001hey good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting business the school board meeting of january 11 2022 is now called to order the time is 601 we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district's mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential in the district's vision to be a world-class school system this evening's agenda includes invocation presentation of colors and pledge of allegiance acknowledgements public comments consent action items which include three items under board office five and five items under business services two items under human res resources one item under information system 10 items under operations which one is good cause dr savage please provide an explanation for this one item yes madam chair
002item l10 the approval of the total project cost estimate for phase two of the veterans park academy for the arts renovation this item was added as good cause because in order to have the project substantially completed by august 9 of 2022 thus providing 1035 student seats the board must approve the phase 2 funding approval upon the superintendent's execution of the construction manager's amendment gmp a notice to proceed to the construction manager will be issued which begins the 205 day construction duration if the board were not to approve until the next available board action meeting of january 25th this would push the project completion past the start of school august 10 2022. thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda four items under other businesses
003board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda i'll move to adopt the agenda as advertised thank you miss fisher we have a second bye second by miss morgan okay and if you would please record your vote thank you miss thomas ms thomas i cannot see what the vote is it's not up there i couldn't get it's not up there thank you miss thomas mine didn't come up i'm a yes oh okay so six zero musha carries well miss vaughn is not here miss vaughn is absent this evening for the time being so miss fisher has kindly stepped in and will lead us in a prayer followed by miss morgan will lead us in the presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance miss fisher will you please please bow your heads father we
004ask your blessing on all gathered here tonight please guide us as we prepare to educate our children and grant us the wisdom to make sound decisions as public servants help us to see the glass that is half full the essay that is half written the answer that is halfway correct help us to see the many students with their hands up not just the few who are shouting out banish our spirit of self-resignation and procrastination replace it with a spirit of determination energy and action help us to be bold and tenacious to believe in ourselves to believe in our colleagues to believe that all things are possible give us the sense of purpose and direction help us to praise students and co-workers who keep going to celebrate our successes and to provide our community with a
005world-class educational system amen thank you mr fisher miss morgan introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for our pledge of allegiance tonight is captain amy lunger senior army instructor from fort myers high school captain longer served 24 years in the army in numerous assignments and duty positions this is captain longer's fourth year as a jrotc instructor in the district thank you presenting the national colors tonight is cadet benjamin records he is the cadet battalion commander of the fort myers high school green wave jrtc battalion cadet records is actively involved in the raider and marksmanship teams he is currently a junior with a 4.0 gpa and hopes to attend a military academy after high school please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states
006of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all acknowledgements the character word for november is commitment binding yourself to a course of action despite obstacles the design you see displayed on the screen was created by arlie orlita reyes a 12th grade student at mariner high school the school board of lee county acknowledges the following events for the month of january 2022 national school choice week january 23rd through the 29th 2022 celebrate literacy week florida 24th through the 28th 2022 martin luther king day junior january 17th 2022. miss kittens would you please read your statement okay good evening and first i would like to acknowledge the fact that this was actually brought to me by two of our community members jamie merchant and pastor
007robert roper and they approached me in talking in a conversation about unity and so their suggestion was what i will read that will go into our minutes for today and i want to first thank the two of them and to say to people it's an example of unity to be able to work with anybody to get something done for our children we acknowledge that in accordance with dr martin luther king's vision quote that children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character end quote all policies training teaching communication programs and activities provided or supported by the school district of lee county align with that vision and any applicable federal state and general laws thank you thank you
008appreciate that miss kittens okay next on the agenda item is public comment mr quick please address the item of public comment welcome as well thank you very much and just so you know shaina zubke is here as well she's seated to my right who will be joining the team at the end of the month thank you school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board consent concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff located in the hallway outside of the board room the rules concerning
009public comment are posted in and will be made from the microphone in the back of the room please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues abusive language is prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or displays of temper during the public comment time is prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper decorum and 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
010you govern yourself accordingly we will take recess as necessary if there is not decorum in the chambers please remember that is unlawful and a second-degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the school board meeting per board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is three minutes if there are 20 speakers 22 minutes if there are thirty speakers in one minute if there are thirty one speakers or more the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour or sixty speakers you will find a countdown on the big screens in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone i will call your names five speakers at a time please follow staff's directions when lining up madam chair there are
01114 speakers that wish to address the board this evening the first five tara jenner mr quick oh sorry i just need to finish reading this oh yep sorry okay please make sure you have completed a public comment card if you intend to provide public comment the card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to staff for follow-up the cards are located with the staff in the hallway or over here right now in addition there is if there is not decorum during this meeting i will call for a five minute recess we will continue to recess this meeting as needed increasing five minutes each time board members of the diocese when a recess is called i ask that you leave the chamber of course it goes without saying that during the
012recess board members will not discuss any matters that is pending on the agenda or will come before this body to avoid any sunshine violation i will reiterate what mr quick just said and that is unlawful and a second degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the school board meeting i would appreciate it if you would state your name prior to the meeting or making your comment if there is anyone in the audience who wishes to address the board but did not fill out a comment card please raise your hand see a nun mr quick if you will begin and it's what three minutes it's three minute chest fourteen speakers three minutes thank you the first five are tara jenner keith olsen denise nystrom helen murphy and jan m thank you is the timer working
013yet miss jenner we have the timer it will be on and welcome yes it's working now can i get it can you please okay we're getting it ready for you tara jenner a couple of things that i wanted to address first off just as a quick side note it's interesting that the chair mentioned about sunshine violations since that was something that was raised in the most recent pleadings for the case involving alfie oaks lawsuit and i noticed that there were some allegations that board members were actually communicating with one another and with then superintendent atkins in violation potentially of the sunshine laws by just pointing that out for the general public i'd also like to state that i have a little bit of a concern with something that was raised at the board meeting last
014week excuse me the workshop meeting last week where there was no opportunity for public comment i believe it was mrs morgan suggested that we decrease the number of regular meetings where public comment occurs from two a month to one a month and there was some discussion about the fact that there were so many other districts that were doing this and they were bigger than us and they were more efficient and i just like to caution the board that decreasing the number of board meetings when we have so many items on our agendas as it is and we don't have an opportunity to interact with you on a regular basis either before or during recess or after is just really not conducive to your whole comment that you want to be more transparent and involved with
015the public so i just sort of throw that out there when i say that you need to be more organized first not it doesn't come from having only one board meeting the other thing i'd like to note is that too many things superintendent search has been a complete disaster in my opinion i mentioned this at the one o'clock meeting so i encourage you to go back if you're in the public to go listen to the comments that i made there but the board has not been confined with public access to the supporting documents per board policy 1.114 a in which the board is supposed to get the supporting documents to the agenda a minimum of two days prior to the board meetings and that the public is supposed to get that information simultaneously by having
016it posted on the website and accessible to us and even then we didn't get all the information that the board got the second thing i'd like to say is that the legal department says they want to be proactive there's laws going through potentially in tallahassee that would increase public comment options you don't need to wait for them to create a law you can do the right thing now so i encourage you to do so and lastly i would like to encourage dr savage to hopefully include during his comments at the end an explanation that might resolve concerns that we have that were raised by ray and associates saying that you had one thing in your cover letter and something different with them i think you need to have an opportunity one of my prayers for
017this year is that the board will make really good decisions decisions that are best for students teachers bus drivers and other district employees but especially the best for students toward the end of last year several of you and i remember especially ms vaughan who unfortunately isn't here tonight made several comments about their kind of discontent that there seemed to be a relatively small group of people who regularly showed up who regularly made comments and wishing that more people would come and speak i think that you may be getting tired of learning of hearing some of the same things that some of us are saying and you may be unhappy with some of the disagreements and some of the criticisms that we have of some of the decisions that you are making you may be tired
