001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting sergeant-at-arms or designee has the front lobby been attended to ensure public access are we ready to proceed with this meeting thank you the school board meeting of march 8th is now called to order the time is 601 pm prior to the start of this evening's meeting we have been enjoying music from the paul lawrence dunbar middle school this election i'm sorry sorry i apologize i have a lot going on this select group of music students is under the direction of dylan cypicum thank you thank you for helping me there i hate mispronouncing people's names these 26 students represented dunbar middle at district vocal music performance assessment for the first time in over a decade stay tuned for more information about their
002next performance in may please give this amazing group of students another round of applause please stand thank you at this time we will take a brief pause just to clear the performance area thank you so much and i apologize for mrs and your name what's up thank you parents for bringing them and for being here today i'm sorry we're correcting a bio okay we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district's mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential in the district vision to be a world-class school system approval of the agenda for this evening's agenda it includes invocation presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance acknowledgements public comments consent action items which include four items under board office
00310 items under academic academics which one is a good cause dr savage please provide an explanation for this one yes madam chair this item h10 was added to as good cause in order to ensure a timely distribution of our sr funding thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda four items under business services two items under human resources two items under information systems seven items under operations two items under attorney recommendation which are good cause mr pre bruno please provide an explanation for these two items thank you madam chair this is a continuation of our discussion in the briefing with regards to dr bernier's employment contract as well as his consultation contract thank you as presiding office officer i find there is good cause
004to add these three items to the agenda three items under public hearings and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda miss vaughn i moved to adopt the agenda as written thank you miss vaughn thank you miss fisher okay it has been moved by miss von is seconded by mrs fisher please record your vote and miss thomas i'm not able to see it so thank you 7-0 mission carries thank you our student representative here we go christian whitish we'll introduce our guest for the invocation after which miss fisher will lead us in presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance christian please introduce your guest for the invocation good evening thank you pastor charles knefke or pastor k as most folks know him has been serving as a
005pastor of trinity lutheran church in cape coral since 2007. the first 40 years of his life were spent in bergen county new jersey a suburb of new york city his initial career path found him in the field of computer science where he specialized in mainframe systems administration capacity performance analysis and project management it was through his professional travels and some divine intervention that he met his wife to be kimberly in fort worth texas god eventually blessed him with his four sons james theo nathaniel and jacob in 2003 pastor k felt that god was calling him in a new direction so he and his family relocated to concordia seminary in st louis excuse me missouri where he learned a master where he earned a master of divinity degree and was subsequently called to serve here in
006cape coral after the youngest three sons were diagnosed with various forms of autism pastor k and kim became passionate supporters of people with special needs during his time as an intern at king of kings lutheran church in chesterfield missouri he created a new ministry for children with special needs and their families with their first year culminating in a community-based special needs fair while their sons were students at trafalgar middle school pastor k and kim participated in the kids night out program for students with special needs hosted a support group for parents of children with special needs and later served on a special needs advisory committee for the lee county school district theo nathaniel and jacob are all now graduates of mariner high school since arriving in cape coral pastor k has also served as a
007boy scout leader a disaster action team leader for the american red car red cross of lee county and as a volunteer guardian ad leader for the 20th judicial circuit he is currently a member of the board of directors for amigos ministries of southwest florida a christian organization organization that provides spiritual material and legal support for our hispanic and haitian immigrant neighbors pastor k is also a tireless advocate for authentic new york style pizza and deep fried jersey hot dogs welcome pastor connecticut everybody rise will everybody please rise good job i invite you all to join me in prayer our father in heaven we thank you for bringing us brighter days here in lee county for letting us see the light at the end of the tunnel in so many ways for allowing us to see
008the end of this coronavirus pandemic at least in our corner of the world that has caused so much upheaval for our educators and students we thank you for the patience and dedication that so many of them displayed over the last two years and asked you will allow us to finally move past this season we thank you for guiding our school board to the end of their search for a new superintendent for moving dr christopher bernier to accept their call and guiding him to join us here in lee county fill him with wisdom patience understanding compassion for all of those employed in our school district and the great love for all of our children in fact we ask that for all the educators administrators bus drivers paraprofessionals and all those who serve our children through the
009school district that they will love our children that they will see the potential and value in each one of them that they will have the perseverance to never give up on any one of them and of course we pray for all of the children of lee county that they will have hearts that value education and desire to learn that they will love and respect their teachers and support staff that they will embrace their classmates with compassion and friendship grant each of them the ability to thrive and succeed in all that they do especially those with special challenges and developmental disabilities and bless them with parents and caregivers will love and support them in their efforts and finally father instill in all of us here in lee county the desire to provide the support and resources
010necessary for our school district to fulfill the mission we have placed upon it and to take responsibility for the future of all of our children together this we ask in the name of your son jesus christ amen thank you mrs fisher thank you pastor introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for our pledge of allegiance tonight is lieutenant colonel timothy walter senior armor army instructor from lehigh senior high school lieutenant colonel walters served 20 years in the army in numerous assignments and retired as the professor of military science at st john's university this is lieutenant colonel walters 15th year as a jrotc instructor in the district welcome and thank you for your service thank you presenting the national colors tonight is cadet colonel ernesto consuega the deputy regimental commander of the lehigh senior
011high school jrotc ernesto is a three-year member of the lightning drill team as well as the current drill team commander he's led various teams to include our exhibition regulation color guard and our jlab team to first place trophies in the district he has amassed over 160 community service hours while maintaining a 4.7 gpa he also was selected to attend and attended the boy state held in tallahassee in 2021 and returned as a boy state senator he's plans on pursuing a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering after high school as he begins his career in the u.s army reserves please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance 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 for all
012please be seated this evening student representative from the district student advisory committee is christian woodish a ninth grader at north fort myers high school christian is a member of the student government serving as the class of 2025 president congratulations a member of the youth in government and an ace honor student christian has a gpa of 4.16 and currently as a freshman 84 hours of community services towards the florida bright future scholarship another congratulations christian hopes to one day major in political science at fsu or uf graduate from yale law school with a focus in corporate law serve as a get this serve as the governor of florida and eventually the u.s representative or senator please welcome christian wish and just a little sidebar he also as a student rep he also is our you're still
013the parliamentarian correct correct he is our parliamentarian so he also does that and helps us to make sure that everybody stays on track thank you so thank you for being here really appreciate it i'm going to turn this over to kristen because you're going to do the character word for march thank you the character word for march is courage courage is resisting fear is resisting to fear mastery of fear not absence of fear mark twain the design you see displayed on the screen was created by cheray lopez an 11th grade student at lehigh senior high school the school board of lee county acknowledges the following events for the month of march 2022 read across america day march 2nd 2022 national day of unplugging march 4th through 5th 2022 national foreign language week march 7th through
01413th 2022 national sleep awareness week march 13th through 19th 2022 arts in our school month march 1st through 31st 2022 irish american heritage month march 1st through 31st 2022 and national women's history month march 1st through 31st 2022 thank you next is public comment mr prix 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 agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a public comment card they are located in the hallway provided by our staff the rules concerning public comment are
015posted and will be made from the microphone in the back please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues abusive language is prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of term temper during the public comment time is prohibited speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers we will take necessary recesses if there is not decorum in the chambers per board
016policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 22 minutes if there are 30 and one minute if there are 31 speakers or more the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour 60 speakers you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone and i will call you five speakers at a time please follow the staff's direction madam chair we have 23 speakers so it will be two minute per speaker thank you please make sure you have completed a public comment card if you intend to provide public comments the card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to staff for
017follow-up the cards are located with the staff in the hallway is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the board but did not fill out a comment card please raise your hand is there anyone in the audience that wishes to address the board and for the third time is there anyone in the audience who wish to address the board seeing none mr pre-bruno thank you madam chair but the following individuals please line up tara jenner thomas pound denise nystrom kelly lewis tuesday shannon i'm sorry did was there someone with a hand up that i missed okay thank you tara jenner i would like to ask the board when are you going to change the policy from having us stand in the back of the room like second-class citizens and move us back up
018to the speaker's podiums on either side of the dais like those individuals who are invited by the school board and the school district to speak whether it's for the invocation or any other addresses that are done i strongly suggest that you make it an option as to where people want to speak from whether it's from one of the two in the front or the one here in the back also i've noted that there is on the agenda i think it's the second or third reading to repeal board policy 1.181 i think this is long overdue and because of that i would also highly recommend that the board consider crafting a brand new policy that specifically states that when an existing policy is contrary to state law or is anticipated to be modified based on state
019law that it either be automatically repealed without having to go through the board repeal process because we will have done a public comment on that new policy and the event that there is a new law that comes into play or is anticipated to come into play that it be adopted and incorporated by reference to existing policies rather than waiting until after that statute is formalized at the state level i'd like to also mention to the state the student representative if you would i highly encourage you to consider flipping the organization on which you plan on going for elected office governor is way more powerful than a state rep or a senator so just advice there encourage you in your plans for the future and wish you the very best thank you good evening i'm thomas
020pound i'm a financial literacy teacher at eastleigh county high school i'm also a licensed stockbroker insurance producer and tax specialist and three years ago we realized that there was a crying need to start teaching financial literacy at easley with the encouragement and support from dr karen blase i took some money out of my pocket did some studying got my business certification and we started the program it's been a very successful and popular program and recently i invited all of you as board members to come watch the class and mrs patrick and mrs gittins did so ms patrick actually participated in one games with the kids and ms gittins i will let you know that we have a young lady who views you now as a role model and she appreciates you being there i have
021also pitched a virtual option where we can teach this class to students who want to tap into my program virtually from their home school this has full support from dr spyro and ms alabato and i just want to let you know with the possible legislation that's going through the state of florida where they're going to require personal financial literacy as a as an elective i'm just offering my services to you as a district where i can help you with the curriculum i can help you with setting up the standards and help training the teachers to make sure that we do this right i've had three years of experience and it's one of those things i just want to share my knowledge and so i'm just going to leave it at that and just let you
022know that if any of you have any questions and want to follow up with me please reach out to me and i will be more than glad to answer your questions thank you good evening denise nystrom as a former special education teacher special education administrator and an assistant superintendent who was a chief negotiator i support public schools and their employees i supported dr savage's district hires and i supported dr bruno's district hires tonight i am speaking in support of the teachers i was able to clarify that if the district moves from a blocked schedule to a seven period day the teacher instruction time will increase and their prep time will decrease this is because their work day is not defined in terms of instructional time prep time and lunch i also learned that for 13
023years teachers pay remains at the same forty seven thousand three hundred per year with no increases then their pay increases by five hundred dollars per year please no one time bonuses as a stop gap measure for teachers also it is my understanding that when a teacher gets his or her masters their salary does not increase unless it is in the same subject area as their bachelor's is it not beneficial for the district to have teachers with multiple certifications and shouldn't everyone who gets a master's get a salary increase as a measure of good faith perhaps you could enter into a contract agreement now for next year to find their workday and give them a salary increase commensurate with the economy in which they are living our teachers work very hard and this year with the
024teacher retention and shortage issue they are under a lot of pressure i also want to mention the bus drivers because they haven't been mentioned in a while it has been months and i'm wondering if there is a fair salary increase on the horizon the bus drivers contract is another contract with no defined work day in terms of the runs they do so with the shortage of 150 bus drivers their workload increased exponentially this year please take care of our employees because they work really really hard every day the following individuals please line up emmy shannon robert roper alyssa bernhardt christy divijelli sharon mcgill good evening wait till they all get up there so that way they're not walking okay miss thomas okay thank you go ahead you want to you can restart her thank you
025good evening my name is kelly lewis my daughter has been in the public school system for 11 years and is in 10th grade i have been a very active volunteer for all of those years with the exception of coveto course i have two major concerns regarding moving from a blocked schedule to a seven period schedule first and foremost is safety i was actually volunteering this last week at an event and i was speaking to a local sro from another school one school resource source officer discussed the difficulty of additional bodies in the hallway it is harder to monitor crowded hallways for illegal and inappropriate activity doubling the hall activity doubles your risk of problems our sros have worked really hard to monitor and improve the safety of our schools but this is also making their
026job harder the second issue is the ib program this seven period schedule is showing an option for theory of knowledge as a block format called theory of knowledge seminar yet on the ib website there is no mention of this ib stands for as you know international baccalaureate meaning that lee county school district chief academic officer does not have the power to my knowledge to change the ib curriculum does this mean then that the students are going to do one entire week of theory of knowledge work in only half of the classroom time how fair would that be to these ib students not just any students may i remind you but some of your hardest working highest achieving students i feel like that would set them up for failure as you know there are students that
027fail ib and graduate with a regular diploma every year because they couldn't achieve the higher success thank you ma'am good evening my name is tuesday shannon and i'm an active volunteer in my son's school in our community i represent countless parents and students who couldn't be here this evening i continue to be disappointed in the school district leadership in this room most of you i emailed including the high school schedule at leeschools.net and i didn't even receive acknowledgement or return email failure failure is happening within our school district it's not the first time we're familiar with increased truancy lower test scores and decreased graduation rates however instead of fixing problems dr savage is leading our district of failing our students by moving to seven periods you are taking away the ability for our students to
028explore their interests in high school you will be failing sports too students cannot manage seven classes of homework after school practices for sports or arts employment and have a balanced mental health you as a district have spent thousands of dollars on wellness programs and mentoring yet you are stripping the students of the opportunity to maintain a healthy balance what time did your day start today or yesterday so yesterday my son was up at 5 45 a.m to get ready for school he had after school practice until 6 pm drove home had dinner had ap homework to work on in other homework went to bed did not have time to do any practice for his instrument did not have time to do three more subjects of homework did not have time to go to a job
029thankfully he doesn't need to but many students do are you telling them they all need to drop out and get their ged because they can't handle it all are you telling them that ap ace or ib classes are not important enough to invest their time in of which many of those classes cannot be taught in the less than 40 minutes of teaching time that will be left to the period after attendance what are you doing to the teachers are you retraining them to teach in a shorter period the entire board was at fort myers high in november as our marching band was invited to participate in the london new year's day parade hello my name is emmy shannon and i am a current college student and a graduate from fort myers high school class of
0302021. i'm home for spring break and i'm now talking to you about your proposal to go from a blocked schedule to a seven period schedule and most importantly i disapproval for it i was a member of the international baccalaureate program in my high school the program is not for the fan of heart you commit yourself to taking college-level classes for two years in addition to taking on research papers presentations and comative exams at the end of your two years in each of your subjects if i had to take each of these subjects each day of high school i would have been i would have failed my exams i need time to process the information i learned each day in college you have your classes spread out you don't have them every day by going through
