School Board Action Meeting: August 31, 2021

001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of august 31st 2021 is now called to order the time is pm we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public 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 this evening's agenda includes invocation pledge of allegiance resolutions public comment consent items which include three items under board office which are good cause as a chair the three items for good cause three items for good cause are approval of the first round kennedy interview via zoom with second round interviews being in person and travel expenses reimbursed for the second round in person superintendent search candidates

002the maximum amount for the three candidates is not to exceed ten thousand two approval of the 60-day process and timeline as presented three approval of the superintendent's search advertisement and advertisement locations with a not to exceed amount of 1 724 as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add these three items to the agenda two items under executive services seven items under academic services one item under business services nine nine items under human services four items under operations three items under attorney recommendation which two are good cause mr bruno please provide an explanation for these two items thank you madam chair the first is with regards to the don't have my script but the first one i believe if you just give me a second madam chair thank you thank you sorry about

003that the first one is with regards to the designation of the sergeant-at-arm for our executive director of safety and security and this will allow our if the board approves the sergeant-at-arms to be able to identify individuals and provide them with warnings as well as remove them from meetings if it's necessary and the second good cause item is with regards to allowing the superintendent or their designee to implement safety measures during board meetings and this will require any safety measure that the safety and security officer or the superintendent believes is required including searches as well as wanding and any other measures that are required thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add these three items to the agenda three items under public hearings and foreign items under other business board members

004is there a motion to adopt the agenda madam chair may i add something to the agenda before we adopt it yes may i add to item n which is unfinished business tabled items item c2 from yesterday's agenda which the board never acted on and technically it's still on the table but by adding it to unfinished business tabled items we can leave it there and at the end of tonight's meeting if no one pulls it from the table it dies i'm sure may ask would see too here d2 was from yesterday's meeting with regards to adopting any guidelines that the board wanted to adopt the board had a discussion yesterday but there was no motion or anything that was made because the superintendent had made a recommendation but there is still an item that was part

005of that agenda so if the board based on what ms patricka is requesting to add that to unfinished business if the board chooses not to remove it from the table then the item basically would die okay i'm sorry but i don't know what that extra item is it was the item from yesterday's special action meeting which was to adopt guidelines regarding board policy 1.181 no action was taken by the board with regards to that item so the board member is requesting that item be added to untabled business unfinished business and again if no board member removes it from that section of the agenda then the item will die so do i have you've heard miss patrick's motion i move to adopt the agenda with the good cause items and with the amended item n and

006do i have a second i'll second that okay and then discussion are you calling on me for this yes miss miss i just think it's superfluous i think it's unnecessary we had this discussion yesterday at two different meetings that was discussed we heard from the public it was determined that the superintendent has the right and the authority to make the decision and if it wasn't brought up yesterday i think we the time has lapsed for it and we should move on is there any other discussion on this i just want if i could explain i don't intend to take any action the problem is we concluded last night's meeting without addressing an item that was approved by the board the the board approved an agenda to include item c2 we never addressed item c2 as

007a result that item still lays on the table today as we're at this meeting by putting it in n unfinished business tabled items and allowing it to stay there it will properly die this is simply a rules issue it's a procedure trying to address the rules issue bruno it's a procedural issue okay so there are no items that are just out there outstanding right since it's a motion though we have to have other comment no this is a ministerial act you guys are just talking about your agenda all right miss miss fun okay do we have something written so i know exactly it was the approval of the guidelines as discussed by the board and what it was it was after our discussion regarding the discussion where are those there are none there are none

008we had the discussion yesterday for the policy 1.181 right which the superintendent reinstated we had our conversation about that discussion we had public comment about it and then there was approval of the guidelines as discussed by the board we did not do the approval of that of the discus discussed items which was on it's it's written down so that's why she wants to move it on here so we can clean that clean that up all right i just wanted to be really clear on what i was approving or not approving that's that's what it is so it will move it there and it will be clean am i correct in that mr prieberno yes it's really just a procedural matter thank you okay i'll get it okay would you may i ask that please attorney

009dupree bruno just kind of clarify and one love some what this is doing and what it will do please so basically we'll add that item to the agenda under unfinished table matters if no board member actually removes that item from the table then it will just die nothing will happen but there is the possibility if it's on an unfinished business that someone can bring it up for discussion correct if someone wants to remove it from the table absolutely so can i have a vote if there's no other comments if i could please have a i'm miss thomas do i need to do can you raise the motion please mr chica could you please adopt the agenda with the good cause items and the amended item end hey miss thomas do we is it on here

010for us to vote thank you so could you please record your vote i'm sorry the voter i have is approval of the agenda as order of business is that it's the amended well it doesn't say amended but anyway okay so seven zero motion passes miss patricka will introduce her guests for the invocation after which miss kittens will lead us in the pledge of allegiance ms patricka please introduce your you guests do you have a guess you want to introduce okay okay i believe rabbi luna is on the phone if we could stand for the convocation invocation my bad rabbi luna received an m.a in hebrew literature and ordination from hebrew union college jewish institute of religion in new york city in 2011. she currently serves as rabbi of temple bethel in fort myers rabbi luna

011is blessed to share her life and her hus with her husband and her two young daughters rabbi luna thank you so much for indication i'm honored to share an invocation from the jewish tradition almighty god now more than ever we thank you for the health and strength to come together this evening for the sacred task of engaging in the needs of our community god our community is in dire need of compassion of unity of respect and of love for each other help us to remember your essential commandments love thy neighbor may our discussions and decisions made this evening honor this sacred obligation so that we live up to your call to love and care for one another when we speak to each other with respect and dignity we answer your call when we truly listen

012to heartfelt cries for help we answer your call and when we do everything in our power to protect and safeguard the health of all of our neighbors god we answer your call elohim blessed are you eternal our god ruler of the universe who makes us holy with commandments and calls us to engage in the true and deep needs of our community amen thank you rabbi luna miss kittens i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one liberty and justice the next item on the agenda is public comment mr bruno please address the item of public comment thank you madam chair good evening school board policy provides the opportunity at this point of the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this

013meeting'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 in the back if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff located in the hallway outside of the boardroom the rules concerning public comment are posted and will be made from the microphone in the back where the stanchions are please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing

014or display of temper are prohibited speakers may not address board members by name and personal attacks against individual board members the board as a whole the superintendent or the district staff are prohibited speakers who fail to proper to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there will be one warning and we ask that you govern yourself accordingly we will take recesses as necessary if there is not decorum in the chambers please remember that is it is unlawful and a second degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the school board meeting for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20.

0152 minutes if there are 30 and 1 minute if there are 31 or more the maximum time allowed it for public comment is one hour 60 speakers you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective board please state your name whether you live in lee county and if you have a student attending one of our district public schools prior to making your comment i will call your names five speakers at a time please follow the staff's direction in lining up in madam chair we have 30 speakers this evening okay thank you please make sure you have completed a public

016comment card if you have 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 david newlin as the executive director of safety and security or your designee for this meeting and future meetings i ask that you assist the chair and parliamentarian in providing warnings to members of the public and removing individuals for violation of violations of board policy 1.11 in addition if there is not decorum during this meeting i will call for a five-minute recess we will continue to reset the meetings as needed increasing five minutes each time members of the day is when a recess is called i ask that you leave the chamber of course it goes without

017saying that during the recess board members will not discuss any matter that is pending on the agenda or will come before this body to avoid any sunshine violations i will reiterate what miss duprey bruno just said in that it is unlawful and a secondary degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with a school board meeting we would appreciate it if you would state your name whether you live in lee county and if you have children in our schools prior to making your comment mr pre-bruno please proceed with public comments thank you when i call your name please line up danielle hagman amy french denise nystrom christy divijelli robert daniels speakers ready oh thank you i apologize for the delay he's bringing it good evening danielle hagman here on behalf of the lee county democratic caucus

018i live in lee county i have two kids in lee county school district i'd like to begin first by thanking the board i know you guys are in an impossible position pretty much day in and day out shuttle back and forth between the powers above and the people below i don't envy your positions but i'm glad that you're here in them trying to do your best every day for our kids that being said i know we are all passionate about our children and i know that we will always choose our own child above other people's children it's just part of being a parent i think we need to ask ourselves if our kids are truly negatively affected by temporary mass mandates or if they are just mirroring what they're seeing and hearing at home because

019would they truly feel that way if they weren't already hearing it is my question and that's just something we need to reflect on hello my name is amy french in full disclosure i don't have children in the district but i am an employee of the district tonight though i'm speaking as a private citizen because i feel that a few loud voices are getting most the attention and the aggression displayed has made others like me reluctant to attend to make their voices heard or they're afraid of getting coveted so i'm speaking for the people who know that public health is part of public education that it's all about we and not about me and speaking for those who know that neither the vaccine nor masks are causing our hospitals to be full and record numbers of

020deaths that cobit is doing that so thank you to dr savage for being part of the solution of our community to mitigate the spread of cobit with the mass mandate for others here tonight are others listening who want to be part of the solution we are in desperate need of bus drivers and teachers so i encourage you to imply thank you amy french is twice denise nystrom even though i think that the decision about masks lacked the appropriate research the superintendent you have brought more integrity to this district in the past eight weeks than it has had in the past four years and those eight weeks have been an uphill battle because of district members fighting against you instead of supporting you and i want you to know that i do have confidence in your

021integrity and in your ethics thank you for taking on this monumental task i am concerned however that the union does not actually have enough members to be considered a union i have requested two weeks ago from public records the number of people that pay union dues and i have not gotten that information back there should be proof that they actually qualify as a union or they should be dissolved and again i will say to the board that i hope you are focusing on the start date for a superintendent for the new school year because quality candidates cannot be found as they are fulfilling their obligations at other school districts and dr savage should be considered as a point of information we were accused of inciting fights yesterday when in fact none of us incited anything

022out there there was a certain special interest group member that started two brawls and cindy banye was loud and obnoxious and got into everybody's face i think that the staff that are on premise should make sure that they get right who it is that's inciting what's going on thank you christine devi jilly i'm with powered parent i don't think i've been so happy to be here until tonight i am just pleased i'm also very disappointed in a lot of you up there for attempting to strip away the rights of lee county parents parents i want you to know it is your right as the parent to educate your kids about whatever you feel is best even the effectiveness of masks if you so choose it is your right as the parent to educate your kids

023about their first amendment rights so they feel empowered to stand it is your right as the parent to send your child to school without a mask on their face if you the parent so choose if your child feels bullied even by any member of staff by being put in an isolation room apply for the hope scholarship you can do that very easily it is your right as a parent to remove your children from this criminal corrupt institution micro schools are coming to lee county if you pull your kids from there we will have a safe place for them and tomorrow if you choose as the parent to send your child to school without a mask make sure you tell them to be respectful no ma'am no sir i'm sorry please call my mom and if

024any member of staff tells them that they need to follow them and go into an isolation room you tell them no ma'am i need you to call my mom immediately call my parent immediately no ma'am no sir there is someone right now on the internet telling your kids to cause a ruckus tomorrow know that will be no one's child in this room you guys are done you just don't know it yet i really really don't want any responses to speakers so this is their first warning if we hear any more responses we will ask you ask mr newland to please address it now will the following individuals please line up kanye truett jane manrate eric metzner robert roper my name is robert daniels i've been a science teacher with the district for about nine years