018of hearing it and yet that might be an indication that we are not feeling very hurt and that some of those real concerns that we have are not being met so i would encourage you to to to to re-evaluate that we evaluate that if you would i do want to thank you for continuing to work on the rules for public comment i do notice some changes one of those that i found rather humorous and i'm sure is just a typo but at the very top where you state that permitted or that prohibited items include but are not limited to book bags backpacks cinch bags duffel bags or purses slash bags that are larger than four by six or smaller obviously a typo i'm not sure if that's inches four by six inches four by six
019feet or meters but that obviously needs just to be cleared up just a little bit there's one rule that says that as speakers near the end of their time the parliamentarian is to instruct us that we're reaching the end of our time we don't need that we can see the clock and do that ourselves there is also another limitation that says we cannot cede our time to another speaker i see that as a very clear restriction on freedom of speech i do thank you for deleting from your previous restrictions the limitation outlawing hand gestures however i think the outlawing of clapping in terms of of affirmation is an absolutely ridiculous outlawing i agree not having hissing and booing and all of that but clapping is a pretty universal positive expression please put that back in
020good evening miss nystrom good evening denise nystrom for all those that are here and for all those that are listening via live stream i am speaking about the school lunches that have been served since the beginning of this school year and why the quality has been so poor on june 7 2020 board member patricka sent an email to attorney bruno asking if the school district could cancel the oaks farm contract contract thus beginning the process of canceling a local food supplier contract that was serving top quality food to our students for eight years the net result the district hired u.s foods who has been unable to fulfill their responsibility to feed our children because u.s foods has been subject to food shortages and the food that has been served is subpar and now u.s foods
021has canceled its contract with the district yesterday the board discussed purchasing 35 million dollars worth of refrigeration as a stop gap measure to store food and contracts have already been signed by the superintendent i am asking that these agenda items get pulled what needs to happen is that this board needs to enter into a negotiation and settle the oaks contract issue and bring back quality food to our children they deserve it they deserve quality food on that note i do not understand how we can think about spending 35 million dollars on refrigeration when we can't give the bus drivers raises that would be to the tune of two to five million dollars additionally there are employees that have placed their careers online to come forward and speak about corruption cronyism and nepotism those are some
022that came forward are from transportation and they have been disparaged with false crafted investigations that discredit them there's no reason to hire these so-called investigators when fdle and the oig will investigate it for free please stop wasting public funds and speaking of wasting public funds is mr patrick is still attending the national school boards association convention in california i do not want my tax dollars spent on an organization that has equated vocal parents to domestic terrorists i also note on something that i found that we have spent eighty seven thousand dollars with the florida school boards association this year what have we spent seven thousand dollars on the wasteful spending has to stop and everything that i have mentioned here tonight is questionable and needs to be addressed thank you good evening oh hello my
023name is helen murphy i am a freshman at stairway high school i am here today to discuss the quality points grading system this new grading system seems like excuse me helen could you get a little bit closer to the microphone please thank you i just want to hear you and i'm having a hard time hearing you sorry sorry is this better yeah you're fine so i'm here today to discuss the quality points grading system this new grading system seems like a good idea as it will help the students pass at least with a d but what some aren't seeing is how it is affecting the students with a's this new grading system specifically tells us how it will affect us now that percentages don't matter well percentages matter a lot to all the students there
024is a big difference between 80 and 89 as an a9 leads us to an a but now a b is just a b so instead of a high b leading to an a is just a b for example in the quality point slideshow that was given to us if you have an in 97 41 and a6 and core 2 and a7 on the midterm then with this new grading system where percentages don't matter you'll have a b in the old system you would have had an a percentages mean a lot as a cambridge student getting those high b's would mean field again a this new grading system is making it so that i can't get that a through a high b this new grading system makes it really hard dna in general for example according
025to ehs midterm quality points in the helpful links section of the quality points slideshow in this new grade system there are only five ways to gain a there are 30 ways to get a b 46 ways to get c 20 ways to grade d and four ways again f so this new grading system is making it extremely hard to get a and f and really easy to get b c or d in order to get into a good college and to succeed cambridge students need those a's this grade system is making it so that is almost impossible for any student to gain a please change the system back to the old grading system so that students who want to succeed can succeed thank you god bless and the next five after that this speaker will
026be sharon mcgill joe phillips christine david julie kathy stout and randy scott okay good evening hello i want to start just by thanking the board and teachers again i like to start that way and when i remember to do that i do and a reminder that we've all been going through a pandemic for two years and give each other just a little bit of grace since unity was brought up unity is not something you write in a statement it is something that you do or you don't unity is a way that you live or you don't unity is a way that you show up at these school board meetings for months or you don't you cannot write a statement if you are the group that punched a woman in the face august 30th in front
027of the school board shoved the doctor off the curb august 30th in front of the school board and i'll leave it at that i'm going to make that short but let me be clear you cannot write a statement declaring something that you're not willing to do and you haven't done already so my suggestion would be to think about making amends if you want unity if i understand my rights i understand everyone's if i understand my liberty i understand everyone's if i understand my freedom i understand everyone's otherwise honestly it just becomes selfish and self-centered and that's not what we're about so that's all i'll say about that because i think we've been wanting unity for a long time but haven't seen it i do want to ask about this the superintendent finalists or semi-finalists i
028believe there's five of them and i saw a blurb today on nbc and i'm going to be really clear here i want to know when the board or the district or ray associates is going to have the candidates resemble because representation matters resemble the very students in our in our in our school district for example it looked to me like there were five white men i could be wrong so i apologize but our student population the number one population is hispanic it's not caucasian the number two is caucasian number three is black and african american these are our kids these are our students so my question is when will these candidates represent the diversity in our school especially our kids because representation matters when they see somebody that looks like them it means something that's
029part of unity and if it's not this time around when will it be next time so that's my question again thanks for all you do and just a reminder of the speakers when lining up if everyone can who's waiting can stay behind the stanchion and that way give everybody the speaker some space welcome and i would also ask too is that when you are waiting in line to be courteous to the people who are speaking so if conversation can be held to a limit on the side as you're waiting to speak thank you good evening ma'am good evening my name is sharon mcgill and i'd just like to thank the board and everyone else associated with the district for your service to our community and the opportunity to come to give comment i've been watching
030advisory committee meetings lately and i've noticed that there are committee members who are attending the meetings with audio only and there's no video and considering these are public meetings and in the spirit of full transparency i would request that committee members who want their attendance votes and comments to be recorded in the minutes of that meeting actually show up at the meeting with video and audio thank you good evening my name is kathy stout how are you this evening a few things i'd like to address one i'm kind of disturbed i wanted to go see a school elementary or i'm sorry middle school and i was not allowed and the reason why is because they stated that you decided because of what's happening that the the rates are up for the mask and you know
031people are sick and that kind of thing i understand people are sick but it's very important that the parents go into the schools and see where their child is going to be that's number one number two the other thing is you don't have the right you have no medical you know certificates and you shouldn't have to say at all if a parent could come in at all i understand if you want to wear a mask you know that's your own choice but if you don't need to wear a mask you don't have to and i'm going to give you a couple reasons why first they don't work because the virus is airborne not in droplets it moves through the air did you know that i need you to do your own research once in a
032while and check out dr ryan cole i think you will be amazed of exactly who he is and what he states and how our constitution is today we have an amazing governor and he basically said it's our choice again i am very upset that i was not able to go into a school and especially student enrollment is coming up in less than a week and a half right so why can't the parents go in and check out the schools so we need to figure this out and it's not going to help on zoom either because you cannot see everything that is in school so i'm very upset about that and as far as the 35 million dollars that you're about to spend why don't you do your own thing by getting some real people to
033clean our schools so people don't have to get sick you know i feel like that a lot of this is hypocrites because again no one's cleaning the way they should do you clean your mailboxes do you clean your trash cans do you even clean your cars your door handles i could actually go on with the list but again are you cleaning the way you should clean before or you know what you say or state i think this is something that you should really look at so if it's once a week or once a month that they have to come in professionals to clean our classrooms that should be handled first in 35 million not wasting on refrigerations and we need our quality food back and i totally agree about the spending it's absolutely awful i
034also like to see a public line to line budget so i can see where all this money is going to i'm not happy about that either thank you good evening sir my name's smoking joe most opinions know me i'm speaking as a man of faith a father business owner and a proud floridian i address this absolute incompetence in the previous as well as the ongoing ego-driven actions of this gathering of arrogant supreme rulers we have here you have wasted our tax money atrociously i currently have a child in lee county's currently kent lee county school system two other children attended the lee county school system my wife myself we are products of the lee county school system being a floridian and the floridian lifestyle has always made me beam with pride my grandfather wrote according