031a seven period schedule you're not preparing your students for the college setting and you're also failing your students in preparation for these exam examinations i took my ib exam this past may i passed them and each exam was a minimum of two hours long and many of us had multiple of these exams in one day how would these students be able to prepare for the length of these tests if they're not even in the classroom for more than one hour at a time you are failing your students you are not only failing your students academically but also mentally and social and emotionally while in the ivy program i was able to have electives in dance and choir these electives allowed me to have the much needed break in my schedule it allowed me time to
032be free of the stress of my academics and to do something i love and these electives serves my mental break for me along with many other students in the iv program my ability to participate in these electives allowed me and several of my friends earn scholarships for music dance and art to our schools that we're going to now i'm studying music performance and psychology i have friends who are studying music performance and architecture music performance and neuroscience it's something that's very important to us and we would not be able to do it if it weren't for this block schedule so please i encourage you to keep this block schedule and keep the arts alive and encourage your students to stay involved thank you good evening you can you can move that down and if that's
033hello my name is alyssa bernhardt and i am a junior at north fort myers high school earlier you cited your mission but i'm going to cite your philosophy which articulates the rights and abilities of all students to learn and establishes a foundation for which all teachers work together to teach all students i believe that there has been a misunderstanding of this in the sense that you have made some of our students and teachers feel voiceless on this seven period schedule i intend to stand here and tell you why this change in schedule jeopardizes many aspects of our student life myself as an a student and my credits and plan for high school moving forward are all at risk as a friend of numerous art students their time and their chance at an arts diploma are
034all at risk as a student in general with the increased pressure that this schedule would place on each individual credit my mental health is at risk not to mention the classes that we have to take online now because they will no longer be offered not to mention the lack of electives that we will now have this will severely limit my time for extracurriculars for work for relaxation or anything else that i find important as a student who will receive less instructional time when you break down the math for the schedule my education and all of our education overall is at risk we students beg you to please reconsider this schedule everyone i have talked to all of my teachers and all of my friends and everyone else at my school shares these opinions thank you
035christy divajilli i have two emails i want to read to you guys that i received this week one's from a teacher and once from a parent first one is from a teacher says okay i don't know how to continue at this point i'm so ready to quit i'm feeling so undervalued i teach part-time and i coach part-time and i have one planning period the district essentially told me told my admin that i would not be compensated for taking on additional classes because i would have another open i would have other open times during my data plan which to me says that they don't need me to coach that it's a free space and it holds no value so why am i here every other role in the building will be compensated but not me because
036i'm a 50 50 coach what's the point of my role if it's easily given away to other places everyone else is making an extra hundred dollars to cover a class but me i won't even get my hourly rate i'm dispensable that's the takeaway the next one i received two days ago from a parent at gateway high school in a gsa meeting a student identifying as a non-binary dog was asked by the teacher running the club to write a list of all of the students they believed to be a bigot this same teacher felt it necessary and appropriate to discuss this bigot list with another student in hopes that this student might reason with one of the accused bigots on the list i switched my child to this school because of the last school because the
037last school allowed boys to change in the girls locker room and now i'm dealing with this and they lie they lie to parents and call this club the gateway study association so quote end quote parents don't know what their kids are going to because boomers are homophobic somebody please address both of these emails today at some point thank you well the following individuals please line up hannah montrose david montrose katrina gunnells carla fox janine schreiber robert roper i sent an email to the district asking this question what is the district's involvement with the american library association the answer was we are currently not a member of the ala however we do utilize resources to ensure we are meeting best practices just three months from now thousands of participants will travel to washington dc to attend
038an ala convention and sign up for sessions such as drag queen story hour experience firsthand the benefits of this iconic program queering the library addressing critical race theory challenges new environmental justice titles that resonate with kids diversity reparations how to be a rainbow ally promoting books for children starting at birth with content i quote regarding inclusion of lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning intersex asexual and all that extends through the rainbow spectrum in previous conventions we had topics like are you going to tell my parents the minor's right to privacy in the library in one breakout session librarians presented books like my brother's husband pregnant butch and lumberjanes this may be the reason why we can find 45 copies of lumberjanes scattered across numerous elementary schools ages 5 to 10. that book received the glad
039media award that honors comic books for excellence in depiction of lgbtq characters and themes maybe this is the reason that we have it's not the stork at bay shore elementary school with graphic pictures of little boys and girls naked or i don't see anybody younger than four in here because this book is designed for four-year-olds so i'll read this kind of loving happens when the woman and a man get so close to each other that the man's penis goes inside the woman's vagina good evening sharon mcgill i've spent the last two days here in this auditorium and i want to thank the board for that opportunity but i also want to thank academic services because they are the unsung heroes of what's going on in the classroom because without them developing the curriculums and helping
040the teachers and making them understand it just wouldn't be possible so i just want to thank them again now i've listened to these book issues meeting after meeting after meeting and i don't understand why when there are solutions and multiple solutions in place to address these issues that we have to keep spending time on when the time could be better spent figuring out how you can help and be a solution to the problem versus adding extra work to the board and academic services and the curriculum committee be a solution not a problem next i'd just like to address a little bit about the envision presentation that was done i was really surprised not really surprised but surprised that there were so many of the kids who are having the problems with the phonics and it
041makes sense because they weren't in school and they had masks and they weren't able to get that interaction so i think the solution there is the community and community groups get involved and help the schools with those issues get groups of kids together read to them interact with them and help them overcome these obstacles that they've faced thank you okay hello my name is hannah montrose i am 11 years old i will be doing a short speech i am proudly lesbian if you think that i am different think about the millions of people that are gay lesbian or anything lgbtq remember that it is natural many species like penguins or dolphins can be gay or lesbian it may sound weird but it is true what some people are proposing makes me feel like i and
042millions of other people humans on earth like me don't matter thank you for listening goodbye hi my name is dave montrose hannah's my daughter she wasn't coached for this in fact she wanted to speak and she wrote that herself i'm a parent teacher social worker and tax paying citizen i'm here to state my support for the challenge to instructional and media material process and i urge you to resist ongoing pressure to alter the process in favor of reactionism over the past several months i have watched increasingly vocal demands for censorship by a small group of people sharing homophobia and conspiracy theories at meetings now i'm not lgbt or plus normally i stay away from culture wars but this is different some of the targeted books are blatantly singled out because they dare to include lgbt
043plus youth in society some of the books identified for banning include and tango makes three which shows that families can look different and being jazz my life as a transgender teen in which a trans youth describes the challenges she faced growing up in a society that doesn't understand her these books give lgbt plus kids a safe space to love who they are in a world where a lot of people don't love them libraries provide kids a safe space to learn about the world and their place in it banning books from school libraries because of the prejudices of a small segment of society would be a tremendous injustice to some of our most vulnerable youth and a green light to those who bully them it's not as much about parents rights as it is about making
044some students invisible because their existence makes you uncomfortable let me be clear i'm not in favor of indecency in schools we have however we have a process let's stick to it thank you good evening hello my name is janine schreiber i am a parent i am also a past educator i do not agree with the change to seven periods dr savage specifically i appeal to you to go back to your teaching years which i know is not long not that long ago i also appealed to you as a past math teacher past in-depth subject teacher to remember what it's like to teach ap calc higher level math statistics trig in a 45 minute class period after taking attendance and then teaching the subject matter how much time is left to go in depth to a
045math or other academic topic how many questions from children or kids can be answered how many examples can be reviewed before the class period time of 45 minutes is over i'm really mainly here in support of the arts it's surely a death sentence to any child who is taking an art class drawing orchestra band class by the time again attendance is taken kids are settled down instruments are unpacked you can review a line or two or music 10 to 15 minutes of music on a sheet before the kids have to pack up my kid in particular was just given a hard time about going to a next class to talk to a teacher because she was late why was she late because in a normal class setting in a band class they packed up and
046class was dismissed late i would say total instruction time as calculated by number is increased in the end but your day-to-day in-depth instruction time is going to be decreased money can be saved other ways if it's money and time will the following individuals please line up robert harrison todd ryoks sarah grace marsha ellis annette sloane my name is katrina gunnels i spent 24 years working in intervention and working with struggling students i'm here today to address the issue of the seven period day and my concerns that i feel have not been adequately addressed by the information currently available to us the first thing i would like to acknowledge and i particularly appreciate dr savage's comments early to earlier today in a meeting that switching to a seventh period day will not stop the teacher shortage
047the teacher hemorrhaging that we're experiencing here and school-wide or school-wide sorry nationally isn't going to be stopped by switching class periods i think everyone is aware of that we've been talking about it for years it's now arrived and people are scrambling for a solution this is not an effective solution the mass exodus of teachers i predict you will see at this end of this year that 10 to 14 teachers will save at each school is not going to tip the balance that being said i do appreciate the candor and the admission that in fact they know that this problem is much bigger than just switching schedules i also was impressed by the amount of time spent addressing the change in the schedules with our advanced students i think however what has not been adequately addressed
048in any way is addressing our students who are served through our ese department our esau students our students who are just simply behind whether it's because of the disruptive education or it's because they fell behind way back in third grade an answer to our questions that says your apc will address that by flexibly scheduling is absolutely inappropriate response they are most at risk students at my school we have a program that works with an eight point million dollar grant good evening board my name is charla fox and i am a teacher in the lee county school system for more than 20 years i'm a former student of the lee county school system i have experienced the seven period day the eighth period the four by four block as things are currently i am in support
049of keeping the four by four block until you can show us that it will not adversely affect our students i would suggest very possibly i was going to end with this but i'll start with this that you take some of those schools high schools that might be truly interested in doing a seven period day and do those as a pilot program to see how much change that could do one of the things that is going to happen with this program or with going to a seven period day is that each school will lose high school will lose approximately 10 teaching positions that's the 140 that we're trying to cover in the school district ladies and gentlemen that means that teachers teaching at high school are going to have to teach at the elementary and middle
050school level because we have been told that those teaching teachers will not lose the ability to teach in the lee county school system but if there are not classes at the high school for them because of the seven period day they'll have to go teach elsewhere we will lose some of our best people also i would like to address many people have addressed a number of aspects the one that i have not heard addressed currently is about our certification programs we have at my school we have construction we have welding we have engine engineering we have firefighting medical these are all programs that need to be done in a blocked schedule there is not time to do appropriate instruction hands-on instruction in a short time thank you good evening my name is robert harrison i'm
051the attorney for fresh air solutions mr harrison i do have to point out if you're here to make any statements with regards to a particular item in front of the board tonight i do want to point out board policy 6.07 subsection 7 which discusses from the time that a formal solicitation is released until such time as an award is made by the school board vendors are prohibited from lobbying school board members district employees or any community member appointed to serve on the relevant selection committee regarding the formal solicitation all inquiries must be written and directed to the department of procurement services so if you want to send something to the department that is the proper way to address any grievance with regards to any agenda items regarding fresh air solutions i'm here to provide some
052background information on a matter that's on here on is coming before the board tonight it's not a grievance i'm trying to give some background information so let me give you the definition of lobbying pursuant to board policy 6.07 subsection 7a lobbying is defined as any action taken by an individual firm association joint venture partnership syndicate corporation and all other groups who seek to influence the governmental decision of school board members district employees or any community member appointed to serve on the relevant selection committee on the award of a contract lobbying by any respondent or any individual on behalf of a vendor will result in rejection or disqualification of said response so if you have a comment that does not fall within that definition please proceed i'm slightly confused so you're i'm trying to give background
053information to the board as a whole it's just like there's matters before the board that people here have been giving background on everything here tonight i am not individually lobbying an individual that would be wrong i am here presenting something to the board lobbying would be something to an individual and i have some important background information that i would like to give to the board here tonight as to what's going on mr harrison i've read you the definition if your comment does not fall within that definition please proceed if it does then the appropriate process per into our board policy is to make a written and directed inquiry to the department of procurement services okay if if you think i'm getting into that point please tell me and i'll be happy happy to stop but
054i believe i'm giving i'm giving you know background to what's been happening here dealing with fresh air solutions so would you like me to proceed if you're not going to violate the policy okay three years ago when fresh air solutions was coming up before the board on the iaq contract an unsight letter purportedly from an associate of fresh air solutions owner was sent to the board asserting improprieties by fresh air solutions in regards to hurricane irma billing an investigation revealed that the letter was a fake the purported author confirmed he did not write the letter and this board approved the ia q bid unfortunately there's a cancerous group in this community undeterred by the board's action disseminated these false and defamatory allegations along with a baseless claim that my client had threatened members of this
055group and our board members it goes without saying that if there's any truth to these claims law enforcement would have been involved as a result of this key members of this organization were served with cease and desist notices now three years later the false hurricane irma buildings has resurfaced last week upon scene on tonight's agenda that fresh air solution was being reviewed i reached out to you mr dupe bruno to find out what was being reviewed yesterday i learned that there was some type of review was being conducted by homeland security i contacted the agent it was reported that fresh air solutions while not doing any cleanup work at varsity lakes built for this work the investigator was skeptical he had already determined he had interviewed employees found out a contractor was cleaning there i
056provided him contract information for all the people from fresh air solutions that work there so homeland security now is the latest victim of this cancerous group wasting their resources to reinvestigate a claim that was debunked three years ago and so i thank you todd ryu good evening everybody good evening i stand here as a bus driver i've been driving for lee county since well 2016. since i've been here this place has gone down and listen i love what i do i pick up kids in the morning i wake up early in the morning four o'clock my wife just came in she gets up at 3 30 in the morning we don't get home till 8 o'clock at night i do between 4 5 and 6 schools i've been watching in negotiations on youtube and i'm
057sorry to say but you guys did not wake up it was proposed 2.5 percent 38 cents then it was proposed five percent for a two-year contract oh i hope you guys can sleep at night i come to work faithful every day because i'm here tonight they had to cover my three oaks middle and part of my spring creek but i made it a point to come here and a lot of drivers aren't here because we are working last friday they were looking for drivers to go do a franklin park after school program and nobody answered the radio do you remember that old star trek movie we've given it all we've got captain we've given it all we got captain drivers are talking today one said if the gas goes up 10 cents i cannot afford
058to come back to work my truck's gonna stay parked you guys aren't listening lee county is a big county you can't provide from school go to lee county we're a big county hello my name is sarah grace and i am a sophomore and a student at northwood myers high school i am also a girl scout united club member cheerleader of two different associations as well as a member of sga as a treasurer as you can see i am very excited and willing student now i come to talk about the seventh period schedule first i have no clue what math you did or where you got that we have 15 extra days at the end of the year with this schedule i have done the math with one of my teachers and for the eight period
059schedule we have 340 minutes a day for a class and for seven period schedules we only have 322 minutes a day there's also more time in the day at a seven period schedule that kids are out of class because of this school because of the class switchings because of this we will have because of the less time in class we will also have extra homework and less time to do extracurricular activities this also calls us that we cannot take higher classes such as double block i want to be in my electives and take higher level math this does not take into account that can work to be in this higher level math i do this to compete because we are not only competing with the schools in the lee county but we are also competing
