they've become coaches they've become volunteers and i think this is a really no money required way to keep teachers in the classroom longer if we just make the bridge from temporary to professional almost non-existent i'm held at the same standards professionally

055certified teachers are held to i'm evaluated twice a year i have to do professional development i have to take the same test to prove i'm competent in the courses what's the difference right so that leads me to another thing i have in my own campus i just want to give you a heads up for the schedule change coming up there are a large group of students organizing on social media to protest it and threaten unenrollment in favor of homeschool or a virtual option because the quality of the course content and time allowed to deliver it is not enough particularly for academy-based campuses such as my own we have firefighting automotive where they like to in in their junior and senior years they go to all day campuses to work on it but that won't be

056possible with this new schedule and if it's possible it's not gonna look pretty and so they're threatening disenrollment just wanted to give you a heads up they'll probably be at a couple meetings here in the near future thank you the lighting in here is terrible i'll back up here okay can't see me anyway i miss anthony thomas the last time i saw anthony thomas alive he was standing right there at that microphone reminding the previous school attorney that he could limit his time at the microphone but he could not limit his content and anthony was a force to be reckoned with he spoke to authority like nobody i ever saw and to say he was fearless isn't true i'm sure he was afraid just like i'm afraid courage the definition of courage is to move

057ahead even when we're afraid and that brings me to jacqueline perez she is the most courageous woman i've seen here in the last 15 years if not for jacqueline most of us would have no idea what was going on behind the scenes here and the extent of corruption and fraud is mind-boggling and the only thing more surprising and disturbing is that it's tolerated it's not prosecuted it's not even it's not even investigated so this brings me to my next point which is newt gingrich said it out loud on national tv ten years ago during the republican debates and i was i was surprised that it came out of his mouth he said the public schools can't be fixed and must be abolished and we really should call public schools government schools which is what they

058are and government schools will never please everybody and that's why we have to find an alternative the hope scholarship is the best kept secret in the state of florida and we need to put that on the front page of every newspaper and every television broadcast the hope scholarship is for everybody now universal vouchers are coming unfortunately they're not here yet but the institute for justice has already cleared the path by winning three u.s supreme court cases in support of vouchers we're about to hear the results of the most recent challenge and the blaine amendments will be history and school vouchers a universal school voucher i hope in my lifetime will be the law of the land and then everybody will get what they want and need religious schools gay schools black schools atheist schools everybody

059wins thank you so d2a is still out there asked the chinese government in shanghai all right we're ready lunavara retired teacher long-term lee county resident lee county district teacher who subbed since my last visit here on the board anybody raise your hand come on i'm the teacher gwen you subbed very good i didn't expect anybody else to how we doing with the sixty thousand dollar starting salary for teachers here in lee county and please don't say you don't have the money you got the money for tons of buses and this that and the other and you've got that fat half cent sales tax and why build buildings when you're not going to have faculty to work in them you're making a big mistake and plus you penalized us because you couldn't even get along with

060the city of cape coral and the charter schools and now they raised our utility taxes you know their motto is if we can't negotiate tax them i didn't appreciate that now you need to look at that half cent it's a windfall because inflation's almost 10 percent i don't care what the government says we know they tweak the cpi now a starting teacher i believe is 46 5 six and your pay is 45 six you know that's outrageous it really is and the governor said he might throw in a thousand dollars if he's re-elected that's a good idea not to re-elect that man gwen i have a gift for you tonight as you do your campaign and it's bible promises for you and i know you're a christian so that's for you and i want to

061take the last 40 seconds to thank yati perez she's a sheriff she's a sergeant here and i haven't seen her lately she gave me this book you know when a officer gives me a book that says something to me because you know i'm not the world's greatest law enforcement fan as chief newland over here but i'm going to make sure i get in touch with the sheriff and give her a good recommendation and hopefully everybody needs at least a 15 pay raise it's ridiculous what this country good evening my name is amy mcnabb and i'm going to switch it up a little bit tonight i'm going to talk about school choice such as it is on day one of spring break my son begged me to find out what high school he got which is

062poor timing in my opinion for the first day of spring break to find that out let me tell you when he found out he got his fourth pick his spring break was ruined and it hasn't he has not been the same since my son is not a lover of school but he goes and he does the best he can he has built relationships with friends since elementary and middle school and he now will not be going to high school with anyone any one of his friends or anyone that he even knows for that matter he doesn't even want to go to high school now he wants to be homeschooled and i have a job i cannot do that he has been depressed and despondent since he found out his placement my family lives three miles

063from his first pick and accordingly this was our first pick for him to attend because of that my husband and i drive right past his first pick which is three miles from our house the fact that we went to this school my husband and i and my 21 year old son has nothing to do with this decision it was based on transportation alone he has sat several times for hours waiting for his bus to come this year which never came i have to drive him has sat in the dark waiting for the bus he has has to deal with troublemakers on the bus he's on the bus for an hour as it is right now by him going to the school he would be able when he begins to drive he would be driving not

064as far i don't understand why we want our children driving 30 minutes away when they're just learning how to drive i just don't understand why school choices into choice he got his fourth pick he didn't get his second or his third pick which are still within five miles of my house i just don't understand you know maybe i don't know enough but the logic to me with transportation transportation being the problem that is that it is i feel like kids should just go to the school closest to their home with the friends that they've grown up with that is my point thank you good evening board soon we will have a new superintendent in place the community is looking forward to this transition in leadership my hope is my hope is that bernier the new

065superintendent does not make the mistake of aligning himself with two board members that ultimately led to the demise of the past two superintendents those two board members patricia morgan who continue to ignore malfeasance and corruption in the district along with partaking in bullying employees and private citizens are the blame for the state of the district in its shortcomings and failures as we look to a new administration at the lee county school district the only way for the community and the district to move forward is to bring final closure on the following complaints resolution and accountability with public employees who have abused their position in power by utilizing public funds to spy on private citizens and maintain dossiers on certain individuals in the communication department the findings of the doa state investigators in transportation who found

066that inspections were not being properly conducted that credit should be given to the two whistleblowers that came forward who are now being bullied and have their reputations tarnished those employees need to be acknowledged and others need to be held accountable the false representation of the population growth in a cereal by kathy eba and other staff members and chris patricka that led to millions of dollars being thrown away for the building of a school that was not needed in estero the misuse of the same employees from the communication department and chris patricka and superintendent savage who created a hit piece to disparage my reputation with fabricated lies in november the bot should temp and wasted funds of attempting to split tower road property then finding out that the remainder of the property was useless to the

067school district it was also directed by chris patricka the hundreds of thousands of dollars used to create a proximity plan which is now being not used because the findings contradicted the lies of patrick's plan to build a school in estero the disaster of a project of the innovation school on tree line to find out you don't have enough land to build a school there so now you have to build up which is going to cost the taxpayers additional millions of dollars due to poor planning the abuse and waste of millions of dollars being paid to outside attorneys like the henderson firm with strict orders to destroy children and employees how about the two hundred thousand dollars that patricka had atkins authorized to go after gabriela perez who won not one not two but three resolution

068agreements with her only request at mediation was to hold those responsible or what about the 26 thousand dollars wasting on investigating the bullying case of reece hall who was truly being bullied in a private meeting with dr spyro and others present greg atkins stated that he was following orders from chris patricka let's not forget that no one was ever held responsible for the pell grab funds i'm short on time i'm going to ask you a forensic audit we have two investigations going on with the federal government and with an internal hired attorney firm by the name of taylor if you have english come forward please no clapping thank you christie i feel like that's hard to follow but i will try a few things this evening to answer something that pastor roper mentioned earlier they

069do plan on voting on that on the to to approve the code of conduct on may 24th in that in a board action meeting so fyi i'm very there the national day of prayer i just want to let everybody know it's for everyone of every religion of every part of the world including no religion so to hear people come up here and say that it's hateful in nature and try and corner it into being one specific religion is kind of a you know it's not kind of it's not true so because because the national day of prayer is literally for every person of every religion including no religion so i just felt like i had to say that twice i am very disappointed in the board's behavior yesterday in yesterday's workshop i was brought back

070to the virtual classroom with my eighth grader and when i had the pleasure or displeasure i should say of discovering this teacher the civics teachers political leanings by just merely attending the class i should never know that i should never know that from from the company that my debt my tax dollars go to to lobby using district dollars on behalf of the district i should never feel like they have a political leaning one way or the other their only political leaning should be for the best interest of our children because that is your political leaning or it is supposed to be so i'm very disappointed in your actions yesterday and someone board chair should probably apologize for it now i have some more money related things to bring up in our my favorite document that

071gets you know every other meeting or so the property records assessment retirements list so we have several printers that we have listed as obsolete okay it took me 30 minutes to google these printers to find out whether or not i could purchase them whether it be at new new or used and imagine that i can purchase every single one of them why is it that there is a zero net book value next to all of these what is the district going to do with all of these printers why is it that to date we have over four million dollars in property that we just have to write off of our right off of our budget and where is the accountability or transparency in that i too would like a forensic audit not performed by the

072district that concludes public comment madam chair thank you just going over there's a lot was said tonight i know that people were speaking on the new laws that have come out and we definitely will be the parental rights bill and our legal department will be working on the policies and making sure that we have everything that is stated in there in the proper manner so that we will be able to adhere to the law and that is something that we must do as the district and we plan on doing that so all the bills that just came through we are currently they are looking at all that and we'll be making sure that comes back across to us with our policies and procedures also the day of prayer i know there was a lot of

073conversation in that was something that miss kittens had brought up that she was going to bring we actually had that when i first started here that was part of our resolution and that's what she's asking to bring back but that was definitely a part of the resolution which we kind of probably a year ago stopped having all resolutions because we were trying to appease every single person which it's impossible for us to do that we understand that you're not going to be able to accommodate every single person but that was something that was always on there in this month of may and i know may i believe it's the fifth the first thursday of every every may downtown there's hundreds well thousands of people that attend the breakfast and people speak about prayer we all

