001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting sergeant-at-arms or designee has the front lobby be been attended to ensure public access thank you the school board meeting of august 30th 2022 is now called to order the time is 6 p.m and our students are going to play us one last song please we want more okay we have been enjoying music from cape coral high school jazz program this jazz combo is a select group of students from the jazz department at cape coral high school this group works in expanding their musicianship through the study of improvisation and jazz theory also i found out a little while ago that this was actually written by our own mr tom there he goes tomaszewski so again please let's give them another round of
002applause we're going to take a brief moment just so that they can clear out their instruments and thank you all so much for being here it's the quickest cleanup i've ever seen okay at this time we just took the brief pause and we really appreciate how quickly that was we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential in the district vision to be a world-class school system sorry my papers tonight on the agenda the agenda includes moment of silence presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance one item under recognitions public comment consent action items which include two items under board office one item under executive services eight items under academic services
003two items under business services four items under human resources six items under operations eight items under public hearings and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda miss morgan i'll second get one okay so the motion was moved by miss morgan and seconded by ms vaughn and please record your vote this okay seven zero motion carries miss patricka will lead us in a moment of silence after which mrs kittens will lead us in the presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance miss patricka please stand please bow your heads in private prayer or private reflection amen thank you miss kittens please lead us in the presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for our pledge of allegiance tonight
004is lieutenant colonel matthew opolinski senior army instructor for cape coral high school lieutenant opelinski served 30 years in the army in numerous assignments both in the united states and around the world and retired as the eighth army equal opportunity program director this is lieutenant colonel o'polinski's first year as a jrotc instructor in the district and i do want to say he is not wearing a brown uniform that is army green thank you man thank you for presenting the national coast tonight is cadet colonel lisa martinez of cape coral high school jrotc colonel lisa martinez is the seahawk brigade commander and is a senior with a gpa of 4.45 this is her fourth year in jrotc and she has previously served as both the operations officer and logistics officer she's also a member of the raider
005team her hobbies are drawing and has an after-school job at domino's pizza after graduation colonel martinez will attend cape coral technical college and study to become an optometric assistant please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance tomorrow the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated the next on the agenda is recognitions board members please join me at the pit for the healthy living collaboration district logo winner and miss fisher will be doing that good evening can you hear me okay i'd like to invite the members of the healthy living collaboration to join me at the podium also from island coast high school principal michelle court digital design teacher ander
006andy jeter and academic academy of natural resource teacher joe mallon the healthy living collaboration logo design was born from the partnership between island coast high school and food and nutrition services during the 2021 school year island coast high school's academy of natural resource students along with teacher joe mallon provided around 700 pounds of produce per month these school grown salads went into school cafeterias at not only island coast high school but also orangewood elementary edison park elementary and north fort myers academy for the arts florida department of health lee county recognized the significance of this collaboration and the dedication of students working to supply fresh locally grown produce for their school cafeterias resulting in a contest the challenge given to students in andy jeter's digital design program at island coast high school was to brand
007the healthy living collaboration with the creation of a sign the sign is to be placed at each school garden supplying produce to their cafeteria since its inception in the fall of 2021 the healthy living collaboration evolved into a multi-faceted partnership between numerous school district of lee county departments and over 15 local businesses and organizations with all members focused on improving health increasing food security enhancing learning along with promoting college and career readiness for the students and families of lee county this recognition celebrates the contributions of this health collaboration with the goal of creating healthy minds and bodies the school board and the superintendent are very pleased to recognize the healthy living collaboration garden design winner from mr andy gida's digital design class under the direction of miss dr michelle court principal of island coast high
008school on alicia shalaby analysia is currently a 10th grade student at north fort myers high on alicia will you come up okay yeah i'm going to ask miss lisa roy to announce the members of the healthy living collaboration are who are present that's just like a test it's like a test this is amy carroll from food nutrition services come on down amy amanda evans from florida department of health the county mary graham from career and technical education mr andy jeter digital design teacher from island coast high school ms michelle court dr michelle court principal of island coast high school and joe mallon who's the garden extraordinaire at island coast high school big smiles one more okay well congratulations that was well deserved we also are pleased to welcome again she is multitasking with with us
009this evening cadet major lisa martinez to the diocese so thank you for being here with us appreciate you the next item on the agenda is public comment miss dupree bruno please address the item of public comment thank you madam chair school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff the rules concerning public comment are posted and in and will be made from the podium in the front center aisle please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made
010by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues abuse of language is prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper during the public comment time is prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone for board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers we will take recesses as necessary if there is not decorum for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20 2 minutes if there are 30 and 1 minute if there are 31 speakers or
011more the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour 60 speakers you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time is elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone i will call you five names speakers at a time please follow staff's direction when lining up madam chair there are six speakers that wish to address the board this evening thank you mr pre-reno please make sure you have completed a public comment card if you intend to provide public comment the card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to staff for follow-up the cards are located with the staff in the hallway is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the board
012but did not fill out a comment card please raise your hand cnn mr bruno i will call all six speakers dr edward drast sharon mcgill robert roper denise nystrom lou navarro tara jenner and the time for speaker is three minutes dr joseph you will come up to the podium please good evening are we good here you can hear me hi i'm dr edward grass good evening i have several items i'd like to address item one the biden title ix changes go into effect september 12th what effect will this have on local control of the school district functions how will the district meet title ix requirements while remaining in compliance with florida statutes item two regarding gsa genders and sexuality clubs can the public be provided a list of these clubs the schools where they are
013located the charter the number of members and mission statement of each club our parents our students parents required to sign permission for their son or daughter to be a member of a gsa does the district have a record of the number of lgbtq and transsexual students currently enrolled and our parents advised of a student request to change his or her gender while he is enrolled during the school year item four the high impact reading interventions and targeted support for 1.242 million dollars is there a process that the board and the district will be able to assess the use and distribution of these funds and their effectiveness at the end of the 2023 school year and will a public statement of that assessment be made with concerns being of course for improving the level of reading
014item four memorandum of understanding with holiday in fort myers downtown area three hundred thousand dollars to provide temporary housing for homeless youth and their families enabling students of lee county to extend attend school participate fully in all school activities why is the district involved in housing students and their parents are there not other agencies such as the lee county homeless coalition that can do this item 6 piggyback prince william county schools contract number rtc17006 through amazon services llc 1.2 million which supports purchase of electric of office supplies classroom supplies art supplies books etc approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all related documents why not use local vendors and spend this money locally and enrich our tax base i know there's a discount for doing this but still putting the money back into our system would
015be much more appropriate and finally policy 3.051 program of instruction lines 56 through 60 reference instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation i'll skip ahead here my question here is although this is specifically stated why do students require sexual orientation and gender identity beyond what's provided in a basic basic health classified reproduction good evening everyone sharon mcgill and i'd just like to start out by saying thank you for the town hall meetings for the proximity plan i think that's wonderful it gives the community both families and stakeholders an opportunity to give their viewpoints i have had some feedback though from community members one being is it okay if i bring my kids because i can't come if i can't bring my kids and so
016i assured them that yes they could bring their kids so blame it on me if there's kids that show up the other one was is there any way there could be a weekend meeting because for the parents who work sometimes both of them work they're trying to pick up kids after school everything going on that it might help if there was one weekend town hall meeting or instead of that having it on social media so that parents could send back questions during the town hall as it was being i'll say televised so to speak so those were the things about the town hall but thank you again now i want to say that i was very privileged i thought to be a part of the equity guide meetings and i left those meetings feeling very
017encouraged about the start of the school year but over the past couple days that those feelings of encouragement have sort of gone away and i'm going to read you some of the comments i've gotten and they're all from middle schools by the way and somehow that doesn't surprise me because if you know middle school kids mentality that this is where they're trying to find themselves and make a spot for themselves so i'm not surprised that these are all coming from middle schools and please i apologize for the language because there are going to be a couple words that you might not like but these are the comments that i've gotten back a girl on a bus can't find her phone and she says one of the goddamn mexicans took it another child waiting for the
018end of the day bus blurts out i hate blacks and apparently she was reprimanded on the spot a handful of eighth graders nodding toward a sixth grader saying to another eighth grader you go have to sit with the gay kid now as far as i know according to statute 1006.147 in our own district 4.14 bullying may include but not be limited to teasing racial harassment or public or private humiliation now who wouldn't be humiliated by those comments that were made so as encouraged as i wanted to be i think there's a lot more work that needs to be done especially at the middle school level thank you good evening good evening dr bernier thank you so much for the town hall meetings this is truly a step in the right direction to establish relationships with
019the parents and the community members i plan on being at every single one of them i'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the hiring of additional attorneys for the legal department in a district where i worked as an assistant superintendent with thousand students we had two full-time attorneys the amount of work that they conducted was huge one attorney was used for special education alone which means that this district would need several attorneys just for the special education department in a much smaller district than that nine thousand dollar nine thousand students we hired an educational law firm and we had at our disposal a full set of attorneys depending on what the issue was i cannot imagine only having three attorneys on staff in a district that has ninety five thousand students the legal department
020needs a full analysis in terms of the number of attorneys that are required to have the department function properly the district needs to determine how many on-staff attorneys they need and what their roles and responsibilities will be and what cases you should outsource one thing is for sure an appropriate construct needs to be put into place attorney bruno i did not realize the inordinate task you have at hand and i encourage the board to support attorney bruno in terms of hiring the correct number of attorneys for the district thank you good evening roper i decided to do some research on one of the after school clubs here's a copy of the manifesto for that after school club it has nine points of which i'm going to highlight just three tonight one of them says we
