001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of may 25th 2021 is now called to order the time is 6 p.m we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential and the district vision to be a world-class school system this evening's agenda includes moment of silence pledge of allegiance resolutions public comments consent action items which include three items under board office which are for good cause the three good cause items are approval for the interview candidates for the interim superintendent position approval of the superintendent's search firm advertisement and advertisement platforms number three appointment to the citizens member to the value adjustment board
002as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add these three items to the agenda two items under executive services which one is good cause dr atkins please provide an explanation for this one item okay item g2 good cause approval the second amendment to the memorandum of understanding with lee health for coba rapid testing for the school district this amendment actually allows lee health to provide coveted vaccines to our students and staff members much like they do testing now the service is completely voluntary which is important voluntary for families we're simply offering this as a convenience thank you as presiding officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda 16 items under academic services which one is good cause dr atkins please provide an explanation for this one
003item madam chair this is h16 approval to increase the facility rental expenditure for graduation at hertz arena this is a cost of three thousand dollars it's a changeover fee is a licensed condition and this is because we are converting it from an ice environment to a non-ice environment it is something that was listed in the term of the contract so we need to move forward with graduations and that's a cost increase that goes with it so great thank you as president officer i find there is good cause to add this one item to the agenda six items under business services three items under human resources 12 items under operations and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda i recommend that we adopt the agenda as published thank
004you miss fisher and second by ms swann thank you miss vaughn and please record your vote is everybody able to record their vote who are we waiting for okay 6-0 motion passes thank you okay miss morgan will lead us in a moment of silence after which miss vaughn will lead it lead us in the pledge of allegiance miss morgan please lead us in a moment of silence please rise thank you thank you miss vaughn 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 okay next we have the resolutions approval of resolution proclaiming june 2021 as caribbean american heritage month board members is there a motion to approve miss vaughn and move to approve that resolution
005thank you miss vaughn is there a second second thank you miss fisher and please record your vote it comes later miss roman has everyone voted what i can't say is it 5-1 that's 5-1 thank you five one motion carries okay next on the agenda is public comment miss dupree bruno please address the item of public comment good evening thank you madam chair school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a blue card make sure it's in the basket that's provided if you need a blue card they are located in the hallway outside of the boardroom the rules concerning public comment are posted in the back
006public comment will be made from the microphone in the back please be advised that the board does not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers at the end of the public comment period the board chair may address some of the concerns or the assignment of any concerns or requests to the superintendent speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or a display of temper are prohibited please also bear in mind that we often have students who attend our board meetings speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order
007any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there will be one warning please govern yourself accordingly for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20 two minutes if there are 30 and one minute if there are 31 speakers or more for the policy the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole please do not address each other and also recognize that the board acts as a collective body please state your name prior to making your comment i
008will call your names five speakers at a time and then please follow staff's direction when lining up madam chair we have 38 speakers for this evening thank you mr bruno are is there anyone out in the audience who did not have an opportunity to fill out a blue card that would wish to that's on my left side is there anyone on the right side anyone in the back who has not had an opportunity to fill out a card yet okay cnn mr free brandon would you please go ahead and start calling thank you for the following individuals please line up robert roper sean williams rachel spiller amaria spiller stephanie brooks robert roper also known as ward cleaver did you hear about the school board in california where children as young as four and five years
009old were exposed to lgbtq teaching or the school board in oregon they had a policy to allow boys and girls restrooms or the school board in washington state that adopted a policy to allow boys to compete with girls in sports or the one out in michigan the school board that offered an off-the-record policy permitting staff to withhold information from parents did you hear about the school board in virginia they actually promoted activist training of students using students to back up the staff agenda in public meetings opposing parents or the school board in tennessee where teachers and students are afraid to say anything contrary to lgbtq plus for fear of retaliation oh wait those things didn't happen there they all happen here in southwest florida indoctrination means teaching someone something to accept a set of beliefs
010without questioning them good evening madam chair madam vice chair reporter if you just we're gonna restart your car because it wasn't up yet i would like to speak about those parental rights before you create a blanket policy on parental rights it's what those parents will do with those with that knowledge that matters the most most parents are going to hug those their children just a little bit tighter will send their children to so-called reparative therapy sometimes called conversion therapy which can inflict immeasurable harm on the victims can lead to lifelong trauma family rejection equals eight times more self-harm and thoughts of suicide five times more depression three times more illegal drug use compared to their peers these are debunked and extremely dangerous and sometimes fatal consequences some parents could kill their gay sons rape their
011lesbian daughters murder their transgender sons and daughters lgbt youth are born perfect and they're all deserve to grow up knowing that they so they're celebrated and valued for exactly who they are thank you my name is emery spiller and i'm from the southwest florida lg lgbt plus coalition i realize that all of you no matter your personal beliefs have the intent to protect students i've heard it asked by board members why trans anti-discrimination needs to be singled out when it's possibly covered under other protected categories the answer is because today trans lives are particularly vulnerable these are the names of trans lives that have been taken by anti-trans violence just this year 2021. tiana alexander samuel edward damian valentine bianca banks dominique jackson 50 bands alexis braxton chyna carliel jeffrey bright jasmine kennedy jenna franks
012diamond sanders rhianna pardo jada peterson dominique luscious remy fennel tierra banks natalia smut iris santos tiffany thomas kerry washington jahara di alto whispering wind bear spirit will the following individuals please line up crystal seiscon carrie lerner chrissy devagelli willie middleton and susan i'm rachel spiller and i will be continuing her list of the trans lives lost to anti-trans violence this year sophie vasquez danica henson serenity hollis oliver taylor and thomas harden and that's just in these first months of 2021. it's not enough to aim to do no harm you have a duty as custodians of tomorrow to keep bending the ark toward justice to today to the day when there are no victims and no perpetrators of anti-trans violence hi my name is stephanie brooks i've been a children's case manager and supervisor in the
013community for over seven years i'm part of the southwest border coalition for lgbtq and i'm here to say that it is a new point being made by those who are here to manning the best practices and action steps to be removed from the code of conduct had they bothered to do any research they would know that just last year the 11th circuit ruled in favor of drew adams setting precedent that the schools must treat transgender students equally in the bathrooms under 12 title 9. trashing in quality florida's version of the best practices best practices and action steps doesn't change the fact that it's illegal to deny access to the bathroom that matches the child's gender identity there will always be people on the wrong side of history just like they were when they fought desegregation
014in gay marriage now you have to choose what side of history you come down on you are the board of education and i hope and also believe that knowledge is power hofia nun said it best when he said knowledge is power information is liberating education is the premise of progress in every society and every family please don't worry thank you thank you ma'am christine divajilli i want to play something for you real fast so what that what y'all just heard right there that's a riot that took place at lehigh senior high school one of two that took place in a lehigh school and one was at varsity lakes middle middle schoolers there was what looked like a prison riot at varsity lakes middle and from your faces right now looks like y'all don't even know
015what i'm talking about and that is pretty sad i am sitting in here in a room where that you have segregated you have brought us back to ancient times you have segregated us and you wonder why you have riots in middle and high school it is because of the decisions that you people have made do better i'm susan and you know who i am word in the teaching community is that gender support plans are being issued under the guise of 504s is this true if so the district is in violation of the civil rights act as this is a gross misuse of title funding and is not the intended use of a 504. we're on the topic of 504s in the last 12 months how many children were denied 504 accommodations for behavioral or special
016needs what about the kids with medical exemptions for masks i can tell you from personal experience that our crisis units are overwrought with suicidal teenagers overwrought and they're sent over to golisano in holding until they can get to the crisis unit this is all on you and you should all be ashamed thank you crystal says khan i'm with the southwest florida coalition for lgbtq plus youth lgbtq plus known youth know that we the lgbtq adults and allies strive to create safer schools and communities for you and with you know that as hard as we try we cannot 100 eradicate the reckless and cruel recklessness and cruelty found in often homophobic racist transphobic anti-black anti-immigrant in a pro-violent society the forces attempting to suppress and eliminate the lgbtq community are strong and you probably already know
017this it probably already lives on your skin so what do we do now we need to rally our gsas organize vigils in our schools find solace in each other we dive we name our fears and our oppressors and all that must be changed we put pressure on school officials city council people senators and other folks in positions of power we take over bridges and we march for justice together you are not alone thank you will the following individuals please line up heather boyle chris tompkins tim does crystal verve chris quackenbush good evening my name is carrie lerner and i am a graduate of colusa middle school cypress lake high school and edison community college my roots in this community run deep and i am here to speak to you school board members to remind you