025now and while i understand why we have put the mandate into place i feel that the mandate's going to prove to be useless unless the board revisits the idea of providing each student every day of during this mandate duration of 30 days with an n95 mask at the very least we can provide and eat that cost for those students on grounds of equity if nothing else but we know from the science that the cloth mask their mom made for them does absolutely nothing but breed bacteria and hold it against their face so if you're going to make them suffer through that at least give them the small bit of protection the medical grade mass would provide thank you a little too short for that my name is konya i would like to start by saying

026watching all the kings and queens up there drink is making me awfully thirsty so i really wish i could have some water right now but a slowly peasants i guess we'll sit here and just stay thirsty next i would like to address the fact that you guys went and made a decision without even listening to us yesterday and i feel that this was intentional i do think and i have seen this board do this over and over again you put this pressure on the superintendent so that you didn't have to answer to your constituents and he could take the blame for it and i am sick and tired of you not answering questions for us i'm sick and tired of not being heard and i am sick and tired of you violating the law to

027take my parental rights i want to tell you something about a smile a smile is scientifically proven to release endorphins in the brains of humans when that endorphins are released that creates positive reactions within the body including decreasing stress and anxiety which then is a long-term effect of decreasing heart problems and depression and suicidal thoughts and you're not even letting our kids see that you're not letting them have a simple human right like seeing someone smile not to mention what it gives to the person receiving the smile who may be on the break that day i have removed one child from the school district and i was trying to give the other choice but i am not going through what i went through last year with him which was threats of suicide severe depression and

028anxiety i had to seek therapy because of the rules you're putting in place without thinking about the long-term impact of these children and their mental health hi my name is jan i'm a resident of lee county for 30 plus years i don't have a child in the school system now but i had a son who went through the lee county school system from kindergarten to 12th grade playing under sam ciriani greenway football so but i'm an advocate by profession i just happen to do it in different science which is prostate cancer i want to thank you guys for putting expert recommendations giving them credence and importance during a pandemic because we are in a pandemic which none of us have been through before we need our pandemic experts and we want to advocate on behalf

029of children to protect them and everyone else so at the very least we know that our pandemic experts are the cdc which is our public health arm of our government the florida department of health which is a public health arm of our state government and we in addition we have the american academy of pediatrics who has given a recommendation that they strongly endorse the use of safe and effective infection control procedures to protect children and adolescents during the covid19 pandemic effective infection prevention and control requires the correct and consistent use of a well-fitting face mask this is pediatrics face masks should fit over the mouth and nose and fit snugly along the side of the face without any gaps in addition there is a florida arm of the american academy of pediatrics and i would

030say that they have resources on their website for parents for kids who are afraid of masks or struggle with them because we all care about the kids let's remember we have that in common so i want to thank you for standing up for the kids listening to pandemic experts i'm not one of them and neither are you and neither is the superintendent but you did the right thing by listening to the experts on behalf of our children thank you will the following individuals please line up jordan connor lavonne grant ralph ortez marsha ellis kurt hook good evening my name is eric metzner i'm a 20-year veteran teacher here in lee county i do not have any students attending no children some of the options that i have brought up in the past meetings i have

031heard that some of those options are being talked about now i wanted to say thank you for that thank you for at least considering possibilities some options that i didn't get to prior to this i did cover some split school days possibly zoom google classrooms as well attending different days of school what i didn't get to was offering minimum contact option where students may attend half days and provide coursework digitally during follow-up hours that was another possibility these are just options and these options just like the mitigation efforts that are being conducted throughout the district also provide layers of possibilities for the students in fact it also offers possibilities for our teachers i don't speak about that very much there is a little bit of you know i would say a little bit of feedback

032that comes to us as teacher leaders but our teachers are desperately needing to be heard as well so i want to make sure that's that's that's on the table as well and i do appreciate what you do i appreciate you listening to every comment thank you so much for the time tonight robert roper also known as ward cleaver imagine a board that refuses to recognize the parental rights of the children until a law is passed and even then you search their medical authority imagine a board that establishes policies exclusively based on only one side such as the masks and lgbtq imagine a board that fails to provide requested records via the freedom of information act or supplies false records imagine a board that consistently misrepresents the facts during public meetings imagine a board that purposely

033have ignored any email of substance of mine for over a year imagine a board that publicly removed an objectionable poster from last year's student code of conduct yet the poster is still displayed in the schools now and boys are still allowed in girls restrooms today imagine a board that recognizes the accomplishments of people based on their sexual preference on october 5th this board will vote on an lgbtq history month if we want to recognize people based on their sexual preference then we should have an adultery day for mr clinton very you're out of order just like the parent that has warnings sorry that's your first warning just like the parent that has a right to make a medical decision for their child they also have the right to set moral standards you must agree all

034our students standards our parents standards are different from one another but each parent has that right what other social or emotional issue name one that you encourage the person to change the person to the way they act instead of changing the way they act to meet their body my name is lavon grant i have three daughters that attend three oaks elementary school the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result these are the words credited by the acclaimed albert einstein we are we're on year two of this coveted roller coaster and yet you want to continue to implement the same policies and mandates that did not work the year prior the policy response to covet particularly as applied to our children have been wickedly inept we now

035have a year and a half worth of data to not use that data to craft better policies and create better outcomes for our children are simply unethical i currently have three daughters who attend three oaks elementary i have researched the data on leeschools.net which you guys list all the covid cases and all the public lee county school systems our school only has 31 cases four of those which were the staff that means 27 kids in one month out of the entire school that is 3.4 percent of everyone that attends there and that is on your website where is my option as a tax paying resident of lee county why are you catering to one side last year you mandated mass and gave the concerned parents options on what they could do with their children in

036regards to coven 19 and their education and now this year our schools our school year is being hijacked by those same parents and board members who live in fear what what you're forcing us to do now is to live in fear it's communism america is supposed to be the land of the free every everyone from all walks of life want to be here to have the freedoms and opportunities we have as americans thank you please hello my name is ralph i have two daughters in the lee county school system north fort myer academy for the arts i'm here not to say thank you for anything you guys have done unfortunately i'm not proud of anything you guys have done yet let's hope we can change that okay what i'm here for is if you want

037to wear a mask wear a mask but give me the option to parent my children the way i choose to bring him up not the way you choose to bring up my kids i'm seeing and just sincerely asking you guys to provide us and give us the option to have home connect for our kids okay if you choose you want my kid to wear a mask to school my kid will not i come from chicago illinois i'm a product of the most corrupt board of education system in the country and i'm starting to see the same thing here our county lee county is not under a state of emergency nor under a mass mandate so you have no authority to invoke a mass mandate for your schools so give us the right to choose that's

038all i ask will the following individuals please line up tara jenner steven stoddard todd thomas francis haas edward dross hello my name is marcia ellis and i this would have been my 20th year teaching school i've been an employee of the district for about a decade i spent most of my career at varsity lakes middle school teaching science and teaching exceptional student education i like many many members of the community have been in a catch-22 situation because i have severe allergies and it's not recommended that i take the vaccine it doesn't look like that kovid's just magically going to disappear as much as we would all like it to and the downward pressures that i experienced as an educator are being felt by teachers support staff bus drivers administrators and everyone in this district i

039had to make a difficult decision to step away after 20 years i would like to say that thank you for your service thank you for following the cdc and the apa guidelines that mitigate the spread of covet in our schools especially among the vulnerable from the schools coveted spreads out into the broader community infecting vulnerable family members filling up our hospitals placing stress upon our first responders as well what you've done is a moral and just action thank you for valuing human health above political division especially for the vulnerable those exceptional learners those who may be immunocompromised and those who are not eligible for a vaccine thank you for showing mercy and compassion and modeling courage and civility for our thank you next speaker please my name is curtis i do live in lee county

040i have three grandchildren in the school district and i want to thank you for the opportunity our lord god put our parents in charge of their children i believe if we're going to make policy that encroaches on that relationship that we always ought to decide or error on the side of the parents so i believe that parents should have the right to decide if their children are to be masked for four six eight hours a day in the schools that they are paying for thank you for the opportunity tara jenner i noticed earlier today you were talking about public comment and i've been looking at the public comment policies 1.11 and half the things that you have in here are not included in what you've recently been including in your comments so i also looked

041at the fact that you guys changed the public comment policy on the website yesterday just moments frankly before the 1 pm meeting and so i scoured policy 1.10 which deals with how to change policy and i looked at section 3 which says the school board may determine that the public health safety and welfare is endangered and that immediate action is required to protect the public interest in interest when this occurs the school board at any meeting which a quorum is present may adopt emergency policies and it goes on to talk a little bit further about how the fact that this may only be done when there is an immediate danger to the public health safety and welfare and it shall be published at the district website prior to the policy action and that notice of

042the proposed emergency policy action shall be provided when and to the extent feasible and that the superintendent shall properly record the effective date of such emergency policy and it shall not exceed a 90-day time period you need to follow your own policies you can't delegate this to somebody else to make a suisponte decision on the spot and you haven't specified why there are certain policies that come into play in this district and i'm personally tired of seeing rules for thee but not for me everybody on the desk gets to have their water we're being told now we can't we're being told our bags are going to be searched but we're not given due process nobody's mentioning anything about probable cause there's no warrant there's no accident circumstances that justify this i will be following this

043up in writing and i also have some comments for you all from a cognitive standpoint with the kids without having thank you next speaker please hello my name is francis haas i am this parent of two current and one former lee county school district students and i'm a health care provider here in lee county currently working in a covered unit and spending the vast majority of the last year and a half working to help covet patients recover from this horrible disease i'm currently wearing a surgical mask to help prevent the spread of covid19 there's no guarantee that this mask will protect me from somebody copying sneezing or breathing heavily on me that has the cobia virus but if the vast majority of us wear our masks cloth surgical and or n95 mass we can help

044reduce the spread of this virus and i commend the board for adopting the mandatory masking policy for at least 30 days because we all want this to this pandemic to end we thought it was over a couple of months ago and we were all feeling pretty good about that because i'm tired my co-workers are tired i spent an hour and a half today talking to family members of covet patients that i am caring for and doing my very best to get them home back with their families i currently have a family member who is a teacher in the school district in the emergency room at least within lee health with covert 19 unable to breathe we don't know is he going to be okay we're worried about him children spread this virus there's currently at

045least 15 pediatric patients within the lee health system with covid19 there's 100 patients on ventilators with cloven 19 once you get on a ventilator your odds are very low children might not get as sick as many children might not get as sick with kova 19 but they can certainly spread it to the vulnerable thank you for the mass policy good evening my name is ty thomas and i live in lee county i don't have any children in the system now but i've had two children to come up through the system completely i'm here to talk about in a non-partisan way a few simple words that i have and as a person that's been active in the system here for 25 years i've volunteered i'm active on the thomas alva edison regional science and in venice

046fair i've been a volunteer from sony electronics i've been a teacher for four and a half years so i have a good unique perspective we need non-partisan civility this disease or a virus does not know creed religion sexual orientation it does not know that what happened to the hybrid model as we move into this decision all of a sudden sprung on the parents and god bless the parents with children in the system now we need n95 mass for those children we need to have some type of opt out method for those that do want to keep their parents at home again i'm in the middle i'm nonpartisan we need something for everyone what about our teachers when i learned how to teach and learn scaffolding and took my five through nine math tests there was

