School Board Action Meeting: June 22, 2021

001good evening good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting this school board meeting of june 22 is now called to order the time is 602 we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential and the district vision to be a world-class school system this evening's agenda includes invocation pledge of allegiance two items under recognitions public comment one item under board office which is good cause as the chair the one good cause item is approval of the contract for professional services with capital strategies consultant inc as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda consent action items which includes

00219 items under academic services which two are good cause dr savage please provide an explanation for these two items yes madam chair the consent items under academic services h18 approval to amend the contract with the state of florida department of health original contract number le200 amendment number two this item was added at the request of the department of health it updates the current contract with e-verify information item h19 approval of the contract between the state of florida department of health and the school board of lee county this item was added because the contracts for six school nurses start on july 1st and this is the last meeting prior to that date it was submitted by the deadline but due to a glitch in the board doc system that is being addressed it did not move

003through the approval process and last but not least under consent under human resources j6 approval of administrative recommendations again this is well one of the last meetings currently scheduled until the late july and so these administrative recommendations are done to not to cause any delay so these folks begin their work thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add these two items to the agenda which is was under academic services we have seven items under board business six items under human resource which one is good cause dr savage just spoke on that one as presiding a presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda two items under information systems eight items under operations four items under public hearings and four items under other

004business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda miss von i moved to adopt the agenda thank you may i have a second i'll second that thank you miss fisher and please record your vote 7-0 motion carries thank you miss kittens will introduce her guests for the invocation after which ms patricka will lead us in the pledge of allegiance ms kittens please introduce your guest thank you very much good evening everyone pastor russ hurst i'm going to take this so you can hear well pastor russ hurst has been a minister since 1996 he started as a youth pastor in singapore where he ministered for five years then he and his wife were missionaries in central europe and also in the asia pacific region for eight years he has traveled and ministered in over

00550 countries and pastored congregations in chicago los angeles and boston he is now the lead pastor of my church our church the first assembly of god in fort myers florida he comes from a ministry family his grandparents on both sides were pioneer missionaries in brazil and tanzania which which is where both of his parents were raised he spent his formative years in the samoan islands and then finished his education in springfield missouri he has a bachelor's degree in bio and bible and absolutely loves being our pastor he's married to kerry has two children jonathan and jordan as well as an adorable spoiled boss interior terrorist named jake and we are so pleased to have him here tonight and welcome him to our community and our church community pastor hearst will you please lead us in

006the invocation everyone please stand could you go to it maybe that like right there will be fine that one the back oh i don't care where it goes thank you for this privilege it's not on it's on here awesome there we go i just want to thank you for this privilege and gwynna especially thank you it's a privilege in gigi as well just hearing my own bio red i just realized man i've had a crazy life but i can tell you one thing i've been all around the world i've been to almost every state hundreds of cities and i'm going to say we've been here six months this is an incredible community i really really mean that and so it's a privilege to be here thank you for all that you guys do for the

007tens and tens of thousands of students you represent i just like to pray a prayer blessing and pray for god's wisdom heavenly father we thank you for the chance just to be together tonight lord i thank you for the cumulative effect that can happen lord where it literally touches tens of thousands of lives so lord your word tells us that if we ask for wisdom that you will give it to us abundantly and so lord i pray for our school board pray for those that are here representing to be voices for those that are the most important in our community for our children and so lord we pray that you would just help to find a unified voice that people that have different levels of expertise would be able to speak but together that there

008would be some sort of way that they would be able to do the best that they can and do what's right simply because it's right for all of these kids lord we just pray in jesus name that you would help us and we just invite your presence to be here and we just thank you for the privilege lord in jesus name amen thank you so much mr patricka i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice thank you so much for being here today reverend pastor first okay next is recognitions and miss fisher please welcome the 2020 the 2020 and 2021 new teacher of the year thank you miss jordan i would like to invite dr helen

009martin assistant director to please join the recognized employees at the lectern the school district of lee county is proud to announce the formal recognition of the 2020 and 2021 new teacher of the year the school district of lee county new teacher of the year program recognizes newly certified instructional personnel for the significant contributions they make to their school their students and their community the program honors one representative annually as lee county's new teacher of the year the nominees are individuals who have demonstrated exceptional skill and dedication in their performance on the job thereby earning the respect and admiration of students teachers administrators co-workers parents and the community a selection committee comprised of community members principals teacher representatives and district administrative staff reviewed nominations to identify interview and select finalists for the new teachers of the

010year at this time the school board and the superintendent are pleased to recognize the following 2020-2021 new teacher of the year 2020 valerie donovan from rhema p c page elementary congratulations donna and thank you for your work and also for the 2021 teacher of the year jennifer ortega from lehigh acres middle school good job well this is some good stuff here miss giovanelli please welcome the 2020 and 2021 apples mentor of the year i would like to invite dr helen martin assistant director to please join the recognized employees at the lectern and she's there the school district of lee county is proud to announce the recognition of apple's mentor of the year the school district of lee county apple's mentor of the year program recognizes apple mentors for the significant contributions they make to their

011peers their school and their district the program honors one representative annually as lee county's apple's mentor of the year the nominees are individuals who have demonstrated exceptional skills and dedication in the performance of their mentor role and their work with new teachers thereby earning the respect and admiration of students teachers administrators co-workers parents and the community as a selection committee comprised of community members principals teacher representatives and district administrative staff reviewed applications to identify interview and select the finalists for apple's mentor of the year the school board and the superintendent are pleased to recognize the following 2020 and 2021 apple's mentor of the year for 2020 benjamin strauss from mariner high school beautiful nice delude kerner of harness marsh middle foreign okay thank you so much and congratulations to each and every one of you

012we're so proud of you and you just keep this district going we're going to take a brief pause so that if there is anyone that would like to go ahead and leave we're going to allow that to happen unless you really want to spend the night with us and enjoy us you're welcome to do that as well okay don't run too fast glory i couldn't get in my computer so i'm sending you this but i told you already today that i was i just sent it to you okay moving on next on the agenda is public comment mr preet bruno please address the item of public comment thank you madam chair good evening school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's

013agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district however i would like to point to board policy 1.11 subsection 5d2 which addresses public hearing if you are here to address the board with regards to items in public hearing you may only speak about the public hearing item during the public hearing time otherwise you may not speak about it during normal public comment if you completed a blue card please put it in the basket provided in the back of the room if you need a blue card they are located in the hallway outside of the board the rules concerning public comment are posted in the back public comment will be made from the microphone in the back please be advised that the board does not respond during public comment to remarks made

014by speakers at the end of the public comment period the board chair miss jordan may address concerns or the assignment of concerns or requests to the superintendent speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback to the board personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper are prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper decarment 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 chambers there will only be one warning for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there

015are twenty two if there are thirty and one if there are thirty one or more for board policy one point eleven the maximum time allowed for public comment is one hour you will find a countdown on the big screens in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective board please state your name prior to making your comment i will call you five speakers at a time and please follow the staff's directions when lining up madam chair we have 12 speakers so that will be three minutes per speaker thank you is there anyone on the my left side that would like to speak who has not filled out

016a card is there anyone on the right side cnn miss dupree bruno please thank you madam chair at this time will the following individuals please line up edward drast corey dye daniello dye robert roper stephanie house good evening lee county school board my name is dr edward after smd i want to welcome dr savage to his new position and i'd like to make some comments first of all i was happy to get here early so i could get a speaker card tonight that has not been possible the last two meetings i am aware that there have been some comments that some of the board is tired of hearing from us i hope that's not the case because i think you'll be hearing more from all of us i'm speaking as a christian i'm not a

017special interest person unless you want to consider my special interest god's people i have three issues that i have addressed in the past in order in any order it's not important the critical race theory teaching should not be taught in this school district gay and transgender issues don't have a part in the teaching of our children and the 1619 project which attempts to rewrite history should also not be taught the what we want as parents taxpayers and members of this community as the truth from the board so when i find issues in the minutes that i can't understand i have to address them by email i would like a response please i will relinquish the rest of my time that's all i have to say but remember that there are eyes watching and we all

018have a vote in this county so please keep that in mind hi everybody daniella dye i wanted to come in today to talk about a few of the items that are on the agenda i see that there is a perkins versus secondary grant and it brings in welding consultants cultural equipment automotive equipment engineering equipment and grant specialists to handle all these things and i am super excited to see that we're actually moving forward with some of these technical abilities for the children i was wondering if that's going to be available for the 2021 2022 school year and where the descriptions are and how the parents are going to know that these programs are available there's another item on the agenda that's actually very concerning to me it's the memorandum of agreement between the school board

019and physicians primary care of southwest florida i would ask that the school district reviews this contract and sees if there's another person or whatever you want to call it the development that would be able to handle this because physicians primary care of southwest florida doesn't provide care to all of the members in 2017 they sent out letters to all of their families that had children that were not on the correct vaccination schedule as provided by the cdc whether they had autism whether they had a delayed schedule recommended by their other physicians or preferred to choose their god-given immune system so with that they don't provide a curriculum because they are supposed to guide you in what's the clinical structure of their program they don't provide a full spectrum of health care they only provide a

020specific spectrum of health care for a specific amount of people that's not inclusive the other thing that we wanted to bring up today was the early head start child care partnership it seems like more and more the school district not just you but across the board is becoming more of a daycare provider than it is a educator and the problem with starting these programs so early and so young is that the education that we're giving the children isn't actually my children were in these programs so i can tell you from firsthand experience these are not education systems these are free daycare provided and we're not looking for free daycare because the more we provide these services in this particular aspect of the curriculum what it would be considered curriculum is the more these people drop

021their kids off from five o'clock in the morning six o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock at night and we have our kids in school for way too long your guys's job is to provide an education and not free child care services so if you could take those things into consideration tonight and if you could also go into detail it's for the hearing items but there's some contracts that are being renewed for 15 years and one that's being renewed for five years if you can discuss what the differentiation between those two is and why some are being reviewed for 15 years and some for five and we know they're reviewed annually but what the contract involves thank you corey die dr savage great to see you out of the gate working to showcase our district