021call for the abolition of police ice borders and the judicial system we demand abolition with the exclamation point we demand our communities to be empowered to take care of themselves abolition is a process and we're committed to fight for it one of them says we call for the end of cisgender heterosexual patriarchy we recognize that the current state of the world centralizes the stories of white cisgender heterosexual men we call for an end to that social structure another one says we call for the decolonization and reparation for all indigenous and black people in other words we call for the reparations that are owned in the reclamation of the cultural practices by the communities from which they were generated we call for the active and complacent perpetrators of cultural appropriation and colonization to be held accountable
022and recognized for the privilege they maintain as they oppress others this is part of the manifesto for the gsa club gsa club has three levels the level three teaches activism that is to take this manifesto out into the general population of the schools and advocate for these what i consider pretty radical viewpoints i've gotten conflicting information from the district as to whether an adult is always present i've been told yes they are and i've been told by others that they are sometimes but it is an adult staff member that has to sponsor the club there are 4 000 of these clubs across the nation questions do parents that give permission to for their children to attend these do they really know the radical nature has a lot to do with politics and very little about
023gender support let that sink in there gsa students are they required to have a gender support plan to attend it are they reporting the requirements for a parent to be notified when a child's emotional faculties have been affected in other words is the adult there required to report this just like they were in the school are furries accepted i have real concerns about adult employees that would maintain this radical position on anything it's the whole thing is very concerning i know they're protected but it's very concerning thank you good evening good evening board members lunamar teacher etc i'm gonna present a couple things first i'm glad that the parents and everybody so concerned about lgbqs and burning books did you look at the fsa or dismal and that's all grade levels i did i don't
024know what's wrong any well i do know what's wrong but we'll go on saving education before the collapse and then and encouraging teacher hiring and retention i keep asking you we'll start the salary at sixty thousand we'll cover the three percent frs retirement for teachers which scott took away and it's not fair because they were supposed to cover it in 1972. you don't remember but i do so put that back why is it going up triple dippers i want you to see triple dippers.org my friend who's spent hours on this okay two three pay full health insurance for the teacher and half for the family you give them a hundred dollar pay raise and then you increase health insurance two hundred dollars that's really wonderful restore professional services contract everybody wants to fire a teacher
025you parents i want to see you in the classroom mr navarro mr navarro thank you i'll do your heart surgery because you all are telling teachers what to do shame on you let me know i still like you debbie all right eliminate the certification test that's jeb bush is folly he owns pearson he has pay for the master's degree any field you took that away stop making education political and picking on teachers that goes for the governor the legislature the local board and the parents who want to teach and i challenge them to teach and i'll do their heart surgery i want to see if they tell them if they're going to tell me how to do it or their heart surgeon pay for courses at s f w and f g c u now
026i have gifts for all these well constitution i do want to say one thing dr berner here he's a good choice i might vote for appointed superintendent i really mean that this man is the best hire you've made thank you mr navarro yeah here's your gift constitutions for lisa chris and mike thank you i'd like to address a couple of the policies that are being looked at this evening 2.062 the parental bill of rights looking at paragraph 1c you have down that parents will be notified if there are changes to services and i propose that you change that to prior to changes of services since there is a parental right to be notified looking at policy 2.0621 you have on line the u.s constitution but we should add in the florida state constitution as well
027under the health issues segment paragraph c immunization you talk about specific exemptions to the policy can you include those specific exemptions so that parents don't have to go running around trying to figure out what they are safety which is page 7 of 15 also talks about specific felony offenses again why not just stated in the policy what those felony offenses are so parents don't have to wonder under home education home education is not a program home education it's like saying public school program come on it's just home education also under the non-discrimination section again we're mentoring mentioning gender identification so i have a question about that there's a section dealing with disabled students having the option of having their parents be able to be accompanied by a third party and that's referenced later on that
028everybody has the right to bring a third party so i'm not kind of sure why it's duplicated there and sort of singling them out unless you're in some way implying that the parents of disabled students are disabled and they need an extra red flag which i find a little bit offensive under extracurricular you have what are this that there are specific academic requirements for eligibility what exactly are those specific academic requirements and could you either cross-reference and refer to those or put them in the actual document itself i've mentioned this before but statutes should come immediately after the section to which they apply rather than being lumped in a long laundry list at the very end because that makes it very challenging for parents to find where those statutes are if they're dealing with one
029of those items that may become somewhere towards the middle and a little off topic for the board but for the superintendent directly under you false the home ed office it is not a board issue and i encourage you to look and see what their manpower status is because from my reading of it the number of home ed students has tripled at least since when i started but the number of staff has remained the same and they have less experience madam chair that concludes public comment thank you i know there was a lot of conversation regarding the town hall meetings so thank you for sharing your thoughts and this is just the beginning of the town halls is that correct dr bernier that is correct the town halls are a kickoff due to my entry plan
030there will also be a dis different there also will also be additional meetings specifically with proximity so the town hall is a part meet and greet but part we wanted to have a good topic to talk about so we thought proximity would be a good place to start so yes we'll look into those other dates as we look towards being more accessible to our community great thank you on that and then i know there was a conversation about lee county about the school district being engaged with housing students we are not in we are not engaged with that i know i was at the horizon council this weekend and dr bernier you were there as well and they spoke on that lee county they i know there was a specific hotel that was mentioned but
031that is something that is set up with the county not the district it's lee county that is doing that rabbit rapid housing i believe it was called but they did a whole presentation on that this past week regarding that dr bernier was there anything else that you can recall when there was an item before there is an item before you tonight that very specifically looks towards a dollar amount whether it was budget having to do with the american rescue plan for homeless children and youth so a specific budgeted source that was provided to the district to support homeless children and those families and the new face of homelessness because it's not exactly the same that we recall it's not there are families that have never faced this crisis before that are now facing it as
032they look towards either holding on to a home or trying to get into the housing market so the memorandum of understanding requests that the 298 thousand seven hundred and fourteen dollars from the american rescue plan homeless children youth grant this was specifically written to help support this would help support the hotel which allows for temporary housing and this is a in partnership with what the county of lee and other members of the community are doing to help support the homelessness to temporarily house our students and then get them into more permanent facilities but that was regarding the tutoring and the extra things that they may need correct yes okay thank you okay and i know we were there was comments regarding bullying we do have a bullying policy and we definitely will adhere to our
033policies for every child i wanted to make sure that was understood and as far as the laws are concerned we will abide by the laws as a district let's see miss let's see what else we have here i'm not sure where that flyer had come from regarding the clubs and i don't know if dr bernier if you wanted to elaborate on that make a comment regarding the gsa clubs and i know our clubs are there for our children if you want to i can't speak madam chair i can't speak to the flyer i haven't seen it yeah so i would i know pastor rope will probably be more than happy to provide it to me i will tell you that while there have been some issues regarding our civil rights and equity guide that are
034fluid in the community right now based upon conflicting guidance both from the federal and state level we are following the direction of the memorandum that came out from our florida commissioner on education that's what we're currently following the existence of gsas in public high schools however while an equity guide can be fluid the first amendment rights of students are not as fluid public high schools including gsas have been projected under the umbrella of the first amendment equal access act for decades and at some point in this decade the 11th circuit also has ruled on this i can defer to miss davie bruno i think it's important for all parents when a student comes home with a permission slip to join a club and to be a part of a club to do as members spoke
035tonight to make sure they're diligent about what they allow their child to belong to how they go about researching it again i go back to every decision that we make with the child needs to be in conjunction with his or her family but his and her family must also do the research to make sure that they're fully vetted and understand what their child is joining for instance those of you in the audience who have juniors and seniors and you're doing and thinking about colleges and universities i humbly suggest that you visit every single one of them not just for the tour but you visit them of your own accord because your children will be going off to those places and you want to make sure it's an environment that supports you and the values that
036you've raised your child to through their senior year so again it's about diligence on the part of ourselves but it's also diligence on part of the consumer the student and their family thank you dr bernier and then again thank you for the information that was shared regarding the policies that are coming up as well so moving on and miss navarro we appreciate you coming and sharing with us we appreciate every every one of you so we are here to listen to what you have to say tonight we are going to move on to the approval of the consent action items the documentation for action items listed under consent is made available to board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all material and we have an opportunity to
037speak with the superintendent with any questions we have 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 the unfinished business table item portion of the agenda miss fisher i have no polls this evening thank you mr evanelli i have none ms patricka no thank you there's kittens i have none thank you miss vaughn i have none and miss morgan i have none and i have none thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda's consent action items with no can we have a motion to approve the agenda items i hope we approve the agenda items as spoken thank you thank you so
038much motion by miss kittens and seconded by ms fisher and please record your vote you need a hand vote miss morgan i miss vaughn i miss gittins aye ms patrick yes please mr evanelli i miss fisher i and i motion carries 7-0 dr bernier please introduce any administrators in attendance with a new assignment that were approved under the consent agenda thank you madam chair members of the board by your actions this evening you've appointed two new administrators into our school district and certainly changing of their roles i'd like to recognize the individual who will be joining us in the payroll department as the new director that's kevin calvi kevin brings a lot of experience with our system software and our software systems and payroll for those of you in the public they're not it's not
039just a ca it's not just a 10 key punch board anymore it's a lot of computer programming and coding and making sure we can go back to retroactively pay individuals kevin we're glad to have your services and wish you best of luck and we know you will do a great job there also you are appointing i think probably the most important position we have within our school district that i get to make a recommendation to you about and that is the people who lead our buildings i've said it before this is the ultimate level of trust this is putting the faith and trust in an individual to lead a school building to do what's right by the children that are enrolled there and to support our families and our children's trajectories towards their future i
040am very pleased to recognize and announce today that by your actions oak hammock middle school has a new principle his name is david howdy shell david has some experience both at ocamec as well as most recently the stero it's nice to see his estero family out with them as well as members of the ocamec family as well congratulations sir congratulations to kevin and david both i know you're going to do a great job if you'd like we'll take a minute we'd love to have you stay but if you'd like to to leave i we understand that as well you have a busy day tomorrow so we'll give you a few minutes if you'd like to and congratulations again give him another hand please moving on we have public hearings dr bernier please present your recommendations
