001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of august 17 2021 is now called to order the time is 603 we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district's 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's agenda includes invocation pledge of allegiance one item under resolution which is good cause the board instructed the board attorney to draft a resolution on a mass mandate the resolution will required board discussion and a vote as presiding officer i find good cause to allow this matter to come before the board for thorough discussion and consideration acknowledgments public comments cassette items which include
002one item under board office one item under executive services three items under academic services one item under business services two items under human resources which one is good cause dr savage please provide an explanation for this one item yes madam chair j2 approval of personnel recommendations this item was added as good cause at the request of the employee thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda one item under information systems 10 items under operations one item under public hearings and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda mr evanelli these two good cause items are they going to be voted together are they voted separately separately thank you this is just the approval of the agenda that's
003why we will pull that in half from yes we will definitely have conversation thank you mrs fisher to adopt the agenda as printed thank you may i have a second second this morgan thank you and please record your vote miss jordan just for clarification the resolution is a separate action item correct the hr was part of the consent agenda but as always the board member can pull that item thank you for clarification miss givenelli is that okay okay thank you so please record your vote mine has not come up as anyone else's just having a problem with hers coming up i'm affirmative okay do you have everybody's okay seven okay thank you seven zero motion passes mrs fisher will introduce her guests for the invocation after which ms juvenelli will introduce her guests for the
004pledge of allegiance mrs fisher please introduce your guests thank you and ms bishop can you speak in thank you this evening our invocation will be delivered by father frank hanlon from saint cecilia's parish in fort myers father frank is a member of a religious order of oblates of saint francis de sales he has served in education as a teacher and administrator for many years for the past 16 years father frank has been a parochial vicar at saint cecilia's okay please no spot no speaking thank you miss fisher can you just can we have can we have decorum in the chambers please decorum in the chambers it wasn't on i'm sorry can you hear me now this evening our invocation will be delivered by father frank hanlon from saint cecilia's parish in fort myers father frank
005is a member of a of religious order of oblates of saint francis de sales he served in education as a teacher and administrator for many years for the past 16 years he has been parochial vicar at saint cecilia's at this time i welcome father hanlon please rise good evening let us take a moment and place ourselves in god's presence dear lord we pray that you guide us always satisfy the needs to be met during this meeting strengthen us as we make tough decisions we pray that we will be fruitful father please guide us so that this meeting can productive let us be effective and decisive oh god of peace we invite you to preside over this meeting even if we have different opinions give us unity of spirit help us to each listen politely as
006others share their points of view help us to work for as a unified team in combining ideas for a great outcome help us to work as a whole rather than individuals trying to promote their own agenda may we have a spirit of friendship in this room and work together in our shared ideas and shared mission and we pray this in the name of jesus the lord amen thank you father hanlon and now miss giovanelli please introduce your guests you can remain standing for the pledge i just want to introduce captain tyler noss is a cypress lake high school center for the arts graduate of 2013 who participated in the jrtc for four years she received a full jrotc scholarship and was accepted to the number to a number of military colleges and academies throughout the
007united states captain nas received her associate's degree from new mexico military institute where she completed an early commissioning program and graduated as second lieutenant in may 2015 as a military police officer she transferred back to florida and earned her bachelor's degree in human performance and kinesiology from the university of tampa she has been a proud member of the u.s army honor guard since 2017 where she has participated in over 80 funerals locally throughout the florida captain assignments and duties positions have included time served in new mexico kuwait iraq and most recently as a commander at fort bliss texas she will be stationed at fort knox kentucky later this month as a battalion supply officer thank you for your service i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic
008for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay and we do not have resolutions this evening but i'm going to just step out of take a little bit of privilege and have ms gittins introduce some of our students ms kittens okay thank you good evening everyone i don't know if any of you had the privilege of attending a performance of bulletproof backpack at the repertoire theater this week and we had several of our students that were involved if you did go it was a treat it was educational and it really gave a perspective of what our students think and feel and the things that they go through if you ever get the opportunity i know the last performance was sunday but if you ever get the
009opportunity please take that opportunity and we invited a couple of the performers from that performance to just come and just be recognized tonight for all of the hard work they did to represent students not only in league county but everywhere so we have tonight macy maggots oh first okay macy magus gabby steinborn elizabeth fleet fleetham tatum bates and zeke backlash is the community outreach man manager from the repertory theater this piece was so impactful and so important and necessary to understand what our students go through when they have to go through what can i say i just lost the word for it now when when drills that's it when they go through drills and things like that for active shooters and it was very very powerful so i just wanted to bring them and thank
010them so much we have students from cypress lake high school lehigh senior fort myers high and challenger middle can we give them a hand so much so much go this way thank you okay moving moving on character word for august is responsibility the accountability for personal choices obligations and duties the design you see displayed on the screen was created by natalia gantt a 12th grade student at estero high thank you ms gam next we move on to public comment and mr pree bruno would you please address the public thank you madam chair good evening 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 on any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a blue
011card please put it in the basket provided if you need a blue card they are located in the hallway outside of the board room the rules concerning public comment are posted in the back and public comment will 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 mrs jordan miss jordan may address concerns or the assignment of any concerns or requests to the superintendent speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback to the board personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive
012language swearing cursing or a display of temper are prohibited speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and said speaker may be removed from the chambers there will only be one warning for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20 speakers 2 minutes if there are 30 speakers in one minute if there are 31 speakers or more for board policy 1.11 the maximum time allowed for public comment is one hour you will find a countdown on the big screens 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
013whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective body please state your name prior to making your comment i will call you five speakers at a time please follow staff's direction with lining up madam chair we have an excess of 60 speakers that wish to address the board today thank you madam chair i'd like to make a motion and i'd like to make a motion to allow everyone to speak tonight and to limit them one minute across the state others other districts have allowed for this and this just be for this meeting only but considering the attendance tonight i think we need to respect that and listen to everyone that wants to speak i know i have to get a second second there will be no clapping please of order with the clapping
014yes i asked for them nothing would ask that you please refrain as i stated we do need to respect the decorum in the chambers this is a school board meeting so please respect the decorum in the chambers madam chair there's a motion on the floor it's been properly seconded okay so you've heard the motion second is there any discussion the only thing i will add is this would be an exception and you would have to follow board policy 1.10 and that would require a super majority vote thank you call for the vote i'm asking there's other board members on this board and i want to make sure that everybody is heard that would like to be heard if any so is there any that would like to be heard no thank you seeing that there
015is none that would like to be heard all those in favor please raise your hand motion carries madam speaker we have approximately not approximately we have 83 speakers for this evening so the time allotted will be one minute at this time i'm sure would you like me to go forward yes please okay at this time i will call you five names at a time please line up when i call your name to the microphone in the back the following individuals please line up corey dye tara jenner denise nystrom carl schultz christy divijelli corey dye activecitizenstogether.org dr savage i would encourage you and support you in your continuing act in a manner that would keep you in line lawfully with the authorities of the great state of florida and refuse any direction that would personally and
016professionally hold you liable for the actions of this board i'll skip because we're stuck at a minute you know i love my speeches pass this unlawful action and every member who supports this we will file for a recall of your election under florida statute 100.361 under violation of malfeasance your violation of the public's trust obligation and willfully and actively possessing a unlawful action you guys have already learned the state has already told broward and the other county up north you guys conspired yesterday to break state law you literally conspired if i could i would order them to arrest you now if not we will remove you thank you please please please we want to hear everybody we've extended this so everyone has an opportunity to speak so please be respectful for one to one another
017and allow each person to speak thank you miss jenner tara jenner it's highly circumspect that the board considered going against the rights to the parents the constitution and the governor's executive order and in doing so without proper notice to the public don't overstep your authority and violate the rights of the parents of the 13 000 plus students who submitted an opt-out form there are many more that opted out using their actions do you think you care more about their children than they do what's next will you demand mandatory vaccination of teachers staff and even students as implied by ms vaughn yesterday it's not just the governor who will hold you accountable if you abridge the rights of the people the voters of lee county will do so too we'll speak not only at election time
018any parent who opts out of masking should pull their children from the school in protest if this proclamation is passed we're not under a dictatorship run by you we're a constitutional republic where the rights of even the smallest number of people are protected from the will of the majority and the power of an overbearing school board necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom it is the argument of tyrants and it is the creed of slaves william pitt the younger denise nystrom all you have to do is watch youtube videos of the board meetings from yesterday and you will see that three board members are perpetually creating disruptive turmoil in the district what happened yesterday is about is about board members trying to damage superintendent kenneth savage's reputation as a superintendent by placing
019him in a lose-lose position if the superintendent follows the board's directive and implements a mass mandate he will have been forced by the board to defy the governor's orders that he clearly stated he did not want to defy if superintendent savage says he is going to abide by the governor's orders then he is not following the directives of the board which board members will use against him so that they will try to prevent him from being hired as the permanent superintendent when the position is open the mass situation was already handled by superintendent savage because he required of parents that they needed to sign an opt-out forms in order for students thank you thank you next speaker please and before you speak will the following individuals please line up phillip schwartz carl j susan cantalupo
020michael corint lisa atkinson christine divilly and i represent power to parent florida's first parents union we exist to empower parents to advocate for their children in their parental voice i'm not here to speak to any of you today i'm here to speak to the parents and i'm here to speak to everyone that is in the audience this board does not care about anything that you or any of you are here to say tonight so my suggestion to every parent in lee county is this if you're upset that we are here yet again talking about mandating masks for our children then our message to the board should be the same and that is this we will not comply our children will not comply and if anyone bullies or retaliates against my child i will pull her
021so fast and i will apply for the hope scholarship and i suggest that every parent do the same peaceful non-compliance is the only way we will win this again warning you cannot clap no booing no hissing officers we need to conduct this meeting with the proper decorum this is a school board meeting this is a government office in a government officials meeting please next speaker please yes my name is carl schultz i'm a retired emergency physician a simple google search before i came here got me to a university of south carol south california website for their one of their medical schools it talks about mandatory masking of school children is a bad idea it says masking is a psychological stressor for children and obstructs learning covering the lower half of the face both the teacher
022and the pupil reduces the ability to communicate children lose the experience of mimicking expressions bonding between teachers and students takes a hit when physicians evaluate patients we do so with a risk benefit for every therapy we employ so masking is in a sense of therapy there's a risk and a benefit in this case the benefit is minuscule and the risk is significant thank you thank you before the next next speaker speaks on board members i got message that you need to reboot your computers there is a technical difficulty so if you can reboot your computers next speaker please philip schwartz according to the school board website under leadership it states the board operates according to florida law house bill 241 parents bill of rights prevents the state its subdivisions like the board department of education
023and its governmental institutions like the lee county school board from infringing on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing education health care and mental health of a minor child executive order 21-175 ensuing parents freedom ensuring of parents freedom to choose masks in schools quote whereas on april 29 2021 florida surgeon general dr scott issued a public health advisory stating that continuing covid19 restrictions on individuals including long-term use of face coverings pose a significant and adverse effect on unintended consequences my name is liz corenti this is my son he has something to say to you i wait my name is michael i am six years old i had to wear a mask all last year and i have something to say to you it's not fair you are making us wear these masks
024we can't breathe we don't even wear them the right way you should not make us the choice for us kids you should let our parents decide what is best for us the masks make kids upset it made my sister cry a lot last year i hate them i think they are done and i don't want you thank you thank you michael next speaker please i'm susan cantalupo back in may i had to withdraw my high school junior from high school all together in the school system due to medical issues he was having while wearing a mask you would not accept his medical exemption three weeks ago i re-enrolled him into the school system only to have to the rug pulled out from underneath us now my question is why weren't the forms to sign right
025before school started opting in forms to wear masks i'll bet you had it planned that for those of us who decided not to sign the opt-out form because our governor already opted us out for it would it would help to make the numbers appear low enough that we should have a problem we shouldn't have a problem with another mandate that we are part of the masses who want it remember fear is false evidence appearing real this however is child abuse will the following individuals please line up denise eberly thomas pound stephen martin edward dress christine baron lisa cohen-atkinson we've all said everything that everybody's already said a million times you don't listen that's all there is to it at the end of the day you are responsible for your own children they will vote this
026in tonight that is it there is a hope scholarship that is now for you i have flyers right here i'm talking to the parents i'm not talking to the board because they don't listen anyway at the end of the day hope scholarship your tax dollars will pay for your kids to go to a private school where they don't indoctrinate your children there are all kinds of benefits that go with this that's all there is to it this doesn't matter anymore government-run schools they don't matter take control back from these tyrants that sit up there and try to intentionally harm your families your children they don't care my name is denise eberly first thing i want to say i want to remind you work for us it's that simple and that you look for in please