022i'm sad that we didn't see anyone present anyone else present at governor desantis bill signing today board at yesterday's meeting you move not only to decide how many companies you want to hear from but you went on to select two organizations for the superintendent search without ever providing public input those two things most definitely were actions this prevented the public due time and the ability to agree with a lot of the concerns with patricka and her role at the fsba this comes from the mistrust of the public with the school district and her her continuous bullying of employees contractors like rms and questionable connections with zielinski owner of integrity builders which was now arrested for a third time while the district continues to contract with his company her continuous bullying attempting to intimidate and belittle

023the public making disparaging remarks about the public and their opinion i'm glad you all don't want to listen to the minority that minority that only comes to these meetings when it suits them that leave after they're done talking they don't care what anyone else has to say i'm glad to hear that because we are not the minority we can pack this place imagine what we can do at the ballot box we have a larger influence of people than what most of you won your election by while this district released all of the records of board members except patricka's in alfie oaks case what is her obstruction to the process costing taxpayers hi my name is robert roper otherwise known as ward cleaver while this presentation is going to sound a lot like like i have

024problems with the lgbtq policies it's not it's about betrayal of trust it's about loss of confidence in the board it's about policies that are continually denied publicly but are virtually destroying at least one family and that gentleman testified last year causing unimaginable harm to that family the lee county school board needs a workshop on how to restore trust of the stakeholders the parents and the citizens of lee county why i don't need to show you this poster but this is the poster that was in the last student code of conduct that clearly says all students are allowed to access the restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity yet publicly we continually hear that is not a policy we can play semantics oh it's guidance it's not a policy but when you put this on

025the wall of a school to the student it's the rule i was present when staff presented this policy they clearly articulated i could i could bring you the videos that was the policy in the league county school board by staff and it was presented to you i could show you on video but yet you consistently say there's no such policy number two you purposely and intentionally tried to deceive me i did a public information request about this form that is signed by the student and the equity coordinator only excluding the parent and i was sent a form with a parent's signature and i was it was very clear it's painfully clear i knew who created the form i started with that person even the then superintendent got in on the thing it was went through

026the foyer process it was closed with the wrong form i reopened it was closed again with the wrong form that is why there's a lack of trust i don't know what's going to happen with the student code of conduct it was ratified at the last meeting first talk about inserting certain verbiage to make things better and it makes me wonder what we have we couldn't change the last one because it was ratified this one's ratified i was a hope that it wouldn't be changed i'm going to ask you to take action make positive change be the transparent board that you claim to be publicly will the following individuals please line up keith olsen your prime dervanyan melissa hatter charles christopher daly good evening madam chairman and school board members my name is stephanie house and

027the people that preceded me already touched on a number of the topics i wanted to discuss but primarily it is already diversity in your school board selection and administration i've spoken to you before on that topic your superintendent selection i want to know why the public wasn't included in that selection or in the selection process we need to be informed we need to be part of that selection committee if you have a committee already in place the naacp wants to be part of that committee please include us if not anybody else i want to be part of that committee as you know i can be a little bit outspoken and i want to be spoken up thank you also the person that came up here and said they don't want crt taught in school that

028person needs to be a little bit more informed too that's a part of history that past generation they might not know what it's about but the next generation coming up they need to be informed that's part of history and that's everybody's history that's american history so please inform everybody that needs to be taught in school also you need a little bit more diversity in school you have a committee called the diversity committee that's in name only do something about that committee but put not just bodies in there but put some action in there teach everybody that includes your staff members what diversity is that's not just a word again that's action that includes your school board members we need to see a little bit more color in your administration if not just starting at the

029head to trickle down we want to see some teachers administration teachers in that diversity also and a little bit more i had in here but i don't want to take up too much of my time we don't only show up when we have a little issue going on we show up all the time and we show up when it's time to vote them in or take them out and i know you hear me i always got a little stuck to say and like that military training i got i don't need this microphone just to hit for you to hear me y'all already know that and if you don't know nothing else i speak when i need to speak proper english but i can break it down for you too the last name was h-o-u-s-e and

030i'll be back again my name is keith olsen and i'm a resident of lee county and i have three grandchildren in district five of the of the educational system in recent school board meetings two two times ago at least ms giddens prophesied that crt is likely to be a major issue coming up and as her christian brother i'm not sure where that prophecy came from but certainly chose to be shown to be accurate in tonight's agenda category h under consent academic services item number 17 deals with the approval of the collaboration agreement with equal opportunity schools equal opportunity schools is a seattle-based organization their mission reads to ensure that students of color and low-income students have equitable access to academically intense high school programs and to succeed at the highest levels i am completely in

031agreement with providing access to all people to all of our students i am not in agreement in fact i'm in complete disagreement that we should be providing equitable access those are very different concerns equal access means that we give every student of every color of every socio-economic level based on merit access to these higher level programs equitable access means that certain numbers of different broad groups must be included in those programs so equitable access supersedes merit and equitable access equity is one of the foundational principles of crt and i'm very much concerned about critical race theory not only how it's taught in the classroom but also how it impacts the very process by which our schools operate so i'm i'm deeply concerned about that the primary goal the rather not not the primary but the

032first goal of the program is to fully close race and income participation gaps in these higher level programs by fall 2021 that's in two months and i'm very concerned about that we it can't be done unless there are these kind of artificial numbers applied to different groups to that must be included in these programs so i encourage you to vote against that proposition will the following individuals please line up charles daly christie divijelli gerald slack yep from their vagina and lehigh acres florida i'm against this political race story it's a communist agenda the chinese the russians are happy that you're pushing this you're screwing up our kids get with it get rid of it second thing i got to say is picking the superintendent i think we need somebody with a business background with an

033accounting background we don't need no more academics people they just screw it up i've been coming to these meetings for seven eight years this is the worst board that i have ever seen i wish some of your board members would resign the one that wants to stop free speech the one that wants critical race theories time to go time to go this is america this isn't russia this is in china get with it i'm tired of it and again i say this is one of the worst boards seven or eight years i've come to these meetings and this is a terrible terrible board that i've seen i wish you guys get with it thank you god bless i am melissa hatter welcome dr savage glad to have new life ladies on january 20th 2021 i

034sent you all an email regarding statute 1001.43 with the detailed list of unauthorized booster expenditures from july 1st 2020 not one of you acknowledged the request for your compliance with law we pay for a board attorney that did not advise all of your obligation to comply with this law and whom one month later sent me a letter stating that the district nor board had any governance of the booster clubs or their financials and that the matter was closed without providing any accountability yet earlier today she cited the same statue and specifically addressed how it states the board is in fact responsible for fiscal management receipts expenditures of funds creating policies regulating fiscal management of booster clubs and the administration at the schools is responsible for fundraising and fiscal responsibility as well mr simmons said missteps

035really no sir it was illegal and unethical activity and the handling of the complaints and all that ensued were conducted in the same unscrupulous manner he said it's hard to hold people accountable if they haven't been trained i haven't been trained to not rob a bank or commit murder yet i can assure you if i was caught i'd be prosecuted to the full extent of the law not to mention that most of what was portrayed today as new procedure actually existed in law policy and previous co-op guidelines we needed enforcement more than new guidelines our district has a serious problem with accountability in taking ownership as demonstrated in these absurd minimizations i have the documentation proving none of the school board members booster board officers school administration or district were ignorant of the law statutes

036guidelines policies or bylaws it's called accountability and i will continue demanding that all parties that did not comply with these obligations are held fully accountable i'm here by officially making a new complaint in light of the board attorney and district staff's public admission to non-compliance with the law and policy and i hereby request that all parties that were involved in the correspondence and mishandling of the misappropriation of booster funds complaints retaliation slander tax fraud falsified audit and investigations are all held fully accountable immediately thank you good evening i am charles daly christopher daly to some i came to sit here and complain to the board about human resources and the fact that us employees are not giving the option to make changes to their specific days of where one day they work i was surplus

037instead of another another employee that i have seniority over i am a 216 and she's a 196. i was told by a principal that it was irrelevant for me to even try because hr said there's no way for me to become off the surplus list to take over the 196. i'm asking you the board as one of your fellow employees that is sitting on a surplus list to actually look into this i do not feel like it is right and i am pretty sure there are others just like me that are asking for the same thing but are scared to fight thank you hello christine divajilli so just a few things first i would like to acknowledge dr savage in the way that he handled some of the more controversial changes that he made in

038his first week we all make mistakes what's important is that when we make a mistake we own up to it and we do whatever we can to fix it from what i've heard you've done that so thank you miss vaughn in june 8's briefing meeting you said i'll share my political beliefs i'm a democrat i'm a liberal i believe that critical race theory is very important and if we lose sight of that as educators we can't be a world-class education system school board policy 1.05 clearly states the following board members must avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof miss vaughn your admittance of democratic party affiliation and leftist political viewpoints is a direct conflict of interest board members must vote on all matters presented to the board for action except when a conflict of

039interest as defined by the statute arises miss vaughn you violate this board policy every time you vote based on the fact that you are guided by your political beliefs and ideals as you clearly stated yourself and number three refrain from using the board position for personal benefit it is no secret that lack of transparency is an issue with this board so how can we be certain that ms vaughn has never used her position to further her self-admitted democratic agenda elizabeth vaughn i find you to be in direct violation of school board policy 1.05 and i request your formal resignation as district 7 school board member effective immediately in the event you choose not to resign i urge the board to terminate her for her term effective immediately thank you that's a tough act father hey

040my name is daryl slack i'm here to speak on a multitude of items actually first i want to express my disappointment and the disappointment of people i've spoken with that the board decided to move forward with the voting on the fsba contract without any public input that's something we should have been able to speak on the infighting and ethical complaint that was filed by one board member against another it's been well known around here it's even making the news i think it kind of makes you guys look a little not great i think you either learn to work together or learn to admit when it's not working and show yourself the door it's disappointing and it's becoming embarrassing mr adai mentioned earlier intimidation of public intimidation of parents by the board specific board members i

041love my law enforcement i appreciate the job that all of them do i find it quite shocking they're one two three four armed guards here watching us and when we clap we get you know not nice looks for clapping i think that these four service owners have much better things to do than listen to us that's your guy's job not theirs finally as far as critical race theory goes i think that we deserve a public condemnation or endorsement from each school member or school board member sorry i think it's really important i hold a degree in history it's my major teaching what happened during those terrible years is absolutely crucial to let our students know what happened we should also teach that the united states has made amends for those horrible atrocities that were made