074pray in our own ways and we have that right to do so and i would never want to take that from anyone i know i pray every day every tuesday before i come out here i can tell you that first thing in the morning and before i walk out because i know i have to have the strength to make it through this meeting and i'm not saying that to be funny i'm saying that because that is that's the truth and then i know mr sergio cruz i did see that ms teresa had met with you to get your information regarding your son we want to make sure that he has what he needs with his device so that way he can feel that he has the tools that he needs to succeed the restore the

075as far as the code of conduct everybody's still working on that and i know ms samantha had spoke about the temporary a professional certification and dr savage can you respond to that yes man i'm sure i didn't actually have our rhr executive director mr dodig was just kind of mentioning to me because i had a question about that because i remember when i worked in tallahassee it was one of the things that i knew that then as commissioner corcoran was looking into was the alternative certification paths and it was definitely on our district legislative priorities in terms of we were looking at alternative certifications several years ago and i think that's just something that we i mean i wrote that down as she was talking about it that i do think that is something that

076definitely is an issue where their temporary certificate expires essentially and then they're not eligible so we're i'll certainly be following up more i don't really have anything in here that i can no no clear answers other than it used to be a legislative priority and we'll look forward to more information okay thank you i appreciate that and then see what else and then also the possibly just touching it on the school choice we know that is a huge issue and i know miss mcnabb was speaking on that regarding proximity and the closeness of the three miles and passing and i mean we just yeah student enrollment has the ability to probably give a little more insight you know which case is a little unique depending on the selections they make in the various different proximity

077based preferences they have in terms of our other our actual what we refer to as a proximity plan obviously that isn't yet an implementation it doesn't mean it's going away the maps and whatnot are all there it's simply the policies that support how it gets implemented that is the next body of work but but in terms of the current choice system it's very much driven by the preferences but then there's additional issues such as the school enrollment so i could guess which schools it would have been but but it's just something that an individual student enrollment could actually see what the choice preferences they put would have an understanding of why the choices resulted in the student getting their their fourth choice certainly that's an issue to us concerning always when students aren't able to

078get any of the schools that they would prefer to have a waiver and they're our waiver process exactly so student enrollment would be the best point of contact for that okay thank you and then i also want to say i know there was a comment that was made that we're trying to find loopholes we're trying to make sure that there are no loopholes and that we are adhering to every bit of those new statues that are coming and miss dupree bruno i know that we talked about that because we want to make sure that we have clarity of everything so there are no loopholes in any of these so here's here's the thing when you are talking to your attorney the attorney's job is to make sure that they share all different sides 360 degrees

079or whatever that issue is unfortunately well fortunately i guess because this is a public body those discussions are done in the sunshine i have to talk to my clients in the sunshine so i have to tell my clients here's what our exposure is here's how we can defend that's part of our job i've said this many times i will say it again the lee county school district will follow the law whatever that law is that's what we will follow our policies and our processes will reflect the law we are currently in the process of digesting and putting together the policies and the process for house bill 1557 1467 house bill 7 and a bunch of others so we're working on it and we will make sure that we are on the side of the law

080thank you and then could you please address i know there was a comment regarding students participating in the curriculum and the sunshine so that's something that i'm going to have to look into a little bit more there is some discussion with regards to student advisory groups and sunshine requirements so i'm not prepared to answer that question at this time but that is something that i am looking into okay thank you okay so next next is the approval of the action items in the agenda under consent the documentation for action items listed under consent is made available to board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all the material and we have an opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the recommendations some

081of these items have also been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda board members are there any agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under unfinished business table items portion of the agenda and miss fisher i have no pools this evening thank you mr givenelli i'm none miss patrick no thank you miss kittens may i ask a question i we received earlier today notification of a poll was that removed or i'm a little confused mag response yes please my colleague is pulling the same thing so i'm allowing her to do it okay okay then i have no thank you miss vaughn yes j1 thank you miss morgan i have none thank you and i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda's consent action items

082with the exception of pulled item j1 i move we accept the agenda as stated with the exception of j1 thank you miss kittens may have a second i'll second it thank you and may i have please record your vote i don't see it miss morgan how do you vote please miss morgan i'm sorry i'm huge myself how do you vote please i'm not able to vote online yes so how do you vote please no she can't right hi thank you okay 7-0 moshe passes okay we have one pulled item to address but before we start that dr savage please read your recommendations they switched my script here nope okay dr savage please read your recommendation for pulled item j-1 yes madam chair j-1 the recommended actions to the approval of the general personnel recommendations as

083presented okay so i have miss vaughan you have pulled this item do you have i'm so sorry this is so different this time i have a motion to present attached to my pull would you please are you ready to hear that i am ready to hear it okay i move that we divide the agenda item j1 and remove the district planning and director planning growth and capacity and as well as trafalgar principal appointment from the remaining appointments in that agenda item thank you miss vaughn has made a motion to remove the district planning director planning growth and capacity as well as trafalgar middle principle do i have a second madam chair let's make sure that we restate the motion because it was to divide j1 do you have the motion madam chair i do not

084have it yeah that's what i said could you please restate your motion i'm sorry can you want me to restate it i move that we divide the agenda item j-1 and remove the district planning and director planning growth and capacity and as well as trafalgar principal appointment from the remaining appointments of that agenda item in other words everything that we will consider but we will pull those two items that's the division that i'm proposing in my motion okay okay so miss spawn has made a motion to i have it to she has made the motion to move to approve the superintendent's recommendation in j1 except for the divided items which are the appointed appointments of the district planning and director planning growth and capacity as well as trafalgar middle school principal so do i have

085a second on that please i'll second that thank you miss giovanelli there is no debate on this motion please record your vote kathleen morgan aye aye thank you miss vaughn aye ms kittens aye ms patricka mr evanelli aye ms fisher nay nay and i six two one motion carries okay ace c now we are going back so there is a motion to adopt the remaining recommendation on item j1 with the exception of the appointments for the district planning director planning growth at capacity as well as trafalgar middle school principal do i have a second wait madam chair i think basically at this point is there a motion so we need somebody to make that motion is there a motion yes i have a second motion please i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendations in

086item j1 except for the divided items which are the appointments of the district planning and director planning growth and capacity as well as trafalgar middle school principal thank you miss vaughn is there a second a second thank you miss kittens it has been moved by miss vaughn and seconded by miss kittens is there any discussion that's fine i have i have discussion statutorily there are only two reasons that a board member might protest an appointment made by the superintendent i am referring to the statutory statutory provision that i can reject this if i believe that the person is not qualified and i'd like to elaborate on that this position has a lot of responsibility it's the district director of planning madam chair yeah i'm so sorry ms vaughn so right now the motion is to

087vote on the consent agenda the items that have not i'm sorry i'm sorry so if there's any discussion on that the remaining appointments that are not divided is there any discussion on that no i don't i don't have any so if there's no discussion madam chain for the vote miss morgan hi thank you miss vaughn aye ms kittens aye ms patricka yes please mr evanelli aye ms fisher hi and aye 7-0 motion carries may i may i make a point of order slash suggestion that we have the superintendent recognizing he's going to do that thank you absolutely going to do that so prior to us going into the next motion miss vaughn if it's okay with you that i asked dr savage to please introduce any administrate administrators in attendance with new assignments that were

088approved under the consent agenda dr savage absolutely madam chair i'd like to recognize tony dent mcnair in maintenance services the new assistant director of maintenance services i'd like to recognize the transfer of mason clark from three oaks middle principal to mariner middle principal i'd like to recognize the transfer and change of assignment of forest walker from allen park elementary associate principal to three oaks middle principal like to recognize tracy kohler from bonita springs elementary assistant principal to fort myers beach elementary principal i'd also like to recognize tony allen from lexington middle assistant principal to east lee county high principal i'd like to recognize rachel gould from mariner middle principal to academic services principal coach holly matthews from the superintendent's office coordinator to off to elementary j principal i'd like to recognize melissa booth from villas

089elementary assistant principal to allen park elementary principal those are the folks in attendance from the undivided piece right right well congratulations to all of you really wish you the best and i know you're going to be great wherever you go at this time i'm going to take another moment so if you would like to exit out of the room unless you really want to stay with us but i'm going to let you have that moment and thank you again let's give him another hand please oops yes it's really great to see how much support that they all had for them this okay okay we will continue on the so we are back to at this time there is a at this time is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation as it relates to

090the position of district planning director planning growth and capacity for travago middle principle miss okay i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation for district planning director director of planning growth and capacity and trafalgar middle school principal thank you is there a second is that you miss fisher okay this item has been madam chair i believe that miss von if you could please restate the motion because i think maybe one or two board members did not capture the motion can you please restart okay okay and it's the motion is i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation for district planning director of planning growth and capacity and trafalgar middle school principal now seconded by miss fisher and now it has been moved by miss vaughn seconded by miss fisher now we will have discussion and

091now i will turn this back over to you miss vaughn okay i'll go back to what i started erroneously to say too early i pulled this item because of this appointment of an individual to district planning the director of planning growth and capacity this is this is a large large responsibility and i have the statutory support to do this based on the fact that i feel that this individual is not has doesn't have the qualifications to be in this position it lacks those qualifications as i said this is a huge position and it's even more important in our next five to ten years as we look at those plans lee county is not only one of the fastest growing counties in florida but actually in the nation we continue to grow at an incredibly fast

092rate that means that the person who assumes this responsibility for all three of these things not just of capacity but of capacity growth and planning of schools it would mean knowing knowing all the rules and regulations having to do with land purchase with you know we've had a few we've had a few problems that were referenced actually in one of the one of the speakers tonight and let's let's be honest we had we had a problem with school being proposed in estero high school that in retrospect when we saw information a second time showed that it really wasn't needed we've had land divided and which compromised building capacity in the future and several other things that have happened this is a very specialized area and this was pointed out to all of us on the