035to hull from the 60s until he died in the 70s in the in the paper in naples my father who has worked at the very first national bank downtown the founding of obama business owners managers was the first certified real property state manager of florida we have a rich history of decent human beings you can take it to work and not worry about it just being lip serviced like this board has been on the ratification of contracts for the emergency purchase of food related shortage and delivery and your intended goal under objective five is to increase operational efficiency effectiveness that job objective has been met with no interruption in services to you for political reasons district three felt strongly and pushed for the cancellation of contract with oaks farms later pushed by district five for
036maybe because of her constituents but illegally violated that contract with a company that has serviced the school district impeccably for eight years after having contracts spelled with u.s foods who could not handle the demand that oaks farms had flawlessly taken care of all those for eight years brings us to contracts for emergency food supply and related service and storage delivery your egos your politics selfishness continue to cost taxpayers more and more while denying our children nutritious foods they once received while this all stems from a man's personal opinion about a terrorist organization known as the blm which has proved to be nothing more than that shows that this board cares nothing about florida or our children but catering to terrorist activists if your true goal is to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness you should reinstate
037oaks farms contract immediately tender all of your resignations with the exceptions of district two you gave her a chance not one of you are qualified to run a pack of dogs let alone a two million billion dollar business i currently invite any one of you to sit down with me on camera and do an interview what the common people are concerned about ask any parent in any district who's our school board representative thank you mr phillips your time is up thank you mr phillips the next the next four speakers will be robert roper dr edward drast melissa hatter and jamie merchant those are the last of the speakers good evening my name is randy scott i've heard a lot about unity and i'm all for unity but i'm for truth over unity you know there
038seems to be something missing in what we teach our children we're making them into robots complacent obedient servants to the authority which is backwards to what history teaches us we have three branches of government and it was by design to create conflict that isn't unity it's making sure that tyrants don't rise so when i hear this board saying you're one body i call fault on that because you're not one body you're elected individually i want to see more conflict if you all want to see some more conflict some intelligent conflict that day is coming just pay attention you know i hear about the organizational skills and when i was a member of the finance advisory committee i was quite proud that i was able to look through my masters of public administration and see these
039presentations that dr amy desmore presented and others and i thought wow this is pretty cool until i studied what looked to be nice and the facts under underlying those presentations none of your board members do it you just look at the prettiness of what they present you i found while i was a member of the finance committee that school population isn't increasing it's decreasing i had mr blurt mclerton or whatever his name was that filled in for as desmore when she took her sabbatical to admit in 2018 that we only had 800 increase in students and that was contrary to the selling of 2 000 student increase so although that's one instance let me give you another one we had the matrix set up called 2020 vision and none of you board members evaluated whether
040that matrix was filled and i'm here to tell you today that 100 of those boxes on that matrix went unchecked not one was fulfilled now we have 20 30 envision doesn't matter none of you are going to study it all you want is the money keep getting money i see in the recent publication you're going to get more money in 2028 you want to push it again let me tell you melissa hit the nail on the head today in a very brief sense of a few words the future of public education is online you can go back and look at it i said it at the finance advisory committee when melissa was still a member and then when miss patricka showed up that was the end of me in the finance advisory committee and i
041said it there too bricks and mortar isn't the future of education everyone wants it to be but it isn't bricks and mortar creates the jobs for those on my right and that's where the confusion and disorder comes from because it's led by confusion and disorder in order to gain money from the taxpayer thank you good evening christy divi jilly so i'd like to start by saying i'm just i didn't pick something up a little while ago i and i don't know why i didn't because i heard you guys say it but it confused me and i want some clarity on it why do we have a beautiful and i mean beautiful staging school in eastleigh county that has zero kids in it like i went to this place and it is gorgeous we have children
042sitting in portables right now and i don't understand the purpose of a staging school is this like a model home do we seriously have a gorgeous empty school in east lake county and have no intention of putting children in it like i certainly hope that's not the case i really hope i'm confused and you guys can provide clarity on that because i did not understand that earlier the next thing i'd like to say i'd like to talk on commitment you know binding yourself to a course of action despite obstacles where's the district's commitment to bring back healthy food to our kids why are we entering into a contractual agreement with pbg when on their website it clearly states they receive their main food supply from u.s foods you know the company that just canceled our
043contract because they can't meet the demand i implore you to listen to your constituents and mediate with alfie oaks and bring back good food to our kids i'd like to end my time today by reading the list of responsibilities the school board attorney slash general counsel has or is proposed to have or not really sure parliamentarian at all board meetings legal opinions an advisor to school board legislation monitoring and advocacy advise on all changes in law like all policies all monitor lawsuits outside counsel public records review for legal cops bonds with outside counsel student expulsions advised school board employee termination advised school board contracts all other issues relating to the school board governance and high level district legal issues agenda item review risk management doe oig and ag board investigations and reviews audits and audit
044committee charter schools grants board advisory committees pandemic all newsletter all board training staff training all supervised office of legal services what when did the board attorney become the ultimate supreme lord ruler of the school district of lee county thank you good evening robert roper instead of doing a comprehensive book report like i've done in the past i thought maybe i would try something different and do a district report so district one miss fisher if you wouldn't mind looking up this book called beloved highly graphic sexual content that i was going to share tonight but it's not appropriate in this mixed group but it's in trafalgar middle school that's for 10 to 14 year olds it's also in bonita dunbar cypress lake estero north mariner and three oaks if you'll look that book up for me
045i'd appreciate it miss giovanelli district two two boys kissing is the name of the book i shouldn't have to say much more than that it's in mariner medical middle school if you'd like to go check it out it's a novel that features transgender and gay boys on a guinness book of world records i won't say anymore district 3 miss patricka if you could look up in in lexington middle school sloppy first that's almost all i need to say about that book i've sent you a complete report on the graphic content of the book could you please do something about it miss jordan district 4 more happy than not it's a colusa middle school the f word is used continuously it talks about graphic various sexual types of things that aren't appropriate for me to say
046tonight i'm sorry i'm not going to be able to share them with you ms gittins district 5 dreaming in cuban is quite an interesting book and you can find that in lehigh acres middle school all these are middle school books 10 to 14 years of age can also be found in high schools this one talks about boys having sex with animals amongst other things over a year ago i met with each of you in your office and i presented myself as an advocate and i presented this porn report to each one of you i gave you a copy of it this district has 30 of the 44 books this represents a colossal failure of the district to protect the children from this kind of material and it's followed by another colossal failure requiring me to
047fill out a single page document for each of the 44 books in order for you to do your job so i've just pointed out five books five districts you could start by doing that it would be very very nice thank you good evening good evening dr savage i'm still waiting for the follow-up to our july meeting miss jordan two lighthouse complaints from may are still not acknowledged neither are my complaints and evidence proving the district provided a fraudulent audit and three falsified investigations two years ago also my complaint and proof that the external investigation it was very inaccurate is also not addressed okay miss morgan direct list mostly to you since you were ball and told to research on the board self-evaluation words found consistently in the four that were provided online were in professional
048development adopt an ethical code of conduct and adhere to it govern respect accountability transparent leadership community parents stakeholders effectiveness respect and most importantly ensure a word included in your statutory obligation to govern the district and ensure compliance with law and policy i've provided documentation over failure to ensure compliance and accountability time and time again verbiage consistently found in ours was review read discuss examine they understand board roles you annually examine your roles they closely adhere to policies for effective board operation and govern within board policies you read through the board's policies and procedures when it comes to parental and community involvement you encourage the public to attend board meetings by calling us rebel rousers and comparing us to parking dogs you offer committees opportunities to report at meetings this is my second time on committee
049and i've never once been offered that opportunity you grade yourself successfully with standing the pressure of special interest groups you label conserve parents special interest groups they ensure board is accountable and open to the public they collaborate with families and community members ensure board district transparency through a process that is open and accountable ensure decisions are communicated community-wide involve the community recognize respect differences of perspective act with dignity and understand the implications of demeanor and behavior consider community perspectives of all stakeholders provide a policy of how the board deals with complaints from the public and consistently uses the process are accountable to the community i would like to see these in your evaluation instead of the elementary one that you currently have and can't even pass thank you good evening can you hear me okay
050yes perfect my name is jamie merchant i wanted to say thank you miss kittens for reading the proposed resolution i do want to state though that simply reading this as an acknowledgement we have no way to to determine if there is in fact any unity if there is no vote there is no unity if you look up the term acknowledgement it is defined as to accept or admit the existence or truth up we already know the truth of the legacy of dr martin luther king we already know or acknowledge the desire of his heart to see us unite around his teaching that all people everywhere should be measured by the content of their heart and not the color of their skin an acknowledgement falls falls far short of what this man stood for if you