060with schools across the country or even outside of the district which is like private schools like canterbury i am not even a art student which does not take an account which i assume that these students will be will have a harder time with this even even harder than ace students this will hurt scholarships such as bright futures because we also need a link two languages to get that to gives we have also have the mission statement well the following individuals please line up jen wata joe phillips jacqueline perez marcia ellis tonight i would like to address the communication policy of the district and the reason why i think it would be beneficial to re to revise this and it's necessary to revisit this policy these policies is because first of all the employees of the
061district are familiar with what the great successes are of our schools and the great successes of public education and they're also the strongest advocates for students second leaders of schools such as the administration pool the district specialist they have expertise of in topics that the public would benefit from learning about third there seems to be a disconnect and there's a disconnect between the schools and the public about what is actually going on there and there's a disconnect also between the schools and the political sphere about what's actually happening in the school and i think the people who would be best to address that disconnect are the folks that are actually working in schools next the employees of education we have our boots on the ground and we have real-time information to help inform the public
062and shape policy because policies are rapidly changing in a rapidly changing uncertain world employees don't feel comfortable talking and this is suppressing leaders from emerging from the education sector our community is suffering from that also feel like that being able to talk is important if we value home rule and that's an important component of local government right now that communication is limited to just a very few people and those are the same people who are sharing information i want to hear from the leaders i've been privileged to work with thank you do you see what he's doing do you see what the man sitting in front of you is doing i don't understand hi the name is jennifer wada i'm here to talk about piggyback from last week about indoctrination i want to read what
063the what it means the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically okay and just in case you guys don't know what that means uncritically means with a lack of criticism or consideration of rather something is right or wrong okay so for this gentleman i want to piggyback on him we absolutely need something to be done with the books okay and the other gentleman that spoke last week mr roper i come from a christian family as well i do want do not want my children reading books that was described last week a matter of fact i think it made you all sick and it made me nauseous i had to leave literally sick to my stomach and i know you all took a recess because of the words that
064you were hearing the books from our library okay yeah we need to come up with some type of solution and i agree with that okay people should not be picked on should not be bullied although we are a bullied district okay my kid came to me about the mask issue he was afraid not to wear because he's afraid to get bullied afraid to get bullied so i understand sir where you're coming from the 11 year old okay because this is a bullied district they can't do something about it they can't come up with it they just keep on passing the buck passing along we need to do we need to do something about the books i'm a christian family i don't want my child reading about gender indoctrination okay it's my job to do that
065everybody else wants to raise my kid except me thank god for our governor who put those rights in place okay because let me tell you i am a retired mom that is involved now because i moved here remember a rated school 15 years ago i loved you people loved you people and now i cannot say the same my name's smoking job i'm a man of faith so i wholeheartedly believe that all dark things shall come to light sadly the illumination is at the expense of tax paying citizens while attorney deputy bruno is busier covering up for chris patricka than the three-legged cat in the litter box ties to questionable vendors come to light yet again why are we not investigating political and financial financial vendor ties with board members asking for your resignations is no
066longer sufficient we the citizens of lee county want investigations and transparency not in the fashion this board has conveniently used in the past to clear themselves need an example how about whistleblower dominic d'souza dominic has served the district for 10 years in the transportation department with a flawless employment history that was until the summer of 2021 when he exposed theft of employee time one would think dominic should have been commended for exposing this misuse of taxpayers money but this board not so much yes this board was cleared after an investigation which went you paid for with taxpayer dollars to hire the investigators of your choice why simply not hand it over to oa ig or fdle which would have cost the district nothing ah but you couldn't control the outcome the ability to self-investigate sounds
067like the bad sequel to good fellas ran by big pauly patricka i spoke with mr de souza this afternoon before i came and informed him what i planned to say his voice crackled his only words were thank you let this mafioso run board be put on notice europe out of time we're going to expose your crime we the people demand an investigation one done properly through the oig and the fbi league mr de souza he's a hero faith family in florida i'm smoking joe good evening board on may 21st approximately 2019 right outside these doors i was accosted by the owner of fresh air solution in the presence of raymie hall kathy mayo bigelow patty bigelow randy scott and another individual where he threatened me and threatened board member melissa giovannelli that is a fact
068the two officers in this room came outside to assist me while he threatened me and told me do you know who i effing am do you know who you're messing with do you know what's going to happen to you and your friend in two days and two days three days later melissa giovanelli was a fabricated ethics complaint was filed against her in the course of me trying to find out what was going on i went to visit a banker friend on palm beach boulevard at the region's bank where i discovered he had actually notarized a document an ethics complaint against melissa giovannelli so it proved that he was working in collusion with chris patricka now you want facts look at the florida auditor general's report that proves that on number item two and three there
069was malfeasance of millions of dollars from the iaq contract that's what we need to know those are facts and as for your cease and desist you can shove them in your ass okay another thing this is please make sure that you are addressing us please another thing this board needs to know is that you are being investigated by the federal government because there are questions that need to be answered on how procurement is handling bids on how vendors are behaving this vendor called the ex on the coordinator of maintenance and begged him today to be a witness for him to to vouch for him he has been calling people out there they've been calling me and informing me of this needs to be investigated i'm sure there's no further comments thank you first i would
070like to thank each and every one of our students who have come here to speak on their issues today that takes a lot to do and i really appreciate you taking the time to come out here and share with us and i just really when i hear that you know people are saying you know we're setting our children up for failure and they're people concerned about the arts which i know we've had multiple conversations about that about the arts about our children with ese our children with english language or english language learners i can't even speak today tonight but i know we've had that conversation numerous times and dr savage i'm going to ask you again and even with the certificate programs i know that was a question that was brought up as well making
071sure to ensure that these students have the ability to make sure that they can finish their certificates and they're not going to be hindered and how the class time would be adjusted for them to do that just if you could just do like a really and i know we spoke about this today and unfortunately and even the two languages there's so many different things that are have been spoken about this evening so i'm just like they're trying to get the highlights of those but i also want to thank really quick because i know they're tired our bus drivers we do see you we do hear you and that's a we do understand that you're still in negotiations dr savage yes madam chair and i and i'm probably not going to do it justice i tried
072to keep notes of each one and highlight when there were specific ones over the seven period day just for those who don't feel like they have the best answer i know that there is a evolving faq that is attempting to capture the themes of the questions that were received pointing directly to the resources and there's a few different presentations that have attempted to address some of these some of the concerns that were raised are some of the concerns that frankly i have and that some of the team also would acknowledge and one right out of the gate one of the very first comments made was safety concerns when you go to a seven period day you are increasing amount of time in transition so the challenge there is more time in the hallways that is
073not something that ever as a school administrator i ever liked i always wanted to minimize the time in the hallways one of the benefits of that additional hallway transition time is it gives people more of a mental break allows them to to get a drink of water use the restroom at less at times there are more opportune for that piece the other piece that kind of addresses in that one of the advantages of the seventh period day is that trying to benefit from an attention span standpoint that maintaining attention span for 40 84 83 minutes can be a challenge and in the seventh period day the trade-off there is you're getting a very robust moment in time i think one of the other concerns that was made had to do with not getting into in
074more in-depth content such as calculus and some of these career academies firefighting medical and again that is one of the challenges that is perfectly fair the current block scheduled way it was designed in every other day academic environment oftentimes the schedule called for two lessons being taught in one session and the reality is most times teachers couldn't get those two those two lessons done in that 84 minute time period so they end up getting less coverage and ended up not really getting the level of breadth of curriculum coverage for some of these sections as was mentioned in the presentation earlier today they're actually going to be very strategic in the blocking of courses together because seven period day is not really a new idea historically when there were classes where you needed that back-to-back time
075period that can be accommodated through the master schedule process really one that really stuck out to me was you know that of course it won't stop the teacher shortage but the esc students esol students and students are behind for for many of these students specifically students who are behind there's really two different ways to approach this first is credit deficiency this certainly does not help in a credit deficiency standpoint because obviously more class sections available means more opportunity to recover credit but from a learning standpoint the trade-off there is that the time you do get with a teacher direct face-to-face is definitely increased in this particular model so you're getting more direct experience which is to increase than the level of learning that is available to students who really need it to be explained and
076have ample opportunity to practice but for credit recovery it is one of the challenges the issue though is many of our credit recovered classes are done virtually as it is so virtual classes can often be done outside of school hours during the summer programming as well i just had to as well but i know that we have their information and i know like who spoke on what so perhaps we can reach out to those individuals to better assist and answer the questions absolutely if that would work thank you okay and then also because then there was the other concern about the teachers and losing 10 positions at each school so that's you know we heard that today that's that's really a rough estimate i'm sure i don't i don't want to be taking the ten
077across board the other issue is as we mentioned earlier probably the most important thing for the teachers to hear is just to be aware that we experience as a natural part of our attrition process from a staffing standpoint we always have every single year for many many many many years a significant number of vacancies this will help but it will not eliminate that need as well so for high school teachers we lose high school teachers via retirement via leaving to other places changing careers so the intention is not to take this abundance of additional high school teachers and push them into middle school or into areas where they're not certified it's more that this will attempt to mitigate some of the natural shortage that we find on an annual basis as well as that's been
078exacerbated by the current issue which is greater than normal abs shortages and again that's a national phenomenon we're seeing as well and then my last final thing would be of course the bus drivers we do understand there's a shortage and i know that i know for a fact because i've been helping to pick up my own grandkids and getting them to schools and a lot of i had several phone calls last night of parents who because of the fact that they added more stops their children in elementary school are getting having to be out there at 4 30 or 5 o'clock in the morning so before high school kids so if the negotiations could get finished that would be great we continue to prioritize all of our workforce including our bus drivers who we know
079work incredibly challenging hours and while they do have the ability to earn overtime by covering additional routes we certainly want to take care of them we also know it's a very competitive credential with the cbl which we don't often mention that it's very competitive in that marketplace for those credentials so we really value our drivers they love children many of them could do those other jobs they choose to drive our students so we certainly appreciate them perfect thank you so we'll go ahead and reach out to the ones that have the questions regarding the schools and everything okay thank you so moving on the next is the approval of the action items on the agenda under consent the documentation for action items listed under consent is made available to board members seven business days prior
080to the board meeting we are expected to review all the materials and we have an opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we may have regarding the recommendations some of these items have also been briefed or workshopped with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda board members are there any agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under the unfinished business table items portion of the agenda mr evanelli i have none miss fisher i have none this evening thank you ms patricka no thank you miss kittens i have won l7 thank you miss vaughn i have won l4 miss morgan i have none i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda consent action items with the exception of the pulled items l7 and l4 excuse me before
081you move forward with motion i was just advised that board members have to refresh their screen so that the good cause items can come up sorry could you refresh your screens please thank you okay again is there a motion to approve the agenda's consent item with the exception of the pulled items l7 and l4 mrs vaughn yes i'm i move to accept the consent agenda items with the exception of l7 and l4 i second thank you okay motion by miss vaughn and seconded by miss gittins and please record your votes has it come up already just did did everybody have an opportunity to refresh you just double click that you have to join again i know okay thank you got it thanks miss thomas is it coming through oh i see it okay 7-0 motion
082passes dr savage please you are waiting you thought i was going to forget it dr savage please introduce any administrators in attendance with a new assignment that was approved under the consent agenda yes madam chair be my pleasure to recognize three administrators here in attendance today first is sean brady and maintenance services from our maintenance supervisor of trades and pest control to coordinator maintenance services i'd also like to recognize christopher stuber maintenance services from maintenance assistance supervisor crafts to coordinator maintenance services and i'd also like to recognize jessica wayne from curriculum instruction innovation elementary from literacy district coach to assistant principal allen park elementary those were all of our administration congratulations each and every one of you and you're welcome to stay or you're welcome to to leave it's up to you but thank you
083so much we're glad that you were here and again congratulations okay so moving forward we have two pulled items to address dr savage please read your recommendation on pulled item l seven please i will start with l7 then l7 is the approval for amendment one and cost increases to the phase two a pre-construction budget estimate for veterans park academy for the arts renovation and the amount of 55 000 to include the design of a campus master plan bringing the total project cost to 17 million seven hundred forty eight thousand two hundred and seventy two dollars approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all necessary documents thank you is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation i move we adopt the superintendent's recommendation for amendment 1 and cost increase to phase 2a pre-construction budget estimate thank
084you miss morgan may have a second i'll second nip thank you miss fisher okay the item has been moved by miss morgan and second by miss fisher is there any discussion and miss kittens you pulled that so i will yes i did we and forgive me for doing it at the last minute but we did have a briefing this afternoon and it just again cemented in my mind that i had to do this number one because six months to a year down the road as the cost continues to rise for this project i just my conscience will not let me just go ahead and approve and approve as it continues to go up i like i said this afternoon i would be the first one to buy a ticket for a performance at a premier
085theater in lehi i would buy a season ticket but when i was told by missy bar and dr savage about a year and a half two years ago i received a phone call and they said you're going to be very excited we are really putting forth a plan to increase the building of schools in the east song because they're needed and it was on the five year plan and i heard again today that we will indeed have two schools two middle schools within the next 10 years our students are sitting in portables that are 20 years old and when you purchase portables it's a temporary fix we have this year and i believe next year a plethora of portables that are being you know reaching that 20-year level i have absolutely absolutely nothing against having
086performing arts centers i am not against the arts so please do not put that out there that i am against the arts and i don't like them enough that is absolutely not true not at all i understand the ability to help some students as they go to into the arts and it helps them to want to come to school and to do all that it has nothing to do with the arts it has to do with the fact that they said ever so small but we're losing seats with this project and it was stated again this afternoon we can't afford to lose seats when the new middle school was built this board did not make the decision to move one group of students from one school to the next it did not come before the
087board it was just done and i would have fought it for all i'm worth at that point because that new school was a potential 450 seats once they added the other part of it additional seats by moving children from one school to the next we lost those 1450 seats and if i'm wrong please say that i am but we did not gain all of the seats that come with a brand new school we did not get to name it we did not get to talk about the colors or anything that had to do with it and i'm i'm sorry those that think you know the arts is that i'm i'm against it i'm really not but when you have middle schools that are still as crowded as ours are when you have potential for seats
088this school year that sat empty and to me it goes back to planning and i keep saying this is a wonderful district we do some wonderful great things we hear about it all the time but when we're not taking care of first things first i just don't understand where the priority comes in i don't understand how continuing to add money because the project changes and we could have taken that money and added an addition onto one of the other schools i just don't understand it and i cannot look back six months from now and see and have someone sit there and tell me well you voted on it i can't and i pulled it because the rest of the things on the agenda tonight are fine but i can't sleep at night thinking that we
089have not changed our condition i've been on this board three years going on four haven't changed the condition in some situations i i just can't do it okay thank you is any other com thank you dr savage i just because i want to make sure and i know this is a very confusing topic and i just i understand and i just know that if you know i want to point folks to resources so if anyone kind of wants to really understand this very complicated conversation i think probably the best part that can do it is page 97 out of our 170 page final budget from this year the call that ms gettings is referencing was actually not two years ago was really just last april or may when we knew we were putting final touches
