School Board Action Meeting: October 19, 2021

001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of october 19 2021 is now called to order the time is 6 00 pm we would like to take this opportunity to remind the members of the public of the district's mission which is to ensure that each student achieves his or her highest personal potential and the district's vision to be a world-class system this evening's agenda includes moment of silence presentation of colors and pledge of allegiance public comments consent action items which include four items under board office for items under academic services three items under business services five items under human resources which for our good cause dr savage please provide an explanation for these four items yes madam chair item j2 the approval to adopt the

002job descriptions for legal services the this item was added as good cause because the board approved the plan for the legal department in august and the school board attorney wishes to advertise and fill the positions as soon as possible j3 nj4 the approval of the fiscal year 22 2122 covid19 memorandum of understanding with the teachers association of lee county as well as the memorandum of understanding with the support personnel association of lee county those items were both added as good cause because the unions voted in favor of ratification both of these items are for fiscal year 22 and the district would like to continue the implementation of the provisions which began on july 1st the mouss include a payment in december of a 1 000 payment to those employees that did not previously receive a

003qualified disaster relief payment from the state of florida and last but not least item j5 is the approval of the fiscal year 22 route time mileage memorandum of understanding with the support personnel association of league county that's the spouk and that item was added as good cause because the union voted in favor of ratification and implementation began again in july of 2021 for the fiscal year 22. thank you dr savage as president office officer i find there is good cause to add these four items to the agenda one item under information systems nine items under operations and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda i'll move to adopt the agenda thank you miss vaughn may i have a second thank you seconded by miss morgan please record

004your votes not coming oh there we go good job miss roman mm-hmm i cannot see it so if you could tell me mine didn't it didn't come up are you logged in miss fisher could you give her your yes i okay 7-0 motion carries thank you ladies miss vaughn will lead us in a moment of silence after which mrs morgan will lead us in the presentation of the colors and the pledge of allegiance miss vaughn please stand for a moment of silence thank you miss vaughn miss morgan introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for our pledge of allegiance tonight is first sergeant retired derek heavener army instructor from cypress lake high school first sergeant heaven retired after serving 21 years in the army he is a veteran of operation iraqi freedom and

005operation enduring freedom this is his first year as a jrotc instructor in the district welcome and thank you for your service tonight are presented by cadet staff sergeant casey tabircio of the panther battalion junior rotc program casey is a senior with a weighted academic grade point average of 4.07 she is actively involved in the june rotc program color guard honor guard and raider team she's also an accomplished member of the cypress lake marching band jazz band and symphony additionally casey is a local artist and small business owner after graduation she plans to pursue a business degree with an emphasis on art at the florida gulf coast university please stand and join me in reciting our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for

006which it stands with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated the next item on the agenda is public comment miss miss dupree bruno please address the item of public comment thank you madam chair and good evening school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff located in the hallway outside of the board room the rules concerning public comment are posted in the back and will be made from the microphone in the back please be

007advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on school district issues personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper are prohibited speakers may not address board members by name and personal attacks against individual board members the board as a whole the superintendent or district staff are prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone for board policy 1.11. and may be removed from the chambers there will

008be a one warning and we ask that you govern yourself accordingly we will take recesses as necessary if there is not decorum in the chambers please remember that it is unlawful and a second-degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the school board meeting for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is three minutes if there are twenty two minutes if there are 30 one minute if there are 31 speakers or more the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour 60 speakers you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they are a collective board please state your name when you

009approach the microphone and i will call you five speakers at a time please follow the staff's direction when lining up madam chair we have 17 speakers thank you mr preverno please make sure you have completed a public comment card if you intend to provide public comment the card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to allow staff for follow-up the cards are located with the staff in the hallway in addition if there is not decorum during this meeting i will call for a five minute recess we will continue to recess this meeting as needed increase in five minutes at a time members of the diocese when a recess is called i ask that you leave the chamber of course it goes without saying that during the recess board members will