051look up the term resolution you will find that it is defined as a firm decision to do or not to do something it is action and action is what is needed today action is the stand that the board needs to take tonight anything short of that highlights the lack of understanding of the gravity of the proposed resolution side tracking changing subjects i also wanted to make the public and board aware that due to the lackadaisical approach of addressing the comments made by the guatemala about the guatemalan community by chris patricka last year and the fact that she still has not given a sincere apology without the direction of the school board attorney and she has still not resigned her position and in numerous other things a valuable committee member with the edoc community committee has
052resigned and that committee this community is losing a very valuable member because of lack of action so i just want to make sure that was public knowledge to everybody because i know that the liaison is absent tonight and i don't think it would be brought up anyways thank you good evening dr edward f grass first of all i want to offer greetings to the board and dr savage for this first meeting in the year 2022 i also want to apologize for my adversarial attitude over the last six months understand that i was motivated by concerns for the students in this district as have most of the people in this room been and sometimes we may get a little out of character but i'm trying to turn over a new leaf i'd like to thank miss
053gittins for her presence at a meeting last week in which she provided feedback to audience members on questions about board function and her input was much appreciated and my sympathies to ms vaughn i understand she's having a family health problem and i'm praying to god that is resolved for her this month in addition to the items you pointed out is human trafficking awareness month i and several members in the audience are wearing blue to commemorate that and i think the school district could be a part of that and identifying that issue i belong to an organization that supports helping victims of that and i can give further information if you're interested i also want to issue my support for dr savage i think he's done a good job with his board service and i don't
054want to see any disruptions in the process of the board in the upcoming months moving on i'd like to offer a spirit of cooperation and congeniality and the things that i offer at these meetings in the future i'm encouraged by what i see from the board and the district and their attitude toward pornography in the libraries of our schools and to pastor roper's efforts i've seen some books that have been removed already and that's very good a very good thing i should point out that one of the county commissioners is aware of one of the books specifically we made an effort to show it to him and he was disgusted and appalled with its content in addition i would commend you on your suicide prevention policy which you have just reviewed and also the allergy
055treatment for students who have severe allergic reaction to foods we don't have to be perfect to be good but perfection is a goal we should all achieve or attempt to achieve and i would suggest that you review the statement that ms kittens made from martin luther king and consider making that the motto for the district thank you chair that concludes the public comment there are no more speakers thank you okay i will address a few of these things thank you mr roper for bringing that back up the district has been in the process of reviewing the books that the constituents believes are objectible where policy 2.18 provides the process for this review and so it will be can it will continue so i just wanted to let you be aware of that the dr savage
056i know helen i really appreciate helen miss murphy who was here to speak on the quality points grading system i'm not really aware of how that works so maybe that can be something that can definitely be shared with all of us if because i'm very much interested in that and what she would have to say here today can you address right now if you so we have we do have a prior board presentation done by our academic services staff they kind of outline why some of the districts had chosen to move in this direction it's very similar to most of us recall with the gpa where a 4.0 is an a 3.0 is a b it's fair though to characterize that there are pros and cons to that particular approach you know it works on
057kind of both sides the example that the that helen mentioned you know of a high 89 percent averaging you know not all bees are created equally and there's there's just no doubt that's that's accurate to say on the opposite side of the coin though like a low b and 81 you know it has the adverse opportunity in terms of potentially bringing downs there's pros and cons there was a presentation it's done with some visuals that kind of goes into specifics of what it is what are the benefits or the drawbacks i see if i can find what day that was and we'll just kind of put that as a notation so folks can look at that it's it's a larger movement than just lee county as well but that's the best equivalence i can give
058you at the moment i'm happy to have the doctor spyro and team now provide more robust information than that okay all right miss patrick you had a question yeah if i may piggyback on that the district advisory council had a very detailed presentation on this and i had parents reach out to me with questions and i pointed them in the direction of that with the link to that meeting and i said please come back if you have more questions and they had no more there was a very rigorous discussion between staff and parents at that meeting so can you ask staff to text you the date of that meeting so we can say it by the end of the meeting so people can look please and thank you thank you for letting me jump thank
059you i just think it's really important because i having you know grandkids in the system too i want to make sure a lot of us have our children and we want to make sure that we're you know following up on on that so thank you for that and again i really appreciate everyone coming in we are here to listen to what you have to say so thank you for that moving on to the next item oh i'm sorry let's see yes moving on to the next action item the documents for the action items listed under consent is made available to board member seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all materials and we have the opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the
060recommendations some of these items have been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda dr savage would you please or if you'd like to clarify item i5 please thank you madam chair and board madam secretary pursuant to board policy 6.07 section 6 subsection m and board policy 1.11 section 8 subsection c please ensure that the following statement is recorded in the official minutes in its entirety november 15 2021 staff presented and i issued an emergency declaration suspending competitive solicitation requirements for the purchase of food and related supplies and their storage and distribution pursuant to board policy 6.07 section 6 subsection m and the declarations from the usdoa and fldoa this was an emergency and a direct result of the national food supply chain shortage which goes beyond the provisions
061of fresh fruits and vegetables to have followed the competitive award procedures would have caused a delay detrimental to the public interest namely to honor our obligations to feed our students on october 19 2021 the board approved item i2 expenditure for emergency purchases of food and food related supplies in the amount of 35 million dollars for the period of october 19 2021 through october two thousand twenty two on tonight's agenda i am requesting ratification of the negotiated contracts based on the previously approved item i-2 from october 19th emergency purchase of food and food related supplies with the power buying group 20 million january 1st 2022 through june 30th 2022 florida freezer limited partnership 935 million 610 dollars december 8th 2021 through december 7th 2022 oc trucking services corporation 4 million to 200 december 8th 2021 through
062december 7th 2022. we've been with the power buying group for over a decade and they have been the main source of our food supply the vendor contracted not directly by us for this source but through the power buying group is unable to meet its contractual obligation thus the power buying group has contracted with another vendor given the change the vendor will have to make some adjustments in warehousing and transportation until such time the district will be responsible for warehousing and transportation thus the contracts for the florida freezer limited partnership and oc trucking services corporation contracts thank you to staff and various departments for being proactive to ensure that our students did not have a disruption in our food supply for the remainder of the academic year thank you for that board members are there any
063agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under the unfinished business table items portion of the agenda miss fisher i have no pools this evening thank you miss givenelli i-5 and l-10 ms patricka no thank you miss gittins i have a question when is there time to make a comment on the item that the superintendent just mentioned is since it's a an addition is it something that we can so it's not it's not an addition he's just speaking on it's already on the consent business item ms juvenelli just pulled it so you will have an opportunity because she's oh okay okay thank you so did you have any other polls thank you miss bone is not here miss morgan i have none thank you and i have none okay is there a motion to approve
064the agenda consent action items with the exception of pulled items i5 and l10 i move we approve the consent action items with the exception of i 5 and l 10. thank you miss morgan i may have a second please i'll second that thank you miss fisher is there any discussion okay please record your vote miss thomas if you can tell me what that is please good so six zero okay six zero motion carries okay dr savage please introduce any administrators in attendance with a new assignment that were approved under the consent yes madam sure it would be my privilege if i could recognize sherry binkowski who is the early childhood learning services coordinator for the head start program i'd also like to recognize scott kozlowski from esc exceptional student education from coordinator in the exceptional
065student education to assistant director exceptional student education i'd like to recognize amanda guzman recruitment from district teacher on assignment to coordinator recruitment and last but not least john gordon from application services software engineer to accountability research and assessment coordinator continuous improvement we'd like to congratulate each and every one of you and thank you for the hard work that you put in we appreciate each all of you we're gonna take a moment so if you would like to stay with us you're welcome to do so but if not we're gonna give you a minute to exit the room again let's give him a round of applause please okay we will go ahead and begin we have two pulls to address l i'm sorry i five and l l five i'm sorry l five and l ten
066i five and l ten i got it goodness i wrote them down backwards okay dr savage please read your recommendation for pulled item i5 yes madam madam chair i5 recommended action ratification of executed contracts with power buying group florida freezer limited partnership and oc trucking services corporation for the emergency purchase of food related supplies storage and delivery previous board approval of the expenditure for the emergency purchase of food and food related supplies included delivery authorize the superintendent to execute all related documents thank you is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation i'll move to adopt that recommendation on i-5 thank you miss fisher morgan will second thank you miss morgan it has been moved by mrs fisher seconded by miss morgan is there any discussion miss giovannelli yes thank you so i pulled this