018that yes indeed you are elected to represent your constituents and you are elected to represent those more vulnerable among us and you are also elected to provide leadership when you adopted the best practices and actions for inclusivity with definitions there for all to see you were acting as educators for and you were acting in support of the lgbtq community i ask that you continue in that leadership role and not kowtow to verbal pitchforks and thank you ma'am next speaker please hello i'm willie middleton vice president of the league county democratic black caucus i have been discriminated against in my younger days at school i'm asking this school board to think what you're doing these scars these walls of discrimination and hatred does no one any good please follow best practice steps and look after our
019lgbt kids and trans kids make sure that they are protected it does no good to keep listening to others that won't constantly keep mistreating others for no reason whatsoever it's all about love and treating each other with respect thank you hi my name is heather boyle i didn't finish the whole video earlier but i did listen to part of the purchasing audit and one of the parts that did concern me was that the school board allows purchases for 35 35 000 and under to be done at the school's discretion i'm wondering how the amounts are being determined as far as the quantitative spending is there a separation of duties why is procurement not in charge of purchases up to 35 000 also in the code of conduct you mentioned restorative practices are parents involved in
020that who is determining what the practice will be and who is facilitating it is that counselors at the school is it administrators and are they adequately qualified to do that it was also mentioned the white paper will be replacing the equity poster is there going to be an example shown to parents before you are putting it up in schools like you did the equity poster last year the critical support guide is also going to be replacing that and the stakeholder input will be enlisted my question is who are considering thank you ma'am next speaker please crystal vervate so i watched the video from the meeting earlier today i had to laugh a little bit about you guys saying that you're going to get parent input on the critical care guide i was part of the
021kova task force we you brought in you know people parents teachers school board members teachers unions folks to get our input and collaborate and then final decisions were made behind the curtain without anybody's input well i'm sure the school board and some other or the teachers union and some other folks but if you do take parental you know guidance and feedback take it seriously i mean i'm here all the time the people behind me are here all the time and it seems like what we're saying is falling on deaf ears so when are we gonna start being taken seriously also i'm hearing a lot of things around the lgbtq community and high suicide rates are these practices that you guys are inputting are they being benchmarked are they being effective or are they just a
022piece of paper to appease people to shut them up are you guys benchmarking that how effective i am next speaker please miss quackenbush where in the world did we get the district logo personal passionate and progressive it has no relationship to the three r's which is supposed to be your job it seems to be at odds with the conservative sentiments of parents and citizens of lee county as well that you represent and our governor ron desantis last week in naples he said quote let me be clear there is no room in our classroom for things like critical race theory he said he wants quote facts not political ideologies he will not allow our schools to teach kids to quote hate our country and hate each other woke education by extension is teaching the kids to
023hate themselves thomas soule says the techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on american school children these include inducing acceptance of alternative values by psychological rather than rational means all this has diverted our kids from hope pride in our country and education to depress the self and self-loathing this district has gone right speaker please will the following individuals please line up carolyn norris tara jenner nancy terry elizabeth roper pamela vasquez chris tompkins lgbt vice president democratic caucus member democratic black caucus member southwest florida coalition for lgbtq kids we don't live in a utopia we live in a reality and the reality is that lgbt kids are harmed discriminated against or mistakenly injured in our society these guidelines work they've been in place we're not asking for something
024new here we're asking you to continue doing what's right we don't want harm coming to our children we don't want harm coming to any children all children deserve to be safe and secure in their surroundings do the right thing keep the best practices in place it prevents childhood trauma and liability for all involved thank you good evening my name is tim dues i'm with the southwest florida coalition in support of lgbt youth good evening i am a lifelong gay man who has lived almost 60 some years as a gay man in many environments this environment that we have today is as toxic as i've seen it i am here to support the league school district's best practices and the code of conduct i don't see stepping back at this point we're not here to support
025the revised version the board is considering because it really isn't something that lgbt people can understand and identify with you are being challenged by groups for political reasons not the well-being of the children just their political ambitions being lgbt is difficult at best sir thank you next speaker please good evening my name is carolyn norris and i'm president of the lee county democratic black caucus i respectfully ask that the best practices and action steps remain in the code of conduct it is my belief that excluding this section may prove detrimental to our lgbt children however when these practices are applied it serves to enrich awareness of differences in this melting pot we call america removing this section from the code of conduct will have a negative impact on the self-esteem of our lgbt children during
026this difficult and delicate stage of their development taking away this support and not replacing it with something better will hamper the growth of our lgbt youth and their peers outside the lgbt community who are now learning to find balance judgment skills and decision making during their informative years today we live in an environment of heightened intolerances and insecurities you or your child might be next thank you next speaker please hi elizabeth roper this started seems to have started from an anti-bullying measure and so i wanted to go along those lines i know teachers who are afraid to speak up against this for fear of being fired and labeled a bigot so who's being bullied here i know of students who are afraid of speaking up for fear of being bullied and being labeled a bigot
027i know that there are students and teachers alike that are both terrified of being labeled so on march 22nd it was said if a cisgendered student doesn't like being in the bathroom with a transgender student they have a right to find another bathroom that's true they do have that right but if they turn around and walk out of that bathroom because they're not comfortable they're going to be labeled a bigot and a bully and that is just not acceptable with me so i kindly ask you to repeal this thank you tara jenner in the code of conduct there's specific language addressing invasive procedures and this includes injectables the superintendent just mentioned the code vaccine 21 usc 360 applies merely mentioning in this forum that the covet injections are voluntary is insufficient the district has an
028affirmative duty prior to any injection that they make available to tell each individual that it is voluntary it's experimental and not approved there may be no encouragement to get the jab and this includes gift cards or other incentives and notice must be given of the significant known potential benefits and risks given the current environment where people are told to just wear the mask because you got to help everybody else out that's a form of coercion and i'm encouraging the board to recognize the fact that you need to get opt in permission well the following individuals please line up francis haas clinton just francis elmore ricardo bocanegra paula blair hi i'm nancy torreira and i'm a member of the southwest florida coalition for lgbtq youth i'm here really listening to the board today i was at
029the earlier meeting i know the board is concerned for all students in lee county and has repeatedly promised to protect our lgbtq youth if that's the case i really advise the board to keep information on lgbtq best practices readily available for all teachers and students you decided the best place for this was the code of conduct now you've decided that the poster form didn't work and i can understand that but i suggest to you that you redo the format that you put the same information or appropriate information into the policy into the code that shows the policies and best practices thank you hello my name is pamela and i'm here with the southwest florida coalition for lgbtq plus youth so while i'm not i'm not a former mem i'm not a former student of lee
030county i have sisters that have been and are and it's the kind of hateful rhetoric that we're hearing now and unsafe you know spaces for students that has kept them out of in-person school they didn't feel safe i know something was brought up about sharing bathrooms with lgbt students i'm not quite sure how people who are against that are planning on are planning on enforcing it are we having a genital infection are we going to be trying to figure out whether or not someone is the gender that they are by looking at their genitals it's just thank you ma'am next speaker please for lgbtq youth and i am here to urge you to continue following the best practices in regards to the lgbtq conduct issues that have been presented here i am a parent of
031two current and one former lee county school district students and i know of no issues brought about by any of the lgbtq students within the district i am a nurse practitioner and a healthcare provider and over the last year i've spent much of my time caring for patients some many of them with copen19 and i will say that there's talk of the board trying to follow the letter of the law at a minimum requirement that's not how i wish to treat my patients that's not how i wish my students in the district to be taught do your best your next speaker hi my name is frances elmore and i am a graduate of florida gulf coast university dunbar high school varsity lakes middle school and pinewoods elementary school i have been in fort myers florida
032as many years as i can be and i'm currently studying to be a higher education professional and when i talk to lgbt students that graduated from lee county high schools i want to stop hearing how hurt they are and i want to stop hearing how hard it was to be trans in lee county high schools and i want to start hearing that their school admin helps them find what they needed and that they felt loved and they didn't get rocks thrown out their heads and that they didn't get fruit caps thrown at them and that they felt safe because that is the bare minimum we should be doing for students this is the bare minimum we should be doing for the future of lee county and the future of the rest of the country thank
033you very much hi my name is ricky bocanegra i'm here on behalf of the southwest florida lgbtq coalition for our lgbtq youth and i just this best practices is not binding we are being asked to be treated respectfully and i think you are seeing us as more of a people group than as individual students but we are students can any lgbtq kids in here raise their hands see us because we are here we are loud we told you we aren't going away and if it isn't present by the nearly empty room we're not going away anytime soon we just want to be treated equally in schools we just best practices we're just asking for the bare minimum here we're not asking for anything binding we're not asking for some sort of affirmative action we are
034being very very simple here we just want to be able to use trans students want to be able to use the bathroom of their choice and lgbtq students want to feel safer in their schools this is the first step of being seen thank you will the following individuals please line up beth weiss gary weiss christina mays guinevere bk and lucas goldstein hello my name is quinton he him i am an alumni of north fort myers high school and a curtin student at fgcu i'm also a member of the southwest florida coalition for lgbtq youth when i went to north fort myers high school there wasn't really a best practices policy for lgbtq youth i spent those four years afraid to be myself and disconnected from my peers for this reason and the students that i