041for this evening's public hearings items madam chair and board members we have several items this evening first is item 0.1 approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as palms classical academy the school will serve grades k-12 for a five-year term from july 1 2023 through june 30th 2028 with a projected enrollment of 895 in year one and a capacity of 1234. item 0.2 approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network doing business as a stereo classical academy the school will serve grades k-12 for a five-year term from july 1 2023 through june 30 2028 for the projection projected enrollment of 895 for year 1 and a capacity of 1234. madam chair and board members in compliance with the changes in the related rules and regulations and statutes
042and to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the following policies are being policies are being brought forward for board action the effective date of the five adoptions and the one revision shall be august 31st 2022 the policies are as follows are as follows 0.3 approval to adopt the 2022-2023 student progression plan 0.4 approval to revise policy 2.062 the parents rights bill zero point oh sorry 0.5 approval to adopt the policy 2.0621 student parent rights 0.6 approval to adopt policy 3.041 curriculum development 0.7 approval to adopt policy 3.051 program of instruction and finally 0.8 approval to adopt policy 2.35 student publications thank you we will now resist a regular school board meeting and open the public hearing items as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider dr bernier's recommendation as previously
043stated at this time the public will be invited to speak on these eight items the time allowed will be three minutes we will call i will call each item up and at that particular time you will be able to speak on that item so is there anyone in the audience who would like to address the board regarding the approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as palm classical academy is there anyone who would care to speak on that okay cnn we will move item two is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as a stereo classical academics academy i'm sorry is there anyone that wishes to speak okay cnn we'll move to
044item three is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to adopt the 2022-2023 student progression plan if there's anyone in the audience that would like to address that seeing none we will move on is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to revise policy zero 2.06 two parents bill of rights please come forward and please just state your name before speaking it'll be three minutes you're my request so this we'll be speaking only on this particular bill at this time exactly yes and miss roman you'll have the clock okay i had made my comments about this particular policy beforehand so at this time i'm requesting that the board consider those recommendations and they consider modifying the policy and come back after those changes have been
045made for adoption thank you thank you is there anyone else seeing no one else we'll move on to item 5. is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to adopt policy 2.0621 students parent rights if so please come forward tara jenner same as before made my comments in the earlier statements and i request that you consider not approving this at this time until those changes have been made or discussed amongst yourself and then consider updating it and approving it at that time after those changes are made and considered thank you thank you for policy sharon mcgill thank you board policy 2.0621 i've mentioned here before that i am in favor of parental rights but with rights come responsibilities and i think and for students as well your rights come with
046responsibilities and i think the title of this should be student and parents rights and responsibilities because throughout here it does refer to what the responsibilities are of some of these actions and on page two it would be line 54. it was stricken and i'm not quite sure why on educational decisions because what happens if you get a situation where you can't get the parents to agree then what happens but that paragraph was stricken and nothing was put in its place that i could see so that was a little concerning and let me see and in section g which would be line 144 it says career education courses involving hazardous substances and it specifically mentions safety glasses or devices so i'm assuming that would mean gloves or boots or anything like that would be necessary in
047the course of that technical training when it says devices and then number safe schools number c it would be line 614. says sex offenses including rape sexual assault or sexual misconduct with a student by school personnel wouldn't that be more appropriate to say district personnel and or other students because it could be somebody that is not necessarily at the school but as part of the district that could be part of that part of that safe school section and i think that might be it yep thank you thank you robert roper i have a few comments on this policy beginning on line 301 page 8 of 15. under educational choice should florida virtual school also be addressed in this it's listed on line 518 under d extracurricular activities but it's not listed here just a question
048on page nine begins the nondiscrimination policy and i would request that sexual orientation gender identification gender expression be removed and just allow sex and the definition of sex by state and federal standards be the definition because it seems to change and fluctuate depending on executive orders and governors deciding this and that would just be better to have that one word and let sex be designed defined by the courts this is warding that's not required by law as i understand it but it does allow for it under page 15 no keep on going here page 13 under instructional materials d parents have access to instructional materials there is one huge loophole in this policy and that is the teachers that have their own personal libraries within their classroom those books and instructional material are not catalog
049therefore they could be in a in against the law or against the governor's wishes and there would be no way for them to know it i'm not asking i'm not saying that they have anything nefarious in mind it's just that they wouldn't know it whereas things that go through the media centers are controlled and there's processes in place to make sure of that on the last page safe schools parents of the district students and students and students where appropriate will be timely notified of a sexual assault but and i know it's not this policy but i just want to point out the clarification policy 5.3111 mandatory reporting says it will be done within 30 days that seems to conflict to me i don't know i would think that you would want this 5.3111 to re
050immediately that's it thank you the next one would be item six and it is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to adopt policy 3.041 curriculum development is there anyone who would like to speak on that sand none we will move on to seven is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to adopt 3.051 program instruction please come forward and state your name thank you so let me redress this issue that i brought up on my comments earlier line 56 through 60 instruction in sexual orientation slash gender identity i take umbrage with a wording here why actually do students need to be instructed in sexual orientation as it says in line 57 or gender identity now i agree with the wording where it says more
051may occur in kindergarten through grade 3 which agrees with the legislative intent of the parents bill of rights or in line 59 that is not age appropriate or developmentally developmentally appropriate for students who's to decide that the student the teacher the parents in accordance with state standards in fs100 1.42 so again i just addressed the basic question why do the students need sexual orientation and gender identity instruction other than would be supplied in a basic health class about reproductive biology thank you thank you okay and the next item would be is there anyone who would like to address the board regarding the approval to adopt policy 2.35 student publications is there anyone that would like to speak on policy 2.35 okay cnn okay i will now close the public hearings and reconvene the regular school
052board meeting of august 30th 2022. dr bernier please restate your recommendations for this evening's public hearing items one at a time thank you item letter 0.1 approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as palms classical academy the school will serve grades k through 12 for a five-year term from july 1 2023 through june 30th 2028 with a projected enrollment of 895 year one and a capacity of 1234. thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves a standard charter contract with classical education network inc dba palms classical academy board members is there a motion to approve miss morgan i move we approve the second superintendent's recommendation for the charter contract with classical education network inc for palms classical academy thank you i'll second that thank you it
053has been moved by miss morgan and seconded by mrs fisher is there any discussion on this item see a nun please record your vote motion carry 7-0 dr bernier please restate your recommendation for item two item letter 0.2 approval of the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as a stereo classical academy the school will serve grades k-12 for a five-year term from july 1st 2023 through june 30th 2028 with a projected enrollment of 895 year one and a capacity of 1234. thank you've heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approved the standard charter contract with classical education network inc doing business as a stereo classical academy board members is there a motion to approve ms fisher i'll move the approval of the superintendent's recommendation to approve the charter contract with classical
054education network inc doing business as classic estero classical academy thank you may have a second i'll second it thank you miss swan it has been moved by mrs fisher and seconded by ms vaughn is there any discussion seeing no discussion please record your vote 7-0 motion carries dr bernier will you please do your recommendation for number three please item letter 0.3 approval to adopt the 2022-2023 student progression plan in compliance with the changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 31st thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt the 2022 through 2023 student progression plan board members is there a motion to approve this item morgan i move we approve the superintendent's recommendation
055to adopt the 2022-2023 student progression plan thank you second i'll second that hey miss fisher okay so it has been moved by miss morgan seconded by mrs fisher any discussion no discussion please record your vote so 7-0 motion carries dr bernier please continue to number four item letter 0.4 approval to revise policy 2.062 parents bill of rights in compliance with the changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 31st 2022 thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to revise policy 2.062 parents bill of rights board members is there a motion to approve i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation to revise policy 2.062 parents bill of rights thank you miss vaughn may
056have a second i'll second that thank you miss fisher it has been moved by miss spawn and seconded by miss fisher is there any discussion miss kittens is there any opportunity to address some of the issues that the public has presented regarding this that would be a question mr bruno regarding line 66 in this particular policy i believe that the concern was having prior added to the language line 66 of paragraph c is directly from the statute it specifically says parents will be notified if there is a change in their child services or monitoring i think it would be a little difficult to put prior because you need to have the change in the services first to trigger that provision in the statute so that's why it's worded like that and again this is direct
057language from the statute itself 1001.42 subsection 8c thank you mr prieber now and again as we went over all of these we definitely kept going back to the fact that we were using statutes when we were creating this these policies ms kittens did you have another any no that was that was my question that and if it's i guess if there's nothing you can do because it's statue then the statute thank you and mr jaminelli did you have something that addresses what i was hoping that she would explain the statute wording thank you thank you okay is there any other discussion see a nun please record your vote okay motion carry seven 7270 thank you dr bernier we're on to item five please letter 0.5 approval item letter 0.5 approval to adopt policy 2.0621 student
058parent rights in compliance with changes in related rules and regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 31st thank you okay you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 2.0621 student parents rights board members is there a motion to approve i'll move to approve on the superintendent's recommendation to adopt policy 2.0621 student parent rights thank you miss fisher i may have a second i'll second it thank you miss phone it has been moved by miss fisher and seconded by miss vaughn is there any discussion miss kittens basically the same question is the last one regarding the inclusion of constitution anyway just addressing what the community concerns were and i'm not sure if that it's something we can
059change or but just to address that the comment was made okay thank you again i'm going to go back to one when we were going over all these we i know we did do a couple changes and then we kept going back to what does the statute state that we wanted to make sure we were staying in for every single one of these policies we were staying with the state statutes i just wanted to and we will go to miss dupree bruno in a second i know miss so she can answer if there's any other questions miss patricka i was just i just wanted to address the public comment because i will say that i have read this language all education programs activities and opportunities offered by the district are available without discrimination on the