047nothing in there that talked about coving what it talked about is professionalism and working for these students to teach these children we have adapted to covet why can't we all adapt to covet so we can move together to eradicate this disease it's going to be paramount that we do that no matter which side of the fence you're on thank you will the following individuals please line up yurum del viniak mercedes price harry april jenkins a juan pastore laurie fahey dr edward f grass you know me and all the children in this school district i consider to be mine amen never in my life have i witnessed the display of indecency and disrespect that you the school board showed during your pseudo-emergency mass mandate the true colors of your core beliefs and of your disdain for

048the citizens and students of lee county is clear you've received copies of my letter to the department of education asking you to be investigated for malfeasance i will continue to push for that until i see action you embody many if not all the traits of a marxist totalitarian state hey sir you're out of order this is your first warning no personal attacks on the board consider it the way you wish we see your unwillingness to show respect to tell the truth and follow through on promises votes and commitments all in the interest of appeasing the political left and special interest groups i hope that you lie awake on your beds at night and think about the harm you're causing to children whose education has been entrusted to you by their naive and unsuspecting parents and

049the uninformed voters you can still reclaim honor and trust do the right thing and how grateful are i am i am for all of these courageous men and women who show up at these meetings and make their voices heard with truth and justice in their hearts and who refuse to bow to the gods of this age and are willing to pay whatever the cost for their steadfastness good evening anthony von pesteri voting citizen of lee county fort myers shores all my kids are growing up and through the school system already have a family member that teaches them just like to say i'm disappointed with the school board's decision to pass the decision on the mass mandate to an unelected official when it was clearly the board's responsibility as elected officials two weeks ago you took

050my opinion the correct position of allowing parental discretion of whether it was healthy and correct for their child to be masked the entire school day i feel it was a bit cowardly of the board to take this way out this easy way out what i voted for was elected representation representation making these decisions i am not denying the current covert difficulties but masking children i believe provides no benefit statistically and is harmful psychologically emotionally and probably medically as well as a voting citizen i'll be watching the board's future decisions at future meetings and at election day thank you from derby in lehigh acres florida i have no kids in the school system thank god i love my country but i fear my government i've come to these school board meetings for the last eight years

051there's been a lot of lousy school boards this is the worst school board i've ever seen again the worst school board i've ever seen shame on you people are terrible mr mr delviniak this is your first warning please why all of us in our order i've stressed the school board so you're our order i'm sorry the thing is dressing individuals on the school board is my right really if you vote for something that i'm not that i'm against i have the right to address you on that vote and why you want to address the whole school board that's a bunch of crap a bunch of crap we got the right to speak you vote for us and the lawyer you cut off people because you don't like what they say when they speak the truth

052against this board you get arrogant to these speakers thank you hello my name is mercedes price harry i have a second grader and fifth grader here in lee county i've been here for 18 years i'm a proud member of grandpa's lee county personal passionate progressive let me offer some perspective i cheered for savage and then 1.181 went into effect i was devastated two weeks ago we spoke and you acted then the surge being experienced around the world hit even in places with mass mandates consider this hundreds if not thousands of lee county kids and teachers have now have now tested positive and are stronger than ever like me they carry the antibodies these kids and teachers must wear masks why are they n95 masks anything else is useless ask all of the kids and teachers

053that wear masks and got coveted this month many people that i know my asthmatic seven-year-old who just recovered from getting covet at school must wear a mask why it was a cakewalk by the way ask yourself what is the purpose of the mask then ask what is the purpose of forcing those that carry antibodies to wear them people are welcome to get a shot wear two masks a face shield latex gloves go for it if masks work and you're wearing one why force others to will you credit the masks when the inevitable decline occurs after this spike show us the district is personal show us your past passionate and progressive but show us some perspective show us that you don't vote on emotion and corporate media talking points those that have recovered post covid this

054year those that sign the opt out and those that want to have the ultimate say in their children's health life and education should be exempt remember when liberals said my body my choice now they say not your body not your choice lastly what is an expert organizational leaders and scientists funded by special interests doctors who deny medications over politics show us you can be progressive be leaders not followers thank you my name is april i have five kids three of them are still in the county system i have a daughter named london jenkins i want you to remember her name she has an autoimmune disease that she's had since she was five she's been on immunosuppressants since she was five she's been on methotrexate which is also a chemo drug since she was five so

055for everyone that has antibodies and choose not to wear a mask guess what you affect her and i taught my kids all five of them care about your neighbor what happened to that what happened to just being concerned about the other person in the room what about being respectful to one another and then you say the school can pick up the tab for the mass you pay 100 or a thousand dollars for phones you don't have problems with that you don't have problems with your kids being on the phone of the phone being the babysitter but you have a problem there because they said for my child wear a mask now all the board members along with your governor can tell you i've been emailing them since day one because my child has an autoimmune

056disease that she had no control over and that some other child maybe one of your children go to school with her that won't wear a mask how would that affect her she get sick and get a cold and stay sick for a month you and i get sick and get a couple and stay sick for a week why should she be affected she's not important is she not important do you care about just more than your child i saw a child today be disrespectful to rules that was already in place he came in and pulled the tape up and sat down and didn't ask why his mother didn't say no that's not what we do she went up to the board remember i said you know they did it's respect we teach them that at

057five please ma'am and it's not just because you can be quiet it's not just because you say it nicely but actually think about what you're saying from your heart for the following individuals please line up melissa justina iris ramirez angela mitchell christina gay susan c megan howard i'm lori fahey i brought my son with me tonight this is sam you may have remembered him from the opt out a couple of you that were on the board that many years ago i had to bring him tonight because i wanted him to see the change in our community with a board that has become a seven-handed monster and is trying to put us this is your first one that was my opinion we're speaking at a mic in the back of the room which on the television

058looks like the witness protection program we belong up there i left you a copy of the organizational chart because i think each one of you needs to review that and i hope everyone in the public does too we the public are on the top of the organizational chart the school board works for us and we need to get that back i'm tired of of not being able to speak i'm tired of seeing you treat the public rude and like children this is not the way any other board in lee county works we have rights and you need to listen to us because these are our public schools i was told i couldn't sit beside my own son in this boardroom we had to have a seat between us we're we're walking down aisles here can't

059talk to the board members and i'm mainly upset about this covid19 boardroom policy protocol it has nothing to do with safety it has everything to do with removing the public's voice and our rights and i need to see it change anything thank you hi my name is melissa justina i have two kids at an elementary school in lee county i want to express my opinion about wearing the masks on kids i believe it should continue to be a parent's choice a mandate is not a law desantis gave us parents the choice and that's all we want if your kid wants to wear it wear it but don't make us have to force our kids to wear it modern psychology explains without face we don't exist as independent beings face coverings and masks are ancient tools

060used to break people down psychologically this is the beginning of deleting individuality he who does not know his history is certainly condemned to repeat it masks don't work these poor kids are breathing in carbon dioxide all day the masks are dirty they reuse them every parent knows that the child is going to reuse the mask do you have a mask for today grab one out of the car it's on the floor a virus is so small any of the cloth masks or the medical masks that are required will not prevent a virus to get through the masks have you ever used a microscope i've not worn a mask in a year and a half and have not gotten sick i don't clean the carts before i use it's my right i don't care if you're

061scared for your child or they're sick they need to stay home not my well child i don't even walk my child to their first day of kindergarten last year you know how much that killed me and then we couldn't do it this year either for the first graders kids are getting depressed they're overweight anxiety suicide is up stop making us non-maskers seem like we don't care about our neighbors and selfish it's not like that at all clubs are canceled social gatherings are cancelled do you think these kids go to friends homes wearing masks no we implore you to reverse your decision on the mask mandate and why is my opt out form not sustained hello my name is angela mitchell i currently have two students in lee county schools one in elementary as well as

062in middle school one of my biggest concerns is the quickness and all this that how and how it has happened we got this taken down yesterday and got a note received today and within that we weren't given any options or any time or any availability to get together what we need as parents that you're saying that we have to have in order for us to get the medical exemptions necessary for our children we haven't been given any time a day and a half is not enough time and on top of that talking to both of the principals at each of the schools today if my child does not go to school tomorrow because i don't feel as though putting a mask on them is necessary and as well as my right it is an unexcused

063absence do you know what that does i'm sure you do because that goes against their personal record okay number one number two while we're sitting here we get an email that says home connect will not be available for our students that if you have a problem with this you're more than welcome to go into homeschooling i'm sorry that is not an option for everyone what are we then supposed to do and everybody wants to talk about love thy neighbor do you know what the beginning of that verse says love thy god with all of thy heart that is the most important thing god gave me my children and gave me the wisdom in order to raise them as i feel necessary and you have no rights to say what those rights are for me or

064my kids or anyone else in the school district my name is christina gay i have two children in lee county school system and i am disgusted by all of you disgusted that you think that you have the right to tell me as a parent what i have to do with my children they are my children not yours you got that i voted for you and i will vote you right out just like half the people in this room right now you are disgusting what's your last warning thank you mr newland five minutes please mr bruno can we reconvene please the next speaker please this is not about health care this is about control you have proven yourself so untrustworthy and indecent to we the parents and the children last night was such an obscene staged

065pretentious opportunity for your agenda and the media you treated us terribly called upon the police and the sheriff's department who showed up like what what did they need to be here for the china virus it's just a short shutdown it's just 15 days to slow the spread it's just social distancing it's just six feet apart it's just to protect yourself it's just to protect others it's just online learning it's just mandatory so kids can go back to school it's just virtual graduations it's just a piece of cloth it's just a face shield it's just one injection it's just two injections oh it's just a few bad reactions it's just a booster it's just another booster in six months it's just another mask mate that mask mandate that you're putting upon our kids it's just putting

066fear into everyone it's just wrong and it's just going to backfire on all of you i will lay bets that most of you will not run for re-election because you know your days are done ma'am we do not have people standing behind the speaker so if you can get on the other side of the stanchion thank you hi my name is megan howard i am a mom of a fifth grader a ten-year-old unvaccinated here in cape coral actually i'm actually here to thank the board for having the courage to put safety before popularity i wear many hats like a lot of people today i didn't write down my thoughts i'm giving to you from my heart i'm a nurse i've worked in this community with kids for 25 years i'm a nurse practitioner for the

067last four we have never seen anything like this and when we talk about isolating children i would give you pause to see what our kids are going through in the nicu where i work and the deliveries that we are going to with mothers delivering early who cannot even come in to see their babies because we have 80 babies in our nicu we've never gone through anything like this before the first round we weren't hit so hard this delta virus is different i'm not trying to scare people my mask is more for you i'm vaccinated but i'm garbed up every day every day like i was this morning going to another mom delivering a pre-term baby in my n95 and all my gear thankful that baby could stay with her and not have to be moved

068to our nicu i have a colleague a nicu nurse in the icu downtown who has a senior in this school district who is probably not going to survive covet a woman in her 40s i don't want that for you i don't want that for our kids it's a temporary thing we don't know how to deal with this virus we just want our kids to have the best chance at safety and we want everyone to be safe thank you dr iris ramirez resident of lee county 95 000 children in the school district i stand opposed to my taxpayer dollars school supplies resources such as teachers time etc for promoting sexual behaviors a special month or any other activity to celebrate various sexual activities under the guise of promoting the people who practice them is not what