042like no other nation has it absolutely happened and it's absolutely been addressed and we're absolutely moving forward with it we're thankful that governor desantis has banned it's not really an issue right now we don't have to worry about it but we here in southwest florida we don't control who's governor we don't control who is our congressman is miami tampa orlando jacksonville they all have an input on the upper echelon of leadership of this state they don't have an input here we can control our own school board vote in your school board elections find out what your school board members are doing what they support and vote accordingly don't just vote an upper echelon history is important what happened is important but critical race theory specifically is a marxist ideology and it has no place in

043our schools whatsoever thank you guys for your time and have a good night and i'm sure that concludes public comment i think we still have one oh mr daley's coming up superintendent savage board members my name is dr charles daly that's my boy there how many of you i don't have to ask that question because every single one of you have children i'm going to always be his spokesperson i'm going to always be his father you made a statement with the pledge of allegiance and justice and justice for all 30 years ago when i was a young boy like him i sat and we challenged the opposing group to ensure that this district moved forward this is not what i approved you board members were elected i sat on podiums with you as we all

044strive for officers and one of the things that i heard every single one of you say if there's an issue call me if there's a problem call me miss fisher i respect the fact that i was able to contact you thank you so very much and we ran against each other thank you so much and i hope you don't get intimidated with the actions of the response of a grievance that implied that i contacted you for personal reasons for political advantage it is a blatant lie superintendent i ask that you look into that measure please the only difference in a grievance mrs morgan an equity complaint a grievance is one that is supported by the non-support of the union an equity complaint deals with it all employment discrimination age discrimination my boy has seniority and

045when you don't fully explain to these young administrators to my right the proper way of informing them if there's an issue you have to give the senior person the choice of choosing whether to go to the 196 or whether to go to the 216. if that employee says i'll take the 216. okay solve but if that employee says i would prefer the 196. the decision goes to the most senior person that stated in the contract mr daley thank you i pray no clapping please i believe now madam chair that concludes public comment thank you first i'd like to thank each and every one of you for coming we do appreciate that you come we are here to listen to what you have to say dr savage i'm assuming that you are going to look into

046some of what was said here today i would appreciate that so thank you both mr daily dr daly as well as as far as the search committee we will be having a meeting with this it will be a briefing on the search committee which we will have a presentation and public input will be on that particular day we will have another meeting for that as well and so we will include that and then going forward we will have many many opportunities for community to be involved in the search process that is something that is we are definitely demanding upon whoever does take get that contract because we want to hear what you all have to say from all walks of this area of lee county so we will be reaching out to you to to

047get engaged to be involved and we hope you know keep looking at the website because i know ms kittens works on that but we're going to try to make sure that we keep every single thing on that website so that you will know exactly what's taking place the time that has taken place how to get engaged and we want you to be engaged in that process so please know that we definitely want you there okay so right now you're out of order and this is your first warning please mr dye thank you and that is it we just appreciate you being here and as i said we are here to listen so moving on the next the next is the approval of the action items in the agenda under consent madam chair if i could

048just address one i think there was a comment with regards to the charter schools and the differences when we get to that well if i could just explain that pursuant to the statute there are charter schools that are considered high performing charter schools and those charter schools can have a contract that is 15 years thank you i wasn't sure if you run do it then or now so thank you for doing that next as i said next on the approval is action items the documents for the action items listed under consent is made available to the board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all of the materials and we have an opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the recommendations some

049of these items have also been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda more members are there any agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under unfinished business tabled items portion of the agenda miss giovanelli i have one night and then i apologize i didn't actually send an email and i am in support of it but i want to pull it to have discussion on it so that it's opportunity for the community to understand and it's i believe it's age 17 is that age 17 yes and that is the approval of the collaboration agreement with equal opportunity schools we were you know i want to have a discussion on that please thank you thank you ms patricka yes please j6 thank you miss fisher yes please for discussion

050h14 miss kittens thank you l-8 thank you miss vaughn i have none miss morgan i have none and i have not is there a motion to approve the agenda cassette items with the exception of the pooled items h17 j6 h14 and l8 i'll move that we accept the consent agenda with the exception of h14 h17 j6 and l8 nice thank you mrs fisher i second thank you miss kittens okay so it was motion by ms fisher second by ms gittins please record your vote so has everybody had an opportunity miss thomas are we waiting for somebody okay 7-0 motion carries thank you okay we have four four pulls to address so dr savage please read your recommendations for pulled item h17 do you want me to go and order madam chair age four yeah i

051will ask you and then you can very good yes okay so age 14 17 very well h17 a recommended action approval of the collaboration agreement with equal opportunity schools to provide support and assistance to the school leadership at the district's 15 high schools this agreement provides a continuation of the work that was started in 2021 school year for the 21 22 school year thank you is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation ms bond i move to adopt dr savage's recommendation to approve the agreement with equal opportunity schools thank you and seconded by ms morgan thank you and discussion and miss juvenelli i'm going to let you start that please yes okay so this is actually only a one-year contract we actually had a whole briefing on this today and i actually had pulled

052this item a pr at a prior meeting because we didn't know anything about it today we were we had a great briefing on it and it's required by the department of ed to to to meet meet the achievement gaps that are lacking in our district and we're trying to attempt that with this program it's not curriculum so it's just ways to help all students meet their highest expectations and achievement in schools so i just wanted to i am in support of it at this time and i will be closely watching how and watching the data and see how this how we come out at the end of the next year regarding this with our students because i still feel that we need to do this earlier than later in high school i think we need

053to be addressing these issues in like third grade in middle school as well so i'm i'm hoping that with the plans in place this will align middle school and at least high school and we help students have a career path and whatever that may look like but at least that they'll have their diploma and can do anything they want to once they graduate so i'm in support of that this evening thank you mr evanelli is there any miss gittins okay in case you didn't see this afternoon i'm in support of it and here's why we are constantly saying we are working towards being an a school we are working towards being world class and the head of the pack and the leader of the pack part of the thing that keeps us from getting there

054is the achievement gap within that achievement gap are students of all colors size race hair everything within that achievement gap so if we don't shrink this we don't get to the a we don't get to be world class and one of the ways that this program helps those children in that gap that are academically not up to standard then that's what this program is about the children in the gap and if some people are going to look at it one way through one set of glasses and another one through another set of eyes it's the children in the gap they need our help and we need their help to become an a and world-class school system thank you thank you miss vaughn yes i want to reiterate some of the things that my board colleagues

055have just said frankly a month ago i think it was when this was first brought up it was an item that i pulled i still have a few reservations about it and my reservations stem from the fact that i feel and actually i know this from 38 years in in the classroom that we need to help these children at a much younger age as a matter of fact someone earlier spoke about head start and made a comment that it was a babysitting service no i've been on that committee i've studied quality day care quality i'm sorry early learning programs and for some of these please no laughing thank you it's okay go ahead ms vaughn please and for some of these for some of these programs we really do need to think about equity and

056i also wanted to touch on that in regard to this eos program and what they presented this afternoon which tipped my thinking on the program to let's let's allow it to have another year in our schools and see and see what happens and if we make the strides in a non-coven year so i think some people and i don't know who among you but some people kind of live in a bubble of of their own group of people and they don't understand that the kind of people that the situations that we have in lee county school encompasses every kind of situation and it's not about as ms getting said it's not about race or ethnicity it's about children and their families that don't have the wherewithal to to advance and for and i'll add one

057other thing i have worked for quite a long time with teenagers who are in the foster care system and some of the young mothers that i've worked with and also children that have no family and have been in group homes all of these children need a voice all of them need a voice and this is what this program provides equity for those that aren't as fortunate as some other people so that's why i am going to support it thank you miss vaughn anyone mischievous just real quick also i just want to add i mean this program will be supports in place for all and that all means all not it's not just a certain group of students and so that was shown to us today as well so i wanted to it was something i

058forgot to say earlier and i wanted to make sure other everyone understands we're not just catering to a certain group of people we're actually we're here to educate all students and that's what this is about thank you thank you for sharing that part too because that's really important it is about all of our children yeah is there are there any other questions or comments saying none we will then go ahead and take a hand vote on this miss morgan aye ms fine yes ms kittens yes miss patricka aye ms givenelli yes ms fisher yes and yes for myself 7-0 carries thank you okay so the next one dr savage could you please read your recommendation for pulled item h14 yes madam chair please the this is a recommended action for the approval of the contract

059with elk mountain mountain academy inc clearview academy to provide combined educational behavioral and residential services for the 21 22 school year for a total cost not to exceed two hundred and fifty five thousand five hundred dollars thank you do i have a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation i'll move that we adopt dr savage's recommendation thank you miss fisher in a second please i second it thank you mr benelli and discussion and miss fischer i'm going to let you start because you yes thank you madam chair before we begin discussion i just want to remind the board that there are ferpa considerations so be mindful when you're having your discussion thank you yes i'm aware of that so i pulled this item the other day at the workshop asking questions about it and we are

060paying 255 500 a school year for this program in idaho and i had asked the question about how are we checking out the effectiveness and efficiency of this program and i had done some research i know to date we have paid over 700 000 with this contract and there have been reports that have been negative and concerning so i had asked the question about how does staff evaluate these programs and do they check with the authorities in in that state to see what their reputation is in in working with children so i did not get that information so i thought i would request it again at this time thank you are there any other well mr bree bruno is there by law what is our obligation obligation thank you that for this particular case this

061particular case you know we go through our normal course in terms of reviewing the as far as approving it or not approving it because you do need something that we must do that's my question is there a timeline yeah well there is a timeline and it is time sensitive you do have without going into the details you do have an individual that requires these services for very specific reasons and i do understand from my conversation with staff today that there is ongoing communication with the service provider they do check with check in to see how this individual is doing as well as verify that the requirements and the goals and objectives continue to be met on a monthly basis i do know that staff has also traveled there to verify with their eyes and speak

062to directly the individuals who are providing the services in the care based on the issues regarding this individual this is an appropriate placement thank you mr jaminelli did you have something to say well i just wanted to say i had asked for additional information because i really didn't know anything about this so and i haven't received any information you know just trying to get some information on it in general it wasn't it wasn't really clear okay and then i'm gonna go to miss fisher miss patricka miss vaughn and then miss kittens so then i just want to now my question really was not necessarily about this particular case but what is our responsibility when we enter into a contract with a facility like that to check that and i thought that when we asked they