060basis of and then there's a list of things and that list of things really could be encompassed by saying on the basis of any human condition but it doesn't say that there's a list of things instead and i have thought to myself sex really does encompass sexual orientation gender identification gender expression but what is the harm in explicitly stating that this district will not discriminate on the basis of all of those things it's not encouraging them it is not in any way shape or form teaching these things it is simply saying that this district does not tolerate discrimination on that basis and for those reasons i wholeheartedly support thank you this policy as written thank you mr bruno the same the only thing that would add to what you stated miss jordan is with regards
061i think somebody had a comment about a strikeout and i believe it was paragraph 50 line 54. that was stricken now because the school district has to be very careful in being judged in a custody situation we don't want to make those types of determination that is really for a family law court so that's why that was stricken now to make it very clear that we are not the decision makers in those types of situations thank you any mistakes in listening to attorney dupree bruno and also miss patricka i tend to agree with more specifics keeps us out of questioning the definition of sex down the road that someone you know something comes up and someone decides well it just says sex and we have to interpret it at that time having more specifics is
062like interpreting it prior to any situations would would that be correct attorney bruno i think this is going to miss patrick's point is trying to be as inclusive in terms of the district's position on non-discrimination thank you is there any other discussion cnn please go ahead and record your vote okay 7-0 motion carries dr bernier please we're on number six please your recommendation item letter 0.6 approval to adopt the policy 3.041 curriculum development in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 31st 2022 thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 3.041 curriculum developments board members is there a motion to approve miss morgan i move we approve the
063superintendent's recommendation to adopt policy 3.041 curriculum development thank you miss morgan we have a second second thank you miss fisher it has been moved by miss morgan and seconded by miss fisher is there any discussion so in no discussion please go ahead and record your vote okay 7-0 motion carries and i just want to say real quick too these items that are coming before us that we're voting on we have seen these multiple times so just the fact that we're reading this once we have seen these multiple times before bringing it to you for the public hearing dr brunier number seven item letter 0.7 approval to adopt policy 3.051 program of instruction and compliance with the changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and promote transparency and accountability the effective date
064of this adoption shall be august 31st 2022 thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approved to adopt policy 3.051 program of instructions board members is there a motion to approve i'm respond i moved to accept the superintendent's recommendation to adopt policy 3.051 program of instruction a second thank you ms kittens okay it has been moved by ms vaughan and seconded by ms kittens is there any discussion miss fisher yes to the point that was made during public comment on 0.7 lines section d lines 57-60 instruction on sex orientation and gender identity may not occur is what that section says so i just wanted to clarify that thank you thank you miss fisher miss patricka and is that not a direct quote from statute attorney to pre-bruno if i may through the chair
065that is very specifically a direct quote from the statute i think what the concern was not the language regarding k-3 which is clearly forbidden pursuant to house bill 1557 florida statute 1001.42 subsection 8c what i think the concern was regarding the language of in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students that will be for fourth grade through 12th grade that is again something that is directly from the statute in addition the statute requires the department of education to provide guidelines into the definition of age appropriate and developmentally appropriate and we are awaiting those guidelines to be provided by the d.o.e thank you mr prieber are there any other questions cnn please record your vote okay motion carries 7-0 dr bernier please continue number eight please item letter 0.8 approval to
066adopt policy 2.35 student publications and compliance with the changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be august 31st thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 2.35 student publications board members is there a motion to approve i move we accept the superintendent's recommendation on policy 2.35 thank you may have a second a second thank you mrs fisher okay it has been moved by miss kittens and seconded by miss fisher is there any discussion okay cnn please record your vote okay 7-0 motion carries thank you okay we're moving on to other business which we have none so we're going to our member comments but before we start with member comments i am going
067to ask our guest to go ahead and speak so that way if she needs to leave she can leave and then that way we'll move on with ours and again lisa thank you so much for being here really appreciate you honey do you have anything to say just push that button and share with us yes i just want to thank the board of education for allowing allowing me the opportunity to be seated here with them tonight it truly is an honor and i greatly appreciate it as stated before my name is lisa martinez i'm a cadet colonel in the jrotc program for cape crew high school and i just have one concern i apologize if it is unrelated to the current events that we spoke about the seven period day that has been put into
068place for high schools in the lead district and i believe everywhere else i could be wrong i it is nice to be able to see all your teachers every day it gives you an opportunity to speak to them if you have any concerns pretty much immediately like as soon as you have them but i feel it kind of was a double-edged sword because on one hand yes you can see your teachers every day you can speak to them you can relate anything that you need to but on the other hand you are missing out on a lot of instructional time when you get into the classroom it takes quite a bit to get settled down and really immerse yourself into the lesson and i feel that the shortened time has made that even more difficult
069and i've spoken to some of my you know students some of my alumni and they also agree that it doesn't really feel like you have the opportunity to get into the lesson before you have to switch your periods that is all everything other than that is pretty good it's just you don't really get a lot of time to really focus in on your lesson well we really appreciate you sharing that and you are graduating this year correct yes ma'am and where where where are you planning on going i plan on going to cape coral technical college i plan on studying to be an optometric assistant great thank you of course thank you doctor would you care that i think the comments are well well taken and well received i think we have an adjustment moving
070from an eight about a four by four schedule to a seven period day i think their advantages and disadvantages any type of bell schedule but as we get the student advisory council up and running for the superintendent we'll dig deeper into these issues and see what we can come up with in order to reach a process and plan that meets the expectations not only of our community but more importantly of our best customer which is our students so thank you it's it's input and direct input like that we need and that honesty and approach is always well received don't ever change that because it's it's really the best way to communicate with people i appreciate it thank you so now we're going to continue on so you're welcome to stay here i don't know what
071your schedule is but i just wanted you to make sure that we heard you out first okay okay thank you and so we're gonna start on this end with miss morgan and continue down okay as i said to you all by email and spoke this afternoon about in the briefing is i'm going to offer a motion and i look forward to i hope i can receive a second and i look forward to the conversation that ensues i move the board impose a moratorium on all administrative organizational and personnel changes to legal services until the board has completed these responsibilities specifically an evaluation of the outcomes of the board's strategic decision on august 17 2021 to approve a new legal services organizational chart outcomes will include deliverables described in the august 17 2021 briefing measuring success
072and return on investment thank you so we have a motion on the floor and do we have a second i'll second that thank you miss fisher okay now discussion who would just anybody ready for discussion on this item that's kittens i guess i'll i'll start it off i my question about it is the concern the organizational chart or is the concern hiring other people i'm not quite sure what the specific reason for having a moratorium and we just hired someone and i don't know and maybe this is a double-edged question it was there a possibility of hiring someone else in the near future is that you know what brought this on i wouldn't mind looking at you know the organizational chart if that's something we need to do but i'm just not sure what what
073the moratorium would mean miss morgan if i may ask her yes please miss morgan i was not aware and am not well i was i am not aware because we got an email from the board attorney this afternoon i was not aware that there were some pending administrative recommendation or processes in in process this was specifically because i am concerned that the legal services team is not moving in a way that's consistent with the plan as envisioned by the board when we made the decision back in 2021 and i believe it's incumbent on us to have a discussion because questions have been raised about the quality of services provided questions have been raised about turnover questions have been raised about compensation etc so that's why i'm asking that's why i made the motion yeah finish
074then yes please i personally believe we've just hired well in the last couple of months we've just really staffed the legal department and i can't say that i totally agree with the fact that it's not producing what we said it should produce when all the changes in the staff are so new i almost feel like we need to give it an opportunity and what i heard this afternoon is the urgency because of the other you know situation that happened and that we may be shirking our duty but i still think we just hired the last person i think at the last meeting two weeks ago and to to say we're not delivering i just think it's way too soon i think if if that's a concern then maybe miss morgan if someone can bring up
075a time certain as to reviewing the status and seeing where we're at with it but i just think it's a bit unfair to finally get all the people that you need especially with the turnover i don't think we need to look at this as to who left and all of that before that's done for whatever reason this one and this one are gone and this is who we have now and this new team just started within the last few months and if we want to put something out there that we will review this within a certain amount of time i can go with that but just stopping whatever they're doing for whatever purpose i'm i'm just not quite sure i can can follow that okay miss market were you going to answer that question then
076i'll go to miss vaughn yeah so the issue is yes we have staff the question is are they providing the services that district staff need and i'm we have not asked the question we have had a significant decline in experience of legal staff and i think we need to understand what the impact has been on the ability of our staff to do their jobs especially if we're considering hiring more i'm concerned about the qualifications and experience that we're looking for in candidates so thank you for the opportunity to respond ms von okay there's a lot to unpack here more than just the actual motion that mrs morgan gave to us and she that she just repeated the first thing since it was just mentioned that i want to respond to is the staff turnover in
077in the legal department yes there has been a staff turnover however it seemed like there was a domino effect on this staff turnover when our prior staff attorney mr brian williams who now works in collier county i would say poisoned the way that we were looking at the legal department and i'm not i hadn't gone back to the meeting but the particular meeting but i specifically remember that there was maybe two years ago or less a time when there was a review for the board on well what does the board attorney do and what does the staff attorney do and there were some there were some issues and it came to light that the staff attorney mr williams was not sharing very important information including some some legal i'm not sure if there were lawsuits
078or or preceding some legal proceedings and the unfortunate upshoot from all of this is that in my view and i have actually even seen some emails recently that were sent this was by a request by a constituent that this that mr williams is still meddling with things in lee county unfortunately we had the development which again was very toxic mrs dupree bruno team mrs dupree bruno team mr brian williams that was toxic people took sides including board members took sides staff took sides i think it was a good thing to move for whatever reason that the people who left left this district from the legal team to remove the toxicity and while we're talking about that it wasn't just legal team where we had lots of people resign lots of long time people i also
079want to point out that not everything but a fair amount of this happened during a time of transition in this school district we had dr savage who was a an excellent interim superintendent but all of us knew as well as he knew that he was an interim superintendent and since that time we have had a change in administration and again i'm going to go back to the fact that it's not just legal team but quite a few even high ranking director and above people left the district looking at the change of our top administration in other words a new superintendent and so what i wanted to do and i actually told dr bernier in an email that i was going to ask him a question about meeting needs if if i may madam chair and