069our school resources should be spent on we do not send children to school to promote various social or political agendas i speak for many when i say that people who are still fascinated by the taste of crayons should not be exposed to sexuality of any type in the school setting put the children first not political or social crusades school is not a political rally nor is it a forum for promoting social change stick to the long-held traditions of education educating children school board just say no to drugs sexuality or sex being promoted on school grounds under any guys or any pretext i would like answers to three questions tonight are you planning on using school resources to promote celebrate bring attention to folks because of their sexuality question two where can the public get the

070list of social political events you are considering or planning for our children to be exposed to thirdly what are the plans to keep board members from making partisan comments or insulting the public or showing a general lack of decorum and respect tonight's invocation mentions this about respect and the example is two tuesdays ago miss vaughn's rude outburst which we cannot forget and i'd like to know what the board is going to do to self-discipline excuse me man we're not what okay you're done thank you're done just a reminder we don't make personal attacks on individual board members thank you excuse me ma'am you've made your comment you're out of order at this point first warning madam chair that concludes public comment thank you i would just like to thank everybody for their comments this evening

071and we will move on to what is your name sir go ahead and make your comment thank you for your time my name is jordan morant i'm a father of three girls in the lee county system i'm very happy with their school i'm obviously here to oppose the mass mandate i am raising my daughters to have respect honor and integrity to do the right thing even when no one is looking i want to ask you how you can force me to mask my children are you taking my freedom the health and well-being of my children is my responsibility masks do not work it says it on the box as people on both sides have asked for n95 or specific medical masks you are not requiring that so masks are pointless the vaccine does not even

072protect you against getting coronavirus breathing fresh air exercising along with proper nutrition should be number one on the list mass cause more harm than good why should i restrict my children from breathing fresh air where is my freedom of choice are you forcing me to make my child wear a mask please reconsider a mask opt out or have certain classrooms specifically for mass or unmasked children i will sign any petition or waiver for that have my child be in a certain math school or unmath school and have certain schools masked why can we have private schools we can pay money and send our schools to send our children to private school and not have to wear a mask how does that make any sense so private school children can breathe fresh air but our children

073sir thank you for your comment madam chair this concludes public comment thank you again i would like to thank everyone for their comments this evening i would also like to thank the many emails that we receive on a daily basis and the phone calls that we receive whether we agree or disagree i appreciate the fact that you are contacting us and the next item on the agenda is our action items the documents for action items listed under consent is made available to board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all of the materials and we have an opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the recommendations some of these items have also been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of

074appearing on the action agenda board members are there any items you wish to pull for discussion under unfinished table items portion of the agenda miss giovannelli i have none miss patricka no thank you miss fisher no pools this evening thank you thank you miss kittens nothing to say to me thank you thank you miss vaughn three thank you and miss morgan i have none i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda consent items with the accept exception of f3 a move that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of f3 thank you mrs fisher may i have a second miss morgan thank you and please record your vote okay we have six two one motion carries savage please introduce your administrators in attendance with any new assignments that were approved under

075the consent agenda madam chair we do not have any administrators in attendance for the administrative appointment today okay thank you okay we have a f3 pull to address dr savage please read your recommendation for pulled item and that would not be his pulled item that would be our pulled item yes yes thank you so the recommendation for f3 is the approval of the superintendent search advertisement and advertisement locations miss vaughn you are the one that pulled this out can we have a motion two for this to bring this forward ms patricka i move that we approve item what was it f what f3 f3 approval of superintendent search advertisement and advertisement locations thank you do i have a second second miss vaughn okay and discussion and miss vaughn i'm going to have you yeah this

076is this is actually a very simple item it's something that i emailed the board about earlier or at the end of last week when we initially looked at the lists that we were given by ray and associates they believed that the florida association of school administrators fafsa was free and it turns out when this was investigated in the hr department by suzette rivera she discovered that there was actually a 300 fee to do this even though we are members of that group i thought it was going to be easy to dispense with this because originally we were going to do it in the meeting yesterday but i wanted to make sure that since originally we were saying it was a no-cost item i went ahead and included it and it's it's for the board to

077decide this 300 fee now i might add and i did add this when i sent you the information last week that our representative molly said to me when i went over this with her she said we're big district but she felt like with all the other the free ones and the others that we have listed that a 300 expense is probably this is her recommendation probably not even worth it's 300 but instead of just myself arbitrarily not including it or not bringing it up i wanted to bring it to the board and again i thought we could do this quickly yesterday but that meeting was canceled so that's what we're we're looking at so miss dupree bruno what's the best way to either i guess it's easy if we're going to keep it and how

078do we do it if we want to zap the 300 from florida association of school administrators well let's see what the rest of the members think about it if there's any discussion from the other members okay do we have any other discussion and thank you thank you mister that's that's all it involves either 300 or no not okay yes thank you for doing that as well so appreciate that mr fisher yes thank you for doing that and i think that the florida association of school administrators would be an important one to have our ad because you know they have candidates who are familiar with florida law et cetera so i would be in favor of the additional three hundred dollars thank you is there any other discussion oh ms patricka i had part of my

079board member comments tonight so thank you for doing this you're welcome and i'm i'm comfortable with the additional 300 as well anyone else okay see you no further discussion we will do this by a hand vote so all in favor of as it stands right now please i'm sorry mr priebus jordan if we could do a roll call vote because sometimes staff is having a hard time seeing the hands certainly thank you miss morgan yes thank you miss vaughn yes miss kittens yes miss patricka aye mr evanelli yes miss fisher yes and yes for myself please thank you motion passes okay we are to the attorney's recommendation people thank you before we go to the attorney's recognition madam chair i'd like to go back to item b1 that is not a consent agent it's not

080part of the consent agenda so we do need to the board does need to address that issue which one is it i'm sorry resolution the one the resolution okay is there a mush is there a motion to approve the resolution approval of the resolution proclaiming september 15th through october 15th as national hispanic heritage month i moved that we approved the resolution for proclaiming september 15th through october 15 21 as national hispanic heritage month and i second it thank you miss kittens and thank you miss vaughn is there any discussion see a no discussion can we please get a voice vote again or can we do that on here miss thomas okay thank you miss morgan yes bond yes miss kittens yes miss patricka nay miss giovanelli nay miss fisher and yes five to two motion

081carries thank you okay mr pre-bruno we'll move to the attorney's recommendation please thank you madam chair there are three attorney recommendations for this evening the first one is the approval of the settlement agreement and release for judith johnson and the amount of 450 000 inclusive of all fees and costs thank you have heard the attorney's recommendation that the board approves the settlement agreement and release for judith johnson and the amount of 450 000 inclusive of all fees members is there a motion to approve i move we approve the settlement agreement and release for judith johnson in the amount of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars thank you do i have a second i'll second it thank you miss vaughn is there discussion miss juvenelli yes i brought this up over a year ago april 2020

082i believe it was that there was possible whistleblowers regarding this and yet no one listened to me no one wanted to investigate no one wanted to do anything it fell on deaf ears when is this board going to be aboard and do and protect our taxpayers dollars now we have a whistleblower that we have to pay 450 000 to that we shouldn't have to do because we should have taken care of business back when this was brought up i'm very disappointed in this board and this is more than 450 000 i will be supporting it because this was a blower as i stated back then and i've stated for the last five years it's the culture of the district and this is a perfect example of what is happening at the district that needs to

083be rectified and i am hopeful under the new administration that we won't have this happen again thank you is there any other discussion cnn can we please record your vote okay we have six and one abstained who abstained miss fisher okay miss fisher if you could just state the reason for the abstention just in one sentence pursuant to the statute at this point since this settlement is pretty much over we can disclose just in one sentence so i'm abstaining from this vote because i have information that this person is not a whistleblower but an offender and i have personal situations that i witnessed and so i feel like i can't vote on this okay and we will complete the appropriate form and attach it to the minutes mr bribrano did you have any yeah ma'am

084anything else with that okay so can we go ahead with number two of the attorney's recommendation thank you madam chair the second recommendation is the approval of the designation of the executive director of safety and security david newlin as the board's sergeant at arms to assist the board chair and parliamentarian in keeping decorum and ordering the chambers during board meetings thank you have heard the attorney's recommendation that the board approves the sergeant the sergeant of arms that will assist the board chair implementarian and keeping decorum in order in the chambers during the board meetings the sergeant-at-arms is empowered to warn individual members of the public and remove individuals from meetings when necessary do i have a motion to approve i'll move that we approve the designation of the at arms thank you mr fisher do

085i have a second second this is morgan thank you miss morgan and please record your vote seven zero thank you mr priebunna will you please state your recommendation for number three thank you madam chair the next recommendation is the approval to allow the superintendent or designee to implement safety measures to include back searches and wanting and anything else for the safety of the public students staff and the board during board meetings pursuant to board policy 4.09 threats of violence 2.03 campus disorder and trespass florida statute 1006.145 disturbing school functions florida statute 790.115 the prohibition of possessing or discharging weapons or firearms at a school sponsored event or on school property florida statute 790.06 prohibiting a concealed weapon at a school district meeting and numerous other bodies of law thank you have heard the attorney's recommendation

086that the board approves the good cause item number three approval to allow the superintendent or designee to implement safety measures during board meetings do i have a motion to approve i move we approve to allow the superintendent or designee to implement safety measures during board meetings thank you miss morgan and a second please miss fisher thank you okay and please record your vote discussion oh discussion sorry miss g yeah i'm actually going to be supporting this tonight i for the last probably four years i had requested to have metal detectors used and implemented at different actually in schools at different places at different times just sporadic to protect our students and to protect the staff here at the district as well yes and then a year a year before parkland i had requested it was

087never even given any thought actually or but i find it's needed it's time to make everything safe for everyone this is not just has nothing to do with the present audience and what's been going on this is something that goes back before parkland i felt the need so and obviously parkland proved that there is a need so i will be supporting this tonight and it's all about safety this is safety that we can control and something that we should be controlling thank you thank you ms juvenelli for your comments is there any other discussion the skittens yes i like miss giovanelli had spoken i think when i first got on the board and we were discussing safety and some of the safety measures that the district was instituting with cameras and that type of thing

088and if you go back to 2019 i did bring up a metal detectors and other safety measures and like mr giovanelli said this has nothing to do with tonight i've been bringing this up for the three years i've been on the board you have no idea when something happens and it's too late after something may happen so it's not against any individual any group anything i've been bringing it up before i think we should have it in schools and i was told that in schools they didn't have the staff to to man it and i beg to differ at that time and i beg to differ now so i felt you know some of the other measures we talk about taking if we stop the weapons at the door then your children and everyone's children

089should feel safer when they're in the room it's not about us up here personally if i feel like you know when god says it's my time i'm going anyway but why not keep people safe and that's why i will support it thank you miss kittens so anyone else has anything comments so yeah no further comments i would ask for you to please record your votes so okay 7-0 motion passes thank you next on the agenda is our public hearings and dr savage please present your recommendations for this evening's public hearing items thank you madam chair approval to adopt policy p1 approval to adopt policy 1.171 audit committee 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