093board early on i didn't just pull this tonight this has come up in prior board for prior board meetings and was pulled actually by the superintendent i'm thinking about a month ago it was brought forward in discussion in either a briefing or a workshop i'm i'm not sure which i have discussed this in one on ones with superintendent savage i have discussed this with a phone conversation with superintendent savage and so this isn't a curve ball that i am throwing out at the last minute this is something i've been talking about for probably a month as again as the fastest growing school district or county in the nation we need a consummate professional to do this now i understand because i've heard several times explained to me the number of people who applied which was

094very few the position was only advertised for a week i find that to be a problem i have stated in private i have stated in prior meetings not action meetings and i will state it again when you have a district like this with the growth when you have a critical need for someone who knows the process of planning growth and capacity all of those things not just one of them then you need a consummate professional and i stated i believed that we didn't have qualified individuals that we that the committee didn't interview qualified individuals open it back up let's not settle let's not we have wonderful people in this district we have wonderful talent in this district but sometimes there are positions that come up where we don't have that special individual that is qualified

095to do these jobs we can't afford to waste any more money and we have wasted millions of dollars because of prior missteps let's say in this department i will repeat again this person is not does not have the credentials that are preferred in the job description and thus i am i have pulled this and i do not support the recommendation for this appointment on the basis of the person doesn't have the right credentials and qualifications thank you miss vaughn miss kittens okay the reason that i am supporting miss vaughn's premise in this situation i know factually that there are people that have the qualifications and they did not receive an interview the other thing you know as i sit here and look at this miss ebau's name is on the list tonight his resignation and

096i wish her all the best and i thank her for the time and energy and effort that she has put into this district and wish her the best in her next endeavors but as we look at this position she came into the position from a planning background with experience in the field and she has had some constraints and some issues and all of that and i'm not going into it but if she came in with some experience and it there were difficulties if we have someone and that does not have the experience i'm just so afraid we're setting ourselves up for failure we don't have time for ojt in this position in my meetings with superintendent and actually with both of them present i questioned they gave us a copy of the person's resume and

097i looked at the resume and i looked at the qualifications and my statement was when i used to teach high school and i taught seniors and i would tell them when you're applying for a position you may know how to paint you may know how to roller skate and you may know how to ride a bike but if the job description asks for a person that's really good at riding a bike you don't necessarily want to talk about your painting and your roller skating you will emphasize the qualifications that are asked for in that job description and coming out of a corporate background that's what you look for when you're sitting in the interview you can talk about yeah i ride a bike but i also can can do this that's fine but we're looking

098for someone that can ride a bike that can get on the bike and ride and i brought up the comment that and i was told well they do have some experience in this other i said this is the experience that we were given and it's not shown there anywhere to me and we did not receive another resume that had any of that experience on it i just really am concerned planning and growth and capacity is our achilles heel in this district right now we don't get people were talking tonight about proximity and you know issues with where their children were going in school choice starts in planning growth and development someone that's going to be over that department and i'll repeat this again when i was training to be an administrator in this district i

099spent a summer in planning and i saw what just the one person that did the growth and capacity data and i saw the work that person did and the connection between that person and school choice they had the data had to have the data to be able to say to school choice you can only put this number of students here you can only do this and i've been told by the superintendent and others that we need someone that has experience working in schools and i get that but just like i said on monday when we get ready to build a school in my experience every time we do there's a committee that is made up of district people and administrators from schools that are there to help with those types of questions do we really

100need to pull someone from a school to be there full time to do that or is that something that when we are going to do a middle school we include middle school principals etc i just mainly because i know that there are people that were not interviewed that do have qualifications and i have not seen the qualifications exemplified in the current applicant thank you miss morgan do you have any comments i do thank you for asking but first of all i want to thank my colleagues for the workshop q a this afternoon on this agenda item the in-depth probing of the job description planning department organization and district long-term meet this conversation was enlightening and contributed to changes in my opinion about this item the problem with an appointed operations staff stems from a lack

101of appropriate and effective operations leadership for the past three years significant losses of key staff suggest the need for movie leadership in other words a chief and a department overhaul my concern is that we will appoint staff today who do not meet the needs of an operations chief in this district let's see a good short-term management practice happens in the context of long-term strategic needs and planning i respectfully request that superintendent savage listen to the board concerns and pull this recommendation tonight thank you miss morgan are there any other comments lisa thank you before we move forward i just want to make sure that the board is clear on the law right so i sent an email earlier today and i have said this multiple times with regards to the law the board has responsibilities

102the superintendent has responsibilities and those are outlined in the statute the superintendent is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the district that includes personnel management now the board when the superintendent brings a recommendation to the board unless the board has good cause under two things moral turpitude or lack of qualifications that's exact those are the only two things that you can base a rejection of a superintendent's recommendation so if the board is concerned about either of those two things they need to be very clear because i believe you've had one-on-ones that talk about the job descriptions and resumes and all that stuff i'm not privy to that but you need to be clear in terms of where you find the fault with the recommendation so it's clear for the record please so miss patricka

103if if i reco if i understand this correctly if i may through the chair attorney dupree bruno it's also the superintendent's responsibility to demonstrate that the applicant has met the minimum job qualifications correct so i the superintendent does have to show where the person or the individual meets the job qualifications i don't know what happened in your meetings with the superintendent and those discussions i'm not privy to that but that is the responsibility of the superintendent to demonstrate that there is a minimum requirement of those job qualifications from the job description and therein lies clearly stated for the record the reason why i will not be supporting the motion dr savage just again we stated this in a public meeting both myself the hr chief so essentially just to recap how we rise where we

104are there were not one but two teams of operation staff including folks from planning who actually know what the planning department does and have it worked in that area understand every aspect of that as well as all the other operations areas such as construction and maintenance and so forth people who work in this from an operational standpoint every day that is where the first opportunity that mr that dr galbraith was considered qualified and recommended not just meeting minimum qualifications which i have in front of me but also was highly in a very competitive field exceeded so many other applicants secondly the executive director who supervises the three areas who is leading that particular area also recommended this individual and felt that not only was he minimally qualified but fully qualified highly qualified for that our

105hr department which is the group that we rely upon to make sure that all minimum calls are met and that candidates who are put forward are in fact qualified for these jobs have also certified and i have it in front of me specifically the qualifications and what his degree requirements and work experience that clearly meets the letter of all of those requirements again every single person i mentioned thus far is qualified to make this assessment upon which i then rely and then say yes i will also support this recommendation brought to me from the professional staff making normal hiring decisions to conduct the daily operations of the work which statutorily has been clearly outlined and i've read every bit of case law and attorney general opinion to help guide this for the last 70 years

106and i have found nothing that says that a school board member's feeling or belief about the qualifications of people again i'd like to know how many of you have worked in the playing department how many of you can can intimately understand what school-based planning can actually do what the day-to-day work function is in that particular to make such a qualified assessment when i have in front of me from my hr executive that the one requirement of course he has a master's and a doctorate clearly satisfying the first requirement the second seven years of administrative in a related field that solidifies the second requirement the third management experience including planning or design directing and large budgets of course he's done that as a principle of a large budget and then last but not least he's an

107expert in the area of advanced principles and techniques of project management planning training budgeting and supervision which came directly from his resume i understand the board has their discretion to feel how they want to feel on these pieces but what i ask is from the legal standpoint in the job that i'm required to do i have to run the date of the operations which means i when people bring me recommendations for professional staff i have to take it cons seriously that the recommendations they're making is based upon their professional judgment and expertise that's why we are where we are today i absolutely support the recommendation i will not pull the recommendation as ms morgan had asked me to do because i fully support the assessment of all the professional staff that have brought us to

108this day and i also don't want to validate that there's been the millions in this and that the person who is in the current role who i'm not going to diminish in any way on paper has every possible qualification that you could possibly want for this role and has done that and was not hired in the in the director world was actually heard executive director role so really exceeded what you would ever want to see in this role on paper all of our prior directors that we've had dominic jamelli who came before before that it was greg blurton mark mora this individual we're putting forward has just as much if not more qualified than any of those individuals other than the person who is now in the outgoing piece other than that absolutely meets every

109qualification for that person so to decide that this person is unqualified on what basis i would ask after a month of answering the same questions many of which are recorded meetings so that people can see that this is not the first time so yes it's not a curveball to me but this should not be a curveball either i have nothing left to say about this thank you dr savage miss vaughn you had your hand back up dr savage with all due respect i take exception with your saying that i are at least hinting that i am making a decision based on my feelings i'm not that kind i'm excuse me but i am not that kind of person i'll tell you who i am i'm an elected constitutional officer and part of my job is

110to make sure that this district has the best guidance in all areas from those who drive the buses through those who make the top level decisions it's we have many people in this district who are great leaders however that's not the only qualification that we need you yourself said that a short coming in the resume of the prior executive director and then director in this position is that individual had no school based experience and you emphasized that school-based experience was very very important what we said and what i said at the meeting yesterday when we were discussing this and i believe one or two of my colleagues agreed it almost sounded like this was two jobs that maybe this individual that's nominated could do half of the job we don't need anything half blank we

111need somebody that can do 100 percent of the job if we didn't have anybody in the school district after exactly one week of advertising that fit this job 100 percent could do this for the fastest growing at the top 25 or something like that growing school districts in the nation then it behooves us at least it behooves me to go back out and find that person if you're interviewing for a nanny for your children and you have somebody ah they know a little bit and they'd be a good tutor but they've never done this before they've never i'm gonna settle would you settle no this is our baby here the school district we cannot afford someone that knows only a portion of the job and as my colleague said it's not on the job training