063said they had not physically visited that place i hadn't i had an opportunity to speak to staff today with regards to this and it's my understanding that they have visited that they do monthly checks as well and there's ongoing communication between the facility and staff my recommendation to the board would be to have a one-on-one to get as many of your questions answered with regards to this particular case because it is very very unique i and i understand that but as our board attorney i would i would like to know if we have any clear data and clear information about the reputation of this particular facility that we've entered into this contract with more than three times and you know from a local official agency how do we request that and if i may before

064i go to ms patricka dr savage it looks like you have something to share yes i do have ms teresa bowen who is our esc director who's here today and could speak to more detail at least to possibly give a little bit more information if you would be amenable to that would that be all right with the board for miss bones to come up this week please and with being careful with the ferpa good evening thank you miss bond good evening board and dr savage and mrs dapui bruno as mr p bruno said we did have a conversation today regarding that request that you made miss fisher about how we go about looking into these types of programs and we do i obviously wasn't a part of that original looking into this program but we

065do have all of that information regarding the program at clearview so we look at those pieces that are defined by boards by licensure so they are licensed by the department of public health and human services they do hold accreditation for behavioral health they also hold accreditation with cognia which is also associated with the southern association of colleges and schools council on accreditation and school improvement and they also are accredited by carf so i can read you they have the highest scores from carf that you can get and i'll read you a clip of what is in their accreditation decision there it says clearview horizon inc staff members provide excellent counseling nursing educational and case management services through its residential treatment program for adolescent girls there is strong evidence to support that the entire team is

066dedicated to providing quality services in a respectful manner students speak highly of the organization and its staff members and report that they are consistently treated with respect and dignity this is a large report i did provide that to mr wuibruno so that she was able to share that with you additionally we do do site visits and that was something that i talked a little bit about yesterday that we have been to the site and we have observed the student receiving services as well we are in constant communication with that school with our assistant director is mainly the one that is in charge of this student's programming so she is in constant contact with them regarding grades courses how she's doing her progress so that we know at any time if there is not considerable progress

067or something that we need to be concerned about we call an iep team meeting so that is the way that this type of placement would work is that and we are the district contracts to provide those services on an individual education plan and so they carry those out at the school site that would include any behavior plan and anything like that and if there are concerns or changes that are needed that is done with a district team and the parents so then i just have a couple of other questions how much do these site visits cost us from florida to idaho and how many times have you been there miss bowen i have not personally been there i was i was not in the role that would have been involved with this at the time

068that the site visit was completed miss ellenger did attend that site visit she is now our assistant director she was a coordinator at the time and she visited that i don't have i can get to how much that cost i don't have that on me however these are costs associated with the additional expense of providing services to a student with disability and are generally budgeted under idea and so is there a an anticipated length of time that it would take for this therapy to show improvement because it's we're in a fourth year now and so i'm just yeah mrs fisher i think that just because we don't want to go too much into the needs and the assessments and how long the student's going to receive services and those kind of things because of ferpa

069i would feel more comfortable if we had one-on-ones to discuss this so that you can have all of your answers and you can go into detail in terms of what the student requires and how long the length of time and why and the assessments and all of that yeah and i'd like to see the documents that say that this facility is approved and accredited thank you thank you miss patricka and then miss vaughn and then ms kittens never mind my questions have been answered thank you okay miss vaughn i've had some huge concerns about this since you know you were addressing us yesterday the cost seems out of control surely there are similar programs that are closer to lake lee county this is i did look up the website this appears to be a religious

070institution have heavy duty on that and i think that as a school district this is we need to if we're going to be paying that kind of exorbitant fees for proper care for one of our students that we need to look into a more secular maybe a public institution to provide similar services there were some disturbing accounts online i can't take those for a hundred percent truth because just because of the nature of the people that were online making making statements about their experiences and all of them were horrible experiences in that particular institution i know ms fisher pulled this item i would i would actually like to see it tabled until we can all get more information the confidential information so that we can better understand why we are spending this kind of money

071for the treatment that is being received i will come i will come back to to you miss spawn i'm gonna have miss kittens and then mr chick i'll come back to you again miss kittens okay i have one question was the site selected by the family or by the district do we know that and can we ask that yeah so i was wondering yeah i think ms bowen can answer that question this site was selected by the district you there are not many locations of these type of facilities when you look at some of the pieces that i know miss dupuis bruno and i talked about earlier it is a very small percentage of places that offer services such as this and when you are then on top of that having to look at accreditation

072for schooling and licensure and all of those things what comes down whittles down into a very very small pool and now we have entered into a situation where age factors in and we have investigated every other opportunity when it comes to looking at residential services there is not one that is going to meet those all of those requirements that is in this state we have taken every opportunity to take in anybody that will give us information about other programs we there is a kind of a list serve out there that we investigated prior to this meeting this last meeting we had just to be able to have all of that information at the table for this iep team to consider so this iep team considered all of that information and it was not a rubber

073stamped decision that this student would be attending a residential program it was that iep team's decision that they needed this in order to be educated with that free appropriate public education and from there we have to then you know negotiate a contract and find a location and this is where the student has been served for the last few years and we do have the end of the contract is june 30th and we have a student that is currently being served and requires services as of july 1. okay so the final part that i have to say is because of the age limit because of the time limit of june 30th because of the specialized services we cannot afford to not pass this because where would the student land on july 1st the unfortunate piece of

074this is that and the issue to me is that we were not informed and spoken to about this prior to getting here i really regret having this conversation at the deus due to the sensitivity of this item and i would just hope that my colleagues understand because of age and time and specialization we need to move on thank you miss kittens ms patricka so i remember the first time i approved it was either this item or an item very similar to this when i first was seated on the board and i remember being shocked by the dollar amount and i remember being shocked by the location and i remember being shocked by so much of it and then i received an explanation similar to the one that you've provided to us tonight but it was

075away from the day so it was more extensive if i may ask the superintendent a question through the chair yes please dr savage did you know which year of this contract we're in is it year three four or five i may have to rely on staff ms boner you aware this i believe might be the fourth that sounds about right because it was around that time that i was properly seated on the board and i saw it and i was shocked but they're i'm sorry there were other contracts with residential facilities this is the only one we currently have in place and they were for far more than this one so that's probably the one that you're speaking of i think it was well over 400 000. okay so this is not new to this

076board and if i may suggest you know i'm prepared to to move on this in support of it tonight and i believe time is of the essence if i may suggest a recess so that my colleagues can gather whatever confidential information they need to make them comfortable with making a vote tonight it's not necessary for me i don't know about anyone else i think that miss duprie bruno this is something that we have to act on tonight because the contract is going and everything else and we do have to act the board has to act on this okay thank you and then did you have some i just wrote i'm prepared to to move forward i don't i sometimes we just need to be our memory needs to be refreshed that's all you know and

077getting this at the last minute i mean this contract we really could have signed it a month ago so it did you know we're really waiting to the last you know second on it so i don't have a problem moving forward i don't i can get information later thank you mr van allen i understand the sentence i'm going to bring that back to you i do not want to see a child put in harm's way in in jeopardy however i have no idea the background information on on this child and apparently a few people do i will very reluctantly supported but i would also like to say that in the future when we have big dollar amounts such as this we can't wait till the last minute we need to have time we can't assume

078that the board is just going to rubber stamp everything we need to have time to get to get information thank you we'll take that into consideration when scheduling the next iep meeting this last one did take approximately over seven days and more than 36 hours whereas a typical iep meeting is one to two well you know i know how those things work i was in a school for a long time however considering the dollar amount and the stakes here there just has to be the prior planning so i mean just to put it bluntly but thank you for your work owens thank you very much for stepping up here and speaking to us does mr appreciate us do you need time to no okay no i don't but i will not be supporting this because

079it's and having nothing to do i don't know the student i just know the reputation of the place and they've changed their name and i will not support something where i might be putting a child in any kind of danger and mrs mrs fisher i know the allegations that are out there that were shared and a lot of that is on social media and we do have responses from the school and they do have attorneys looking at that information it is misinformation i'm not on social media so i don't even know what you're talking about but thank you thank you miss moments so if there are no further further conversations or discussion then i'm going to ask for a hand vote on this item which is h14 and i will start with miss morgan please

080yes miss vaughn yes mrs kittens yes ms patricka hi thank you mr evanelli i'm gonna vote no okay miss fisher no and i'm gonna vote yes so it's five to two motion carries thank you okay moving on to our next one dr savage would you please read your recommendation for pulled item l8 a yes madam chair l8 recommended action approval for phase one pre-construction budget estimate in the amount of nine million one hundred and thirty two thousand seven hundred dollars for the quadruple a formerly known as the k elementary and n n middle pre-k 8 school south zone approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all necessary documents thank you dr savage and me i get a motion to approve ms patricka i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation with regard to nine million one

081hundred thirty two thousand seven hundred dollars for aaa pre-k through eight school thank you a second please miss morgan okay so motion by ms patricka second by miss morgan and miss gittins if you will you brought this one to us yes i did thank you i have stated before and i will continue to state that unless i have enough information and data on an item i will not vote on it quadruple a is a question in my mind i've heard different amounts i've heard and we discussed it today but i've we have heard 72 million 75 84 90 we've heard 15 percent increase we've heard 20 percent increase in in products and i still have asked for for several months the growth and capacity numbers and the algorithm that was used to save the need

082for this and other capital projects so and just me personally i cannot support 9 million dollars on a project that is i don't know in black and white the need for it i haven't been shown those i asked again today and i was told that i would get it later so perhaps after i see the data see the need and weigh it with the other needs that we have in the district then perhaps i can support it at this point i cannot and thank you thank you or is there any other discussion on this please no other discussion i will say that we have been been speaking about this for quite some time and as far as given the estimates and the difference because the fact that we it's some of this stuff is unknown

083because of the fact that you know the cost of certain items dr savage should you have something to share i can just speak to ms getting concerned very briefly i think this might be helpful this just to remind everyone this is our phase one cost so this is really an amended contract taking the prior contracts with work that's already taking place amending and clarifying those contracts this in no way binds us to begin or proceed with our phase two essentially because of the rising cost for some construction materials when we get to the point where we complete our phase one which really includes a lot of the design work those are things that are not as impacted the permitting and so forth things that allow us to get ready for our phase two this in