035see sitting in front of me and the students that i know go to these schools deserve better than that they deserve to feel safe they deserve to feel connected to their peers and accepted and they deserve to be able to use the bathroom thank you hi my name is paula blair i sponsored the gay straight alliance at cypress lake high school for 15 years over this time i've had contact with many trans students as a group these students were among the most thoughtful kind and caring students i've known unfortunately these children often had high absentee rates and low grades because every single day was a challenge just going to the bathroom was incredibly stressful especially when they were denied access to the restroom where they felt most comfortable trans students have to constantly worry about
036not fitting in and being bullied even by adults these children are often anxious and depressed and have an extremely high suicide rate our school district has a duty to provide a loving and stable environment for these children this code of conduct provides a framework for accepting these students so they feel safe coming to school during one of the most difficult periods of their lives hi i'm beth weiss as a mother a grandmother and an art educator i want to emphasize the importance of page 84 in the lee county school's code of conduct the term color of law that comes to mind when viewing page 84 declares that it is a crime to deprive any person of any right protected by the constitution and any law of the united states the visual impact of the state
037of florida as an inclusive rainbow of all safety for all students is so vitally important as a teacher my school encouraged me to post a welcoming rainbow outside of our classrooms to symbolize a safe haven for students who needed to talk about any issue that was important to them the students understood the meaning of this visual language and often availed themselves of this opportunity page 84 expresses the same concept of safety and caring that all schools can provide for all students thank you ma'am next speaker please i have a first grade granddaughter in the school system i want her to learn that her school's advocate inclusion of all students my daughter my granddaughter's aunt is a middle school counselor she has shared with me the vulnerabilities of her trans student and what she has to
038do to help them i have discussed this with educator family and friends i've shown them the best practices and the reaction of each of them has been that this is beautiful and advocates inclusion for all students in the community it will benefit all students they all ask so what's the problem here my response is that a group of politicians who neither know nor care anything about education are trying to make a name for themselves at the expense of our kids each of you are educators who have the responsibility for effective administration of our schools i'm sure each of you know how much the best practices is needed in our community it is why we elected you thank you i'm with the southwest florida thank you sir next speaker please hello my name is christina mays
039i'm the mother of a rivers dale high school transgender child the last time i went into any women's restroom i thought they had private stalls so if somebody's child is coming home and saying they saw a boy in the bathroom that means that child will start peeping so which child is in the wrong which child needs to be reported most of these transgender children live in what's called a stealth lifestyle that means they're afraid to let anybody know who they are in fear of bullying and retaliation my child refuses to go to the bathroom because somebody peeped under the skull on her is that wrong you will not know who is in that bathroom unless you look most of these children if i showed you the pictures you would not be able to tell my
040child fights to make sure she looks feminine and look at her mother i'm a straight cis gender woman but i am very tom wish thank you very much ma'am well the following individuals please line up katie ireland ben bennett wilcoxon paul newcombe mercedes price harry corey dye hello my name is lucas goldstein i got my bachelor's in child and youth studies and i'm going to be a teacher i am in the fgcu masters of educational leadership program and i am with the southwest florida coalition of lgbtq plus u if the lee county school district mission is to make sure each child succeeds you must give the children what they need to succeed basic human rights how can you expect your child to succeed and get an education if you do not even respect them the
041goal of an educational leader is to be there for the students and give them a positive learning environment to thrive in so let's start for lgbtq plus children as a future educator i will make it my mission to give these lgbtq plus students the rights they need to thrive and learn thank you hello there i'm gwyn of your board nurture diary i go to cypress lake high school and i am at the southwest florida coalition for lgbt youth trans and lgbt youth are not part of the trend lgbt youth have been here all along being bullied and killed killed for being who we are i am asking that you think of all the trans and lgbt children who have committed suicide because of the things going against them in this world think for a second
042about how it might feel be told that you do not deserve to live because of who you are think about how it might feel to be kicked out of your home and told you to not deserve love because of who you are that is the truth that so many children have to deal with children deserve safe faces and i ask that you allow that i ask that you allow the bare minimum and make sure the children feel safe while growing up in lee county thank you hello my name is katie ireland and i'm one of the founders of the pldms identity club and i'm here on the topic of the equality florida poster all students should be able to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity in this poster is a
043resource that teachers can use to help their trans students better removing this poster wouldn't make us exist less it would just create more suffering for young queer people and no matter how hard you try to remove things that make us feel safe we won't go away being lgbtq isn't a trend that only just now deserves accommodations you just didn't see us before because a whole generation a whole generation died of aids and so many more stayed in the closet because of stigma there's nothing i can do to make people care about their children and their children's queer peers but i can point but i can point out hypocrisy and endangering the lives of trans students with bigotry we don't want to be fought over we don't want to fight and we don't want to cause
044problems we just want to be kids hi my name is bennett wilcoxson and i am one of the founders of the podms identity club i'm in 8th grade i am i am here in support of the trans community if you get rid of the equality poster now problems with the lgbtq community will still be there keeping the poster would be a step in the right direction school is a place where students are meant to learn and express themselves getting rid of this poster would limit the ability of teachers to aid their students and if students can't deal with their own issues how can we be expected to learn and grow as people and i'm not the only one who has experienced this keeping the poster helps the community put up with their struggles but if
045not for their own well-being of the time of the board thank you good evening my name is paul newcombe i'm a citizen of lee county have been for quite a few years and as a citizen of this county i've helped and nurtured three generations through the lee county school system there's been i would just start off by saying i do not support the board's best practices or their actions on lbgtq in the public school system lbgtq has been in their community and their advocates have been supported financially by blm and supporters of critical race theory one of the things that critical race theory talks about is that they want to take away from some particularly whites and give to others thank you very much will the following individuals please line up daniella dye melissa hatter
046and zynga gaines danielle hagman good evening i'm mercedes price harry i just wanted to let mrs gettings know that after six months i brought you the book the coddling of the american mind and i would be willing to buy it for every one of you if you would be interested in reading it talks a lot about how we got here today i think you will enjoy it i wanted to bring the book as well to point out that you can only control what you can control which is yourselves and the judgments that you make you cannot control how someone feels you cannot control the fact that as teenagers were confused and sometimes mean and i wanted to point out that a poster will not determine somebody's validity or self-esteem that's really up to parents sounds
047to me like the kids in the lee county school system are very welcoming and you as of your march 22nd workshop are too nonetheless superintendent conversation when it comes to nalt i'd like to say a hard no thank you corey die i'm gonna read for tone control we believe all children need to be protected and given the best quality environment to which we hope they can all be successful in this is supposed to be a non-partisan body of government but there sure seems to be a lot of democratic organizations pushing a political issue your non-discrimination policy covers all children i hope none of this violence spoke of this evening occurred here in our schools and if it does you definitely need to be holding your staff accountable what would the needy and low income of
048our community look like if they had this level of special interest this level of leadership focused on them what would district five look like if you had focused like this on those issues that affect all genders and pronouns an entire community has been shut out of much of the benefits rest of us are awarded how many children attend schools in a portable year after year how many kids have never even enjoyed showing up their first day of school walking into a building thank you next speaker please my name is daniella dye i am coming to you guys today to talk about the amount of items that you squeeze into each of these meetings it is becoming more and more excessive and i understand we're coming to the end of the school year but there is
049definitely not adequate enough time to review the information and make an educated decision on any of these items you guys are in the midst of a superintendent search as well or interim superintendent search and it was 30 applications it was 182 pages i believe we printed to go through all of the items that is a lot of information that you had less than 48 hours to review and now we have 16 items under consent six under business services three under human resources 12 under operations and i don't understand how we can make decisions on that many items in such a small amount of time especially when they're of vast importance i wanted to bring your attention to the superintendent search as well and say we need to really look at what we're doing going forward
050for the interim as we set our tone going forward for this thank you next speaker hi i'm melissa hatter i just want to say objection to a policy or a change of code of conduct is not an objection or rejection to any student god created us all the same we are to love you all i love any student as much as my student regardless of their sexuality or how they identify it's a policy we're opposing it's not you sixty percent of teens are bullied seventy percent of teens have negative things said online about them 61 of those are based on appearance where is based on sexuality i'm not saying there's a problem i'm saying there's a problem across the board and we need to protect all of you my name is nzinga gaines i'm a
051parent i'm a student at paul lawrence dunbar middle school on monday my daughter was the victim of a meat check she was in class a young man called her over he then stood up and punched her in the groin i am told that this is not only happening at her school but other schools throughout the school district the thing that i find alarming aside from the fact that it happened is the fact that other types of violence are taking place across the district and that being said i don't understand how it's it's okay for students to come back into class or come back to school and have to sit in near and with the people that have assaulted them my overarching concern is that when i've called and i've reached out to the school you
