001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of april 27th 2021 is now called to order the time is 601 pm 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 and the district vision to be a world-class school system this evening agendas include the invocation the pledge of allegiance public comments consent action items which include three items under board office three items under executive services eight items under academic services three items under business services two items under human resource one item under information systems 11 items under operations one item under unfinished business table items one item item under public hearings and four
002items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda miss vaughn i move to adopt the agenda thank you and second second that thank you mr fisher please record your vote is thomas i can't see the screens are not on motion passes seven zero miss fisher will introduce her guests for the invocation after which miss giovannilli will lead us in the pledge of allegiance miss fisher please introduce your guest yes this evening we have with us dennis gingrich born and raised in oregon dennis moved to cape coral in 1986 and is the founding pastor of cape christian fellowship started with the assistance of two other couples cape christian has grown to 3 000 weekly attenders on a 14-acre campus that includes a popular park for families of cape coral to enjoy
003dennis has served as the lead chaplain for the cape coral police department since 1996. he loves the opportunity to serve those who generously give and sacrifice themselves for the well-being and safety of our community dennis has been married to his wife linda for over 46 years they are the parents of three adult married children who all went through the lee county school system they have five grandchildren two of whom are students at fort myers high school and orangewood elementary for relaxation dennis enjoys nature photography his award-winning photos of southwest florida naturescapes can often be found on the cover of local chamber of commerce visitor guide magazines lee county tourism websites promotional advertisements and for the city of cape coral on a line of greeting cards in three area stores please welcome pastor gingrich thank you
004i invite you to stand lord we pause this evening to give thanks thanks for your blessings the blessings of a safe and free nation the blessings of a beautiful community to live in the blessings of children and youth and teachers administrators and this board of the lee county school district lord i thank you for the passion that dr adkins and this board has for their role in leadership in providing a safe environment for learning of our children what i ask that you would give them supernatural wisdom and discernment and guidance for their monumental task that you've entrusted to them and lord may they always remember their calling to lead with listening integrity and humility and yet with boldness and clarity and lord we are grateful for all of the passionate parents of students community members
005who've weighed in on their interests of the well-being of our students in our community we ask your blessing on them and we ask your blessing on all of us in our community and in this room to always act with relational maturity because we know that mature people can disagree without being disagreeable can learn to have unity without uniformity and can walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye and i pray that you would help all of us each and every one of us to listen without defending and to speak without offending and may we adults always leave a legacy for our children where we are remembered more for the song of our hearts and less by the screech of our lives so lord give us your strength your peace your presence your guidance today
006and always in your most holy name we pray amen amen thank you pastor gingrich i pledge allegiance to the of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated mr pre-bruno please address the public comments just a little technical difficulty 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 blue card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a blue card they are located in the hallway outside of the boardroom the rules concerning public comment are posted at the back public comment
007will be made from the central microphone in the back please be advised that the board does not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers at the end of the public comment period the board chair miss jordan will address concerns or the assignment of any concerns or requests to the superintendent board policy 1.81 is in effect and requires everyone to wear a mask on school board property speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper are prohibited speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker
008continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there will only be one warning for board policy 1.11 since we have over 31 speakers it will be one minute per speaker with a maximum of one hour 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 we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective board please state your name prior to making your comment i will call you five names five speakers at a time please follow staff's direction when lining up madam chair there are 39 speakers that wish to address the board this evening thank
009you before calling on the blue before calling for public comments is there anyone on because we have at 60 minutes so i want to make sure if there's anyone here on the left side that wishes to speak and has not filled out a card please raise your hand is anyone on the right side who has not filled out a car that wishes wishes to speak and do we have anybody in the other room that is here that wishes to speak yes thank you can someone check on the people in the in the room and let me know i'm sorry just please bear with me i just want to make sure that if there's people back there that wishes to speak that they're heard dr savage is there anyone can you please look to see if
010there's anyone out there that wishes to speak that's in the other room no thank you thank you miss dupree bruno would you please go ahead and thank you madam chair will the following please line up prodigio corey dye daniella dye christine divilly robert roper mr prodigio corey dye daniela guy christine divijelli robert roper sir you can come stand in front of the microphone and begin thank you hi my name is robert roper in 1992 a big scandal broke woody allen who'd been in a relationship with mia farrow for 12 years broke up with her and entered into a relationship with her daughter when asked about it he said the heart wants what it wants can we just pause for a minute and address the elephant in the room that is the plus in lgbtq plus
011what does the plus basically stand for anything and everything that's not enumerated in the letters lgbtq for example minor attracted people once known as pedophiles fall under the plus no less than 122 gender variations fall under the plus many of which do not get along i would like to add a b for biblical relationships one man one woman married for life these folks are not going to get along very well in the designated safe space my name is predigio and i was in skyline elementary but now i'm homeschooled because you guys made it a policy that we have to wear mass we spoke to our doctors and they told us that a mass would be bad for health it i had a really good vice principal her name was miss gurgle i think that she
012should have her own school i also think that you guys need to communicate better with each other my brothers and i communicate better than you guys i know that you guys communicate bad because i've seen and been at most of the meetings with my parents not that you guys can see me because i'm in a different room comments called the timeout room apparently we're not doing good at home school corey die let's start by stating the public isn't confused by what this code of conduct says collectively we can read it and we can't all be wrong not to mention how it got there nobody wants to talk about how it got there we know how it got there there's only one board member that only shows up when she's pushing her agenda and she also
013sits on the board of equity florida ironic nobody else knows but she knows everything this private pack on the superintendent i'm happy to hear that you guys want to make selective changes and you want to take charge instead of giving it to somebody else but now you want to hire somebody to do what we elected you guys to do how about you go back to the state standard and voters pick the superintendent and not you guys because obviously you can't do it patricka doesn't trust any of you to do your jobs and if i can't trust her i can't trust the rest of you guys so all of you need to go or give it back to the voters will the following individuals line up angie nichols jennifer stacer linda milligan jim dozier debbie objartel
014may i start yes my name is danielle ladai and giving a minute we have to really kind of narrow it down to bullet points so miss kittens i'm glad you got your lighthouse back and i'm glad you continue to represent us and speak for the people miss morgan i'm glad you spoke up for us today as well and did not let it die you guys kept on it and i appreciate that very much the code of conduct went from three to five points of disciplinary action and that needs to be reevaluated the way we put those into the columns is extremely disproportionate as much as that word keeps coming up it's not fair we're supposed to be getting these kids ready for college but not everybody in life goes to college we actually just need
015to get them ready for the real world and we in the real world have growth from adversity we need to teach them how to actually grow from the adversities that they're going to have in the display that came up for the education we didn't include any of the people that were homeschooled and how they were performing or how many people actually pulled their kids from home school you had 61 speakers because ms fisher's great great granddaughter or whoever had her words written and reviewed we need to remove the policy limiting the speakers and policy 1.181 and have the people select us amen good evening my name is general jim dozier i'm here to do two things tonight first to tell dr atkins how much our community has valued and appreciated his service and secondly to
016recommend to the board that we conduct a nationwide search for successor dr adkins by any measurement you've been the best superintendent our public school system has had during my nearly 36 years in lee county as an admirer of your steadfastness during some difficult times i and the rest of our community wish you godspeed in your new endeavors you leave a truly invaluable legacy a legacy of which you must be very proud well done dr atkins and secondly i strongly urge members of the school board to not settle for anyone but the most highly qualified person to be dr atkins thank you please remember thank you mr dozier according to osha the use of a workplace respirator or mask requires medical consent and medical clearance none of the students in florida schools receive medical clearance before
017being required to wear deoxygenating hypercapnia-inducing apparatuses that are largely unregulated and without efficacy standards for the pathogen at hand masks come with grave microbial inhalation issues as most are wearing them in unsterile environments like public restrooms dropping them on the floor putting them on tables in their pockets then back on their faces kids sneezing them and then they proceed to breathe all that in for eight to 12 hours a day medical consent belongs in all conversations not only are exemptions being denied in the public school setting without much recourse but truly immunocompromised children are forced into compliance with these ridiculous one-size-fits-all masking policies and is putting the lives of our truly vulnerable and undue risk when there are far better options available i urge you to resend this policy immediately almost as inappropriate as mary
018fisher's granddaughter having more time on the microphone than me at the last meeting is your inappropriate policy for bidding teachers from expressing their religious views while encouraging them with posters to express their sexuality in the classroom it's just an added insult that you put these posters in when you forbid us from going to the classroom you passed a muzzle mandate giving taking away parental freedom of medical choice and then you empower our children to deny their gender and go behind our backs by denying us the right to know about their gender we know that these children who are having gender dysmorphia issues struggle with depression and suicide we're their first line of defense how can we help our children's mental health when we don't know what's going on doctors know kids cannot drink because they're
019too young to understand the consequences and you're letting them play creator by choosing a gender unacceptable thank you ma'am can you please state your name angie nichols and i pulled all three of my boys out of the district because you can't help them thank you ma'am well the following individuals please line up debbie abdurtel michael peters greg tomsk ryan stafford linda brown charlie edwards my name is jennifer spacer i'm here to talk about safety violations would a child be allowed to bring a gun onto a school campus if he promises not to hurt anyone with it no just having the gun on campus is a safety violation so why are we talking about putting little boys in little girls bathrooms because the potential for rape in that environment is so high that is a safety
020violation i know some parents are saying this is an equality issue i'm sorry i disagree with that i would prefer that we stop referring to this as a gender identity issue and let's call it what it really is a gender physical safety issue would you please protect these kids so they can just focus on reading writing math science which is all they should worry about at this stage of their life thank you michael peters we opened with a prayer honoring our lord and savior our bible tells us that he created all things and us in his image our bible tells us that he created man and woman our god i would advocate as my mother her mother and even her mother all believed that god doesn't make mistakes equality florida and many leftists tell us
021we need to trust science science biology is a science in humans men have x and y chromosomes women have two x chromosomes even the ioc has used this science to determine the proper sex of olympic competitors for the last 40 plus years lee's schools should not assist in the destruction of title ix and women's sports my name is linda milligan as i stand here this evening i have mixed emotions about vocalizing my feelings because a part of me thinks you only listen because you are required by law it feels like you are only going through the motions but there is still hope inside of me that you will hear the outcry of the people the 96 percent of the population the 96 percent of the population the majority of the people who do not want
022you involved in setting our family's values who do not want you talking to our children about their sexuality when we feel those are family issues if the lgbtq kids are being bullied remove the bullies don't get involved in my family don't decide what my children should think don't teach them values i do not agree with that's not your job thank you ma'am okay this might be too short huh you can adjust it oh i think this is good you know can you all hear me yes ma'am all right my name is deborah objartle we have just declared together the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and i highlight that we stated and we pledged one nation under god our foundation which helped build our constitution a foundation and a
023nation built on the word of god so a nation could govern oneself we have slowly gotten away from this foundation how would you like a contractor to show up to build your home without a design or a plan what kind of foundation would be laid if we if he just did what he felt like doing without following the master plan how would it hold up under a storm if we don't build a foundation of truth for our children we are not preparing them for life's storms we need to go back to the master plan and it works go ahead hi my name is linda brown just wanted to make a couple of quick points here i've been married 27 years and when i go into the bathroom i shut it and i lock the door
024and i wouldn't even want my husband to come in while i'm in the bathroom i definitely want my privacy and i would be very uncomfortable with that so the idea of you know mixing genders in the bathroom i don't agree with i looked at this right before i came in so i don't have a lot of information but just real quickly it was a mick martin preschool case back in the 1980s and basically make a long story short the police interviewed the kids and they didn't interview them correctly because they're not health professionals and they were able to rehearse 200 kid kids to believe that they were sexually abused when they actually weren't so my point is in no such way do i ever believe that teachers with just a little workshop that you may
025have would ever have the seven thank you ma'am thank you man hello my name is greg tomczak i work with cummins yard ministries feed in the homeless and safe families taking care of broken children from broken families you are bringing in more rules and laws into this situation that are causing more chaos for these children who are already tormented the amount of drugs and sexual activities that go on in the schools is overwhelming there's police bringing dogs in to smell the lockers and check everywhere trying to control the drugs you're opening a door now bringing in lgbt is to have their own specialty rights and all this as far as the lgbt has been around for over four thousand years without needing a special bathroom we cannot be distorting these kids memories and their minds
026to be thinking if relatively the drinking age is 21 for a reason driving a car is 16 for a reason because they're not mature adults yet to make proper decisions parents have to protect to kill their children and guide them thank you sir will the following individuals please line up mary firestone eli sanchez brenda burnell lynn also tyler stowell i'm charlie edwards whatever the board decides will be the model that provides our children with a lifelong morality and belief system the code of conduct requires students to use non-gender verbiage then bullying is a class two offense what that means is a boy calling another boy a boy is guilty of bullying and is required to be punished under that offense the question was asked what is the punishment and who's responsible for that punishment a
027person with an agenda will punish differently than a person with a different set of moral values please board require very specific punishments for specific levels of offense to be written into the code and include specific punishments for the adults responsible for punishing if they exceed the limitations that are spelled out please be very careful about the wording written by people with an agenda respecting the morals of our country we're established under must not be overrun by calling for respect for different agendas we must intelligently combine them i'm going to be praying for your wisdom because it's a tough situation and a tough question to answer hello my name is ryan stafford i'm here to bring up the topic slash issue of public school tracks not having community access hours even though they are funded by