090september 1st 2021. thank you we will now rest so was that you just did the one no all three was all three okay perfect we will now recess the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider approval to adopt the policy 1.171 audit committee in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of the adoption shall be september 1st 2021 approval to adopt policy 1.172 audit selection procedures in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of the adoption show be september 1 number three approval to revise policy 1.20 community involvement in compliance with changes and

091related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of the adoption shall be september 1 2021 at this time the public will be invited to speak on these three items the time allowed for comments is three minutes is there anyone on the right side that would like to speak thank you if you please go forward and if there's anyone on the left side that would like to speak on these three items miss christine wait there we go can you can you hear me yes we will we will come back thanks hi christine dibijli here so i'm going to comment on both your audit committee and your community involvement one audit committee that's a long time coming you guys needed that for a while since we've been

092out of compliance in our audit department for like a while now you know we don't have enough people for a quorum so i certainly hope that no one's going to fight some of these audit committee this audit committee vote today you know we're trying to in the in the heart of transparency i would hope that every board member thinks that we need a an audit committee here and then i would also like to comment on the public or the community involvement part where i'll give you guys a little bit of a kudos but we'll see if you vote yes on it or not i do think it's a good idea for you to give community members an opportunity to continue the zoom the zoom meetings i was able to attend a dac meeting a few

093weeks ago if you all don't know what a dac meeting is it's a district advisory council meeting and all members of the public are welcome to join i suggest you join and it is available on lee county schools down their website if you go to their calendar under the under their calendar of events it's hard to find but it is available that's that meeting that we watched the other day on on youtube well you can actually attend if you go to the district's website so i hope to see so many of you there next time okay because they went over a lot of stuff and certain board members were even in the in the room with us and it was super fun to hear their suggestions so i do think that you guys should vote

094yes on that think it's a great thing and you should vote yes on an audit committee thank you very much thank you tara jenner sorry it took me a moment to pull this up because the internet here seems to prevent us from connecting without using our own data on a vast majority of the time just as a point of order one of my biggest concerns is whenever there's any kind of a group that you guys set up i'm sorry i'm sorry miss jenner could you please it's three minutes i just want to make sure we have the right minutes on here thank you one of the concerns that i have is whenever you guys set up any kind of meeting or committees or whatever you always start talking about forming the advisory groups councils and

095committees and making sure that the effort is there to reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the current lee county community population whenever possible i understand the reasons behind that but i have never seen anything that gives a very easy one-shot indication for anyone in the public to see exactly what that translates into and whether or not you actually have arranged in these meetings for people that can have or are in need of services whether it's for the hearing impaired or whether it's for people that speak foreign languages whether we have a lot of people that speak spanish and haitian in the area but i don't see that's ever been addressed and i haven't ever seen any breakdown on that having said that i'm also of the opinion and this is just my personal opinion

096that the makeup of a room to match the community is not as important as having individuals in that community that are looking at the factual basis bases that are being addressed rather than special interest components i have never voted for or against anyone based on any of their physical presentations whether that is melatonin level gender height weight ethnicity language whatever and i'm never planning on doing that i look at the character the individual and the content of what they bring to the table and i don't see that as being the priority here you're focusing on external things but even when you focus on the external things you're not giving us enough information as a community to let us know exactly what that breakdown is and i don't see when you have a policy like this

097that you're including individuals that might need or have language barriers whether that's need for asl or another foreign language so that's just my two cents thanks thank you is there anyone else that wishes to speak please nystrom i applied for two committees i didn't hear from anybody but then of course based on the district that i live in i probably will not be selected so i would like if when people make application for those committees if they would all go for example to the superintendent so that everybody is considered because i strongly feel it's because i show up here that i will never be considered for any of those committees is there anyone else well thank you for your comments at this time the public will i'm sorry i'm going backwards here i will now

098close this public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of august 31st 2021 dr savage please restate your recommendations for this evening public items and if we could do it one at a time so we can get the approval for each one that would be great thank you there's no discussion madam chair no yes madam chair first item approval to adopt policy 1.171 audit committee thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves the to adopt policy 1.171 audit committee to in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt the best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of the adoption shall be september 1 2021 board members is there a motion to approve i'll move that we approve to adopt policy 1.171 audit committee thank

099you miss fisher i may have a second high second mortgage thank you miss morgan and please record your vote there's no discussion on this there is not on this mr bruno there is a discussion if they want to have a discussion there's a motion there should be a discussion i'm going down i'm just reading so is there a discussion yes go ahead ms kittens thank you i mentioned this at the meeting i think on monday and i just want to reiterate i agree with most of the comments that were made that we this audit committee has been too long getting across the finish line however i want to make sure that in the section i think it's three a lot of section c starting at line 30 and some of the comments were referring to

100this i'm not going to not support it because we need to get it across the finish line but i am concerned with the verbiage that says the board shall take care to choose individuals appropriate qualifications and background such as certified public accountant attorney or certified internal auditor period and then the next sentence says the board shall choose individuals with accounting industry or whatever it kind of leaves the connotation to me that we're looking first of all for cpas and odd attorneys and certified internal auditors i hope that in complying with this and each of us selecting individuals that we consider that whole first and second and third sentence and going further down realizing someone sent me an email about this the other day and the comment was whether we want someone that does not have

101all of these credentials and everything that are dealing with our you know massive and large two billion dollar district and my response was i don't think all the rest of us on this board have all of these qualifications and we on a regular basis vote on the two billion dollar budget so i think we should take into consideration qualifications but not excluding people that have experience there may be someone that you know has a business and do their own and really understand and but they may not be a cpa i would hope that we don't do that and in response to what one of the speakers said about reflecting the racial and ethnic composition i think that ethnic part does address somewhat to what you were saying and i don't feel that's saying we have

102a quota and we've got to have this many of these and this many of those it's just saying that we need to be aware of what our community is all about and giving an opportunity to everyone that wants to be a part in response to the last comment we all are you know required to select and first the first filter is your district you know i represent represent district five so that's who i tried to put on the board so that district five has representation and i hope that all of us will do the same thank you thank you is there any other discussion or questions ms fisher yeah i want to say thank you to mrs gittins for bringing that up i do believe that we need people with some kind of financial expertise

103we're talking here about the board auditor right no this is the audit committee no but we're talking about the audit committee to help with the selection of the border that's correct yes ma'am okay who who look at each of our departments and make recommendations for potential improvements and i think that someone with you know an independent business or someone who works in a bank or even in a store could be that kind of a person who could lend some valuable contribution to helping us find a board auditor there are a lot of people who are not a financial professionals like a cpa or a certified auditor who have a lot of knowledge about budgets and finance so i would thank mrs kittens for those comments thank you and i believe that's what it says it's

104given you such as the certified but then if you read on it does say people with experience so the experience is in financial and it just gives you a multiple of different industries and such so it's not just for cpas so that does give us the opportunity to to look at a broader field as well is there any other comments on this if not i would then please go ahead and record your vote do you need a hand vote on this miss tom okay because mine didn't oh here it is thank you okay motion carry 7-0 dr savage could you please restate item two please yes manager thank you approval to adopt policy 1.172 audit selection procedures thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 1.172 audit selection procedures

105in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be september 1 2021. board members is there a motion to approve miss vaughn i move i move to approve to adopt policy 1.172 audit selection procedures thank you may have a second second thank you miss morgan discussion no discussion seeing no discussion please record your vote seven zero motion carries thank you dr savage please state your number three yes madam chair approval to revise policy 1.20 community involvement thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to revise policy 1.2 1.0 1 2 1.20 community involvement in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective

106date of this adoption shall be september 1 2021. board members is there a motion to approve i move that we approve policy 1.20 community involvement opportunities thank you miss kittens and may have a second second okay thank you and discussion and i will say that we are we have changed this policy 1.20 to accommodate the zoom which we now can have for all of our meetings so this is to keep that there for the convenience of those who will participate in person and for those who will want to participate via zoom miss gins yes i do support the policy as well although i have had experiences in some of the advisory boards where if some are in in person and some are on the zoom that the telecommunication is not that great and i don't

107know if it's something we need to look at through technology or whatever to make sure that we do have the proper equipment to do that so that those that do attend via you know telecommunications are still as much a part of the process and of the group when there's a combined of both so i would just request that we take a look at that and see how we can make sure that it's up to standard thank you miss kittens is there anyone else for discussion cnn please record your vote seven zero motion passes okay next we'll move to other business which is board member comments and i am going to start with miss giovanelli of course you are because i'm always the one okay i'm not going to start with you miss givenelli i just

108took that back miss morgan i'll come back to you please miss morgan i left my comments on my other computer and i'm not they're not coming up here so i'm going to ask that somebody else go ahead while i pull up this spawn okay i'll go ahead first of all i wanted to mention that i really the improper word is enjoyed but i really appreciated tonight's indication i think the rabbi was spot on in in her in her message and apparently many of the members of our audience also were paying attention because i heard thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself mentioned numerous times and of course that is very appropriate as we start our mass mandate tomorrow because yes all of us agree by following the science that a mask like the one i'm

109wearing is not going to keep me from getting covered if somebody comes up close close to me and you know even though i am fully vaccinated however it does mitigate the chances of my spreading even though i'm fully vaccinated i may be asymptomatic of my spreading it and loving my neighbor and looking out for others and i think that's an important lesson for all of us i think all of us sometimes forget that i know i'm guilty of forgetting it and i and i think all of us need to take this message to heart secondly we did a lot of thank yous yesterday for those of you who didn't hear we covered a lot of bases and i just want to reiterate that for anybody who didn't hear we have all of the school staff

110from district administration district staff in all corners of this school district and i would say especially the school-based personnel have had to be very well to use the operating word agile i would say flexible and what they and what they did what they do in their teaching plans in the number of students that are showing up for their classes so thank you thank you to everybody that has been helping with this along with our volunteers the one group that i was remiss in thanking and i want to do this right now i want to send a personal thank you to the 200 plus parents and other constituents and teachers and other staff who have sent me in the past two weeks since our last school board meeting and it goes right through last night they've

111sent me messages of thanks and support for the controversial stand that i made about wearing a mask and i do send special thank yous personally to all of you who did that thank you very much and those are my comments thank you miss von miss morgan okay this evening we approved three resignations elizabeth whiff who is a big loss for us she was the health services coordinator backbone of our coveted protocols for the past year recognized by the superintendent as his employee of the year i'm sorry to see her go i'm grateful for her commitment to the district at the time and the work that she did andrew brown is also leaving a long-time employee of the district respected individual and he has moved on and i'm sorry to see him go and then finally

112i want to recognize trey davis our information's information systems chief information officer you know i'm someone who believes that opportunities to learn and grow sometimes are limited within an organization and you need people coming in from the outside to look at things a little bit differently and to help individuals and programs learning grow and mr davis came in with a vision and a commitment for a certain period of time to use technology systems to support the mission and vision of the district he and his staff have created a foundation and a network that has transformed the way people communicate across the district the way they administer and manage so i want to acknowledge his contribution and i also want to acknowledge dwayne alton who i understand will be standing in as acting cio and i'm