052can tell that i'm sick every day last week monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday to ask what the steps were so that all the students will be taken seriously and be safe i was given they can't tell me what happened to the kid that's not what i asked i will go up every rung of the ladder of accountability you ma'am next speaker no clapping please danielle hagman southwest florida coalition for lgbtq youth today i sit here before you as a disabled individual when i leave my home and go about my daily life there's one public bathroom i'm able to use and that's assuming it's not taken up by an able-bodied individual who prefers the space to a smaller stall that they can easily fit in nobody here aside from myself and our allies and other transgender
053students and other disabled individuals knows what it is like to be stressed out over something as simple as using a bathroom this is called privilege when you don't have to worry about something as simple as using a bathroom it is called privilege bathroom use should not be a point of stress for anyone in a first world country and conservative politics should not be dictating the safety of students who've lived in the shadows and periphery long enough support those who need the support they have more than earned it thank you madam chair that concludes public comments for this evening thank you i think i'm going to start with miss gaines ms gaines thank you for coming here and doctor i'm up here and dr atkins if we can get her information and follow up on that
054one that would be wonderful could you yes madam chair we will okay we'll make sure we get your information okay and then i want to thank all the students from whatever side whatever side you come here for whatever point of view that you are here for any student to come before this board and speak in the public i really i know that's hard and i really appreciate you all being here and speaking your what your truth is to yourselves miss robert and all of all the other students from the different schools i just want to let you know how much i appreciate that and earlier i did say that our students in this county do have a voice they are willing to speak on their voice and today tonight we see that again so thank
055you for being here as far as the code of conduct we want everybody everybody that comes to our school that are in our schools we want you all to feel safe we don't want anybody to ever have to worry about not feeling safe so that is definitely important to myself and i know my colleagues as well the code of conduct we worked really hard on that for goodness 2019 yeah it was over a year to with all the different people in the community the different committees advisory committees i know a lot of people believe that did not take place but i know for a fact that it did take place because i was there at most of those and going forward we will be out in the community and i hope that when we're out
056in all the areas whether it's east fort myers north wherever those communities are that we have this kind of turnout there to speak about what you feel because there are many times we are out in this community and you might see two people but we are there so we will continue to do that mr bradley and everyone spoke about that today we are going to be out there speaking to get your feedback and information but going back to the code of conduct when we brought that around and spoke about everybody we went back and forth to make sure that we had everybody included on in that code of conduct and i understand the poster regarding that poster it was an equality florida poster wasn't a leak county poster and so we were going forward and
057that was for a point of reference when i think when the when that came into play so i'm just giving a little bit of history because i was there you know we were all there and i just wanted to to put that out there but we are steadily working we're not taking anybody's rights away we want to make sure that everybody is you know protected under our code of conduct and the district will you know definitely make sure that takes place so many oh the superintendent could you please dr atkins speak on i heard again about the vaccines even though you did say that it was it's a voluntary thing and we are doing this to have putting it out there for our community so if those who want to be vaccinated or need a
058place to go we're putting it we're bringing it to you and we're not that lee health is but we're giving you an opportunity to have that nobody's telling anybody to do this no one's forcing anyone but it is a place for you to go if you need to just like the churches are doing it and everybody else but dr atkins can you please again it's to allow lee health to provide covet vaccines to students and staff and members just like they do the testing now and it is completely voluntary and in terms of all the proper notifications that's something that i'm i'm sure lee health will take care of so i don't i don't have any concern with that they have been excellent partners and have really done a great job helping us through this
059pandemic thank you and then someone had spoke about the 35 the 3 500 35 000 regarding the procurement i know that was corrected because it was misunderstood that it was individual schools could spend up to that can you could you clarify that one as well i know that the overall amount you know in terms of what the basic guidelines are you have an amount for schools which you just mentioned then you have fifty thousand dollars which is here and then over that requires board action and approval and when you approve a an amount that is the total amount so you have to do you have to divide that up amongst the different schools within the district so i think in this case you were talking about priority one marketing i believe i'm not certain on
060that but if there's an account for that all schools could utilize the board is approving just up to a certain level and we can't go above that because you've got multiple sites that go higher so we have to monitor that as we go through the expenditures throughout the year thank you i just want clarification that it wasn't an individual school that can just have kerbelon to spend that up to that amount of money right and then something else it missed i you are right we do have so much that we put into these meetings lately because there's so much that has to happen and i know we find we find ourselves being tasked at you know being here sometimes eight o'clock at night because we have we know that we have to read we have
061to do you know get this stuff done and that will be coming up later as far as you know the timing for maybe making the for the interim superintendent and giving us a little bit longer time to digest all of that information so that way we can come come up with the right solution for that as well but i again i just thank everybody for being here we do appreciate it and you know we want to hear your input so thank you for that and we do get it via email here phone calls so we do i know i read them and i'm sure the other members up here they read them as well so i thank you very much okay okay the next the next on the agenda is the approval of the action
062items under under under the agenda under consent the documentation for action items listed under consent is made available to board members seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all 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 unfinished business table items portion of the agenda mr giovannelli's not here miss patricka no thank you miss fisher i have no polls thank you miss kittens i have two i two the monthly budget report for the period ending april 30 2021 and l 10 approval of
063piggyback with suwanee county school district rfp 2209 for panelized modular buildings and miss vaughn i do not thank you miss morgan i have none and i have none is there a motion to approve the agenda consent action items with the exceptions of the pooled items i2 and l10 miss spawn i moved to put forth the consent items with the exception of i2 and l10 thank you may have a second miss kittens a second thank you okay and please record your vote is roman miss roman is it coming up or do you need a hand okay there you go everybody should have it up now there it is has everyone voted my madam chair i'm sorry one moment please can we just get a hand vote on this please ms patricka aye ms fisher aye ms
064kittens aye ms von aye ms all right and i six six zero passes and madam chair if you approve the consent agenda i have a personnel one to introduce oh thank you i totally skipped right over that tonight so thank you so i'd like to introduce kimberly sass from trafalgar middle behavior specialist school intervention support specialist to accountability research assessment coordinator continuous improvement congratulations thank you thank you okay so we will go continue on to we have two pulled items to address and let's see dr atkins please read your recommendation for pulled item all right i took i2 yes please that is approval the monthly budget report for the period ending april 30th 2021. okay is there a motion to adopt dr atkin's recommendation miss morgan i move we adopt the superintendent's recommendation for the
065monthly budget report for the period ending april 30th 2021. thank you second that second by miss fisher thank you hey this item has been moved by miss morgan is seconded by mrs fisher is there any discussion miss skittens i'm going to open it to you please okay thank you i mentioned at the last meeting that i do not intend to vote in the affirmative for any capital reports until we look at our priorities for some of the areas that are much in need i feel that we're doing more moving forward with areas of future growth rather than current need and i do not want to be caught like i was before and bringing up an issue and then later on being told well you voted on it so i will not vote on capital items
066until i see some resolution in that thank you thank you is there any other discussion regarding this and can i can i say one more thing go ahead miss kittens this afternoon it was very concerning to me and i brought it up in discussion that we are looking to build a 72 million is what was said but it was i've also heard 75 million k-8 and estero and that's the current cost and we were informed that it could be anywhere from 20 to 30 percent increase because of cost of items and i ask the question at what point do we figure it's too much and crunching the numbers the current costs between 72 even at the 72 million 30 percent increase is 21.6 million dollars so we could look at a possible cost of 93.6
067million for a k-8 and with the need in other areas of the county i just can't of good faith agree to move forward on some of these items until we look at the areas that have such a significant need okay are there any other comments miss fisher i just want to comment that these this is a monthly budget report and the budgets have already been approved and revised and this merely tells us our year-to-date spending and our outstanding encumbrance and our balance so i'll be supporting this thank you any other comments okay so you know other comments and thank you miss fisher for stating that because that's exactly what this the balance sheet so i appreciate that and i understand your concerns too ms kittens but we are trying to make sure we build as
068quickly as we can build and looking forward to franklin park being one of them so i am i will go ahead and then ask for the vote and this will be a hand vote on this so if you can just and i'm just going to go around because i know people cannot see everybody as at this point but at our next meeting everybody will be back up here on the dyna so that everybody will be visible on the screen miss morgan yes miss vaughn yes miss kittens no miss fisher yes miss patricka aye and yes for myself so it motion carries five to one okay okay now dr atkins can you please read your recommendation on the pooled item l10 yes recommended action approval of the piggyback with swanee county district rfp for type 2b