027you are in defiance of our governor and of the parents and their children you already made a decision that we could do that the children could be masculine what the heck is going on here that now you won't change that if their vaccines work i don't know how many of you are vaccinated but if you're all vaccinated you look ridiculous wearing that mask secondly if the vaccines work you don't need the mask but i guess you don't think the vaccine works so you wear a mask the masks don't work either so this is just totally absurd why don't you do some a little research on medicine and biology and science and chemistry and that thank you next speaker please thank you my name is stephen martin i'm an attorney here in southwest florida i'm also
028a father of four children i stand with the parents here that are looking for the rights of their children you know thinking about what's going on here i think this board really needs to consider the president that they're setting for our local community mr bruno keeps asking for decorum and for us to respect the institutions but the governor issued an order directing all districts in the state to not mandate masses for their children and if we're going to honor what the judge or what the governor is telling us to do and respect that authority this board also needs to respect that authority too and abide by that order and not have our children be stuck wearing these masks how can you ask our children to follow rules if we're not going to be following those
029very same rules in this building thank you edward after smd these don't work these do not stop viruses there is no scientific evidence that they will protect your children or your teachers masking is a political issue it's been used to force public compliance no scientific studies confirm that these masks will prevent viral spread it will however and the physical effects on the children have been mentioned already but think about the psychological effects we've had this discussion about the gay and transgender children being depressed and suicidal what do these children have when they're wearing masks the same issues and we're talking about 90 000 plus children in this district i asked this question i saw them on the news this morning that miss jordan was quoted as saying she needed to address the mask issue tonight
030because there were 14 teachers absent where those teachers actioned from cove before the next speaker will the following individuals please line up adam buskowski elena barron amy moore alexis moore paul barnes christine baron i just pulled my three kids out of public school yesterday due to what's being taught and my daughters have experienced i find it hard to believe i just moved from new jersey three weeks ago thinking i left a swamp and i come back here and i'm like what are you kidding me okay so i already pulled him out three weeks in okay i find it hard to believe that you think you're smarter than me when it comes to raising my kids there are these things called the constitutional rights declaration of independence the bill of rights and the bible which i
031stand firm on okay that guarantees your mind and our children's rights and freedoms my prayer is that you get off your power horse stop being motivated by political position money power and influence from other higher authorities why are you trying to bring or create immorality division within the family unit we are truly living in a time where truth is false and false concepts of being truth start caring for we the people and not the things that are tearing our society apart for you work for us we don't work for you if the lee county institutes of mass mandate we will not comply our children won't comply and if they are bullied retaliated against any way we'll apply for the hope scholarship we will pull them from the district immediately which i've already done god bless
032you all and god bless america it's the last warning with regards to clapping we really we have over 80 speakers that we need to hear tonight so help us out so we can hear all of you please next speaker please next speaker please thomas pound cape coral florida teacher at east leed county high school i'm always privileged to teach your children and there's been a lot of focus on children and i know that's why schools exist i just ask that you understand there are teachers where our health also matters the layers that we need to protect ourselves from kobe and the delta variant you have three of them posted outside wash your hands watch your space wear your mask and then there's a vaccine all of those have been proven to be effective layers in
033protecting us from infectious diseases by removing mass from the school you are taking away one of the effective measures that we need to protect not just the lives of students but also the lives of teachers i understand that i may be just spitting in the ocean but this isn't a political decision this needs to be a health care facility thank you for your time and please know this i mean even though it's like the sign language saying no or whatever against let's be respectful sir i understand that thank you but i'm just saying just comment courtesy please sir i apologize with all due respect it doesn't matter what my name is i like all the parents here as i'm a very concerned parent and this decision to implement masks i think is very detrimental and
034i implore you not to go down that road simply because you need to familiarize yourselves with the terms hypercapnia hypoxia medical things like that they're just one complication of the mask but also the barrier that creates that they think is going to save lives in fact is going to hurt lives when you talk about depression anxiety self-esteem the barrier of communication that this throws up for the kids it's not it's not going to have a good outcome if if this takes place it's not and these kids this is all they've got you know they have a few years of high school and others you know middle school and everything but next speaker my name is adam weskowski there's a calamity brewing in our school district current community spread of the delta virus in our community
035less than 30 percent of the student body some 90 000 students are not vaccinated the current statistics on the alpha variant are a mortality rate for under 18.34 that breaks down into about one in three hundred the more cases there are the more hospitalizations result more hospitalizations and more deaths with ninety thousand students unvaccinated unmasked enclosed spaces all day which goes against all scientific evidence we have from our leaders is a recipe for failure a recipe for calamity board please do something thank you sir next speaker please i'm going to go with the science here the site says that this sars cova2 virus does not exist in human cells it is only replicated from vero monkey kidney line kidney cell line which is a group of epithelial cells extracted from african green monkeys in the
03660s these monkey cell lines readily contaminated with latent retroviruses have been injected into the population since the mid-90s through the flute virus the flu vaccine the mmr polio they originated and can be manifested that can be manifested as a disease in humans but they are what is in the vaccines that you are receiving now the vaccines the vaccinated people literally have no more immunity they are super spreaders when they're wearing masks they spread this white proteins through transmission and shedding there is no legitimate reason to wear a mask zero the mask connect they are clear and present danger to your health they are especially a danger to children's health and the script is bunk you guys are paid next speaker thank you my name is alexis moore and to start off all people need oxygen
037when you take that away for any kid no matter how old they will suffer severely how you might ask because it makes them acidic or more prone to sickness and also it shreds the mindset completely this also lowers the muni so how does that help anything so if you are not benefiting us then who are you trying to benefit i'm a 12 year old and even i know that this is wrong and that something is happening behind the scenes people are starting to wake up to your crookedness and it won't be long before we find out why you're doing what you are doing because as a school board thank you alexis thank you will the following individuals please line up mary hartley vicinda neely glenn black eddie button lindsay young hi my name is elena
038baron and i am 10 years old i'm here to protest against mass because it's bad for our health and you guys know it's bad it's hurting everybody no one should be controlled by you guys to wear a mask we should have a choice master like governor desantis even made a rule that our parents should pick it and that it's optional we should have a choice if we want to wear math so i just want to say i'm not afraid because i know that jesus is with me thank you elena next speaker please my name is paul barnes many of you up there know who i am i used to come here on a regular basis and you're still failing this county consistently all of you with that said if you guys try and pass this
039mass mandate on our children you're going to be out state funding without state funding what are you going to do you're going to go to the parents and taxpayers for that extra money like you did for the half cent sales tax which you guys are miserably spending and unaccountable for okay and it's gonna be the same thing all over again my son has asthma so when he wears a mask he's gonna have outbreaks and he's had outbreaks what you guys are doing is basically child abuse the governor has spoken you work for the governor you are in direct violation of your employer's words and what you're doing is wrong and we've had it and we're not going to back down we're going to continue on and i think parents should all not after kid out
040take your kid to school i want to see you guys make a thousand kids go home on the next day of school make us go home make us we're not going away belinda neely here we go with your backdoor tactics yet again we're two weeks into the school year now that parents made their choice on where and how to send their kids to school you're trying to change the rules and not just change the rules actually break the law the options for people to protect themselves should be doing what they feel comfortable vaccines mass staying home vitamin d zinc vitamin c and so many other options with that said an analysis of mac mandates versus none shows us no favorable difference in covid cases in fact the opposite the efficient efficiency of masks like fluoride
041flu-like viruses don't work just because you want them to there are several studies published prior to this partisan fear-mongering control power themed year of 2020 that said exactly that so what all of a sudden it changed a year later i don't think so i'll provide the sources if you like but something tells me you won't read them or you would have found them yourself you will not suppress my kids natural immunity immune systems again they leave school go to daycare where they're the kids of the same school mask less and they've been fine for over a year and a half if mass worked we wouldn't still be battling his virus let's stop the literal insanity hi my name is actually edie button and i am on three boards myself so i do understand what you
042guys are going through but i am here today as a parent because finding out last minute that now you're going to change the rules after you've given us the opportunity to opt out of something that has already been passed by the governor by the way that we should not be doing this i do consider this abuse i do consider this a diaper being put on my child's face i saw the agony that my children went through last year especially with headaches having to wear these things on their faces we already heard from dr dress an actual doctor by the way tell us these do not work you tell us to follow the science listen to the doctors they know what they're talking about i will not comply thank you my name is lindsay young we
043the people that's how our country was founded we the people are in control we the people are here to exercise our freedoms and to recognize the limited reach of the federal government we will not comply with your treason to the state of florida's governor this is just the beginning of a huge movement will the following individuals please line up chad taylor judy button terry casperson crystal varvat daryl slack hi glenn black business owner here in fort myers how many people here are against the mass so the board needs to recognize you just had a quarrel that's how you got voted in was a quorum we just gave you the vote that you must pass no mass nobody else is here representing lee county but us you're not a quorum secondly the national institute for health
044in november of last year said mass were no good go look it up all of a sudden in january there's administration change there's a group out of the netherlands that says that they have the patented right to how it's going to be written for us that's what you're looking at today and that came in effect july 1. that's a bunch of balls next i got done with cobia wasn't even a top 10 event in my life thank you next speaker please next speaker next speaker please excuse me sir you're out of order next speaker please hi i'm mary hartley i just i sent all of you an email last night to let know what my husband i really feel about all this we ordered our family from illinois about three months ago to come down
045here for florida's freedoms to choose especially parental as well as child because there are masking muslin our children up there doing sports inside outside none of it made sense and still the virus still spread masks don't work they're all they all started vaccinating the kids they're forcing vaccines up there they have numbers attached to our kids names and emails and it's ridiculous we upload our family for the freedoms that florida was allowing and i was so disheartened to see that you guys want to ask our kids and so i will take the cue from the new jersey woman and just maybe remove my kids because obviously yes the hope obviously you guys don't care and you see a big crowd here that don't want their kids masked and the vaccine works the mass work then
046there's no reason to make everybody else do because what you're doing is taking them away from our civil rights thank you next speaker hello my name is jordan button i'm a senior at oasis high school and i am a student i'm the one seeing the truth in my hallways and classrooms by being forced to wear a mask i felt the pressure not to only keep it on my face but to stay with the crowd i watched as students were locked up into their rooms forced to recreate a classroom setting with their beds and wake from their alarms just to watch their classrooms from their screens i lost a whole year of my life to headaches stress and the fear of my own school reprimanding me you may have covered my mouth for a year but
047you can never silence me and teachers are there for the safety of their students if a bus driver or teacher feels uncomfortable by the fear of their students harming them they are in the wrong career i'm speaking on the behalf of all students who are dealing with this we will not comply thank you tough act to follow my name is daryl slack i'm here to speak tonight before i start i would like to ask the board to address the gentleman in the purple shirt here who's out of quorum by making side handed comments while we're speaking moving beyond that the board has a difficult decision tonight specifically each individual board member has a decision tonight you may be influenced as to your vote by desire to keep the peace elite wisel said we must always
048take sides neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim silence encourages the tormentor and never the tormented sometimes we must interfere i get a little heavy-handed for a board meeting about masks but it's relevant here remember why you ran think of what you want think of what is right don't listen to other board members don't be unduly influenced by a desire to keep the peace a vote against what you want to call somebody else is a wasted vote and that's not why you ran to everybody else here peaceful non-compliance and then recalls that's where we are thank you and have a good night hello crystal vervet and i'm sick of coming here i'm sick of talking to you guys being ignored by you guys i was on the kova task force wasted my time out of
049my working day to give my input only to be ignored i don't understand why you guys want to make medical decisions and medical mandates on us you guys are a school board why don't you work about lgbtq issues and keeping those out of our district look who's here look who your constituents are we have been coming here over and over and over asking you to listen to us i don't go to you guys and say i don't want you to wear a mask all we're asking for is choice you had what ten percent sign the opt out form how many covet cases do we have in the school district versus how many kids are kept home healthy kids kept home and then you guys are worried about you know people not showing up and in
050all these issues we're just asking for a choice just listen to us i was supposed to well the following individuals please line up richard romeo jovi coulson chris holmes lava williamson mark gillespie chad taylor we the people elect a school board to represent our choices none of us elected you to co-parent my child's health decisions are my choice that includes a mask forced vaccinations or any other medical intervention interventions you decide to dream up period part of the problem here is perspective if all you see is the negative you're only going to see negative golisano doctors can only tell you what they see their whole job is to treat the worst of the worst with that perspective what do you expect them to say what we're really seeing is a lack of leadership true leaders
051aren't afraid to take a tough stand true leaders ask tough questions during tough situations for example how about asking our health professionals about the damage being done to children because of the masks do mass cause damage to developing lungs can masks make a child sick how many pediatric baker acts has golisano had versus thank you next speaker please next speaker please sir you're out of order please thank you terry casper ma'am please clearly the medical cartel has convinced you all hook line and sinker that your masks are working because you all the majority of you are all wearing them again like chad said how many pediatric deaths do you actually know the board in the state of florida as of a couple days ago there were eight and those were all to medically compromised children
052so what are you doing you're creating a frenzy for our children i mean kids get sick and sadly children do die but eight pediatric pediatric deaths come on really you need to rethink your thought tonight and again going against the governor you've got the whole country trying to crucify our governor thank god we live here with the governor thank god thank you and i just think you all know home and apology sir go go ahead i just want to make sure that you're her can you make sure that can you hear me yes sir go ahead please my name is joey colston i'm a dual board certified physician here i would encourage the board to look at the evidence and not be swayed by the media and what they see on tv as the previous