113really excited for you and and glad to see you take this big step so thank you thank you both thank you all the other comment i would make is that i have been asked by several people two people didn't didn't support didn't verbally support the superintendent's recommendation at our meeting monday night board members getting in giovannelli and people have asked for purposes of transparency if they would offer their support or indicate whether or not they supported the superintendent's recommendation and those are my comments for this evening thank you thank you very much miss morgan now i'm going to miss javanelli okay a couple oh let me see what date with this i sent an email out regarding rsm i don't know what day this was it was a while it was a couple weeks ago

1148 13 excuse me and i am bringing this back up regarding that we had do do not have a presently an auditor in place and we need one per the statute i would like to make a motion and i move that the chair reach out to rsm and utilize the board attorney if necessary to inquire if they would be willing to be our board auditor once more now a second okay is there any discussion miss morgan i believe it's our practice not to bring up motions that have not been previewed with the board so i can't support it thank you i sent this on august 13th i don't know if you can't read but i sent it on august 13th wow okay miss miss jaminelli they've had plenty of she's had plenty of time i'm

115sorry i disagree let's just please be just be respectful to each other miss dupree bruno were you going to no i'm not i'm okay i'm just preparing in case okay so we're in discussion miss patricka we just approved a policy to help us hire a internal auditor and this is premature i can't support it any other discussion miss kittens yes i have brought up several times and on several occasions that we needed to have whether it be interim or short or whatever that we needed to ask rsm to at least help us during this time they were a part of this process of selection for the audit committee they are aware of it when i brought it up i asked the chair to please talk to them about that and never really got a response

116i understand that i mean i don't recall if you spoke to them or not but there was no firm response i asked at one meeting to have the discussion with them as to you know what what actually might either help them to decide to come back and help us or what was the actual reasons and specifics because here's the point we can move on and use this new process and choose the best person and best company in the world but if the same thing happens to them and they feel the same way for whatever reason or for whatever thoughts that someone doesn't like the way they're doing this or doing that we cannot afford to be in this position again we cannot afford to go through months and months and months and not have the

117people in place that we need because of whatever we have drug out this audit committee thing now for almost 10 12 months it's been almost a year and that is just unexcusable to me it really is and to have somebody at least in there so that they're helping us do something we're flying by the seat of our pants right now for a year and it's it's just not right they were there they didn't do anything illegal they didn't do anything wrong and if so then we should have turned them in we need someone there were various reasons we still don't have it down as to why they're not here and i think if we just you know put our tail between our legs and put our head down and bow down and say would you

118help us we still with the what we passed this evening we still got to get that committee everybody's got to decide who's going to sit on it then we got to decide if you like the people i put and we're just going to go on and on and on we need help so just bury our pride and ask them would they please help us until we get to this point thank you thank you miss kittens and mr jamie you well and if we had utilized rsm properly over a year ago we wouldn't have paid out almost a million dollars to whistleblowers so we would be ahead of the game by far so i don't think that we need to allow board members to run off our employees and our rsm would be our employee and

119so we need one we need to apologize like miss getting said and we can't wait for the candy being kicked down the road for the committee the bid i'm not i don't have a problem with the committee working with rsm but we need to have something in place even if it's for a short period of time six months or something but we're right now without an auditor and we need one thank you and i will let you know and i have said this before so this is not the first time i'm saying this i have spoken with them and it's not has nothing to do with one individual board members it's the fact that they were not able to do their jobs they kept bringing things to us they wanted m mousse they wanted to

120be able to have a the ability to do something for a thousand dollars or ten thousand multiple people said no so it's not one person that was it that's what made them say i cannot do my job i'm being held kind of like hostage to not do my job so it's not one person and we keep re it keeps looking like we're pointing at like an individual it's not one person and when i've talked to them multiple times and it has nothing to do with one it has to do with the whole dynamics of we have jobs to do we're trying to do our job we bring these things to the board we're we're told no we then say can we just at least have a little bit of leeway with the chair or the

121attorney you know saying it's okay for us to do something for this amount of not to exceed xyz and they're told no that was the last straw that was the last straw for them and then they don't want to do that they don't want to put their employees through that and mr vanessa and i spoke to them too as well and they said that you know until we find value but now that we have an audit committee that we'll have one in place i think sooner than later now because we have this policy i think rsm will be more comfortable and working with the audit committee we will be able to move like a district like we should be doing with utilizing the auditor in an audit comm audit committee together and those functionalities will

122work and be cohesive and then i think this board will work better so i don't think certainly rsm did nothing wrong so i think there's nothing wrong with rsm so i think i think it's just a matter of now putting everything in place and rsm will come back they told me when we find value in it they will i mean they didn't have a problem so i think that working with this committee now will be the piece that was missing right and they did say to me they would con consider only if there was an audit committee put in place first and that audit committee would be the ones who come up with the recommendations and they're like the go-between that is what they that's what they said to me so again once we you

123know get our members on this committee then we can reach back out to them once more have that conversation with all of us including the audit committee of what we are looking at and then and possibly move on with that yes we do need to get this done as quickly as possible miss fisher yes so then i would just suggest at that point that we since we are not in statutory compliance and we do need a board auditor that is required that we go ahead and review the procedures and select the audit committee as soon as possible and put that as a priority for one of our next as soon as possible workshops and get the show on the road trica thank you miss fisher if i may through the chair ask dr savage how

124quickly dr savage could you get staff to put together applications and get them out do you think can you could you guestimate a time frame for us please because i don't think we need a workshop i think we just need to get applications out and then board members need to review them and make appointments well then well yeah that's what she's going to ask because that'll have to go out on the public so the public can also sign up dr savage i can work to provide a response but we're guesstimating somewhere between 14 just two to two and a half weeks to try to put that together and could i also please request social media you know we're looking for audit committee members when the application is completed and we push it out to the

125community if i could ask for you know social media engagement just whatever tools you would utilize to push something out on a wide basis i would appreciate that yes i'm certainly not the person you'd want to do that well not you but i have somebody our communication staff is far better than i am at that so i'll certainly bring it to their attention as well fantastic thank you and then dr savage with that and then once that has taken place and the it is pushed out there then when these applications come back it would behoove all of us to make sure that we get them we read them we contact people and we make decisions and turn those names in so we can make this happen as well so we don't hold anything up on

126our end miss gittens through the chair may i ask a question of attorney bruno yes please attorney bruno prior to rsm resigning it was my understanding that you and they were working together to put together this whole process that we just voted on is that correct yes rsm did assist with the development of the policy okay so again i state my case they were involved with it they helped put it together we are still two weeks is going to turn and 14 days will turn into more guys we are in the midst of a crisis and everything else everybody is stretched to the nth degree and i think putting something else on the plate of other staff members because we don't want to just ask rsm to step in for three months or six months

127to help us do this is putting more work on staff and i always often hear you guys say we can't put more on staff and you know the superintendent they are you know knee-deep in alligators and putting something else out there it would just make it simpler they helped put it together so why can't they come on for three months and help us get actually choose people from the help us choose them help us set up what we're looking for do the people that the superintendent is going to use or whoever to put out the application do they actually have the experience and to know what we're looking for and what works best or would a company that has been doing it and that is helping other districts to choose their committees not be the

128best person to help us well miss fun i'm going to get to you one second the audit committee i mean the rsm would not pick or pick the audit committee because those audit committees are the ones who have given them instructions so it is not they will not be doing that the applications is just what how we get our other committee members we put that out there they send them back into us it's not gonna be any different than that and rsm is not gonna just walk in here without a new mou telling us what they want and part of that would be working with an audit committee and not dealing with i'm just i'm gonna stop that right there miss miss vaughn please okay and madam chair i respectfully say that perhaps you should

129have reserved that judgment till all of us were done but i what i want to say is i really respect and liked the services offered by rsm i was very unhappy when i heard of them quitting and i had some and i still do have some pretty good ideas why yes i think there were some things coming from the board but also in the previous administration because i had dealt with that with the previous superintendent a few times i believe there were some there was some heel dragging purposefully on that said i oppose bringing in rsm as an interim or for a short time as much as i like that organization because my feeling is if we bring them in and we don't have all our ducks in a row with what we have just

130passed we are setting ourselves up for another debacle and yes i am upset and many of us and i'm one of them have kept saying when are we going to do this when are we going to bring that up but at this point i really do think we're setting ourselves up for a big fall and with with rsm and maybe messing ourselves up with other potential firms or auditors if we don't get these ducks in a row and even though i hate waiting more time i'm not going to support a short-term ask of of rsm without everything else in in alignment thank you miss vaughn and i truly was not trying to put a judgment i was just i just wanted to state facts of from through conversations that i've had with them and i

131guess we could i mean if we could put a date on here no later than the today is the 31st so if we want to put a date certain to make sure that we have this information out and by the end of the month have that put together acceptable to everybody i think the information on the floor shouldn't i'm sorry i didn't get recognized there's a comment and then if she wants to yeah i'm sorry well promotion or not moment i just my thought process is that the fact that it doesn't have to be short-term i remember i don't know if everybody on the board here went through the whole hiring of the auditor but there was very slow there was very slim pickings i mean it was very difficult this is their expertise school

132boards they came highly recommended from fsba i've spoken to other districts and they use them this is their expertise i don't i think that just keep kicking this can down the road and we're going to end up with rsm anyways and then we've we've been without non-compliant another month another another 60 days another 90 days i think we're derelict in our duties quite honestly and i don't understand why why this why the resistance for somebody that's very reputable and very professional and on our part we're we were the bad ones so let's just get the auditor in place let's get so they can work with our audit committee and let's just move on and be compliant that's where i'm at and i will not change my motion let's vote thank you gonna call the question

133okay so could you please re state your motion i'm a i moved that the chair reach out to rsm and utilize the board attorney if necessary to inquire if they would be willing to be our board auditor once more and second and may i have a hand vote miss morgan nay miss vaughn nay miss kittens yes miss patricka hey miss giovanelli yes and miss fisher yes and i will reach back out to them so yes so that's four to three do you have any other comments with steven yeah i have another motion now then once this pet was passed i moved that if rsm agrees to be our board auditor that they be immediately reinstated under the terms of their prior sow and that the new proposed sow they presented to the board until such

134time as the board can enter into a new sow with them in order for the board to have board auditor to have a board auditor as required by statute a second would you like me to read that again say you second okay is there a discussion miss thomas did you get that motion and i can email it to you would you please yes thank you that's good so is there any discussion on that see you no discussion mr nelly will you please reinstate restate your motion i move that if rsm agrees to be our border auditor that they be immediately reinstated under the terms of our prior sow and that the new proposed sow they presented to the board until such time as the board can enter into a new sow with them in order

135for the board to have a board auditor as required by statute thank you miss morgan nay miss vaughn yes miss kittens yes miss patrick hey this javenelli yes ms fisher yes and nay for me so motion passes four to three okay miss giovanelli is there anything else yes i have my comments for this evening that wasn't my god that was not your comments huh okay i would like to thank did you have our staff for the dedication they have shown these first few weeks of school thank you for the public who came out last night and tonight to share your opinions as i always welcome your feedback prior to the start of school i asked my fellow board members to meet to discuss our cove protocols for the upcoming school year my requests were ignored