069panelized modular buildings awarded to mobile modular management corporation for the period of july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 an estimated expenditure of 350 thousand dollars with an option to cancel deemed to be in the best entry to the district approval authorizes superintendent to execute all related documents thank you have heard dr atkin's recommendation is there a motion to adopt dr atkins recommendation on l-10 or members i'm sorry ms vaughn i moved to adopt dr atkins recommendation on l-10 thank you a second please miss morgan thank you it has been moved by miss vaughn and seconded by miss miss morgan is there any discussion and miss kittens i will turn that back over to you because that was your pull please okay and again any and it's just my personal opinion anything that has to
070do with the financial expenditure for portables in lee county i will not support i do know that this was discussed yesterday and i was told this afternoon well yesterday we were told that this is a new company and i was told this afternoon that actually it is the same company that we are using presently my concern still is have we looked at our priorities have we looked at a way out of portables as opposed to spending 350 000 to stay in portables and you may think i don't understand i do understand and i have questions about it that for going on three years have not been answered and so it's a matter principle for me thank you are there any other miss vaughn yeah i feel like i do i am going to support this
071but i do so with hesitation because i am very much against how many portables we use in in this county and i know i've talked with dr atkins on several occasions about my own feelings about how we open our schools with the soft opening and bring in for the last two high schools that we opened i don't even know how many portables like portable city and i look at expenditures that we have for instance mr rickenbacker talking about the canopies are being finished in some of the schools which lack them and you know it's not just with with the portables it's not just here's a building and it just kind of gets plopped on a piece of ground no i mean you have to there are all kinds of you have to have sidewalks and
072canopies and the buildings are not good investments because they deteriorate i guess it's kind of like a car at a certain point they're they're worth almost nothing and yet we still have to fix them that said and saying i understand what ms kittens is saying i spent one terrible semester one time teaching in in a portable and it's kind of like your ostracized there was it was a portable city in a growing district not here but you know there's safety concerns and you know i think so many so many aspects so many costs that go along with the portables and then when you have to move them there's those costs too so i'm just going to say that i i know we need seats we need student stations we need we use some of our
073portables like at bonita elementary for office space because of the situation there but i will go on record one more time with my disapproval in general of the i would say way too much use of portables in in the school district thank you dr atkins please i just need to for the for the public i know the board has been apprised of this but we forget that we have a cat we had a tremendous cut in our capital budget of over 200 million dollars that we were operating with a much smaller reduced budget of which you have to try to build schools and maintainer schools and ad technology and security upgrades all of that on a tremendously reduced budget so 300 plus million down to a little over 100 million over the course of a
07410-year period of time that's what we're dealing with so just in 2018 we passed the half penny sales tax so we are in catch-up mode we also forget that in cape coral and other places in the county we also had many many many portables that we had to deal with and gradually we were able to catch up with the growth in the cape coral back in the mid 2000s and fortunately we've been able to do that but the but the shift has gone rapidly to the east after the recession when our funding went down tremendously the other thing as i need to point out is that these are leased so they don't count against our inventory you remember we the district made decisions to purchase portables years ago that counts against our inventory so we
075just have so much capacity and we're not allowed to to build certain amount we're not allowed to build to that level which is what for example with mm we had to to build that at that level because that's what the capacity allowed for at that time you're leasing them it doesn't count against our capacity and then finally just want to say i did spend two wonderful years in a modular building to start my career you know i understand some some teachers like it some teachers don't we used to have portable on the green portables on the green here wasn't ideal but it's what we had to do as a district and the operations team does have a plan to try to move us in the direction of of not utilizing the number of portables that
076we currently have we're just in catch-up mode right well thank you for that and of course this is up too so it's not saying that we're going to go out there and spend this money and also i know and unfortunately you know there is always going to be a need for that as we go forward with the building of i'm going to say again franklin park so when that school is being built we have to locate those children some place not in a building because that building is coming down so those children will you know be placed somewhere until we can then bring them back into a new a brand new building for them so i understand that you know there is a need and i wish that we could get them out you know
077quicker than we that we than we can but we have revenue coming in now and we are working on that going forward miss fisher so this vote this evening is merely to approve piggy backing with swanee county school district so that we can get the best price available as explained by mr rickenbacher and the building is not like the picture of the old-fashioned portable it's the panelized modular building and i took the time to research that and it's actually an on the ground building with a whole different safety issue composite so i think that maybe we're missing the point but we're voting on is the piggyback of the bid thank you thank you mr fisher ms kittens okay and thank you for that mr fisher i too looked into the modulation in fact i spoke
078with the modular company and you know they were explaining all that we do with that so i do understand that the new ones do look different however you know listening with the superintendent in no offense to anyone but in the last 20 years 66 of the growth has been in the east cell and a much lesser amount in the other zones and 28 which is the lowest percentage of the tax has been of the half cent tax money has been spent in the east zone so i'm just saying those figures there the facts and the figures i understand that it's a piggyback and i also understand i mean people have said quite a bit we must have these and in other areas we've had the portable cities when bonita springs was being built the portables
079that were down there do not look like the portables that are in the east zone when the west zone had their portable city they did not look like the portables that these students are in right now it's just to me it's unacceptable and it goes back to our priorities i understand that there's growth all over but when you really look at the numbers most of the growth is in one area and it's being overlooked to put buildings in other areas that do not have the same amount of growth and it's a it's just a personal thing to me until we can see a plan prove some type of a plan we're just kicking the can down the road and i just cannot support it thank you no thank you ms von i just wanted to
080make a quick clarification i'm not judging on what portables look like in one place or another i'm just i just never since i've been on this board missed an opportunity to criticize our overuse of portables and especially the way that lee county does the soft openings and i know it's a i've seen it done several times in another state without that and i've heard the arguments for and against and you'll just never convince me that it's the best way to go so i just thank you and i understand miss vaughan but i will i do want to say something just anecdotally this year that we saw happen we did do the soft opening at gateway high school yes with getting the freshman class and then we tried really hard to go full boar opening at
081gateway high school all the way through the senior class they didn't want to come if you talk about if you look at the juniors and the seniors so we could not equip a full senior class or even a full junior class so we had to to make adjustments so that's the thing when when a student gets at a school they want to stay at a school all the way through graduation and nikita to her credit you know she came and saw me and i kept remembering what miss vaughn was telling me and what the board i felt wanted us to do so we went full bore against her better wishes and you know i will have to say she as it relates to the seniors you know we really couldn't equip a senior class at
082that school and the problem too that you have to deal with when you don't can't get as many seniors there or juniors there is you're not able to offer all those upper-level classes as you're very familiar with as a former high school teacher because you just don't have the teaching staff to support it because you don't have the number of students to support the class so that's part of what goes into some of these decisions i understand we're on both either side of that issue and i've come to accept it but i just think let's let's hear both sides and then let them everyone else can decide for themselves right in fact i said one thing that please go ahead yeah i know about the senior thing and we could debate it we have and
083it's not appropriate at this point that no of course the seniors don't want to leave their home schools and the incidents that i saw were not that way but i could talk more about it but it's not appropriate so i'm done thank you well so we will go ahead and move on to the vote then and this is again a hand vote as well so miss morgan i miss vaughn yes miss kittens no miss fisher yes miss patricka hi and yes for myself so motion carries five to one thank you so we have attorney's recommendation none next on our agenda mrs giovannelli we are missing her today she's traveling miss patricka i thought rsm was coming as an attorney recommendation rsm said they were not ready they needed to process the changes and then they
084will send it back to us thank you i'm sorry i should have asked that question through the chair thank you attorneys brie bruno for responding i am gonna go as fast with these comments as humanly possible but i'm not gonna see you for a while so i've gotta get through them i watched the yes the rest of yesterday's meeting and there was no discussion regarding a writing prompt for our group interview is there any interest on the board of having a writing prompt can i don't think we need to do an official vote can we just direct staff to get that ready or do we have to have an official vote on that at least board consensus to see how the board is if they want to do that and then we can you know
085i can work with mr cashman is there a consensus that you would like a writing prompt or a writing sample are those comments okay miss miss vaughn yeah i'm going to say no on on on a writing prompt for an interim that may be something that when we have our national search company it may be something that they recommend for our permanent superintendent but again we're you know it there's there's a lot of subjective well of course there's a lot of subjectivity to all of that even though we have done our best to come up with a rubric to kind of keep all of us on a similar page in any way and we're going to be checking references and you know we've already eliminated a couple people that looked good on paper but i
086think in part the success of the of the writing prompt is going to in part depend on the person's background now i could do a lovely writing prompt because i taught english all those years and i know where the commas go and all of that but i just really feel that it's not a necessary step for us to do with five people and all the other things that we're doing to to screen each of these candidates so i'm not i'm going to oppose the idea thank you miss kittens and then miss morgan okay i'm i'm kind of on the fence by it because i had a conversation earlier with ms stilwell today we were talking about the timing if we're going to be doing interviews on two days and what the other candidates would be