010not discuss any matter that is pending on the agenda or will come before this body to avoid any sunshine violations i will reiterate what mr bruno just said in that it is unlawful and a second-degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with school board meeting we would appreciate it if you would state your name prior to making your comment is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the board but did not fill out a comment card please raise your hand sand none mr pre-bruno please proceed with public comments and could you please also give the time allotted i don't think that the time allotted is going to be three minutes we have 17 speakers correct thank you well the following individuals please line up robert roper crystal johnson denise nystrom keith guy saunders

011and please be reminded that this is a what we call a limited public forum for first amendment and constitutional purposes mr roper you start my time again please robert roper also known as ward cleaver we hear a lot about the desire of this board and the superintendent to be transparent being transparent comes with a connotation that you have nothing to hide during public comment at the action meeting of september 21st i ask the following questions what are the current policies regarding boys and girls restrooms where are these policies located how can i obtain a copy of these policies all of you were present for the questions and none of you responded if you were standing on this side of the microphone what conclusion would you draw i've concluded that you really don't care about what

012we say from this microphone so i sent an email on october 11th the district 5 board member because well i voted for her i copied the board attorney and the superintendent i simply and respectively respectfully requested a copy of that policy i have not even been given the courtesy of a reply you are elected to represent the voters many of the voters are parents some are not equality florida did not elect you surprisingly enough the students of lee county did not elect you did not elect yourself therefore your personal interest has no place in policy voters and votes are what the voters are expecting you to represent their them in their policies and decisions this is my theory you will not give me that policy because you're afraid that i will share it with the

013parents and the voters of lee county well you would be correct about that this is something the parents and the voters should have access to because it's a matter of public safety you know the public safety that it's so important that voters and parents are locked outside the building until just before the meeting and are subject to a metal metal metal detector search in order to be allowed inside the meeting room maybe you should make your restrooms that secure are any of you concerned that a 14 year old girl was raped sodomized by a boy wearing a skirt in the girl's restroom in another school district a school district that utilizes the same policy that the lee county school district has it's a matter of public safety it is the fact that your policy is

014the same as that policy that caused the sexual assault of this young lady is that why your policy is hidden be the transparent board and superintendent you claim to be let's make this policy public then let's fix it for the safety and well-being of the students of lee county can i move this up i can't see the time it's usually further up is that okay mr mission can you assist them yeah just i can't see the time thank you thank you and it's right up here as well thank you very much okay at the last action meeting the ugly truth was revealed by ethical brave board members 6 5 and 2 about the abuse of power by district 3. the ugly truth racially charged statements about guatemalan children verbally abuses the haitian school board attorney

015who had to put a letter in her file to sit as a safeguard measure tells the black board member to stay in her own lane district six member is just fighting for construction and renovations for the children in east lee and lehigh has filed false ethics complaints against district three i'm sorry against district two and six has publicly harassed the superintendent on numerous occasions pay for play includes being instrumental in building a brand new high school in the white area of estero and now breaking ground in district 3 on a middle school there was an 80 acre tract of land in estero that the middle school was supposed to be built on but instead land was purchased next to the existing high school millions were spent on surveyors engineers plans when suddenly they went back

016to the 80 acres of land and 40 of those acres will now be a park for the town of estero this is on video district 3 stated her intention in passing the half cent sales tax was to use the money for construction on the buildings and to give the teachers a raise in a later video she denied ever saying that and the buildings have been built using bond money several board members admit that estero's abuse of power is the worst 51 years old 15-year adjunct professor law degree if you don't understand cultural cultural diversity by now you never will bottom line when board members the community edac and the fsba all want you to resign you're a liability to the school district and you should have the moral compass to resign oh and thank you