028public tax dollars i currently have a petition on change.org with over a thousand signatures just from this weekend under your mission statement under the department that pays for it the maintenance department you say you want to operate and maintain a safe and functional environment for students staff and the community currently the community has no no access to the tracks there's counties all over the united states of america and all over florida that have access to their local tracks and lee county is not one of them there's kids running in the streets high school middle school and elementary schools like other kids like ethan being forced to run in the streets and backside neighborhoods because they don't have access to the tracks they're locked every day and if you could put that on a future agenda
029i would really appreciate it thank you my name is mary firestone i'm a wife a mother and a grandmother i have been in nursing for over 30 years and i've taught nursing students i've worked with children in many many areas and i love them so much genesis 1 27 states that god created mankind in his image in his image he created male and female transgender ideology is anti-scientific it's an impossible to change your gender medical science has been founded and proved it is the truth we love the transgender people we love the people and god loves them more than we could ever love them but we cannot perpetuate a lie if you destroy the male female distinctions you will make slaves and dehumanize our culture thank you ma'am good evening my name is eli sanchez
030i am 12 years old and i attend sixth grade in a public school through homeconnect while attending elementary school i noticed that christian children have been underestimated and bullied some teachers and students dislike us for praying for our food for reading the bible and for mentioning the name of jesus that is why i want to propose a month of celebration and respect for christianity just as some of you support baseless movements like the lgbtq movement it is fair that you support christians not only support those who fulfill your own interests we need to create a safe place for christian students thank you will the following individuals please come to the microphone marvin goetz marcia mccombie lorena gomez sierra simon dick kennedy hi my name is lynn oso i'm here representing our father's heart every one
031of these children is so important in how the situation is handled is of great importance to everyone the word of god says in matthew 18 16 but whosoever causes one of these little children who believes in me to stumble it would be better for him that have a heavy milestone millstone should hang around his neck and be sunk to the depth of the sea in proverbs 9 10 it says the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is understanding what happens in the school system what is happening in the school system today is this agenda causing our children to stumble is it protecting us our children is it protecting our children i believe not as a child i was put in a situation where i was
032raped i believe our children will be put in a very dangerous situation thank you my name is tyler stowwell in 2010 i started coaching here in lee county because i was inspired by someone who showed me the impact you can have just simply by caring and being held accountable at 21 i was awarded the county boys high school coach of the year at 24 i founded e-r-y-r-c to give back to the youth of lee county for kids aged ages 8 to 15. i have coached kids after they make their 6th grade track team to be national qualifiers within two years i've coached county state national champions in december of 2017 i had an athlete going to cardiac arrest on the sidewalk of mcgregor over a mile and a half from our parking spot because we
033could not access a public track and be centralized oven over seven years i have founded ery rca i've never cared much about my athletes winning a race i've cared about their safety and building them into future leaders while maintaining a healthy lifestyle and holding them accountable we are looking for the public schools to open their tracks to the public with limited hours after schools any sign liability waiver can be placed online with community hours the hours can be daylight time so lights are not needed an example high school of cypress lake has an east gate that can be left unlocked and next thank you sir my name is marvin goetz i'm the head of the substitute teachers for lee county school district i'm here to sort of place blame on the entire board every day
034we have absent teachers up to every day we have no coverage for it that means that our kids are sent to separate classes or they're divided up or we have to find some available teacher to cover or teach your aids those children are not learning that's your fault because i've been here before to try and get you to recognize the role of the substitute teacher and what needs to be done to correct that situation how are we going to account for those kids who are not learning hi my name is marsha mccombie it's with my hopes that after hearing it myself and the others talks in regards to opening the tracks at the schools to the public that we further discuss this topic in the future when it's put on an agenda i am the
035founder of running friends of southwest florida a local running group that is still around today and the group was created in 2013. although i am no longer an organizer in the group i am still very active amongst the running community as many people in the running community know mcgregor boulevard is often utilized by runners for recreational running along with a lot of the youth that are involved in track back in february 2020 a man exposed himself to two runners along mcgregor boulevard after the news article i never heard any closure in regards to complaints brought forward and reported however my safety became a major concern for i once thought mcgregor was one of the safest places to run just yesterday i was down running myself and i came across the old meda neighborhood where a
036down pole telephone pole and a palm tree were hit a young girl was distracted hello my name is sierra simon i'm the senior class vice president at northrop mars high school i was here last night and heard a lot of people referring to cis girls who may be uncomfortable with trans girls in the bathroom i'm here to say that i am a cis girl i've been in the lee county school district since kindergarten and i want my transgender peers to have the same luxury as i do to choose the bathroom that they identify with and feel comfortable in the suicide prevention resource center found that students in the lgbt community are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual students lgbtq students need to be supported and respected just like the
037rest of us so i would like to thank the school board for implementing this policy and these resources and taking a step towards these students being given the same level of understanding and encouragement we all receive i plead with you all to not dismiss someone because you don't understand them but to take the time to put yourself or your child in their shoes if you identified in this group how would you want them to be treated another thing i heard a lot last night was not to listen to minority and they were referring to the lgbtq community i'm here to attest that the supporters of thank you will the following individuals please line up jennifer bouchard hall rachel doyer eve olsen tara jenner heather boyle good evening good evening my name is dick kennedy i'm
038a retired lee county vocational teacher and a vietnam vet i just want to offer a bit of a historical perspective i could i graduated in 1962 and that was the last year that religion in the bible could officially be taught in the public school system 1964 to 1965 was a vietnam era which guys returned they were made fun of spit on etc plus flags were openly burned the draft was in 1973 which hurt the american spirit americanism versus communism was then taught after the cuban standoff in a bay of pig's affair the class was closed officially in the 80s discipline has declined since the aforementioned has taken place and now increasingly harmful events have taken place which have little to do with education everything to do with social engineering the usage of same-sex and transgender
039bathrooms are now being considered it seems both sexes would be uncomfortable with this arrangement and parents would certainly be disturbed i predict if this happens with the bathroom thank you hi my name is lorena the last sentence on the pledge of illusion it says with liberty and justice for all it's not what you guys are saying with the lgbt bathrooms in school it's not fair it's not fair for christian teachers principals staff members to participate and submit themselves to these events or ideas that you're going to make i encourage teachers staff principals to not deny your faith stand up for what you believe not because of your job your money stand up you are making teachers denying their faith believe it or not you are your cows and divisions in famines feelings the feelings of
040their kids you are still in their faith repent jesus is coming soon hello rachel dwyer mother of two it is important that we have a school board primarily focused on academics so i look forward to hearing what's going to replace common core also it is imperative that local citizens be able to vote in and have a voice regarding the next elected superintendent with regard to this track issue we should let our kids run on the tracks that tax dollars pay for if they would rather be out exercising than sitting on a device thank you so the following individuals please line up heather boyle raymie hall jared longshore james simeon simeone thank you steven stoddard and greg allard tara jenner last night there were 60 plus people in the no mask timeout room as we call
041it more in the lobby and outside overflow area without cameras the board the auditorium and video audits audience didn't even know we existed being seen even if not speaking because of the limited number of people allowed is a form of public participation which is part of our rights to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances i have to wonder by the way what would happen if i identified as a healthy non-contagious individual and sat in the auditorium after speaking without a mask would i get the same consideration as being pushed by the lgbtq plus community at least with mask usage it's not it's science it's not science and with the other it is set and you would also know who and exactly what i was please make masks optional in
042all of the thank you jennifer bouchard hall i am a veteran i am a mental health therapist i'm a social licensed social worker and most importantly i am a mother of two who should be in school but they are not my oldest is vaccine injured and she is vaccine injured with the vaccines that are required to go to school i am not an anti-vaxxer i vaccinated my kid and she got hurt it took years to heal her and then covet comes along and now we are requiring masks my child is not able to wear a mask and therefore is not allowed in your building and that is not okay i have worked for years to get my kid healthy i pay attention to my child's choice health medical should not be in the hands of
043a school board or government my medical freedom to mask or not mask my child should be my thank you heather boyle i'm a parent to four school-aged children who due to your unfair ppe policy are either homeschooled or participating in the home connect program with the announcement that the homeconnect program will be discontinued with the upcoming school year i'm here to implore you our elected officials to review and adjust the mask mandate by making them voluntary for all students on wednesday april 14th the florida education commissioner richard corcoran has asked school superintendents to revise their district's mass policies and make them voluntary governor desantis recently had a round table with medical and health officials where dr scott atlas referenced a denmark study showing that there is a small if any benefit on mask wearing mr
044gupta an epidemiologist has also stated in terms of masking children it seems absolutely obvious that it's psychologically deeply damaging i do not want to stand here tonight and recite all the numerous studies and facts that to the detriment an ineffectiveness of masking however i would gladly welcome a sit down with any and all of you regarding these tonight i instead ask you to please rely on thank you hi remy how i'm here tonight because policy is important to me it's so important to me that i'm earning my phd in it policy 1.113 c states that only formal actions will be taken in action meetings or hearings today this board took many many many formal actions void of public comment depriving us of our voice you violated your own policy and i ask you tonight please
045go back and resend everything that was done today because you did not have public comment last night it was mentioned that maybe there should be a panel formed in lee county with transgender students if you do that could you form one with evangelical kids muslim kids autistic kids blind kids deaf kids maybe everybody should have a voice and quickly during your last board meeting miss patricka left but voted on the phone that messes with your integrity of the vote thank you hello my name is dr jared longshore i'm married with seven children longtime lee county citizen graduate of florida gold coast university with degrees in education both me and my wife and pastor of grace baptist church in cape coral florida there's been a lot of talk about the bathroom policy and the poster but
046i'd like to address the training that you all received in private training on january 22nd 2021 just recently it's very important this powerpoint came out i think it's like 61 slides it was lgbtq competency and awareness training that you received it advocated for gender identity and expression that is it actually said it's a good thing to have students identify a gender contrary to their biological sex and then express that gender you were actually trained in that i'm requesting that you report your opinion on that so the citizens of lee county can know where lee county school stands is that a good thing for children or is it not it also advocated for kimberly crenshaw's intersectionality as a way to approach positive social change that is a way of injustice and inequity and i ask you
047thank you my name is eve olson i'm here because i am appalled as a parent and a voter in lee county and i'm calling on you to repeal this transgender policy that you passed behind our backs if an adult knows the scientific facts and the risks and they want to defy their god-given gender and go through sex change operations to change how that appear that is on them that is their free choice god has given us free choice to sin he's given us free choice but god help those that cause these little children and teenagers to be indoctrinated into gender dysphoria i watched yesterday as these poor kids and their parents they have gender dysphoria they need help something happened to them that they don't want to deal with their actual gender we should be
048getting help for them we should not be enabling their delusion thank you for the following individuals please line up yes my name is just one second just one second please bill jacqueline perez heather newbert gerald slack melissa hatter diana ospina carmen rodriguez and don allard please line up thank you mr simeone yeah i was a little nervous to get up and speak at first but there are many christians here and everybody's getting up and speaking biblically that's what god wants that makes god so happy that you keep that in your household whatever's being taught in these schools should never come into your household that's your job you never stop doing that and there are many christians here right now we're giving thanks but let's get thanksgiving how do we give thanksgiving our father will out
049in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come you will be done on earth as it is in heaven and give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors and lead us not to temptation but deliver us from evil how long did that take that didn't take any time at all do we thank our creator enough do we thank them should we drop tony's repent is there a need for revival does it need to start right now right here with us praise god hi my name is craig eller jr and i run for a competitive track team and i think that everyone should have her the community should have access to tracks because we have young kids in our track team that you know could get
050hit by cars can get severely injured and if we have a track team they won't they won't have any they won't get hit by a car at all and one day i was running running on your own run and a car almost hit me twice and i think that we should have access to tracks because it'll be safer for all kids thank you hi my name's heather neubert a few weeks ago my husband was picking up my daughter from school for a headache and she needed a quarantine for 10 days and when he went to pick her up he found this poster posted at her school sent me a picture i struggled with whether i should post it or not didn't want to be called a bigot i didn't want to be called hateful i
051went ahead and posted it and here we are so i'm glad i posted it i'm glad we're we're out here now supporting our children we need to keep doing it shame on us for just blindly following and allowing you guys to do work that does not at all relay what we believe and what we want we are the reddest county in the state if not the nation this does not follow our beliefs and what we want and how we elected you and what we need you to do for us what i would like to be brought to the floor is a public vote on who agrees with this poster and yay or nay that so we know next year who should be out and then two years after that who should be out we need
052to know who agrees with this hello my name is daryl slack i spoke at the april 13th meeting and then back here i was expecting to address masking tonight but it sounds like there's a lot on the agenda i want to stick with accountability accountability is important something we teach our kids i think the board should let parents be accountable for their student whether or not they decide to wear a mask or go home or stay at home wear a mask don't wear a mask whatever if a student wants to wear a mask let them wear it nobody's trying to stop that but it should not be forced upon the children i think the parents the board should let the parents hold their superintendent accountable as the parents should be electing a superintendent by the