112and the other problem that we've had in that department and we have one more person of the exodus in the past year we have had many people leave this district from that department we need the best that we can hire and i'm not going to settle for less and i don't think the people out there in this community should settle for less miss miss juvenillian than miss kittens here are my concerns that i raised a couple days ago and prior to this and with all due respect dr savage here's what i do know this the very individual that applied for this job has also applied for the director of maintenance so that raised me that raises a big red flag because really what job do they want any job here at the district or are

113they qualified for both jobs which one were they qualified for that's questionable it was only advertised for five days i have a that's another big red flag for me personally because it did not allow for opportunity for other principals to apply or any other person to apply within the district and i'm all about what's equitable and fair and everybody has the same opportunities and are afforded those very same opportunities and i feel like it was a closed job for an individual that is taking second second best for them so those are my concerns i will be really fighting for the a job to be our any job in positions to be advertised for a minimum of at least 30 days and i think that's a board discussion and maybe it should be 45 days but

114that's a board discussion and i will respect the will of the board at that point i have to listen to the board i'm gonna i'm gonna vote i think i'm changing my vote to the will of the board thank you thank you miss kittens okay first of all i take exception to seeing feelings i don't know this individual if they were sitting right there in front of me right now i would have no idea they were sitting there i've never spoken with them i've never conversed with them to have a personal opinion would be that i don't like someone and that is not the case as i look i pulled up the the resume again and as i look at it i just don't see it just kidding it's just if you could what is

115it that you don't see so that it's clear and we understand what what the issue with the qualifications is the issues that we've had in the last three years as my colleagues have said in that department of keeping qualified staff of working with qualified staff of not wasting 5 million dollars of taxpayer money because the planning was not done precisely of not planning projects pristinely which is what saves money in this district we have done project after project that it's like okay we do this now well we've got to change this i understand the economy and i understand shortages of supplies and all that but somebody who works in that field and who understands how to manipulate through that would be able to help us manipulate through that someone who has the experience that has

116done it and i'm not going to say the name but there was a person that applied that has experience doing it and was not interviewed when i look when i say the qualifications did we do and here's one question did we do an experiential interview or what type of an interview because in experiential interviews you ask a person give me an example of a time when you were doing a project and the cost of materials increased exponentially in the middle of it and how did you handle that and they should be able to give you an example well i did this and this is how we solved that can you give me a time when the person in charge of data in your department quit and that's an integral part of what goes on what

117did you do how did you handle it and they would give you an experiential example of something that they have done and i don't know if it's we haven't seen the documentation as to you know the questions and all of that what experiential besides of education and directing and staffing i just don't see it do we have any any other comments mrs morgan oh thank you miss morgan i just want to reiterate what my colleagues have said we had professional leadership four years ago we recruited from outside the district creates a highly qualified fact and all of whom under subsequent leadership we have a problem we are not using best management practices by trying to solve our immediate problem with solutions that may have unintended consequences i again have the superintendent to listen to his

118board understand their concerns acknowledge that we have a problem and that standing on this appointment alone is not the solution go through my comments thank you thank you and are there any other comments i just i do believe that this is a very hard conversation that we're having and i do agree with the five days that is not nearly enough and my other concern now is the fact that we are losing another person in that department who had that planning depart that planning knowledge so putting a person in there right now even though they may be the best leader and they can organize and i'm looking at their their skill set but not having that other part that's a concern to me because even yesterday in the conversation when they were speaking about possibly having

119which i know we would not have two people but it's two totally separate issues but who are they who are they leading if that person's not there now we're going to have to bring another person in there to learn that whole concept as well so i am i am truly concerned about that taking place as well just listening to what you just said one other thing we have some extremely qualified people in that department in certain areas of that department that do know what they're doing and in their individual areas not not looking to you know put them in this position but in the economy that we have now we have to make sure we don't lose individuals that have the expertise because of the way we are managing our departments we could very easily

120have someone say well you know i'm leaving i can't take this person doesn't even know what i do and trying to direct me i know all of this and they don't even know what to tell me in doing my job it's it's a tricky time to not be precise in who we hire to be over people that have done their jobs successfully and professionally for a long time no and thank you i'm not definitely not trying to take anything away from the people who do work in that department because i do appreciate each and every one of them and i guess miss dupree bruno what where are we at where are we at with this because so madam chair go ahead please so i would like to i would like to ask if the board

121would allow me to consult with the superintendent if i can have a five minute recess please and may i have miss fischer has a five minute receipt miss fisher had a comment to make though so just want to hear what she has to say so i've listened to this and we've had this conversation before for the last almost month this was pulled before we have a process in the district and the superintendent is legally responsible for doing personnel legally we don't have to advertise at all although it is best practice to advertise for at a minimum of a week if not two or three but it's not legally necessary i when we have other professionals evaluating the applicants and i'm not aware miss kittens i know you know somebody who has the qualifications and did

122not get an interview and i was not aware of that so that was a different piece of information so i think i'll ask superintendent if i may through the chair when the people were vetted when the applicants were vetted how many of them did not get an interview i would say i know that the appropriate processes pursuant to our policies and procedures were all followed in this entire piece and to my basic knowledge the board is only responsible for vetting and hiring three potential employees that's the board auditor the attorney and the superintendent the superintendent is then responsible for all of the staff all of them and that includes the vetting that includes the interview process and so forth if the board would like to be a part of the interview process the pre-screening of

123the rubrics or something along those lines so that you can feel more informed and more input into vetting candidates i've never heard of such a thing i don't even know if it's legally permissible but that's what we're doing right now vetting the resume as if that is a part of the board's responsibility it's a courtesy that the board receives the resume so there's some familiarity with the candidates being recommended the actual vetting of the resumes and the experiences all of that happens to the interview process so it's again i went through 70 years of case law advisory opinions i saw nothing nothing not a single shred of anything that allowed the board to hand pick who they felt was maybe someone they know that should have been more qualified than someone else i just didn't

124see anything to that effect those are the three employees and then when the board doesn't like to performance their employees then that's really the board that's what the governance level of the ten thousand foot level is the employee that we run the organization that's our job it's to do it and i rely on all the people that i work with to make professional recommendations that's so cheap miss fisher go ahead and finish yeah okay so i agree we have a problem we've lost a lot of people but that is not unique to lee county schools lee health has a problem other big employers in this area have a problem people all over the state have a problem with the employment market right now and so i feel like if if i determine what the qualifications

125are when they're already listed i'm out of my lane as a board member and i think that yes we have to do a better job retaining people but it's not only us this is a different time and so i would think that it's not legal not to support the superintendent's recommendation recognition mr pribeno so madam chair if i may through the chair ask a couple of questions to the superintendent if i may and i'm going to put my lawyer hat on instead of the colleague had so doc so dr savage could you please tell us what exactly were the minimum qualifications for this particular job description yes if you give me a minute i can pull those up while he's pulling it up i'm going to go back again to miss fisher's point in what

126i have said repeatedly repeatedly in emails and on the dais when this has come up before that the superintendent's recommendations must be approved unless there's good cause which which is limited to moral turpitude or lack of qualifications so let's find out what this individual if i if i may because we i want to straighten this out a little bit miss kittens i need to find out what were the qualifications if it's taking a little pulpit job description but i do in the summary bullet list i have from hr the first was that they had to have a master's degree he has not only a master's degree but a doctorate degree in organizational leadership the second was seven years of administrative professional technical experience he has seven years of administrative in a related field he's actually

127been a school based member for over 18 years so he clearly exceeds that the third minimum qualification area was management experience including planning organizing directing staffing the development management of large budgets he has planned to organize directed staff to middle school for eight years as a principal he's managed a large budget of trafalgar middle for eight years as principal and then last that those are the three that i have in this list again i'm just waiting for that was that all of the minimum qualifications unfortunately because i am concerned i have to tell you and i was going to consult with the superintendent off the off and i've shared this with board members i am concerned when the board steps into the operational lane i'm very concerned about that i am concerned with skin because

128what this the statute has lines the superintendent has responsibilities the board has responsibilities it's outlined in the statute and the superintendent is responsible for the operation it's responsible for the day-to-day it's responsible for personnel that's clearly in in the statute and i'll tell you exactly which statute talks about that let me pull it up really fast well you're pulling that up man please speak one thousand one thousand twelve point twenty two one thousand twelve point twenty seven it's explicit so yes can the board say i'm not going to approve a recommendation yes you can based on good cause what's the good cause lack of qualification or moral turpitude there's no question about moral turpitude so now we're stuck with lack of qualification so what is the job minimum requirements dr savage has indicated what those

129job minimum requirements are has is there any other job requirements from that job description i mean is there something that is not meant pursuant to the job description because there are legal consequences to these discussions on the dais there's legal consequences to hiring and firing this and i'm extremely concerned about the exposure that this conversation has given us and putting us in from a legal standpoint thank you and i know we did go over the qualifications at one meeting or i mean qualifications yes or no that's all i want to know miss miss kittens here's where i beg to differ and it's been brought up to us over and over and over again there's legal consequences we realize that but our at least the way i see my job as oversight and based on the

130way attorney bruno just said that it's almost like saying well you can say it but you really can't do it the and what ms fisher was saying well you can talk about but you really can't do it where does it his responsibility stop in our start is oversight something and i'm not trying to be hr but what i'm saying is if you see something that may cause an issue for the whole you have to speak up about it and we do have that legal ability and right to do that if one of the main qualifications was budget and the individual has run a middle school budget for eight years and is going from that to a 1.9 billion dollar budget there's a difference there and there are people that have run million dollar budgets that

131have more oversight in doing that and i really i just i don't know the way the comments are made it's like well you can say something but it's not legal for you to do something our job is oversight and if oversight means sitting up high and looking low and saying there's something about this that doesn't look right we are just asking to have it reviewed it is not personal it is not about an individual it is about are our children getting the best person to run and decide where schools are going and where choice is going to be made and how much we're spending for this and you know do we need to buy extra steel and all of this how much dirt do we need and can we get it from over here there's