090on the new the capital plan for this upcoming budget that was then fully adopted in this past fall the reason why i would point people to page 97 of the 170 page budget book is because in a single page it outlines what's planned not in 10 years which is what was said just now but in the next five years which if you compare it to any prior capital plan that we had submitted you just have to put them side by side and it'll tell you everything you need to know which is very quickly all the four different land acquisitions that are budgeted elementary east j the east zone pre-k kate innovation school east middle mm which was then turned into the lambs building an addition building for the lambs building not just one additional east
091middle school but a second east middle school and an east high school gateway high the finishing payments for gateway high the lehigh senior edition which again had its final payouts the remodel of the pre-k at james stevens the riverdale high remodel that was currently in process the g weaver hipps pre-k center the and then a number of things varsity sidewalks the old the actual remodel of the veterans park old lambs buildings how it's listed here so all the money that's being done to upgrade all the plumbing all the fixtures all the things that we were able to do because we displaced students in that building we now could in an active do the active construction that we would never have been able to do if the building had been occupied and then last in there
092in the east zone and east technical center all of these are budgeted projects within five years so if you compare that to the prior year which i'm not going to do for the sake of time but for anyone wants to see that you'll see a drastic difference and so that's when we talk about the shift in priorities we're specifically talking about those priorities these were not planned in this way not nearly what was there it's that's the excitement and again i want to credit ms gittins because her advocacy in this particular area as a board member she has rung the bell for the east east lee area as as consistently as any person i've ever met i'm so grateful for her service to this community and specifically to lehigh and the east zone because she
093continued to ring a bell on this but it's very important from a factual standpoint that people have access to this is how an organization sets a priorities by budgeting monies to it and then hold people accountable to are they on progress for those years because it takes multiple years to build the school to design it to prepare the land for it to do the engineering for it to to do all the site work on it to build it and then get it open and it's just it's a very complicated thing to explain to people but this budget document does an excellent job of putting in a single page now it's page 90 if you're in the pdf version page 97 of 170 that's probably the easiest way to find it so i just wanted to
094give that as an extra tool for everyone thank you for that chairmaid please respond yes yes i understand this afternoon i did hear miss ebau say that we would have two new schools in 10 years no one has said anything about in five years and when i was told a possibility of five years it was including a possible acquisition of a school the middle school and gateway we never really and i understand that did not happen for whatever reason i know the budget is there and i know that you're saying within a certain amount of time i know how long it takes to do a school i have suggested that we even do additions in some of these schools we have so many portables behind them if you move the portables and add an addition
095to the school the case would be closed we had a whole school of portables behind lehigh senior this year that sat empty and i understand what you're saying i can go to page 97 and i can see what's coming but it's just always been coming and this project seems that it is much more important than what is coming that's just the way i see it i'm sorry you cannot convince me that of any different i have been told on many occasions oh we're going to do this we're going to do that and bottom line is we lost seats this year and they admitted it this afternoon mr evanelli i just want to i just want to say real quick i can commend miss gittins and her advocacy for the east zone because they did make
096some changes and they're listening so you are making a difference so i just you know i want to say how i appreciate that i think this is all about priorities and dr savage just said that and so finally the priorities are shifting it's a slow process i just would like to bring up just a little something today because it makes me think about it today this morning we had three expulsion hearings they were all east zone students that's because there are they are overcrowded so we have to do better because it is up to us to do better however i will not hold up the progress because it's the train has left the station so i will support this tonight but i do want to commend miss gittins for her advocacy for the east zone
097because she is making a difference thank you thank you miss juvenelli but i did want to make mention though the trail the trailer the portables that were from lehigh they are for franklin park so those are going to be used so that way we can get that moving too because we have a lot of other things we brought up bayshore today you know putting something out there to help the east zone as well so yes thank you so much for constantly bringing that up because it does it needs to be heard it's being heard they're we're trying to to build and do as quickly as we can but as you just mentioned too things take time to you know to develop and we have other items on the table in throughout the county as well
098but i've heard that for three and a half years and i'm sorry i won't say anything else is there any other comments regarding this no okay cnn we will take a hand vote morgan i miss fun i miss kittens nay mr trica yes please mr vinelli aye ms fisher i and i motion carries six to one dr savage could you please read your recommendation for pulled item l4 yes madam chair the item l4 is recommended to approve to renew itn number three n18733 four l n for indoor air quality environmental environmental consulting asbestos lead abatement microbial remediation remodeling and painting awarded to american management resources corporation fresh air solutions of southwest florida and legal enterprises incorporated otherwise known as captain steamer carpet cleaner captains complete restoration repairs and remodeling for the first renewal period of
099february 26 20 2022 through february 25th 2023 fresh air solutions will not be provided any any projects pending the completion of a review the estimated not to exceed expenditure for the renewal period is two million eight hundred thousand dollars pursuant to the same terms and conditions as previously approved by the board approval authorizes the superintendent to execute all related documents thank you dr savage is there a motion to adopt dr savage's recommendation miss morgan i move we approve dr savage's recommendation to renew itn number n187334ln indoor air quality environmental consulting thank you miss murder and do i have a second second that thank you miss fisher so it was moved by miss morgan seconded by ms fisher and discussion miss vaughn you hold this i'm going to yes yes i did i did pull it
100i will not be supporting this 2.8 million dollar one-year contract renewal because of one aspect of what is written on our on our board docs fresh air solutions will not be provided any projects pending the completion of a review we had a rather lengthy discussion of this yesterday at at the workshop and i will quickly summarize my point of view and what i asked for on this the first thing is i object to the language completion of a review i find that too vague in reality it is the completion of an investigation now mr harrison himself the lawyer the attorney for fresh air solutions brought up details on that what he said was that there is an investigation going on by the department of homeland security and he cited one particular invoice from the past
101now i don't know anything about that i'm investigation i'm not privy to those details it may be just that one thing and it may turn out just fine in a very short time for fresh air solutions or there may be more things or it may go on but what i asked for yesterday which is why i cannot support this is that i wanted the vague language taken from this description on board docs i wanted to see something official a letter or an official document signed that said instead of review because our initial information from a board attorney was that is under review by our legal department no that's not good enough for me if we have a vendor who is currently under investigation by the department of homeland security a federal agency as i said
102yesterday this isn't some ricky dink thing that some pi decided oh we're gonna no this is department of homeland security i want it documented and signed from this school district that this vendor will not be provided any projects pending the completion and the i'm not sure what the legal word be maybe exoneration or i'm not sure what word the success they're successful for fresh air solutions successful ending of the investigation and then they will move on as part of this contract i am very uncomfortable with this vague language i don't think it has any real teeth to it i know that this particular vendor has a history and has connections and i want to see legal teeth from our school district that there will be no exceptions made because of possible historical connections or connections
103to other people that are associated with our school district this is why i will not be supporting this that's all i have to say on it any more comments miss kittens well i know that she brought out that sentence it is confusing to me that it says will not be provided any projects pending the completion of review but then the next sentence says the estimated not to exceed expenditure pursuant to the same terms and conditions it's a little confusing to me are we not giving them projects or are we giving them projects up to 2.8 is that something attorney through the chair attorney bruno can we ask that or is that something that is because it's pending we cannot so this specifically says that particular vendor will not receive any projects pending the review and
104that's exactly what it means i do not want to go into any additional details given the nature and the circumstances of what we are looking at and i would caution board members to be very careful too with your statements because we do need to be careful we do not know what the outcome of any of this will be so we must be and choose our words very carefully from the deus so is this saying then the last sentence the estimated not to exceed expenditure blah blah is in reference to whom the other vendors that's relating to the other vendors which are captain steemer and who who else it's just one other one yep it's let me find the names up here so in indoor air is separate from fresh fresh air so indoor air is
105still in microbio remediation oh that's the surface oh that's what they do yeah and captain steamer so is that just the two yes there'll be two that's left so there's three and of the three only two are referred to in that last sentence yes okay thank you okay is there any any other comments mr evanelli yes so i'm gonna agree with miss vaughn and miss kittens the word the verbiage is too vague at this point in time i also speaking with the director of maintenance yesterday he recommended a re-bid so at this time i won't support this and we'll wait for the resolution of the investigation thank you miss patricka if i may direct a question to dr savage through the chair yes please dr savage have there been any issues with quality responsiveness quality
106of work performed on our campuses etc for any of these vendors i've received no issues of concern from the maintenance department who supervises the work that is done by the vendors okay thank you and the rest of my comments i think are directed at my colleagues and please forgive me in advance if i say things that are off-putting to you i've tried really hard ms fisher in particular to take the chris out of what i'm about to say because i know it's it's not what you say it's how you say it so i'm trying really hard to temper my comments here but i do find myself a little bit sad here as we discuss this issue i felt like we as a governance team were beyond this kind of behavior where we were raising issues
107based on rumor and innuendo this was a practice of some members of the board in the past loose allegations have been made based on previous investigations that resulted in findings of no wrongdoing just to refresh the board's recollection this is about the t francelle letter from 2019 and while some members of the board and some members of the public don't like the findings and bad investigation there is no proof that investigation was conducted improperly further you know we do have a specific outside agitator that we're all aware of that's behind really all of this and that agitator has a documented history of filing complaints which are found to be baseless and then refiling the same complaints with other agencies ad nauseum each to be determined as baseless i do have significant concerns about statements made
108at the table yesterday and in email communications to the board and the board attorney regarding the vendor in question defamatory statements made made by members of the public are on them but statements made by us at this table and in public records in my opinion make the board and the district vulnerable to claims of defamation allegations of unfair favor favoritism have been made against the district in favor of a specific vendor yet the data provided by the district does not support that allegation we received information yesterday that captain steemer carpet cleaner has been awarded three hundred nineteen thousand six hundred and four dollars in projects fresh air solutions has been awarded three hundred and thirty seven eight hundred and forty four thousand dollars in projects and amr corp has been awarded 558 792 dollars in
109projects i see no evidence on the face of those numbers of any kind of favoritism or or treatment in favor of one vendor over another the point in my in my opinion the point of the procurement process is really to insulate us at the board and staff from from from favoritism it's to eliminate favoritism in support of all vendors and to eliminate unfair bias against all vendors that seek to do business with the district no employee or board member can have a favorite and expect that vendor to be awarded a bid based on that favoritism likewise no employee or board member can have a personal bias against a vendor and expect that vendor to be denied a bid or a contract based on that bias yet that's what i feel is being attempted here by
110some members not liking a vendor and stating generalized and unproven allegations against a vendor is not is not a reason to deny a bid in terms of email communications regarding attorney dupree bruno's involvement in this matter i take exception to the allegation that the school board attorney has acted unethically while i don't always agree with attorney dupree bruno i have never ever questioned her ethics and i will say that this board has put her in some difficult ethical conundrums on several occasions i believe her ethics and ethical conduct are beyond reproach in an email to the board a member indicated that the current review of the vendor in question involves unproven allegations of crimes i'm not clear on the accuracy of this allegation since the board has received absolutely no information regarding this review by
111an outside agency please refer back to my previous comments regarding the boards in the district's potential liability for defamation unfounded accusations of criminal behavior can be considered negligence per se and you know i wonder do do we trust staff you know it is in writing as part of the motion and part of the agenda item that this company quote will not be provided any projects pending completion of the review if staff does in fact award a project i would think and i have confirmed this that would rise to the level of insubordination that would result in said staff's termination i don't believe staff will do that i don't think staff is in the habit of of acting against the superintendent's directives and certainly not against the board's directives and as indicated both here tonight and
112in in an email to the board yesterday mr ross did not say three times that he wants to put this contract out to bid unless i heard him incorrectly what i heard mr ross say was that he'd like to look at the scope of work for hvac maintenance and indoor air quality to determine which is better suited for the cleaning of hvac coils those those are really my comments about about this issue but but i will say that while tonight's discussion is a little bit of a disappointment for me as a member of the team i do believe we've moved so far ahead that this small hiccup really will not keep us from continuing to move ahead as a team those are my comments thank you thank you miss vaughn apparently mrs patricka didn't listen
113carefully to what i had to say if she's referring to me what i said was that this firm fresh air solutions is by virtue of not just an email that we received but by what attorney harrison said just an hour or so ago in public comment that the firm was under investigation by department of homeland security and it doesn't matter has there been the rhetorical question has there been a decision hand it down from homeland security no am i asking that fresh air solution never gets to have projects no what i said was that in my opinion and i get to have an opinion as i am a member of this board equally with other people what i said was i feel that the wording is too vague i specifically looked at the word review
114when asked about that yesterday our board attorney said that review meant that the legal department was reviewing it well i'm sorry that's not good enough for me i want it as is my prerogative as a board member i wanted specific language i wanted language referencing the fact that fresh air solutions is under investigation that's it i never yesterday brought up homeland security or anything i made a reference to the fact that it was a rather large organization that was it i take offense from my board colleague mrs patricka that she would indicate that perhaps i am under the thumb of a person in the community i have a mind of my own i have ethics my ethics by the way when i was running for school board never had me taking large campaign donations from
115vendors and then speaking up in glowing terms like like you're in a oratorical contest i've never done that and yeah i realized that unfortunately in florida the ethics commission doesn't take offense to people who are accepting big campaign contributions from vendors i know there is one member on this board that ran at the same time as mrs patricka received a large donation from a vendor and returned it that's ethical so i returned to what i said before the reason i am opposing this is the language is the idea of review you know whether the staff violates this or not that's not what i'm talking about i am talking about us as a board putting something so vague out there i again would like to see this the word review get rid of it investigation you
116don't have to be specific it needs to be that this vendor and i would say this for any vendor any vendor that is under investigation should not be awarded contracts by this school district if you have other ethics than that's your business i have those ethics and i stick by what i said i will not support this mr nelly so since we're given history lesson lessons let's really talk about what happened this particular vendor was on the florida auditor report because of the claims that were out of the scope of their contract that is clear i spoke to the florida auditor myself and that's exactly what he told me he told me they would not clear them that is not their job this was what was wrong with it he asked for the district to
117ask for a refund of over i think it was like 269 thousand dollars which today has not been done the district did not ask for that refund because i asked for that information so that is where this started regarding the initial florida auditor's report and that's because the and i'm going to say it again that's because the invoices were voluminous and not within the scope of the contract i swore then and i've continued to not support this contract based on what the florida auditor said and that's where i stand tonight so that's the history lesson that's really where it started it got pulled regarding that at that pa back then i had asked for copies of the invoices which i was denied which by law and statute i'm allowed to have but i was denied
118them back then but when the rebuttal went to doe who questioned the the invoices that's when i was able to see the invoices and received many of them which were a lot of money we are still outstanding 33 million dollars in fema money so that we may see maybe in 20 years i'm told or may never so that's the history lesson that's the reason why i will not support this at this time and the re-bid and give opportunity to have separate contracts for remediation versus testing that was the information i was given back then when i contacted other districts and how they do it and their and their costs on those were not nearly what ours in the contract is so that was questionable for me too so that's the history and for the record