053people not by the board and parents i got to talk to you need to be more accountable you need to hold your board accountable by attending these meetings not just twice a year by voting in elections not every four years but every two years if you have conservative values we have conservative values conservative leadership at the top of this country or this state rather and we can have it at the lower level too just pay attention to who you're voting for i'll be running next year remember my name gerald slack good evening i'm jacqueline perez and there are seven board members here let's start off first hopefully one of you will do a motion so you can open up the tracks and make it safe for these children of red so they don't have any
054kind of accidents i watched a financial advisory committee meeting i believe it was on the 22nd where the chair debbie jordan spoke incorrectly about melissa hatter i'd like you all to review that tape and correct the information that was given i watched the video today about the board meeting i couldn't believe that seven elected officials an attorney and staff have to hire a consultant for thousands of dollars so you know who to pick for superintendent and last week that should help you with your decision i sent you a case of a whistleblower two two employees one that worked here for over ten years who was targeted retaliated against when she reported theft thank you hello how are you my name is dawn allard my son runs on a competitive team here in fort myers his
055name is craig allen jr he spoke a little bit ago and his coach actually spoke a little bit ago as well and he didn't get to finish so i'm going to finish for him we're looking for the public schools to open their tracks to the public with limited hours after school an assigned liability waiver could be placed online with community hours the hours could be daylight time so lights are not needed an example high school of cypress lake has an east gate that can be left unlocked and access to the school is still locked via other gates the athlete that our coach spoke earlier that had a medical issue will be a high school senior in a few short months in 2018 for his eagle scout badge he coordinated the donation of a hundred and
056fifty thousand dollars for all of lee county elementary middle schools to have an aed he was 14 and was able to make a difference thank you thank you hi i'm melissa hatter miss jordan i will discuss with you and i have more time at the next meeting hopefully the incorrect statements made at the meeting committee meeting two weeks ago i asked the board to seek community import regarding moving forward with decisions regarding the superintendent today the exact opposite was done when the board voted five to two to have him stay until june 30th even though he should be suspended in his resignation contingent upon the outcome of the governor's investigation just as he would suspend employees and has during the course of investigations i also share with you the court rulings that restricted content restrictive
057measures taken for public comment is unconstitutional specifically what the virginia attorney general's office ruled the no personal attack as unconstitutional but thank you good evening my name is diana ospina and i'm here to talk about the gender neutral bathrooms i'm going to list issues so i can i don't take as much time and i'm going to try to list issues are not related with religious beliefs not because i am not because i am believer i believe in jesus christ but i think there is also important to find other reasons so other people don't feel like it's just about that number one safety and lack of privacy for already insecure growing kids i don't know if you remember being 12 13 14 it sucks it sucks you don't know what you want you're embarrassed of your
058own body just imagine going through that and wondering who's going to walk in in that bathroom that does not have the same body parts as you it's just really nerve-wracking second one is safety i'm safe i'm sorry biological and curiosity you know biologically we are curious at that age if you remember that and the third one is there are other options there could be other options like a special request is not about just making them feel uncomfortable i understand your point thank you ma'am thank you madam chair that concludes public comments thank you well first i'd like to thank everybody all of you for being here today and those in the back room as well and i did share some conversation last night with and i apologize i think it was miss jenner regarding not
059being able to be seen and i know that i've not had an opportunity to speak to anyone regarding that because that was just a conversation that we had last night and i do understand that being back in that back room not necessarily you can see part of it but the example was you could not see everybody and you couldn't see the audience as well and hopefully we can find a solution for that where one day we will come in everybody will be in this room together as far as the thank you all the the kids that came here to speak on whichever topic they were speaking on because that takes a lot of courage to to come here stand there and speak trust me we i feel it sometimes up here so i do appreciate
060you know being there and standing and sharing you know your thoughts with us each and every one of you dr atkins can you speak on the track because i know i do see runners all the time on mcgregor running down the street because i'm always thinking they're running for me because i can't do it but could you maybe share something or is there a way that we can do something yeah what i can do is i can get with with you know our staff in terms of how we share use with of the tracks and other facilities with the community i think in many cases like we had talked about it with bonita springs high school as an example about how that can be worked on i understand where they're coming from as it relates
061to safety you know on the track and you know there was a day where tracks were easily accessible to to all but in this day of safety and security you know we fenced in our schools and it makes it a little bit more difficult but let me let me get with our team and then i'll provide a response to the board in the very near future if not as soon as our friday update okay because i just want to figure out how do we let them know so we have your information and i guess we could send that information out to them on what we can do for them okay absolutely thank you oh let's see what else mr goetz thank you so much for always being here we know how important it is for
062substitute teachers teachers in general you are the backbone we need you here we appreciate everything that you that you do and we just we can't do it without you so i definitely want to thank you and thank you for always being here sharon adam chair just on that item and just so we have a little bit more information in the room again you know that we continue to do compensation studies on substitutes and continue to do compensation studies on on substitutes and in ours if not the highest is one of the highest continues to be one of the highest in the state the other thing is that i think one of the things that we've done to try to address this problem as you are aware is we've opened up our vaccines to our substitute
063teachers and so you know we still strongly encourage that because i think that was one of the things that had been a deterrent is as many of our substitutes were concerned about about substituting because just concerns about you know their own safety and welfare so now that they have that available again encourage them to do that finally i do want to thank this board you have helped our human resources team and open up the avenue for paris to actually go in and help provide substitution and in a place where we cannot get a a sub that has made a tremendous difference and then i think we have talked to you but just for the community teachers substitute teachers bus operators just to name a few of the critical need positions this pandemic has really put
064a strain on on this district as well as other districts in terms of of these positions and getting qualified people many of our of our educators are older and including our and our bus operators and i think that there were some concerns that some of them had and they determined that you know we're i no longer want to do this or i want to retire from the possession of the profession and that's had an impact but we continue to look for innovative solutions and we appreciate your all support in that and i appreciate the work of our human resources division that's i think really looking for all kinds of different ways to try to fill those vacancies thank you thank you and then dr atkins if i if i may i know we had quite
065a few people speak on the mask mask optional and i know that there was a letter that came out recommend for recommendations for next school year correct right so can you just regarding policy 1.181 right i did provide the board with with a memo recently when commissioner corcoran came out with his recommendation regarding the 21 22 school year for us to revise our policy and that's what what i'm recommending at some point we do need to come back and i think revise that policy so we have the flexibility to move away from the mass mandate for the 21-21 to school year right now our board policy states that we have to establish procedures or guidelines that where you have directives or and or advice issued by the florida center for disease control the state of
066florida department of health and or other local officials those guidelines and or directives will be followed in addition the policy says the procedures or guidelines shall expire as soon as the federal centers for disease control and the state of florida of health and or local health officials advise that protective gear is no longer recommended and or required and currently you do have a number of these organizations that do recommend these things such as the cdc i think the policy limits our ability to make recommendations regarding the mass mandate because of what the policy says it really makes it dependent on all these others entities and if we did look at doing something my recommendation be to follow the florida department of education's suggestion to amend our board policy that i just spoke to policy 1.181
067or at least allowed to sunset a date certain in order to provide the board and staff with the flexibility as it relates to a max mask mandate for 2122. great thank you very much i just wanted to get that out there and i appreciate that and i know we still are constantly just even today we received a notification that we have had three classrooms that had to be closed down so this is still out there and i believe that what i was told this afternoon or it could have been this morning that we're still at six percent and as far as where we're at on the spectrum and it needs to be below five yeah the recommendation is below five percent i did perceive that yesterday i know we're not last time i looked at
068it was still over five percent and six percent i believe is correct it okay i think it hasn't been below five percent in a little while we're all hopeful though as we see vaccines continue to to expand and you know i think that hopefully we'll see that trend lower as we approach the school year thank you and we did have a workshop today so today we did have a workshop so that way that's the only way that we can have conversations so our workshop today was just to start the process and figure out where what is our next moves as far as with dr atkins retiring at the end of june we need to work together as a team to you know pursue and put an interim and then you know as a placeholder or
069whatever it looks like for us so that conversation had to happen you know in the sunshine so that's why we had a workshop today and we will have many more workshops we will be bringing eventually to a briefing or a special meeting or action meeting where public input definitely will take place so i just want to make sure that everybody is aware we are not excluding the public from this and you will be engaging in the process and let's see what else and miss hatter i'll be more than happy to talk to you anytime just call me and i'll have a conversation with you and i think that is it for now and i hopefully i haven't missed any one but again you know thank you for engaging thank you all for coming the code
070of conduct is another issue some of you spoke we are not we do not want to discriminate against anybody regardless if your religion or anything we hold each and every one of you very near and dear to our hearts we do hear what you say we do listen we're not listening just because we're sitting up here we're listening because we do care about what is taking place in here and as far as my god my god is a loving god and loves everybody and i just you know and the gentleman with the prayer i can't tell you how many times i pray a day but i just and i know and i forget her name she left this brenda i believe it was i didn't understand every word that she was saying because she spoke
071in spanish but we do care about our children and their christian values and so we're not eliminating anybody our code of conduct is there to protect our students to make sure that each and every one has a safe place and that they have a good safe learning environment so i just wanted to share that with you as well matt and just to bring the board up to speed staff is going to be meeting on this particular issue the code of conduct again on friday this friday just to because now we had had the public input from from yesterday's briefing and of course we want to come back to you with a recommendation in terms of what next steps will be also you know i committed yesterday to providing some responses to some of the questions
072that were raised about distribution and so those two things will be forthcoming to the to the board thank you thank you very much yeah we need to make sure that we continue on that process of working on that so i do appreciate that okay so next on the agenda is our approval of consent action items the documents 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 of the materials and we have an opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the recommendations some of these items have also been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda for members are there any agenda agenda items you wish to
073pull for discussion under the unfinished business table items portion of the agenda miss giavanelli two k 10 and k 11. thank you miss patricka no thank you miss fisher i have none this evening thank you miss kittens i have none this evening thank you miss spawn i have none miss morgan i have none and i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda can set action items with the exception of the pulled items k 10 and k 11. i'll move to adapt the agenda consent items with the exception of k10 and k11 thank you i may have a second thank you miss morgan and would you please record your vote can i have a discussion please yes i'm sorry so i did i know we had a discussion and we reached consensus so
074that we could pull the resolutions out so that i wouldn't have to pull them every time and have a separate vote on those and that didn't occur tonight but i also didn't give you all 24 hours notice to pull those items so i didn't pull them but i'd i'd like to ask that going forward if we could find a way to accommodate that at our meetings i'd really appreciate it thank you thank you okay so if we may please record your votes we'll go just know that i'm sorry it's not out oh miss thomas there it is okay motion carries 7-0 okay we have k-10 to address okay dr atkins please read your recommendation for the pulled item approval to pursue the sale of 9.81 plus or minus acres of 1429 northeast 15th avenue cape
075coral in the amount of 1.5 million dollars approve authorizes superintendents execute all related documents thank you is there a motion to adopt dr atkins recommendation i'll move to adopt dr atkin's recommendation thank you miss fisher and we have a second this one okay so we have i have a first and a second and discussion mr evanelli thank you actually i just want to move to postpone these items and table it with the other item that's already tabled until the new we have a new superintendent as appointed so i'm just asking for a postponement until we figure out you know the direction that the district at this time so i just moved to postpone items k 10 and 11 and m one to be tabled or to be table with m1 until the new superintendent has
076been appointed on the floor that excuse me yeah we're on k-10 and this is discussion so miss patricka i think i need a second on that though that's why i'm asked i was going to second it okay is k10 not motioned and seconded no she's moving to take it the superintendent's version was motioned in the second year so there is a motion with regards to the recommendation but a motion to postpone that motion has been made and it has been seconded so now we'll have discussion on that motion yes is there any discussion on miss j vanelli's motion i see no reason to delay this dr atkins correct me if i'm wrong did we not have do you not have a superintendent business round table with a whole bunch of business leaders here in lee
077county who many many years ago went through our budget went through our property holdings and made recommendations to the district to be more efficient one of those recommendations was to offload property that can't be used for schools in the future i also understand that our legislative delegation while i don't always agree with some of the criticisms that they provide to us as a school district this was one i agreed with we were holding on to extra property and property we had purchased at the height of the market and the possibility of getting rid of that to to provide more capital revenue am i remembering this incorrectly please doctor my recollection is that we've received that input from multiple sources and i to be candid staff really believe this was the direction of the board to
078look at surplus properties i mean and so that's why we engaged trinity and have gone about this process that's been a while ago but that's that's my recollection and that's my recollection as well and i do believe this is the direction of the board i don't see any reason to to delay this i have been i'm really happy with the information that's been brought forward to us by mr obersky i feel comfortable with the i feel comfortable with the information he's provided although a little bit uncomfortable with the level of detail because i don't think that's necessary and the other thing i'll say is you know when this was being discussed yesterday there was there was discussion of getting a higher price if we made alterations to the land and i don't even think i'm
079using the correct terminology because i'm not a commercial realtor but somehow improving the land to make it more attractive to the end user i guess is and i don't think that's the business we're in as a school district i think that if we have land and we can sell it makes sense to monetize it and it doesn't make sense to wait and hope the market goes up more and take on the risk of the market potentially going down so i am fully prepared to move forward on k-10 k-11 and i'm prepared to remove m1 from the table and vote in the affirmative on that this evening as well those are my comments thank you thank you so if we can stick to k10 first and then we'll move to k11 so that way we have