053lady mentioned the pediatric incidence of serious complications is extremely small okay kids are going to get sick they're going to get the flu they're going to have a fever for a couple days they're not going to feel well they should stay home and as parents will keep our kids home when they're sick but other than that there's a lot more to the school than sticking a mask on them saying you're protecting their education i was here last year and warned about the consequences of masking up kids it ruins their social impact it ruins them a lot of the cues of learning and other factors of their education that you're not thinking of don't be swayed by the media we're looking here for the betterment of our kids all over their total growth and development and
054putting a mask on there's no way to provide that the school board did the right thing by allowing those parents who want to put a mask on their kids wear them for those who don't want to wear them you don't have to wear them next speaker please rick romeo if you want to wear a mask or have your child wear a mask wear a mask because they work right and if you wear it you're protected right we're told to follow the science so let's follow the science according to the cdc 49 000 children died last year of which only 331 died of covet nationwide children account for less than one hundredth of one percent of the coveted deaths yet they make up more than twenty percent of the population this number is smaller than the
055increase in childhood suicides last year and less than half the number that died of pneumonia which is one of the risks associated with mask wearing in addition to other related issues issues related to rebreathing viruses and bacteria and decreased oxygen levels do masks work well according to the science for years and decades but prior to covid no in fact most medical mask boxes include a warning that they do not protect against covid if a mask mandate is implemented i have a law firm on retainer to file suit against the school district next speaker please medium chair madam chair please don't clap in adam chair madam chair maybe we have a five minute recess please it's fine bye thank you five minutes get through all 80 some of you so that way everyone has the opportunity
056to speak so please as we move forward let's stay respectful to one another and allow each speaker to have their turn mr pre-bruno will you please go ahead and begin this again next speaker please my name's lara so last flu season alone more kids died just during flu season than have died since covet emerged statistically your children are more likely to die from choking on their lunch at school than from coven but you guys aren't going to stop serving breakfast at lunch in case somebody chokes or in case they accidentally bring food home and somebody chokes on it there this isn't about our kids and the parents that are griping their kids might bring it home they can get vaccinated which 74 i think of the people that were hospitalized with covid in massachusetts were
057fully vaccinated you guys are overstepping your reach ms jordan told the news i think yesterday that this isn't about parental choice it's about what's best for everybody my son has adhd he can't wear a mask all day he can't sit in a chair at home and do virtual school for seven hours without getting up you don't care about what's best for everybody it's not a one-size-fits-all solution and you guys need to do a better job well the following individuals please line up chris berry rachel moffatt ted romke luis apicella and addison moffatt and paige moffett good evening my name is chris holmes i'm a simple truck driver local i'm home every night with my child and unfortunately about a year ago when my daughter was about to embark on her high school career kobe came
058out she was kept up from school and had forced to wear a mask i'm sorry sir may i please i'm sorry to interrupt you but ma'am you cannot hold signs up thank you and sir can we please start this gentleman over again i apologize sir and like i said she's about to embark on her career as a high school student and kobe came out and she was kept home and forced to do virtual schooling then when she did get go back to school she wearing a mask just this kid went from being happy and healthy and fun loving and wanting to do everything and hang out with her friends to being an introvert and going back to school this year made her feel really good because there's no masks and we agree with that my
059wife myself and you know i might as well spoke to some of these other people here i'm just a regular guy and all i can tell you is that i love my kid and i just want to have a normal happy healthy high school career and i don't think you or anybody else should choose that for her let her make that decision let us make that decision as her parents and that's about all i gotta say i mean i just i feel bad for her and i feel bad for all the other kids that haven't put up with this thank you please no clapping thank you sir my name is mark gillespie i just wanted to remind the board that i heard yesterday somebody said they would be willing to risk losing state funding to
060pass this mass mandate i also remember when the code of conduct was up the concern was losing funding because the federal funding if you didn't include certain rights for the lgbt community so you don't make the right moral decision because of funding and you decide to help get children sick so that you don't all right you would opt to use lose funding and sicken our children so by your actions it appears as if you really don't have the best interest of our kids at stake i would like to yield the last 20 seconds of my time to give everybody a round of applause these young kids that spoke tonight very brave happy all right please thank you so please listen guys we have a lot of speakers this evening we really have to conduct business
061tonight if we cannot continue to do this so please we've asked multiple times for everybody to be respectful and to allow these speakers to speak those who have already spoken had their opportunity the ones behind still have an opportunity i know and i'm speaking as well so please thank you my name is lou apocella i've had six kids in lee county schools currently still have four my wife and i will parent them we sat by and listened to your rules and we allowed our seven-year-old to come home with headaches because you all thought we needed to have masks on our children i'm not going to stand by anymore i'm going to join with everybody we're going to be here if i have to be here at every board meeting to combat this ludicrous behavior then
062i will i will spend my time standing in the streets and protesting this nonsense our kids do not need masks what our kids need is to be at school learn and be social this is getting to be ridiculous you pull this mass mandate thing on us the night before the first day of school and then you give us an opt-out i don't want to opt out my wife does not want to opt out we'll opt out by not wearing the mask stop the insanity and let our kids be kids hello ted ramke school bus driver lee county i've learned a lot tonight about personal choice and how strong everybody feels but i have to stay in line with our bishop he said his state he that the requirement would be returned to optional in counties
063where the positivity rate fell lower we've been we're in a red light emergency right now and there are certain situations where personal freedom should apply when we're not in a red line emergency but anyway it looks like how things are going to go so i appreciate both sides of the equation i'm just real scared about the sickness that's going to be spread though to parents and kids like my name is rachel moffat and i'm going to remove my mask i feel like it's my choice to mask and it's not other parents have to make that choice like they get to do it i my kids get to do it i have 11 kiddos you are a board of education i choose to mask but i do not say that every parent needs to choose to
064do that for their kids i'm here to speak for special needs kids i have some kiddos at home that can not be educated properly when they have masks on last year their ieps could not be done because of the at-home learning styles i also want to hit on that my son has speech apraxia how can you understand anything that he has to say it's increasing a social gap also the deaf and hard of hearing population can not have equal access to language that is a personal liberty you are withholding from my children and other children the deaf and hard of hearing have not received equal access to language language thank you next speaker please hi i'm chris berry i'm received my time to my congressman hey i'm sorry i'm sorry excuse me here i go
065again i'm taking time from you all mr pre-bruno can you please address this if we don't calm down and we don't stop with the clapping and the booing and well not the not the booing but definitely the clapping and turning this into a rally we're going to have to take another recess and we will continue to take recesses until you guys calm down and at some point this is going to end because our board policy has a time limit for meetings so we really really want to hear everything that you have to say the board wants to hear what you have to say then they're going to go ahead and have their discussions please cooperate with us so that we can move this along thank you ladies how are you doing i will tell you
066that the only thing that's going to calm down this room is actually do the right thing and follow governor desantis order the governor has been very clear about what the order is for the state of florida that there are not to be mass mandates as somebody who served in florida's legislature you know just like i know that when the governor issues an order it is the responsibility of every elected official in the state of florida to follow the order of the governor whether you like it or not that's your refund that's what you that's your order to do because his order supersedes yours now on to actual data says hhs has been taking records on hospitalization of minors people under the age of 18. the hospitalization rate is 0.3 persons per 100 000 individuals in
067the country according to cdc data follow the science and follow the order see you later again please yes we cannot conduct this you know turn the lights on or something like that please take your seats just a rabble of people miss fisher madam chair i moved to adjourn this meeting based on the fact that we are unable to continue our business i'm sorry please miss fisher yes i moved to adjourn this meeting for this evening yes please ask the question clarification through the chair so we can't we cannot we cannot conduct them we cannot conduct business we can't hear eight officers officers that lady needs to be removed court of order we might as well just stop i mean this is ridiculous can i get any business done this is ridiculous please miss patrick do
068your job point of order yeah board members out everybody go back and we continue to feed it thank you there is a emotion on the floor miss fisher please reinstate your motion i move to adjourn this meeting due to the fact that it is impossible to conduct business under these circumstances can we vote no discussion there's no discussion it's a motion to adjourn so you go straight to the vote we have a vote on who would like to discontinue this meeting do what disc continue who would like to adjourn the meeting okay motion does not pass it's two two to five so i am asking you please to allow the people who are coming to speak we have 40 i'm sorry 20 40 more people just two here so please allow each of them their
069minute to speak i really do implore you to do that so miss miss miss morgan yep i move that we amend the agenda and place public comment at the end so that we may proceed with the business of the board and then hear the public comment after i second it so there's been a motion to amend the agenda to move public comment to the end and it's been seconded you can now move to discussion okay discussion miss kittens yes i kind of sort of agree because i think that everyone does not know what it is that we're really going to say or what we think or how we're going to vote and there are so many people that have already decided how we're going to vote and i think that is incorrect and in order
070to to do that i will go with moving it to the end as long as we don't vote prior to the rest of public continent i'm not sure how we conduct the business of the board without voting mr free bruno you got it we have discussion on the next item if we put this on pause may we have discussion on the next item which may eliminate another 40 people speaking and maybe have helped the other 40 that are already here and those who are watching so there's emotion on the floor however if miss morgan wants to substitute her emotion and just move forward with the section b on the agenda which is the good cause resolution and have that vote with the okay so miss morgan go ahead and substitute your motion yes i meant
071the motion to put the b-1 at the end of the agenda after we proceed with the other business of the board okay do i have a second on that i'll second that all right and all in favor of that hi i are okay mr patricka okay motion carries okay the we're basically down to that point actually in our agenda so the action item i don't even know where we're at so excuse me on this so we are moving the item addressing the mask to the end so that way we can make sure that we get everything else done speak on that and then hear what everybody else has to say so the next is the approval of the action items under the agenda consent the documentation for the action items listed under consent is made
072available to the board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all of the materials and we have the 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 board members are there any agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under unfinished business table items portion of the agenda ms giaminelli i have none thank you ms patrick yes unfortunately i came to my attention late this afternoon what is the item please madam attorney my computer is not open j2 thank you miss fisher i have no pools this evening thank you miss kittens i have none thank you miss vaughn well i've also
073wanted to pull j2 miss morgan yes i wanted to pull j2 as well i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda cassette items with the exception of pulled item j2 i'll prove that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of j2 thank you mr second thank you miss kittens so it was motioned by mrs fisher second by ms gittins and please record your vote my computer is off so i may have to do it i'm affirmative miss thomas can you help me out that thank you very much motion carries 7-0 before we move on to that dr savage do you have anybody that you want to introduce yes madam chair i would like to recognize meredith berry who has been promoted from the lee's county virtual school franchise from school counselor
074to assistant principal i believe she's still in attendance thank you thank you thank you and was that anyone else okay thank you and she's still accepted okay so moving on to j2 okay we have jade we have one item pulled dr savage will you please read your recommendation for pulled item j2 yes madam chair j2 this is a good cause approval of personal recommendations recommended action approval of the general personnel recommendations as presented thank you is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation move we accept dr savage's emotion as stated thank you do i have a second i'll second it fisher okay the item has been moved by miss kittens and seconded by miss fisher is their discussion and i will start off with ms patricka you pulled it first so i'm gonna have
075you start thank you i became aware late today of additional monetary financial impacts of this that i wasn't aware of until probably i mean since we've been sitting here so i'm not comfortable approving this at this time miss juvenelli i'm not aware of that so what what is that impact i'm not comfortable discussing this in a public setting because it's confidential we have been and i'm not aware so we have been okay advised by attorney general bruno that this is confidential so i can't okay talk about it here so miss kittens okay i'm i'm wording this attorney dupree bruno has there been a change since we were individually notified earlier this week there is not a change a question was asked in terms of a value of a particular item and we just learned of
076what that value was does it okay and so it changes what we were told earlier not necessarily change it but now we know what that value is but it does not change the total that we were told earlier this week it's one thing to know what something's valued but if it doesn't change the whole total then i don't understand what the issue is it's it's with regards to one particular item that deals with the no you don't have to i know but what i'm saying is if we had a figure has that total figure changed yes when you look at that value yes okay is there any weird way to recess or talk to us individually or something i really do not want to have this just going on and on so i can if
077the chair let me if you may if i may miss miss morgan i know you have pulled this too may i hear what your comments were as well well my comment was going to be that it is unfortunate that we have to make this payment because i think it's a self-inflicted wound the only reason i would have supported it was because of the cost of not supporting it would have been substantial would potentially substantial okay i can have an individual one-on-one briefing with each board member just to explain what this is and then this evening it would take 30 seconds then i would do i show your hands is that permissible for everyone can you hear me yeah i pulled it as well the reason i pulled it is because overall i was uncomfortable with
078with this recommendation and now i'm even more uncomfortable because i was unaware that there was a change since i reviewed this a little over 24 hours ago okay so if i may then ask would you all be in agreement of taking and i apologize to you all out there taking a few more minutes so that everybody can be briefed on this ladies show of hands please that you're okay with with doing that miss javanelli all right well and i guess if you all want to one at a time go back there and meet with mr preet bruno oh take your seat please take your seats thank you okay dr savage if you could please re-read your recommendation for the pool for j-2 yes madam chair a j-2 a good cause approval for of personnel recommendations
079as presented so everyone has heard dr savage's recommendation it was moved by miss getting seconded by mrs fisher is there any more discussion to be had if miss kittens yeah i'm just a little confused with all the excitement where are we attorney dupree bruno with this so you've re-read the motion as is on the agenda correct yeah there was a motion and i believe it was properly seconded you were in the middle of discussion there weren't discussions if discussion is completed then you vote i'm not sure if this is a proper time to do it but in light of new information i suggest that we pull it and do i can i do that in the middle of his motion well it's been pulled it's been pulled so okay then i make a motion we