119i never have went around campaigning with a vendor unlike some board members at this table did so while we're talking about how this board is going to get past things and beyond things let's remember what we did thank you mr oh i'm just getting this i just have a question i don't know if it's this the superintendent or attorney bruno that can answer this in this situation these are the three final people that got the highest bids right correct they're the ones who were selected in the original bill in the original bids if you select three and one cannot be used why wouldn't you then if they cannot be why wouldn't you go to the next one that was in line or not even list them on here at all do we have to have
120three on here i don't know the answer so either not having them on at all or is this just a legality that we have to say why we haven't don't have them or i'm not sure about that so there's a lot of legal issues in that question that you posed there is an itn with very specific clauses that discusses investigations that allows the board to utilize other vendors we do not want to put ourselves in a position that we're just out and right canceling the contract because this vendor was awarded the bid and they are these i shouldn't say this vendor these vendors were awarded the bid and part of that was the three-year one-year renewal three-time one-year renewals so this is the safest legal way to address this particular situation at this time right
121i hear what you're saying i guess i don't know maybe it's something that we can't discuss then but i just think if we need to look into the legalities of not saying they will never but it just says until pending that's what this says right so that's exactly what that does the sentence that we have in there i do understand the frustration in terms of wanting it to be more specific as counsel i would not legally advise you to do anything more specific because we don't have enough information to do anything else at this time okay but if we if we have four bids five bids we choose the top three and there is something legality that requires that third one not to be at this time we cannot legally go to the fourth one
122for this particular project so remember this was already awarded yeah well i and i don't know okay this is a renewal of this so in the bid in the itn and mrs upke is here with us today thank goodness our business services and operations attorney jump in with whenever you want to and the last thing i have to say about it okay if it's a renewal it still comes before the board for approval it's three years but each year comes before us and it is not awarded until we all vote and it's awarded correct but remember from the original bid that three-year renewal is part of it so when they're doing the original bid for three years and then they also have up to six years because we can give you three additional one-year awards
123we can is the pivotal word anyway i'll stop well i think too because it's not this what the vote is not for one particular company it's all of them included and i think we are we keep missing that it does entail all the other ones and when mr ross spoke well and barbara they most definitely said that okay it's already been a week or whatever that time frame since the february whatever that date was that the service has not been we're not doing this service so we're it's sitting out there the services are not being done and we have the other vendors on this list who we certainly have used in the past and we can use but without passing this we would not be able to use any of them because we're still going
124to be in a situation where there's no work being done so i think we have to remember that too and i and i know that we even spoke about or that we had questions i know i think i believe i had question about was there a way that we could pull one out or even and i think miss vaughn had even made mention about making a letter or stronger sentence which i know that you all said it was going to happen after the fact and i think that's the problem because it's after the fact versus b4 and i think that's if we had right we can't do a stronger letter until the board votes and gives us direction that we can notify the vendor with a strong letter i have a strong letter drafted but
125i need the approval of the board to be able to move forward okay and when would that take place we can send it out tomorrow i have a draft letter okay thank you mr evanelli and then miss fisher so this contract has already expired that's where it's at and the difference that i don't think miss kittens through the chair i understand some of this is for testing some one vendor tests one vendor does a remediation that i think so that's why this whole the contract is and then you've got a coiling issue that's an hvac piece of this that doesn't even belong to this so i mean that was the recommendation and he said it twice not three times that he would go back out for bid and it doesn't have to be renewed if
126the contract and services are not needed and an emergency situation so and right now i mean we don't even have mold comes with rain and water and heat and so forth this is just it the contract could be extended for 120 days like we've done in the past or six months until the other issue was resolved that was one of the recommendations that i would have been a little bit agreement upon versus renewing it the way we're doing it tonight that's my other reason for not doing it thank you not supporting it thank you thank you mr vanilli miss fisher so then in the contract there are multiple services to be performed by the different vendors and the disclaimer in that i read when i read this over initially was that the three original awarded
127vendors were on here because they're on the contract but then there's a disclaimer that says fresh air solutions will not be provided any projects pending the completion of a review so we could move on and operations could move on with the work that does need to be done which is you know water extraction dry rot carpet treatment treatment i mean it could be a number of places in our district so i understand what ms vaughn's saying about wanting something stronger but attorney dupree bruno said that she has that drafted and we'll send that following our vote so we're way past february 26 now and we're still discussing this and if i may just say i'm extremely disappointed that we get personalities and old problems into our discussions which are supposed to be focused on business
128thank you mr miss miss vaughn please just to clarify i believe i heard mrs de primo say that at board direction she would send that letter and this is another reason why i'm still not i'm not stupid i do understand what's going on with this and maybe it is my personality but my personality happens to be an ethical one and one who's going to stand up for what is right and what i believe in and i thought it was a very simple fix but we could pass this and then if the board doesn't give our board attorney direction to send that letter at this point because of the personal attacks that were started not by me but by a board colleague i'm not going to vote for for this apparently certain vendors get what they
129have money well spent so mr prieberno miss vaughn the approval or disapproval of the actual agenda item as written is what i'm referencing i don't need a specific instruction from the board by virtue of the board approving this agenda item that will trigger certain things from my office to be sent and then the only other thing that i would point out because i've heard this a couple of times pursuant to board policy 6.07 is very specific that prior to the expiration date of the current term of the contract an extension or renewal is approved by the board at its next regularly scheduled meeting so the contract could have expired and then at the next meeting that's when the board has to approve it and my understanding from staff is that they need these services we
130don't have enough time to be able to do anything else now i do also know from staff that they're looking at all options for right now we need these services and we need these two vendors to provide us those services madam chair okay miss miss kittens okay attorney bruno through the chair can you please explain then in the last paragraph it does say it is recommended the board approved the renewal of and it lists all three i think unless i'm reading it incorrectly where are you miss getting some the next to the last sentence and the last paragraph that starts with it is recommended the board approve the renewal with american management resources corporations fresh air solutions the southwest and so i is that not contradictory to above where it says that we will not
131award i'm still trying to find are you in the public content or the recommendation content content the last paragraph starting with it is in the one two three halfway in the third line it just seems like it's contradictory to the other one that we will not award do you see what i'm talking about yes i see that so if we're looking at the same paragraph miss kittens the last paragraph in public content there is it does say that because remember that's what the bid is with these three vendors so we're asking the board to approve a renewal of this particular bid that includes these three vendors however if you look i think it's the second to last sentence in that paragraph it does specifically say that one vendor will not be provided any projects pending
132completion of review oh i see it later on okay i just it's just very confusing the way it's written if they if we say up above that they won't be considered and at the bottom we put it in there it is very confusing but i'm not an attorney thank you is there any other comments cnn i'm going to go ahead and ask for the hand vote and this is with depending upon which way it goes mr prieberno if it's favored you would then send out the letter immediately yes correct okay thank you do we madam chair but do we not even discuss the amendment that miss vaughn had brought up is that off the table or emotion no okay never mind or if i didn't hear that so seeing there's no other discussion we're just
133going to go ahead and have a hand vote for regarding this item l4 with miss depending upon the outcome mr pre-bruno would then send out a letter thank you miss morgan aye ms nay miss kittens nay miss patricka yes please mr evanelli nay miss fisher i and i so that's four to three and then miss dupree bruno if you'll make sure that gets out and we get a copy of that but everybody gets a copy of that yes ma'am thank you i'm going to ask if we the next item on the agenda is attorney's recommendation which i would like to ask you if that would be okay for us to move that to to after public hearings so that way we can allow the public to do the public hearings and then we come back
134to mr pre bruno's recommendation for the superintendent and we need a motion so can we have an emotional move that we rearrange the agenda to have public hearings first and come back to the other cause items thank you miss kittens i'll second that thank you all in favor of it aye any opposed just to make sure is there any discussion discussion on moving the public hearings there's no discussion then thank you and we're moving forward okay dr savage so i'm we're going to come back to you then did you take the formal vote yes it was seven seven seven zero thank you very much yes okay dr savage please we're in public hearing now so dr savage please present your recommendation for this evening's public hearing items yes madam chair i will i have three
135recommendations first is to approve approval to adopt policy 4.222 mental health and well-being in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9 2022 second is to approve the approval to repeal policy 1.181 emergency requirement for protective gear in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt the best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 the third and final recommendation is to approval to conduct a public hearing to receive comment on the proposed 2022-2023 instructional materials plan for mathematics thank you we will now recess the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public the public hearing
136this evening is to consider approval of adopted policy 4.222 mental health and well-being and compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statute to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 the second one would be the approval of to repeal policy 1.181 emergency requirement for protective gear in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statute to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 and the third would be the approval to conduct public hearing to receive comments on proposed 2022-2023 instructional materials plan for mathematics at this time the public will be invited to speak on these three items the time allowed for the comment is three minutes is there
137anyone who would wish to speak regarding these three items please go to the back thank you and if you would state your name before you speak on the three items thank you ara jenner as i mentioned earlier during the briefing board policy 1.181 is long overdue being repealed in fact it should never have been instituted in the first place there are certain responsibilities the board has and they're given to you and they're not indelible and what you ended up doing was delegating authority to a single individual that was way outside the purview of what was needed regular board policy one point let me see one eight there we go allows the superintendent the authority to shut down the school in the event of emergency situations such as hurricanes tornadoes flooding shootings things of that particular
138nature it's envisioned based on looking at the historical record of that particular policy that this is a single incident event shutdown and not an extended long-term circumstance additionally looking at board policy 1.181 when that was originally passed it was passed when we were under a state declared emergency and it was subsequently modified and warped into giving the perception that policy could be utilized whenever the local area decided they were going to have a suicide decision that there was some kind of an emergency had we understood at the time that board policy 1.181 was being implemented that it was going to be extended and broadened quite significantly there would probably have been significantly larger number of people speaking out against it also it was really clear in that policy that it was written in such a
139poor way because it gave one of three agencies the opportunity of saying when there was an emergency and yet there was no clear indication as to who the parties were there were no open meetings with especially the local health care advisors who were giving advice and guidance to the school district no opportunity for public comment no opportunity for public involvement and it was limited to primarily from what i understand lee health individuals and not even any private practitioners or any specialists that were involved as i noted back in april there was a real problem with this policy because one of those agencies actually said there was no longer a medical necessity for it and that proved to be problematic when you guys continued to isolate a number of us in what i would call the
140no mask time out zone in the back room i will say this one more time you need to have a policy that specifically says that when the law has been changed that any policies that counter that law counter those laws automatically expires thank you thank you hi christine diva jelly i just want to comment on the math textbook adoption review because i was the only community member on that committee and just some just a few critiques so that we can hopefully make it a better process in the next textbook adoption because being the only community member in this process i felt extremely ostracized even when i came here for the pub it wasn't the publisher yeah the publisher review i was at a table by myself i wasn't given the same materials that everyone else
141in the room was given there were 51 total people in that room and i was the only community member it was very apparent that they were not not only were they not prepared for me they didn't know what to do with me so i got a different survey that everybody else got at the end even the way that you know i wasn't supposed to be the only parent on that committee there was supposed to be another community member on that committee however the there was a required zoom training on a school board night and that part the other community member had to make a choice as to whether or not they would attend this meeting or attend the required zoom training i sat right over there with my headphones in my ears and i attended
142both because that was the only way i would be allowed to be a voting member you know i want to build bridges with you guys i want the lee county school district to better partner with community members but this you've got to start somewhere and not including community member like not better including community members in this process you know it just it creates a further divide where there could have just been some small tweaks from the very beginning that would have made my experience a lot better and it would have given me an opportunity to give you guys some praise today rather than sharing with you a very traumatic experience created by your school district you know i shouldn't have had to leave that day feeling like i was in high school again and i
143was the only kid that wasn't invited to sit at the table you know and i know that sounds dramatic but me at 37 years old i never thought i would be made to feel that way ever again by a group of adults so looking forward to the future and any other textbook adoption committees please make community opportunities more available and more just more public so that there's more people than just one community member involved and also maybe schedule those required trainings for days other than school board action meeting nights thank you so much for your time thank you is there anyone else that would like to speak is there anyone else who would like to speak okay at this time the public will well i will now close this public hearing and reconvene the regular
144school board meeting of march 8 2022. dr savage please reinstate your recommendations on this evening's public hearing and if you will do one at a time yes madam chair thank you so much first recommendation is to the approval to adopt policy 4.222 mental health and well-being in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approved to adopt policy 4.222 mental health and wellbeing in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 board members is there a motion to approve i move we approve
145the superintendent's recommendation to adopt policy 4.222 mental health and well-being thank you miss morgan may have a second second thank you miss kittens is there any discussion regarding this just real quick well and this is actually for the board attorney something that miss jenner mentioned regarding when is it something that we could have a policy where when the law changes that we would update our pilot or do we have to actually go through the process we're on the mental health oh i'm sorry i'm getting ahead of myself yes you are yeah i'm sorry do you have anything okay i'll wait okay sorry the only discussion that i would have with this is that make sure that our processes are updated to this policy yeah that would be my ask and i would second and i
146would direct that yeah to have that done mr fisher and i want to thank attorney bruno and miss laurie brooks for their work on this policy yes thank you i agree and miss thomas are we voting okay please record your vote okay and motion carries 7-0 dr savage yes madam chair the second recommendation is the approval to repeal policy 1.181 emergency requirement for protective gear in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022. thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to re to repeal policy 1.181 emergency requirement for protective gear in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and
147accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be march 9th 2022 board members is there a motion to approve i moved to approve the superintendent's recommendation to repeal policy 1.18 emergency requirement for protective gear thank you and it may have a second i'll second thank you miss morgan and now mr vannelli discussion yes so i'm sorry i got ahead of myself so is that something that we can do we can have a policy that would when the law changes that it could it would just up you know update it where we wouldn't have to go through this process so we do we have to always go through the rules i'm sorry so the rules do require a proper rule-making process for repealing a policy okay now we do have policy 1.09 which is our policy
148development let me think about that a little bit more miss giovannelli to see if there's anything that could be done and the board tonight just approved neola so we will see what niola has oh that's awesome yes thank you i forgot about that thank you thank you is there any other discussion regarding that cnn please record your vote my box didn't come out yes aye yes please okay motion carry seven two zero okay thank you and dr savage we do not have to do the last one because there's not a vote on that for the approval to conduct a public hearing is that correct just to receive comments comment thank you okay so now we will go back to and thank you very much ladies for allowing us to to move that and switch that
149over so we will now go back to the attorney's recommendation and mrs dapri bruno i'm going to turn this over to you thank you may we have a five minute recess please we've been sitting here a little bit yes thank you and at this time i'm going to ask again for another little change and hopefully it's okay we have our student here and i know that he really wants to get home so he can do homework study get ready for bed for school does that sound good so if if you all have to eat and yeah that would be good we'll finish some cake we'll give him some more food but if we can allow him to to say hi to your family and then if if we can let him give his report so