084no way says that we must approve the phase two that gives the board another moment in time where we can either commence and make a strategic decision of if we want to commence as we had planned or if the costs which can fluctuate at that point in time are of a concern or not this just allows the work that is already continuing to continue with these amended contracts mary please just thank you yes please mrs kittens this afternoon and i see mr rickenbacker there and i know you're going to say that we must get i'm sorry for speaking for you but the conversation today is and i totally understand the cost of materials is continuing to rise and as you stated earlier today if we don't purchase the steel now then we will have a

085difficult time moving forward in all actuality i don't believe it should move forward and i never have and that's just the way i feel about it i feel that our priorities are out of sync and if we continue from 70 to 75 84. i did the math even on the 72 and at a 30 increase in supplies it goes over 90. and i can't support that because it's like once you get in there and you got nine million dollars of steel sitting there then you're gonna come back to us and say we've gotta move we got nine million dollars worth of steel if i may the board and the previous superintendent you've all approved these dollars six million dollars of it the only ask you're seeing tonight is the 4 million to do an early

086procurement for this deal originally the approval you as a board approved was for the phase one total project cost of nn middle school and k elementary so you've already approved six million dollars i've voted down i haven't voted but i'm just saying it's a board the board had approved it and so what this is doing is merging the design costs into one contract so we can go for the cops funding for one site and our experts in the construction field in order to get the materials to meet the schedule for their student seat demands we have to release it now normally i would go and bring you a total project cost that phase two which would be the total product cost for the job but if i do not order this four million dollars worth

087of steel now then that school will not be done for 23. so may i ask a question if the school is not done in 2023 can you support those student seats by placing two portables at two schools i cannot answer that i am not planning that was all done by the planning department and sent to the state for confirmation okay well it's my understanding with the numbers that are needed man just finished yeah so there's should not be having a conversation back and forth with mr rick and biker so go ahead and please state whatever you would like to say well my point is that if it's going to the costs keep rising for this we don't know where it's going to end in the first place i feel that it was a it was

088a non-priority that's my own opinion and i know others don't agree with me there are higher priorities in the district that need to be done and that's that's just the way i feel about it so if we can in one area take care of a situation for a year or two by putting 20 portables then we can place two portables in another area to save us all of this money so that's i haven't voted on anything for it since it came and i will not until i am it's proven to me that we really need it thank you sir thank you thank you miss kittens mr evanelli today we had a budget meeting wasn't this in the budget this school was in the budget yes it is the 10-year plan that is correct so and

089i think it's within the five-year plan really part of that but we're going to need schools there's a lot of communities being built tree line all the way to bonita springs right now so we are going to need the schools so i'm in support of it this evening thank you thank you is there any other comments or conversations cnn i will go ahead and then ask for a hand vote on this thank you mr rickenbacker miss morgan aye ms vaughn yes miss kittens no thank you miss patrick hi mr vanelli yes ms fisher yes and yes so six to one motion carries thank you very much okay moving to the next one and i thank the administrators that have been sitting out here so thank you for being patient dr savage can you please read

090your recommendation for pooled item j6 yes madam chair j6 regular recommended action approval of administrative recommendations as presented thank you may i get a motion to move it and move that we pass the superintendent's recommendation thank you can i have a second i second that okay were you gonna pull it i was the pole yeah i'm going to have discussion i know but i'd like to amend the motion to approve the interim superintendent's recommendations for administrative personnel appointments as found in item j6 except the position of coordinator superintendent's office that's the only one i need to discuss okay so did you get that miss thomas yes okay so do i have a motion do i have a first on that so she made a motion too she made a motion i need a second okay

091and i second thank you miss morgan and discussion and the discussion will only be on the amendment you got to get through that part first so does the board agree with amending the original motion to what ms patrick has said in terms of approving everything except for the last item thank you so do is there a discussion on the motion that was the amended motion to approve all of the names on this with the exception of the very last one miss patricka first mrtrica i don't i don't have any questions or concerns with any item except the last one i'd like to approve them and congratulate the people in the room and then move on to discussion with the board on the last item i believe that's how we handled it previously with a superintendent

092appointment at a superintendent a principal's appointment at one of our schools so i'm just trying to be efficient thank you so ms vaughn i would like some information from mrs patricka on her objection to holly matthews moving from sunshine elementary assistant principal to coordinator in the superintendent's office that's the discussion we're having right now all right i've just okay we just call for the call for the vote that's where i would yeah we're right here for the vote just for the first part and that's to eliminate no just on those and then we'll come back and bring that second one back i will make a motion next we'll bring that other one back i'm just trying to work the first five together in voting for only those first ones do i not have the right

093to know why it's it's it's part of us but we're on our offer i don't understand we're not vote we're fighting for all of them except and i would just assume vote for all of them and i want to know why we're separating one person you can make that decision by this is the pre-bruno can you please explain that this is a amendment amendment motion and we are voting on the amendment never mind i get it i get it okay and then we'll bring it back so if i may have a hand vote on the amended motion to approve all of them but the last one on the list miss morgan i thank you miss vaughn no miss kittens no miss patricka hi mr evanelli no miss fisher aye and i so motion carries four

094to three dr savage did you want to recognize the other individuals recognize yes please absolutely we do have some individuals here in attendance today so the first one that i would like i'm sorry the free burnout i didn't vote for that yet i'm sorry dr savage that's right even actually to confuse you point of order madam chair board members should not be speaking to each other while one person has the story i'm calling on miss dapri bruno thank you miss kittens okay so this motion was this motion was just done so do we go ahead and move the second one before he announces so what you voted on was to amend the original motion which is now you're back to your motion with as amended as amended which is the motion to accept dr savage's

095recommendation with the exception of the last item so that is what you're going to vote on now okay thank you remember amendments are always a two-step process first year put on the amendment then you vote on the amended motion so can i please get a so now we have a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation with the exception of the one last may i get a okay can i get somebody to move on that it's already been moved on second okay so we have another vote on it then right if there's no discussion you can go ahead and move forward thank you ms fisher do you approve it i'm on we're approving this motion now the motion that is on the floor i'm going back again and we're going to prove this first we approve

096the motion now we're going to approve it as stated yes thank you miss givenelli no thank you miss patricka aye ms kittens no miss vaughn now miss morgan i and i motion carries now the account madam chair of the camp motion carries by what it's four to three motion carries and then i'm going to ask dr savage to please before we move to the next one to please go ahead and congratulate so we'd like to recognize those administrators in attendance here the first is danielle swiccola who is going an exceptional student education coordinator for exceptional student education we also have michael licotta from heights elementary from dean of student discipline to hector a caferata junior elementary assistant principal you also have michael auer from the professional development department learning and leadership teacher to island coast

097high school assistant principal those are the administrators in attendance thank you so much and congratulations and we will take a brief pause so if you would like to exit please feel free to do so but congratulations thank you already approved they're both ms patricka i move that we adopt superintendent's recommendation with regard to administrative personnel appointment coordinator superintendent's office you've heard the motion do i have a second yes fisher thank you and discussion ms patricka so i had a very brief discussion with superintendent you're aware that i can't support this evening and i guess my explanation is i don't i don't understand how this appointment fits into the larger scheme or the larger plan our board chair reads at the ever the beginning of every meeting that some of the items have been briefed or

098workshopped i'm not i haven't had a lengthy discussion with you about this i don't believe your you have even met with your chiefs as a group to have a lengthy discussion about this i think the best way i can explain to you dr savage is you know when you get a puzzle you see the picture on the outside of the box and then you take the pieces and you put them together you have given me a piece of the puzzle without giving me the picture so i need to understand the full breadth of could you speak through what i need to understand the full breadth of what what picture you're trying to create here before i can support it make sure you're speaking to me please those those are my comments please all right i

099do support this recommendation by the superintendent i'm not sure how miss patrick knows whether or not the chiefs have been briefed on this i do know from meeting with dr savage last last week as i believe most of us did i discussed with him you know what are some of the things that you would like to accomplish during the time that you are our superintendent and i'm going to emphasize our superintendent that's by law i heard miss patricka earlier at the end of the last meeting or at during the last meeting say that she couldn't support anything done by an interim superintendent to do a reorganization this is not a complete reorganization that we are being asked to approve in 24 or 48 hours this is an individual who is on our governance team who

100felt feels the need to have a coordinator in his in his office i believe that we have executive assistants that have the title coordinator i can think of one or two who have have that have that title as executive assistants i respect the superintendent's right to appoint if he feels necessary a coordinator especially due to the fact that at this time this district has a lot on their plate as evidenced by the length of the meetings that we have had in the last month or two and this superintendent has been in place now for a few hours past one week i remember that miss patricka who's objecting to this during the time of the last superintendent chided fellow board members for opposing moves like this from dr atkins and i would ask that she has

101respect for our new superintendent and not address him like about a puzzle piece like she's talking to a third grader so i will support finishing please adam chair point of order i think we need a three-minute recess until we can get ourselves together let me finish my statement please i'm nearly done there's a point of order that has been made miss madam chair can you please rule on the point of order i think that i would like miss vaughn to finish speaking but please speak to me and i'm speaking to the board they speak through the address addressing me speaking to the board i would like to see i will amend what i said all of us sitting here on the dais to have respect for our superintendent and for anybody else who addresses us

102and i will be supporting this because this is a relatively small movement from an assistant principal to a coordinator in our superintendent's office thank you thank you ms vaughn i'm gonna have miss kittens and then miss morgan please okay and in my opinion miss vaughn was referring to what miss patricka already said and she was not interrupted by a point of order just for the record my comment on it is in agreement with miss vaughn i have sat here meeting after meeting and been told that my job is not to tell the superintendent how to make decisions that the superintendent makes decisions and we do policy we have been around this about appointments before that we had question about and that's what we were told so i do believe it's kind of you know to

103make it simple what's good for the goose is good for the gander and if we have a new superintendent and i will tell you what i was told for the last three years that we need to stay in our lane thank you miss kittens and miss morgan please well i guess you all are at an advantage that i don't have i haven't had my meeting with the superintendent so i had a brief meeting with him this afternoon i guess around 5 30 or so and asked him what this was about and he told me that i should know about it because it was something that had been discussed in cabinet i know nothing about this reorg or this position in the superintendent's plan and all i'm asking is that when there are changes i think