080consistency here thank you ms fisher yes so yesterday during the agenda review we had detailed answers to the questions that were presented regarding k-10 and the nine point something acres off of del prado in north cape coral i think that was adequate and i want to say that dr atkins is retiring as of june 30th and in the meantime i expect for him to continue doing his job his contract is not up yet thank you mr fisher any other comments just kittens yes i just wanted to make the same comment i made yesterday during the briefing my question remains as to why we're selling property now i agree with miss patrick we are not in the real estate business and i would hope that we're not you know trying to fix up property to sell
081or flip property or that type of thing that's not our business i still have the question though that in this market in the in this county there tends to be a limited amount of property to purchase in certain areas when we look at the growth numbers from from the county and gis and all of that if it's i guess to say if if it ain't fixed don't you know don't break i mean if it ain't broke don't fix it but i don't understand why we need to be selling right now and my point is if we were in need of funds and we had to build a school over here or fix up a roof over here and we didn't have the money for it then i could understand divesting property i just i just
082don't see the need for it right now unless the one property in bonita where the mine is and all that type of thing was a little bit questionable but i just i just don't see if you could show me like i said asked yesterday if you sell this for 2 million where is that going what is the purpose for selling that and what are we going to do with that 2 million do we need it for something or are we just going to put it in a fund that's my question about it miss vaughn okay i do agree with the fact that it's not wise to sit on land that we have no use for but on the other hand when we do sell property that we have two things i agree with ms gittins
083that and i had asked very similar question yesterday about where those funds were going to go and had an analogy of this is to my knowledge unless there's something i don't know about our funding that we are doing perfectly fine at this point bringing in our sacs our tax dollars to fund the projects that we have going for us and then the other thing is the market today i listened to what mrs givenelli said yesterday about where this where the cape coral property which is 10 k10 is located on del prado and i know that's very desirable and even though we're not talking about the other two the one that's tabled is another example which is m1 is an example of to me the same thing because i do live near that area and i
084think that's a giveaway if i had money i'd buy i'd buy it and flip it in a couple years i think that one's a giveaway so those are my comments thank you do you have any other dr atkins first of all i think i think as a board there needs to be clear direction here i mean we've engaged trinity to do this type of work and there's been a lot of work and effort that has been put into these efforts and then to if we were to come forward and like this on every one of these property sales i mean i just i don't see the reason to to even go through this effort if it if we're not able to to move forward with some of these things so again that's where we felt
085we had direction that's what we've done that's why we engaged the contract with with trinity to do this very very work having said that again i the another reason we did it is because we are not commercial realtors this is not my area of expertise i'm not a developer so i'm that's not my bailiwick that's why you engage people who have more knowledge in this area finally to again to answer the question as was answered yesterday regarding the funds i think two things one and i'll try to say it more clearly this time but what i was trying to demonstrate is that when we have more dollars in the capital fund we are able to do more of the projects so some of the things this board has wanted to do like accelerate construction in
086the east zone accelerate you know the purchase of land these are things that we are able to do more rapidly if we have more funds that are available so that's one the second thing is that as mr oberski pointed out yesterday this actually positions the board in a good i think financial position if you sell this property over here you have again funds to be able to purchase another piece of land in an area where you may have a larger student population and want to have the dollars to do that and not impact anything else in the capital plan like the construction of buildings the maintenance you know the security upgrades all these things because the example is trying to give is that while the infusion of dollars from the half any sales tax has
087been excellent for our district it still doesn't bring us up to the level that we saw back in the mid 2000s and so you know back in the mid 2000s we needed those dollars to go through rapid growth today we need those dollars because we are still in a period of rapid growth so again we're just here to to truly what the board wants us to do but that's we felt that's what we're doing thank you ms kittens i have a question ms patrick and superintendent we're talking about that when trinity was hired the board had approved everything at that point was that i don't know if i'm just forgetting it but was that with this board or the previous board i would say it was pro probably with the previous board but you know
088this board has been together was this year three so i don't know and we do have mr oberski here so he no i don't we don't need to to go that i do need to say though every time we talk about funds it comes up you know that we were getting funds to do something these zones miss morgan even said that the half cent tax was to catch up things in the east zone we're almost halfway through the half cent tax and we haven't done that yet so i'm just a little skeptical whenever that's brought up that we're getting these funds to do that and i don't i don't doubt mr oberski or his company and that they know what they're doing i still always go back to our job as oversight we're here to
089ask questions and asking questions does not mean that we don't understand that he works hard and knows what he's doing i don't know how to do what he does but if there's a question then i think we should be able to ask it without being made to feel like you're questioning the process and that this shouldn't happen so that's my comments thank you thank you just okay you have every right to ask questions miss kittens i'm i mean what what i'm really trying to do is try to provide a little context for why we're making this recommendation that's all i'm trying to do it's not taken away from any board members i want you should be able to ask questions that is your position and position of oversight and if you want to change directions
090that's your that's your purview to do it's it's just you know you ask questions i'm doing the best that i can to to answer those questions relative to the east zone though i do want to again say that remember we just passed the half penny sales tax it takes a while for the revenue to get into the coffers and then you've got the capital project so i think we're we're making good progress and i think it and it's starting to really accelerate i mean because we're really starting to see a lot of projects get moving in in that zone and all zones which is what the goal was when we got into that penny sales tax remember permitting as an example takes takes time acquiring property going out and doing rfps and bids and getting
091the players in place to build a big building that does take time but now we've got a lot of these projects in motion thank you dr atkins mr evanelli thank you i was hoping i was going to get to talk so let me share some context on this we did these were listed prior to the year election so that's why you're not aware of that along with we listed several properties one was the actual three oaks property because mr mora said that was the worst place to build a school and it would be the so my point to that is we do change gears because we actually bought property to build a school on that we're not going to build a school on now but we're not selling that one right now because we possibly
092might build a school so it's all about growth and i think we you know god's not making any more land so we have to be very frugal with what we have i am concerned over the 40 acres i'm also concerned over the six mile cyprus property because i think we should keep that because it's connected to our property so i just think we need to have a plan the plans have changed since four four years ago when this was listed so i think it's really important that you know we talk about what somebody here says we don't we know we make plans and stick with it but we did change plans we changed to three oaks property that was listed for sale by mr mr browsky's a trinity and so he listed it actually had
093an offer on it that was not brought to this board and yet we should have known about that and then it was decided that was because somebody decided to build on it when we didn't decide that it wasn't our decision it was decided by atkins administration so i think it's important to know that we have to talk about the future and this future needs to belong with land needs to belong to the superintendent that's going to be heading up this future of the district and i would ask for this to be tabled at this time for the best interest of the district in our community and our tax dollars okay do we have are there any other comments i will make my comment and that is yesterday we sat here for hours we were given
094a presentation and mr barrowski did answer every question that we had before us so i felt comfortable and especially on this piece where they were speaking about and i know the location where we could not build a school there and all the and the other information that we had asked of him and that was answered so it was asked and answered so i feel comfortable with with what we have going on right here so our if there's no other comments i am going to go ahead and call for a vote a hand vote on the motion and if ms juvenelli if you could re state your motion so that miss thomas has it i moved to postpone items k 10 and k11 we're just on k 10 at this moment okay i post i move
095to postpone k-10 until the new superintendent has been appointed okay hearing miss giovannelli's motion can we please have a hand vote on that all in favor of postponing please raise your hand okay all opposed of postponing and going forward four to three thank you okay moving on to so that was the motion so we're going back to the original motion which was dr atkins recommendation on this item so dr atkins could you please re state your motion or your recommendation madam chair it's approval to pursue the sale of the 9.81 plus or minus acres at 1429 northeast 15th avenue cape coral and the amount of one million five hundred thousand dollars approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all related documents so now may i have on dr atkins recommendation may i have a you already
096you already have that you're going back to your original motion back to the original so if you had your second already if there's any discussion and then your vote is there any more discussion regarding the recommendation ms fisher yes the only thing i want to reiterate is that mr obersky and miss ebar clearly defined for us the benefits in selling a small piece of property that is not on del prado it's off del prado and we have no foreseeable use for it in the 10-year plan and but right now the reason to sell is it's a seller's market so i support this thank you mr fisher so see you no other may we have a hand vote all in favor of moving forward with the sale please raise your hand is there no discussion oh
097i'm sorry i asked for discussion oh miss kittens did you have something to just basically on all of these i just want to reiterate and make it clear that if we're going to sell property or divest anything and raise funds if i were to hear specifically that we're going to sell this we're going to get this amount and we're going to be able to remove 10 portables from this school and 10 from this school i would go along with that thank you thank you is there any other discussion okay if i may again oh no okay so all in favor of selling the property as recommended by dr atkins please raise your hand all opposed 4-3 motion carries thank you dr atkins would you please read the recommendation for pulled item k-11 yes ma'am chair
098approval to pursue the sale of 20 plus minus acres of our 40 plus or minus acre property at 691 tower road bonita springs in the amount of 1 million hundred thousand dollars approval authorizes superintendent to execute all related documents thank you dr action talk to action dr atkins may i have a motion to adopt dr atkins recommendation i move that we adopt dr atkins recommendation to pursue the sale of 20-plus acres of our 40-plus acre property at 12 691 tower road bonita springs in the amount of one million five hundred thousand dollars thank you may i have a second i'll second that thank you miss fisher okay it has been moved by miss morgan and seconded by miss fisher any discussion and miss givenelli yes real quick i wanted to make a correction because yesterday
099it was stated that there's a road in in between that divides the land but we were going to vacate that road to build the medina springs high school so it can be a road that is can be vacated when you utilize that way and that wasn't going to be an issue also what the motion reads now we have another offer on the table that's 500 more than this so how does that work with this motion dr atkins i'm not sure okay yeah stuck dragons this one over here we cannot ha i don't believe that mr very bruno are we able to have somebody come up and speak during this time i was trying to understand what mr giavanelli was saying because i missed that so that's what i was going to ask could you repeat
100what you said in terms of okay so yesterday he mentioned that there was another offer on the table that came in on friday that's 500 000 more than this than this actual motion and offer that's on the table so what are we voting on exactly because it's only one the 1.5 or whatever when in fact it's really more than that now it's 2 million i believe right so how does that work that's that's really a question i need clarification please if dr atkins can answer the question he can definitely ask staff if they have more information to answer the question that's posed because you do need to understand what you're voting on right that's acceptable okay just wait a minute we went once you have the accurate information so mr oberski is here to help
101answer these questions you for is that on dan oberski for the record trinity commercial group we did speak to the potential buyer of the property that we presented to staff last week they were not aware the representative who had submitted the offer had not communicated that the property was in the drgr and as of five o'clock this evening they retracted the offer because yesterday you had left it that you were going to contact contact both bonita springs and the buyer and that conversation occurred today and then we received an email today retracting the offer and apologizing that they were not aware that it was in the rgr which was our concern with the potential purchaser at a price that didn't seem to make sense in the drgr okay so it's not being average it was
102not advertised that it was in the drgr the property is advertised with open market we do not specifically state zoning on much of our property but this was a buyer brought the client to us it was not one that we had worked with mr jimenez do you have any more questions for no thank you miss vaughn okay i see this property is different from the other two and you know madam chairs said well all of our questions were asked and answered but i'm i'm just going to remind everybody just because we have questions answered doesn't mean we're going to agree and go along with those answers on this one i did i do agree because it was explained that even if we sell a portion of this land on tower road that we would still
103be able to build an elementary school there and the odds are especially considering the fact that well right now bonita springs high school is not there's no portables there let's put it that way that future growth and i know there are a lot of communities springing up in in that area will be pushing east that way even though i wasn't on the board i'm very aware of the difficulties we had with that property with drgr and the fact that bonita springs and i credit them on on being a green community that wants to maintain our beautiful ecology that we that we have our environment that we have here so i understand this is this is a church and that we just have not been inundated with people who want to buy so that's why i
104have a different opinion and i will be supporting the sale of this one whereas i don't on the other two thank you miss vaughn miss kittens i have one question someone i was speaking to today mentioned the road is shared with the mind is that correct the road that goes north and south and borders one side of the road or one side of the property is an access road to the mine that's to the north and how would that affect if we even built a school there and what they were saying too it depends on how long the mind is going to be in operation if it's you know five years and we're not building anything for that time then it's not an issue but if it's if it's going to be a continuous thing
105how does that affect us building a school and sharing that access right our normal opinion would be in road improvements are to our benefit it's not a detraction it's it normally increases the accessibility for us so okay and i'm that's this level i'm down here so what i'm saying is i'm not saying that we have do we have to fix the road if we do decide to build there and share the road with the trucks and everything coming from the mine that's basically what i'm asking that's that's i don't technically handle transportation discussion and whether or not that improves or is accessible or not they're improving it to improve its current condition so it will be better than it currently is but i can't tell you whether the level of improvements that will be required
106okay and that would be something miss getting that if we were to move forward in a in a future capital plan to look at that's when we would start engaging the county about the road and potential improvements that they might have in mind i think that's been a process here recently that has really been beneficial to us is to engage engage our commissioners and our county manager in even even with this sale that we're talking about here we still maintain enough to build an elementary school and we still would have to mitigate the road situation when and if we decided to build that the school there yes okay thank you is that your yes thank you thank you is there any other discussion regarding this offer the vote thank you dr atkins could you please