150that way he will have the opportunity then we can move forward okay kristin we are and he's been typing away so lord knows all right well say hi to mom good evening school board members my fellow students who were previously here and all those in attendance tonight i thank you for allowing me to serve as your student representative for tonight's district action meeting it's an honor to be a member of the district student advisory committee serving as norfolk meyers norfolk myers high school's alternative representative and as a committee parliamentarian tonight i'm here not only on behalf of my fellow students those of which i serve but i am here on behalf of the future for lee county high school students there are many issues that face high school students today issues that we as a
151generation of students will carry with us throughout the rest of our lives among these i truly believe that the most important are lgbtq plus acceptance and sexual assault and abuse because of the intensity of the topics that i will bring before the board tonight i advise all those in attendance to put themselves first in terms of their mental well-being and if at any time anyone feels that it is necessary for them to remove themselves from this space in a common orderly fashion please feel free to do so at your discretion first i would like to address an extremely important and contemporary issue for all students at any grade level lgbtq plus acceptance just recently both chambers of the florida state legislator the house and senate passed the parental rights and education bill more colloquially known
152as the don't say gay bill in this piece of legislation in summary it mandates that discussions on sexuality and lgbtq plus topics are to be limited in kindergarten through third grade environments although it may not be appropriate to discuss these topics at such a young age it is still imperative to teach open-minded open-mindedness and acceptance at all levels of education especially kindergarten to third grade i ask that not only students across league county but school board members alike recognize the importance of teaching these elements and publicize their possible opposition for the bill if they truly believe that it is extremely destructive to give an example to the board students at my school norfolk myers high school and other schools around the nation stage an administration approved walkout in opposition of the parental rights and education
153bill i participated in the walkout and i would like to make the board aware that the measure of the resolve of students to oppose such discrimination and support acceptance of lgbtq plus is high and remain that way until members of our government take the necessary steps to follow an act and interest in the best interests of the beliefs of their students with the comment concerning outcasting of books and other pieces of literature literature on lgbtq plus i ask that individual to put themselves in the shoes of someone who naturally feels away about their sexuality and is forced to feel ashamed of that because of the little acceptance that would be encouraged of them and other humans like them how would you react to such treatment such treatment in fact has provoked the following according to
154the trevor project and supported by the cdc as of march 11 2021 suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth with lgbtq plus identifying youth being four times more likely to seriously consider suicide to plan for suicide and to attempt suicide than their peers as of 2019 the trevor project also estimated that at least one lgbtq plus youth between the ages of 13 to 24 attempts suicide every 45 seconds in the united states i call upon all people to recognize the importance of accepting lgbtq plus individuals for the benefit of the survival of equality in public education next i would also like to address an issue that is not only prevalent in our school district state and nation but across the entire world sexual assault and abuse are not only heinous acts committed
155by some of the worst members of our society but they are also acts that influence some of the most detrimental side effects to those who experience them when an offender inflicts these acts on their victims on their victim or victims they not only strip them of their dignity but their humanity their personality their mental health and ultimately their life these acts can influence depression suicidal tendencies loss of personality and other life-altering factors that victims carry with them far beyond the time of their experience when children of all ages experience sexual assault and abuse these effects are amplified by intensities that i cannot calculate nor do i think any organization or foundation can truly calculate the national sexual violence resource center projected that one in three females experience sexual assault for the first time between the
156ages of 11 and 17. of males it is one in four between the ages of 11 to 17. thus i call upon not only the school board but all members of our school district to work tirelessly and extensively to dispel such heinous and illegal acts of inhumane conduct but to also work to spread awareness that is credible and factual about these issues i thank you for your time and consideration thank you and to say he is only in ninth grade just imagine where he's going to be miss patrick i just can't tell you how much i love you i just think that you are truly amazing you really give me hope for the future and my initial comments that i wrote that i wanted to say during my board member comments were i promise to
157vote for you for governor if you promise to support public education traditional public education and return local controls with school boards if you if you promise those two things i don't care where you stand on the rest of the issues you got my vote and mom and grand grandma you your grandma right you guys should be beyond proud beyond proud he's amazing thank you thank you for letting me oh no thank you and thank you for saying this lady i'm sorry that it was it took this long but we can definitely have you walk out here so you're he has to give a piece of cake on the way out please no and thank you christian yeah again i thank you for listening to my piece i'm here like i said not only on behalf
158of the students that i serve in the student district advisory committee but i'm here on behalf of my personal beliefs which i feel reflect the contemporary beliefs of my generation and i believe that my beliefs will hopefully one day become policy and that policy will hopefully one day influence change for the better of all people so again and we do see that at student advisory how you are and you are the like the protector of all so thank you for that that's very noble really appreciate you well thank you all right guys thank you very much thank you thank you good luck i think we'll see you back here again since you're in the ninth grade yes okay thank you thank you for being so patient and letting them stay with us yes appreciate you
159okay we'll go go back to where we were at and so mr pre-bruno now you have to follow that this is getting close to my bedtime so board this afternoon we started reviewing dr brunier's contract in the agenda it indicates the consulting contract first and then the employment contract however since we started with the employment contract i would like to start with that if that's okay if i can get a quick consensus from the board to to change that thank you very much yes everybody should have a copy of that and i had an opportunity to make some of the changes that we talked about earlier today so i'll go through those changes really quickly with you we're gonna start from the top then yeah so the first change is gonna be on page three
160we just have the strikeout because we have a consultation contract a consultant contract in lieu of that transition period so i just struck that out what did you call it i'm sorry we have a consultant contract a separate complete contract so we i just struck out that transition period because that has been removed from this contract that was done before i just wanted to do that strikeout it's yellow are we on the consultant no no no no oh okay i'm sorry if you follow up we're on page three and all what she is saying is that she struck out the transition period what she had spoken about earlier today of the employment of the employment yes it's number two okay because the one is lit up that's yeah okay number two okay if you go
161to page six subsection nine as the board directed we removed that last sentence so he can choose his three local services without the board's approval we separated the two paragraphs paragraph 10 is re immersible expenses and then we created paragraph 11 which is coach paragraph 12 we removed that language with regard to the vehicle and provided 500 a month allowance for a vehicle can you go down so i can read that please thank you now i will tell you that during the break between the briefing and the board meeting i did have an opportunity to speak to dr bernier's negotiator to advise him of the changes and what maybe future changes so i have an idea as to where they want to land and they were he was very happy about the vehicle change thank
162you so i'll tell you that and then we left off at our new paragraph 14 which is board relations and communication and that's where we were now there were some board members that indicated they wanted this to be removed that's why we wanted to have this discussion i will tell you that dr bernier did like this language which all of 14 all of 14. so at this point this patricia trigger i mean it's it's fluff it doesn't have to be in the contract it doesn't bind us to anything that we're not already bound to by law so if you want the fluff keep the fluff if you don't want the fluff then take it out i see it as legally insignificant any other comments does anybody else have any comments regarding a mystery i i
163actually think it's fine to leave in here because it makes him comfortable it's his contract and like even like f is he's asked to not be called on sunday unless it's an emergency i think it's just boundaries and respecting that even though it may be the law i don't know about the law regarding contacting him on sundays because i think people have contacted the superintendent on sundays before so i just think this is setting boundaries and i don't see anything wrong with boundaries and just for clarification with regards to sunday absent and emergency i just want to make sure if there's an emergency feel free to to call him i just remember the first time i saw that was kids you forget me oh no that sentence let me put my name tag on i'm
164just looking at e to create the school board individually and collectively refer promptly to the superintendent for studying any criticism of of the of do we say the school board or any member thereof or is i mean it's not necessary i guess this is if something comes up he wants to know immediately no i know what it is i'm just talking about anyway is there anything in here about our one-on-ones no there's nothing specific about one-on-ones in here is he amenable to doing that my understanding he is any other questions on this particular section so at this time can i have a consensus as to whether or not we want to keep this section in there as is and we're going to do just consensus for these sections and then we'll do our formal vote
165if a board member makes the motion the next section is section that was 7-0 i believe the next section is evaluation any comments with regards to section 15 which is evaluation ms patricka i think i remember superintendent self evaluation at the interim and i know it's not as detailed or as in-depth as the annual evaluation but it helps me in performing my own interim evaluation so i would ask that be part of this process please miss kittens well my question is we he starts what may yeah may 16th 16th so middle of may june july august but in three months you're gonna do a 360 to find out what everybody thinks about him i mean the 360 is that everybody does input including staff and all that so but that would not so dr bernier
166was very specific in terms of this evaluation and the timing of it and what and it makes sense he wants to have the data from the state come out i get it never mind yeah i know exactly why now okay yeah miss fisher yeah and then i think that it says in september of each year the superintendent shall provide the school board with the written self-evaluation oh okay okay thank you but i didn't know if miss patrick was talking about an end because so are you also asking for an interim self-evaluation okay i think that's right in addition didn't we always do that whenever we evaluated the superintendent we got a written interim no did we not get a written self-evaluation at the intro no there was a pre to he did his own self-evaluation
167to before our evaluation no i know that but i thought we received some artifacts from him at the interim as well no not the internet memories facts did you have something that you wouldn't respond oh no oh okay i thought you so madam chair if i can just see where the board is about including an interim self-evaluation we didn't do it in the past we don't even need to ask the question okay all right we did not any other questions with regards to the evaluation section 15. yes ma'am it does say an interim assessment the school board shall complete an interim assessment of the superintendent's performance by july 30th that is so my understanding is miss patrick is asking for the superintendent to do an interim cell phone on him oh yeah okay no right
168i see i'm sorry go ahead miss kittens but he still whenever there's an evaluation he will do a self-evaluation and we will do hours and it's all at the same time the yearly evaluation annually and there's specific times in terms of how that will happen but any other discussion on this section may have a consensus as to whether or not the board wants to move forward with this section okay that's 7-0 the next session section is about continuing employment and miss kittens i think this is the one that you were inquiring about earlier if there is an elected superintendent what happens and this is where if you want to put something in there that's more specific this would be where to put that or we can accept it as is and may i make a
169comment on that i know ms jordan said well you know when someone's elected they take over immediately yes i get that but that is in a situation where like we're elected we're here now and another elected person comes in this is the first this would be the first time that there would be an elected person and i'm just saying for continuity of processes because we could potentially have someone that really you know and and not not for the legal and the elected piece of it but just for the sake of the district's ongoing continuous flow of work and everything to give someone otherwise we're saying okay they elect someone on november 24 and on the 18th of november and the 19th he's moving his stuff out and they go in the office and sit there
170and go okay what do i do now basically that's what that's the way the law is written but i understand that i understand that but the law does not preclude us from offering some type of assistance right now we're talking about with us and elected to an elected we're talking from a non-elected to an elected which is a totally different situation if i could just say one thing from a contractual standpoint i think i'd be careful with putting very specific language because if you have an elected superintendent that superintendent may not want to have any and it can say optional but that we could it could say optional i really am very very concerned that if we get someone that is elect if it goes this way and we get someone that's elected that is
171not an educational professional that does not have the background to know what to even tell these folks what to do or to move forward then we've got a big gap in time and kids have to continue to be educated we can't have a gap while they figure it out okay ms patricka i just think that we there's too many unknowns we the person that first of all i can't fathom that this community wants more politics and education so i can't fathom that it would pass first of all second of all we you know the person that runs could could run because they want to unseat the superintendent now we're putting in his contract that he has to work with them like there's just there's too many unknowns if we if we get to that point
172then those two individuals can sit down have a conversation and make a decision about how to move forward yeah with the board's approval or feedback or input or whatever but i don't think that's something for this contract any other discussion with steven i just don't think we worry about the unknown i mean and you can't have two superintendents technically so you cannot so i think that we're just causing more problems than we need to and it would not be fair to dr bernier either at this point without his input so i i caution not to do anything thank you any other comments i'm can i have a consensus from the board whether to leave the paragraph as written question 16 as written miss kittens i'm going to lose living with us 7-0 thank you the
173next section is section 17 which is professional liability this is this is not an unusual clause i think it's a it's a good legal clause are there any questions about that particular clause census on section 17. thank you 7-0 consensus the next one is about medical examination this is we may have to fix the numbering here i think the next one is 18 medical examination there was a question that was posed by a board member in the prior contract of the superintendent dr atkins it did have a requirement for an annual examination this was this one basically says if and when directed by the school board so i do need some feedback from the board as to how you would like to handle this particular clause section ms kittens can we legally if someone gets
174a physical examination that says that they are you know potentially impaired in some way can we legally do anything about that you're putting it in the contract right i know i i don't i don't like that it's patricka i'm more comfortable with the required because i think that to sit down as a board and have a conversation about a public conversation about concerns about the superintendent's either physical or mental health is inappropriate it never really came up or was an issue in the past at least since i've been on the board but knowing that it's required each year i think is important okay any other board member discussion miss chief okay so if it's in there what do we do with the information once we get it if there's something wrong maybe i'm just missing
175the point well i mean if if you know let's say a previous superintendent had a terminal illness and that was revealed in an annual physical then the superintendent makes the board aware and the board can start to make plans for transitioning as that person's condition deteriorates and instead of it being a surprise right but they're capable of playing it to them well because they may decide to you know test it out let me just say this just to clarify a little bit so you have the examination and the only thing that the physician will be reporting to the school board is whether or not the superintendent is physically absolutely mentally able to perform his duties right right that's what the report they do with the president right right similar to what they did with the
176president miss mr evan my husband has a physical every year he's a police officer and it's required by his you know job so you know he has a bum knee they get rid of him no they need to know no that he needs to be healthy and mentally healthy is a very good point so the mental part i get the standard in the contract remember is whether or not the superintendent is able to do his job correct that's the sorry mr bond i'm i don't remember what's what's in there but isn't there like with all the other job descriptions able to lift 40 pounds yeah you know your weight i mean to me that's i don't know that it should be required but if we notice no seriously there are certain things that the superintendent
177needs to be able to do and you know like blindness might disqualify it that's the handicap careful we don't want to have an ada violation yeah yeah that's exactly what driving it has to be i'm not even going to give any examples but please that's does that make sense if we notice from the job description that seriously there are things that the superintendent can no longer do because we expect the superintendent to go out to the community and that sort of thing and if the superintendent for whatever reason can't do that then that might be a cause for it but i don't think it should be a requirement it's pretty invasive to be quiet so i guess fisher yeah so and then i think 18 as it sits is fine and what was his take
178on this right well the way that the contract is presented to you is how we have negotiated yes right so it's fine yeah i think this is it's that's adequate and it will cover any issue that might come up so i saw miss gettings and then well i was just gonna say a ii or whatever that is wouldn't that cover the things that we say like miss vaughn was saying in the job description you have to lift 40 pounds all that stuff is listed in there wouldn't it refer to this if you are unable to fulfill those things and yeah so just to be clear about the language just so that the board is clear and understands it's if and when directed by the board which means that this would have to be a discussion
179brought up at the dais and i think that goes to ms patrick's point so i just want to now know from the board if this language as written you want to move forward with that if i can have a consensus please is jordan miss kittens well i'm gonna say yes because he's already he's already looked at this so yeah he's five with this five two and can i just say the reason i'm saying no i think we if we just what gives me pause is it has to come back before the board if we added something that just says pursuant to the job description you know as detailed it's all there so if something like that comes up but anyway whatever well i need i'm on clarification from the board do you want to add