087doing so it could be relevant that while others are being interviewed they could do the writing prompt although i actually think it's very subjective as well and i'm not sure that for the interim that we need it but if it's a time thing to you know give them something to do while we're going through this whole process i'm kind of on the fence with that okay miss morgan thank you ms kittens well i think particularly when we're dealing with someone that we don't know that well someone who doesn't know us that well i would like to see how they structure a an argument or a conversation or something that we need to know i mean i would like to see them asked to write about something that indicates how they would communicate with us and
088with the community in writing i think it's important to see how articulate a message can be framed so i would like to see a writing prompt thank you go ahead mrs skins just one more thing we and like i said it was talking to stillwell this morning about the timing and we're going to have a very very very short turnaround in order to get this all done and i don't know she did say that there is already a rubric and they can provide prompts and all of that and we'll that will come up too that's going to come up okay yeah thank you miss fisher did you have any comments or regarding witness i could write a really good argument or essay but i wouldn't qualify to be the superintendent of schools i i'll live
089with the majority okay so i guess we could take a consensus on that then make some comments please oh please it's really important to me to see someone's ability to write under pressure so i would ask that the board please allow this as part of my ability to make a decision about who's going to serve as the interim those are my comments thank you miss dupree burno you had something to add to that yes since we're in an action meeting can we go ahead and just go ahead and take the formal vote please that we solicit a writing sample as part of the interview process for the interim superintendent thank you have a hand this was fun well i'm not prepared to make that judgment without looking into how much that really is going to
090be a judgment on on the person that we choose and i'm not going to go just because it means something hey there's a lot of stuff that means a lot to me that never gets past the board it's got to be a better argument than than that and i know dr atkins knows how to write and so do many of the others but let's be honest secretaries and communications people you know the high level executive may do some some writing but i dare say that most of that writing unless it's from the world of academia and you know that's a whole different story if it's academic we'll go through a process and i dare say that some of the speeches are never written by the ceos because they are so darn busy with budgets and
091meetings with you know leadership things that many of the items are done by somebody from communications department or a chief of staff or or somebody or somebody like that i just i'm not ready to vote unless i could take a look at you know what kinds of things would would it be what you know ideas about what kind of prompt would we have how long would the prompt be se we're going to read five of them in addition to what we're doing and to really do a good job on five essays that will probably be at least several pages long that's that's a long that's a long process and i just don't see for the process for the person and the process for us in making judgments that it's going to really tell a story
092and again if it's something that's a common practice i wouldn't oppose it for perhaps for a permanent superintendent but i don't support it okay thank you any other comments and so now mr p bruno do we have to open this for public comments yes don't have to have a motion we have emotions on the table we've had discussion and our discussion is over and now because it is an action item we have to open it to public comments and the public comments would be those speaking on just this one topic the motion to have a writing prompt moved by ms patricka seconded by miss morgan thank you so do we need cards for everyone to fill out if anyone would like to make a public comment please line up at the microphone danielle and i
093wanted to speak on the written portion i think that a written communication is extremely important i think that we agreed previously as a board that we were going to use the cover letter for that function and it wasn't going to be an additional focus in the actual interview process but i do agree that if you're going to go ahead and i think it's important but if it's going to be reviewed it should be already part of what you were discussing in the rubik's or were added to that particular meeting when we have that discussed speak to mr cashman about that to get that added christine divajelli again i agree like you guys i sat in the meeting with you guys when you all talked about this before and you talked about how you're going to
094use the cover letter you know to to make those assessments and now we're sitting here having another conversation wasting how much how much more time you know out of everyone else's schedules here to go over the same thing again so i think we should just stick with what we talked about before especially considering mr cashman isn't here he's not he's supposed to be facilitating these conversations i don't know why we're talking about this right now without him present but i definitely agree that i think you guys have this portion of it already under control and it doesn't need any more control thank you hi chris tompkins here i'd like to support chris patrick and her request i think it's important that we know who's coming in to basically be a superintendent over our children i
095know we don't have a long time for this person to be here but for the time that person is here and while you're looking for someone else their role is important and that person could also be the person that continues on so i support what chris patrick suggesting and voting or recommending for a vote thank you thank you corey die stick to the process you guys voted on it even paid somebody to come help you make it right let's stick to the process you can uncover your ear you okay patricka i'll talk i'll talk quieter for you miss patricka a board member covering their ears wow you guys had a process you went to length about the importance of the first impression on the cover letter like you guys spent quite a bit of time
096discussing that and the value of that obviously you were extremely impressed at somebody's cover letter all of you guys raved dr savage and he took the opportunity to make the impression so i think you guys just stick to the process continue to truck forward and work hard you guys are doing a good job okay is there any other any other comments see or no comments we will then call for the vote and i just want to add one thing i do know that mr cashman did have writing samples right mr pre-bruno i don't recall who had writing samples i know that there were additional materials that was provided but i can't recall who had them but i believe everyone did have the cover letter that was requested yes thank you okay so this will be
097a hand vote again please so we will go down the list i'm going to start with oh well i'll start this way miss patricka hi miss fisher no thank you miss kittens no thank you miss vaughn no miss morgan hi and i'm gonna stick with what we had said no so motion does not carry okay so dr adkins can may i continue with my comments please yes please dr adkins can we get some information surrounding data for mental health incidents for our students through the pandemic what has the impact of increased absenteeism then what was the impact of quarantines what happens is any compensation being made by the schools for that increased absenteeism and then just sort of separate questions what happens when a student messes the fsa and the makeup fsa what is the
098fallout for that child for that teacher for that class just some general information i think as we're coming out of this it might be helpful for me to look at that data or for us to look at that data to see what kinds of changes we need to make for next year mr dai you have an incredibly loud voice and i have a splitting headache so it hurts for me to hear you speak right now so i apologize if you took that as a personal affront but it literally hurts me right now i had a wonderful wonderful opportunity yesterday to speak with not speak with be on a call with the u.s secretary of education miguel cardona and the call illustrated for me a couple of things first of all education truly is nonpartisan i
099really liked secretary devos because i didn't listen to what the news outlets told me to think about what she said i listened to her words and to me her words were competition and education is necessary because competition breeds excellence when and we see that in our his schools in lee county all the time those principals in those high schools are fighting each other hard for to be the most selected and because of that they take great pride in their buildings and they work really hard to make their schools the best and that's all i think devos was after now if you ask the democrats what they thought about it they hated her if you ask the republicans they loved her but i don't look at education through the lens of the republican or the democrat
100perspective i look at it from the perspective of of what's best for kids and miguel is a parent he's got kids in schools and we didn't have that in the previous secretary of education so i think that's a refreshing perspective the other thing i want you to to realize is he asked one question for feedback from school board members again this was school board members across the country the question was how can we reopen schools that was the question that he asked of school board members across the country how can we reopen schools how can we get schools open in time for summer as we sit here finishing a full school year where every classroom was open to every student face to face throughout the year so again congratulations to our staff for pulling that
101off fhsaa state championships were held this past weekend in fort myers and as always and i will go to a lee county commission meeting to tell them what a wonderful job their recreation staff does top notch across the state lee county is always considered amongst the best but the most amazing thing was stoneman douglas won state championship five to one and the freshmen who were in that building were on that team and the score was one to one going into the six and stoneman pulled ahead five to one and every administrator from stoneman douglas was there and it was only the athletic director from the other school that was there and i was talking to him afterwards and i said i said you weren't playing a baseball team you were playing a baseball team with
102angels on their shoulders and he was like i know you can't you know the kids were sad that they lost but the overall recognition of what those kids went through and have been through in their high school career it was it was an amazing experience to be able to sit there and watch that play out a few more things bonita springs high school senior awards night you would have dr atkins you would have been so proud i was proud as board member and i didn't mentor this guy or bring this guy along but principal estes i remember sitting in this room getting a briefing from him when he sat and he told the board his vision for bonita springs high school and how he wanted to create the culture for the school that would serve
103his own family and to see him go from that to the leader that i saw at that award ceremony was just it was fantastic i was very very proud very very proud we had our first district career tech signing ceremony many of you were there thank you to my shower door for sponsoring that spearheading that and offering their property for us to be able to have that i mean honestly gotten true when they finished the last word that's when the rain started like god was definitely on our shoulder for that i did speak at the leadership academy for the bonita estero association of realtors and they are fantastic group they really seem to understand our system very well they had a lot of questions obviously surrounding a lot of the things that are going on