107restate that recommendation approval to pursue the sale of 20 plus or minus acres of our 40 plus or minus acre property at 12 691 tower road bonita springs in the amount of one million five hundred thousand dollars peru authorizes the superintendent to execute all related documents thank you dr atkins we have heard dr eckon's recommendation we've had discussion so if we could please have a hand vote for all in favor of selling this property please raise your hand six opposed okay six to one motion carries thank you very much okay so those are k10 and k11 has been completed dr atkins please introduce any and administrators in attendance with a new assignment that were approved under the consent excuse me madam chair there is one more item which is m1 which was a tabled item
108at this time the chair can entertain any motion to take from the table do that sure can we celebrate them first please okay i have two people to recognize this evening first is brooke thomas golf elementary from dean of student discipline to assistant principal congratulations the next one is a transfer cherry gibson sunshine elementary principal to gateway elementary principal it's chris siebenhall the current principal gateway elementary he'll be retiring but has has done a phenomenal job for this school district congratulations ladies thank you dr atkins and i apologize i did not see that so i'm so sorry for that so unfinished business which is dr atkins would you please state your recommendation for our yes i'm sorry i think we need a motion to remove it from the table do we not okay i moved
109to remove the tabled item to approve approval to pursue the sale of 10.43 plus or minus at 14701 ben c pratt six mile cypress parkway fort myers have a second okay and madam chair because this is a motion to take from the table first a discussion is not required just majority vote once that is done you will then go to the motion to adopt the recommendation as normal i'm so sorry please this is a motion to take from the table you have a proper motion you have a second a discussion does not occur when it's to take from the table you would do a majority vote once that is completed you will then go to your motion that is on the table okay i'm sorry that is pending okay and this will be a hand
110vote as well no it'll be up okay it's going to be on the screen sorry this was an additional and not a poll no this was not a pool that's why it wasn't on my paper okay hmm did every did it come up for everyone miss patrick oh miss kittens we don't have your vote i didn't yes does it need to smell smoke or is it my seven zero motion carries madam sheridan what is it six one thank you so now at this time the motion that is pending is the motion to adopt the superintendent's recommendation dr atkins would you please state your recommendation the recommendation is a motion to take from the table the motion that was made on march 23 2021 by miss fisher to approve pursuing the sale of 10.43 plus or
111minus acres of the 34.85 plus or minus acre parcel of school board property located at 14701 ben c pratt six mile cypress parkway fort myers florida also known as strap and i will not read this strap to seagate development llc and the gross amount of 2 million 271 hundred and fifty three dollars subject to final actual property conveyed calculated via certified survey at five dollars per square foot approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all documents thank you dr atkins is there a motion to adopt dr atkin's recommendation it's already been motioned there was a prior motion it was properly brought forth it was properly seconded so at this point if there's any further discussion and then your vote thank you i have to apologize well everyone is my first time doing this miss dupree bruno
112maybe i confuse things with this the origin do you want me to read the original motion it's for clarity thank you original motion is its recommended approval to pursue the sale of 10.43 plus or minus acres of the 34.85 plus or minus acre parcel a school board property located at 14701 ben c pratt 6 mile cypress parkway to seagate development group and the gross amount of 2 million two hundred seventy one thousand six hundred fifty three dollars subject to final actual property conveyed calculated via certified survey at five dollars per square foot approval authorizes superintendent to execute all documents madam chair that motion the recommendation was made to adopt the superintendent's recommendation was made by ms fisher and it was seconded by ms morgan on march 23rd thank you so at this time we will
113have discussion anyone for discussion thank you so is this a total sale of all the property is this disapportioned it's a portion it's that front portion of that property if you go to the transportation compound there and you know when you turn into if you've ever i don't know if you've been there but oh i know where you're telling me yeah that's right it's right in the front part of that property i'm sorry now that i know that it's that for the sign may i rescind my vote at this time i voted yes i would like to rescind them it's in your vote to move from the table to right now right now it's only now that we're voting on this yes we haven't voted on this yet no we're not this is discussion okay
114did you have any other discussion miss kittens no i think i've discussed it before i think that yeah i've said everything before okay thank you is there any other discussion miss shavenelli well i'm just going to say that i just think you need to keep this 10 acres with the other 25 and so it's you know a total of i think 34 acres and i just think the property needs to stay together at this time because we don't know when we might need to need to put another school there or you know middle school or whatever or k through k through eight then that might be the success of of our district you know all the new k through eight so i'm gonna at this time ask again i would like to have seen it
115stay for the next superintendent not just table it but since it got pulled from the table i will be not supporting the sale of this property at this time thank you thank you is there any other discussion miss vaughn yeah i understand miss givenelli's point about keeping it together which is one reason that i oppose selling it right now and the second is i am very familiar with this area pass it several times a week and this is a very hot area and i know people might say well it's it's you know you're gambling when when you say things are going up but land the projects on six months cyprus are little by little just going up and the land is disappearing and i've heard the argument oh this land would be much more sellable
116if we had if it were cleared if it had my feeling is there's a dearth of land on six mile cyprus there's only so much and a motivated buyer is not going to care that they will have to clear and do the things we've talked about i'm not for having us go in and change what the land looks like and do improvements like you might paint the walls in your house to make it look nicer i really think that we need to sit on on this one go back to the table if the seller is motivated enough that seller will come up with more money or we will no doubt have other do i say sell other buyers rather in the future thank you miss vaughn is there any other and just so the seller
117is actually an investor he's going to he's going to upgrade the property and sell it so it's an investor i'm sorry he's say that again right i mean the buyer is an investor so he's going to upgrade the property i said the wrong thing yeah the buyer is an investor seagate's an investor they're gonna you know they're gonna clear the land and then flip it so thank you i'm sorry miss vaughn did you have something else to say no i just said they're gonna flip it out of turn sorry is there any other discussion okay so if none we'll go ahead and call for the vote those in favor of selling the property at this time and you know what i'm going to make my comment too i'm so sorry i think that i believe
118that we were told though if we were to do something behind that on that 20-some acres we could actually build a school if if need be that there was still enough room even if we sold this property is that correct am i remembering that correctly i thought that we were referring to the property on tower road i know it was it was discussed that's currently a transportation compound and i could be wrong but i don't recall any discussion about a school being built on that piece of property other than i know miss giovannelli brought it up yesterday in that meeting so doctor and i'm looking at dr savage no correct i just wanted to make sure okay thank you do you do have to think about i'm not saying it's not feasible but you know
119it's a transportation compound with the buried tanks and it is a under the ground yeah and you have that and then you also it's a vital link in our transportation you know system right now and that's i think our second biggest i want to say transportation north north is the biggest and then six mile they're very close in terms of their size okay thank you okay so if we could go ahead then those in favor of selling going ahead and going forward with selling the property as recommended by dr atkins please raise your hand those opposed three four three motion carries thank you okay before closing the regular meeting and opening the public hearing dr atkins please present your recommendations for this evening's public hearing yes madam chair recommended action this evening is approval adopt
120policy 5.081 certification of adjunct educators in compliance with changes in related rules regulations statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be april 28 2021 thank you we will now recess the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider approval to adopt policy 5.081 certification of adjunct educators to inc to in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be april 28 2021 at this time the public will be invited to speak on this one item the time allowed for comments is three minutes is there anyone on the right side that there's somebody on the left
121side that would like to address the board madam chair i do believe there may be some people in the back room as well that want to address the board were you in the back room dear yep please wait a second make sure that mike's on just a second can you check it out i think you're honest let's die see if you're on there we go okay so policy 5.081 is the certification for the and i'm probably going to say it wrong but the adjunct educators i actually think that there's a great policy and it's going to bring in some qualified people that have certifications in their own field to be able to teach the students which would allow for more hands-on learning experiences which might be a good use for what the properties that you're
122discussing might be is if we could actually build vocational schools on those properties as opposed to regular everyday full traffic schools but to actually have things like tech automotive wood shop things that we previously had that built a society my concern with the policy specifically is that it has rights and protections but it doesn't actually have a review policy it doesn't have any kind of qualifications for the review or it doesn't have any kind of responsibilities listed in here it does say that they have the rights of the teachers it does say that they can have a contract that's up for one to three years and it's not renewable if we have a person in the position that's doing a great job i don't see why we wouldn't be able to renew the contract especially
123if they were somebody that is qualified they're great they're local they could impact they could even offer internships with the students or something like that where they have the availability to go further into education and with the field that they're educating in so maybe we can change the verbiage about renewal and maybe just up for re-evaluation where they can re-qualify something like that just wanted to bring those things to your attention and with the review i know that it came up with our attorney but if there's qualifications that they're being held to then that which is what should be the review is for and built in from the beginning i think that was it thank you thank you this time corey died i think the policy is good i'll reiterate a little bit what my
124wife just said i think it's important for us to not just focus on college ready and get people working class i mean some of the land that you're talking about that's small we can't really do anything you know you guys could offer that land up to team with like lincoln a massive welder manufacturer they built schools all over ohio and in other areas that they bring in kids and train them and they're nationally certified to go anywhere in the country and be paid 32 an hour things like that hvac obviously this is florida we know you know hvac is a big deal team up with a local major company right say hey look we'll offer the land we'll do the permitting all of those things that obviously you guys get a little bit bonuses too
125and we'll get the land ready and you build a you know a training facility and we'll get high schoolers there to learn hvac i mean electrician your possibilities are limitless tech we already know you guys can build technology hubs programming hubs robotics engineering is a massive thing right now you know those are all things that you guys could just offer this up tell a company or or even some university link with fgcu and say hey how can we bridge a gap between some of your programs and our program and if i can get you know juniors and seniors over there two days a week how fast could they now progress through your university and get into the workforce and become productive members all of those things so i wish that you know you guys could
126talk a little more about you know it's not just college you know it's not so maybe use some of these programs and these properties to really really give these kids tools for success in whatever path fits them best thank you guys thank you and thank you both for those comments and we are definitely trying to stay focused on career to training so these kids are ready for whichever path they choose so thank you for that okay i will now close the public i'm sorry was there anyone else in the room before i move on i will now close the public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of april 27 2021 dr atkins please reinstate your recommendations for this evening's public hearing item yes recommended items the action is approval the adopt policy 5.081
127certification of adjunct educators and combines changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be april 28 2021 thank you did you i'm sorry allow her to well at this point you have closed the public hearing if you want to do a motion to reopen the public hearing to allow her to speak i would i would like to someone to have a motion i'll motion that we open the public hearing so that we allow and i'll second that thank you can all in favor all right thank you thank you very much as you might not know this but we're on delay back there by a good 15 to 20 seconds so we sometimes don't get all the information until late tara
128jenner here one of the things that i think that the board needs to consider looking at that kind of goes along with this whole votech component we've got a lot of land that is not being used you guys have already discussed that a lot this evening look into an agricultural tech program that's an agricultural variant of what we have for the vet tech program at south high school and we can train kids that are already in those areas doing agricultural work not as a picker not as a manual laborer but working in management focusing on things that they can do in order to be able to have a career there are plenty of people in this area that have the skills and the ability to be able to assist with that we have universities in
129the area and i know several staff members that are currently on school salary that have the ability and the enthusiasm to even spearhead such program so i encourage you very strongly to consider that as a viable alternative to selling land make it productive not only can these kids learn and have an actual vocation down the line but they can actually grow some of the produce that would be able to help our community and also subsidize some of the food products that are going into our schools in order to increase the quality of the food that they're eating thank you very much thank you mr was there anyone else back there thank you okay okay i will now close this public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of april 27 2021. dr atkins please
130restate your recommendation for this evening's public hearing items madam chair recommended action approval to adopt policy 5.081 certification of adjunct educators in compliance with changes and related rules regulations statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be april 28 2021 thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board adopts policy 5.081 certification of a junk adjunct educator to in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be april 28 2021. is there a motion to approve i'll make the motion to oh i'm sorry kittens go ahead okay oh okay i make the motion to accept policy 5.081 certification of adjectives educators thank you may i have
131a second please thank you miss morgan any discussion ms kittens i know this is just the policy but do we have the pay scale or anything with that yet dr atkins to to i mean is it going to be based on if you're engineer or teaching nursing or you know is there a sliding scale how does that work i believe that's the way it works but that's a great thing for you guys to have i mean i think this is a this gives us i believe that type of flexibility but i don't want to misspeak this is a first step from moving away from short course instructors to getting adjuncts it's something we've been talking about doing for the various reasons stated by really some of our public speakers here today you know it when
132you have our technical colleges and you have people that have these areas of expertise it really doesn't always match up with our salary schedule and the same with the hours and so forth so you know my hope is that we were able to adopt an adjunct model so that we can we can employ somebody who's got expertise in welding as an example because you know if you talk to mr greenville out at south i think that's one of the things that can talk to you about the difference in compensation levels so and can i also ask them that have we i'm really have not read the whole 101 2.57 have we discussed or compared with other districts how that are that are already doing this how strenuous it is and what their success rate is
133as far as finding adjuncts that are interested in doing it i wish i could answer your question directly i can't but i will be more than happy to get that it's rita davis who brought this forward and so you know i'm sure i know she brought it up once before i mean i that's just a question i would like to hear i mean i'm still supporting it because i feel it's another way to get teachers yes and another way to as we've heard to have students educated that are not necessarily going to college or and maybe not going right away so correct i can get with her and get those answers later thank you absolutely i did just get a text from dr pruitt who's listening in and she says we will be the first