080one of the things is whether let's see i wrote i would be asking you dr brunir to weigh in on miss morgan's point of discussion whether or not the legal team organization meets your needs and secondly the board as we all know has basically three employees our board attorney our superintendent and our auditors the others these are people that are present superintendent hired so in talking about the lowering of the level that's that's not real good flowing conversation there but the declining level so to speak of and i'm just paraphrasing what you said miss morgan a background and experience this is something that our superintendent has signed off on as well so i'm just assuming because he's done an excellent job of bringing new blood which we desperately need here in lee county schools and
081actually the whole county but in lee county schools so dr bernier do you feel that at present the legal team is meeting the needs of you and your staff it's a different question than what you sent me you asked me whether i believed in the organizational structure of which i do i am happy to answer that question we're learning it does not matter to me what the structure is and i've worked under both formats where there's a board attorney and a superintendent's attorney and i've also worked under a format where there's a general counsel office with a legal law firm underneath the general counsel very specific to very specific needs i can work with either system so yes you're you're you're very right i changed it a little bit and i apologize for that so
082in other words you don't have a problem with the organization and i'm going to assume that you don't have a problem and this will be the end of my comments with recommendations that you have put forth for new i guess under your administration i think we've just had one new hire i believe i'm not positive so that's correct we've had one higher since i've been here we've placed it under my purview for the hire based upon your comments earlier that the board really has three employees they have a superintendent they have a general counsel and they have an auditing firm okay thank you those are my comments thank you miss fisher yes thank you back to discussion on the motion about the board imposing a moratorium on all administrative organizational and personnel changes to legal
083services i believe that ongoing monitoring is important when it comes to our board attorney and as superintendent bernier said legal services serves the staff right now according to cnbc job openings in 2002 july were over a million well done nearly double the amount of available workers so we are not the only people who are experiencing turnover where people are choosing to work at home or different modes of work which came to us the last two years with the pandemic etc so i would be reluctant to approve opposing a moratorium because the work of our legal team is important the work of the district has to continue and recur every day i know we have had turnover in other departments we're in a situation a change of flux we're short of staff across the board so
084that being said you know i think that we continue to get information from our legal team that is necessary and the work has to go on so although i agree with monitoring and being informed of the work of the legal team i would be reluctant to impose a moratorium at this time and if i may i'm just going to i went back and i looked at august 17th i read everything i watched the whole the whole meeting we actually and if this is about way of working it's not about individuals so i want to just make sure that's clear as well and when i watched that on august 17th 2021 it was stated in a year from that date time certain that we would come back here and re-evaluate and do all the measurements that
085was stated here the quality of legal services meet the district staff superintendent board's needs cost effectiveness i mean it's all listed on that meeting that we would come back a year from that date to discuss all of this if you look at the organization's chart and i know miss miss von loves organization charge she loves those when we're looking at those charts the last chart that we have that i could find was august 17th for the legal department and on that when i looked at that we still it is not correct the way it's written so that's something that we definitely need to address and make sure that is squared away because as it stands right now we have a staff attorney who's still underneath of the chief executive officer which is the superintendent we
086have there is no coordinator for of equity listed on here at all which is another part that we need so we have to correct this organization organizational chart to match what we are hiring for because as it stands right now we have the our general counsel two assistant board attorneys and a paralegal period that's on this side it's still separated so if we're going under the assumption that it's all one legal legal services and when i went back and we i listened to it again how everybody was going to do collaboration was a huge word on of that particular meeting how everybody was going to collaborate and work together on both sides which are still considered two sides and that we were going to make sure that you know we're going to measure and i'm
087sorry i'm looking at all my notes that i was writing measure success you know from that year with the attorneys that we had at hand which none of those attorneys are here at this particular time so i think we do need to make sure that we change this have this form changed to make sure that it fits the need of the legal team that mr pre-bruno is working trying to create so that way we can move forward but we absolutely have to have that and i even went back to you know we did another presentation january 11th which you know just spoke about the legal services and again it reiterated the what the attorneys were and their jobs the responsibility of those and again it's that was the two attorneys that we had hired which
088was mr hudak and miss zuk zuki and here again and miss schroed who's no longer here but we and that's still as a staffed attorney the coordinator of equity does not exist on that one either so i think we just need to to make sure that we are that we have the right organizational chart to match what is going on and that i think we need to do sooner than later so we can move forward and have have it match what the needs are i'm trying to miss kittens the question i have is there anything i mean we set out we set out the whole plan august 17th of 21 is there anything in the process or procedures that addresses if there are staff changes and i don't know if that's in there because basically
089the whole staff has changed so to follow through on what we said evaluating the process and efficacy and all of that it's impossible if the staff is all flipped around and changed so maybe we need to look at adding something in our process that if this happens we do this or we review that so anyway that's what i'm saying no thank you for that miss kittens and miss patricka so miss morgan when you discussed this afternoon i was thinking about the grand jury report at the same moment that you lifted it up because my concern in having read that and seeing the quotes that existed in the superintendent's evaluations versus what was said at the board table there was not a lot of alignment there and as i look at the evaluations that have occurred
090here of this board from this board of legal what was written on the paper does not remotely come close to matching what was said out loud at the table and so i think that needs to be addressed and i think the form that you're suggesting would address that really what what i what i see you asking for is the legal department currently meeting the needs of staff and i am not going to put dr bernier on the spot and ask him to address that question right now because i think that's more appropriate for a work session for the board so that data can be brought forth to show yes it is and if legal services are meeting the needs of staff how can we as a board support that if legal services is not meeting
091the needs of staff what changes can we put in place how can we fix that and what time frame will be used to come back and re reassess and re-evaluate i believe that's our job as as a board i believe that's our job in terms of why have people left the district ms fisher you indicated that more people are working at home but is that the case here in lee county like an article in a national news source doesn't necessarily address what's occurring in lee county and i think that if we were to have a discussion we could find out trends or information or data that came out of exit interviews that occurred with legal staff so that we as a board could address that as well not going to put anybody on the spot
092here today not going to ask for these questions to be answered but i do think it's important for us as a board to have this discussion and i will be supporting your motion okay i want to succinctly say three things and then add something first again there has been an administrative change major change in this district from a year ago and i too went back and watched the meeting and i'm very well informed on exactly what we said secondly a year or so ago we entered let's say we entered the new year we entered with a sense of optimism that this would be a better year in terms of a hiring pool it has not been and as a matter of fact it seems that it's gotten worse which was already which was already pointed
093out and yes i know a lot of people that work from home in in lee county another thing that we didn't know was going to happen and again i will be happy to provide the proof on this i don't have it with me but i will bring it we didn't realize that there would be a continuation of meddling in the affairs of the legal department of lee county schools from someone who left this system as a disgruntled employee and so i will not be supporting the moratorium and i'm going to add because i originally said there's a lot to unpack miss morgan brought in that grand jury report during our briefing and pointed out the members of the board who were dismissed relieved of their duties by the governor because they weren't doing their their
094duty so what i'm connecting here is that apparently somehow ms morgan thinks that we as a board might have the same fate as those four people in in broward county because somehow we're not doing our due diligence i'm sorry what happened to the due diligence for the past three years over things like contracts that never should have been passed audits that were voted down etc etc some of these things were mentioned by miss givenelli during the briefing so all of a sudden oh we're going to get removed by well i don't care i'm removing myself but oh well governor desantis is going to remove us we're not doing our due diligence here we're not following through we're derelict in our duty how did that become such a pressing issue about this one thing all of
095a sudden when for three and a half years there were plenty of very specific things that were never ever voted on by the majority of this board i find it extremely hypocritical i also find it part of a plan perhaps by a couple people on this board that never did like our selection of board attorney and i want to also remind you if that's the direction that this is going there is still a case pending and that was brought up i believe a couple months ago when this was first brought up so to me this is just another little curve in the road i didn't get to do it this way so let's do it hmm moratorium those are my comments thank you miss phone oh mr vanelli i haven't had chance yeah thank you
096okay so i will not be supporting this motion i think we need to be moving forward with allowing miss debris bruno to continue her hiring and making sure that she has the staff to have the legal team that she was aspiring to have because she's never had that chance that's the elephant in the room let's let her have a chance at it she's been undermined honestly before she actually was hired but won't go back that far we'll just stick with that she's been undermined for the past couple years and i can start a list i mean i don't have to start a list i can spout out a list and not been allowed to do her job as a board attorney because she's too busy doing things that have not been what she was trying
097to by one person directing her to do one things that the board has not directed to her to do therefore it's been difficult for her because she can't win she loses every time so let's let her have the opportunity to be the attorney that she's supposed to be and represent this board and the district and at the ethical way that she wants to do it she's not been allowed to sometimes and been strapped by obviously there's different opinions of law and some people try to undermine that even within what she's trying to do and just representing the district and the board properly so let's just go down the list because i do think we need to have the conversation of what this board has been derelict on our duties and i'm saying hour because we
098are a board and so even though when i voted no on many many of these things number one we have a roof and bonita that went over a million dollars that was installed improperly the huge mistake that we never addressed and that we just let it go and just hired another contractor to fix the original problem so that's over a million dollars we had a litigation with two employees that resulted over a million dollars one got 250 one got 750 and a reinstatement we were supposed to give them their job back so i don't know and that ironically the board attorney didn't even know about it until it got all the way all the way to mediation she knew nothing about it until a mediation that's a very long ways to know nothing about it
099that's because the staff attorney did not tell her about it nor did this board member know about it the same time she found out about it so let's that's just an example of her not being able to get the information to do her job adequately and represent the board properly let's talk about quadruple a school we bought a lot to build a school on on block lane oh but that's not where somebody wants to build the school anymore we purchased it we had we hired architect and they're going to get a design of it that was millions of dollars as well wasted that went out the window because the board didn't even decide on this staff decided this because we never even voted and i'll stay i'll take that one to the grave we as
100i guess the staff decided they liked three oaks better them and the village of estero did they liked it better so they went and we jumped over there abandoned block lane and went to three oaks property that was listed for sale listed for sale and we had an offer on it but that wasn't disclosed to the board either well not to this board member i can't say because i know board members were getting information that not every board member receives the same information it's prior administration i want to make sure that disclaimer's out there we didn't even vote as a board to leave block lane and go to three oaks that's a derelict of duties now that's not on the board attorney in fact she came in the tail end of that one so that