104but a very supportive group and they have officially come out and supported the location of the school on three oaks so they're they're showing their support to the village council dr atkins and staff did a fantastic job at the state of our schools as usual i would have personally liked to see more fanfare given the fact that it was your last one dr adkins i was a little bit disappointed that you weren't more celebrated but i will celebrate you personally as you walk out the door so get get ready for some accolades during my public comments throughout the month of june i'm wondering about training we as a board if we could put this in the parking lot please of things for the board to discuss about a workshop we had training on lgbt but
105that was provided from one perspective i know that there's another perspective so i wonder if we can receive training from another perspective and it also i'm interested in knowing what kind of training staff is attending on this issue and whether they're getting a broad breadth of training or it's just one-sided training perhaps you could provide that information in a board update dr atkins please i think the board is getting away a little bit from our agreed-upon protocols from following our agreed-upon protocols and i just wanted to mention that thank you to board chair and to ms roman and attorney dupree bruno for working to to make it so that i didn't have to pull that resolution and finally i don't think it does any good to compliment someone behind their back ms roman i was
106telling dr atkins earlier how fantastic you are i trust you your level of work has been incredibly high you keep my schedule straight which i think is very difficult to do and ms johnson and ms reed are incredibly incredibly difficult to replace because they have a special place in my heart but but you're doing a fantastic job and i really really appreciate you those are my comments thank you thank you i'm going to jump over to miss morgan i'm going to really miss you today and i have none okay miss fisher thank you miss morgan and i have one it's a quote tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs practices and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them and the author of that is joseph osborne and i'll close with peace
107begins with tolerance and respect for everyone thank you miss fisher and miss vaughn yeah did i need to ask a question miss roman were those pictures oh i am so sorry did jason i apologize because i forget that you do it in order and i just messed you up didn't i well while he's oh there they are thank you okay several of us attended the student advisory committee and it's always a pleasure to hear how how poised our kids are and it's another reason why i love when the students come here and speak at the microphone because we i think sometimes we don't recognize these young adults and the fact that as young adults they're they're not just clones of their parents at a certain point they have their own points of points of view
108and we see that here in the boardroom we also see it in this in the student advisory the focus of the meeting and you will have you've seen the different officers that are around at the tables like in this one speaking with the children it was it was organized by our executive director dave newlin and he brought in from let's see cape coral and the city of fort myers some officers and county that i don't think the sheriff is that sheriff's department okay okay so and anyway he brought in various people you will also see in one of the pictures that although we had a lot of students face to face in attendance we are having students appear on zoom and they can participate as a matter of fact they were part of a discussion
109led by the officer that you saw at that table and i think it was very very productive for the kids and also i think it's just another opportunity for our law enforcement officers to learn well what is it that really concerns our kids what do they worry about all of those things so it's just it was it was a great opportunity for all of them another important aspect of that meeting was that the students voted that they wanted to have meetings and of course we started very late this year what was the month mr march yes i think the first meeting and so there really wasn't an opportunity to get as much done as in prior years but the students voted to have a meeting in june skip july since it's a month when everybody's
110traveling and have the first meeting of the new school year in in august so i they made that decision they wanted to continue to meet and it's it's wonderful that we can have students on the on the zoom as well because we do have some students some of the older students and we do have middle school as well as high school students some of the older students either drive themselves or you know some of the kids may have a friend or an older sibling or a parent that's available but when the meeting starts it at six o'clock we have a lot of kids that just aren't available there there's no way for them to have the transportation so i'm just really pleased with the group and i look forward to we're going to be rotating
111that each of us will be like the introduction which really isn't much be beyond hello welcome and that sort of thing but and all of us can go to any of the meetings so it's going to be a little bit different and we have a great group of kids also went to the state of our schools great breakfast great program i have to send my best wishes to all of our teachers as we're entering these early last days it is maybe one of the things i was thinking about we're talking about those essays the writing samples was my days of grading all of those and especially with the pandemic we've the teachers have had to be more flexible in accepting assignments because we've had kids that were in school and then they got quarantined and
112then they got sick i know my own grandson has had some catching up to do because he did get sick and was unable to keep up and so the worst thing for teachers i mean it's hard grading papers but when you have assignments from that are representative of 12 different assignments all with different grading keys and all of that it's it's just a really stressful time so my very best wishes to the teachers and of course to all of the school-based staff that will very soon be going on a significantly shortened summer vacation but it's it's a vacation nonetheless let's see i have to respond to a couple things miss patricka said the training the lgbt training from another perspective i'm just that's something we're going to have to discuss i guess it's on the
113board it's going to be on on an agenda but as far as i'm concerned there's one perspective and it's a perspective that we as educators need to pay attention to and it has to do with factual actual factual information and so you know i'll be open to listening but i can't imagine what other perspective might be shared regarding some of those things and of course i'm a very partisan person and if you really think education is non-partisan go up north and take and take a look at the kind of funding education gets in and some other more i'll say the l word liberal states take a look at academic freedom under some administrations versus other administrations take a look at textbook developments and the development of standards and we're seeing that right now we're seeing
114some interesting changes and some of you will be loving the changes that the governor governor desantis is embracing and other others of us not so much so the one thing that is nonpartisan at least it should be about education is that is the children and i'm not going to say that the other side of the aisle for me doesn't love the children and want to do what's best for the children i'm not saying that at all what i'm saying is approaches to education are very very different and i seen it in you know i've i've seen it in many different aspects in a couple different states so anyway that's all i have to say for this evening thank you thank you miss kittens okay i'll start with the heavy and work my way to the
115light it won't take too long i've gotten a lot of questions and people were interested in what happened to the letter that i sent to the governor and as of yesterday the board as well as myself received a letter and i'll just read portions so you'll understand that i can't say anything other than this it's to advise that the florida department of education and the office of inspector general is in the process of reviewing several complaints regarding the lee county school district the office will finish initial interviews summaries and review additional documentation as well as documentation that was requested to properly address the complaint determination as i stated before there has not been a determination on the complaint no one has been accused no cases have been filed in accordance with section 10120 florida statutes
116under certain conditions the fdoe and oig is responsible for conducting coordinating and requesting investigations into allegations of waste fraud financial mismanagement within the school district and our initial review of the complaints reviewed remains open and ongoing so it's this is what the board received this is what i received and as i had said before i found it troubling that so many people were working so hard to look through my emails etc to get a copy of the complaint that i sent when there was no determination made so there is still no determination made and no one has been you know accused or whatever of anything so i wanted to put that to rest i have to to say i was disturbed this afternoon after our first meeting when a student left in tears because they
117were afraid they were afraid of some of the comments that had been made by the audience and they just did not feel safe our job is to make students feel and be safe we talk about comments that are made in this room yes you have freedom of speech you can say within reason whatever you want attorney bruno did mention in her comments earlier there are children present there are students present we have to be mindful of how we speak and what we say and consider that we could be affecting someone who feels vulnerable and cannot protect themselves and i'm just asking all the adults within earshot or that will listen to this on tape please remember our responsibility as adults to keep children safe and feeling safe now to the happy stuff this morning we
118had the new teacher of the year congratulations to jennifer ortega at lehigh acres middle school yay she is a new teacher of the year and she was so excited that she was named her husband was there and all of that and for a first year teacher there is hope in education there's hope in lee county for where we're headed to have teachers like mrs ortega that first year out she just hit the ground running and there are many miss ortigas and take us and we need to look for them and as parents sitting out there look for your mrs ortega and pat them on the back give them a hug or tell them thank you for all that they do because it's not been an easy year i was thinking of the song and trust
119me i won't sing but hold on to what you got okay you can look it up i won't sing it the other was the apple mentor of the year and it was mrs allie delude and her parents were there i think one of the highlights was looking at her mother after she was announced and her mother gave her a hug i think she thought she was not going to let her go and she kept like okay mom but she was so proud and you know thankfully so what was said about mrs delude is that she's not only the apples mentor for one teacher but how many teachers come and seek her out for her help and all that she does i the next thing i do think we have some do the right do the
120right thing it was my turn this month i love it and these are some of the recipients of the do the right thing it's always fabulous i love when my turn comes around to do this and the cutest little kids and like oh well i just did what i was supposed to do and they were so cute they all sat up here on the deus and our chairs so you couldn't even see them they were so small but it's a wonderful organization and a great thing and especially the parents when the parents are there and we started out saying thank you to the parents for raising such thoughtful and mindful and kind students and we really appreciated that there was one little boy that was standing up there next to me taking pictures after he