132a lot that goes into this and that's all we're saying is just to take a look and see have we really got the best person for this job can they do the job i'm sure given enough time they can but i just i take offense to being said well you really can't do anything about it because it's illegal it's not illegal for me to say my opinion and one of the things let me just say this too the board is made up of all different types of people from all different types of backgrounds and that's what makes it the board i have a corporate background in finance and all that others of you have different experiences i bring with me the eyes to look at this and i do understand what i'm saying about the

133ability to do this job miss vaughn and i'm going to focus again on the nature of this district and the speed of our growth and i didn't see the as a matter of fact i've been trying to pull up the job description again i'm going on memory because we've had issues with our server i'm not say i'm sorry i'm not satisfied with can somebody do the job can they maybe do it in time and learn from i'm not satisfied with that we can't i mean would you hire somebody like that to be the ceo of a fortune 500 company oh they probably they're a good person they i am not going on feelings and i feel like not i don't feel i know i am going on the law when i say the person is

134not fully qualified and i'm not satisfied with minimum we can't have minimum in this school district is that what we want is that what you know is that what our constituents want for their teachers for their principles is that what you want for the person who's building your house putting a roof on your house oh they're minimally yeah they'll get it soon no we can't afford that and i'm you know miss dupree bruno did an excellent job saying well you know talking about this somebody want to sue me on this be my guest random chair maybe may i have five minutes please to consult with the superintendent yes thank you madam chair what is the when do we have public comment automotive no we don't there's no public comment on this is part of the

135consent because it's already part of the consensus the consent there's no public comment on this that's what we're waiting for so we'll have a five minute i don't think we met because i came in late i'm chris i'm mrs patrick brielle ambriel yes and what is your last name calyx and what grade are you in eighth grade i'm wearing mariner middle school no problem i just got theirs okay thank you we are we have returned and i'm actually going to i think there has been plenty of conversation i don't really know what more we can discuss without repeating over and over again what has been discussed so i guess that mr bruno would it be okay for then just to take a hand vote on this or would we have that it would be a

136hand vote or i think it will be a handful right okay anvil so dr savage and he left did you want any last words well just to say that i think the structure that i've read about through the study that i've been looking at is essentially the board's job is to hold the superintendent accountable you know we made different opinions of the qualifications and so forth and we clearly differ in our assessment here today the tap the typical remedy is really for the board to hold the superintendent accountable that's really my best understanding based on legal opinions that i've read so far of how it's supposed to play out not for the board to directly engage with the individual pieces however i'm not an attorney that's just what i've read as i've gone through like

137i said all that peace you're correct from a legal statement 70 years of stuff many times over so madam chair at this point you want to call for the vote yes thank you so this will be a hand hand vote and miss morgan morgan miss morgan i'm sorry i'm going to have miss vaughn it's been such a long time ago she's going to re-read her motion go hit my phone and you need to listen carefully because what this says is i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation for district planning director director of planning growth and capacity and trafalgar middle school that's where i'm confused she's approved are we're voting on the approval correct of this person's appointment correct you're voting on two appointments one is for the director of planning and growth the other

138one is for the principal at trafalgar middle school because they're intertwined correct yes yes thank you yes so miss morgan i will go ahead and ask you then for your vote please i'm going to make a very brief statement first i understand the law and i recognize the line between ceo and board responsibility what i hear is aboard loss of confidence in his cpo and the disconnect between the board understanding of district's strategic needs and his desire to exercise his right to make an appointment that said i support emotions thank you miss morgan miss vaughn nay miss kittens nay miss patricka no thank you mr evanelli no miss fisher i and i and it's three two four the motion fails okay on to our next item we have a board member comments and i will

139start with miss miss morgan i'm going to start with you i'm sorry i'm actually going to start with my our student over here so if you don't mind i'd rather her just be able to do this so that way if she needs to leave because it is getting late and she does have school tomorrow so andrea ambrio ambrielle please thank you for being here honey and go ahead and give your comments so i'm very thankful to have served as a member of the district gotta turn on yeah it should be done just lean in okay as a member of the district student advisory council for the past two years and i've truly enjoyed sitting in on this meeting one topic i'm passionate about is vaping in school and since i go to marine middle school

140and ib school eighth graders do an ib project my ib project was centered around discouraging vaping at the middle school level i made a commercial and created posters to spread this message and the district does a good job of discouraging vaping and setting up discipline procedures i do have an idea to step up the work we're doing to put an end to this possibly creating school vaping ambassadors would allow a student who knows their school to focus on persuading their peers to stop this ambassador should meet with their principal and put plans into action i understand the complexity of this idea so i believe starting with starting small with one middle school and one high school will allow a test group in hopes of spreading county wide thank you for your time tonight i think

141that's a great idea and you can bring that back to the student advisory and see how how we can make that happen right yeah so are you okay to stay with us for a few minutes or is dad ready to and thank you dad for bringing bringing her we're gonna go ahead and let you go because it may be a longer meeting but we so appreciate you and thank you again for bringing her thank you sweetheart thank you're gonna walk out there okay this morgan i'm gonna go ahead and let you start please with your with your comments please well first of all i want to thank gabrielle because she not only identified the problem but she offered a solution and that's the kind of problem that i love to fear absolutely other than that

142i have to say all my board member comments are in my district's computer in the office and i don't have access to that computer so i will save my comments for another day thank you miss morgan i will go to mrs fisher please yes thank you and also thank you to ambrielle not only for serving on the student advisory for two years but for focusing on the needs of the kids and really articulating it beautifully i want to thank our hard working staff for their support of our students making their mission and vision i want to have a special thanks to cindy mcclung for all the work that she does not only with the board but with the csi committee and i really appreciate her diligence finally to our administrative professionals who keep the ball

143rolling every day and all of the help that they give us keeping us on track and on task and making sure we have what we need to do our jobs and thank you and thank you for our audience for your patience and for all of your comments tonight thank you thank you ms fisher miss giovanelli i'll be quick real quick this decision had nothing to do with the applicant for me it was about the process and i mentioned about two months ago i mentioned let's not have any hires let's wait for the new superintendent but i was out voted and the board wished to do proceed with hiring and so that was my concern from day one and to find out this was only advertised for five days and it was an opportunity it wasn't

144afforded the same opportunity for all other principles to apply i think we would have more candidates and more opportunity and i think for me it's all about it being an equitable process so he may very well be the candidate in another month with the new superintendent and then and the and his pick at that point the board will have to make that decision again possibly so i'm not opposed it was never had anything to do with the employee it had to do with the imp the process and that is my concern so i just want to make that really clear because we do have a problem in the department i wrote down there's eight items that fell in operations that were clear problems block lane the purchase of block lane and then we bailed on

145block lane and went to three oaks then three oaks became a policy i mean proximity issue that came up that we really don't didn't need to put a school there to at all and so now we have the proximity that's saying now we don't need to use proximity we need to kick that can down the road i got a big problem we spent over 500 000 for a proximity plan i want to see the proximity plan play out i am not the only one our community does because they're tired of waiting on a bus to that never comes and that's what it when when when it affects our students and our children and employees we have to look at this because that's where that's who we serve that's what we're here for is to make

146sure that we're running the district so that the buses pick the students up the students get to school the students are learning and the students get home safely that's the process that has been a problem and we need to make sure that we bought we spent millions of dollars on steel for a property that we're not all not going to build now we got to store that steel and i thank god that we're still going to get the steel because i didn't i was curious what happened to the steel because i never heard anything else about the steel so now i know the steel is going to be stored somewhere in maintenance i probably have to do a drive by to see it because i think it's probably going to be stacked pretty high you

147know tree lines now a problem in the lane is not sufficient we purchased that land for a specific plan and that land is now not sufficient and we're not really talking about the additional costs for that the property on tower road we subdivided that i voted against that i recommend it we don't divide the 40 acres we need all 40 acres we need to keep the land i just want to be real clear because i fought against selling any land and i would agree to buy land so we go to split it now we lo and behold when we split it's still not enough and i remember remember asking the question numerous times is that if we split it can we still build an elementary school i was told yes that is not true that

148was not true and so i am the overseer and that's a problem when we need to keep tower road that should be where our next school should be because i know we almost had a high school there and it was sufficient then we've had a high turnover in this department this falls on even prior administration and we need to dr savage said a very important thing today we need to hold the superintendent accountable and shame on us because we do not do that this district does not do that and therefore employees are the ones that suffer and then the students ultimately suffer so we need to be doing our job the reason why we have gonna have an elected superintendent on the ballot is because we don't do our job and we need to take

149ownership of that i'll keep saying it until i am blue in the face because that's where the problem is it sits right up here right up here and i'll stand with you on that and i voted against many of your decisions making i felt we should wait on hiring employees and changing jobs and changing principles until on the new superintendent comes but again i was that was crickets and i was a vote against that so today we are reaping the repercussions of what we didn't do to begin with and just that was to stop hiring any body until this new superintendent arrived and was in a position i know i'm not the only one that mentioned it got mentioned by a couple other board members but they still never had the support three votes is

150still not four i can't count i went to lee i went to school in lee county thank you mr patricka i just would like if i may through the chair ask the superintendent can we somehow follow up with our student regarding the ambassador issue i don't know what the answer is but if we could have someone on staff provide her with a direct answer i suspect that she should go to her principal and ask but we can just provide her with her i don't want that question about the ambassador to just go into a black hole in her never get a responsibility please and thank you those are my comments okay and she's she's going to bring it to the student advisor advisory committee as well ms vaughn well i'm i've said a lot this

151evening i'm not going to rehash i'm i'm the kind of person i learned this back in high school on being on debate team you do your best and then you move on and i feel good about the decision we made from the from the deus this evening because again we can't go with mediocrity when it comes to any of our employees being qualified for for a job what i'd like to do is real quickly run through edac recommendations none of these require an abort action now but i wanted to go go through them one of the things that edac felt and i'm liaison they recommended that the board support the crown act the crown act is create a respectful and open world for natural hair and this was commentary on the code of conduct and