101can't be the board attorney's fault the list can go on i already mentioned things earlier that has nothing to do with the board attorney so let's let the board attorney and their staff do their job and allow them to where they don't have to keep looking over their shoulder worrying about what acts is going to drop tomorrow or next tuesday's meeting and i think that we'll have more productivity from that department when it's actually functioning as it's opposed to boo she was undermined from day one from the prior staff attorney and we all know that we witnessed it ourselves we saw it in a board meeting and i was in shock how unprofessional it was and she i looked over at her and she was surprised by it actually very surprised had no idea clueless
102is that her fault or is it this board's fault just saying so i say let's do what we voted to do in august of 2021 and stop this silliness unless also have a meeting and talk about our derelict of duties and how we got here and that has nothing to do and is not on even on this board attorney and i think that we'll see a lot of things change and things be will be different than they were in the past year if we can stop the undermining from another district and attorneys within the district that were undermining her by sharing information with staff and other employees and board members individually so that it i will love to make a motion tonight to move forward within the legal with our legal department as as approved
103by this board on august 17 2021 and then we can reevaluate that and set goals and we can have that discussion and i'm okay with that but no moratorium she needs the staff and the district needs these attorneys to get the work done and i don't want to be in the way of that we have we do have a motion on the floor that was given by miss morgan so we need to finish this thank you miss jaminelli but we're going to go back to miss morgan and then miss gittins so i just want to respond to a couple of things that have been said first of all dereliction of duty in the past is not an excuse for failing to do our job moving forward this is not about oh this is not about
104the my fear of being removed from office it is about the grand jury report was a reminder of what our job is and what is expected of us as constitutional officers i want to make it clear that i never have in the entire time brian williams worked in this district i never had a personal conversation with him i never had a professional conversation with him i have not had a personal or professional conversation with him since he left this is for me i'm just really disappointed in the i understand we need a legal team i agree we need a legal team i agree that we need staffing but for the legal team i'm just really disappointed in the low expectations we have for the kind of people that we're bringing in and i'm afraid that
105if future hires will just continue to be more legal aid more general practice more family practice lawyers we need people who can do government contracts and grants procurement construction we have we have all bonds we have all kinds of things outside the arena of just meeting the needs of students and their families and i'm just really concerned that we're overly concentrated in terms of skill set and we're basically using it's it's a legal team on training wheels and i'm just i'm very very concerned and i do believe we have an obligation to ask staff before we hire any more people in the legal department whether or not the change in legal services because the process that has been used by the process that's being used by the legal department to process documents has changed and
106it has had an impact on staff and we have to ask the question is this process better or has it slowed things down has it delayed work being done so i i think we have an obligation to the new superintendent to ensure that the quality of staff we are hiring experienced staff who can meet the needs of people in the operations department people in academic services people in hr and i don't think we've done that and i think we need to make clear that those are our expectations going forward so the i i'm sorry i know i'm wearing you out and i'll stop right there miss kittens okay a couple of points number one everyone agrees we need a legal staff and we cannot operate without one for any length of time at all as
107litigious as this board has become we cannot go without legal team and i believe everyone agrees with that the second point we already have hired and we approve through a vote the people that are sitting in the legal team now the time to have said you didn't agree with that would have been to restrain your vote of yes for hiring them but they were hired by a vote of this board so that say that constitutionally you can't interrupt morgan let her miss kittens go ahead finish please okay so that was point number two staff is already hired the third point is this i don't recall unless no one shared it with me the fact that staff is just so highly upset about the legal team that they can't get their work done if so why
108haven't we received that information has there been some type of a 360 or questionnaire to the departments that interface with the legal department to say that they have all these complaints i haven't seen them and maybe it was just kept for me but i haven't seen it so if that is the case we need to follow through those steps and find out who's being affected by the people that were hired two weeks ago who who's being affected by the people that were hired what a couple of months ago we cannot keep people here that don't want to be here we didn't fire people they left and we had to hire other people so it's just plain and simple we're not at a starting point we're at the middle and we've got to go forward or
109we crash and burn together we need a legal team whether we feel that they are competent or whatever which i and i don't know how you would how do you measure that what what is the proof that they're not competent because they don't have this degree of that degree so i just honestly i had to say that because i just think we need to stop and look at this on a realistic basis what we need who we have the job that has to be done and move forward thank you okay i am going to go ahead and i know ms fisher had her hand up and then i'm going to do one more round with miss fisher then miss patricka and then mr evanelli mr fisher please yes so i just want to say that
110the board is responsible for its three employees the superintendent the board attorney and the auditor period the day-to-day administration of the district and the evaluation of all other employees is done by the superintendent and his designated staff and again i'm just going to repeat that i would be reluctant to having a moratorium on any changes to legal services when we are it's a work in progress there is progress being worked worked every day i have gotten information more information than ever before when i've been on the board from from legal services we have grown we have had an increase in legal matters so there are so many variables here that i think although we need to continue to monitor and make sure that we as a board are doing our responsibility i think that we
111need to let legal services do their day-to-day job because i think as mrs ginton said we can't function without them right now and thank you thank you miss patricka and then mr evanelli i just wanted to say that in terms of the hires that have been made significant concerns have been raised at the table prior to those hires by some of the people who are making the positive supportive comments here so that's a little surprising we don't have the ability statutorily to deny the recommendation of a hire by the superintendent unless minimum qualifications are not met and there are a lot of comments by board members about minimum qualifications being met but lack of satisfaction with experience so is do you need to jump in just want to make sure you're microphoned ms morgan i
112wonder if you would be willing to remove your motion from the table if the board agrees to workshop this item asap if we could perhaps have through the superintendent ask dr savage to dr bernier through the superintendent ask dr savage to put give us that thing again with this as an item on it you know the list of things that we had to jiren i'm saying i'm sorry i'm not being very articulate about it's your list of workshop priorities thank you i'm hearing from your colleagues ms morgan that there is a sense that this is an important thing for us to do but i'm hearing a resistance to a moratorium so if we can all agree that this is something that needs to be discussed quickly because new hires are coming on board our legal
113services need are the needs of staff being met if so great how can we support that if not how can we direct the board attorney to improve upon that i think we can accomplish that in a workshop if we agree to prioritize it those are my comments thank you thank you and miss giovannelli i would be open to workshopping this item but i don't even see how we do that until she can get the staff that and i say she but actually dr bernier it would be his employee as well to get the staff needed to be able to see how this is gonna function there's that's never even happened yet that's that's the iron of an irony of it all is that she's never haven't had opportunity to have everyone in on the seats
114of the bus to accomplish the task at hand with the legal team through the chair i would like to ask miss morgan i i recognize that you didn't speak to mr williams but you told us in a meeting one time that you spoke to ms road so you were speaking to ms road and that's what start that's kind of what started all of this is the fact that their employees were being underpaid which turned out to not even be true that she wasn't even the least paid it was another employee so the information wasn't even accurate at that point in time when you brought this forward at one point in time so i mean and i just got to keep reminding i mean we need to look in the mirror i just don't even understand
115how we keep wanting to talk about having meetings to talk about what somebody else needs to do when we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing and i mean i can i can name one issue that has nothing to do with the board of attorney another one was our board auditor we went months without a board auditor that was on us they fired us i didn't fire the board they didn't fire the superintendent they didn't fire the board attorney they fired us and why we need to look in the mirror that's why it wasn't because of anybody else look in the mirror we had attorney we had an attorney leave he now is working in hr look in the mirror had nothing to do with miss dupree bruno she wasn't even here then are
116we forgetting are we are we really forgetting how about the fact that we didn't address issues when they happened with whistleblowing and all these i mean i named them earlier and i'm not going to dwell on them but i mean we had a sunshine case that we lost it wasn't even her fault that wasn't her fault look in the mirror i we need to have a meeting but not to talk about her and not to talk about a legal team we need to talk a bit about what we're doing and how we're gonna do our job by expecting accountability it doesn't need to start there it needs to start here not there thank you and i have to agree that we again with this organizational chart we need to have that so that way it
117addresses the legal department not i'm not speaking on an individual but just so the legal department is set up the way that it needs to be set up by an organizational chart and not the old one that does not explain how it's supposed to be so whatever is needed it needs to be on this organizational chart so that way we can move forward and the legal department services can be as it needs to be and i think we need to do that as quickly as possible because the last thing it was we were going to adopt the pinellas county model but this has changed so we need to make sure that this is what we need however this chart needs to look we need to make sure that it is it's appropriate and that one
118is not under the superintendent it is where it needs to be and the coordinator needs to be added to this chart so that way as we move forward we know who everybody is and where they need to be at so i think that needs to come sooner than later i'm sorry miss giovannelli i'm sorry for one more thing i wanted to say was i mean really if we keep having meetings like this what attorney wants to come and work for us when we keep doing this really who who does i mean have we thought about that it's not because we're operating like a well-functioned board thank you and again i'm going to keep saying it's the way of work not the individual's way of work and what we need to how we need to have
119this organized miss vaughn and i think that's your last time okay yeah and i think madam chair that when you're talking about the coordinator i believe that's the position that mr hudak was in and then he moved from that position into the legal department so that's why that's the way it is but anyway that's i just wanted to say that frankly i'm a little concerned that mrs morgan chose to say that our legal department is a legal department on training wheels but i guess i shouldn't be terribly surprised because it's analogous to how mrs morgan viewed several of us when we came on the board and perhaps still sees it sees us that way i want to add that piggyback off what mrs giovannelli has been saying and what i said prior to this that
120all of a sudden it seems like you know when our derelict in our duties on this one issue when there have been so many issues and like mrs giovanelli said this afternoon i sleep well because i know where my votes were for over three and a half years and frankly i never needed to read a grand jury report to be reminded of my constitutional duty and finally to pick up and respond to what mrs morgan said as a board we have the obligation to our new superintendent to ensure that we have the best possible hires no we chose dr bernier for one of the reasons was we trust his judgment and i have not by the selections that he has made and selections that he has discussed with me and i'm assuming the rest of