067item my concern is 35 million dollars is my concern so i want to first say also that i do care about quality food for our students and my granddaughter has gone to lunch and not had not been able to eat her lunch so while i have a big huge problem spending 35 million dollars i still know that kids need to eat and this is right now the ability to do that i support i'm going to support it this evening however i do want the superintendent know that i did not receive those contracts for power buying i still want those items i sent an email and i advised you earlier today one of the other questions that i wanted to ask and i didn't and this occurred to me recently now is was there a possibility
068that we could lease the refrigeration i'm concerned after we you know what are we going to do with the these refrigerators and all this refrigeration system after what in a year from now when i pray that things go back to normal because i feel like that is around the corner so then you know we can get back to normal what are we going to do with this expense that we've had and you know i don't want to see this just be out what is it you know when they it gets on the list all these refrigerators get on the list and given away and so my concern is really that i mean but i know that i need taco tuesdays to come back i need friday pizza fridays to come back and this i know
069this is the way this is gonna happen so i recognize that but it's i am very concerned over this additional cost which because it's substantially more money than we are used to spending in our budget well we are fortunate to have someone with us who may be able to answer part of it but i don't want to put her on the spot in okay is it ms malay yes ms malay is willing to share just a little bit of this piece i do believe in our workshop we did address part of the refrigeration how that would be put to use but i want to make sure if there's anything we report it accurately because this is obviously very significant we're asking for as well and that's why i can't let this go without acknowledging that
070we do recognize that it's quite a bit of an expense but it's a needed expense we have really major issues right now with the food and if we do not do something many children are going home hungry and i can't i can't sleep at night knowing that so i just thank you and i also before miss malay if i may they had sent us something regarding the cost yes i did receive that okay that's just what the total and that's that's i still kind of wanted to see the contract and what has increased with power buying because power buying it seems to be the they're the big budget item here and so that's you know that's just important for the community to understand what we're understanding ms malay thank you thank you okay good evening
071wanted to want to shed some light on some of your questions so the 35 million dollar expenditure was previously approved in october of that 35 million 26 million was previously approved by the board in june so twice the board has approved those expenditures the reason we brought the october expenditure forward was at the recommendation of the federal and state departments of agriculture they advised that we would need to alter our some of our purchasing methods due to the national supply chain disruption and so although 35 million dollars is the requested board amount a typical year we spend 26 million in food so what we've done is we've put a cushion on top of that 26 million to account for any potential increase and in addition because the power buying group has changed their grocer the
072grocer provides frozen refrigerated and dry goods but does not provide fresh produce so this bid has nothing to do with fresh produce so the previously board approved amount of 26 million which was just a regular year rolling along kind of in line with serving 77 000 meals per day and 16 million meals per year so that 26 million dollar expenditure request was for that since we are changing providers grocers the there are additional services required and in alignment with the federal and the state government we have created one-year contracts with no renewal options all of those contracts were provided to the board a week ago as part of the agenda item and so that information has been out there for the public to review and so the amounts broken down were the original 26 million
073requested an additional 935 thousand and dr savage when you re-read that if you could make sure that you mention that is 935 000 because i think you said million the last time that would have been my apology it was the where the florida freezer limited partnership was brought to my attention i may have said 935 million it's actually 935 thousand ten dollars so right that's the yep correct and then the distribution of that food from a north fort myers based firm a local firm is providing warehousing space to receive the incoming goods and then a trucking firm to distribute them to the schools so the 35 million dollar is a not to exceed cap our real estates are several million lower than that but because of the current market conditions prices could continue to increase
074on food we're all realizing that right now personally so the breakdown of the 35 million is 26 million which the board already approved approximately a million dollars for warehousing and approximately four million for transport and a cushion of about four million dollars as we continue to be the largest food provider in lee county for our community thank you thank you ms molly any other questions miss kittens i have two in our workshop the other day i requested information about whether we should do a private meeting to discuss this because of the legalities so basically my question is going to be you may not be able to answer it here if we are legally restricted from doing business because with certain vendors because of a current legal situation and that's why i asked about you know
075private session and i was told that because me mediation is coming up soon that there would be a session that we could decide yeah i would caution against any discussion with regards to anything that's in active litigation at this time right i do understand that there there was an closed-door attorney-client session that was scheduled for tomorrow but needed to be postponed because of some issues and that will be coming back before it is getting rescheduled but i would definitely caution anything inactive dealing with active litigation to to be discussed in the closed doors no i have no intention of doing that i just wanted to say that i do know that it is coming and because of certain things that was postponed it was due tomorrow and it has been postponed so we will be
076having that session and miss malay you mentioned that all of this agenda item has nothing to do with fresh foods that is correct okay so where how are we who we contracted with now to receive fresh foods if we can stay on we're on the this one agenda item which has nothing to do with that so if we can stay focused on this topic that would be i don't see how you're stopping me from asking that question if she just mentioned all the things and i'm asking a question based on something she said and she was not stopped i can give a real quick answer and the board approved the fresh produce contract in september of this year of oops we switched calendar years of 2021 with brian pazuki's farm fresh is our current provider
077they've been under contract and have been doing stellar as well as providing additional product that was not previously available through our fresh produce provider thank you mr juvenille did you have any other questions i didn't i was just going to say it i think it's important to for her to be able to answer and so thank you miss malay for answering because i think it's important for the community to know that we still do and are getting fresh produce and this did not this does not affect that so i think that was an important issue that the community needed to hear so thank you and i believe that yes thank you for sharing that earlier and at our briefing as well so i thank you for that so is are there any any other questions
078regarding this thank you thank you okay so seeing now and welcome miss vaughn hope everything is okay so we will go ahead if there's no other discussion we're going to do a hand vote miss morgan miss vaughn aye ms kittens yes ms patricka yes please miss juvenelli yes miss fisher yes and i thank you seven zero motion carries next will be let's see dr savage will you please read your recommendation for pulled item l10 yes manager item l10 approval recommended action approval for total project cost estimate phase 2a in the amount of 17 million six hundred ninety three thousand two hundred seventy one dollars and thirty eight cents for the total project cost estimate for the veterans park academy for the arts renovation approval authorizes superintendent to execute all necessary documents thank you dr savage
079is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation i move to accept dr savage's recommendation thank you miss vaughn and i'll second morgan thank you miss morgan okay it has been moved by miss fawn and seconded by miss morgan is there a discussion miss giovanelli yes thank you so i did pull this and i apologize again i wanted to apologize earlier that i did not let my board members know that i was going to pull these items but i was hoping i would have received the contract for the other other item but i in no way want to not support any any school or any building that's going to be being rehabbed or renovated at all in east lee because we know we need the seats so it's vital that we do this and with
080the mindset that we are trying to meet a deadline of august so i appreciate the hard work that the staff has done to get this in here and pulled or put on the agenda and it was literally a very short notice because of the holidays and everything so i really appreciate that however i want to just i wanted to go on record and say that i would never stop seats but i'm i'm somewhat reluctant only because this is a school that's not named and we're not exactly sure what the plan is for this school so that's still up in the air and i would encourage the superintendent that we work towards getting that resolved and having that plan laid out for the community so and as well as the board so that we know what
081we're that we're voting on something with a plan in place and because i think that's really important for the community to have the same vision and be all on the same train at the same time because otherwise we don't if we don't have the support and the transparency of the community by not and we don't have it here really either so it affects us everywhere so it's really vital that we have the plan in place to do this but i will not be stopping this tonight but i think it's important that as a board we're you know we get a plan in place on this so it's something that we need to be doing so thank you mr evanelli ms kittens yes as i stated very clearly this afternoon and i said to staff in
082the beginning that i would be supporting it because we need the seats if it's done properly we could actually have an additional thousand seats for middle school students starting in the next school year and a thousand seats could be as much as 40 portables that we do not have to use however my concern and i said i wouldn't pull it but thank you miss giovanelli for giving me the opportunity to say this as i said before we have a policy for naming schools the board is included in that the board was not included in the naming of lehigh acres middle the new school and at this point the board has not been included in or the community in the name of this school we were told this afternoon and we're waiting for the details and
083data that it once the students moved out of the old building that in me it automatically became a part of veterans park academy and i would really like to see that data because if that's the case all the time and the years that lambs was on the same property as veterans park why was it not the same name but anyway we asked for information we need the seat so we need to get the building done what happens with it is my concern i think we should go through the naming process as our policy states and we should know going forward before the 17th when the public gets an opportunity to choose a school are you choosing veterans park are you choosing something else what is on the list for choosing i'm sure at this point