121got his award and i said are your folks here he says well they couldn't come because they had and he named this whole list of things they had to do all of a sudden he looked at the door and they were here and the smile on his face was just priceless that they had come actually the last thing is if you have a down day where you need to laugh you need to go to learning for life banquet tina pegler will make sure i mean i haven't laughed so hard and for so long and she is just funny and she's just natural at it and you get a chance to talk to people that we kind of had a bad naughty table i won't point to anybody but we laughed a lot about a lot
122of different things but it was so excellent and seeing the talent that we have and how hard they work with children in the learning for life program and i thought about live love and laugh and that's what we did at that banquet and i would hope that when you we all leave here that sometime or another we stop and think to live love and laugh and thank you it's my comment thank you okay let's see for my comments a lot of you have already mentioned that i had the opportunity to be there this morning to see mrs ortega and miss duluth and you're right it was priceless just seeing their expression i mean you just felt you felt it and when they when they start crying that yeah i cannot i can't take people crying
123it makes me yeah i get emotional with them but miss kittens is correct it was definitely a worthwhile trip the 21 miles to lehigh it was great but also i had the opportunity to go to our partners in education or states of our school that was great it was highly attendant everybody thought it was fantastic we did the ribbon cutting at gateway that was another great and i'm sorry she didn't mention that was a another great it was really a great feeling we were able to the students were there they took us for a tour it is a fantastic school and they're gonna be really lucky to be in that school so i'm looking forward to what was going to come out of there also attended the and i know ms kittens was there as
124well the all-county dance at north fort myers our students from middle school elementary middle and high school performed masks on and everything they were beautiful they just did such a fabulous job they made me feel like i had to get up and start dancing but it was just beautiful to see these kids in action so i'm glad we're able to to do all that and i did a visit to maintenance i know a lot of you have been there and i was so impressed by them because they seem to to work so much together and the atmosphere there you feel good when you're in there as well and i really you could see the respect that they have for each other and i really thought that was commendable moving on to i know we have
125a lot of things that we have been doing and the board is working on our candidates that we are going to be interviewing which will be a two day the seventh and eighth because of the fact that we have five we'll have it on two days because we could not do it all on one day and i was hoping to we have scheduled the 14th meetings scheduled as far as a whole date on that and i was hoping that we could instead of trying to get everybody in there on the seventh get everybody in there on the eighth and then at the last minute make a decision give us the opportunity to because i know that's not on the agenda that's what we had stated that we would do but we do have the 14th
126at 9 00 a.m which we could then have a really good conversation after we've had time to digest everything that we have had and bring that back at a briefing which then would allow public comments so we're including the public in that and then bring and then have an action meeting that same day because we already have it scheduled that we are here so hopefully everybody will be here just do it an action meeting a special action meeting from four to five just to finalize that candidate so that is my proposal to you all i just wanted to put that out there as i said we already have these dates scheduled and then that would again allow public comments so we will be having public comment twice and giving them the opportunity miss kittens can
127you clarify for me we have a hold from nine to noon on the 14th that's correct and then we have a hole from one to four so are you suggesting that afternoon would move or the morning when moved after okay so no i'm not suggesting that we i'm suggesting that we i just lost it i apologize because the morning one is just a hole for now right and we put these holds so that way we could assure that everybody was going to be here so that just changed you're suggesting that afternoon when moved to a later start time yeah so we have a workshop a one o'clock workshop on here so right after the workshop i was hoping that we would have from nine o'clock nine in the morning because we already have that on
128here is to take is to take that nine a.m say nine ten to noon have a good conversation discussion and then after our one o'clock workshop which is the calendar that's not should not that should not take long then after our one o'clock meeting from four to five o'clock just one hour for us to come in and do an action a special action meeting which then would allow public comments and vote for the interim at that time may i miss mr preeber is was i know is that correct what we talked about earlier yes that's okay that's correct the only thing is i would need just a little bit of times if you're going to have the morning briefing from nine to maybe about 11 so i can have 11 to 1 to negotiate finalize
129any contracts that need to be finalized for whomever you decide to choose for that action meeting that day and everything that is because this the sixth the seventh and eighth we're gonna have so much that we're gonna be taking in on the seventh and then coming back in on the eighth and trying to absorb all of that and then making a decision that night i don't think it's fair to the candidates and i don't think that i think we need to have some time to digest it so i know those were recommended dates for us to to do this so that's my suggestion so miss kittens what was the question when i was i know you were talking about to be able to have the public come i just wondering i know it makes for
130a long break but you know we have to move to move that workshop or or else have an hour in between is what you're saying so you're saying one to four and then have a break and then five o'clock out of the public just four four to five so we are we're going to already have spoken to everybody on the seventh and the eighth so we have all of that time we will have our conversation at the briefing and that's all we will talk about at that briefing then we have to have an action meeting in order to take a vote so after our workshop we would then have an action meeting for one hour and that is to to come back we've already had our discussion as to come back and allow us to
131then take a vote have public comment and move forward because we had wanted this person to be to be ready by i think i believe it was the 14th or 15th of june and that way it gives mr bruno an opportunity to whatever we decide and whatever we discuss to go back and negotiate and come up with the contract for the individual so we will have already made the decision in the morning we would have already had that conversation and then bring that to the vote that evening that's what i'm recommending i'm just my only trepidation is from four to five you know the early time for people to be here too but i'm easy and then they we will have conversation they'll have opportunity on i believe we have the seventh in the eighth
132so there's still opportunity before we do vote for community involvement as well this has just given more community allowing more community involvement and i know mr cashman had thought that would be not a bad idea either so it's up to of course it's up to us so any feedback on that or miss vaughn i'm just saying it's it's hard to follow i'm looking at i'm looking at the dates and i i can sure it would be helpful to have like a schedule and that's sent to us ahead of time it's it's difficult to look at okay so if you look on you just open up your calendar okay so if you the seventh and the eighth are the days that you know we're already having interviews so we have three on monday two on tuesday
133so that will be our five five kennedys then we were supposed to come back that we could possibly come back that evening and vote now that's given us you're gonna sleep on it on monday for the three that you just spoke to and then tuesday you're gonna have the two people that you know are going to be there i just think that's a lot miss dupree bruno and another consideration is that you're going to have the group interviews they are going to be in person but to protect the process you're going to have three on monday two on tuesday you're probably not going to want to have the tapes out on tuesday you're probably going to want to have the tapes out later on in the week so that will also allow the public to
134have an opportunity to view those tapes and have some feedback on monday so here's did you understand so that's my that's my suggestion how it was before i'm just trying to look so you're saying which date to make the decision that would be that following monday on the on the 14th 14th on the 14th and that's what we were already looking at yeah it's just hard to follow and change the schedule in my head and look it up look at that miss kittens do you have yes like i mentioned that based on what attorney debris bruno was mentioning too about posting and i mentioned earlier that i had talked to ms stillwell and in order for them to have time to get it posted you know to have a day or so if we finish
135on tuesday you know morning then to have them post it by thursday or something would give them time to do all that communications has to do and the public has an opportunity over the weekend and can send in whatever you know things they might have that's why yeah i as as long as we do it that way i'm i'm fine with that mr thank you i love the idea thank you for bringing it up thank you i just i know my head's gonna will blow up i won't be mrs fisher yes are you okay with that and miss morgan yeah okay so we don't need a formal vote because it's not we don't have an agenda item on this as of yet so this was just for consensus for us to go ahead and put
136that on the schedule so we will have that there for on board docs you can you can take a vote on it on the 8th if you want to you can take a vote on it now it's up to you a formal motion it's completely up to the board but if i could at least get a consensus to make sure because you're sc you're changing the schedule a little bit and i want to be able to talk to mr cashman about this change so my understanding is that on the 14th you're going to have a briefing in the morning to discuss your candidates and then after the afternoon briefing from four to five you'll have a special action meeting to actually vote on the candidate is that my understanding is correct on the 14th and
137then that way everyone has the public has an opportunity to digest we have an opportunity to digest it and we can have clear thoughts when we go forward so if i can have consensus on that so that way when we work to put this out there on the agenda we have it ms morgan yes thank you miss vaughn yes thank you ms kittens yes yes yes please and yes so we will definitely do that and thank you so much i just think that it's going to be a better process for that miss dupree that was the end of my comments and again thank you all for working so hard to to do all this i really appreciate it thank you to that yes please miss vaughn are we going to schedule something like the like
138we have a float and the new person comes in i'm kidding but maybe not hey it might be fun but like a formal introduction of the selected news i move that ms vaughn make the float for the new person you know thank you for that i will help with the float i will i will speak to mr mr cashman on that and so that way he can reach out to all of us and share his thoughts on that but thank you for that idea i'll definitely share that with him that's a good idea and mr preet bruno do you have any comments no so on the 8th you will have your new schedule that has this additional time on it and you will take your formal vote on that new schedule on the 8th of
139june thank you that's no other comments dr atkins no comments this evening thank you thank you mr seals jason thank you so much and i apologize that i did that i forget that you have that order back there but thank you for being here with us too all right well seeing no other business i declare this meeting is over thank you so very much go in peace be safe you