121you and the one-on-ones i believe that he continues to find the people that will be the best that we can get here in in lee county i have every confidence in that but you know sometimes again we have the this job market we have our budget i'm not i'm not sure what the market rate is on you know maybe an attorney that another scold district can afford to hire you know this is fort myers this is not a metropolitan area we're not jacksonville or miami or tampa this is lee county it's it's it's a different pool that we're pulling from and it seems like our very top attorneys that are here and i'm didn't i hope that didn't come out wrong because we have some excellent attorneys here but i'll bet that if they took
122a look at you know they took a look at the salaries we are able to offer versus their own success their own firms and all of that they're they're not going to they're they're not going to trade i'd be very i'd be very surprised and so i would say our obligation is to support our superintendent in the searches and you know we may have to continue for a while to do that out of the district the people that we've had people like john quick and some of the other attorneys that we have come to rely on and hopefully now that dr bernier insists on these positions being advertised for more than five days for 10 days and if nobody turns up then let's do it again and let's do it again i'm all for finding
123the top-notch people but i'm not for a moratorium and i'm not for criticizing and insulting the team that we have right now in the legal department final words on that thank you i guess i'm going to go back to miss morgan if i know mr patrick had asked you a question regarding your motion so i will make a couple of comments and then i will talk about the motion thank you if this is about setting high expectations to the people we hire let's be clear dr bernier has not been involved in the hiring of the people for legal services he's brought the recommendation forward now if this board is going to tell dr bernier that he has the ability to say to his colleague that he does not accept her recommendation based on the needs
124of his staff then that is that is something you know i think we can talk about dr bernier comes to us with resumes for people he plans to hire he tells us if there are issues that he thinks are associated with a particular hire he tells us if there are concerns that he has about a posting we all know exactly what it is that he is doing when he is looking for stuff what the qualifications are what the experience is i don't we don't have that experience i think we need to have the same expectation for both of our employees when it comes to the recommendations they make for staff now having said all of that i if the board is willing to conduct a workshop and have a real conversation about where we're going
125and how we're going there i am i will be i will remove my motion okay thank you and i think that we are definitely looking forward to having that conversation moving forward so thank you for that miss morgan so the motion has been removed does it have to be seconded and does that miss the pre-burner does that need to be seconded the removal or she can just she the maker of it can remove it withdrawal okay thank you so the motion has been withdrawn at this time and dr bernier we will work together to get something scheduled so we can get the organizational chart and everything on a on the list i can share with you that we've had several conversations about organizational charts they've already been scheduled monday for cabinet for all the chiefs
126to go through there because we're also getting ready for an onboarding process with additional board members so we have to have those ready i always have looked at october and march as times of the year where we review our org charts make sure they're up to date so that we go into the fall with complete org charts we go into the spring and then into the summer with complete org charts and if there's major shifts during the summer because some summers will create that depending on whether district staff leaves to go become school-based personnel we would update them again so we will put a regular rotation into our chiefs reviewing their org charts making sure that they're accurate sending them off to graphic arts so that the graphic arts department can make them all identical
127in terms of the way they look and typeface and everything else and make sure those happen so that's already underway i will tell you that i'm not really sure based upon the board's discussion what you want me to schedule i have to be completely candid i've heard two very different approaches to what that meeting would be about and i think we should probably take some time in one-on-ones to have some discussion about assessment of him all employees what i'm doing with my chiefs what you're doing with me what your plan is for kathy dupree bruno i know she also meets with you i think it would be vital for her to have those conversations with you as to what your expectations are for her assessment she does have a pending 360. we are in the
128process of finishing that we have a meeting i believe tomorrow we have a we have zoom meeting set up tomorrow to continue with that process so i'm i'm just looking for some clarification from the board as to what i'll schedule anything and i'll get it to you as quickly as possible but i would like to know what you would like to workshop and what you would like staff to prepare about one of the people that is my i was stated very well one of the people that in this organization is my colleague she is not my direct report and that is i believe that is understood that she is not that she is your colleague however the agenda is yours and so you know we have to go through you to make sure that we
129have that what is needed what the board is asking for to be put on there so i believe that part of that was we have to have the organization charts which we spoke about that so that way it's matching the way of work and we're not talking about individuals it's the way of work i keep on stressing that because it's not about a person it's about a department and so that is one of the things that i think miss patricka you had mentioned please could you repeat what you had mentioned because i is the legal department currently meeting the needs of staff to include the superintendent and his staff if so how can we support that if not what plans can be put in place to address this wait a minute also there why are
130people why have people left the district the legal department specifically is it because people prefer to work at home is it because they're getting better paying jobs elsewhere what were the results of the exit interviews that were conducted i think i did mention the fact that what's been stated publicly at the table does not match up with board attorney evaluations but i'm not sure that we'll get anywhere by discussing that i don't think that addresses the issues that were raised in ms morgan's motion thank you and then miss juvenelli i know you had stated some items with this as well yeah well so i just want to try to make sure that it's clear of what the ask is the budget too the budget where do we stand in terms of legal's budget do we
131have our arms as a board around what that budget is yes mr vidalia yes well it was discussed so we brought in the grand jury report recommendation and that was discussed so how do we bring that back in because i think our way of work if we go back and look at that our way of work might be a little more simplified and you know i feel like the reason why some of these some most employees laugh most pretty much from all is because of the direction of the district that ms bruno is taking us down which is a road of ethical listening to the people and doing what the people say and with that comes resistance resistance from the district and some members on this board and i love the ethical ethical policy and
132the whistleblower politic policy that she put in place that took a long time to even get and then when we got it was used against her and board members so that had to be tweaked quite a bit but at a point where we had these investigations that were honestly a waste of our money because we the board didn't look at the situation and direct and address that and we allowed for drama at the table about things that weren't even true like that there was a there was a law investigation being put on one of a public constituent that wasn't even true unfounded and it wasn't i mean so it goes on so how do we address that is what i guess the question is how do we address how we're how we're acting the way
133it works because we're not doing it thank you so dr bernier excuse me i'm sorry some suggestions as well you didn't ask me to repeat mine please miss gittins thank you i just don't want him to be just so over please pertaining to this thank you i need to say something really quickly i was going to leave it until the end but i do need to say until november i'm still here and i'm still a vital part of this board i was elected until november of 22. so some of the things then the ways that people are going are just not going to fly with me i'm not going anywhere until november and my comments and my input is just as vital as it was in november of 2018. so i just need you all
134to know that i think i apologize because i was looking that way so i apologize so please we will go into that as to how many times you've apologized but i had suggested earlier about and i asked the question what staff comments had we received no one addressed that you went back to miss patricka and she mentioned what she said i asked the question what staff i said no one has told me unless they've told everybody else so why don't we have that information before we sit down and have a workshop of which we only have a little bit of time left to have the workshops that are necessary before the new board comes on so i mean if that's the what you're trying to do is to wait for the new board but some
135of the issues that have been put out there i was a vital part of and i really would appreciate being a part of the solution of those same items so to add another workshop means to take away something that we've already said we need to get across the finish line before november so that is my statement on that i also mentioned the possibility of having a protocol stating how we shift gears if there are changes in the staff and that was something i would like addressed as well thank you is there anyone else miss vaughn no i have five okay thank you and miss patricka and i just want to ask if i can do my board member comments next because i promised a constituent that i would raise an issue and you all know
136i have a hard stop at 8 55. so i'm sorry but thank you mr patricka dr bernier sorry i'm i'm sure do we have the gist of it i have a lot of information that i will make sure that i circle back with you and we have a discussion thank you i appreciate that okay so seeing that has been withdrawn we miss morgan did you have any other comments i have lots of comments but i'll save them for our next meeting thank you and does anyone mind if miss patrick goes second because she is going to be leaving is there is that okay with the okay i just want to make sure i'm asking everybody patricka so regarding the gsa's we all received an email about gsas and i wanted to if i could direct
137some questions to the board attorney through the chair about students first amendment rights how the existence and conduct of gsas is protected not just by and these are my impressions i may i may be very wrong but it's my understanding that students have a first amendment right to form and engage in the activities of gsas and that there is some statutory protection for that as well and the creation of student-led religious groups is receives the same protection as a student-led gsa is that accurate legally number one number two do all parents have to sign a permission slip for all activities that our students do through their schools including a gsa those are the questions that i can remember right now i'll pull up the email and tell you if there are others please mr pre-bruno
138thank you madam chair 20 usda section 471 is a federal law it is basically the denial of equal access prohibited and specifically refers to these types of situations it is unlawful for any public in it says secondary school but our 11th circuit has applied it to even to middle schools that receive federal financial assistance and which has limited open form to deny equal access and limited open form in this particular circumstance would be clubs to deny equal access or fair opportunity to or discriminate against any student who wishes to conduct a meeting within that limited open form on the basis of the religious political philosophical or other content of speech at such meetings that has then been reviewed by our 11th circuit which is the federal court for our particular jurisdiction there are two cases
139that you should be aware of one is carver middle school gay straight alliance versus the school board of lake county florida that is an 11th circuit case that basically adopts 20 usca 4071 and then there is also a district court case from the 11th circuit in federal court not 11th circuit but within that federal court system which is the gay straight alliance versus yuli high school school board of nassau county so within the state of florida is pretty well settled law that you can have gsas if the students request it they follow the appropriate process it is not a violation of law and the other question that you had was patricka no i will just say that i understand or at least the gist that i get from some of the public comment that comes
140forward is that there's a resistance to the speech being conducted in this these gsa clubs i don't i don't object to the speech personally but therein lies the responsibility of the first amendment you know we have to tolerate speech that we don't necessarily like because the first amendment protects everybody's right to say it unless that speech puts someone in immediate harm or you know somehow would hurt them immediately so i you know i said that i would raise the gsa issue and during my board member comments i have fulfilled that duty thank you very much i'll stay as long as i can to hear what everybody has to say thank you thank you i am going to go continue back here with ms bond please i think the only thing i had a few other
141notes but i did want to share my experience with a ga gsa group at astera high school i went there a year ago i was i know the lady who's i'm not sure if i guess sponsor would be the right right term i know her and i was very respectful and said well ask the members of the group and they were happy to have me come and observe their club and i'm i'm not sure what kind of mental images go through the heads of some of you and i have no idea what mr roper was talking about with that kind of frightening looking i i don't know anything about that but i just want to tell you it was a fairly small group of students high school students maybe students i can assure you that