136yesterday i asked for transparency in how the district reports coveted information and clarity in quarantining the met and quarantining messaging although i did not vote on a mass mandate last night the opt-out option has been removed and a mask mandate will go into effect tomorrow for all students and staff i do not support the decision and i continue to believe that parents have the right to choose what is best for their children the message you heard from the lee county school district in in the past weeks leading up to school was do we have no mass yes mass no mass so in the past two weeks there's there would be there was no mass mandate this year when you were when we when they were notified of the mass mandate the day before school started

137the information was not provided as only only an opt-out option at that point but it was short notice and i think that's the mistake that we made as a board by not having the discussions to to have the proper communication and that's a mistake that i will own as well as this board should own and to make it better for our students and family and faculty and staff that has to work in the in in with in this covid environment they were they were provided an option out and now that's been revoked mass are only one piece the puzzle in coveted mitigation we have many other issues that must be addressed to prevent the spread of covet like overclock overcrowded classrooms countless staff abscesses on top of staff shortages a crisis in transportation department unnecessary

138quarantining coveted reporting problems inadequate turnaround times and contact tracing and constant and inconsistent protocols that were not brought before the board for our approval this mass mandate will serve as a makeshift band-aid but it will not truly address all issues we have and has greatly impeded the trust of the public and our relationship and our leadership i am disappointed in the communication that went out today to parents as i understand it an email was sent out to parents that stated mass would be required for everyone tomorrow in school on school property and at indoor athletic activities our communication did not explain that the opt out was being removed our communication was not clear or concise i received many calls and emails today about the whole the email that went out expressing concern with the poor

139communication people stated the email is unclear they asked do we stop do we still have an opt-out option what kind of masks are required what's the protocol if the mask is not worn when our communication changes so rapidly we must make sure that it is clear and precise and that people are instructed properly since we failed to do that i will try to make it as clear as i can at last night's board meeting our superintendent chose to exercise board policy 1.1 1.181 giving him the authority to mandate mass on our school campuses for everyone he removed the opt out option that has been put in place giving parents the right to choose starting tomorrow students and staff must wear a mask in school and on lee county school district property what kind of math

140did your students wear you ask we shouldn't have we should have guidelines for that what is the protocol if the mass policy is not followed i have not been informed we have taken an action that addresses one aspect of fighting covid i'm sorry for those of you that feel let down misled or misinformed by the board to be crystal clear if we wouldn't have been if we would have been asked to vote last night my vote would have been no there was not enough information both sides of the information was not provided or shared with our district and our whole community i wholeheartedly stand with parents right to choose what is best for their child this is not my authority and i will not overreach my power or anything further than that i will continue

141to ask questions and to advocate for every student staff member in lee county i choose to wear a mask tonight because i respect those around me i had i was at a conference this past week so i've been around a lot of people so i'm respecting my in my individual board members and that's my choice and i respect others to have the same choice if i can't encourage i would encourage vaccines please stay home if you are sick and i thank you and those are my comments thank you miss giavanelli and miss fisher please thank you madam chair i'm sorry i was trying to get your attention prior to mr avenelli's finishing her comments but i just want to make sure there was a procedural issue that i did not bring to your attention timely

142with regards to public comment for those two motions so if there's any member of the public that would like to speak and i don't know if that would change anyone's vote if anyone wants to speak about the rsm issue thank you does not appear that anyone does so i just want to make sure that the public had that opportunity miss fisher yes thank you so i want to appreciate again the comments that we heard this evening and i just want to say that it is our responsibility to provide for the health and safety of all children in our district and i also want to repeat something that i've said many times over the years which is that parents are our most important partners in your child's education that being said we are losing some very

143valuable employees who have contributed much to this district and i want to say thanks to them and wish them the best of health and happiness in their new en endeavors and dwayne it's been a lot of years that you have been in that department and i remember when i first met you i didn't understand the word you said and then when trey came along i understood even less but thank you for all you do ms mcclung thank you for all that you have done to support all of the work that has come in front of this board and we really appreciate you and all of our staff have been going above and beyond the call of duty both at the district office and in schools and that is much appreciated with that being said i

144wish everyone health and safety and blessings good night thank you miss fisher miss kittens yes i have notes and i don't know if i'm going to read them i just will speak i do want to say why i did not well i voted nay on the agenda i have said over and over and over again i will not vote on anything or any agenda that has moving forward on veterans park academy project because i don't feel that it's being transparent i do know that i have a meeting this friday i believe it is with the superintendent and some of the people involved and i am not sure why in that meeting all the people that have contracts on here tonight are not going to be at that meeting i don't understand why that's not happening

145and i would like to publicly request that everyone who is mentioned on what is it l4 that have signed contracts when i was told previously that we could not i could not meet with any of them because the contracts were in negotiation and i quote would not be done until october or november so i'm a little bit confused as to seeing these contracts are there several contracts throughout the process or is this starting it and the bottom line to it i just feel it's not being transparent i still say the name of it veterans park academy and i'm told we have plenty of time to change it but i'm told that out of one side of my people's mouths and on the other side we're just continually moving on and on and on i do

146not think it's the best thing for our community to have a mega super school and it was supposed to be that they were i heard from was it maintenance or construction at one point when school ended that they were going to get in and refurbish all the portables that were over there because they were in such disrepair and they had to put the sixth graders in there but then i heard no it has to be fifth whatever and then i walked i went on a tour with the principal and he showed me the areas of the old building that would be used temporarily until they got the portables fixed and then they'd move the kids in there then repair the building well every time it comes up i hear that repair of the building means

147painting those bricks and putting down new carpet and changing the paint to match the rest of veterans park academy it does not sound transparent to me i don't mean to be mean or nasty about it i just feel like i'm not getting the straight story to it and i keep getting different stories so i'm not pointing a finger or blaming anyone i would just like to know the truth if you have no intentions of doing anything but putting in 16 out 16 million for the performance arts and 8 million to fix up and paint and put carpet in that old building which i remember we were told the reason they were moving them over to the new building was to get a new start to get out of that old building so then why are

148you painting and putting carpet and putting children in that building again i don't understand and if you can explain it to me so i can understand it then i'll get off of it but i just can't at this point there has not been a real open forum for the community to talk about it and i won't go into the previous thing that was done so i would like to publicly say i want to see some transparency about it i want to have a true town hall where people are explaining the actual truth what is going on and why the lion's share of the money is going for performance arts center which was supposed to be a black box theater and two-thirds goes to that and one-third goes to the school where they're going to be

149sitting and doing academics i don't understand so that was why i voted like that i want to say some of my board members like to to push me to do what they want me to say it happens all the time and tonight is no exception so i think there was no question whether or not i approved what the superintendent was doing in my comments yesterday but let me back up for a quick second for the last month every time the situation the conversation about masks came up i raised my hand and if you can go back and look at it what was the thing i kept saying how are you going to enforce it i've asked that over and over and over again how are you going to enforce it i had nightmares literally of

150waking up and seeing something that i hope and pray does not happen tomorrow morning with people showing up saying yes my child is coming in and you will educate them and yes we have a reason we have to do that but then i look at the numbers i read the letters i talk to the people there was a conversation where the secretary said a lady called in today five people in her family one person got it then everybody got covered and she just doesn't know what she's going to do at this point when i see suffering and pain and numbers that i see again i go back to my the building is on fire we cannot sit around and talk about who started the fire we've got to turn on the fire hose and the

151best way to do it is not going to be the best for you or you or you or you or maybe for me but we had to do something and as i said yesterday which should have left no question in your mind where i stood it's all a part of a multi-pronged mitigation and i regret and apologize to people that think that at least i as a part of this board were blaming masked or unmasked people for this pandemic i in no way shape or form have done that it is everything i personally feel that it has to do with not having enough help to to test not having enough help to back up and do the forms and find out who's got it and by the time we get over here 10 more people

152have been at school all week and then you're backed up again there are still people that are ready to come back after having coveted have not received a phone call i on my phone every other day we get some text saying there was a case at the district office and you will get further information well that's a text if you're a parent you get a text like that and say wait for further information you're sitting with pins and needles okay was it somebody that sat in the front row next to me and coughed or was it somebody that had a meeting in the boardroom when we weren't here and they sneezed all over my desk who was it where was it well hipaa says we can't tell you can't tell me what part of this

153huge building or if i was affected and then two to three weeks later you get an email that says you know it was in a certain area but we can't tell you i can't imagine people with children going through this every day you have multiple children like the lady was saying multiple children and you send one and they come home a parent called and said their child was crying she was wearing a mask and there were kids in the room in her class that got sick and weren't feeling well she was so afraid that she was bringing covet home to her family and she was in tears and she was wearing a mask masks are not the end-all cure-all the testing isn't the vaccine isn't it's everything together and we have to work together to

154put the fire out but we have to start somewhere and yesterday the superintendent said this is where we can start we have to start and in answer to that as well please i've told you all before threatening that you're not gonna vote for me does not make me lose sleep if any of you ever sat up here and had to deal with all the stuff that i've dealt with in the last three years you'd ask me what was wrong with my head if i did run again and if i do if i win i win this is where god wants me to be i don't know how and why and if i don't i don't but i can tell you one thing i've worked as a teacher i've worked in the district a long time

155and now i've worked behind the curtain at oz so i do know this district inside and out i will not go away so it's your choice don't vote for me if you don't want to but i'm not going away because the issues that i fight for sitting here are the same issues that i fought for forever and will continue to fight for so please just stop looking at me and threatening you know we know we're gonna vote for you don't my husband will be happy so you know we got to move on turn on the hose let's put some of the fire out but we have to do it together i just hope and pray for everyone tomorrow that no matter how angry or upset you are that you will put children first and someone

156mentioned i think it was yesterday at one of the meetings have you talked to your children i saw a report on the news and they were there was people protesting about masks and no masks and all and the reporter stopped and asked this one kid that had a sign and she says what do you think about this he said well if i don't wear the mask i can't go to school and i just want to go to school and he said so it's okay for me you can look it up it's on youtube and it was just a simple kid that made a comment can we just get back down to a more base level thank you i'm done thank you miss patricka i'm really sorry it's late but we didn't have a briefing so

157i've i've got some stuff i have to say i'm really sorry so through the chair dr savage i had my first call to the covet hotline today and i was really impressed i'm really tired right now so i'm gonna have a hard time getting my comments out but i was really impressed they were so patient and so kind and so overworked and i've got my first 15 minutes or however long i'm going to be in there tomorrow to actually see behind the scenes i just needed you to have that positive feedback they didn't take my name until the very end of the call so they didn't know it was me that was calling so i just got randomly whoever picked up the phone and i think i got the real experience so positive feedback there

158we do have three and the rest of my comments will be about our resignations we do have three resignations tonight beth whiff we could not have gotten through last year without her i am concerned about how we're going to move forward without her given the high level of expertise she showed she was our employee of the year last year and i'm really sorry to see her go andy brown his reputation precedes him in the law enforcement community his reputation is beyond question and above reproach he is considered incredibly ethical in all of his activities and actions and i will say that i think both of these people are stolen by our sisters to the south collier and collier's got a good district and collier obviously saw something in them that well it's not that we