134so we'll be on the cutting edge when it comes to this and is this miss davis's yes ms davis was the one who brought it forward yep congratulations ms davis this is excellent agree this potentially be a really good thing for our for our kids i mean what better way to get an education from someone who's been there done that has a real skill on the trade so very very true thank you any other discussion please mrs fisher yeah i just wanted to clarify a little bit on the policy 3 c where it says an adjunct teaching certificate issued for a full-time teaching position is valid for no more than three years and is non-renewable and then i there are some indications in the statute that say that a school district can or offer or
135award a teaching certificate to someone who has been rated as highly effective so is there a plan like a backup plan because if you have somebody who's in a position for three years and they're doing an effective or highly effective job and meeting the need and their adjunct certificate is not renewable is there an alternative or plan i just wasn't able to really clarify that for myself by reading the statute i'm a little rusty in my hr i apologize for that i we used to award vocation vocational certification so i think we still do that and but i'll make sure to follow up and okay all right thank you thank you mr fisher was that did you have any other questions so can i ask one quick one wait let me see make sure are
136you finished with your questions oh okay no miss fisher i just want to make sure you're finished okay thank you miss kittens since it's our policy that we're writing and there's nothing else to compare it to then perhaps looking at that non-renewable part because i hadn't seen that either is there a way that we can even adjust that and thanks for bringing that up mrs fisher because if we do have someone that is doing a great job and i don't understand the non-renewable part well i think that came right from the statute right so that's that's what i was asking and then then then if you go on to four in the rights and protections it you know individuals who are certified shall have the same protection of laws as teachers certified under 1012.56 which
137is the preceding one but i still wasn't able to decipher did that mean that was that protection was to keep them employed in the event that their certificate expired and couldn't be renewed so i just wasn't sure about that dr atkins i think that was something that miss davis had spoke to us about though when she was presenting this i just can't remember i think you're writing what you're saying yeah yeah so do we have did you need have any other questions no can we pass it with caveat that we would look into that no that's what dr atkins said yeah do i have any other questions okay cnn then i will ask for the vote then and this will be a hand vote as well correct it's it's up here it's on what's on
138there oh i didn't see oh i have it thank you please vote does it say yes all the way motion carries 7-0 thank you so much okay and we are now to go to our other business which will be board member comments and i will begin with miss giovanelli this evening did you say of course oh she did you're the first one on the list no but i'm really not numbered one today you're number one i'm always number one so i had i had sent everybody an email regarding my motion to repeal the equity florida poster from the code of conduct as of 2021 school year however the board attorney advised me through an our other board attorney or our retired board attorney i would say mr martin and he's he said he advised that
139the poster cannot be removed without public hearing because it would be an amendment to the policy the public meeting in which the public hearing would have to be held it must be advertised 21 days prior right so that doesn't allow me to repeal it and then i was advised that i can't even repeal my own vote correct so i can't even do that so i wanted to allow for the fact that if i can't do that i can publicly state that i would rescind my vote at this time based on how it was put in the code of conduct without community stakeholders and i mean by all so i actually would like to make a motion that to this board i would like to motion that this board advise the community how they would vote
140to keep the keep the poster in or not have the poster in if they had known at the time and i would like to take a vote for that so i motioned for that vote for all of us to let the community know who's who was behind the poster mr giovannelli that's not an action vote you can request if your colleagues want to advise how they perceived if they were going to vote for it if they hadn't recognized or realized that the poster was in there but it's not it's not really a it's not an action vote it's not a motion i can't ask the board to pull the board to you can ask them but not informative emotion okay i'm pulling forward then they don't have to answer is what you're telling me okay
141so i'll hear my vote again that i would resend that thank you and y'all have a good evening what's up dude that was your comments yeah mr vanelli thank you did we speak on what she said or you're saying we don't we're okay we're going thank you thomas kittens miss patricka so we received an email from christian whitish you all remember that from the student advisory committee i believe parliamentarian and asked if the student could be given a 10 to 15 minute period time to come before the board to present issues in capacity as a parliamentarian i don't know that's appropriate because i don't know that the parliamentarian is the appointed person to speak on behalf of the student advisory committee so i want christian to know that we got it we received it and
142we will discuss it i probably should have raised it during good of the order at yesterday's meeting or at today's meeting however those meetings ran really long and i had it in my notes to raise it during my you know my board report which i'm doing tonight instead of earlier so i don't know if during your comments miss fisher you could provide some guidance as to how i mean i think we usually we like we would ask the student advisory committee to determine who's going to come forward as opposed to and i don't i'm not aware that the parliamentarian has that authority so i guess i would ask that whoever is at the next student advisory committee meeting if you could raise this with the group and then find a person who can be nominated
143and elected by that group to come in front of the board to share i think it's a fantastic idea that they come in front of us but i don't i don't know that we can just grant this request as it came to us am i making sense yes dr atkins can a member of staff please transcribe the public speaker from tonight who spoke spanish and send that to the board because i did not understand any of it yes we can make sure that happens and get you all that information i would assume that's what you all would want thank you and then i just want to report on my activities over the past couple weeks executive district advisory council met a second time for the purpose of sort of previewing the presentation that's going to
144occur tomorrow night the level of involvement of this edac has been phenomenal they kind of pre-vet these presentations to make sure that the presentations are going to elicit actionable feedback for staff to use going forward so again they've really been wonderful i have had three school visits riverdale did i hear you was it you miss fisher yesterday who mentioned how happy you were about riverdance yes very happy ditto it's always been a little bit of a sad place to me riverdale because it's old and brick and but the staff inside the building is not sad i want to i want to make that very clear and they're doing a phenomenal job despite difficult times i'm repeating what everybody else is saying they're exhausted but they continue to be dedicated to the kids and grateful for
145the opportunity to be in classrooms in front of kids veterans park i was out at veterans park principal freeman is i don't know i think she loves on those kids and she holds them to the highest standard at the same time that's frankly wrong school franklin park is principal freeman sorry franklin park there's principles i don't know why i wrote veterans that was stupid my dad you're right franklin park principal freeman loves on those i mean they she walks into a classroom and they all hug her while she's correcting them and telling them to stop running in the hallway you know what i mean like if i get my kids to love me when i'm correcting them that would be awesome but she just she's got she's got control in that building she is she's
146so devoted to that community and so into this process of figuring out how that school is going to be torn down and rebuilt so just really really good to be out there i should have gone out there sooner finally i'm ashamed to say that i had this my first trip to pine island i'm ashamed to say that it's my first time out there i've been on the board this long and what an amazing place dr atkins i do have to tell you i walked up on the hill where your portable was where you started your teaching career 33 years ago it was and i did get a picture if anybody wants to see it of what you look like back then it's very fuzzy and it's very much in the distance so i couldn't see
147it very well but dr as we all know is phenomenal he has he's gone out there and he's gotten a feel for the place and he's not looking to make any huge changes immediately because he knows that there's a culture that needs to be understood before any changes can take place the staff was just unbelievable they really were just unbelievable i got a chance to sit and speak with teachers in small groups i got a chance to sit and speak with bus drivers i mean he showed me every nook and cranny of the place just really really excited to finally get out there and understand what makes pine island so special and it was also really cool i mean right on the heels of your announcement to retire it was really cool to see where
148you started so that was fun two more things estero rotary i spoke out there last week and as usual they are phenomenal supporters of our schools you know a lot of interest in your retirement and in lgbt issues and very happy to hear about the data coming out of our schools the progress graduation rates all of that and finally you know i wasn't here yesterday because of my fhsaa meeting that was two days of meetings trying to think if anything major happened that i need to report to i don't really think anything major happened that we did like 58 000 little policy changes but but that was really it there so i think those are my comments for tonight thank you thank you so much miss fisher okay thank you very much first of all
149i participated with the united way as they decided on funding two of our partners which is the drug free coalition and also learning for life programs both of which have serviced our students without cost for many years i'm just going to say i know miss jordan's going to talk a little more about the student advisory but i was able to attend the student advisory meeting on april 24th via zoom and it was a whole different look and i missed having that personal interaction with the kids however i will be at the next meeting to be there you know to enjoy it in person so with christian i think we need to find out what it is he wants to talk about and then we can bring it to the committee so i'll ask lizette to
150put that on the agenda okay and then i'm going to give a little bit of a oh we had the drug-free coalition red ribbon week which was delayed from october 2020 because of covid last week and i'm going to let mrs vaughn talk about that because she graciously did the resolution and the announcements for the awards for our students and thank you for that ms vaughn a little bit of update on my strategic plan activities which is my piece of the strategic plan is the social and emotional health of students so let's look at mental health wellness wednesday for parents this week is tomorrow night at 7 pm and the topic is going to be depression and youth what parents can do to help and georgia hilinski who is a licensed mental health counselor as
151well as the assistant manager for children's therapy service at south care will be presenting our schools continue to offer small small groups to students with indicated need and referrals for clinical services as determined by the parents of the children and the mental health teams at the schools services will continue during the summer months to support those kids and families who really need the help our lori brooks mary lynne rodriguez and cherry wenzel part of our mental health team went through a rigorous training and earned the designation of trust-based relational intervention practitioners which means now that this trauma-informed training can be offered free of charge to district district staff and families our prevention services has released its fourth quarter prevention newsletter and this quarter's topic fos focuses on social media and mental health and addresses such
152other topics as the effects of social media on youth and suicide and prevention courses on tobacco vaping marijuana and bullying continue to be used across the district with students who are engaging individually in the course comprehensive health update our health teacher on assignment lisa roy has been invited by the florida department of education to be a part of the substance use and abuse state standards writing team she is notorious around the state and has helped with curriculum in many areas and kudos to alicia and lucky us to have her on our team this week the school district's inaugural historical historically black colleges and universities virtual college fair for students which is a collaboration between the school district of lee county and collier county public schools and hope to be a partnership for years to come
153just a little update on legislative that i've been keeping tabs on for health comprehensive health education senate bill 1094 which requires the general health education curriculum for k-12 public school students be developmentally and age appropriate and must include information on the prevention of child sexual abuse exploitation and human trafficking it also modifies our existing health curriculum requirements to specify that any instruction on abstinence and the consequences of teen pregnancy applies only to those students in grades 6 through 12 and of course the parents have the right to opt out and that so that passed and our parental rights bill house bill 241 which now creates chapter 1014 of the florida statutes as the parents bill of rights enumerates parents rights with respect to the minor children for education health care criminal justice etc and i
154won't go into the whole thing but i'll send you guys a copy of this and this has been sent past both houses and has been sent to the governor for approval i want to say thank you to our student services and mental health team for for helping me and keeping me abreast of all of the activities of the district so that i can do my part of the strategic plan and i want to thank all of our dedicated employees who work hard and have gone above and beyond to keep us rolling and i also look forward to the next two months as we transition with the support of dr adkins our stakeholders and all the people who come to share their opinions with us are very important to our business and i'm also grateful for
155them and it's a pleasure to serve thank you thank you mr fisher miss kittens okay just a couple of things i've asked a couple of for a couple of meetings i wanted to two weeks ago at our last meetings i had asked for an opportunity to rescind my vote the student code of conduct just on that one section and i did ask for if we could do a consensus and that didn't happen so it did not happen two weeks ago as far as where i stand in that and i will say publicly i think i've said it in the last couple of weeks that i feel i don't know of anybody else that has said so many times about involving the public and i have continued to say that and continue to ask that and
156i still do i asked the chair and the attorney several times about having a special meeting and discussing the superintendent after his some announcement that he was retiring and the reason i asked about a special meeting was so that the public would be involved and i was denied that as well so what i would like to say is and it was brought to our attention that we have gone forward and set up the whole plan and not included the public in order and i know we're saying we'll do that down the road but we have a very tight timeline so my suggestion is to add a special page on our website perhaps calling it our superintendent search and where we would post the minutes per se and the things that we discussed the timeline all
157of those things and put share the what is it the board board office at leastschools.net so that if anyone has comments or questions then as we're going through the process at least we can let them know that they can add that at that particular spot i don't know do i need to make a motion for that or may i make a motion for that well i would like to mr prairie bruno yes it's appropriate if she wants to make that's a formal action so she can make a motion and i would like to make a motion that we provide a special page on our website as we are having to move very quickly through this process to add something to the effect of our superintendent search where the public can be kept up to date
158on a regular basis of what we're doing know when we will have open meetings that they can give input and kind of share the process as we're going along i think we have learned our lesson or should have that not taking the public along hand in hand gets us into a lot of situations madam chairman so if you're making the motion make the motion and then we can move forward to see if there's a second and then there can be discussion so my motion is that we have a special page on the website for the district and possibly the school sites as well so everyone can see it to keep the public and taxpayers up to speed on what we're doing with our superintendent search i second that thank you now discussion please it's fine
159i think this point beyond the emails that we normally get and phone calls and that sort of thing i see it problematical to have that special page we made as we discussed this afternoon and to me that would have been something more appropriate for discussion this afternoon we want to keep it us as a board we really drove that point home and to do that first of all we would involve communications department to establish that and put it out there we would need to have people we to monitor i think you know we have open meetings their advertised meetings and people can tune in i invite anybody who wants to email us on anything that we said you know where to find us and you can see exactly what we said what we decided and
160the same thing is going to happen with all of our meetings so i see having a special page dedicated to this at this time for an interim search as problematical and not practical so i won't be supporting it thank you miss vaughn miss morgan yeah so i actually i think it's a good idea to have a static page not an interactive page just a separate page that says you know this is this process of the superintendent search these are the associated meetings and the public is welcome to speak or not speak at these meetings no just put it up a piece of just you know a schedule period doesn't need to be maintained just needs to be updated as we add dates that's it i think it's a good idea it is a big it's