017for hiring a new investigator that won't need to be investigated board members you need to do the right thing tonight thank you good evening my name is guy saunders you may have read recently john gruden of the las vegas nfl football team lost a million dollar job for a tasteless email sent 10 years ago the email was a private message the district 3 representative made a very derogatory and racial remark in a public forum and is still in office why you need to take action so that district 3 representative can join john gruden on the sideline thank you my name is keith many of us have grave concerns about many issues that we are dealing with and that the school board is dealing with they include inclusion of critical race theory in classes in board

018policies and in curriculum another issue is radical restructuring of what it means to be male what it means to be female what it means to be man what it means to be woman there is an almost complete disregard for the god-given anatomy and biology through god-given sex assignment there's also a secretive inclusion of pornography in the classrooms in the media centers there's also ongoing pressure for mass mandates and more particularly prejudice against unmasked students in the midst of all of these concerns it's tragic that we have to be focused so much on the inherent unhealthiness within the school board itself miss chris patricka of division three excuse me sir we don't have any personal attacks and honestly to make sure that we're not violating any viewpoints we don't have any personal compliments either yes this

019person from district 3 has led an underground effort with three other school board members compliant complicit to undermine current school board supervisor dr ken savage and to get him voted out she has also led a subversive campaign against sister school board members giovanelli giddens and vaughn the same person this is the last reminder we do not did i oh i'm sorry got it three other school okay she has also fought for mandating that children wear masks when she often does not and unfortunately as has already been mentioned she has displayed her racist bias against guatemalan children this person representing district 3 should be immediately removed if she doesn't resign immediately from the lee county school board she should also immediately resign or be removed as president of the florida school boards association sometimes healing comes

020from excising really unhealthy parts of the body that's true physically physiologically it's also true in terms of relational systems of which the school board is part i have a phd in marriage and family therapy had a 45-year practice in california and led a master's degree program in marriage and family therapy relational issues are something that i know a little bit about good evening my name is crystal johnson i am here tonight as a concerned parent parent and about black and brown children being misrepresented by our lee county school board as a whole as you stated when you speak about our children of all different racist backgrounds you should be most considerate of all of them it is i think i find it very insulting and offensive for such remarks to be made concerning any of

021the children as a black woman i'm not unfamiliar with this type of treatment however it is unacceptable and i think you should do what's right but i'm not sure you will i'm positive you won't because you think you're right you know you own your feelings you own your thoughts but they have no place on our district board you don't get to do that it is a professional standard you know outside of professional standards you should be more professional i've always had a great deal of respect because i like the truth i like people who tell their truth but not when you think it's okay to disrespect others thank you well the following individuals please line up tara jenner don armstrong jan m jen watt edward drastic tara jenner board policies that fly in the face

022of our rights as protected by the u.s and state constitutions are illegal and unenforceable of note we have the right to petition our government for a redress of grievances this cannot be effectively done without stating the grievance and the party who has aggrieved us as long as the comments made are applicable to the district and within the allotted time and do not violate certain rules including slander libel things of that particular nature for which individuals are personally responsible and accountable and for which there is a process through which you can go to get recourse there should be no limitation on our rights when we meet the time allotted at this microphone as note regarding the legal team i understand litigation usually costs three times that much of settlements my concern is that when you habitually

023settle claims it may drive up frivolous claims resulting in even greater expense in the long run than if you were to actually defend the state and art i should say our district against those frivolous cases and only settle the ones for which you know are we are actually accountable looking at the talc and spalk mou's i have to ask what the definition is when using the term public health emergency who determines this and what's the threshold and criteria for something no longer being classified as such the emergency expenditure for food that you guys have on the schedule tonight for review would not have been necessary but for the wrongful termination of the contract the district had with oaks farms so now not only are we facing higher costs and availability issues but we're also dealing

024with a claim against the district that might run us millions the district motto personal passionate and progressive does not match what the district actually stands for this is evidenced by recent comments by district 3 board member chris patricka who lumped a group of children together excuse me miss jenna you know as i said before i have the right as long as i'm not interfering with this your first warning would be more apropos maybe it would be more apropos to call us perverse progressive promiscuous and propaganda driven i recommend changing the motto to what we should strive to be professional passionate and if you want to stick with the p's may be principled unparalleled preparative or preeminent i'm a little disgusted with the way this board has been going and as you know i've been coming