104it is appropriate for the superintendent to provide information about changes he's planning to make and what the and what the context is in terms of his broader plan which i don't know so i hope that the superintendent's office will be able to arrange a time for me to meet with him in the meantime i will not be supporting this thank you miss jaminelli okay so there's a lot of changes here on on this good for cause that i did not speak to the superintendent on but this happens all the time so i think it's not uncommon i think that we need to give the superintendent the respect and allow him to have employees around him that he trusts and i think that's what this person is for him i don't even know who this person

105is never met them in my life but i'm going to respect the judgment of the superintendent you know i can recall that our last hire was a board attorney and that was a five to two vote that was also derailed after the fact after we voted and i believe that's what this attempt is to derail the city the respect of the superintendent of the vote that we've already we've done as a board so i will be supporting this i'm not i'm do not know if he's met with all his cabinet i would hope so but i don't know how ms patrick has information that i don't have but it seems to that's always been the case for the last four and a half years and so again she has more information than i have so

106i'm statutorily miss bruno does does the superintendent have the authority to make changes that he feels comfortable with so the hiring recommendations transfer recommendations of the superintendent must be followed by the board unless there is a concern about moral turpitude or the person's ability to do the job hiring okay so and i believe miss matthews has does not have any issues with that so i'm gonna i've never heard anything so i'm gonna support this evening thank you this is a transfer transfers also fall under that legal guidance and mrs fisher did you have any comments no comment right now okay and i'm just going to share i know i had a conversation with dr savage earlier today about this and when i was the only thing that when you and i spoke about it i

107mean i know we're going to support but my what i see here when i'm looking at the job description the qualification of the person for the coordinator is less than the qualification for the secretary for the superintendent and then i know that and it's saying that they are going to be supervising the office staff which supervising and overseeing support staff in the office of the superintendent and i know when we had our conversation you said that was not part of that but it is definitely stated in their in their job description and they only need a high school diploma where the secretary needs an associate degree i know they have more than that but i'm just yes please i'm happy to respond to that thank you so this was the board approved job description by

108end under dr atkins regime so this is not a new job description this is an existing job description so all the qualifications and descriptions that you have are simply what was in print on that port approved job description with that said certainly we'll be looking at all the different duties and core functions and we can at a later date come back and outline any clarifications any red line edits anything that we would recommend in a future time we'd be happy to do that but under the current circumstances this coordinator position functions much like any other administrative coordinator function around the district we have a number of them they serve a vital function in leadership just to speak specifically to this candidate a tremendous school leader tremendous talent and a great opportunity to serve our district

109out in schools in fact i would tell you that the leaders out in our schools know full well what our schools are dealing with and so the opportunity to enhance our team in a position a very similar fashion to what dr atkins had said that he needed and staffed is a great opportunity for us to really enhance not take away from anyone on our current team our team is fantastic in the superintendent's office they are fantastic in one week i have been so impressed with the quality what they do but i would understand that i have a very compressed summer any move we make if we were to delay the issue is then that causes a subsequent delay for any replacement of staff so say you know the most sensitive thing we do for school

110leaders is we want to give them every opportunity to staff so those folks can attend professional development they contribute to the work that is ahead it is a compressed summer it is a certainly reluctant to bring any items such as this nature we want lots and lots of time unfortunately i've only been on the job one week and there's a lot of work still to do so i hope that helps clarify at least some of the comments that were made so far and i'm happy to answer any other questions you may have no thank you and again it has nothing to do with the individual person it could be job whatever it's just the fact that when i'm looking at two different job descriptions they kind of overlap so much and just you know i

111just want to share that with you as well miss fisher yes thank you i just wanted to say that we have personnel recommendations literally at every board meeting and unless we all know from our training with fsba that unless we have good cause to question one we approve the superintendent's recommendations we say what he says how we say yes this is you know we need personnel he says who that's not our purview so i will be supporting this evening thank you is there any other comments or questions no okay then if you have i'm sorry just comment it's up to us to make our appointment with the superintendent i last week sent an email and asked to see him because i heard that he was already having meetings with him i want to be out

112of respect i waited because i didn't know i knew he'd be very busy this whole this first week but he carved out some time for me so it's it's up to us and our ownership to meet with the superintendent and that's what i did and that's how i got my appointment so thank you and again we are here to make sure you know to support him and make sure that you know we move the district forward so i appreciate everybody's comments and if i could go ahead then please and get a hand vote on on this item i would appreciate it miss morgan aye thank you miss vaughn yes thank you miss gittins yes miss patricka nay yes jim nelly i know i'm just trying to rush that meeting along with sorry ally yes thank

113you miss fisher yes and yes so six to one motion carries can i've had a request for a five-minute break does would anybody need a five minute break i'm here can we please move on the lateness of the hour i think you need to thank thank you yes are we it's up to you no thank you okay dr savage did you want to announce your appointment your second appointment that individual's not here but could you please already recognize everyone who is in attendance today but go ahead and recognize the person as well absolutely it is my privilege to also acknowledge ms holly matthews sunshine elementary assistant principal moving to the superintendent's office coordinator in the superintendent's office thank you okay we are moving to public hearings dr savage please present your recommendation for this evening's

114public items thank you madam chair a recommended actions p1 approval of the contract for renewal with heritage charter academy incorporated heritage charter academy of cape coral serving grades k through eight for a five year term from july first 2021 through june june 30 2026. p2 approval of the charter contract for renewal with the city of cape coral oasis middle school serving grades six through eight for a 15-year term from july first 2021 through june 30th 2036. p3 approval of the contract for renewal with dj b technical academy incorporated donna j beasley technical academy serving grades 9 through 12 for a 15-year term from july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2036. and p4 approval of the contract for renewal with the heights charter school incorporated harlem heights community charter school serving grades k through five for

115a five-year term from july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2026. thank you we will now resist the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider one approval of the contract for renewal with heritage charter academy inc doing business as heart heritage charter academy of cape carl serving grades k-8 for a five-year term from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2026. two approval of excuse me approval of the contract for renewal with the city of cape carl doing business as oasis middle school survey grades six through eight for a 15-year term from july 1st through 2021 through june 30th 2036 approval of the contract for renewal of djb technical academy inc doing business as donna b beasley technical academy serving grades 9 through 12 for

116a 15-year term from july 1st through 2021 through june 30th 2036 number four approval of the contract for renewal with the heights charter school inc doing business as harlem heights community charter schools serving grades k-5 through for a five-year term from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2026. oh at this time the public will invite be invited to speak for these four items the time allowed for the comment is three minutes is there anyone on the right side that would like to speak on these four items is there anyone on the left side that would like to speak is there anyone in the back that would like to speak want to make sure i cover all bases please state your name wait i don't think you're on yet i'll just be louder there you go

117daniella die i just had questions if you can go into more explanation i know you said 15 years for a high achieving school versus the five years so if you just go into more detail about what that means and what it is why there's three at fifteen one at five and what the qualifications are if you can go into more detail that'd be great thank you thank you mr pre-bruno i will ask you to okay so let me pull up the statute really fast thank you for dr savage did you have some information we actually do have a staff member donna troll who works with our charter schools who is available if the board would have a question on that okay do you all mind if she steps up to the microphone to speak on

118that please michelle and dr donna schroll dr scholzer thank you welcome thank you make sure you're on please i think i think i heard you dr sean go ahead it sounds like you're on yeah well i heard you i heard the button push ms still was going to help you i believe the question was about a 15-year term for charter contracts there are of the four schools there are two of them who have applied for a 15-year term one of those schools is oasis middle school that's a municipal school owned and operated by the city of cape coral it is just ending a 15-year charter and its application asked for another 15-year charter statutorily there are two parts or two sections in statute which would allow oasis to have a 15-year contract i believe they're

119both in section 100 2.33 and the first states that as a municipal charter school or owned by the city of cape coral or any public entity that a charter school can apply for and is eligible for a 15-year contract so that is in statute the second reason that they're able to apply for a 15-year contract is because they are a high-performing charter school they meet all the requirements set forth by the fdoe to be considered as a high-performing school and one of the benefits of being a high-performing charter school is that they can extend their contract into a 15-year term thank you so very much really appreciate it we just make sure that we get the information out to the public okay is there anyone else that oh mr president if i could just add

120because i think this is adds to what mitch roll said in terms of just lost it second i just lost my where i was high performance or stature i'm going to provide the definition but i just lost it i'm sorry i'll find it again all right so is there anyone else out there in the audience or on the way back that would like to speak on these items seeing none i will now close this public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of june 20 22nd 2021 dr savage please reinstate your recommendations for this evening's public items my pleasure madam chair and we will go one one at a time thank you one at a time that's right p1 approval of the contract for renewal with heritage charter academy incorporated heritage charter academy of

121cape coral thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the contract for the renewal of heritage charter academy inc doing business as hair charter academy of cape carl serving grades k through eight for a five-year term from july first 2021 through june 30th 2026. board members is there a motion to approve i move that we approve the contract renewal with heritage charter academy thank you miss kittens may i have a second thank you mr second pawn and could you please vote please record your vote okay seven zero motion carries thank you dr savage yes would you please reinstate your recommendations for number two yes madam chair p2 approval of the charter contract for renewal with the city of cape coral doing business as oasis middle school okay you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the

122board approves the contract for renewal with the city of cape carl doing business as oasis middle school serving grades six through 8 for a 15-year term from july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2036. board members is there a motion to approve miss vaughn i moved to approve the contract renewal with the city of cape coral for oasis middle school for a 15-year term from july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2036. a second miss vaughn and second by mskins thank you miss kittens and please record your vote and motion carries seven zero dr savage please reinstate your recommendation for item three madam chair p3 approval of the contract for renewal with djb technical academy incorporated doing business as donna j beasley technical academy you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves the contract for

123renewal with djb technical academy inc doing business as donna j beasley technical academy sermon grades 9 through 12 for a 15-year term from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2036. board members is there a motion to approve mrs morgan i move we approve the contract for renewal with djb technical academy doing business as donna j beasley technical academy serving grades 9 through 12 for 15 year term from july 1 2021 through june 30 thank you miss morgan i may have a second second thank you miss kittens and please record your vote 7-0 motion carries thank you very much dr savage please restate your recommendation for item number four yes madam chair p4 approval of the contract for renewal with the heights charter school incorporated doing business as harlem heights community charter school thank you have

124heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves the contract for renewal with the heights charter school inc doing business as harlem heights community charter schools serving grades k through five for a five year term from july first 2021 through june 30th 2026. board members is there a motion to approve this item i'll move to the we approve the contract for renewal with the heights charter school inc doing business as harlem heights community charter school thank you miss fisher may i have a second second you miss kittens yes thank you miss kins and please record your vote thank you 7-0 motion carries thank you very much next we're on to other business which is board member comments and i'm going to start with miss giavanelli can you come back to me please thank you miss fisher

125thank you star please yes thank you first of all i want to thank staff today for the presentations they were all very thorough and informative and an example of the hard work that our staff does each and every day not only in concluding this past school year but preparing for the next i'm really excited about the summer feeding programs and particularly the one in partnership with cape coral parks and rec at paul sanborn park i know that last year they had multiple kids there every day and it looks like it's turning out the same this year i want to offer oh i do want to say that i do hope we will take another look at the district calendar i noticed that many districts have managed to meet the day requirement and finish the semester

126before the holiday break which i think then gives the students and the teachers an opportunity to feel a little bit of relief during that break so i hope we will come another look and also i would agree with miss morgan that we should have students on the calendar committee and i know some student advisory members who would be happy to participate so we are looking at there was conversation today about the career and tech programs the east lead tech and it looked like there was some bored interest in moving that timeline up and i certainly agree with that along with the k-pop tech renovation proposals which are much needed in my community of cape coral and very much supported by the business community and also i suggest that we take another look at the public

127service academy which serves the five county area and prepares our firefighters our emts and our other law enforcement and we could almost use some of the medical programs in that same facility because the work is all similar and connected finally i just want to give my wishes for staff students and parents to relax renew and refresh and stay well this summer thank you thank you so much miss chivanelli i'm still writing my notes thank you miss patricka i don't really have much to report we've spent so much time together lately we're we're very aware of each other's activities because most of them are taking place here at the table i would like to comment on the golden apple banquet i feel like a lot of the work that we do can be difficult but the

128golden apple banquet to me is always a reminder of why we do what we do to see the teachers i mean this is my fifth year attending and i heard two of the best speeches i've heard in five years i mean they were just phenomenal so i thank the foundation for continuing to recognize not just the teachers who win the award but the fact that they're representative of fantastic teachers across the district i would like to add to the parking lot for board discussion engaging the doctor that ms morgan mentioned earlier today he gave a presentation in a breakout session in fsba regarding 10 laws of board governance or something along those lines i'd like to add that to the parking lot for board discussion i think those are my comments for this evening thank

129you thank you ms chavenelli are you finished writing your notes well not really but i'll come back to it shall i come back no it's okay i i just was going to mention the golden apple event it was a wonderful event and the presentations again today were they i would agree with miss fisher but they were great and the sos program i know that starts this summer and that will be that will be really good too and i'm excited for the kids for that it's going to be a short break but i hope that everybody has a safe summer i wanted to have dr savage addressed the mr daley's the surplus pool and get back with him on that no one mentioned that but you could clearly tell that he was very upset and my

130heart went out to him for that because i don't really understand the what he was referring to the 196 and 216 and stuff like that so i think it's above my pay grade but so i just and that was one thing and then mrs house mentioned a couple things that i thought that i brought up that i think is very important and i want to bring that back around regarding the committee for the hiring of the superintendent i feel that they should have been the public should have been involved in that process i brought it up several times but the this board didn't have that appetite they want i think want to wait till after the search for firm is formed but i felt that the public should have had more of an input on

131that and during that process and now we're down to two and they're not gonna be involved in that at all and i don't i don't agree with that and i'm just going to go on record for that also she also brought up edact and i do not think edac is a diverse enough there's issues there that and i brought i brought it up several times to other people i do not think that the lgbt has enough representation on there as well and i think that we need to really seriously look at that edac group and make sure that it is diverse and so that everyone feels like they're adequately represented because i think that's going to be key going forward with the issues that are coming down federally and so i think we need to

132really be proactive instead of reactive and that's we've been that way too many times so i also have a report and i'm gonna read my report i am happy to report that i've been exonerated from all thoughts allegations that were lodged against me in may of 2019 the state of florida found no probable cause behind the complaint proven the allegations made against me were unfounded over the last two years i've been subjected to false accusations that were orchestrated by a fellow board member along with an employee of the superintendent who retains their position as chief in our district the board member who was involved confessed to her actions once it was discovered that it was her documents that were shared to jane cuckel and the news media outlets in her attempts to justify her acts

133of of the months of badgering and orchestrating lies against me she emailed the board a letter with her excuses and publicly gave a weak statement in june 4 2019 of her actions the other individual who retains chief position admitted in a board meeting in the summer of 2019 that she authorized the unlawful use of the watermarking documents against board members these acts under florida state and federal statutes are a violation the aggressive unlawful orchestrated acts perpetrated against me not only were intended to harm me but also private citizens some who are advocates for many in our community it is known that the individuals that were being protected were campaign advisors contributors and protectors of this board member several individuals have come forward to plead with me to proceed with exposing all this corruption after careful

134consideration i've decided that i'm going to submit my complaint to the governor to investigate this board member on her unethical acts against myself and others i was told something very point this week weekend if this can happen to you imagine what they do to us this statement was made to me by an employee i have a duty and responsibility to stand by my the constitution of the state of florida in which i was elected to do and protect policies and statutes that inc that include protecting students and employees and citizens of our county i will continue to advocate for those rights the main problem with this board is that we have not had an appetite to root out the corruption and they prefer to false to give a false sense of appearance that everything is

135fine and dandy but when the individuals are colluding and orchestrating false allegations against elected officials and private citizens it needs to be exposed although i have no authority over the employees of the superintendent i would pray that it would be an important significantly important matter significantly important to him to look into thank you for listening to me and i'd like to i'd like you to know that i will always be here to fight for what's ethical and right people's indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow delia friera i want everybody to have a great summer and i look forward to the new school year in 2021 thank you thank you miss chief ellie are you so clapping thank you miss kittens okay i'm still writing can you come back i'm sorry we

136needed a little levity no issue okay all right first of all i thank you for letting me do the value adjustment board i went to the first meeting of this morning and very interesting i learned a lot walked out as as vice chair whatever that means but there weren't a whole lot of us so it was okay but i did learn a lot and i do have some questions that i raised and i will bring back to the board at some time about our 40 that we pay for running of the value adjustment board and one of the things we're going to do is onboarding a few of us are going to attend some of the meetings the sessions where people have complaints about their term notices and all of that so i'm looking forward

137to that and finding things that i can bring back to the board and help us to do better i'm going to bring in a future date hopefully the next meeting some pictures and some information about a program that we piloted called elec or eastleigh county reads and we actually during the pandemic partnered with a couple of churches on sanibel and with our reading department kimberly busby i believe is her name and yes busby and she was excellent and what we did was set up a zoom meeting during centers at certain classes and we piloted it so when the teacher is working with this group and this group was doing this one group was reading digitally with one of our readers from one of the churches in sanibel and temple that yom was one and i'm

138not even going to try sanibel christian i always mess it up yes congregational church but i'll be bringing that and i personally want to invite them some of the members to them to one of our meetings just to kind of show them off and i hope that it can spread and we are going to talk about how it went and all that but i've heard great things and i saw some of the pictures of the zoom meeting it was really really cool to see you know a lady sitting there and she's reading the kids and across the room the teacher's doing something else so i have said over and over again that as horrible as cobit has been it has created another way of communication and another way of reaching each other and i hope

139that we continue with that morgan are you going to talk about the chamber event no okay will you i'll leave it to you cool okay all right well the three of us as you can tell went to the lehigh chamber event where we participated in the giving awards to the teachers of the year in the east zone area so that was very good very nice evening met a lot of the teachers and administrators and congratulations to those that received awards not just the teachers but all of our first responders and firefighters and police and all of that it was really a nice event golden apple i think i was so excited about golden apple because i was out with people in a social setting it was just very exciting to be there to see old

140friends and to see meet new friends and to see them receive their awards if you get a chance to watch the speeches you will laugh you will cry the whole gamut it was really really excellent we had our last meeting of eastleigh education co-op and we went back over our i'll take this down for a minute we went back over our goals that we had set a year ago and it was interesting to see the things that we had accomplished and the things that we didn't accomplish that were right back on there and revising and reworking what we're going to do so you'll be hearing more about that i agree with miss mr daly his son i worked with him before very hard-working person and unfortunately i have to say that's not the only situation

141that i've heard about that i do understand that there are two sides to every story but when you continually hear about the surplus list and the things that happen on i understand i've been on it before so it is a difficult thing to deal with and you're second-guessing yourself and we don't need really good employees to second-guess themselves so i am hoping that there will be a follow-up and just briefly miss giovanelli 196 is the number of days they work and two or two sixteen so anyway just in case i wanted to respond to a couple of the public comment items but basically i'm just going to say i when i worked in tampa and we used to do this program called walk a mile in my shoes and it was a hospital and so

142i was in charge of you know the employee what can i say getting along in a sense and understanding what everybody else did so once a year i would have a walk a mile in my shoes situation and you could sign up to switch places with somebody that worked in a department that you did business with so say for example when you're doing working in or and you have like a you have someone on the or table and you have a sample that has to be tested before you close them up again i'm being really gross but so the people in or were always saying these people in pathology are just so slow they are so terrible they don't do their job whatever so during walk a mile in my shoes i would have an

143or person spend the day in pathology and vice versa they had a much better understanding of what it was like to be in pathology and have all these body parts lined up and everybody at the door knocking for them i say that to say it may look easy it may look cushy sitting up here and you know we're sitting up here with the big chair and all of that stuff walk a mile in our shoes walk a mile in mind i wish we could do that sometimes i really do i wish we could have community leaders to sign up to sit here and for the day have an opportunity to have to make the same decisions and to take care of 95 000 students and thousands of employees and keep everybody happy because you can't