161a big deal in the community i think it warrants that kind of attention miss chavinelli i actually agree with miss morgan i think that it's being transparent i think it's being communicating out the information i don't i think it's and i think it needs to be simple and just you know you know exactly what we as a board decide to give it and we in that we hold that you know as our you know it's ours to ownership on that so no i think you i think it's a great idea thank you i'll support it too if it's static and i just i want to sort of lay out a bit of a caution you know we did discuss this afternoon how this has to be just ours and very separate from staff but i
162think we're going to find along the way that we are going to need staff to to complete this process and this doesn't have to be in us versus them we are a district together and so i when that conversation occurred earlier today i didn't want to be combative but i think this is an example of many that we will find going forward thank you ms patricka and that's it i'm not going to talk about protocol because we violated protocol ms fisher so i like the idea of the static page keeping the community informed and of course our meetings are all on youtube and people tune in more sometimes more than others and i totally agree with being transparent and connecting with the community i think that's a critical part of our job because after all
163we work for them they're the taxpayers and the voters okay so i would support that and i would go with the oh but i'm just going to say sorry we just need to make sure we have our ducks in a row first before we put that page out there correct miss fine i would support this if it's was specifically a status a static rather page that just puts the information that's available anyway on our website but puts it out there my understanding from ms kitten's motion was that it would be inter almost interactive that we okay well then i misunderstood what what you said i will support it as a static informational page but not as something where except for an occasional date update that we would have to have somebody monitor all the time
164thank you i misunderstood the motion then okay and i as well would support if it was a static page as well and i just for clarification oh i'll just hold that but so could we take a vote then on i've got two questions are you okay with us asking staff to do this yes and number two do we have to take public comment on this because it's emotional we do yes so once our conversation is over then we have because it is a motion it has to be i have to offer public comments so and can i just clarify an emotion please i'm not asking for something that everybody has to you know monitor every day and people can put messages on there what i originally said was it was basically informational adding the part
165of if you do have comments or questions here's the meeting here is you know meetings coming up here's an email or whatever just something basic like that but just to keep them informed because there's a time period now where we've made a lot of decisions today and yes we can say people will watch the video it's not gonna happen thank you miss morgan did you have a yeah i just got to ask miss gittins to withdraw our motion we all agree that we want to do this we don't need a motion and a vote and a public comment well can we i want to make it formal if we can is there anyone can we check you can have you can have this so could you please re state your what your motion is so
166then we've already had discussion and then we'll ask for public comments okay i'm just i want it needs to be clear so that miss thomas has what your motion is it is to provide a page on our existing website that would have notes and plans and dates and all of that to inform the public because of what we are doing as far as the whole superintendent search interim search the whole thing to keep them in line i think do we need that to be clarified of what that is so my skin perhaps i can help with some wording the motion to have a static informational public page on the superintendent search yes and not just the superintendent but the interim as well all of the whole process the whole superintendent search everything so if that's
167acceptable the motion would be to have a static informational public page on the superintendent search yes okay thank you and now public comments because we've already had discussion so we're going to proceed with public comments which they see we have some public comments miss dupree bruno do you need to address public comments prior to us going or may i just start mr dye is very familiar with the i was giving you the floor you know i was going to respect your process you know the rules correctly all right i'll i'll say i think it's a great idea obviously especially at this climate i'm not going to beat up on you guys for sure but especially in this climate as more and more people i guess maybe jump into the process kind of blind about the
168process obviously some some hot topics have gotten people motivated to come to meetings which i guess that's good that would greatly help obviously either for against pro or khan about the current superintendent it's kind of irrelevant but if people i think some of the commute the confusion is they don't even quite understand what dr atkins role is and you know we're over here throwing stones at them and beating up on them and they don't really know so i think that this website would have or paige probably would have made even his life a lot easier given that opportunity but going forward for the public to be able to understand how this process is going to go we get emails all the time about when can we talk at a meeting what meeting what's the difference
169of a workshop a brief all of those things so i having that process there is great your website is horrible it doesn't function well and you're talking about somebody kind of born in the millennial generation first home computers i had one as a kid i've always had computers so knowing how to use a computer yeah your guys's website is not user friendly to finding board board operation stuff that the website in general is a great website i'm not knocking your it department if they're listening don't don't spam me don't spam me i.t department i mean just about the board operation aspect of it like the board docs was a horrible idea i don't know who sold you guys that and you know you might want to throw a rock point of order we have to
170keep our comments to the motion on the table please thank you there was hi my name is daniela dai so i think that the website is a fantastic idea or the additional page i think that informed consent goes across all borders and informed decisions is extremely important i would say that it needs to stay informational i think that the statutes for the state as well as the district need to be cited and i do agree and i've talked to ms stillwell before but the it is very hard to navigate through the board docs and we're i do understand that they're working on resolutions and they're trying to work on it but it's very very hard to navigate so if you can reference those specifically on the page so that the jump to it is that
171much easier it would help people be more engaged and help them to find the information it is hard to navigate so i would ask you to please make the page please keep it updated with the dates as they change it seems like everybody has travel plans just because of the time and we are working on a sensitive schedule so if there are changes updates informational on when you get candidates who's being interviewed when their interviews are if they're going to be via zoom like what the methods are so that we can have an educated opinion and understanding of where you guys are at with that but just to really be involved in what that process is you have a lot of people paying attention you have more people that are attending and viewing and judging
172whether that's right wrong and different it is what is happening right now and we need to make sure that we're continuing to have that transparency it is vital i know miss morgan mentioned it today and you spoke on it very often and you drove it home that like what you did in the past whether it worked or didn't work needs to be revisited and i think that this is a great step in how we can go forward with a new process and what the options are for that process what i think we talked about neighboring districts one of them being miami-dade or dade county i don't necessarily know that we want to use a county of that statue it is a it's not the same caliber of anything it is it is massive it is
173a big structured school district but that's not the same representation as we have here so if you can give those examples give all the references that you're talking about you've discussed a lot of things in these meetings but to give those direct references those direct links so that people don't have to find the conclusions and make them themselves they can take the information and make an informed educated decision thank you thank you so the only thing that we want comment on is the one page thank you miss die the only thing we want comment on is the one page that is for informational purposes as to the superintendent process not about the rest of the website not about board docs not about anything else just on the page to give the public information on the
174superintendent hiring process tara jenner if i may just though add that if we can't find the page it doesn't do us any good having great information on the page and therefore i highly encourage that since this is going to be a new item if you do add it then it be highlighted on the main page not hidden under the board and that it is clearly indicated when anything is updated on that page that there is a banner or some kind of informational blast that tells people that there's new information and that new information is specifically highlighted so that we don't have to go back every single day and try and hunt and pack through everything to find out what it is when it comes to the job description of the superintendent i think that's something
175that needs to be more readily available and including it on this page would be excellent it then needs to remain as a permanent page down the line as was mentioned it would help the superintendent to be letting people know exactly what their job is and what their limitations are we may not all agree on what a superintendent should or shouldn't do but we can all sing off the same sheet of music if we know exactly what that is and when it comes to knowing who the potential candidates are links to their cvs obviously redacting privacy information i would understand that is crucial and personally i would also like to see any affiliation and any contributions that are made by any of the potential candidates to any of the board members or anyone who has any
176stake in voting for recommending encouraging or otherwise assisting in that individual potentially gaining that position down the line i think it's crucial that we have complete transparency there have been whether they are valid allegations or not allegations that the board have favored certain people over others because of campaign contributions or because of personal relationships and so forth so that information needs to be clearly presented and again like i said it needs to be blasted on the home page of lee county school district so people know that it's there i know that we pay good money to i believe it is the news press to let people know about our board meetings and everything this needs to be no noticed to the community in such a public format because not everybody would know to even come
177to the lee county school board or school district website to start with to even know that this information was coming out without advance notice to the community thank you christine division i don't have much to say because those two ladies that just said every single word that i could have said for me complete transparency is extremely important especially when it comes to the hiring of the superintendent for our district i don't think that you guys can afford to leave us out of any decisions that you make from this point forward i think that we've shown you over the last you know a couple of weeks that we're no longer going it's no longer just going to be miss die sitting in the no mask room it's going to be a group of us and that
178group is going to get larger and larger so i think transparency especially with this webpage this webpage is a great idea great idea as long as you guys are fully transparent on it thank you michael peters quick background been on planning commissions with a city and a county both previously in the state and have been involved in politics in this state for a little over 30 years after the most egregious infractions in florida sunshine law that i've experienced in those 30 years earlier this afternoon in this building with the people who are present now mostly but not completely i think making that link on your website absolutely critical because the people want to know that people need to know and what went on today should not be tolerated consensus is a vote thank you thank
179you seeing other public comments we will now call for the vote could mr preet burno could you please restate the verbiage that we will be voting on ms kitten's motion is to have a static informational public page for the superintendent search thank you all in favor please say aye 7-0 motion passes thank you miss kittens and if if i may have a part maybe in working with staff on getting that going if that's all right with everybody i had a question on student advisory when we have the reports do they report out when we have the reports for advisory committees so perhaps that's something we need to consider i mean i know that we had went around and around about their position and all that but it's just something i just thought about that giving
180them that opportunity and i'm not quite sure what our role is i attended the last meeting and i was just unclear as to why i was there so and if that's something that we can have defined i know it was asked that all of us attend whenever and as often as possible but i don't are we rotating the responsibilities or or what i wasn't sure of that so maybe mrs fisher somebody can get to me later about that two last things i went the ymcas and the whole like area had family day on saturday and since they are very good partner of ours as well i went to the fort myers ymca and they had all kind of activities and all and i'm always interested in seeing where our students go after school and we
181talked about their summer programs and that type of thing very good and i ended up playing volleyball there then i went to bonita and played pickleball so that was my funny for today was me playing pickleball and it was interesting and the last thing i want to say is this last week was administer administrative professionals week and so i just wanted to say publicly thank you to all of our administrative staff ms fisher provided a gift and miss jordan provided flowers for them and then we collectively whether you knew it gave certificates and some gift certificates to r3 and some cookies and all for the other side so just congratulations to all of them and i just want to say to to staff we really do appreciate all that you do i'm looking at you
182now the eyes are you know going so are mine but thank you this change is not easy and it is but it requires everybody rolling up their sleeves and deciding which way we're going to change and what we're going to do we'll need everyone's input not just the public but also staff so thank you all thank you miss kittens miss vaughn okay first i wanted to start by and obviously the public that was here for public comment is no longer here but maybe they're watching at home i wanted to make a few comments about some of the things that were said this evening always particularly happy to see our young people talking during public comment it's it is takes a lot of courage to get up there and address us and the whole room there
183was one young lady i think her first name was sierra and she is the north fort myers high school student and because we had the minute just the minute time limit she ran out of time but i think i know what she was about to say because she ran out of time she was talking about something that another speaker had mentioned that in in looking at lgbtq issues 96 of the people were not in involved well i think she was about to take issues so i'm going to say and this also goes into my response to what miss jivanelli said however long ago i am one of the people that adds to that four percent if you know if you want to look at and say well lgbt community trans and gay and it may
184be i'm not sure about the exact percentage and it may be that percentage but even though i am not in that community i'm a straight white woman i support the that community i support all their rights i would say that there were a couple of verbiage issues in the poster that appeared in the in the code of conduct and so i will go on record as saying that although i don't favor that exact poster in the code of conduct i will go on record saying as i was asking earlier today what language is going to substitute if we pull that out of the booklet which appears it's that's been done and i think there were issues with the way a couple things were written i am expecting that our committee our staff will come forward
185with the language that will substitute and i am 100 in favor of it that said i really want to add truth and i want to say one more time as we have said over and over on this board in a statement from the school district we do not have unisex bathrooms in our school we do not have locker rooms where boys and girls shower together we provide and this is part of the law and it's part of our basic humanity in making accommodations for people we provide single entry facilities for trans students so i just want to make that perfectly clear and i really really hope that some of the people and it wasn't just today it's been in our emails it's been other days that say that our schools are indoctrinating children to become
186transsexual we're we're confusing them we're driving them and people saying something must have been done so no that's not how it works that's not how it works there are i'm not going to get into a lesson on it but really when you come back here next time i really hope and we welcome you coming back we respect religious views i respect religious views but please be factual that's that's that's all i ask on the on the mass i think considering the fact that lee county remains in and i checked there is a wonderful interactive map that appears every day in the new york times and you can go you can look at all kinds of data and i just actually today looked again at lee county we're in the second highest area we are high
187risk for covid we have high levels of risk we have and this was on one of our local news channels just recently of the surrounding counties of collier and collier and charlotte and lee we had the lowest percentage of vaccination rates i want to get out of this mask we all want to get out of these these masks we want to see the children the teachers we want to see everybody's face we really do but we want to protect our kids we want to protect our teachers and everyone and one of the facts of life here is now i'm going to anger the anti-vaxxers but oh well we're never going to reach herd immunity without stepping up vaccinations we're just not going to do it so those people that are complaining hey that's a great