080table it there a second seeing there is no second we will then call for the vote and this will be a hand vote correct miss thomas thank you so all in favor of dr savage's recommendations please raise your hand four all opposed mr benelli okay i feel it's best that i abstain under the circumstances okay so and you know what i i can't i can't do this i just can't i'll abstain as well all right i can't oh there's there's a reason why miss giovanelli is abstaining because the statute does require you to vote miss giovanelli is abstaining because there's potential conflict that's why miss juvenelli is sustaining my concern is the new information i do understand i do understand the vote but we just have the vote so the board has already voted right
081so it is four to two with one abstaining and the motion carries thank you the next on the agenda is public hearings dr savage please present your recommendation for this evening's public hearing item yes madam chair p1 approval to adopt the 2021-2022 student progression plan in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt the best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 16 2021. thank you we will now resist the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider approval to adopt the 2021-2020 student progression plan 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
082be august 16 2021 at this time the public will be invited to speak on this one item only this one item the time allowed for comments is three minutes is there anyone on the right side my right that would like to address the board regarding this issue the issue is the approval to adopt the student progression plan okay we cannot have a conversation back and forth i apologize for that so the agenda the agenda is you know bruno you cannot speak out of order we have a time for public comment the board does not do interchange with the public in the middle of its meeting unless it's during public comment time the agenda for the school board is published and if you want to read the student progression plan the 2021 student progression plan that's
083where you will find it so if anybody would like to speak on the 2020 one 2022 student progression plan please go to the microphone if there's anybody on the left hand side as well or in the back does not appear that there's anyone for that particular topic this gentleman's going up to speak on them i think we need to know what we need to ask basically we need to know what we're talking about mr preeber will you please address this again the student progression plan is on the agenda where's the agenda it wasn't given to me as i walk in here no the school board publishes it its agenda and it's on the website and anyone can have access to that agenda days before who's got it you got this okay please can we please
084say you're for the record i'm christine barron thank you so what i'm gathering this is admissions enrollment and transfers okay for kindergarten it goes down to verifying residencies divorced separated parents admission of part-time students enrolled in a home education program i can't get into specifics because it is over 87 pages if you're for it i'm against it thank you can we go ahead and does not appear there's any other comment dr savage will you please reinstate restate your recommendation for this evening's public hearing item madam chair we need to close the public hearing and then move forward i'm sorry there's someone else coming to speak ma'am are you speaking on this subject thank you please say your name my name is leslie i have a high schooler and i'm looking at this progressive plan and
085it looks like it includes what the budget should be for the schools and how it should be spent and all of that right that would be what the progression plan includes right no no no well why not does it include the kids not having a class just to teach them how to take an sat does it include the kids not having a class where the teacher on opening opening night when you walk into the room oh as soon as your kid passes the s.a.t he no longer has to take this class he'll go to whatever class he wants to take why not just give him a remedial english class to help him don't give him a class that takes only testing and only does that i understand most of the school district is not title
086one some of the schools are the title one schools they hug that title one rule they know they have no budget they don't care they don't the school board doesn't give them extra funding it they give the funding to the schools that have the bigger draw to this to the area norfolk myers high school in island coast high school north athletes they all have team uniforms away and home island coast schools none of them have the same uniform away and home they have to buy their own for fundraising when they start for even close to wear around school to show school pride so ma'am let me let me just and just also for the audience what the student progression plan discusses does not discuss any of those things it's just your man the student progression
087plan is about the elementary requirements the middle school requirements in terms of the grading system and the promotion that's what the student progression plan is about so public is the hearing closed now no miss denise is going to miss nystrom denise nystrom it is hard to know where to find everything there is a link it's called board docs if you actually google board docs comma lee county school district it'll pop right up there is nothing wrong with the student progression plan it simply outlines literally every single piece of information that they're teaching and a synopsis that goes along with it i'm only concerned with third graders because my son was just a third grader and he has adhd and what i read here is that for him to pass the third grade he has to
088demonstrate satisfactory performance on locally selected state approved standardized assessments and i don't know if any of you know kids with adhd have a very hard time taking tests i think that is very restrictive and it needs to be reconsidered considering the only reason that my son passed third grade last year is because of covet restrictions ma'am could you please state your name karina wyatt thank you tara jenner i've spoken on the home ed portion of this before and unfortunately my printer died on me earlier today and i've been in this board meeting for all day long so i haven't had a chance to download it and i'm basically legally blind when it comes to my cell phone so as long as the changes were made to the home edge section that and i think they
089were but that clearly state that if you want to have a diploma that you can get that as a home ed person without going through the district that it needs to specifically state that if you want a school board or excuse me a lee county school district diploma that they need to join in but i also want to make sure that it's very clear in that particular section of the student progression plan that there is clear guidance given to any homeschool family that may choose that option that if they move from home ed within the last two years of their child's academic studies that they may lose their florida virtual i mean excuse me their bright future scholarship because you have to have two years within your academic arena whether that's home ed whether that's
090private school or whether that's public school if that change has been made then i commend you for doing that and i thank you very much for doing so if it has not then i request that change be made before it's approved thank you christine diva jillian i just i got one question for you guys about this my daughter is in the age cambridge program what accommodations have been made for students that tested who maybe didn't test as well as they typically would have due to the ridiculous mass mandates that were in place last year are there any other comments okay so you know other no other people wanted to speak we will now close this public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of august 17 2021 dr savage please reinstate your recommendation for
091this evening's public hearing item yes madam chair p1 approval to adopt the 2021-2022 student progression plan thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approved the adopted 2021-2022 student progression plan and compliance with changes in related and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 16 2021 board members is there a motion to approve i'll move that we approve the student progression plan for 21 22. thank you mr schneiderlin i second that and thank you miss giovannelli so it was moved by mrs fisher seconded by ms giavanelli and please record your vote okay seven zero motion passes okay so now we're to the point where mr free bruno we're gonna bring that back up okay so next
092we because of the fact that we had moved the one item we are going to go ahead and bring it forward now we're gonna have that discussion and then we will open it back up for public comments so it's we are let's see which number is it the resolution it's to find good cause i'm sorry i'm trying to read all where i'm at now i think it's b1 sorry it looks like it's b1 i'm trying to find it's b1 on the agenda thank you okay okay so bring it up for a good cause it is the approval of a resolution of the school board of lee county florida declaring that all students shall be required to wear masks do i have a motion on this are we going to read it out loud yes so
093before the before this is read out loud i just want the public to understand they're going to read the resolution after the resolution is read most likely emotion will be made to adopt the resolution then there will be a second however that does not mean that the resolution is adopted that just opens the door for the board to have discussion okay so don't get upset and riled up let us go through our process okay thank you okay just bear with me while i read this the resolution the school board of lee county florida a resolution of the school board of lee county florida declare on a state of local emergency it's the one that is in the board that's okay again i have the wrong information so let me just can we have it up
094on the screen do we are we able to put this up on this screen miss shafer and i'm going to go ahead and start reading it the school board of lee county florida a resolution of the school board of lee county florida declaring that all students shall be required to wear a mask whereas coping 19 is a serious respiratory illness that causes symptoms similar to influenza including coughing fever and shortness of breath and where a significant outbreak of kovic 19 has spread throughout numerous countries including the united states of america and whereas the delta variant of cova 19 is easily spread amongst the population and has a more serious effect on children than past variants of the viruses and whereas pursuant to the cdc individuals who are two and older should wear a mask to
095provide the maximum protection against the virus those who are fully vaccinated should wear a mask indoors when they are in the area of substantial or high transmission and whereas many people with clovik 19 do not show any symptoms but they still spread germs through coughing season or even talking and whereas pursua 2 the florida department of health the positivity coping 19 rate for lee county is 24.6 for the week beginning august 6 2021 which means lee county is in the substantial or high transmission rate and whereas pursuant to florida department of health the positive rate for children under 12 is 22.1 percent across the state of florida for the week beginning august 6 2021 in addition children between 13 and 19 have a positive rate of 24 n whereas of august 17 2021 there are
096571 copic patients isolated in lee memorial hospital which include pediatric patients and whereas there have been reported coping 19 deaths amongst lee county schools staff and whereas there is this concern that educational activities and business operations may be affected by rapid spread of delta variant in the school district to include shutting down of classrooms and normal bus operations and whereas pursuant art fought nine of the state constitution article nine of the state constitution section four b and the florida statute one zero zero one point three two two district school boards shall upright control and supervise all free public schools in their respective districts and may exercise any power exempt expect as expressly prohibited by the state constitution or general law and whereas pursuant to florida statute 1001.428 student health safety and other matters relating to
097welfare of students and whereas pursuant florida statue section 1.431 the school board may adopt programs and policies to ensure the safety and welfare of individuals and the student body and school personnel and whereas the school board of lee county policy 1.181 states that when the district is confronted with a health emergency including endemic and infectious disease situations which might require or warrant the wearing of protective gear the district shall follow the guidelines of the cdc doh and or other local health officials and be it resolved that the school board of lee county florida acknowledged that kovic 19 poses a serious threat to the lives of students and employees of the school district be it further resolved that the school board of lee county florida here by exercise is authority and mandates that all students wear
098masks during hours of school during school hours and school activities approved by the school board of lee county florida 17th day of august 2021 and i did not sign this it was a resolution that was requested and i felt that this was brought for a conversation so that's why i just read this so at this time the resolution has been read is there a motion on the floor miss vaughn i moved to accept this resolution is there a second to the second second for discussion and then seconded by miss fisher for discussion and who would like to begin or who would like to have can we draw straws no seriously it's fun i'll begin i want to go on record as absolutely supporting mass mandate in our school further i would like to see our
099staff members get vaccinated excuse me i have the floor please thank you i've listened to what everyone has said here this evening and i could very easily debate everything that was said however i've learned a long time ago that it is impossible it is impossible to change minds of people who have such such a strong conviction that they are right all right folks please please sorry remember what we said they're going to have their discussion so allow them to have the discussion and then you'll see you will be back able to speak again miss i have a very strong conviction that i am right and i have spent my entire adult lifetime looking out for children and i'm not going to debate the other things but after 38 years in the classroom as a guardian
100ad litem child advocate as a volunteer tutor mentor to students i am personally offended when i hear some of you say that this is child abuse i'm going to say to you perhaps maybe you haven't seen what real child abuse is maybe you haven't sat in the court system or maybe you haven't sat with a student to escape physical abuse sexual abuse when you compare what we do as a school district i take personal offense having spent my lifetime with this and i believe that others who have spent the same kind of conviction also take offense to the fact that you see asking a child to wear a mask is child abuse i'm going to also add that it's ironic that we are in this situation today because if the populace of especially of florida
101which is right now if you look at the maps of the united states it's in the darkest red possible we are a hotbed of this disease if you look at that you will see that there has been the in florida and in lee county which last time i checked was below the rate of vaccination from the whole state you will see that this has not been taken seriously you will you might think oh i've read dozens and dozens of letters about it's a very small number of children that die well i'll tell you what if there's one child that dies because we didn't protect them then i feel that it's on us because i feel that protective for our children and the irony is had we as a populous all of us i did my
102part please you can bet i did absolutely because i please say that i did otherwise we wouldn't be in this situation we had turned a corner and i was extremely happy to not be wearing a mask and to maybe start to live my life again but we are in this situation because i feel that there has been a general lack of realization of the seriousness of this and i pray to god that none of you people with children experience a regret a regret that i have seen in news reports of people who have lost loved ones and have said after the fact i wish i had i wish i had done it and finally let our children breathe i hope that you never have to have a child or a loved one breathing through a
103tube folks please that is why i support this i didn't say what i was how my vote was going to go please come on please please please allow the discussion let them do their job this is part of the work that they have to do just listen you'll you'll hear what my vote is when i vote and although i have very strong conviction on this matter and quite frankly i think that many of you are short-sighted that's fine i also do not want to inflict my penchant for some civil disobedience against this governor and this education commissioner who this afternoon was extremely rude about our president of the united states guys please let her finish this part we have to finish and i have i have i have figured it out sit down sir it's
104fine it's fun i got miss thank you thank you hey you guys hold on a second time out you were doing very very well we'll get through this okay we will get through this but allow the board members to have their comments and their statements and their discussion this is part of their job and they can't do it if you're interrupting they just can't they can't do their job so please and i appreciate you sir for trying to calm the crowd down but let's let's allow them to finish if i if i decide i have a right to say point of order sir you're in the audience go ahead met him if i decide to vote against this resolution it is not because of some of the fallacies that i've heard it is not because
105a rabble of people just like those who attacked the capital it is not okay this one please and this one it's fine can we just please please it's fine please just let her finish and miss spawn can we find please i'm almost fine excuse me i'm not sure yes it's fine i want to make it clear that if i decide to vote against this resolution it's only because my penchant for some civil disobedience on this i do not want to inflict anything on our school board after listening to this afternoon's vitriol coming out of the mouths of some of the people in that board meeting i'm done thank you miss vaughn excu please thank you mr fisher you had your hand that mr president and just a reminder that the board is nonpartisan okay so