152we had earlier as as a board talked about hair color and we had taken that out and i had a brief meeting yesterday actually with several people from student services and we were talking about the student code of conduct and i brought this up and mr mangan said that it's built in the way that the code of conduct is written it does support the natural that you know the students can and i guess this would go for the parents to or not well you know the parents but the teachers although this is a student code of conduct and in addition he said that this will be addressed in training so when when the principals and aps have their training and go over the code of conduct this will be something that's that's brought up another

153thing that i talked with student services about is edac recommended that the board expand the use of restore restorative justice practices to keep students in the classroom this doesn't need action from the board because we do continue to offer training and guidance in terms of implementation of this edax says recommend that the board communicate with local small businesses and organizations that foster small businesses to make them aware of the district's need and availability so they support something that is already ongoing and it's not just being done in in one small area we've talked about this in procurement we've talked about this just the other day when we had the sos to support our students talking to local businesses to have them to give them intern opportunities we have all kinds of outreach to our local

154businesses and we value that deeply and this is something else that edac supports and that we are doing edac has a lot of recommendations bear with me adac recommends that the board create an annual reporting process between small business enterprise or sbe and edac that would include periodic meetings and ms susan malay via mr jared edie put forth this statement we are eager to continue to present to edek on this topic so this is i think this will satisfy their ongoing interest in being sure that the small businesses of our community and i know we've also the staff has brought forward also minority businesses and so on and so forth so this also is something that we are doing okay recommends the continuing expansion of recruitment efforts efforts they mentioned canada i don't know if

155we've done canada have we done canada but the caribbean central america etc i know there have been things with africa some exchange interns and and that sort of thing and so again i know that hr and the recruitment and retention but we're dealing with recruitment here has is busy always and always looking for new opportunities and that doesn't end at the u.s borders that we are looking elsewhere for qualified candidates there's another recommendation that actually overlaps csi and i don't know what miss fisher's going to want to do with the discussion on i think theirs was a little broader because it talked about land but from edac it was a concern about affordable housing for staff recruitment and retention so that can be something that we talk of you know both both the advisory committees

156were interested in this and i know this has been brought up before so i have no doubt that it'll continue to be something that we talk about and finally there's there's a piece that i mentioned to the this board quite a few months ago when we were discussing the map changes the redistricting and the maps and i'm going to say it again because edac brought this up a second time and i would like to see this topic on a future and there's no hurry about this i'm sorry i'm talking in riddles they recommend that the board eliminate at large seats we're talking about school board at large seats and add two single member district seats in support of term limits so i would like to see obviously it will be some time before this becomes

157a pressing issue but time has a way of moving fast and so i would like to see this in some future month put in the parking lot for our board workshops and i had a few other things but i think i'm going to leave it with that and and say it's my second year this was my second year working with edac so there's going to be you know a changeover and i will miss the group because i think i said this two weeks ago there are people after my own heart because they have opinions and they are not afraid to express their opinions and put things out there because the only way that we move forward is to come up with new ideas and come up with brainstorming and collaborate on these things and we

158may not all agree on everything but if we can take a little piece here a little piece there add something else sometimes we can surprise ourselves on what we can accomplish and that's all i have to say this evening thank you miss vaughn ms kittens okay i just have a couple of things because in good of the order i will be bringing up a motion but i got a call from one of the representatives on the curriculum i think it was curriculum committee last night and last night was their last meeting and they were a little bit i guess surprised i don't know if the schedule they weren't aware but that was the last meeting for the year and there was much discussion about at least having a meeting until you know in may or

159whatever so there was a lot of discussion on that at that meeting last night and there was more that they wanted to discuss but they're done until the fall so i don't know how we look at that calendar or you know look to rectify that in the future you could change this they have changed it before i'm the liaison for that and they didn't have a quorum so they couldn't change anything or add anything or do anything right so you gotta have participation so that really was what happened there and you can't even they can't even talk about a calendar or do anything if you don't have a quorum and they had stuff to vote on and they didn't have a quorum so thank you to get the answer out there the last thing i'm

160going to say in this i was on my way to get some lunch this afternoon and i was stopped in that magnificent traffic at fowler and colonial and i happened to look up and saw several of our golden apple teachers in a revolving billboard and it was so exciting i was hoping the light didn't change before i saw them all it did so i didn't get to see them all but their event is on friday night many of us will be there with our guests and it's we can never have enough of saying thank you and recognizing our hard-working teachers so i will leave it at that for now and go to the order whenever i do thank you this is your still your turn you're this is you go to the order oh so

161i can do it now this is yes everybody else i'm used to you saying is there anything no this is every this is your comments this is you okay so let me get into this i'm going to make a motion we've talked about it already about the national day of prayer and i've worked with the attorney on the legalities and everything of it and there were suggestions from from different individuals that miami-dade i believe had done that last last month or in their last meeting and so there were questions as to why can't we so i first want to read the legalities of it for i was a little concerned of some of the comments tonight of people thinking we were trying to make people pray or take prayer out of the schools or i

162was very confused but anyway so the first amendment to our constitution protects the rights of free speech and religious liberty including the right for of all americans to pray the national day of prayer is an annual day of observance held on the first thursday in may the modern law formalizing this observance was enacted in 1952 however there have been calls for days of fasting and prayers since the second continental congress in 1775. in 1795 george washington proclaimed a day of public thanksgiving and prayer as did president james adam and adams in 1798 and 99 in addition thomas jefferson established a day of worship and thanksgiving while serving a governed as governor of virginia president abraham lincoln proclaimed a day of quote humiliation fasting and prayer in 1863. on june 17 1952 in a joint resolution

163of congress president harry truman signed a bill proclaiming the national day of prayer into law in the united states president ronald reagan approved an amendment in 1988 designating the first thursday of may each year as a national day of prayer according to federal statute 36 united states code section 1 the president the pres i'm sorry the president of the united states is legally required to sign a proclamation each year encouraging all americans to pray on the first thursday of may the national day of prayer the constitutionality of the national day of prayer was unsuccessfully challenged in court by the freedom from religion foundation and their attempt was unanimously dismissed in april 2011 in federal court the national day of prayer is meant to transcend differences brings citizens of all backgrounds together the purpose of the

164national day of prayer is best summarized by the presidential proclamation of may 5th 2021 which states on this quote on this day this national day of prayer we unite with purpose and resolve and recommit ourselves to the core freedoms that help define and guide our nation in its earliest days we celebrate our incredible good fortune that as americans we can exercise our convictions freely no matter our faith or beliefs let us find in our prayers however they are delivered however they are delivered the determination to overcome adversity rise above our differences and come together as one nation to meet this moment in history end quote this year the national day of prayer falls on thursday may the 5th 2022 and calls on all people of different faiths in the united states to pray for the

165nation and its leaders i like to explain this as one lady was talking about not not letting children pray or whatever i would like to describe it as a quiet reflection and a chance to breathe in unity it's the parents rights to teach their children how and what to pray so when there's a moment of silence the answer is they know because you've taught them what to pray or what to do in your own way however your family does that and teaching them what and how to pray i hope that when that this motion passes and that we follow the national day of prayer and embrace the silence of quiet reflection and collective with a collective cleansing breath my motion is fellow board members i move that the school board of lee county recognized the

166national day of prayer and that our students and staff be allowed to participate in the national day of prayer in their own way based on their preference and in compliance with all federal state laws to include but not limited to florida statute 1002.206 and board policy 2.34 religious expression which is based on the model policy provided by the florida department of education i need a second on this please second that thank you miss fisher and discussion please and who would like to start miss jivanelli okay so real quick i do want the board attorney to explain that there's already a federal law on this and that but really concerns me is that i heard people state today that some schools don't acknowledge it or exercise it and so i want to make sure that if

167this is voted in that the opportunity at every school will that you know that will happen and what what is the actual plan i know she says in your own in their own way but what if one school doesn't even do acknowledge it like that's what's been happening now so i mean we've got a federal law that we sometimes do we sometimes don't what i mean what's that mean so the federal law 36 usc section mandates that the president of the united states encourages all americans to pray on the first thursday of may which is the national prayer day that's federal now we do have two relevant state laws one of them was passed last year which requires that students be given a minute in the beginning of the day to meditate and then we

168have florida statute 1002.206 which is the religious expression policy that allows students to express their religion and can even have lead events that are religious you know based on religion if they want to doesn't specify any particular religion any religion any faith or non-faith just a belief in whatever can be done and then of course that's policy that statute also includes some guidelines for staff so we will if the board decides to approve this motion legal will draft a guideline for staff so that they can follow it reminding them of the one minute meditation that's already provided by statute that we should all be doing anyhow because that is florida law as well as one you know the religious expression law we will make sure that staff understands that in that just like when students

169walk out we can have a national day of prayer on the fifth and we will provide the same type of guidelines that we do whenever these types of things occur okay so and this is not going to be a resolution this will actually be a motion and it's not going to be a resolution though i want to get clarity on that as well so a resolution really is a fancy motion is what a resolution is so this but this is not in that form of a resolution where we have the whereases and all that stuff right so this is simply a motion that we recognize the national day of prayer and that we allow students and staff to really do what what's already there per law that they can do right so i'm supportive of

170this mainly because it is religious freedom and it's their it's a student and a parent's constitutional right for each person to practice what religion they want and pray or meditate whatever you know they're diverse we're a diverse district and i want to make sure that opportunity is afforded for all students i in the past have not been supported but supportive of resolutions because with resolutions there was no action so i voted against a resolution a rece a while back a couple i don't know probably october or something because of resolutions with no action as long as this is actionable i support because i think that's the most important thing is that there's action with with an outcome so i'll support this evening thank you thank you any other comments miss morgan are you still with