188way to get out of out of the masks and i know that's editorial statement and i'm going to end with a couple things on a more positive note okay so on the screen we have some pictures these are prize winning posters actually they're from the 2019 2020 the norm project poster contest that's done every year and the norm project poster contest just actually recently reached its its deadline and next year we'll be back on track for announcements in october this project is sponsored it's district-wide it's sponsored by the united way and it challenges misconceptions about lee county students by presenting them with facts the florida youth substance abuse survey pulls a sample of our student population each and every year and it's found that a majority of our lee county students do not drink alcohol
189or do drugs this shows that our students are making good decisions and are choosing a healthy lifestyle so you just saw the middle school posters here are the winning for last year the winning posters for our high schools and if you look at the one don't get hooked on drugs you might recognize that one because miss fisher brought us a folder yesterday so that one is actually being used and these are just our kids do such a great job with these graphic images including for our character education each each month we have a winner for that mrs fisher referred to the fact that last week was the celebration of red ribbon week and our we partner with coalition for a drug-free southwest florida and since i am the liaison to that to that group i
190said i will be happy to participate in in the zoo meetings so we had four nights of zoo meetings at which time i read the board resolution about red ribbon week and the fact that our children are making good choices one night we had actually two nights al ordered awards for athletic excellence in an individual sport we had one award for girls and one for boys as a matter of fact mrs patricka's daughter was nominated right miss patricka i saw you and your husband on online patty didn't win but it's an honor that she was chosen from her school in an individual sport she's she's a swimmer these these kids have to for this they have to exemplify drug-free that they're drug-free and that they support this initiative as well as be excellent in their
191sport and in academics and volunteerism we had the sheriff's office service to the nation award on see that was wednesday night and on thursday night we had the jim nathan leadership award and finally and i don't know if miss morgan's going to mention this i think miss givenelli did mrs morgan mr juvenelli and i were judges for the learning for life talent show and i know i was extremely impressed with the talent it was it was fun it was hot very hot but it really was a fun afternoon and for those of you who don't know learning for life is a program that many of our schools have participants in learning for life program and it makes students more confident and capable and it provides character and career education programs and was one of their
192two fundraisers there's a banquet coming up next month so those are my comments thank you and i know miss fisher you forgot to say something or share something i'm gonna let miss morgan speak i think i'll just send it in an email okay thank you but it is regarding the poster and the code of conduct thing and i know that staff is meeting next week to work on on an alternative display of the code of the non-discrimination policy thank you miss morgan so in the event that anybody is still listening or watching i do i do want to celebrate some of the things that were in the board agenda tonight so expanded learning opportunities and partnerships we are all worried about keep getting these kids back on track ready to move on until next year
193so there was an mou expanding learning opportunities for our students through a collaborative partnership with boys and girls club of lee county they will be operating summer programs at two of our school sites james stevens and varsity lakes another mou expands learning opportunities for students through a collaborative partnership with sky family ymca they'll be operating summer programs at cape elementary cypress lake middle edgewood academy harness marsh middle and three oaks middle in addition there there were roll forward funds available from a title one grant of two million 100 odd thousand dollars and that will be offering extended school year program for students from the 44 title one k-12 schools so those are things to celebrate i mean we are working hard as a district to keep people back on track and we're getting the partnerships
194that make it possible for us to leverage the resources we have by sharing them with the community i also want to celebrate we've talked about it endlessly but i do want to celebrate the memorandum of agreement between the lee county school board united way of the lee henry glades okeechobee florida gulf coast university and lee health for the community partnership school at franklin park elementary a fantastic opportunity for this school district for that school we're providing the facilities teaching and learning staff united way is providing the school director school manager and coordinator fgcu is providing faculty and student research and internships lee health is exploring the usage of our portable unit for health and wellness initiatives for students and families so i just i think we need to celebrate the fantastic things that are happening
195in this district this year in support of kids and communities despite everything else that has gone on this year i just think fam i want families to know that we approved the senegex crisis alert system which is a panic alarm system that connects schools directly to law enforcement for faster response times and this is in response to alyssa's law we had a great presentation by mr davis and his histo are not mr davis but dwayne altman and i think you know people should be aware that we have made a commitment to provide that in our schools we approved phase one pre-construction budget estimate for 2.5 million dollars for riverdale high school you know just great things pre-k programs bonita springs elementary tropic aisle sunshine lehigh colonial they're all getting new new playgrounds replacement of materials
196and and improvement of sites let's see i want to mention that if anybody's watching who has a three-year-old and would like to do the early childhood program because our four-year-old program which is typically oversubscribed is undersubscribed at this point and so in order to make certain that we maximize the usage of the spots that we have we may drop to a three three-year-old program based on ranked according to greatest need i want to mention for any parents who are watching any families esc parents survey is out there now my visits to the schools trafalgar elementary asked that parent volunteers stop me on the way out of trafalgar elementary saying can't we please get back in school as volunteers lee health is allowing volunteers back in schools so i did forward something to the dr atkins
197and lauren stillwell and they're going to bring it to the coveted working group you know can we start to allow volunteers particularly in the elementary particularly in elementary schools where there's a lot of end-to-school stuff going on so we'll see about that and then the and i visited a bunch of schools too and i'm not going to go into all of them but i will say i did you always learn something in these schools it's amazing there was a question that i would like to see addressed at some point in the future dr spyro about i ready usage in the middle schools there seems to be a little bit of pushback in that it doesn't work as effectively at the middle school level as it is at the elementary level so i just i think
198it would be helpful to learn a little bit more about that and those are my comments thank you very much thank you miss morgan i think i'm going to continue on the celebrations as well so i have been continuing my school visits which have really been fabulous i even went to when i was visiting the villas last week i wind up coming out of there with eggs they have chickens there and roosters and all of a sudden i had a child come up and they handed me these eggs i'm like what am i supposed to do with this they go you're supposed to eat them i hate to say this i didn't eat them i gave them to someone in the office who eggs and villas villas it's just great the kids take care of
199these beautiful little ducklings and it's just they have a great time with this they were really excited about it so that was fun that was a fun visit but as i you know go through the schools and visit i you know i just you know thank the staff of everything that they're doing i was able to go to edgewood elementary school this past week they i was invited to come by the principal they did a cultural relevant training class by crystal nunes torres and she did a fabulous job i can say they're not all artists because they had us drawing things and we were trying to figure out what the heck we were drawing and just communicating you know with each table it was it was just really a good thing i had the opportunity
200to participate and do the right thing we had 19 of our fabulous students from elementary and middle school who came here to the district and they were presented with certificates and trophies and they were just so proud their parents were very proud of them and just you know they're just amazing and i just really enjoyed being part of them i also we are just end it i was able to be a judge i don't know if i want to say i was a judge but i was a judge for the 2021 lee county student film and television awards that our communications department helps with that and they do it just a fabulous job last year we were not able to do it because of the covet so this year we were able to do that
201and these the kids and the filming and just everything that they do it's it's pretty deep and they were doing some of them were like lip singing and i was like i was trying to listen to the music and listen follow their lips and it was fun it was a good release of anxiety just watching that also and that just ended so we'll know you know who won those awards shortly we also had our student advisory meds so our student advisory committee we just formulated them again they are here for our meetings and here is actually a picture of them these are the kids that were here at our meeting and then if you can see behind because we wanted to try to get everyone so not only do we have the kids who are
202able to come into the building we also have the kids who are home connect or cannot participate at this time so they're able to come virtually and join the meeting it was a great meeting we had mr david newlin was there and he was doing a presentation on safety and security this right here is the new officers officers that were just voted in so and this is them being surprised so they're having a great time the one in the red is the and i have to apologize because i can't remember all of their names and anyways they're really excited about this they went ahead and they made sure that they everybody exchanged phone numbers and so they can text one another and keep engaged because they're offering all the different schools that we have they
203will continue to participate in their next meeting they're wanting to have some more focus groups where they will be able to sit around and have more discussion on safety and security they asked a lot of questions and you know they are concerned and as mr newland had told them you're our eyes and ears in the schools and so we really need you to to bring back to us what is taking place and kids are great because they will share with you and so to me that was just a really good thing and as far as what this is a student driven board so now that they have their own election the election was done and they have their board they will come up with the agenda for their meetings they will run their meetings with
204the staff liaison so she'll be there to assist them as well as far as like the board members i know when i'm there i just i'm over active with them because they're kids and i love being around kids so i guess our role in that is we're there for them whatever we can do to to help them and maybe miss fisher can we'll add some more to that of who and what we are you know when we're there at those meetings and we can you know rotate as far as getting the meeting started for them but that's why the first couple meetings are kind of strange because we're happy to get the officers into place but i'll let you share some more information yeah okay so i think it started out as the school board
205student advisory for the purpose of having the board members be able to hear what the kids have to say regarding their like their school day and they identify issues of concern they tell us what what they like and what they don't like they tell us what they need that they don't have so over the years they have really helped us with a lot of changes specifically with the code of conduct and you know some of our legislative priorities and some of those kids have actually been with us for five or six years like allison burnell the new president her sister was a former president and she was not you know to be left out of that race and so she worked really hard to get on that i their conversations are great they really had
206a very positive experience when they met with brian mangan and the rest of the academic services staff in in helping with the code of conduct development and identifying things that might be changed and i think they were part of the drive to increase the number of levels of you know discipline so that was interesting they're much harder on themselves than than adults are mr newlin will be coming back with some of the fr sros for the next meeting to have some focus groups so that he can get a little bit more specific information regarding the safety and security issues so we'll keep you posted and we hope next year to keep this group going with the exception of any seniors who will be leaving us because this year was so short but they have been
207a great source of information thank you mr fisher also i just want to remind everybody to our support our students summer enrichment program for the high school students which is a four-week program it starts in june june 28th through july 22nd and it's going to be held at the dunbar community schools they're taking applications the deadline for that is may 21st and it is online for anyone so if anybody's interested this is a great program we have a lot of people coming in and speaking to the kids teaching them they get stipends so it is just a really great learning opportunity for for all of them so i would advise you to if anybody's interested go online and read all the information is on there on the district website and you can actually fill out
208your application online for that and then just two more things we will have a public meeting town hall meeting for may 4th dr savage if i'm wrong for franklin park that's i think that's what it is i'm pretty sure that's what so it will be a public meeting for them and that will be regarding franklin park and then everybody should have received the fefp information for the 2021-2022 school year so the budget has been settled and it's they're voting on the final version for this week so if you want to look at what our numbers could look like i would advise you to go on there the link is on there for you to click on and go on but everybody should have received that today from ashley and then the last thing that i
209want to say is that i want to send prayers out for the family of one of our children who we lost too soon in life and i just want them to know that we're sending prayers to them and that's my report and miss dupree bruno thank you madam chair i just wanted to clarify a couple of things because we did i hear heard it in public comments i also received some emails about it so the board workshop is for the board to have discussions in-depth discussions about various issues such as what they were discussing today in terms of setting processes however the formal action will take place when those contracts come before the board for an actual vote so if they decide and choose their interim their interim will have a contract and that contract
210will be ratified and voted at an actual action meeting for an actual vote briefings are when the board is being provided with information from staff during briefings public comment on the agenda item only is permitted and of course at action meetings public comment on any item including interim or anything that involves the district can be had all of the workshops briefings and action meetings are done in the sunshine pursuant to the statute and are properly done they're properly noticed and the date and the time in the location is what is required and minutes are taken which is what is required by the statute so i wanted to clarify that formal votes formal actions will take place at action meetings the other thing i wanted to address is based on dr atkins recommendation with regards to
211board policy 1.181 revisions will be coming to the board to make it a little bit more flexible and that will be coming definitely prior to the new school year starting so it will be coming to the board for an action thank you mr bruno dr atkins yes thank you just one quick thing i want to recognize our human resources team they have formally submitted to the 2021 malcolm baldrige national quality award application so that's a formal submission of that application to be able to submit an application must be approved so even to get to this process is literally years in the making it takes a lot of work and the team has had to do just a lot to be able to to be able to submit this moving forward so this is quite a
212recognition we hope they're successful but they've done a great job and again a nationally recognized quality award that they have submitted for it i know that they've worked real hard shelly halstead dr halstead in particular has really contributed to that effort as has others on the team i know cindy and i'm missing the other person shoot who is it but cindy i know cindy mcclung and again others on that hr team have worked really hard to make that happen and would you be aware i'll provide more information in the board update this week so you can see the submission dr pruitt provided it to me this afternoon i started this morning i started reading it's quite a lengthy doc document but you can see a lot of wonderful things that are taking place and so
213it's just kind of a good thing for maybe to take a look at other than that's all for my comments thank you very much thank you the next schedule meetings of the board and may 10th there will be a school board workshop at 1pm on tuesday may 11th there will be a briefing at 1pm and an action meeting at 6 o'clock at this point having no other business to come before this board and see a new objection this meeting is adjourned thank you and have a safe evening you