084in time there's a list stating how many students at each school and this must be on the school choice list as well by now since next week we're going to be able to choose schools i appreciate again staff getting this done it's just the back side of it what is it who's naming it who's making these decisions because the board is not in the community it's not thank you miss kittens any other comments on this and i know this afternoon we had quite some quite a long time long conversation about 40 minutes worth and the superintendent was given a directive to make sure that no it was to make sure that we are aware of what has taken place and madison chair may i please say he was not given a directive i asked for
085it and ms patrick has said if it took less than five minutes that it was not a director so there was no directive stated the superintendent said he would look into things but there was no formal directive mate there was no consensus okay i apologize if i misspoke dr savage you did state that you would get back with us on this very quickly before the time that they had referred to the 17th is that correct yes there's just a great deal of information staff was already working to compile it when i came out of this meeting before this meeting began they were already working on it's just there's just so much information it'd be very difficult to just piece it all together here just because of the presentation's been done the data the you know
086the the date that's been suggested to just about the choice just even the decision about this year the following year the options that are available to us there's just there's a lot of opportunity here still so i just wanted to today's item was very straightforward and it's very specifically about the construction the deep remodeling process that is planned to occur in that building it really in no way binds us to say that we have to have a particular outcome for this school and i think that's what i want to make sure we articulate that even though there is a presumption that you know that it's veterans park the way it is currently set up as the msid we have the ability to change that as often as we need to and i just want to
087make sure that is well understood so that there isn't a belief that it can't be done that because it can be done i just don't want to make sure it's misstated because that's that's very important i think this gets was very important mr skins and i wanted to validate that is not something that is we can't fix just because i know how important that is thank you please respond yes if i may i'm going to miss juvenelli and then i'll come back to you mr evanelli so my only concern is that we need to have a plan so and is the information too much information that's going to be more than an hour and a half work that was i wanted to address that before we before that comes back up tomorrow in an email
088i think we're sharing existing information but we're just going to try to put it in the most easily digestible way so that it's being interpreted correctly and that everyone feels adequately informed all seven board members really fully understand all the different pieces because i think it's very easy to conflate them it's just it's very easy for that to happen and so we just want to make sure that we have a lot of stuff we've covered a lot of ground over this period of time so i just want to make sure it's very clear i think that's the most important thing okay miss kittens very simply and very clearly my question is and it shouldn't take that long to find out if you look on your records right now for school choice in the east zone
089what choice is listed for that school veterans park academy if it's listed under veterans park academy the numbers will be different there will be numbers that say how many middle school students vpaa will accept right and if that number is larger than it was before then that school building is included very simply what is on school choice right now as the numbers for that facility two two sets of numbers capacity the full ability and we don't necessarily allow for that full capacity what we could put in the school is not what we do put in the school that's the physical capacity we have for the school includes all those campuses we do not currently put all of those into that those two full campuses the second capacity number is your program capacity that is the
090number that we decide based on all of the schools in totality and all the enrollment the third number is the actual enrolled students how many enrolled students are presently and of course that fluctuates throughout the year based on growth and whatnot are actually present in those schools as part of our budgeting process and part of our annual allocation process we set between the time period it really lines up very much during the choice window as well what program capacity we will ultimately set for that campus and it's it has to reflect the change in enrollment throughout the year and what we project for the start of the next school year so that number is not set yet that is a number that is that is a meeting between budget and planning that occurs right now
091through march before they finalize the choice so at presently we don't have a unnamed school that would have been something if we were to open up say a brand new school for next school year to open it full capacity with a new name that would have had to have been already completed at this point now what we don't what i would say is because that's been one of the conversations there's nothing that precludes us from doing that the following year so let's say that we go through this process and we determine that we want that school to be a standalone brand new middle school whatever the name may be there's nothing would stop us the following year to to say hey and have it go through this is we're going to market it we're going
092to programmatically assign it we're going to go through the full naming process there's nothing that precludes us from doing that for the following year it's simply currently at its present use extra space for veterans park while renovation work can occur in that facility so all the work that well so it's not occupied the idea is for that school to be to go through its major renovation work which is substantial that's why we don't want students necessarily in those spaces because then they have to be displaced and we simply just don't have that additional space to displace them so that's the present piece can i just explain this one last time i'm a parent i want my child to go to a middle school someone said send them to veteran veterans park academy they said in
093august they're going to have additional seats because they will have finished off the renovation of an older school that is there at what point will i be as a parent told there's no more space at veterans park prior to what number lottery will you cut me yeah i think i understand miss kittens the so prior to us f running the lottery when we actually have both the numbers in front of us of families of complete applications again we're typically talking primarily about like in middle school six sixth grade students we're addressing the sixth grade students not just at that particular campus but the entire zone so we'll have at that point of the full entirety of applications as well as what we reasonably can suspect we will will come to us after the lottery through
094the start of the school year and those different projections that's an ongoing process that planning and budget they literally work on that through the whole lottery process all the way through the summer it just continues so they will adequately address to ensure that we have set up appropriate amount of six-grade seeds that's how they address that i couldn't tell you what that number is today and i don't think they'll be able to tell you what that number will be immediately but they certainly will know sometime between january and march strictly because that's also how we build our budgets so schools start to receive their budget information but all that's driven by our allocations of where he put them the fact that the agenda item says vpaa leaves me believing that it is already named it
095is already done it will already be out there and i'm done miss jordan thank you madam chair if i can just ask yes my understanding was the same as yours that there was a consensus taken on a directive for the superintendent to come back with this information at the prior meeting i do remember that there was a discussion that as to whether it was necessary but i thought that the board did take consensus because ms patrick stopped it my suggestion is if we can get a consensus now to avoid any confusion that way we know for sure a consensus was taken for so staff can come come back and get the information miss kittens is looking for thank you may i may we take a consensus regarding this that the superintendent will come back with
096the information do you mind repeating what it was since i wasn't able to be here at that point goodness gracia i didn't write it down but miss miss kittens it was basically basically it is to have the superintendent come back at the earliest convenience to let us know what is happening with the naming and the use of the school that is now called vpaa and i would like to add to that pri it's simple to say what's on school choice right now before the 17th okay you have heard miss ditton's request written down but i don't have it in front of me so i apologize for that so is there a consensus to have dr savage do this please thank you we have a consensus 7-0 and thank you mr quick thank you miss kittens
097and mr evanelli so now if i is are there is there any other questions regarding this if not i will go ahead and do a vote miss morgan aye this one hi miss kittens for the construction yes yes okay miss patrick yes please mr givenelli yes thank you and miss fisher yes and yes for me so 7-0 motion passes thank you ladies so the next is oh we are already to board member comments and miss fisher thank you miss jordan so i just want to congratulate the newly promoted and staff and wish them well in their new assignments i heard the comments about the quality points from the student at estero and with the board's permission we can put that on the next agenda for the student advisory to get student input because i know
098i've had input from my high school grandchildren and others at the sports field about that so i think there is a lot of information that we can garner from the students regarding the rationale for why some of them are good with it and some of them feel like it's damaging their gpas thank you and then you know we're we have tremendous challenge in our schools these days with students mental health situations we've had a big increase in involuntary baker acts and referrals to local counseling agencies and i just wanted to thank our district and our school staffs who work with that every day because some of the stories are definitely heart rendering and we really need to pull together and support our kids because this is a difficult time for them as they often react
099to the frustrations and difficulties that their adults are experiencing and i had an opportunity to visit our public service academy and i just want to thank of the instructors and mr everly who do a really good job preparing our first responders for a five county area and i spoke with some business people in cape coral and they're very excited about potential increasing programs and expanding at the cape coral tech college so our career and technical education is alive and well and moving forward so i'm happy to support that and once again it's an honor to serve with my colleagues and everyone get home safe thank you miss fisher miss juvenelli thank you i don't have a lot but i do want to bring up a couple things that some of the speakers had brought up
100i don't know if miss hatter's still here but she had a list or something that she read off i would love a copy of that and i someone i don't know if it was some someone mentioned about the human trafficking and we do have a lot of people that come and speak to the schools and talk to us i've been involved in much of that trying to you know because especially florida florida's high human trafficking so it's a national problem however it really is say yeah i know so i knew we're up there so it's it's really important that everyone is vigilant because and looking around because believe it or not we're all around it and we don't even realize it so we need to be very educated on it and so does our children