025for many many years maybe longer than most of the people on this board i will not be going away i will be holding you accountable and i will continue to remind the individuals on the board and the board attorney when they are wrong because that is my right and my authority to do so thank you good afternoon for the record my name is don armstrong proud parent of two juniors that go to north former high school so let's talk about one thing rules and conflict resolution i want you to remember that because i will be getting back to that in a minute at last week's workshop this board was talking about the superintendent search and the survey you put out there and some board members started questioning how come we didn't get a lot of

026surveys back or the amount of people well towards the end of the meeting an organization actually requested to come to these board meetings and have a to speak for five minutes which is a perfectly important policy and i thought just for once one of you up there would have had a v8 moment and said wow maybe it's because we don't believe the public's just not don't believe in us anymore because that's the truth they don't trust you they don't believe in you they know you're not going to listen to them the bus drivers don't have no confidence in you the teachers don't and most importantly our students don't one of the things i want to remind you is before this pandemic we used to have our students come up here and have performances do you

027anyone know why we did that or why we do it because my tenure on the board is one of the things i brought to the board i wanted to remind us at every board meeting why we are up there but accordingly obviously you guys don't but here's more facts that i just figured i'd throw out there for you guys in the past four board meetings two action two briefing you have spent 12 hours 36 minutes and 46 seconds 2 hours and 55 minutes was public comment 42 minutes and 38 seconds of educational issues that the board discussed 48 4 hours of staff time and the rest of that five hours of this board arguing and fighting back and forth that's ridiculous our students deserve better than that our kids do i'm not going to allow

028you guys to run our kids education and when i read to you earlier when i started this rules and conflict resolution because you guys are getting ready to hire a firm come in here and teach you guys how to get along well guess what that is our kindergarten curriculum for first quarter if they can learn it by kindergarten why can't you should be ashamed of yourself the way you fight dr edward f grass 43 year practicing physician lee county florida i read today in the national school boards association letter that i'm now considered a domestic terrorist as are all of these parents in the room i want to point out that is not true we are here exercising our civic duty and first amendment rights now i have several questions as did pastor roper that

029have not been answered over the last six months of my attendance at these meetings has the florida equity poster been removed from school property i have it on good authority it has not what are the board's plans regarding bathroom facilities for transgenders where and when will critical race theory and 1619 projects be taught i can't find any reference in any of the meetings to these subjects if you have those references please email them to me why are large numbers of immokalee children attending lee county schools is the county government collecting tax revenues to cover their expenses are lee county citizens footing the bill for their education previously i asked dr savage regarding unnamed groups donating banned books to the school libraries this question has not been answered banned books containing pornography and hate are in

030school libraries public records requests from the flca produced a list of 44 books that lcsd states are currently in district schools interestingly these books are also on the study sync guide list to be accepted in the district this year for instance books called 13 ways which advocate teen suicide the bluest eye representing pornography telling mr griffin a story about killing an english teacher by his students kite runner which includes sodomy four sex on miner's torture i am jazz the story of the transgender transition of a young girl would you be proud to have your children and grandchildren read these on pure radical propaganda and agenda stance the these books are meant as purposeful grooming of innocent children to ignore these books as a school board their existence means that you approve of shameful and corrupt

031material i ask you to please remove them immediately from the district libraries thank you well the following individuals please line up mario bachris marcia eus melissa hatter christie divijelli bill hupman hi my name is jennifer and i do have two children in lake county schools i'm here because i'm a concerned citizen along with the lee county activists i do want to apologize for my last week i've been deemed deaf by a medical doctor so i do intend to speak loud for the attorney who continue to interrupt me i apologize but i do speak loud because i am deemed deaf medically okay and i would like to apologize to the one without the mask and the one next to her because those are the only two that deserve my apology and along with my respect so