144do it you have to stay true to what you believe is right and for the people that are concerned about me being one way or the other all i can say is i stay true to myself and to my god in every decision that i make this afternoon the last thing i want to say this afternoon during the presentation about the equality schools mrs robery from the principal from east lee county high school gave a quote and i begged her to give it to me and she did send it and i think it kind of capsulizes a lot of the things and understanding what we do and how we have to take care of so many people and the quote is equality is leaving the door open for anyone who has the means to approach

145it equality is leaving the door open for anyone who has the means to approach it equity is ensuring there's a pathway to that door for those who need it and if you need the quote i'll share it with you i'll put it on my website or something thank you all teachers if you i know you only got like six weeks if you unless if you're not having summer school take one weekend go to the beach put your feet up or something get your nails and hair done and just do whatever it is you want to do for a few days and don't think about us at all because we're going to need you in top shape when we come back in a few weeks and thank you for everyone thank you miss kittens miss vaughn

146i miss kittens i hope in the program you described about walk a mile that you didn't switch places with the brain surgeon but anyway okay i'm gonna ask you about that later because i'm really not sure well if i were on the table and you came in and switched places i would be worried okay okay my favorite was the morgue i have to tell you that okay anyway that's fine i wanted to address edac for for a moment because i am the board liaison to edek and i'm i'm gonna take exception to what my board colleague said about lack of diversity because i find that it is an exceptionally it's it's called the equity and diversity advisory committee and we do have different races different ethnicities including people from other countries we have you know

147we don't take a poll on this but i know that we have at least two people that are in the lgbtq community so i really find that it is a very diverse board and the thing that i love being a former english teacher with a lot of conversation i love conversation these people in this group they love to share their opinions and actually we have i know of at least one person who's very he's very conservative as as well so it is extremely diverse and what i would like to say to miss house is that i hope that you and actually everybody here will consider becoming a member of one of our board advisory committees if you go to we're always looking for for people for these and as a matter of fact we are

148right now advertising for for next year because we have finished this year of meetings a couple committees may have summer meetings but basically we are done for this school year the easiest thing is last time i checked the district website there's you know kind of the banners that go across and one of the learn more about it is about the advisory committee so if you just click on learn more about it and you can submit an application we have the edac and curriculum and finance and a variety of committees that you might be interested in so please take that under consideration and speaking of edac we met a week ago and adac did come up with some suggestions i've already mentioned this to the board that actually recommendations that we will be bringing forth to

149the board the language of it has had to be tweaked a little to to make it more concise and mr edie is the staff mr jared edie is the staff liaison and he will be running those things by by district staff and so we will be i'll be bringing hopefully in the next few weeks to the to the board like most of us here on the on the dais i went to the golden apple banquet to recognize our teachers and have the same reaction everybody looked lovely it's it's a great it's a great night and i agree i think somebody said about the speeches all of the speeches by the teachers and some of the sponsors who are on stage were just heartwarming and one of the best things is each teacher has one of

150his or her students introduce him or her and it was so cute the little kindergartners they've learned to read really well and can you imagine being five or six years old and stepping up on a little step stool and addressing this huge room of people that's that's pretty daunting so it really was great i thank everybody in the schools for all the work that they that they did this year and that includes all the support staff the bus drivers the custodians the food workers etc but i always have a special place in my heart for the teachers since i devoted 38 years to that pursuit and i know that i have to say that many years ago when i first started teaching it was a profession it never teachers never made a lot of money

151but it was a profession and for some of us a calling that got a lot of respect and it's very disturbing to me personally and also as a member of the board that i have received some comments by email that to me are extremely disrespectful to to our teachers to the point of and this is extreme wanting cameras in all classrooms so that parents could watch the teachers and make sure that they weren't teaching anything that parents might not approve of i really find that extreme i find it quite shocking and i just hope that some of the people that are having misgivings and mistrust toward our dedicated teachers who were especially dedicated this year with many many teachers teaching a group of students on the screen at home in a hybrid class and a

152group of students in the classroom i'm i'm sure that probably somewhere on youtube the golden apple speeches must be out there somewhere and that you just listen to what these teachers these dedicated teachers a couple of them career changers how they felt about their students and the schools and just really think twice about your really as i said my opinion and i always tell the truth even if it sometimes often doesn't sit right with some people but it may make you rethink just a little bit i do wish all of the teachers and all of the staff members in in the schools because i know most of the people here don't get the full summer which of course is a short in summer this year a restful peaceful summer we had a actually it was

153a very small retirement ceremony here in in the boardroom last night and i did get to meet some of the new retirees that had put in up to i think 36 years and i wish all the retirees as as well happy enjoyable retirement well-earned you may do like me and actually retire and then find a new chapter in in your life where many new new chapters and finally when dr savage speaks i hope he will tell us just a little bit about the adventure of this afternoon of of the press conference with with the governor did you i was hoping you'd have some pictures up up on this on the screen but i don't see them put some out for us please or i'm sure it'll be on the news and that's all i have

154to say for this evening thank you thank you miss vaughn miss morgan i have no comments this evening thank you thank you and my comments will be brief everybody pretty much has spoken and told the story of our exciting week and i just want to remind everybody and i think miss fisher had already mentioned this about the summer feeding programs we want to make sure that there's like 70 some schools locations for these kids to go up to the age of 18 in order to eat we want to make sure that everybody is fed this summer so please if you know of any families or anybody that's in need of that it's the list is on the website it is vitally important also summer school started i know because my grandkids are in it so

155they're excited about that we're going to keep them going sos started as miss giovanelli stated that's great for our kids today they i was able to greet the summer leadersh leadership summit and that is our leaders in the district and they all were meeting today and i think tomorrow to reset for the upcoming year so they're still working very diligently you know for you out there so i just wanted you to know and then i know somebody had made a comment about dr savage being at the governor's press conference today that was scheduled for last week we were scheduled to go there they changed that and they changed it to today so the superintendent was able to go we were not able to be by his side because we were here at a meeting so

156i just wanted to put that out there that's why we were not standing with him let's see what else and then i had was speaking with mr malloy and they're going to be trying to get out to the neighborhoods and trying to get into wherever we can get into to speak to the residents especially where we know there's a lot of children that attend our schools to see what is it that we can do for you all how can we help you and so if anybody knows of places where we can go and seek information please let us know so that way we can be out there and do what we need to do for the community and with that i just wish everybody a great summer and thank you for all that you do

157we will still be here so please feel free to reach out at any time and with that miss dupree bruno do you have any comments just three things really quick just to clarify with regards to the charter school i did find what i wanted to share to be a high-performing charter school you need to have at least two school grades of a and no b no school grade below b during the last three previous years so that's the first thing also you must have received an unqualified opinion on your annual financial audit no issues with the financial audit and also that there was no emergency with regards to the financial conditions of the charter school so that's how you qualify to be a high-performing charter school the other thing is that i have gotten some

158requests from the public in terms of the status of my board education law certification i am working on that it's going to take some time it's not going to happen this year hopefully by next year you are required to do continuing legal education as well as get points i get points for everything that i do so that's the easy part getting the continuing legal education is more difficult because it must be in the area of education law which is few and far between however i am happy to report that i have been accepted to be on the education law committee with the florida bar so that should also open up some additional opportunities for me to get those educational law credits i just want to also add to something that ms vaughn said just for

159clarification with regards to board advisory committees at this time if you join the board advisory committee you can participate in those meetings via zoom so that's something hopefully that the public will be happy to hear because of the changes upcoming law that the governor will be signing thank you and i'm sorry i did forget one thing for dr savage i hope that you got what i was talking about with the surplus checking into that when i said that okay thank you because i know that was not the only case i have heard of others and longevity was the main factor how long they have been here and that they are on those lists so i know we're always in need of good teachers great teachers so i know it's being thrown on you but i

160really would appreciate that certainly look into all that thank you absolutely and then i will go to if you have any comments please thank you i do have a few just want to say for our golden apple it's even though it's been mentioned many times it's so rare that we really elevate our teachers to that level of elegance in such a visible way the foundation i just have to say they really go all out and they really allow our teachers to shine these teachers really serve as champions for all teachers so while there may be six they really do then that entire year highlight all the work of our teachers and they do show it's just a wonderful celebration i can't think of a better one we kicked off our summer leadership summit today with

161our school-based leaders and i just want to say it's excellent professional development with the marzano high reliability schools but that really tells you what leaders are all about well they're wrapping up one year they're getting ready to get right into the next year just a tribute to our leaders and to the team that put that training together i was also just a real great pleasure to have dr amy desimoire fulfill my executive role on this team earlier today at the board briefing i was shocked to find out that despite the fact that she's a very long tenured in in high level leadership positions here in the district she's never had that opportunity to serve in that capacity so it was a great privilege to give her that opportunity after just such tremendous service to our

162district so i was very grateful to her to fill in so that i could be there to to on behalf of our entire board and our district to greet governor desantis so but before i even get to that part i just want to say i'm also so grateful for our staff who are sitting out here never quite sure exactly what all questions may come and so just to have that flexibility to provide those on-demand answers so we can make informed decisions to watch these meetings just so grateful to all of you who are here to do that as well and then just the as i was asked governor desantis well it wasn't just governor sanchez with commissioner corker numerous legislators they came to three oaks middle and they joined we're joined by our student debate

163teams from i believe was colusa middle three oaks middle and island coast high school from my recollection and it was a it was real education in action those students will not soon forget watching their their civics education come before their eyes is being signed into law in fact one of our students even spoke at the event and did an excellent job so i just want to kind of also use that as a moment to say that you know of the three educational bills that were signed one of them was a k-12 civics bill and that i just want to lastly thank our public not just the public that come here to speak but those who take the time to watch these meetings to attend these meetings who read through our various items ask probing questions

164and for for those who really proudly exercise their free speech it's that's democracy in action and i felt it vital on a day where we celebrate this new civics education to also say that you know those who research our laws participate actively in our governance activities that demonstrates exactly why the civics education is so vital to our democracy and our school board governance is a living example of that with your with your assistance so thank you to all of you as well and those are my comments for today thank you thank you very much for sharing that the next schedule meetings of the board on monday july 26th there will be a special meeting at 11am followed by a board workshop at 1pm on tuesday july 27th there will be a board briefing at 1pm

165followed by a special meeting at 505 pm and an action meeting at 6. at this point having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objections this meeting is adjourned thank you and good night you