101so i'm i'm very supportive in that but something i want to bring up that pastor roper brought up and i thought about this when he mentioned it so the theater a student cannot go to a movie that's rated r or pg-13 and so i i actually googled it while sitting here and i wanted to read off the different things because i think it's something that maybe our books should be rated or and and that i think is something that we need as a district i mean if if you've got movie theaters that are rating our movies for children that can't see and they can't get in them i mean i know my daughter has told me when she was younger like that mom that's rated such and such i can't go see that without your
102permission or without you taking me i'm like oh so i mean that is something that's it's kind of a simple system and i'm just going to read a couple things about it because i think it's kind of important that if you got movie theaters that's doing it i think a district could do that easily and especially you know my homework was you know two boys kissing so you know i thought about that and i was like that's something that it brings me back to parental rights so because the parents have to allow the child to go to the movies right then the parent needs to allow the child to just to read the book so i circle back around to it's about parents rights and how do we get our keep our parents involved in
103and they obviously let their child into the movies or they don't and i know that the actual theaters are pretty strict about that they enforce it because i know personally not personally but i know children that have been escorted out of the movie theater when they weren't supposed to be in there so i mean the letters g that the general audience all ages are admitted contains nothing in theme language nudity or sex or violence or any other matters that are in view of the rating a board would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture it's important to note that ge rating does not automatically make the movie a child's a children's movie or an approval of the movie for children i think that's important to really think about those words and then pg
104is parental guidance suggested some material may not be suitable for children the film should be investigated further by parents those may be some contents oh wait there may be some content such as language violence brief nudity but that but they aren't so intense that more than the audience is suggested remember the content will vary with each movie so check the specific movie rating for the film you are researching pg-13 parents strongly cautioned some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. the rating is stronger caution for parents that can that content included may not be appropriate for the child under 13. pre-teenage years that book i don't think is probably that you gave me is for pre-teed years this may include stronger language extended violence or sexual situations and drug use remember the content will
105vary with each movie so check the specific movie rating for the film you are researching restricted are children under 17 require require a company parent or adult guardian this rating means that the film contains adult material such as adult activity harsh language intense graphic violence drug use and nudity most theaters have their own policies regarding r-rated movies and some including checking ids in those who look under 17 purchasing tickets allowing any parent only allowing parents to purchase those tickets and accompany those under 17 into the movie or just stating it has to be an adult guardian not necessarily not necessarily a parent and the guardian has to purchase the tickets and a company under the set the under 17 ages the entire time and then there's nc 17 which was a new one on me
106actually no one under 17 admitted those films are too adult for children the rating doesn't mean that they aren't they're that they are what mean that they're there are obscene and pornographic but the content is only appropriate for adult audiences my point is that if you've got movie theaters doing it and parental rights are a law that we as a school district have an obligation and a duty to make sure students are re receiving appropriate content for that's age-appropriate and i will want to have further discussion about this with our board my board so i just that's i'm going to leave that tonight but it's something to think about and it's truly important because parents do have rights and i'm here to be there be here that writes for them thank you and speak for
107them is that it yes i'm sorry thank you get a little excited so i'm sorry nope that's good thank you i didn't if you were saying taco and pizza yeah i could do that but i think we're gonna have tacos soon okay good miss patricka i gave my report this afternoon i have nothing this evening thank you thank you miss kittens a couple of things i have a couple of comments regarding public comment mr olson thank you for your comments i agree that i think people continue to bring up the same things until there is a conclusion until there is something bless you until they see that something is done or is being done then the interpretation of that would be that nothing is being done so there are things that are being done and
108i have said many times i think that we need to work on our communication process to make sure we help everyone understand what we are doing when and how and what is being done so thank you for that miss murphy talked about the quality points and i thank her for being brave and coming any time a student does that and awesome things that shows that we're teaching them good skills and i have heard that actually from a group of teachers that talk to me not too long ago about the same thing with quality points and from the teacher's perspective they were saying they feel that we are watering down education and that where it will one teacher said that you know it will catch up with us eventually when we get to the point of
109sending out students into the world and they cannot do the things that they need to do so that is just something that was from a teacher mr roper thank you for all that you do in reading all those books too god bless you and thank you and miss merchant for approaching me about doing the quote that was a good thing not only for the adults but the children in our district there was one other thing oh dr dress where's he thank you so much it takes a good person a thinking person to know and to say when they need to take a change and to do something differently we're only as good as the improvements that we make in ourselves if we were all the same all the time it would be terrible because no
110one would listen to anyone else and make changes and i truly appreciate you making that statement i think there was one other thing i wanted to say hold on one second i gave most of it today there in in relationship to a lot of the comments that were made there was also a quote by dr martin luther king that said there comes a time when silence is betrayal and i will just leave that to marinate with you and think about it and look it up and see what he was saying about that we basically should not be silent about things that we feel are inequities in life not only to ourselves but to others and thank you thank you miss kittens miss vaughn yeah first i want i want to say that i'm sorry that
111i had to miss so that i had to miss the public comment today but i certainly will be listening to it watching when i go home tonight and tomorrow unfortunately i had a family emergency that i had to take care of that lasted a whole lot longer than i thought that said i guess i'm particularly sorry that i missed the mr roper's presentation she'll be interested in seeing what that is as far as well as as far as what mrs giovannelli said i can't disagree more with what she said about applying movie you know things from a movie from the movie industry and by the way the theaters do not set the ratings it's the movie industry and they are very particular about who their demographics are going to be and if you follow movies
112the way i do you know that sometimes there's one little tiny scene that will kick a movie from one rating to a more stringent rating and depending on their their demographics for that film they'll either keep it in or cut it so the movie theaters yes they're the ones that police the people that are coming in or not it depends on on the theater but it is the theater industry and you have to remember that a film is a visual medium and a book opens one's imagination and a book has different different a different way of opening the world not just to children but to adults and to all of us and i just want to leave you with the thought that if you haven't read books like for fahrenheit 451 or or some of
113the other classic dystopias i suggest that maybe you do that because those books demonstrate and this is why books like that are so important and are taught in the schools 1984 was one of my favorite books to teach because it was so eye-opening to students if you haven't looked at those books or never read them i suggest you do because the worlds that they portray along with the books that were burned and the narrowing of language equaling the narrowing of thought that is truly frightening and i can tell you this it's not a world that i want my grandchildren and their children to live in so i will look forward to seeing what was said earlier tonight and i think any of you who come here on a regular basis you know how i stand
114on the subject of book banning and censorship thank you miss vaughn miss morgan so i have to start off with an apology i should have done these this afternoon and i failed to do them this afternoon first is a comment about esei i spoke to a parent about a year ago who had a child at an elementary school and was very concerned about the services the child was receiving and so we talked about you know how she might proceed within the system to get the appropriate treatment for her daughter and over the holidays i got an email from her and she said my daughter is doing amazing at ramusi page she has two teachers who co-teach together and are amazing miss nelson nelson and ms reeves both seem very dedicated to the kids in the
115classroom i get almost daily updates via texting from ms nelson which include pics and daily activities along with a daily journal that is brought home every day her therapists have been fantastic also i am even so pleased with how the principal has been reaching out with monthly monthly zooms for all the ese parents to hop on and express certain needs and issues it is truly a night and day difference from last year i'm so grateful my daughter is making leaps and bounds and communication and skills i'm very very grateful and the reason i bring that up is that we do listen and i believe staff listens when they hear something of concern and they provide recognizing that they're not always getting the message they provide an opportunity for i love this that the principal does
116a monthly hop-on for ese parents i think that's great so that was just a kudos i wanted to share a construction advisory met this week there was a presentation by beau renewables a local firm doing solar energy feasibility studies project development funding and construction support the firm offered to do to provide at no cost to the school district of lee counci school district of lee county a diligence report a due diligence report on several represent representative school district properties that might provide information about opportunities to exploit solar for cost saving purposes mr frederick ross was in attendance and agreed to work with her representatives at the request of the committee as members of the construction industry it was agreed though that rooftop solar was out of the question for the school district and i will
117tell you there's a lot of interest in this committee about looking at solar and the implications it may have in terms of planning for renovations and forced for new schools because solar may require additional property and we may not want to sell off pieces of property that we own we may want to hold on to things so the group was very excited by that and i think they're going to be doing more with solar i want to thank suncoast credit union they have approved two hundred and seventy thousand dollars in grants to support the school district thirteen different programs but what particularly caught my attention was the big grants were for an outboard marine service technology at fort myers high school grow your own scholarships which are about growing our own teaching faculty culinary arts