032i do apologize to the both of you thank you okay so i just want to reiterate because i'm a concerned parent i think i told you i moved here 15 years ago for an a-rated school and we are now a c-rated school okay i don't understand what has happened okay and when it comes to the passion of our children okay i'm confused okay to learn that when our kids graduate lee county and like i said last time 52 percent do not have reading proficiency okay and 61 does not have math proficiency i think it's time to start teaching our kids reading math and you've already taken away their signature by not teaching them creative writing cursive writing excuse me okay so now they don't even have an identity thanks to you people okay but my

033concern is i just want to get back to an a-rated skull because my question is to you how do you expect to get reelected with those type of figures i would like to know that because i don't see that being happen okay second of all i got a disturbing email over hundreds and hundreds of books in our league county system has some type of pornography yes i did say pornography okay and i'm to be next board meeting i will have the exact figure i just didn't have time to calculate it all but when i saw that email and i opened that email my heart sunk lastly i had a conversation with the principal of school 30 30 days ago and when i got from this conversation from the principal was a cry a desperate cry

034for help okay and i'm not no psychiatrist but let me tell you i am a retired banker a vp of banking for 50 years for 25 years and i retired when i'm 50 years old i think i know what i'm talking about when this principal was crying in my hair when i hung up the phone with them my heart sunk for them and i actually told them that we are working to get rid of the board because this is a person has dedicated his life to teaching and i'm sure you people know that you are losing good teachers thank you ma'am next speaker please hi my name is jan i live in lee county i have one child who's an adult but went through the entire lee county school system from kindergarten through 12th grade

035at fort myers high i just want to take a minute and i want to do a few thank yous because we've got some teachers who deserve a lot of gratitude for having gone through pandemic and taking care of our children and serving them and teaching them and caring for them and sometimes that just needs to be said i know it needs to be said because that's what we taught our children i want to take some time and thank the board for some difficult years i think i know things aren't always easy but i think you deserve some thanks i want to take some time and thank our bus drivers and speak in support of them for they also serve our kids and there are people in the community who do support them and i hope

036that you guys keep that in mind serving is a form of leadership and all of these people lead and they take care of our children i think we're coming into a place possibly there's where we might be fingers crossed i'm not a public health expert but there's some evidence that we might be coming out of the pandemic i don't again not a public health expert but there are a couple of predictive models from university of florida and university of south florida who have said that we may peak in september and then improve in october and one model even dared to speculate on the phrase herd immunity so a big part of that is the vaccinations and all other public health measures public health is a field of science public health is a field of study

037it's a field of accreditation if you see someone with an mph after their name it's a masters of public health so all these measures that have been implemented during a pandemic were part of this public health knowledge and research and implementation so i'm thankful for all of them i want to thank you once again this will be my second time for the strong anti-bullying policy that we have in lee county schools and it actually came from jeffrey johnston who was a cape coral honors student i know there's 67 counties in florida lee county is the impetus unfortunately and fortunately and his mother for creating this strong anti-bullying policy where harassment and intimidation are not allowed thank you good afternoon my name is mario juarez i am the ceo president of the guatemala usfl chamber of

038commerce as a chamber we also work along with the guatemala community and latino community in general i'm here today as you all know my district 3 made those remarks about our guatemalan students i did not write a letter or email previously because i was in guatemala on the business street but i did follow up through the social media what was going on here and this is very unacceptable i'm here today to represent not only the guatemala students but all the latino and generous tourism of lee county why because we deserve a better representation to our school board district it's time for us to step up and speak up here as you all know about district 3 those remarks made our students feel like ignorance this is not acceptable not in the school district not to

039our kids we point in you where you are sitting now with our bots and you know district 3 you promised to work with the latino community and we have proof of that when you were campaigning for the seat yesterday i sent an email through the school board superintendent and all the local authorities and i didn't have and i didn't receive my courtesy and email back what a shame what type of communication we have here communication is number one number one priority between the parents you the board member who represent us and the whole community in our community leaders there are about two thousand guatemala students in the lee county district alone and my question for you is do you know in guatemala we speak 26 dialects or languages if you want to call that and