180something else to this well they already voted okay all right but we're just taking consensus so i can get some good information make sure i understand how the board all seven of you feel on a particular section are we ready to move forward to section 19 which is termination of agreement this is pretty standard i don't know if anyone has any comments on this i don't know why i'm stuck on the tail you're stuck on which one is getting to innovative disability whatever whatever without putting a reference to something it's kind of like we just decide oh he's crazy so you know you know what i'm saying it's not if we added the part is pursuant to what was required in the job description you're going back to the medical industry i'm just saying it
181has meat to it gives specific things otherwise we can pick out something and say he's incapacitated because he can't do this well yeah but but that's not what that said yeah when the medical examiner said you know if it when directed by the school board the superintendent will submit such physicians shall report their full findings to the superintendent personally and shall report to school board whether the superintendent is and is likely to remain physically able to perform his duties i mean that's really all we need to know and under a and termination is saying the same thing not if we notice something not if we notice something and ask him to to get it and it's likely not going to happen but okay and he already agreed to this or his yes his negotiator yes
182agreed to this yeah and just to be clear miss kittens number two is very specific that at this point it's been determined that he's disabled or ill that he cannot perform his duties that relates back to the that relates somewhat to the examination yes though correct yeah this is pretty and this is this is the language that was previously in our prior superintendent contracts okay so going back now to number 19 yes 19 termination of agreement is there anything else that the board wishes to discuss or change miss vaughn i have to do it i think sorry i think number three we shouldn't have that in there that's not an excuse no number 19 number two we have to focus focus focus let's focus so i think that just makes it very legally clear if
183that person passes away they will not be here well there is a sign that says it has been brought to management's attention that people are dying and not leaving so yeah okay so at this time for number 19 do i have a consensus by the board oh thank you that's 7-0 and then the other clauses in this contract or what i will call the clauses that gives comfort to your attorney those are pretty much legal language i don't necessarily unless somebody really has a question on it but i would advise you to accept those clauses so we're talking about savings clause if for some reason that a part of this agreement is not legal then the rest of the agreement is not unavoidable or invalid i should say that the applicable law and i'm at
18421 right now applicable law will be state of florida with venue in lee county superintendent cannot assign his duties to anybody else notices well let me go to 20 i'm saying that again please where are you at does i have a question on that which one which should be 22. okay thank you 22 assignment so let me go back then savings clause was the next one after termination any questions on savings clause may i have a consensus on that okay thank you that's miss kittens you have a question okay seven twenty whatever it is next one is applicable law can i have a consensus on that please thank you that's seven zero assignment can i have a consensus on that please is this you have a question on that one the assignment i'm just trying
185to make sure i understand it in other words he can't leave and pass it on to his wife or something well okay so here's the scenario let's say that you have a change in some of the school board members during this two-year term unless there's an actual you know something that falls within that termination clause then these new individuals can't just go ahead and say hey we demanding that this contract be changed so it's binding on anybody else who will be sitting at the board and vice versa for the superintendent oh our success i'm sorry okay so may i have a consensus on assignment please zero okay next is notices so there was a question that was actually post on notices whether or not an email notification is sufficient when we're doing formal legal notices
186we often like to have it sent formally by registered mail a certified mail or something along those lines but we are in 2022 and it's modern era i don't know if the board wants to relax that a little bit and use email or do you want to have it formal miss giovannelli then miss patrick the miss kittens i would request to stay formal because as we know there's the spam folder that emails can go in to when we may not see them timely i've been having that half issue a lot lately like a lot of my emails have been going into the spam and i don't check that you know daily so and so i would keep it formal my opinion thank you i believe miss patrick have been miss kittens email is formal it's
187a public record and that's true but you know the emails from the superintendent two board members are not going to go to a spam folder because we're receiving them frequently if it was an outside email though that's but any notice required or permitted to be given under this contract would be notice from the superintendent to the border from the board to the superintendent wouldn't be in an outside email it would be between the board and the superintendent so i don't i don't think i think it's 2022 and we need to miss getting 2020. i agree with miss giovannelli i've had several occasions where things did not come through for whatever reason or if i was at home and it didn't go through the filter and i didn't realize certain information i understand about you know
188maybe can we do both it can be because there are times when we don't get stuff can you can you clarify that is this for outside or is because if it's for outside because that's what it looks like as the ladies were saying that it looks like it's going somewhere else not within like they email each other so how he sends us emails so how this can come about let's say that the board decides to or let's say the superintendent wants to request the renegotiation there's a clause in there that says prior to the extension of the one year he can ask for a renegotiation so let's say he sends an email he sends a notice that he wants to do that do you want that to be it's going to be the superintendent sending
189it to the board members do you want that sent via email is that okay or do you want it sent formally via registered mail ms vaughn yeah and to me not just mailed but by registered or certified now because that is proof that the person got it and heaven only knows we don't need more email problems okay i still have a question so you would want the superintendent to send you a registered letter for you to sign no no no no no no it's fine for this that it would be proof that the superintendent received it so you have the green card when you're sending certified that shows proof that it was mailed out and it would be sent to the board probably via the chair but to all the board members to me that
190protects everything i got you know so it's not just it's not in-house right this is u.s mail if you're doing it the formal way any other discussion or comments on this okay so at this time based on the conversation may i have a consensus does the board want to leave the notice provision as written all right i have 7-0 attorney fees any question on that is pretty standard and so may have a consensus on attorney's fees okay 7-0 the entire agreement is very standard any questions on that seeing no questions may have a consensus on entire agreement 7-0 and then the last one would be paragraph headings any questions on that seeing no questions may have a consensus 7-0 thank you very much board that's the entire contract ms patricka i'd like to make a
191motion that the board approved the contract with the changes agreed upon this afternoon and this evening the substantive changes agreed upon this afternoon and this evening along with the scribner's changes that have been forwarded to the board attorney second and we've already had discussion so we have public comments well you have emotion any other discussion on this and then if there's no other discussion yes madam chair public comment public comments so we would have public comment on this particular item if there's anyone here that would like to speak please go to the podium thank you and please state your can you go back around now just kidding state your name before you yes specifically thank you i'd like to just point out the fact that this particular document wasn't available prior to the starting of
192the briefing even though it was ultimately available on board docs it's really challenging as you all know what the day is to review a contract when you don't have it in written format in front of you where you can actually do pen and ink changes and notes and stuff like that so i find big fault with just the manner in which this was done i seriously doubt that you didn't have an opportunity to get this available to go on board docs even your own policy specifically says that any supplemental documentation needs to be presented at the same time to the general public as it is presented to the board and so i just throw that out there because this is not the first time i've mentioned this is a concern we had this previously when
193it came to the writing samples of the superintendent and i asked for a copy of it that day because it was not even available on board docs at that time and if it weren't for miss vaughn asking to see the actual written document rather than just going over the information that was evaluated by the individuals who were looking at it for english language arts components it would never have been even viewed by the board members and when i broached the subject with ms dapri bruno she told me it was a records request i mean seriously i'm going to ask for records requests on something that's timely so the same thing happened today here so let me just go ahead here at what point in time does the superintendent write to retirement pay vest itself so
194i'd like to know that i'd also like to raise a question about the disparity in the percentage of the contribution towards his retirement account which is versus the very nominal amount that teachers get as a percentage for their retirement account if the superintendent is terminated by either a switch to elected superintendent position and he either doesn't run or he loses if he runs does he get to double dip then on retirement and i was also looking at the fact that the superintendent can unilaterally terminate his contract with a 90-day notice but the board has to either get concurrent approval with the superintendent or have it for cause why is there not something in there about when there's a change to the board makeup that there is a possibility that they have the chance to be
195able to review his situation just because of dynamics i also was looking at the fact that it might be worthwhile considering doing an annual or at a request of the board medical evaluation because it might come up earlier in the year that there might be something that comes up we even have this option under the u.s constitution it's called amendment 25. thank you hi sharon mcgill just because i'm all about like details and contracts the one thing that you are proposing to change is to on the i think it was under the vehicle where you're going to now give the superintendent just a flat 500 a month well now is that going to come under his compensation and be taxable income versus he doesn't have to submit an expense report to get reimbursed for that
196so that would end up being taxable income and would that then 500 be included in his salary as part of his benefits package and everything that would relate to that and then the other thing was under the insurance it was like for the disability i believe it was a disability and the regular life insurance benefit where it says that he will own those policies but it doesn't specifically state that at the end of his employment with the district that the district would no longer be paying him for that it would terminate those of the contributions that the district made to those would end with his termination just those couple things christie diva jelly again i agree with everything that the two people prior to me said but i also have a question in regards to
197the termination so i don't understand why it's okay for or why we even have this in the contract that the superintendent may terminate this agreement just as long as he provides 90 days written notice however the board if they want to terminate him it has to be under cause and if not then we have to give him another position somewhere else within the district that doesn't seem right seems like more of the same here in lee county which i'm hoping i'm just reading that incorrectly but now let's count up all the numbers again 255 000 salary plus a 15 000 consultant bonus plus a minimum of ten thousand dollars up front for travel expenses plus forty three hundred dollars a month in retirement plan plus a fifty thousand dollar mentor plus a five hundred dollar
198monthly car allowance again if we would have just offered the ap put out a position for 350 heck i'd even be willing to have you guys hire a superintendent for 375 hec even four for the size of our district as long as this person is qualified to do these things we don't need a 255 or 255 000 base salary for an assistant superintendent that's going to need all of these extra things as well i just i don't see where the fiscal responsibility is here at all and i'm really trying to understand it but you know i mean i don't know i just wish you guys could give a little bit of clarity just on that little bit that one little clause in there about him still being able to be have a job within our
199district in an administrative position that we know they make a handsome amount as well if he if you guys choose to you know terminate his employment without cause are there any other comments and mr preet bruno i'm just curious with the with the insurance i know where to take the vote now but with that insurance the benefits and upon termination so we can add something in there that says during his employment but hr will you know finance would not pay after his they wouldn't anyway correct but necessary okay reimbursement i mean it's just completely up to the board okay and i think the other comment was with regards to to determination a contract okay mrs fisher did you have a question before i call for the vote shouldn't we answer the questions yeah the superintendent
200can terminate his contract with 90 days notice but the board needs cause and to give him a position i think i miss that somehow i think previously with superintendents it's been more equitable you know that either party could terminate without cause with sufficient notice i'm going to take a look at the prior superintendent's contract and i will tell you yeah miss cheney and also regarding the get giving him a job i think dr atkinson's contract was that as well yes it's kind of a normal thing but why is it normal i guess is what the public wants to know i'm sorry i don't understand the question that without call just cause you would have a different position yeah allowing him to have another position within the district that portion and then i already switched over
201but so before we ignition missionelli before we get to that question i want to go back to ms fisher's question so there was a prior clause with regards to termination without cause within 30 days so if the board wants to include that and not we can include that but i'll have to check with dr bernier's negotiator but i can you know present that to him terminate could you and i'll read the clause termination without cause board may dismiss superintendent during the term of the agreement without cause upon 30 days written notice in the event of such termination without cause superintendent shall wave all rights to contest or challenge board's decision and in consideration of such waiver will accept a lump sum amount calculated as of effective date of board's termination equal to 20 weeks base
202salary plus accrued sick and annual leave and such other benefits and amount payable by law and school board policy in full satisfaction of board's obligations here under so ice retriever yes so i think the choice is a large payout if we terminate without cause or we give them a job right at the district where he's earning a salary right like working for that money as opposed to just paying out that money so i'm more comfortable with it the way it is and you know frequently those transitions don't work out too well anyways exactly i was just going to say that so did you have anything else to share i want to make sure i get a good consensus from the board do you want to have a termination without cause provision in this contract there
203already is one determination without cause right he gets another job well so i'm looking just to be clear i'm looking at section 19 which is the termination of the agreement so we do have a section that talks about him having another position but section 19 is specifically addressing termination of the agreement in that section there is not a termination without cause it's very specific so i want clarity from the board if you want to have a clause added regarding termination without cause as something similar to what i read again i will have to go back to the negotiator to bring this to see what they want to do so may i ask christmas section talks about giving him a position that is in section 15. it could be let's see if that's the continuing employment
204right yeah continuing employment right before professional life that instead of calling it continuing employment you could call it termination without cause i mean it's the same it's we're just not calling it that but that's what that clause is it is termination without cause so if that makes everybody feel better then just change the because because the language is in the event that this contract of employment is terminated in any matter other than for a cause so it's already here so that's basically what it's saying yeah so i the miss kittens just to make sure that the board is clear so the option is to terminate without cause which means you would have the payout pursuant to this language or to terminate and give him a position miss kittens my question is like what one of
205the members of the public said why would we get 30 days or something and he gets 60 or 90. i'm not sure why that he can terminate with 90 days but we have to terminate with 30 days but where are you seeing the 30 days miss kittens so i can follow you okay maybe i'm i'm looking i saw it now i can't find it in 18 it's the new 18 of b correct oh well that's that's talking about him i'm talking about the 30 the other the 30 years ago okay where is that is a clause that i read that was in a prior contract that's not there it's not here but we do not have we have a different vision in there he has 90 days but we don't have a time limit it's
206a different provision so the termination if you look at 15 or continuing employment that's the clause that talks about termination other than for a cause so the question that was posed is do you want to have a termination without cause provision or do you want to just keep that language that you have if you have determination without cause that would include all of this other payments that we were just talking about or just offer him another position but in either one of them it doesn't give us a time limit correct well the clause that i read had a 30-day time limit the continuing employment doesn't have right a particular time okay so are we talking about well i'm confused but whatever my main question is even what you read are we talking about putting that
207in which would give us 30 days and give him 90. she was just reading that as an example but there's still as it is right now he has 90 days there's nothing that says how many days we have it just says with cause and that's it well so if you look at 19a it's when you're talking about with cause it says immediately right is there with cause and without cost that's what i'm saying so the without cause would be the continuing employees with calls and without all right i miss juveniles had her hand up for a minute yes just one second mr evan i just want to make sure everybody's understanding does everybody understand yes mr giovannelli i understand so i'm going to help gwen gwen he decides he doesn't want to work for us
208anymore he's got 90 days he's going to tell us that gives us time to start working on a plan for us we don't like him we want him gone we don't care how many days he's gonna we need to go now that was that's the point in that we don't want to get we don't want it we don't if you're gonna fire somebody you don't want to hang around 90 days or 30 days you don't want that so i can't have that immediate i get that i get that but if it's let's say the the health thing or whatever is that cause is that going to be no that's what something different but what i'm saying is whatever are we cutting off our nose to spite our face if it's a health thing and we
209wouldn't say where's the outside and gone sorry dr bernier i just but what if okay all right so that is in there i'm gonna try to call for the please yes can we take a vote because i need a drink i want to make sure that all board members are clear so long as we're all clear then we can move forward okay so miss miss thomas is it a hand vote or a hat just for my comfort i'm sorry just for my comfort can i please get a consensus about the continuing employment as the termination without cause okay thank you very much yes and did everybody notice that it said upon recommendation of the successor yes that's in there as well yes yes okay okay so i am going to call for the vote and