106these these are just comments and statements the board is nonpartisan but can we please can we please finish this thank you please thank you thank you very much appreciate it i'm trying my soft boys miss fisher thank you so i appreciate that while i sat and listened to you without making any comments or signs you'll respect me as well i like like miss vaughn i have had my whole entire career in education and i also worked with guardian ad litem in this in the court system and i am a certified family mediator and i have respect for the opinions of everyone being different i reviewed the resolution i reviewed our former rule that came out right before school offering people the option of making a choice for their kids i understand that we all may
107have different opinions i also have spent my entire life since 1960 working for kids working with kids and i'm public servant and i am elected to serve all of you i will say that we have had numerous contacts by email text and phone with people giving their opinions some people are begging us for a masked mandate other people do not want it we have to represent everybody so i am of the mindset that we should keep the things the way they are leaving the option for parents to make the decision and i want you to know i don't personally agree with that but i think that it is the way we have to go in order to have everyone's needs met as best we can thank you mr fisher miss kittens okay you guys are
108doing good hang in there we can we can do this thank you okay all right last year this time when we first got started in this covid situation the superintendent had a task force to talk about how we would do it and how we'd open schools or when we'd open schools and if you were around then and you watched any of the meetings i was constantly asking when is the board going to weigh in and i was constantly told it's the superintendent's job and it's his duty to do that what i don't understand from some of my colleagues as to what's different from last year and this year if it was the superintendent's job back then it's the superintendent's job this year as far as i'm concerned we have a superintendent not an intern but
109a superintendent and prior to school opening the superintendent along with staff and the union and other people discussed what do we do to open school and their decision was told to all of you yes some of you are upset it was at the last minute but things happen but you were told before school started so his option was to strongly request masks especially of staff and to give the opt-out there is never ever going to be something that makes you guys all happy and there's never going to be something that makes the people that are not here happy a gentleman earlier asked how many people are for you know this or against that i was keeping track and i know there's more people to speak but i kind of felt like we should hear something
110from another perspective i'm not saying that it's i'm not saying it's mine i'm just saying that if this is a public thing we should hear all sides of the story so excuse me so i would like to read a comment of the myriad of comments that we received today there were hundreds and while i was listening to the meeting this afternoon from doe i was going through the emails and doing ticks and crosses to see how many were for how many were against just because i was interested i still say that if we are going to be a democracy we need to hear from all sides so i'm just going to read this please don't stop me i'm just going to read this one comment we have no idea why as many people against are
111not here quote on a personal level my 10 year old daughter came home today nervous and upset because the child in her class became sick and went home early while they did not sit next to each other the airborne nature of the delta variant makes it quite likely that many in her class may now be infected should this child have covet unfortunately we will likely just have to hold our breath for a few days unless contacted by the school especially since we have no idea how many cases the school has had especially with the opt out for mask wearing it would be inevitable that exposures and quarantines will continue and with no system in place for reporting how many cases are occurring in each school families are totally flying blind when assessing the risk of
112sending their child each day so it may not be what you believe but there are people out there that do believe this and there are people out there that are just as fearful for their children and their situations so that's why i wanted to mention that i do not believe that we should have even had you all here tonight you know why because i don't think this should have been brought up i believe that we are in a crisis but the bottom line is if we had a seven to one vote for this tonight there is absolutely no way to enforce it how many of you have already said you're gonna send your child anyway how many please how many of you are said you're just going to ignore it so my question to my
113colleagues is who's going to police it whether it's right or wrong i'm not saying it's right or wrong but who's going to police it we have teachers right now that are not wearing masks and i get calls about that as well and so we've got you know your rights and her rights and his rights and all these rights what's the bottom line people that we have 90 000 plus students that need to be educated so you the people that write the other messages all of us somehow we need to get that common denominator of educating children it's not going to be to everybody's liking never will be and i just want to say this for the record please don't threaten me that you're not going to vote for me it don't i have sat here
114for four years almost four years third year and that's what democracy is all about when you go into the voting booth and you think about my faith and what i have done if i have not done what you don't want then don't vote for me but if you have seen what i have done and you believe in what i have done then you vote me that's democracy and when you go in the voting booth i don't know what you put and neither do they but i'm just asking you to think about evaluate whether you believe this is a hoax or not think about when you take your child to school if you're sniffling if you have some symptoms if your child does whether you believe it's the flu or you believe it's the whatever keep
115them home please that's all we're asking i don't believe that we should overturn what the superintendent has said and i know that we cannot enforce something that so many people have said they're not going to enforce anyway and the fight that would ensue is taking away time from educating our children i guess that's all i have to say thank you thank you do i have any other comments first of all i'd like to thank everybody for being here i respect your comments and opinions and i hope that you'll have the opportunity to finish them after we take our vote i personally don't believe that i would the law i believe in inviting by the law and the law is we're not allowed to mandate mass so i would not support that in any way shape
116or form i believe that the state trumps local government and in this situation we don't have the true power in that and i believe that parents have rights and you need to exercise your rights be a parent and you pick make the choices for your child you know your child best and i would encourage that from opting in or out of mass and all the way to their their teachers and their their homework every day that they everything that they do i don't i live i live by fear not by faith i mean i feel like faith not by fear and that's and that's what i truly believe you know stay healthy if your child's sick if you're sick please stay home that's really the only way you're gonna fix this masks don't work they
117really don't and you know take vitamins take care of yourself and don't come to board meetings stay here all night long because you're not gonna be well when you do that so i mean i just believe that we have to do what's right for everyone and options is the right parents are the rights for the has the rights of that for their child and i will always stand by that parents if you i have my grandchildren wearing masks wear them when you think they're necessary do they work we know that they don't we know that the vaccination is not even working so what works i think staying home and so i am going to preach that every time i'm at a meeting please stay home if and that includes adults if you don't feel well
118stay home that's the only thing that's going to do it you don't know if you have the virus or not it's it can be a cold but just respect others by that i mean and it's all about respect and so i had hoped that everyone could control themselves and be quiet so we could get through our meeting so because it's important to hear your side and your voice everyone i read all my emails i apologize for those that i have not responded to have been responded to by the board or by any one of us because we've been inundated with emails but my choice is always to side on the law and i don't want to be sued and that's what it exposes us to do if we would go against the governor and the
119state and the laws that govern our state and that's really all i have i have a lot of questions if this were to be in place and i'm going to say them really quickly so that others have the opportunity to speak but i mean we have you know high schoolers art can be vaccinated so do i mean do they have to wear a mask i mean there's so many rules to that if you're going to require everyone to wear a mask how do you know who has it and who doesn't have the vaccine i mean and is it relevant is who's going to police it you can't really get in trouble for not wearing a mask because the governor's already taken that away from everyone so people if you want mass wear them that's what
120i say if you don't don't wear them in and then govern yourself accordingly if you feel like you shouldn't be in the public then that's what i recommend but it's your choice not my recommendation truly so i just there's like so many questions regarding you know i've had teachers contact me if i wear a mask i'm going yards tomorrow i'm quitting so i mean we have to respect everyone and i have i know people are concerned and i get that just do your best to stay well god bless thank you mr patricka so i'm gonna going to direct my comments to the leadership team because i believe we're the ones who have to make this decision and i have some suggestions or questions for dr savage as well so i'll start with the doe meeting
121today i think most of us had an opportunity to hear most of it the irony in that meeting today was there was a focus at one point by one of the speakers on the disparate impact on minorities and students from circumstances of economic disadvantage the disparate impact on them of of wearing masks and in reality the order that came from the doh has a measurable disparate impact on minorities and students of economic disadvantage because they are far less likely to be vaccinated than their non-minority more wealthy peers so dr savage i'd like to look at a way to potentially educate the community the unvaccinated community surrounding the importance of vaccination to avoid quarantine because if you are vaccinated as you're aware a student that's fully vaccinated if their contact trace doesn't have to quarantine so
122not only will it lead to more students in the classroom for long periods of time but we're less likely to see achievement gaps between minority non-minority students economically disadvantaged and wealthier students i'm sorry could could you please ask miss patricka to repeat that i didn't quite understand this was she is speaking on i guess miss patrick no for an increase in education surrounding vaccination and the fact that if you're vaccinated you don't have to quarantine if you're contact traced that's that's what i'm asking the other thing that i've learned through this process over the past 24 hours is that i think there are three categories of people i will put myself in the first category and that is i've got four kids in our schools and i think i had this conversation with dr savage
123i've got four kids in our schools when i received the text message that you all received that mass were required with an opt-out i sat down with my kids at dinner and i said the district is requiring masks this semester and they said okay and i was surprised i thought there would be more pushback and there was pushback from one who's very angry that he got vaccinated and he wore masks when he was supposed to and now he feels like he's not as free as he could be had more people in the community done what he felt was his responsibility at the time that being said you know we talked about the fact that yes they're vaccinated yes they will be wearing masks and the reason for the mask is to keep someone else safe
124the reason for the mask is to keep someone else safe as a family we determined it was our moral responsibility to do everything we could do to keep the people around us safe and so that's the decision that we've made i did unfortunately find out today that one of them is not doing as i've asked him to do in school and i will be addressing that when i get home tonight assuming he's still awake the other category of people was very well represented at tonight's meeting very much against masks and then the final group of people emerged really in the past week or so which is parents who are desperate desperate desperate and afraid because their children are in schools with others who are not masked and they're desperate and they're afraid because they and
125their children are being exposed to an illness that they legitimately have every right to be afraid of so the question that i asked yesterday i'll ask again what what are we legally capable of doing can we offer these parents an online option i understand that there are labor issues associated with that i understand there are potential funding issues associated with that but can we please do everything we can for these families to give them a sense of safety for their kids i mean last year parents who are afraid to send their kids back to school have the option of lee homeconnect or they have the option of lee virtual school i don't think lee virtual school is a legitimate virtual option a legitimate quality virtual option for the majority of our students again i've got
126four one of them for whom it would work the other three would quickly be high school dropouts because they just they're they're not self-motivated they're not self-starters they can't do it they need that live instruction so if i could ask superintendent through the chair how how long would it be before you could get answers to the board as to what our options are for these parents madam chair if i may please so i you know i really appreciate the question i also appreciate the framing of the three kind of different groups in your mind and i certainly have also received a significant amount of emails and concern for folks who truly are terrified and they don't necess they want their children to have in-person learning they don't really want to do the virtual option through
127lee virtual or florida virtual as they can they want something and so i think i appreciate you kind of giving voice that there certainly are those folks out there and well you know last year we had the latitude to do the home connect the way it was to offer that's that same connection to each individual school site that could transition throughout our varying stages you know that does not appear to be something that is permissible under our current educational models however i think nothing will stand in our way of trying to be as creative as possible to continue to try to serve our community you know this unfortunately this covent situation we're dealing with you know we all hoped it would be gone and instead it's still here and it may be here for quite
128some time and that's unfortunate but it may very well be something that goes away and recurs as well so i think it is incumbent upon us to come up with the best quality options between where we are now and the online piece as well so i'm perfectly willing to take on that challenge i think we have to do it anyways to provide the best quality i it'd be very difficult for me to give you a specific timeline of exactly when another option would be available the other piece just out of respect to our union partners and so forth anything that's kind of currently offered within our current schools would be a challenge we know that what we currently we did last year will not work that doesn't mean we can't try to come up with
129something that is somewhere in between to be responsive to those needs so thank you for asking that question and we'll we'll do the best we can to get some information sooner rather than later to help answer that question so if i may i'm not i'm not done with my common ship but if i may could i can we ask you to prioritize determining whether we can use essar funding for this and what are the logistics that would need to be worked out in order to offer something something something to these families within the confines of the law i understand that we're limited at a state level but i also understand that we might have some flexibility with federal dollars that we don't necessarily have with state dollars i also understand that the state holds that
130money if they don't approve giving it to us then then that could be an issue too but i understand all the logistics i'm just i'm just trying to find something for them to do and then if i are you all okay i mean i think that's a great idea for you to look into that as well during the bargaining perhaps so is everybody in okay with him with the superintendent moving forward to see what those needs are for our other families can i please ask a question in that regard we kind of briefly touched on the other day of google classroom and the restrictions of bargaining and saying that they didn't want to do that to me that's an immediate possibility especially if you have a teacher that is quarantined or is able to still
131work and be at home but if there's an issue with the union then i think we need to address that if a teacher wants to continue dealing with their class through google classroom and it is a possibility and like i said before i've done it when i was at sick home in bed with the computer going so at least you could keep in touch and help you know it's not like teaching face to face but it is that context so go back to what miss patrick has asked for the superintendent or you all in favor of that could you just raise your hand if you're in favor of him if you add the google classroom piece yes anything that can advance the families we just wanna make sure that thank you dr savage good mr
132patrick okay so the other thing is i'm sure that you all have read the emails a lot of indications of the union being in charge here i never ever talk to the union when we're negotiating and if we're negotiating right now so i've heard i've heard zero from the union on the mask issue i don't know if you all have but i'm letting you guys know this is i've not had any conversations with them at all about it i think you all the those who have spoken so far for every single parent that decries the damage that their children will endure as a result of wearing a mask i have parents who are decrying the damage that their children are experiencing from not wearing the masks someone else touched on non-compliance i still have that