171us i am still with you and i have no comment thank you thank you mr so i've been very consistent that i don't think we should be making any decisions at the table that don't have a direct impact on education to me this has nothing to do with education and i will not be supporting it those are my comments thank you miss vaughn did you have any comments on this no thank you no okay and i believe we already offer this to our children so in our schools we have that there and everyone has the ability to to pray and or meditate or whatever that looks like to them or their family and that's something that we do offer and as i said earlier that this was definitely a resolution that we did have in

172the past and i'm sure it was there for many many years so to me it's not really changing anything that we're already doing in saying that our next step would be we have public comment i'm sorry we know that's right go ahead we have public comment anyone who would like to speak on this motion please feel free to step to the back and miss roman would you please make sure that you set the timer for them yes before you speak will you please make sure that you state your name for the record good evening my name is keith olsen and i am so happy that this issue has come up for a vote i have attended many prayer breakfasts community prayer breakfasts in several different states and in most of those we have a variety

173of prayers offered by protestants christians who are catholic jewish prayers imams prayers and it is a general gathering that has has been described a coming together of faith and a coming together of of of praying for the community for the nation or whoever that particular group is wanting to pray for it is a time not of just pushing one faith it's not that's completely contrary to the idea we are a nation founded on god's principles on on the bible and it is part of of the freedom to worship the freedom to pray the freedom to seek god and in our own individual way that makes us so different from other many other countries the idea of separation of church and state has been so convoluted it wasn't originally to protect people from from faith it

174was to protect people's faith from government and so that there is not a church or a state church per se most of the early meetings of the government in these small communities were within houses of worship because those were some of the first buildings central in those in the in those cities and the only place to meet and so we need to embrace faith i think not teach faith but embrace faith as a part of education miss patricka and i think it is vital as part of who we are as humans that we give students the opportunity i'm glad that i guess there is a one minute rule or a one-minute option for silence may i hope that there will be freedom and encouragement to for freedom for staff for teachers for students who wish

175to explore prayer why not make that a part of the educational experience on may 5th next week thank you very much thank you good evening my name is maria martinez i am here to support the proposal to recognize may 5th as a nation as a national day of prayer but first and foremost i think it's important for me to mention what was said earlier by another person the fact that this that history teaches us that the united states of america was founded on judeo-christian principles why do i believe this is important because the ultimate authority of the christian faith is the bible the word of god that said i will proceed to read to you what god says about the nations and prayer in the bible psalm 33 12 blessed is the nation whose god

176is the lord the people whom he has chosen for its own inheritance second chronicles 7 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then i will hear from heaven and i will forgive their sin and heal their land now i'd like to read for all of you a very special prayer prayed by one of the founders and first president of the united states george washington but before i do that i have to tell you that it is my conviction and belief based on the direction our country is headed that the more that more than ever we need to seek our creator and stop leaning on our own understanding after all it is written in the book of proverbs that

177the beginning of wisdom is the fear reverence of god the prayer that washington prayed says almighty god we make our earnest prayer that thou wilt keep the united states in the holy protection thy thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the united states at large and finally that thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the divine author of our blessed religion and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation grant our

178supplication we beseech thee through jesus christ our lord amen those are the words of the first president of the united states tonight i just hope your time as well as you guys consider thank you ms martinez thank you denise nystrom i definitely won't be as eloquent as some of the people that are up here will be first i would like to thank you for considering this i think that it is something that is very very important and one of those things that is easy for you to give us that we are asking you to give us secondly i think that this is a teachable moment for children it's a teachable moment about the constitution and about god it doesn't matter if it's my god although i am a christian but as was stated earlier it's

179about the belief that any child has so to provide them with the opportunity to understand that there is a national prayer day and that they can utilize that day to pray acknowledges the differences of all children and there has been a common theme from the group that is standing here i don't know if you have heard it but we have spoken for the better part of a year now about the idea of unity about the idea of bridging gaps and putting our hands across the aisle and working together this is a way that we can do that and i'm asking for this from you thank you so as i was saying could you please state your name kathy stout thank you thank you as i was saying before i definitely support this national prayer day

180but most importantly what i really really expect that all of us can do as not just you know us in general let me let me just repeat that i'm sorry first of all we have a religious rights it is our freedom it is our constitution and most importantly our children we definitely you're here on school board and you're definitely making decisions for our children and we have to do this in the right way most importantly my kids love where we go every single week they are part of the youth group and one thing about the youth group that i love some of the kids don't even believe in the religion they just love going to church because they love and feel safe with the children that surrounds them because they feel loved and they know

181what's going on as far as you know helping each other out for the children but i want to say a few things don't be a hypocrite because just the beginning of this evening tonight we did what we prayed all of us stood here and prayed we stood up and prayed before you even begun your meeting you do this every single time we have a meeting so why is it that we can't acknowledge one day of the year this should actually happen all the time that's number one and two we are a community and in the community we have every religion every race and everything is important to most of us is it not so if a prayer is happening so what it doesn't matter what religion you are i go to church faithfully once a

182week and i see the community not only helping each other but we support our community and that's what's important about our children they support each other and that's why they love the youth group that they tend on a daily basis and i have to say there are 12 different religions in our world that are notified or i'm sorry that is recognized so with that said it doesn't matter what religion you're from it doesn't matter what race you're from it doesn't matter what you believe in it only matters what is important and the importance is that you cannot take away something that already existed before all of us thank you tara jenner the only thing that saddens me about this proclamation is the fact that we even have to make it in the first place the

183problem that we actually have in this country is that there is a government-endorsed religion of no religion and the fact that we have to actually step out and assert assert ourselves and demand an opportunity is in my opinion a little sad so one of the things that you guys probably know about me by now is that i tend to live by three main things one the bible two the u.s constitution and three the rather lengthy florida state constitution and when i look at these i know that it says nothing in here that would prevent us from praying anytime anyplace anywhere any day all year long whether we're a student or whether we're a teacher and it doesn't have to be silent it can be out loud if people can talk about the football game and

184those that aren't interested can move away or not have to listen to it they can do the same thing when it comes to an out loud prayer there have been actually there was a recent hearing by the united states supreme court about a football player coach who wanted to pray in the beginning in the middle of the i guess it was the 50-yard line and that's just been heard recently by the supreme court we don't know the decision on that but between you me and the lamppost i don't really care what the supreme court says what i care about is what god says and what these rights that are established and identified as being inalienable inalienable say and one of the things that just says this there shall be no law respecting the establishment of

185a religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof and i'm quoting that from the article 1 section 3 of the florida state constitution and freedom of speech says we can speak and write and publish sentiments on all subjects and so like i was saying before the sad thing is that we even have to bring this up in the first place and the only thing that i would just caution people on is that there have been some suggestions that people will be uncomfortable or they'll feel coerced especially if a teacher is one that is engaging in prayer if you feel like you're being bullied or harassed or intimidated in any way you know what move from that area invoke the hope scholarship talk to somebody about it speak up for your rights if that's the

186case but in the meantime i think that this is a really good start setting us back to where we should have been all along and giving us back the power to actually invoke the very rights that we've had from established thank you again i'm megan howard and i have a child that is in school and we do have a moment of silence i feel as though the last year and a half that i've been coming to school board meetings i missed the first of my whole daughter's years through lee county schools not coming to the school boards i can't imagine that this is how we conducted ourselves so i remember i've been in this area for 30 years and our school board has had its moments but this is a non-issue like so many other

187issues crt that isn't happening kids that aren't being influenced to do other things we have a moment of silence we can come up here and talk about being interdenominational but the reality is we have an underlining white christian outspoken group in this area that wants to take us to a place that we can't go we can't go legally and we can't go morally these are the same people that were yelling at children who had who had identified as being homosexual and i'm tiring of people coming up and talking about god's love and their rights and stomping on other people's rights we have a moment of silence i respect other people being able to have their religions outside of school but please be careful taking us to a place we just don't want to go because

188there's a lot of people in this community that do not believe the same way that we might believe and we cannot we can't force our beliefs on people and for those that have their beliefs think about your message you're sending and if it's a message of love don't come up here and be so aggressive and threatening think about the people who aren't believers and are you really wooing them in the right direction i don't think so i'm not against prayer but i am against what we're trying to do here and it is a lot more than just one little moment of saying a prayer it's trying to change things and influence our society in a way that doesn't respect other people's beliefs thank you robert roper prayer in school goes way back to the founding

189of our nation when the school room was actually a church and the teacher was the pastor or the pastor and his wife when ready for this the textbook was the bible or some form of moral instruction prayer is an integral part of school and always has been part of the institution and not just one day but every day and not just in primary grades guess who founded yale puritans guess who founded princeton christians guess who founded harvard christians guess who founded rutgers dutch reform why was this even necessary because these institutions were created and formed to train missionaries and pastors they were seminaries and the quakers and the mennonites and the presbyterians and the catholics and the baptists all sent their people there to pray and to study god's word prayer was an expected thing

190why because our founders constructed a covenant with god called the mayflower compact that morphed into the declaration of independence and finally into the constitution and our forefathers acknowledged that it is god that gives us the authority and the right to worship and free speech and our founders simply made it law that they knew what was the will of god until 1962 prayer was essential to education from the foundation of the nation children were allowed to pray we've come a long way since 1962 when it was outlawed we have mistakenly learned that because schools are operated by tax dollars that they're guaranteed freedom from religion when in fact it is freedom of religion you cannot regulate thought thank you miss kittens for your boldness it is a happy day for me to see what you've done

191it is a good thing as a pastor i have a front row seat a gallery seat to the power of prayer and you know who the most powerful people are when it comes to prayer or children because they have no limitation on what they think god can do and when they pray they pray with power and they get results when i want somebody to pray for me i'll go to a child because they pray believing thank you good evening i'm rick stevens the pastor of diplomat church in cape coral and one of the co-founders of florida citizens alliance and i stand before you to support the national day of prayer and appreciate your consideration of that support and urge you to support it many people have come before me in support and i think in