142the sponsor was there the entire time as a matter of fact as a former teacher and knowing the responsibilities that we have in our schools i cannot imagine that any principal would allow a group of kids just to congregate in a room and have a meeting without an adult present so i'm gonna put it out there that yes there will be as a matter of fact there was there was there were two adults present because there was another teacher that was interested in helping with with this club the meeting that i went to actually it was it was interesting to me there was a short presentation i believe the young lady was the president or the chair of the club she gave a short i don't know if you could call it not really a
143lesson but an overview about pronouns and some of the terms which are still i'll admit very confusing to me and i think a lot of people think oh this is just for those who identify as lgbtq individuals no it's not it is also for those people that support this particular group or have you know whatever kind of interest as it turns out my friend former colleague after the meeting told me that a student that i had talked to for about five minutes near the end of the meeting was in fact transitioning and she my friend the sponsor mentioned that this that this young lady who was transitioning to identifying as a male had her had her parental had parental support and she just told me that and the kids were very open and free and
144the thing that impressed me the most and again this was a mix there was at least at least one transitioning several several students that were lgbtq identifiers and others that were just interested and wanted to be supportive and there they were so good and kind to each other as part of the meeting they had like a circle and in in the circle and i can't even remember the issue there was a young boy he looked like he was probably a freshman that was experiencing mental anguish and the empathy and the support that those students gave to this young man were just really heartwarming because kids can be mean to to each other so i think in this particular case and i can't say that every school has a group that was as impressive as this
145group and i actually i've been invited back again this year and when i was at the when fgcu had all the thing they had last year the 25th anniversary celebration there were some tables for some of the groups and there was this one student oh ms vaughn now i remember and it was somebody that i'd actually met in in that group and so that made me made me feel good that this individual remembered me and i got to talk to some of the people in in similar parallel groups that attended fgcu and it was it was very interesting so anyway again i can't guarantee that every school has a group that mirrors my experience but i thought that i would share that just so those of you who have visions of a of a bunch
146of kids coming parading in with cat ears and tails and in drag or i mean no it's and i only say that not to insult all of you but back in the days when i was on the election the campaign trail i did have very brief couldn't even call them conversations but words thrown at me from some people that had just very very mistaken ideas and so just keep your keep your minds open is what i is what i want to say and realize that you'll you'll get the whole gamut and and i would put the big bet down that every single one of the gsa clubs like every other club that we have at our schools have an adult there and if they don't shame on the principal or whoever is watching because you've
147got to have an adult there and that's all i'm going to say for tonight i've had a lot of other stuff i said already thank you for sharing your experience miss vaughn miss kittens i'm glad i'm going after miss vaughn because when i taught at lehigh senior high school and there was a gay straight alliance club and i agree with her people have these visions of what goes on in the gsas and it is not like that at all the kids really are so supportive of each other and very kind and considerate of each other that it draws other kids to that to that are not gay gay to come just because it's such a inviting and loving and i know some of you are saying yeah that's how they get them but that's not
148what we're talking about we're talking about the kids especially middle and high school are looking to belong and to just feel okay and they the one that was at lehigh senior i don't recall them having a lot of presentations and speeches and i mean they played games and music and had food and they had a little meeting to talk about what they were going to do for activities or that type of thing i was i too was appalled that the flyer that you had i don't know where you guys get some of the things that it's like we have all of these schools and suddenly there's this one and you're able to find this one out of all of the things that are going right i it just it baffles me but anyway but if
149it's going on in one just don't assume that is everyone don't assume that because this flyer says this over here that everyone is that way and miss von is very very correct if you work in a school the and the superintendent and everyone else and you will back this up you cannot leave a room of kids they cannot meet by themselves so you end up with kids begging you oh miss will you please sponsor our club you know we want to have a hacky sack club and we can't find a sponsor would you please sponsor our hacky sack club and basically all you do sit there while they play hacky sack but they have a sponsor because they must have an adult present so there's not the time that the kids are just in there
150doing all these nefarious things i you know i just wanted to to add that and i have visited other clubs and i think sometimes kids just want to be kids and they just want to you know play games and eat cookies and soda and just be together and feel not pressured or or judged or bullied by the fact that they walk a certain way or talk a certain way and i've seen those groups that are just kids just being themselves i don't really have anything else to say except to remind you and i will remind you at every meeting that i am here until november and thank you thank you miss kittens trick already went miss giovanelli please i just have a quick statement real quick as a wife of a local police police officer
151i was very troubled over what occurred at the estero high school the phrase back the blue was painted on a parking spot by a senior only to be painted over by the school staff the lee county school district most certainly backs the blue as we are in a partnership with our local law enforcement officers i would like to thank the senior for choosing a phrase that supports our local law enforcement and say that i am truly sorry for what occurred and was disturbed by the manner in which the spokesperson for the district resorted to blaming her versus committing to investigate and rectify the situation unfortunately it was a missed opportunity this could have been used as a teachable moment for our students and for the community as well as our law enforcement and parents and
152staff we are we are show are we really showing freedom of speech are we picking and choosing what can be spoken this really concerns me tonight i would like to ask some questions which occurred to me why the phrase was painted over and why i'm not satisfied with the statement made by the district or the misinformation that was given to the media i am requesting that the following five questions be answered that i will be given the opportunity to ask these questions as well and these are just really food for thought where adults slash school staff present in the parking lot when the seniors were painting these spots was a student contacted by the school before her slogan was painted over how many parking spots were painted over is the phrase back the blue allowed
153on clothing backpacks etc at school at estero high school per dress code who gave the instruction to paint over the statement back to blue i was disturbed because you know we talked tonight about freedom of speech and yet we want it one way but we don't want it the other way we pick and choose what's freedom of speech and freedom of speech is for everyone all in all means all and i will as i sit here tonight i will always represent all children no matter what thank you and miss giovanelli okay thank you miss fisher yes thank you and i'll be brief thank you miss giovanelli first of all i want to say thanks to cadet colonel lisa martinez for being with us this evening and for her statements sharing information from the student perspective
154i also would like to recognize the cape coral high school jazz band under the direction of ed ortega it was very good and always a nice way to start the meeting i just want to once again recognize the phenomenal work to support academic proc progress secure additional funding for schools teach life skills improve behaviors and eliminate food insecurity being done by our healthy living collaboration that's food and nutrition services environmental ed competitive grants and health education in partnership with u f ifas cte ag programs community gardens etc they really make a difference and the people who are doing the work are phenomenal finally i just want to thank our students staff and stakeholders for being a part of the lee county school district team thank you thank you ms fisher and i would just like
155to thank lisa as well she stepped in we had another student who was supposed to participate with us this evening and that's what she jumped in and was honored to come up here and sit down so i really appreciate the fact that she did take her time to come and be a part of us i also appreciate all the public comments that came of the people who came in today and all the comments of the are the board members this evening and i actually have no other comments to make this evening mr free bruno do you have any comments i do i have three on brief comments i did hear from the audience that there was some concern about a title ix guideline i think it was referenced as biden's title nine guidelines from the
156us department of education with the date of september 12th i just want some to provide some clarity that date of september 12th is when public comments for that particular guideline is due that's the final date and it's my understanding that there's if not over a hundred thousand nearly a hundred thousand comments thus far on those guidelines and the department of education has to respond to each one of those guidelines so september 12th is not the date that regulation will become effective the other thing is i do want to thank i think she's still here tammy scott who is our neola liaison for academic services and her team that gets up on mondays at 7 30 in the morning to review these policies and dr spiro and his team that's why we have these policies come
157to final fruition tonight so thank you so much academic services for your support and getting these policies done these fire policies as you will excellent job and i also want to thank shayna zupke for working with our staff in those negotiations for those two charter school contracts i know that you had a lot of negotiations with miss donaldson in particular with her attorney and the other attorneys that were involved in that negotiation so thank you for landing those two charter school contracts for the district and that concludes my comments thank you thank you mr bruno dr bernier just a few things just to remind everybody about the town halls that begin on september 1st september 8th and september 15th really looking forward to being out at the elementary schools and engaging with the community yes
158children are welcome children are the purpose of our work so children are always welcome at the events september 1st a reminder to the board originally we did have a work session planned for in between the two meetings but since the meetings are back to back by how august ends and how september begins with the labor day holiday forthcoming that september first work session has been canceled it's not been postponed it's been cancelled that being said a reminder to all as we go into the weekend both to our staff and our parents it's a great opportunity to reconnect with our children over a three-day weekend set those expectations for school and for staff an opportunity for them to relax and rejuvenate and be ready to go because we have a long haul once we get back
159from the labor day weekend lastly i still want to make the statement that we stand by our law enforcement partners this is what i said at the last work session and the briefing today would be the last time i make this comment but i really do appreciate everybody in law enforcement what's transpired and what this givenelli is asking about are excellent questions we will get those answers to those questions but i want to know that what transpired is not reflective of the overall belief of the school system and how we value our law enforcement partners they are incredibly important to our safety and they do amazing work day in day out whether they're a school resource officer a person in our board meeting or a gentleman or a lady patrolling the streets finally i am
160remiss sometimes when appointing people and not recognizing the value of their family i know both appointees tonight have very strong backgrounds and great support systems at home and i just know that some of those people were present so in case they are still listening and they've come up from their ice cream bowl this is the opportunity for me to remind them i have reached out via email to them to to thank them and their families but really important to understand the sacrifice that family members make for individuals who join the education profession whether they're a bus driver a teacher or a assistant principal principal or one of the executive staff we're not home a lot and our families know that and they know our commitment to our children and sort of the calling that we
161bring to this profession so i want to once again thank the team for their work and all of our team members within the school district of lee county i love when i got here the hashtag we are team lee we truly are and we're blessed to have the individuals who work for us so i'm looking forward to closing out this evening and closing out the week looking towards the holiday and looking forward to getting all of you the answers to your questions so we'll get those taken care of as soon as possible thank you dr bernier our next scheduled meetings of the board on tuesday september the 7th we will be there will be a board briefing at 1 pm followed by a special action meeting at 505 pm and a regular meeting at 6
16200 p.m at this point having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objection this meeting is adjourned and the time is 8 59. you