133plea from that text yesterday and that gentleman was here tonight please do something for our kids please do something for our kids i'm trying but we were told very clearly today by the doe that our that their only option parents only option is to sue the state that's it that is the only option i do not have the authority we do not have the authority to to act outside the boundaries or the bounds of what the state of florida the governor or the legislature and the board of education has put in place and you know it's funny because and these this is my last or last line of reasoning here it's funny because somebody did suggest tonight that we think back as to why we ran for school board and i did that before that
134was suggested tonight i walked into tonight's meeting and i said why the heck did i run for school in the first place and it was because because a board prior to the one that i was sitting on violated the law they didn't like a law and they violated that law and that put the education of my students my children and other children in the district at risk and i vowed i ran on a platform of never violating the law and so while i believe in my heart i believe and i hope i'm raising my children this way that it's morally right to wear a mask right now that's the morally the correct thing for me to do please please law or in our case policies cannot be used to force my morality on someone else
135the rule of law is essential to the proper functioning of our society for example murder is not illegal because it's wrong murder is illegal because it provides for order in society we would have no order in society if we were allowed to run around killing each other without penalty just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's right and just because something is illegal doesn't mean that it's wrong so i am morally opposed to the vote that i have to make tonight because i think that as a human being i'm doing the right thing i'm sorry as a human being i'm doing the wrong thing but as a school board member i'm doing what i have the authority to do which is thanked attorney dupree bruno for bringing the resolution in front of us but
136i can't support it those are my comments thank you guys please please thank you please is patricka are you those are my comments okay thank you miss morgan well i don't really have a lot to add but i think people are entitled to hear you know what i think and and you know i was elected by this community to represent everybody in the community i'm here for all the kids my heart goes out to those families who have children under the age of 12 who go to who send their kids to school every day afraid of what will happen to them and we had a very vivid presentation by our local health authorities yesterday talking about this excuse me please let her finish talking and i expect the respect of this audience as i respected
137you when you talked go ahead miss morgan i after the after listening to the folks from the hospital speak it just it breaks my heart that we can't as a community agree to support one another by doing what we have been told is the best way to protect one another i am very disturbed that this has become a political situation that the governor has inserted himself in our process we on the ground know what our local situation is and i am not go i'm going to ask if you're pleading to be adjourned if i hear any more buzz in the audience just please be respectful let her finish speaking yes i am concerned that in this case we know what our situation is locally i i hate to be in the position where i can't
138do what i think is right for children and i will use the word that another board member used and that's the morality of this this thing i mean i think there is a difference between the morality and the political situation and it's unfortunate the rules were made it's tough to change them i think you change rules when people's lives are at risk but that's obviously not on the table it's unenforceable even though people's lives are at risk so i also will not be supporting this resolution but i do want to say how disappointed i am in the people who have come to speak who have evidenced so little trust in the ability of this group of people to have a conversation about what is important to us what is important to you we do listen
139we did listen and i'm finished thank you thank you mr menelli did you have something else to add yeah can you please but actually more minutes please regarding like people and this is another for another conversation but i get a lot of complaints about makeup policy and the quarantining you know they're quarantining students that aren't vaccinated and quarantining students that they're not quarantining students that are vaccinated but yeah vaccine if you're vaccinated you can still spread the virus so there's no i mean we have that's conflicting and it's it's wrong and i think we need to have a clear policy for teachers and an administration to deliver it so and so this was the other issue that a lot of people said to me you know if we're going to mandate mass what happens to
140all the sports are going to go out and have contact sports i mean it makes no sense we have to make beast we have to be sensible and we don't want we want we need to live that's all i have to say and i just think we need to have clear messages to the schools fisher did you have something else to add yeah i just i know that everyone here thinks that they're right i sitting up here think that i'm right in my feelings i still have two grandchildren and now have four great-grandchildren in the school system who go to school every day again i said i'm making the decision that i may i am making because i respect the rights of all of you to your opinion and to your decisions i also respect
141the rights of the other people who have contacted us to their opinions and their decisions and i really feel like what's been demonstrated here tonight has been devoid of respect i just need to say that so yes take care of your children don't keep them out late at night when they're tired and grouchy and hungry take them home and take care of them so that we don't get sick so our medical experts re recommend that the best thing to do is to strongly encourage or mandate masks face-to-face education we all know is best for kids our responsibility is to provide a safe and comprehensive education to with adequate provisions for all students your kids my kids everybody else's kids we are having a public health emergency otherwise known as a pandemic that puts some additional
142well whether or not you agree with it that is what the information that i have from the scientific research i've done tells me and i'm old enough where i've lived through things like this before the echo virus different flus when in in the late 40s when i got the polio shot i ended up in the hospital so you know i've seen this happen before it's not going away we'll get it under control and it may take a few years in the meantime we still have a responsibility to serve our public and to educate kids to prepare them for their future and to feed our future workforce so i'm going to strongly be encouraging masks distancing hand washing and the use of common sense and again looking into the what we can do with the use
143of the esser funds in order to provide some of those provisions for all students thank you mrs patricka for suggesting that because we are here for all of our students i want to thank you for sharing your opinion and for taking the time to come and let us know how you feel however we are elected officials who have a constitution and laws to follow and sometimes our hands are tied as as right now we are all here for the right reasons we're all here because we care about our community we care about the kids your kids our kids and everybody else's kids and i think that i would just like to ask you the next time you come to be a little bit more respectful and we are trying to exhibit respect for you by
144listening without giggling laughing making comments we sit here respectfully and listen to what you have to say because we believe that you have a right to your opinion thank you mr fisher and i'm going to just say a few things as well i know everybody thinks i have new children i have grown children i have many grandchildren within the school district and nieces and nephews so i am inundated in these schools and i do you know pay attention to what is going on at all of their schools and when i me personally i wear the mask because i feel more comfortable with this that's my choice to do that as it is for my children to to choose what's best for their kids even though i may not agree with them they're their parents and
145i know yesterday when i said it's not about parental rights to me it wasn't more of a medical i wasn't taking trying to take anything away from anyone but i had just had two people that i knew who lost their lives from covet and i had multiple family members who just contracted it as children so we don't know what that looks like and even within our own world here we're seeing that every day so this is something that's really real to us because we are seeing this on a daily basis so but we are following you know and since yesterday i've had multiple conversations i mean i never knew i was so popular my phone's been ringing off the hook emails and we do want to to hear what everybody is thinking we do care
146about everybody's opinion whether it's masking or non-masking that's what we have to listen to everybody and we do care about the families and their children we are and then you know following i had 20 some hours to talk to family members and personal friends who you know it's like where's the data at where's do you have the data do you have the data how many children are out from the schools how many of them have covet what is our data we don't have that yet so in listening to all of that and trying to collect all this even though i know that this is something to me personally is a very serious situation i know that we have to abide by the law whether we agree with it or not that's not an option for
147us i mean it clearly states regardless of how we feel about something the law is the law and we have to adhere to that and then with the recommendation that we had put with the masks and opting out that is part of the documentation that was released of the rule so 64 d er 21-12 states that students may wear masks or facial covering as a mitigation measure however the school must allow for parent or legal guardian of students to opt out so that is what we have done as a district we've we're following the orders to the t with putting that on and we just i just think we just got to make sure that we're following the protocols and making sure that we're trying to keep the kids as safely as we can in
148the classrooms and with the parents you know making their choices so i guess with that we're going to come to a vote on this madam chair i believe we had said we would suspend oh we are like so we can discuss before we vote mr preet bruno even though we stated that can we can i go ahead and amend them can we go ahead and vote then so you voted that prior to your vote that you would go ahead you voted that prior to the vote for this resolution that we would allow that you would allow public comment so there's any individual that still would like to make a public comment at this point please go to the microphone okay so have a seat i didn't realize it was going to be that many so
149i thought it wouldn't be that many either actually so only one time not twice you have if you have not spoken before and would like to speak at this time please line up please state your if you've not let's go ahead and speak chinese all right so folks my apologies i did not realize that there were going to be so many people that wanted to speak given that i was getting indications to just move forward so if everybody could please sit down i'm going to go back to the list to make sure this is orderly done in an orderly fashion my apologies for that attorney bruno so at this time attorney bruno go ahead and just call their names call the names names so at this time will the following individuals at this time we
150were at the following individuals addison moffett paige moffett matthew ross frank colin kim noean and matt caldwell hi my name is paige moffett a study from the cdc was conducted in 2019 for motor vehicle accidents with teens it was found that 2 400 teenagers died as a result of a car accident and that motor crashes were the second highest cause of death among teens that means that every day seven teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 would die the study revealed that 258 000 teens were rushed to the hospital because of a major medical emergency because of a car accident now let's compare that to another study from the cdc which was updated august 11 2021 found which found that from january 4th 2020 to august 11 2021 292 kids from the ages of
151five to 18 within the u.s died as a result of cover 19. that's a year and a half period we have we have no idea how many of those had next speaker please thank you paige my name is axel moffitt and i tried wearing masks i chose to work during the pandemic and to pay for college because i need to save up for those things and other future plans i wore a mask and as a result had multiple visits to the doctors for chronic headaches and acne i had to quit my job and now i can't save for my future my future lies in the hands of education because we didn't have to wear a mask i was excited that i was going to be able to come back to in-person school i learn best
152in person education is my future if i have to wear a mask i will not be able to come back into into in-person school where i learn best and as a student i would like to say by mandating mask you are robbing me of my future opportunities thank you nick speaker my name is angela fagg and i came here only for the mask reasons i watch you guys on tv every day and this is complete tyranny it's pretty sad that you're not even going to stand up for yourselves on this board that you're more worried about your pensions than anything else now just mind you i'm not here to say that kids should wear masks i'm here to tell you that you will not get away with this is not nazi germany this is the
153united states of america those vaccines have killed 45 000 people already and there is a lawsuit against this and i have paperwork here with all kinds of information to tell everybody where to go and where to look up the real facts and not follow the news media that does not do anything for our children as well as you are not doing anything for our children except for this nice lady right there hi my name is matthew ross first time i've been to a school board meeting i appreciate your time and i would like to say that the majority of people that have been here have been respectful i'm almost 20-year resident of the county my wife and i she teaches in the district we have two elementary age daughters in the district we are strongly
154opposed to the resolution i mean you want to talk about vaccines as the next option for teachers and staff there are european studies coming out now that suggest strongly suggest that they're causing kidney disorders the vaccine that's modern and pfizer the vaccine in this country is not even approved by the fda i mean it's just preposterous there's no peer review studies that clearly state that mass work these are my kids not yours good evening my name is angela i work with transportation and i'm speaking for our drivers that's why we lost a lot of drivers of the safety we have kids get on our buses and the parents sit on the school they sick and then it passed on to the drivers and then their home they end up being hospitalized because of they don't
155caught the covet from one of the students now this year they don't give us enough time to clean our bus sanitize our bus or nothing we have to we're so short of drivers we don't have time enough to sanitize like we used to because i'm simple fat we short on drivers because of the covet vaccination i mean because of the clothing and it's not right they should work i understand you're saying thank you next speaker please next speaker those babies hi i really do i don't know like she said we don't have much time we're doubling all these routes as bus drivers we three four five schools a day we don't have time to clean our buses at all it's spreading and all right we don't our paid we us our us drivers we do
156a lot and we don't get paid enough forward we don't we are trying we are blessing our behinds out here we are here it's nine o'clock at night that we're speaking up for transportation and all of us have to be to work at four o'clock in the morning we get up early and we get off late we only got off this early today so we can come out here and voice our opinions for transportation we need more drivers we are extremely short and we don't get paid enough and the time that they're giving us to do it is impossible thank you very much next speaker please so the rules this the rules still apply the rules still apply next speaker please my name is karina wagner i come to you today not only as a
157parent but as a registered clinical mental health counseling intern with the state of florida and in the last year not only have i seen an increase in depression and anxiety amongst the population of not only adults but children i have seen i have heard from my friends who work in pediatric offices that there is an extreme extreme increase in depression cases amongst children who are vaccinated on vaccinate it doesn't matter the masks are causing mental health issues and we're not talking about it enough i did not spend the last seven years of my life to become a mental health counselor to be a part of a community that doesn't acknowledge the mental health impacts on children and adults my child has a genetic mutation that does not allow him to get the vaccine thank you
158next speaker please hi my name is levi and just like some of you i'm fighting not to wear masks and last year i had to wear the mask a lot and i didn't like it there's some things i didn't tell my mom i was stressful we weren't allowed to take our mask off outside at all my teachers sometimes got mad when we took our mast off without a shield in our face and i don't like that we should fight for our freedom i think if we for our if we fight hard enough we can do this together i made that thank you next speaker please hello my name is mason weaver the question tonight is not whether the virus is spreading the question tonight is not whether the virus is spreading it's not whether kids
159are getting a virus or not the question is are the mass effective and so when i went to the bank of the day and i was told to put a mask on i grabbed the box and i turned the box over to read the warning from on the box the aerocart surgical mask one of some of the reads not recommended in settings where exposure to liquid bodily or hazardous fluids is expected or where infection risk through inhalation is high it does not work everything that comes out of the human body is nasty that's why your body expels it i'm serious so you put the mass on your face you're breathing back into your body carbon monoxide you tell them that's healthy you have you have your eyes water up your nose run you get a