118and agriculture programs i mean it says to me that we are really reaching out to the community and asking for support on our career and technology opportunities for students so i just wanted to say kudos to them and those are my comments for this evening thank you thank you so much miss morgan mr students did you i just there's one thing that i forgot because it was an agenda item about the superintendent search and it wasn't pull we didn't discuss it so i just wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that the public is going to be you know solicited to put in your comments if you will check board docs all five of the finalists are there and also on the website there'll be further instructions as to how you can give input
119on those finalists thank you thank you i was going to share that and i appreciate you sharing that for me oh i'm sorry no that's okay that's that's good miss fisher did you have yeah yes i'm sorry i neglected okay when speaking about the student advisory committee i'm scheduled to do the welcome this tomorrow no the 19th i'm sorry and i have a conflict and i was wondering if one of my board members would do it for me it is on zoom thank you very much let's appreciate that thank you okay one time please six o'clock so i'll send you the info thank you okay so as miss kittens had shared we definitely will be having a community involvement with the superintendent search as we continue on i was looking at some of the numbers
120as well we had reached over 39 000 people between the surveys forums focus groups regarding what our process has been what we have been doing and moving forward with that and all the board meetings that we've had pertaining to the superintendent search as well we also have some meetings coming up for that and i will definitely share those with you at the end of this meeting but we are definitely as ms kittens had stated we are going out we're having committees each one of the board members will be coming up with five community members which will be engaging with us the january 18th and 19th we will be doing a zoo meeting with the superintendents there will be five of them that we will be interviewing and on the 19th we are hoping to have
121those put up so that the community members as well as everyone else will be able to participate watch those the community members that have been that the board members will have chosen will then do a impression form which will be sent to ryan associates and at that time they will consolidate everything that came from all 35 people well 35 plus seven more from the district so they'll be coming to us and that'll help us as well to give us some more guidance of what the public is looking for and two of them are parents two are what was it the skins to this two parents two school staff and one community leader community member so each of us will be choosing those and they'll be sending out all the information to those who have agreed
122to help us in this we will then take it down to three and then we will we're not we don't have the whole entire process for that at this moment our hr department is working with reign associates and we will as soon as we get all the details for the latter part we will definitely bring that back to you all and miss kittens is working on the website so please continue to go to the website that we have for the search committee and that will have the information on there as well and it's going to be able to allow you to send in any kind of messages regarding any of the candidates and they'll be setting that up so each one will have a link from the candidate to a box that just speaks on
123them specifically so go ahead miss kittens well and just you know they can contact us through board office or through the website the comment but make sure that if your comment is about a specific candidate that you put that in the subject line or at the beginning of your document so that as we get them we'll know which ones and be able to sort it simply thank you because we definitely want to make sure that we are getting this out to everyone and miss patrick i have a question that i didn't think to ask earlier when we were talking about this committee that we're putting together is not going to be approved by the board correct meaning the membership like advisory committees we vote on the membership whatever five names each board member puts in
124or automatically on this committee correct involved i just wanted to be clear thank you that is correct and sure will we share who all is on it at one point another list will come to miss roman she's receiving all the names and then yes they will be shared because we want to make sure there's no duplications and you know and we have a broad range of people and then the only other thing that i want to say too is i really thank mr quick for being here we always enjoy having you here and really appreciate you know what you bring and i do want to make sure that we are we're still in rough times right now and i really want to to say thank you to the teachers the bus drivers the staff for
125being present they're always there and their continued dedication to the children even the team here they're they get a list of the needs out in the schools so when they get those needs they're jumping in and going there doing lunch duties doing car duty doing whatever they need to do to help to help the schools so i just really want to thank you all very much for what you're doing and what you continue to do and we as a board i know that all of us i can i can hopefully i can speak for everybody we are here for you if you need us you know let us know we'll be there and that's all i have to say and i will go to mr quick do you have anything to say just really briefly
126i just wanted to with regard to the powerpoint with on legal services i wanted to make sure to avoid make sure there wasn't any confusion as i understand it the list that was set forth under your school board attorney that was pulled from the school board attorney's contract and then in in that list there in some of them there's parents that's they all what that was intended i understand is that meant that was the entire legal department would be working on that because some of those things are pretty broad and pretty large so i just want to make sure that there was no confusion on that and then i just wanted to you know thank you all for for the opportunity to be here it's it's always a pleasure to to be here and it's
127always a pleasure to to see everyone and to sit with you so thank you very much and happy new year to everyone again thank you thank you so much bless you dr savage yes ma'am sure i do have answers on the quality points in terms of materials that was requested bless you so the first one and the courtesy of dr spyro so thank you sir wherever you are there you are thank you very much for sending these on on demand here so the july 27 21 is when the board was briefed on this there's a board presentation material there that really kind of spells those things out there was an additional facebook live event on october 13th that had some good participation some on-demand questions there so that would be helpful there's also a parent
128university for october 21st that has a lot of those questions in there and then there was also a november 17th dak meeting on quality points so of those four sources you're pretty it's gonna be pretty helpful i would think but but certainly if there are other questions that aren't answered in that piece we would love to be able to address that wanted to address you know just a few days ago wanted to take a minute tonight just from being in this specific role to to remember and honor a man who had a tremendous impact here on this school district and that's ravy podorf so ravy potter passed away just a few days ago on january 8th at the age of 93. so mr potter for those who aren't aware was the superintendent here in the
129school district of lee county from 1977 through 1984 and of course one of our elementary schools is even named after him he came up through education as a teacher as a principal district administrator and superintendent news press actually did a story about him that has a lot of accomplishments that he specifically had but really highlighted his child-centric focus as a leader and really championing educators so he survived by his two children four grandchildren ten great-grandchildren and there is a celebration of life held 1pm on friday january 14th that's that's this friday at the fort myers memorial gardens but in lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made and is honored to the foundation for lee county public schools his legacy and his sister will be remembered and it's one to be honored and
130celebrated one other person that just because our next meeting will be after the fact to celebrate as we've made several references dr martin luther king jr so you know that's someone who's you know even though he was he had passed long before i was there he crammed a lot of power and influence into his short life that in that touched multi-generation since i found that over time some of his powerful quotes many of which he pulled from other source material you know ended up having inspire to this day and so i just wanted to share one that i thought you know that us is this stuck with me and i think is helpful when you've gone through these these very difficult times that's we shall overcome because the ark of the moral universe is long
131but it bends toward justice and i think that just now with all the things we've been through and all the difficult times that we've had and sometimes it can be very hopeless we have so many people out in our community that don't necessarily feel a sense of hope and they feel a sense of hopelessness in their fellow humanity there's nothing better in education than the idea that we are we are the manufacturers of the future and so just such a powerful opportunity for us to consider that the legacy we have are the children in our system right now that as much as what they're going through in our staff is such a difficult time it's forging their experience in a way that will shape their futures and shape all of our futures and sometimes going
132through such tremendous adversity and difficult times it helps to promote as dr martin luther king jr lived during his time something that can touch the life of people now and the generations to come so just an opportunity of recognition of his sacrifice and the power and influence he exercised at that time and how those words still ring true today so thank you all very much and those are my comments thank you dr savage and that just when you said that i started thinking about our students and miss jivanelli and everyone else speaking on the quality food what i think a lot of people don't understand how our food service workers provide for our children and it's not just in the schools it is during the during the afternoons going home at night making sure they
133have meals to take home with them making sure on the weekends that they have food the schools being engaged with that and making sure that they provide food for families so we do make sure that the kids are fed and i want that to be stated that we do care and they are going to be fed no matter what they did it during the summer time they were there every we're going to make sure that those children have food so i just needed to say that and thank the food service department for for that and we want to make sure that we state that we want a speedy recovery for miss attorney to pruna pre bruno and her family thank you for reminding me to say that and then and i also want to thank
134miss supa for being here she's one of our school board attorneys thank you for being here this evening with us appreciate that and we welcome you when you join us completely so we look forward to that our next scheduled meeting of the board is january 18th and 19th there will be a board briefing at for the superintendent's search which i mentioned on monday january 24th there will be a board workshop at 1 pm on tuesday january 25th there will be a board briefing at 1 pm followed by an action meeting at 6 pm at this point having no further business to come before this board and see a new objection this meeting is adjourned thank you good evening i'll be safe you