210miss what the whole thing is no i'm caught on the contract which is on the on the couch i'm saying the whole concept can you please restate your motion i move that we adopt the contract for superintendent dr bernier to reflect consensus changes made this afternoon and this evening and scribner's changes that have been forwarded to the board attorney thank you so may i take a vote on a miss morgan aye i thought it was a okay all right i missed giavanelli yes miss patricka i missed you yes please yes and miss fisher yes and yes seven zero motion carries miss dupree bruno can you do the next one now so the next one would it be consulting regarding the consultant contract there was a lot of discussion by the board when dr bernier was
211when you voted on him what's going to happen during this transition period dr bernier is talking to staff he's looking into our district operations has been attending some one-on-ones and as he gets closer and closer to his start time he'll be spending more and more time with the district personnel working on his 100 100-day plan and those types of things so instead of putting it a small paragraph in the original employment contract it's better for us to have a consultant contract that addresses that the original request was that he be paid his daily rate and the original time period was from april 15th through may 15th so if you're looking at and miss kittens brought this up if you're looking at the origin the daily rate which is about a thousand dollars a day just
212under a thousand dollars a day technically speaking he can work for 30 days in may and get 30 000 so the when we were negotiating we thought that it would be better to put a cap and do a flat fee in terms of how much it would be so that's why there's a request for fifteen thousand dollars which is half that amount of what was potentially available miss patrick i just want to be clear this is not a bonus no no this is money he will actually earn by putting actual hours into the district and it's it's almost the equivalent of of of us hiring him 15 days earlier right right and quite honestly getting paid for it and quite honestly he's probably already done the 15 hours 100 percent sense any other question miss
213vaughn yeah i'm just questioning why the march date and not april so when we're doing contracts we have an effective date but then when you look at the actual time or the term that's specified in the contract so the same thing with the employment contract the effective date will be march 8th the day or march 9th when it is signed but the actual term and time for the employment contract is may 16th for this particular contract i have it as let's see term it's under number four for any date that we want to put in in march because i left that blank through may 15th i can tell you that he's already really trying to get to know the district already okay and the one of the reasons that i ask this is i had
214separately contacted you questioning how ethical it was for board members to be contacting dr bernard during our negotiation phase i know i didn't do that but i know that there were a lot of contacts with him even though he invited us us to do that so i would assume that once we pass this and his employment contract then we wouldn't be in that realm of hazy ethics on contacting and talking with him during this negotiation phase so i would not call it i would not call it an ethics issue because he specifically invited anyone to come talk to him and he also has been communicating with the superintendent he's been communicating with me he's been communicating with other district staff so i do understand that some board members were careful with that line in terms
215of communicating with him and some board members you know took advantage of his offer to be able to to talk to him but the difference is the staff members he's talking to aren't the ones voting on his contract we are the ones voting on his contract and i found it unethical to be passed maybe a short conversation of getting to know you kind of thing and i have no idea i know there have been contacts and i have no idea what was what was said but i ch i chose for myself to not go down any kind of murky path on that and frankly because we are the ones that vote on it i chose to not put myself in a questionable position the point and the diff and the difference is as i said
216the staff dr savage not none of them are voting on this he's our employee so that's what makes the difference thank you miss vaughn the point is while taking miss jordan yeah what i just wanted to say is that he wanted to make sure that everything was perfectly clear that he is not the superintendent that's why he has been going through the superintendent that we have sitting right here at this table and that he was reaching out and making it perfectly clear like even with mr simmons said today what keeps you up at night so he's reaching out to get exactly what he's saying to get to know the people of and not overstep dr savage and having that communication with him as well and meeting once a week twice a week but having that
217good communication with him he did put that out there that if any of us were to want to you know pick up the phone to call that he was open to us i mean i know he might not have been have that separate conversation with him either but that was there for us if need be i totally understand you need to understand my point also absolutely absolutely so before miss miss kittens i will say that having this consultant contract clarifies that he will be a consultant in addition one of the concerns that i had was that as he's getting to know the district he's getting some information and there are certain laws that are applicable so this contract will also ensure that he is abiding by our school board policies and the applicable laws miss
218kittens i did speak with him and there's absolutely nothing on either one of these two documents that i discussed with them so i do not feel that there was any unpropriet impropriety or anything like that thank you any other myth so a couple questions regarding can are we still talking about the contract now can i go back to that yes okay thank you who does he actually report to my so i have a couple concerns regarding the cons and i'll just get all the questions out here so has the district ever done this before as far as a superintendent and then the incoming superintendent is a consultant so my understanding and i actually spoke to andrea messina as well regarding this is that there have been a few districts that have done this in the
219past i have not been able to get a hold of any of their contracts i will tell you that based on my conversations a simple consultant contract is usually what people have been using something similar to what we have and then in one second ms kittens and just to go back to your point miss giovanelli who does he report to he's working as an independent contractor as a consultant with very specific guidelines and this is a contract between him and the board ms kittens and isn't he still during this time period or is he finished or when will he finish working on his current position so he'll be working two positions at once and i guess that's between him and them but will he be working too he's not working two positions at once because
220i think in april he should be getting ready to move down here to lee county which indicates that he'll be finished with his current employment any other questions or discussion on this contract miss giovannelli well and it also like mentions like board members versus bored i when you start saying board members that becomes individually and i just i'm really concerned over that and i just really want to make sure that we're respectful of this present superintendent and that i don't want him to be circumvented going to the board and or vice versa you know the board going to this the new superintendent before he's a superintendent i'm i'm just kind of concerned over that and so we have a section we have some a sentence in section three with regards to responsibility of parties that
221it says very clearly that consultants shall not supervise nor provide direction to the school district miss kittens but in chicago and then miss patrick of the miss kittens i didn't see miss patrick's hand yeah so miss g vanilli i did go through this and make sure that terms were used consistently and where board members are referred to as opposed to the board it is appropriate so for example 1c consult with board members and school district staff to ascertain system successes and identify areas of improvement i would expect the superintendent to sit down with each of us individually and determine that whereas two two says board employee of the board correct so i i saw it i really did go through that with a fine tooth comb to and i'm sure that attorney depe bruno is
222annoyed with me about the scribner's changes that i've asked for but it was with that specific thing in mind okay so i'm confident that your concerns in that regard are covered okay and then before miss kittens miss givenelli if you look at subsection 1b as well it's very clear that dr ken savage is the interim superintendent miss kittens okay and then even based on what you just said two things number one under section one b is in boy guidance to the superintendent and then in two is not an employee of the board in the past it was my understanding that if when we had hired consultants to do certain things with the district they reported to the superintendent as per the contract that the board agreed upon we have a contract with abc company to
223find out you know how we buy chairs just saying and the board agrees upon that and when the board votes and agrees it says that from that point on the superintendent then is the purveyor of that contract unless there is up into termination and all that so the way this is written providing guidance and then the second part is not an employee of the board the question is who is he an employee of this is a contract am i correct he's an independent contractor so he's not an employee of the school district of lee county he's an independent contractor now if the question is so i'm sorry miss kittens explain a little bit more what well i'm saying we've had several consultants what i can't remember the names of all of them now but we
224had a couple demographics well davis and then the others that did the operations kind of opera operations and all that stuff to find out where how we could get better i it's late and i can't remember their names the superintendent it was a contract and when there is a contract and we agree upon it as a board look at the contracts and it says going forward the superintendent has all rights and whatever to handle those contracts somebody has to have oversight of a contract it can't just be you know they're they're just they're not but but it says they are not an employee no it's the board members they're a consultant they could say it can't be a consultant they don't get benefits okay benefit who do they report to the it's the board it's
225an agreement between the four right there very first paragraph i read it but it says clearly not an employee of the board i don't understand not an email employees on our payroll getting benefits from us and is an employee of the district and of the board a consultant is somebody that we hire for a specified period of time for specified for for for listed services to be provided to the district this is a specified period of time with listed services to be provided to the district he's not an employee until the contract kicks in now i get that he's a consultant i get that but even as a consultant he is getting paid from this district and let's say halfway through something goes awry does it come to us to say so miss getting maybe
226this will clarify a little bit so if you look at section one where it says services provided the consultant shall provide consulting services to board and then it lists the types of consulting services so it is the board i just the verbiage that bothers me is b provide guidance that sounds like a supervisor or someone that is superior to the superintendent so would you we could change take that word out and just say provide feedback i mean what would you like it to say collaborate or so collaborate means that they're working together which means which defeats what you're trying to do so he's an independent contractor which makes it self-employed i'm an independent contractor as a realtor it's self-employed he said i get that separate but even even when you get a job as a
227as an independent contractor the person who hired you tells you yay or nay what to do okay miss kittens is there tell me tell us what we can do to help you to understand or make the changes whatever so that we can move on to public comment okay what what my concern i said specifically is one b that says provides guidance guidance is a word that means you direct someone what what would you like to see there in one be i don't know the word for it but it just sounds like when you have a contract some you have to report to somebody okay here's patrick and then i have a customer go ahead mr trigger davis demographics provided guidance to staff with regard to the proximity plan they provided guidance they didn't dictate what
228staff does they provided guidance because the contract was between the superintendent and davis demographics here the contract is between us and dr bernier and he is to provide guidance to the superintendent amongst other things it doesn't say dictate the actions of the superintendent it doesn't say the superintendent is to answer to dr bernier it doesn't in any way create a hierarchy of anything it's providing guidance and i would think that dr savage would want that guidance given how closely they've been working together up to this point and how closely they will be working together going forward the point is a smooth transition and i totally understand that even if it said work with the superintendent and you know provide feedback miss fisher and then and then i think i have some clarity well let me
229just jump in with the clarity miss miss getting if you look at number three it is very clear consultant shall not supervise nor provide direction to the school district great miss fisher so the webster's definition of guidance is direction advice or something that instructs thank you so i see that's why miss kittens if you're guiding me you're showing me the way to go okay so can we take can we get rid of the word guidance so we can take a sentence yes that's what we're going to do so let's take a consensus to remove the word guidance and 1b to remove the word guidance that'll do whatever the word guidance so it will read provide feedback to dr ken savage right is that good yes but yeah we've been trying to okay so okay sia
230no other we are opening up public comment so if there is i do have a question you have a question yeah do we need may paragraph three do we need to have a reference to confidential information at the end there board shall provide free access to staff and consultant shall be afforded all information related to district business to include confidential information necessary to effectuate the terms of the agreement or is it assumed under board shall provide free access to staff and consultants shall be afforded all information is all information inclusive of con confidential information the way that it was written yes okay the meeting of the minds would be yes i'm good i make a motion because we still have to have public comment now we have we have to have a motion first i
231have a motion yet but is there anything else with regards to this contract is everybody okay with number four because that would be the only other thing which is the two payments of 7 500 for the 15 000 may have a consensus on that please okay so that's seven zero everything else i think is pretty standard so miss patricka i just want to ensure that the scribner's changes will be made yes ma'am okay thank you now miss kittens the motion please i make a motion that we accept and it's just this one exactly okay i make a motion that we approve the for good cause the approval of consultant agreement with dr christopher bernier with wait wait wait with scriveners i hope i said this right corrections and any other corrections that have been discussed
232at this table beautiful you have a second motion thank you so we have a first and second do we have any discussion see a new discussion thank you i will open this up for public comments anyone if anyone would like to speak please go to the podium thank you and please state your name tara jenner more than anything i'd like to say that i just get the feeling that attorney dupree bruno is acting more like the incoming superintendent's personal attorney advocating for his needs and benefits rather than in her role as board attorney who has a fiduciary duty to the district and the county taxpayers here in lee county as well as to those of you on the dais it seems like she's bent over backwards in order to assist getting this contract written in
233the most favorable way for him without looking at things that are favorable for us and i'm just going to leave it at that because i'm just tired of this mess sharon mcgill just a point of clarification the consultant contract would be signed simultaneously with the contract for employment or at any time after the employment contract has been signed the consultant contract would not be signed and effective prior to receiving a signed employment contract thank you is there anyone else that would like to speak mr bruno will you answer these contracts would be signed simultaneously so when it's presented to dr bernier he had signed the employment contract and then he'd signed the consultant contract thank you and i am going to go ahead and call for the vote mrs morgan hi this one hi mrs
234kittens hi i'm sorry hi miss patricka miss juvenelli hi good morning it's getting late and i seven zero thank you miss dupree bruno after 10 o'clock again no promises yes the i'd like to offer to my colleagues the opportunity to postpone board member comments attorneys comments and superintendent comments to the extent that they are not necessary to conduct the district business of the district over the next two weeks i do have one thing i need to bring up i'm sorry may i make that recommendation if it's necessary to the conduct of the district over the next few weeks and feel free to do it otherwise i'm willing to give up my time so that we can all go home at 10 o'clock at night okay well i know i'm the only thing in between but
235i do have a comment to make yes that may i please yes please okay mariner high school lady tritons the soccer team were the first ever in history to win a state championship according to our protocols as to who can be recognized it does say that they fall under that circumstance and i would like to propose that at our next meeting as has been done in the past that we have invite them to be here for the beginning of the meeting as part of recognition i have data and minutes from other times that other teams have done that when they received state so i am making that proposal okay and i believe if i'm correct there's a form that they fill out so they if you just have them fill out the form there's a
236phone usually always comes from the school yeah okay well i just thought that anyway can you please make sure that i know where that is and we'll make sure it gets in but is everybody amenable to it is what i'm asking absolutely i've only heard from three people can can we ask for once you turn that in we ask for a concern could we please have consensus before we'll get done thank you is there anyone else who has comments that they have to share this evening and whatever they would like to share i can wait oh we can't i just want to remind the scheduling people that i think they said next week is national sleep awareness week always always seems ironic to me especially at 10 o'clock thank you well see dr savage do
237you have anything that you need to share this evening or would like to share this evening just a big thank you to our student who representatives pretty amazing i just had to give them a big shout out pretty amazing i'll be sharing the next time all the wonderful things that the kids have and pictures that they had done from this past week mr preeper now sorry miss jivanelli just really quick i always want to thank staff that's still here i'm counting the people just so you know i was out there i was counting and i'm like i'm amazed and the people that are still here thank you that's it's it's 205. direct the superintendent to allow them to sleep in tomorrow yeah capri mr prieburno do you have anything i have one thing very very
238quickly but i was just notified and i just want a consensus on this because we approved this contract but i have a question for the board going back to medical examination there's a line that says the superintendent authorizes all such examining physicians to report all findings to school board if school board requests a full report is there any objection to removing that sentence from the contract what the superintendent authorizes and i'm sorry i just got something that makes me ask this the superintendent authorizes all such examining physicians we're talking about medical examination and contract the superintendent authorizes all such examining physicians to report all findings to the school board if the school board requests a full report why do you want us to remove it after we voted on it i'm just okay i mean
239he agreed to it right it's unless it's a problem on his end and you'll have to come back to tell us that you tell us why you want us to remove it after we have voted to approve it because i just got something that made me ask you that question so that's why but let me let me let me an interesting ride so let me go back and if there's a problem i'll come back to the board can i end with one thing yes please okay it won't be next the next two weeks this is happy international women's day every home every heart every feeling is incomplete without you and to all of the incredible women in the world pray on shine on not just today but every day thank you that was national sleep
240week well seeing no other business to come before this board this meeting is adjourned and i appreciate each and every one of you thank you