160headache that is partying our children wake up folks this is thank you sir please good evening matt caldwell i appreciate some of the examples that the board members made about their years in the classroom and how this is not how they would run it to run a classroom you have to first establish trust and respect from the student body you clearly lost that from the public you burned it down by forcing through a sales tax referendum 5149 you antagonized the community with an outrageous gender policy earlier this year and didn't apologize for it just made excuses and took the exact opposite position then that students are able to make their own medical decisions about their permanent gender state and would and would follow law in that case and then we had tonight political theater there
161you were never going to vote for this you turned this community out and angered them and you should not be surprised then that they have no respect for you these scenes are not happening the county commission they're not happening at the hospital board they're not happening our fire districts the only elected board in this county that has this problem is this board excellent treats the public you've got to change that attitude in order to get it in reverse kim noeson and i have a daughter that is struggling currently with anxiety and depression pulled her out of school last year she's made it four days this year and has already had to stay home two days because it just tanked again with her her mental state so i'm just wondering with any funding and that who
162will pay for outstanding bills for when we have to go and pay for a psychiatrist or a mental health counselor or for when the kids have these masks over their face and the dental work that's going to be need to be caused because they're not drinking as much and they need saliva in their mouth and i want to relinquish a few moments of my time for my physician friend here dr dress please ten seconds i can't do much just to say that there's a virus that's worse than covet and that is the school board's inability thank you thank you sir next speaker please and normally just so we know per the board policy we do not relinquish time go ahead next speaker please i'm a student athlete of eastleigh high school a husband to a
163disabled veteran of the marine corps and 10-year teacher in this county i'm also homegrown lee county a product of this education i don't care if you believe in adam and eve adam and steve i just want my choice for you to leave me with my choice to do what's better for my kid just like miss vaughn you were up there you said you have a choice here that you have to make you get that choice leave me with my choice miss fisher you started off by saying i know everybody in here you think you're right i know i'm not right my wife tells me every day i'm not right so but give me the choice to make the choice on the decision to do trial and error if i made the wrong choice i made
164the wrong choice and i learned from it and i keep going for it romans 13 1 all authority is governed by god stick by your authority and leave the no mass mandate hi i'm ali lock i'm a teacher in lynn county i've come to you several times now and i'm here again first i want to address miss vaughn i am a victim of physical and sexual abuse and i still think masking my kids is abuse you don't get to decide that okay second you stated yesterday that you would give part of your salary for to defy the governor's orders so i want to know are you going to give your salary to the teachers and the students that you want to mandate the vaccine for because they can't sue vaccine manufacturers when they're permanently injured
165or their child dies so are you gonna pay for it that's what i want to know and last we struggle to keep teachers in lake county we're at all time low for morale it cost twenty thousand dollars to replace a teacher and now you guys want to mandate vaccines and masks you could forget it teachers are going to walk out next speaker please i'm winnie harrison again i watched yesterday's meeting video during which the talk of the masked mandate was denied to be a power play or a political issue it is both and we all know it we just saw an example of that tonight governor desantis has made florida an oasis of sanity and normalcy amid the global descent into madness over a 99 percent survivable virus for you to even consider defying his
166executive order against masked mandates is clearly thumbing your collective nose at him it is also illegal and so is violating the florida parental rights law and this is about parental rights it is not about health if you vote for a mandate no doubt there will be lawsuits and you will be held accountable for breaking the law so i would ask you to abandon this latest attempter please next speaker i'm angie nichols i had three kids in the district and i was fortunate enough to make the choice to pull him out last year i wish he all spent so much time fighting for my son with special needs who needed to stay in school last year rather than wasting 500 parents three hours 1500 hours of our time to fight a proposed legislation you intended to
167vote against that's not respect there's no respect coming from the board not to our governor not to the parents and not to the people you shushed in the room we have to lead by example and you are leading terribly you are teaching our children to defy the law you are teaching our children that we have to fight for basic rights you are teaching our children that you and your vaccine stance is more important than mine and i'm not afraid because i can't get fired i'm not afraid because i'm independently employed and i was able to make choices but shame on you for wasting our time next speaker please my kid's a high school athlete the it's shown in multiples multiple medical decisions that they only want a three-ply mask or an n95 mask how's he
168gonna play that use it while he's playing sports that memorial that you wrote that you claim that you want to send to the governor to go against his plans says use it all the time even in gym settings that is not possible with their loan capacities and i heard yesterday that y'all want to give up your salary if you go against state funding what about the scholarships that are given to the high school seniors from the state are you going to cover those are you going to cover the money that the schools are missing out on the lunches that are being funded by states are you going to pay for those now or are you going to make the poverty level parents pay for them will the following individuals please line up kathy stout megan
169means arielle martinez maddie dalton karina wagner maria martinez therefore is my time running yes can we start it hi my name is brenda clark glad i didn't have a speech prepared because you guys completely changed what you were going to do for those of you who were going to vote against this before the department of education meeting today i thank you however watching the board meeting yesterday you guys were all in so i thank the department of education for their meeting today i thank the governor and you know you don't like his involvement yet he gets involved because you've stripped the parents of their rights and that's the only way we have rights as the governor gets involved and the department of education they're the ones fighting for our children and our rights and that's
170a shame so i thank you that you decided to not take biden up on his offer because he probably would have forgot about it hi my name is valene hoover masks do not work if i knew my children weren't going to be allowed to breathe again this year i would have homeschooled from day one it is my moral duty as a parent to stand up for my children under the government executive order and our parental rights regardless of what you vote tonight we will not comply my name is suzanne shorten i am here because i have a senior in lee county schools the rights to protect our children are in jeopardy if we allow you or anyone else to determine whether or not our kids should wear masks than what is stopping you from forcing
171the shot and then where does it end when drug companies cdc fauci doh and our government officials assume liability for a shot that is not fda approved and they are allowing millions of unvaccinated immigrants into our country then we americans know this is no longer about our health and safety or our kids health and safety it is it is selfish of you to expect me to surrender my parental rights for your false sense of security with masks especially over a 99.6 survival rate good evening my name is kathy stout and i didn't want to make this political but i'm really going to first of all dr fauci if you think he's a doctor you're an idiot sorry to say that's number one he can't even make up his mind what he wants to do with
172the mask and he said in the beginning before this even started the pandemic that it was we didn't have to wear the mask now we got to put the mask on so be going on further from that the main thing that i want to say is i watched all of you on the school board to play with your mask as you were talking and put it back on it is unsanitary i was at the dentist office nobody cleans the doors anymore let's talk basics you want to keep our kids safe let's get the schools cleaned they're not washing their hands before they start lunch or they're not washing their hands after lunch so i think we need extra time especially with the school buses now to get that cleaned so we are going into flu
173season soon we do have something called flu it's ma'am next speaker please for the record gerard rocco you know we're here because of the decision for this good cause resolution you know it's it's disappointing but our grievance is with you if if the governor had mandated this we would be doing that we live in a rule a land with the rule of law and what you guys are doing is it's kind of shameful i'm sorry that i'm trying to raise my daughter and my son in this environment and trying to have them they went to school last year they continued with the mass but that was their choice they had the freedom to do that we gave that to them we did not allow my seven-year-old to do that and i think the question that
174gets me very nervous is where does this end mandate vaccines then once 12 and under then what what happens what what happens when a child's born in lee county he might attend our school are we going to force parents to give their children vaccines at her this goes deep and we need to think about these things can you please make it my name is ariel martinez and i find it laughable at the fact that some of you up here can actually demand respect and are concerned about the decorum of this meeting a meeting which is being held to determine whether you can or can't violate the law and violate the very respect that each and every parent in this room has to govern and do with their child as they please this is a land
175of freedom i was born in cuba let me tell you in 1959 they pulled 1400 children out on flights never to see them again to send them to this country just for the basic premise of the fact that their children will not be indoctrinated or property of the state and what i've seen here today and the attitudes from some of you are exactly the same as those marxists that are left behind at the age of five years old and i'm going to tell you for the lady who made it political you know the reason that january 6 happened why the people in here are the same because we know them well that we won that come on election almost there we're almost there thank you okay this is very simple this is tyranny versus parental
176rights and freedom what does going on in my child's face and inside my child's body is my decision not yours what happened to my body my choice i guess it's only when a woman wants to murder her baby so parents the children are yours not bidens not the school boards stop complying complying no mass mandate and or take them out it's time to define these tyrants man what is your name please thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak again i just want to address ma'am you've already spoken you only get one opportunity to speak sorry next speaker please sorry i'm sorry you do not get a second opportunity to speak next speaker please next speaker please we would have to give every single person another turn hi my name is can i have
177some respect board members thank you my name is justin community member lehigh and father two purple heart veteran youth school board have decided our kids should go to school all day every day wearing muzzles like rabid dogs i've listened to your arguments and i've noticed that they're missing a few things namely evidence data science common sense and b basic human decency you've presented no facts at all so let me do that now here they are kobe poses almost no risk to kids at all 4.2 million children have tested positive for covin a total of 0.008 percent have died what about the flu cdc estimates that 480 kids died from the flu from a 200 2018 2019 season that's more than what have died from covert in a year and a half now did anyone on
178this board suggested at any point that year that kids wear masks did anyone in this room suggest at any point anyone wear mask for the flute which is more dangerous to kids in covid that's a fact now do you know what it's called when you force your children to wear masks to fear of a virus that poses almost no threat to them it's called child abuse next speaker please so if you have spoken already you you do not if your name is excuse me sir you're out of order excuse me sir you are out of order if you have spoken already please do not line up to speak again next speaker please my name is april holland and i want to say that i've spent a lot of time watching your workshops and watching sarasota's
179workshops and palm beach workshops all of them and the narrative continues to be the same there's no questions being asked what parents can do to support their child's immune systems while we're going through this it's mask up wash your hands all the things we could possibly do except for what you could do at home for your child to support them and their immune system no one talks and asks the question is vitamin c a good question to maybe offer to our kids here at school it's very sad and it's an atrocity that you continue to push this narrative that wear mask wear mask wear mask but never once say hey did maybe your kid take a multivitamin today also this one's for miss vaughn and yes it's very much child abuse to mask your child
180and not allow them to breathe thank you all right will the following individuals please line up or die thank you will the following individuals please line up and if you have spoken before please do not line up michael moherick leslie amazon angela fagg kelly y'all melissa colson ready when you folks are my name is stephen finch i do have two kids in the system i appreciate the lesson that you all have taught me here today and that's that this language needs to be kept out of our schools and kept where it belongs in the church i've been wearing a mask this whole time i'm fairly confident my blood oxygen levels have been perfectly fine i've been wearing it in public even though i'm fully vaccinated since the week that we were allowed to and frankly
181it makes me ashamed to think that y'all don't care enough about your fellow human beings to put a mask on and get vaccinated it's basic i don't wear the mask to protect me i wear the mask to protect all of you because i don't know if i have it or not okay please i don't know if i have the disease i might i might have been exposed to it earlier today i wear the mask to keep it with me if i do play edition please you guys have a wonderful evening none of them you have to protect every speaker regardless miss patricka i just i've just spoken to them please i've just spoken to them thank you listen folks come on wait a minute wait a minute i have something to say okay just hold
182on a second we have to be we have kids here kids are watching your behavior so please let's be respectful let's allow everybody to have their viewpoint let's make sure that everyone has an opportunity to speak please call people names so excuse me sir you're out of order next speaker please hi my name is michael moherick and the first thing i want to know is how many of you up there all you were ever told you had to make medical decisions as to get your job none i already know the answer okay second of all there is not one person and what a great deal to follow this guy that was in front of me that is wearing a mask in here that works you want to know why i know why i worked nuclear
183power and i taught a respiration for individuals so unless you're willing to spend 400 to 500 on a real mass that covers your eyes that go into your sinuses and buy them for all the kids that you want in your schools and your teachers you're not protecting anybody if you can smell it can get through that mask okay i won't bother you with the joke about underwear okay you know where that goes okay and you know what there's only one person that you all need to go off to yourselves and talk to our creator okay and have a come to jesus meet all right for the following individuals please line up phil laak travis mcfarland mason and brianna biolecki hi my name is melissa coulson i'm a mother of four one of the things that
184really hit me when i think about the mass mandate is when has this when has the side that censors information ever been the good guys can anyone think of a group of individuals that censor information in the history of our country that ever been the good guys they're not the good guys we all know that's that's proven by history there's plenty of information that shows mass don't work but the thing is that's being censored we all know that it's the information's out there but that's censored this known physical and psychological harm to our children their lives matter all life matters do you know that covet deaths rank seventh behind diabetes i mean that's adults at this point the wonderful thing about this is that it's open our eyes to the corruption and if that's the
185good that so will the following individuals please line up heather newbert tracy bosh eve olsen justin shuego liz hernandez and if you have spoken before please do not line up hi my name is phil laak this is my first time attending a school board meeting shamefully that i haven't been paying attention but now that i'm awakened by all the shenanigans that have been happening i encourage everyone here to watch everything that happens with the school board as i am going to be doing that now to be more informed of what is going on and keeping them accountable to you and i because we put them in here and we can take them out thank you hi my name is eve olsen and what i want to talk about is the science and part of the
186problem that we're here today is that our education system is failing all of us did you know that you have over 319 trillion bacteria and virus in your body right now that your immune system is conquering all day you don't have any symptoms so wearing a mask is not going to protect you from covid my husband works in the hospital and they have to be fit with a n95 mask they're sprayed to make sure they can't smell anything are you going to get n95 masks for all the kids and make sure that there's no particles going through changing them out every 30 minutes in the 70s surgeons got sick pneumonia masks give you pneumonia you have to change them every 30 minutes are you gonna do that for our kids thank you my name is