159didn't see for both of them but at least for mr brown that we didn't necessarily see in him so i'm sorry to see both of them go mr davis i worked very closely with because i was i am the safety and security liaison from the board and obviously a lot of security issues reside in mr davis's department i'm going to tell the board a story i was new to the board when when mr davis was hired and i didn't understand a word he said and frequently people will give you tech speak in order to cover for a deficiency right so i didn't know if he was real if everything if if he was actually as smart as he sounded so i have a brother who was offered the cio position of a large multinational manufacturing

160corporation headquartered in finland he ultimately turned the job down because he didn't want to move to finland but really high level cio type thinking like trey and trey was going to boston my brother lives in boston and i said hey steve will you have dinner with this guy and see if he's the real thing cp's the real deal trey didn't know that that was why i was hooking them up i just figured two computer geeks could sit and have dinner together anyways they had dinner together i think you were up at mit for a conference and my brother called and he said you are you have got to hold on to that guy as long as you can possibly have him and it is true that trey hired us as much as we hired him

161so i'm going to do a little bit of a walk through memory lane with you it wasn't until i had been on the board for a couple years that i started to really talk about cabinet members in my annual evaluations of the superintendent because it took me a couple years to get to know them so 2019 what did i say about trey davis cio trey davis maintains a positive work environment that he is helping to spread through the entire district his initiatives continue to make the district a leader in education technology across the nation trey's ability to negotiate with vendors so that we can provide cutting edge technology in our classrooms in an affordable way has proven to be extremely beneficial and trey's focus on safety and security gives me great confidence as a footnote

162added today in 2021 i will talk about the 40 million dollars in savings that you've brought to this district through your ability to negotiate 2020 what did i say about mr davis i said mr davis continues to move is ahead of just about every other educational institution in the country inclusive of post-secondary institutions the learning impact platinum award is certainly an example of the innovation taking place under mr davis leadership but the proof can be seen each and every day when we tour schools talk to teachers and staff and see a higher level of collaboration between departments at the district than we have ever seen in addition from a customer service perspective this is the thing that's closest to my heart the placement of many of the required back to school forums online was tremendously

163helpful to parents and the feedback regarding this has been very very positive finally last year what did i say about mr davis in response to i was talking about dr adkins response to covid and i said in the process mr davis has proven yet again that he possesses exceptional negotiating skills he and his team were able to secure the devices and internet connectivity needed so that each one of our students and staff members had access to a device and access to the internet during the fourth quarter shutdown the bandwidth and security necessary to accomplish this including the rollout of lee homeconnect and the explosion of enrollment at lee virtual school has never been questioned the technology adaptation to the district's immediate and unprecedented need to convert to zoom classrooms and meetings was incredibly smooth new

164necessary technology and software have been carefully vetted so that students and teachers were set up for success the acceleration of the installation of promethean boards during the fourth quarter shutdown was prophetic all of this has been accomplished while planning for future technology needs and advocating for statutory changes needed to effectively secure district assets from threats that are increasingly sophisticated that's a lot you've done a lot and while i really look forward to the implementation of the succession plan that you have worked so painstakingly to implement the man to your left mr alton i am excited to work with you moving forward you've got huge shoes to fill and mr davis i am just so incredibly grateful that we had you for as long as we did thank you for your service to our community those

165are my comments thank you mr patricka and i will be short with my comments as well trey thank you for the last three years of helping me out here i really appreciate it i wish you all the best what with whatever you your new venture will be also i want to say too i do really appreciate everyone who works in this district i know how hard everybody is working i've had the opportunity to work within the schools for the last couple weeks and i see the stress i see how hard everybody is working and you know even though i'm just in the lunchroom helping them you know with the kids giving them that free time to do whatever little bit that they can do or be in there greeting the kids in the morning speaking

166to the parents i think you know just seeing all that and just seeing everybody how they're pulling together and working together it's really heartwarming to know that everybody is even in the cafeteria you see people from the different locations jumping in there and just working you know side by side to to make sure that the kids are fed there's just so much going on out there and you know that's not even you know all the other emotional things that are going on with our children you know coming in and maybe their shoes are too small they need another pair of shoes they don't have another uniform to wear they're all dealing with all of that as well as trying to make sure that they're educating these children but i also want to say too and

167i sorry that some of our members have left we did have a health and safety protocol prior to workshop prior to school starting so i just wanted to put that out there i don't perhaps some were not able to attend that but we certainly did have that in advance and they we continue to get updates daily as as often as they possibly can as far as the updates the covet room i was able to go in there and train we're trying to put more people in there so that way they work together with the i.t department to make sure that we can have that communication and maybe dr savage will speak on that so i don't want to bust his bubble but everybody's working together to really try to dr savage did i call you

168somebody else if i did i apologize but everybody's really working hard you know together to to make it work for for all of us because we are definitely in this together whether we like it or not we will you know we're going to get through this and i just want to make sure that we all understand that and then perhaps dr savage and in your comments because i know we have quite a few people speak about home connect and the understanding of that virtual option and how we're still looking at you know what we can do for that options options and last but not least thank you again for to all the law enforcement who are here today tonight with us yesterday and just for keeping us safe in here and outside of here and

169i thank you all and mr pre bruno thank you madam chair i have no comments thank you and dr savage please thank you madam chair i do have just a few i first want to acknowledge trey davis i believe this is his last and final day with us here but i know his his leadership and his contributions will be felt for many years to come wish him all the best i also want to give a public nod to dwayne alton a big part of leadership is really about succession it's you're one of the kind of truisms that i always believed in is lead yourself out of a job if you're doing a good job you're building up the people around you so that they are ready to take that mantle and so while well duane

170and trey are very different people i know that we're in great hands with duane's leadership as well so thank you trey for all that you've done but also thank you so much for investing in someone who has been a part of lee county's past present future and we're just so lucky to have you as well mr alton but but thank you thank you trey for everything you've done for us i also want to share something very important from our dunbar family you know so dunbar high is a near and dear to my heart with some of their work but they had a really unique situation that had occurred very early in the school year and i wanted to share it but i wanted to wait until the results of the outcome was shared and this

171really kind of speaks to one of the most important things i got a call the day it happened from the principal who said thank you so much for pushing for two sros at all of our high schools including the ones in city fort myers he said it literally saved a life today and so i wanted to share this email that carl sent to carl burnside for those who don't know sent to his faculty i'll make sure we just do not read the student's name dunbar family i wanted to update you to let you know that student continues to progress and it appears that she will be released soon also i wanted to share with you about the sink the actions of members of our dunbar family who came through in the crisis first jill closing

172who's a reading teacher activated the emergency card which alerted us to the situation as well as making a call and was amazingly calm throughout the entire medical episode second are fantastic at fort myers pd resource officers david sanchez and david wood assessed the situation and not only made the 9-1-1 calls but knew that the situation was dire and called for the aed to be brought to the classroom as they began to administer cpr ms macewan graciously asked if she could be of assistance by bringing mrs claussen's students into her classroom as i directed them to leave when i checked later she involved costing students in the lesson both officers along with coach sammy brown and esc para backup clinic person issa lee enacted the cpr protocols ray romero ran downstairs to secure the aed machine

173the student situation required the usage of the aed machine several times by our dunbar team keeping her alive emts finally arrived and they continued the process and eventually stabilized her to be transported during this time i felt helpless as all i could do was be in the room watch and quietly pray i was later informed that the hospital medical team stated that if not for the quick actions of the team the child would have died i wanted to share with you about the amazing actions of members of our dunbar team of heroes if i admitted anyone who assisted charge it to my head and not my heart it is a reminder of why i'm so proud to be the principal such an amazing school with amazing people below is a picture that officer sanchez received

174from the child's mother yesterday i hope it brightens your day and serves as a context that in this difficult time of the pandemic there are still some great and positive things occurring that we do have some things of which we can be thankful carl burnside i share that with you yep i share that with you because it's a you know not only was the emergency response cards that are part of a response to alyssa's law something our governor and the legislature put in place so that we can immediately issue that piece but that the quick actions of the law enforcement officers there the life-saving devices and all the team coaches paraprofessionals in the clinic the teachers everyone moving quickly into action this child allegedly was minutes that the child would have died had it had

175it not been for those pieces so that is an awesome thing to see and the young lady i saw a photo of her and she is smiling and happy and completely was discharged from the hospital and is doing very well right now so it's just a good brighton story to share because she was in very dangerous shape for for quite a while so i wanted to share that with you the last thing i want to do is just to address the masks because i understand that's kind of like the it's going to be the elephant in the room for the next 30 days and so i just wanted to kind of remind any of our public who are watching and unhappy with the mask mandate to please bring your concerns to our district office and

176please do not blame the schools they did not have any opportunity to participate in this decision so please do not take out any frustrations on school staff as we are the ones who are responsible also this is for 30 calendar days which in september results in just over 20 school days while this may feel like a major change it is actually just a return to where we were just a couple months ago in june and it was a way of work that we had implemented all last year the only major difference is that we don't have the lee home connect option just in kind of response to that piece because that the state would not give us that flexibility to permit that type of innovative learning model that's just one of the pieces we did

177not have none of the districts had that availability this year for those innovative learning models however we do continue to try to attempt to find workarounds so that we can still provide the the approved models but supplement with ways that more closely mirror what the families became accustomed to in that effort and so we are working on that piece we still though also make sure we follow all the laws i just want to kind of acknowledge that this is a turbulent time in general and just between the pandemic and the polarized politics i think we can all acknowledge that the pandemic has completely disrupted our way of life but so has the manner and sources in which we consume information so from my perspective and i'm just going to try to do this without choosing

178sides and if you're a person who listens to news and consumes articles that reinforce that masks are useless that they provide no benefit that local hospitals are doing just fine and that it is a liberal agenda or special interest conspiracy then when your local school system requires masks it offends that person's worldview in a deep and personal way but conversely for people who listen to news and consume media that reinforces that masks are part of a larger comprehensive strategy along with vaccines and the portrayal that our hospitals are filled at dangerous capacities then that person equally finds anyone who rejects that as crazy it is becoming exceedingly difficult to find common ground we can't seem to agree on any type of objective reality or facts and an educational policy setting that makes a task far

179more challenging i want to state that i really believe in the constitution i believe in democracy i do believe in parent rights and freedoms but authority is also vested in governmental entities as well i think we as those governmental bodies should embrace challenges to our authority and visibly offer up what we believe our defenses are due process and our various checks and balances and governmental procedures hopefully do provide the remedies or access to remedies for any who are inclined to exercise those freedoms i also believe that we are in the midst of a very serious mental health crisis and i don't have an answer for that i try to agree each day in each person with compassion even for those that wish harm on me our school board or others we have been faced with

180an unprecedented trauma and it has affected so many of us in profound ways and unfortunately we aren't out of the woods yet winston churchill famously said when you are going through hell keep going and i don't know if this is our darkest hour i hope that it is but i'm not sure that we're there yet i hope for our schools and our community that brighter days are ahead i will not lose hope or faith in our community and i will do everything in my power to be a part of anything that allows us to come together as one governance team one district and one community thank you thank you dr savage the next scheduled board the next scheduled meeting of the board on tuesday september 7th there will be a board workshop at 1. on

181wednesday september 8th there will be a board briefing at 1 followed by a special meeting at 505 and an action meeting at 6 00 p.m at this point seeing no other business to come before this board this meeting is adjourned thank you and be safe you