192the spirit of that support i should say a hearty amen to all of their comments and i would also like to remind all of us including the board that your support for this national day of prayer is not a function of anything other than good government in the declaration of independence we are reminded that our rights are endowed to us by our creator so anytime we honor our creator we are in line with our founding vision of this country further that document one of our seminal documents of liberty reminds us that the reason we form government including school boards is to preserve the rights of the people so when you acknowledge religious freedom in as simple a way as acknowledging the national day of prayer you are performing the most fundamental responsibility of a governing

193body in this country because you are acknowledging that our rights come from god and you are performing the function of preserving those rights that must happen over and over at all levels of government and i too would like to commend miss kittens for her initiative on this and for her reminder that this could be a time of quiet reflection i recently heard a gentleman talking about prayer and i think it's applicable to this situation he said those who pray best are those who listen most it would benefit all of us for all of us to hear from our creator on the national day of prayer i encourage all of us to listen to him sharon mcgill i in no way want anyone to think that i don't think they have the right to prayer i

194think everybody has their choice and that's what it comes down to is choice there is already a national day of prayer that is in place if people want to pray if they want to congregate in groups on the national day of prayer so be it if you know one group wants to a muslim group or a christian group or the non-religious kids want to get together i just don't understand since we already have the moment of silence in place in the schools and now whether that's being enforced or not i can't speak to that but it should be that's the time that could be used for that for either reflection or prayer i don't understand why it has to be a resolution or a motion or a policy for the school board and the district

195that's what i'm having the issue with and has anybody reached out to miami-dade to see how it's going there to find out how they're instituting this are kids just randomly going to be able to break out in prayer in the middle of a class how are they handling it i just think it needs to be considered a lot more before you make this something permanent good evening christy divijelli first i would like to thank miss kittens and all those who are in support of this so far have you been having the discussions that would be you miss mary fisher i appreciate that you guys have taken the time to have a healthy discussion about this topic i would like to remind everyone like i did before that the national day of prayer is for everyone

196of all religions and i want to read something to some of the people in the room that feel like this is against the law and this comes from our sitting president this is the white house proclamation on national day of prayer from last year and he says throughout our history americans of many religions and belief systems have turned to prayer for strength hope and guidance prayer has nourished countless souls and empowered moral movements including essential fights against racial injustice child labor and infringement on the rights of disabled americans prayer is also a daily practice for many whether it is to ask for help or strength or to give thanks or blessings or give thanks over blessings bestowed the first amendment to our constitution protects the rights of free speech and religious liberty including the right

197of all americans to pray these freedoms have helped us to create and sustain a nation of remarkable religious vitality and diversity across the generations today we remember and celebrate the role that the healing balm of prayer can play in our lives and in the life of our nation as we continue to confront the crisis and challenges of our time and i'm not going to go through all that i'm going to skip down to on this national day of prayer we unite with purpose and resolve and recommit ourselves to the core freedoms that help define and guide our nation from its earliest days we celebrate our incredible good fortune that as americans we can exercise our convictions freely no matter our faith or beliefs let us find in our prayers however they are delivered the determination

198to overcome adversity rise above our differences and come together as one nation to meet this moment in history the congress by public law as amended has called on and it goes on to say the president issues this national day of prayer if the president of the united states can issue a national day of prayer why can we not have one in lee county miami-dade did it a month ago i commend you all for having this conversation and i trust that you're going to make the right decision tonight jamie miller echoing a quote from pastor rick stevens just now those who pray best are those that listen most that couldn't be more clear just looking out on the dais to see who is supporting us and who is not chris patricka we're talking to you we

199already know you don't like prayer in schools when you addressed the southwest florida christian academy after a wrestling match at bonita springs high school in december of 2020 saying that you would never they would never pray in one of your schools again it's not your school it's the community school do something right for once hi my name is ian rankin and some of the people that know me know me as a as an agnostic and i am an agnostic it's not for lack of trying i've been trying all my life to to get what a lot of my friends have you know that feeling of god and faith in god and not for lack of trying so i think maybe i represent the cue in this issue that we have lgbtq they're questioning and i'm

200questioning and i'm sure there's a lot of students who are questioning and for those kids maybe they could use this time to reflect and to maybe maybe help them either to remain agnostic or or go to fave or not to fake i don't see it as something that should be prohibitive for anyone whether whether they're true believers or not so i that's that's about it for me i thought it might be a different a different perspective from an agnostic and what's the harm i don't see any harm in it as a matter of fact when i when i think about all of the churches in the area all the religious people in the area what kind of a what kind of a you know what kind of a black eye is that going to put

201on a school board for for denying people that you know you can split hairs with you know separation of church and state i from what i from what i know i don't think that's that's valid anyway i think that's been twisted over the years but again here i am an agnostic i'd be disingenuous if i said if i stood here and told you that i'm a believer so i try to separate myself from the issue but that's that's my thoughts thank you thank you i'm just i just want some clarification too because i in listening to the speakers and i know we're going going into a vote on this we are not recommending that we are teaching nor are we giving guidance which i heard those two comments made and i just wanted to make

202sure even though there's that is understood that's not what this is about at all if am i correct on that okay we you know we recognize many national holidays and many national things that come before us and this again is something that is national there are maybe 20 or 12 different religious that's recognized but we have to also remember there's many more that are not that we still have to allow those people to to have their reflection or whatever that looks like as well but i just want to and i so we're not reinventing this day it's already there we allow this to take place in our schools right now and it's not where the policy would be made just as mr priebus stated when the kids have staff kids and they need to have

203a place to walk out they have that opportunity to do so and there's the criteria that we have for that so i just want to i just need to add that as well but we it's not that we are teaching nor the teachers and we're not giving guidance that is for families to to have with their own families and whatever that looks like for them is you know how we have to appreciate you all so in saying that we need to come before us right now we will go into a vote on this motion chair cass can i just mention one thing i know once we vote the attorney said that she was going to work with their legal team and develop you know the process and i would just like to ask that somehow

204or somewhere in there the words quiet reflection be reflected i guessed as as a defining of the product of all yeah of everyone increasingly in the inclusion of everyone and everyone's thoughts and feelings and like you said we are not trying to indoctrinate anybody this is what this is where the village comes in the village teaches the children at home they send them to us so okay thank you so we will go to a vote on this miss miss morgan are you with us i am and i say i thank you miss morgan miss i'm sorry it's miss gittins yes miss patricka no thank you aye mr giovidelli miss fisher i wholeheartedly support that we recognize the national day of prayer for everyone and i so six one motion carries and then miss mr prieberto

205it will go back to you now so yeah we have it you wrote it okay well this is assigned one okay thank you miss kittens where are we it's been so such a long meeting and i thank you all for sticking out with us tonight i have no comments to make i made all my comments today we've spoke a great deal about a lot of things tonight we had great turnout with our children and i think that everything that we do we still have to to make sure that is our primary goal is to the kids that were here today from thais all the kids that were recognized we have to make sure that we are very thoughtful on what we do for them as well as our staff thank you all for being here

206so late i really appreciate you all i know you've been here since early morning and that means a lot congratulations to all of our team members that have been moved into different positions and again that was one thing i wanted to bring up when looking at that and reevaluating that no one is changing until the end of school so the school will not be disrupted and they will go into their new locations upon the end of the school year thank you dr savage for that and i know that or i believe that you have had many conversations regarding all of the assignments that you had made today and with dr bernier as well so he was very much aware of all the stuff that you were bringing bringing forward to to us this evening as

207a board it's not that he's being blindsided he is on as a consultant right now he was here earlier today for the children he was here to watch that take place but he is very much aware of the things that are going on and when he is sworn in on the 16th he'll be going full force thanks to dr savage and the two of them working together to make a smooth transaction so i really appreciate you doing that dr savage and next would be miss dupree bruno and if you have any comments please the only thing very quickly is to make sure that we adhere to the no campaigning on district school property and that's just really important and this goes for school board candidates and any other candidate that is running for office that

208you cannot campaign that includes wearing buttons passing out flyers et cetera just can't campaign on school board property perhaps for employees no discussion with regards to campaign while on work duty thank you dr savage i just have one thing madam chair just there was a comment made earlier about mediocrity and i thought you know what a better way to respond than just a you know we're we're a district that's focused on student achievement obviously that's a really important thing to us that is our business just wanted to highlight that one of our particular schools so over the last 10 years there have been not that many schools that are straight a's that have had a's every single year over the last decade it's not an easy thing and so you know like for example miami-dade

209so i'm just talking now about middle schools in particular are traditional middle schools miami-dade as big as they are four times as many schools they only have four schools that have achieved that feat collier county though again half our size has four such schools duvall four such schools st john's four such schools in lee county at our middle school's traditional there were only two schools that had the distinction and that were those two schools were cypress lake middle and trafalgar middle and for those who would say well trafalgar middle's got a favorable you know population but so too are schools like three oaks middle gulf middle and so forth challenger middle there are many good ones but that distinction of a school that's anything but mediocre i would say is and just happened to be

210under the leadership of the particular candidate who was recommended forward today so just wanted to highlight that particular piece and really credit to all the hard work because i would never want our folks to feel as if they are being summarized that their performance is truly just mediocre when that's the type of impact they're having on our community and they're in such high esteem when compared across the rest of the state because i know our goal is to be world class i think it starts with trying to be the best in the state so they're part of that conversation at least so the credit to those folks and congratulations to all the other people who were appointed tonight thank you those are my comments thank you dr savage for sharing that the next schedule meeting

211of the board on monday may 9th there will be a board workshop at 12 p.m on tuesday may 10th there will be a board briefing at 1 00 p.m followed by an action meeting at 6 00 p.m at this point seeing no other business to come before this body and see an objection this meeting is adjourned and the time is 9 58. you