187my name is justin chago i went to school through lee county schools and i have two young daughters in them last year we kept them out because of the mass because i was not going to put them through that when it has proven beyond a doubt that their own immune system can fight this better than any of the mass or anything else we have cdc shows under 340 deaths total for under 18 years old from all of last year through now including the new bearing yet the ntsb shows over 3 200 died in car accidents in the same age group last year alone your kids are over 10 times more likely to die in a vehicle accident than from this virus the virus itself is at roughly 36 million in the country which is just
188over 10 percent total now over 98 of those people are still alive with 75 fully recovered 93 percent are 55 plus years old and 94 over 94 percent have on average four other comorbidities when they die which means five listed cods at 55 plus years old it's not cova that's killing them solely it is a part of it when your body is giving up thank you well the following individuals please line up allison gaudreau heather kortschma and jude sinkowski so my name is christy stafford i'm actually doing this against miss vaughn and i do apologize seriously on this but you talk about how you had to sit with kids that were sexually abused mentally abused and physically abused you have no idea what you have to go through for that i've been all three so
189i've been through all of it i suffer from major anxiety where i take medication every day to actually be able to function the masks are not very good we have a daughter that is our eldest she also deals with anxiety as well that mask gives her more anxiety and when she wears it her chest hurts so then everybody thinks oh well you have asthma and that's never the case always because you can it varies on everybody else so with somebody having to wear a mask and saying you have to do this even though you don't agree with it that doesn't make sense because you're taking away the free choice of the child they should be able to choose if they wanted to do or not and with the emotional part how long you have to
190go through counseling to actually be able to be able to function is outrageous that's all heather newbert here we are again parents fighting for the medical freedoms for their children to make the choice for themselves they say the days are long and the years are short you've already taken over a year from my children and we will no longer let that happen anymore we are done you're not taking another second away from my child we will not comply and as you can see tonight you guys can't even make us comply anymore the board of education has made sure of that and we will make sure of that i just can't believe i'm back here you awaken a giant hopefully this does it we are here for the lgbtq poster that woke a giant eyes are
191on you we're gonna come back we're not gonna stop here we are people are looking at you they're watching they're hearing what you say your non-partisan speeches that we have going on right now hopefully that bill that spencer roach brought forth for our next election we will know what side you're on we will know who are you for and we will know who to vote for and who not to vote for amen alison cadreau less than one week ago i reached out to the board and received a respectful reply which included the following the district will not be acting as a mask police this is truly left in the hands of parents and reflective of their health care choice for their child in addition the district will not take any disciplinary action nor penalize any
192student who opts out of the mass requirement i do not feel that same level of respect this evening the cdc has acknowledged that cloth masks have a maximum effectiveness of 15 to 20 minutes maximum based on that having children wear them for a minimum of six hours a day at school is completely illogical my child attended a school last year with a mask mandate and there were frequent pieces in quarantine throughout the school throughout the year if you would like to do something you could provide n95 or nkn95 mass for those students and teachers who feel that they need them thank you my name is jude sinco i apologize i'm very nervous i'm not a public speaker but i felt like i needed to say something for my children the first thing i wanted to
193say is that since i started speaking about this on social media so many people have come to me and said they agree with me but they're afraid to speak out for every one of us here there are thousands at home who are afraid to speak out because they have been they feel alone because politicians and so-called medical experts have divided us really quickly last thing i want to say a quote that i posted on social media today by dennis waitley a smile is the light in your window that tells others that a caring sharing person is inside are you ready let's go ahead my name is heather korchma i'm a 20-year resident of cape coral florida and i'm a mother of four children in lee county school system we opted out of masks as requested
194even though we're protected by our amazing governor desantis parental rights order regardless of your decision tonight i will not be masking my children ever last year we watch as our children's personalities change because of them we will not be doing that again we went through four quarantines in our house last year related to close contact collectively my children lost a month of schooling all while having healthy children at home the entire time we refused to do this again we will not do this again statistically our children have a better chance of dying from an mba suffocation or drowning in the state of florida and then there's the flu from march 20th from march 2020 through august 12th last week children's death rate for covid was point zero zero speakers over eighteen next speaker please the
195death rate next speaker please good evening my name is eric metzner i did not fill out a blue card i just felt compelled to come up as a teacher of lee county school district for 20 years options is what i'm hearing tonight i would love to see the board consider possible options for instruction let's say different times for opening schools for example a day shift and a night shift also opt in for google classroom only opt-in for a possibility of having a single class taught by a single teacher not hybrid options give parents options rather than just one or two choices because that's what they're asking for this evening i'm hearing that the parents want choices i heard a lot of statistics thank you very much for all of them but how about you have
196some more choices for your children thank you my name is brianna pikachu and sweet everyone already said what i was going to say tonight so my kids opt out of masks they won't wear them we won't do it the stress and depression that my older son went through last year i can't do it again this year and we won't do it again but i will say that my son's first high school assignment this year that the teachers threw on him on how he should be wearing a mask because he is one of the opted out kids that i'm not okay with wow you want to see it here i got it from my teacher his teacher i requested today high school a very disturbed one that's teaching my kids about math miss getting said get
197to education this is not teaching them what they need to know teach them biology you don't give a crap about masks please order please take the mask education out of the school if we opt out of it our kids don't need to hear about it anymore very much ma'am madam chair that concludes public comments thank you if you will thank you that concludes the public comments and dr savage if we could please perhaps the last person who just spoke if you would leave that information with us over here for this okay thank you dr savage will you please check in to that i appreciate that no and i we appreciate we are actually go ahead take the vote now or dwight and now you can now you can take your vote thank you all right
198going back to our motion and i have to find us find that back okay we are no we are not the comments have been closer and we will be taking a vote but thank you we sorry there are public comments that we extended the hours mr freeman no i was just going to say the public comment is closer you can have a seat so if we can please take a vote on the on the mandate of masking those in favor of where'd you go those in favor of the mask mandate raise your hand i'm the resolution yes please those in favor of the resolution because there was emotion motion there was a second we had our conversation we had public conversation and now we're taking the vote so i'm here my computer's out should we
199wait for miss getting to come back please go ahead and record your vote i'm not sure if miss getting stepped out not to vote would you go see this is the approval for of the resolution of the school board of lee county florida declaring the all masks all students shall be required to wear masks this is what we are voting on right now and it's on the computer to vote do you have the miss thomas do you have is it showing so the motion has failed five to one please please we are still in a meeting thank you we are so we're in a meeting please let's finish let us please finish the next on the agenda is member comments mrs fisher i have no further comments this evening thank you please please let's continue
200to have decorum please let us finish this meeting i'm sorry but this is ridiculous it's we have like five minutes left mr avanelli okay real quick i just want to thank everybody that came out and spoke tonight i really want to thank the teachers and the bus drivers the personnel that came and spoke and options i love the gentleman that mentioned options i actually wholeheartedly support that i think that we need to think out of the box and educating our children these days i was going to ask the superintendent to possibly look into more openings for lee virtual i know that's closed but i think that under the circumstances there might be parents that want to jump their children to jump into leave virtual and i think we need to have options for for parents
201and the parents make that decision so that was the other thing that i wanted to speak about i just really again you know teachers the bus drivers that came out hang in there we're trying to get you additional help and support and we're working on it and just hang in there and be a little bit more patient and as well as parents you know they will get the bus thing worked out there's issues with that but we are short staffed all the way through teachers custodians cafeteria workers we need we do need help so that's not a secret that you know i'm gonna advocate for that as well and so i just again thank you everybody for being here tonight and i'm glad everybody had the opportunity to speak that wanted to unfortunately for the
202gentleman it did close but we do have a meeting coming up in two weeks that he can come back so i welcome that thank you ms patricko no thank you miss kittens we took the votes without you okay sorry about that thank you to everybody for coming out i just i just hope sometime in some day in in our country that people can understand truly to listen to others it's it to me that's that's the main issue that we have and because you believe so strongly about something doesn't make it that i don't believe strongly about something else and it doesn't make me bad because i don't believe what you believe i mean that's why we have so many different groups in different churches because people worship different people believe different things i'm just asking
203you all to please consider listening to the other side not that you'll get indoctrinated but just for the fact of listening that there are other people that have other opinions and i as a board member i heard some people talk about you know bringing you out here tonight i apologize for this i really do because like i said earlier it was it was decided and if we were going to make a change you know board members talk all the time about following the rules and following the laws then why did we bring up something that was not following the rules of the laws i just i just please anyway calm down one second i just don't understand it i really didn't it was a lose-lose situation for some and a win-win for others but this
204didn't have to happen we know how you feel that's why the superintendent made the decision he made on august the 9th so thank you for being here we're almost there we're almost there i promise you miss vaughn i believe that everyone here knows how i feel and saw how i voted i voted as i said earlier my conscience and morality i really was on the fence about this but i could see that it was more important to register how i felt morally and to stand up for my convictions and even if you don't go along with my convictions i did and i stuck with it that's all i have to say this evening thank you miss vaughn miss morgan yeah so thank you board i think this was a conversation that the public was entitled
205to here we've had so many people in the community reach out to us about their children and masking and could we do something and i don't think it would have been smart for us to just ignore it because there was a law in place i think the public was entitled to hear us have a conversation about how we felt about the masks how we felt about our practices and practices in school and we needed to give the public an opportunity to talk about what they felt so i thank you for having this conversation this evening i think it was important for the public for those watching and for those here and those are oh i do want to thank all the marshals here thank you it's it's been a i appreciate how long you've had
206to stand on your feet and keep order so thank you very much those are my comments thank you and i'd also like to thank all of you for being here this evening all of the sheriff's department all of our security staff who is always here for us i appreciate you all our bus drivers which we are definitely we know that you work hard we know you work the craziest shifts ever we appreciate what you do and i hope dr savage if we can i if we could try to see how we can fit that time and that they spoke about so that way we can make sure that it that they have time to clean their buses so that's another safety precaution so when they're picking up our children that's at least we're trying to
207do our part there i know that we asked you to look into other options as one of our the teachers here had spoken and we had already had asked that of you going forward and goodness and we did have to have this conversation this conversation unfortunately we didn't know would be so popular today but we did have to have that conversation with all of you here and all of those who had the opportunity to send us emails to call us to speak to us because we do need to hear what all of you have to say this is a large district and it does matter what you believe in and what you think we're never going to always agree on things that's just human beings but we have to you know try to do what's
208best and try to move forward with making the district the best that we can do and if it takes us having this conversation then you know we will have this conversation but i do appreciate you being here this evening i'm sorry that we're so late and that's all i have to say mr pre-bruno i have none thank you and dr savage thank you madam chair i would be remiss if i didn't mention that today a week ago today we opened school and i would just say in my whole career in education i don't know that i ever recall opening under such a difficult circumstance we've we've opened when hurricanes have delayed we've opened you know last year we pushed it back a month the situation is very very tough out there so i just want
209to really just take this time to thank our hard-working staff out there whether it's our bus drivers who are in very difficult conditions our teachers who are coming to work every day and in some cases having to take on additional classes because of the quarantines and all those other elements paraprofessionals custodians everyone our food service workers they're out there and just really serving our entire community i know that people don't go to work in education unless they love children and to do it when things are so hard out there you know it's not just education it's being impacted a lot of industries are being impacted when you go out to restaurants and so forth but for people who truly appreciate our children and are doing all this for our kids every day and it's been
210one week but i bet for a lot of those folks it feels like a whole month so i just wanted to say for any of our staff were there just a real special thank you to all of our staff out there as well as all of our district central staff it's been a very short summer and it's been very contentious and just very appreciative of all of our people out there doing it i also just want to say how grateful i am for democracy you know i think as a young child i had no idea what it was like to really grow up in a country like this where we have such spirited debate i'll continue to push i think so that we can do it as respectfully as possible so important that people have
211the opportunity to share their ideas but we want to do it in a way that kind of models the civility for our whole community and i think as a board we have to continue to look in the mirror i think as a community we have to look in the mirror and just determine is this the type of community that really truly reflects all of us right now so i would just say continue to to push forward on that to get that trust to build up that credibility mutually with this board with our community we'll continue to work at that and i hope you'll continue to give us that chance to serve you know not just you but people who disagree with you and everyone and everyone in between i really appreciate everyone here tonight and
212thank you thank you for the opportunity to have some comments thank you the next miss oh no no i just okay i just want to say that in future though i agree that you know it's important conversation but we need to find a way to hear from all sides and perhaps it would start with a survey or something but we need to look at hearing equitably from all sides is all i'm saying it is an important conversation no i i agree with you there and that's why we brought it today because yesterday there was no input so today there was input so yes next scheduled meeting of the board on tuesday august 24th there will be a board workshop at 1 pm on monday august 30th 30th there will be a board special meeting at
21310 a.m followed by a board workshop at 1pm on tuesday august 31st there will be a board briefing at 1pm followed by an action meeting at 6. at this point having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objections this meeting is adjourned thank you very much and be safe you