040i would like to ask how many translators do you have here in lee county that we speak these dialects or languages because we are a lot 20 22 000 and change is a lot of students and we really need that help if this tree wasn't aware about our culture i think it should be a communication issue with all of these principles i think that you mentioned about having these issues or problems with our students so what is the communication i guess we don't have that here thank you mr juarez hi i'm melissa hatter i'll keep repeating this until you uphold our constitutional rights board policy 1.11 is unconstitutional you are placing restrictions on our right to express ourselves regarding school district business obviously these concerns will include matters regarding specific individuals must you be ordered

041by a judge to uphold our constitutional rights as has happened in many other districts which i shared with you attorney bruno in response to my slander complaint you personally informed me that it was the staff members constitutional rights to voice their opinion how is your denying the public the right to protect for staff a demonstration of maintaining public trust as you inform the board they were obligated to do during your exercise with them today two lighthouse complaints filed in may have still not been addressed and the board has still not personally responded to my appeal of the investigation when will you provide accountability and transparency public trust means doing the right thing we have legally protected rights the first amendment and as long as you keep violating that you have nobody's trust and you'll never

042gain it until you earn it back is that not what we've all taught our kids when you break you lie to somebody you have to earn their trust back but yet you have no desire to do what we teach the fundamentals we teach children as adults and it's sad christine di vigilia power to parent this wall is very obstructing and it's just it's very awkward for people up here speaking number one i one of the board members made a comment a week or so ago maybe a couple weeks ago about the banned book list and about us you know in our schools having books like to kill a mockingbird and catch her in the rye and that's why parents are so upset right now so i just want to give you an example really quick

043of some of the books that we're referring that parents are referring to when they say that you know there are books that are inappropriate for children in schools and this was provided by florida citizens alliance the first one is a book called george and george george is george has been able to find information about being transgender online after her brother taught her how to clear the web browser's history on mom's computer that's just a little excerpt the next one is from a book called what is this one called has a long name the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian and this is in several of our middle schools and a few of our high schools and the reviews on this alone should scare you it says banned and challenged for profanity sexual references and

044allegations of sexual misconduct by the author many objected to the language and references to masturbation the concern was content regarding alcohol bullying violence sexual references profanity and slurs not found suitable for a public school because of gratuitous and unnecessary profanity in reference to sexual acts i could go on but i'm going to go to the next book the next one is a book called drama and it seems innocent enough it just it looks like i even purchased this book you know under when my children were in elementary school because because she saw it in the library and this book i had no idea that this little book was about drama is the story of cali a girl in middle school who loves stage crew and theater and who has a twin best friends whose twin

045best friends who are gay the characters in that story are based on real people real friends of mine in high school i have two best friends who are gay twin brothers and our relationship pretty much mirrors what you see in the pages so when we say that we have problems and issues when us as parents say that we have issues with the curriculum with the books that are in the library these are the reasons when we ask you to these are these are books that these are decisions and conversations and things that parents should be having with their children you do not have the right to have these conversations and ex with our children and expose our children to these types of things it's wrong and we will hold you all accountable because even if

046you didn't do it's neglect if nothing else thank you hello my name is bill hoffman wow i don't even feel like i have my first amendment rights i had to mark out a lot of myself sir could you speak into the microphone please yeah i had to mark out a lot of mysteries i don't feel like i had my first amendment rights after all the rules i don't want to break the rules so let me see what i can do i move my first trip to bonita in lee county was 1985. my oldest daughter graduated from sterile high school in the late 90s i'm a grandfather i just googled the first school books in america early public schools the united states did not focus on academics like math reading instead they taught virtues of family

047religion and community i mean wow now the books are teaching the evils good and good's evil history is being changed wrongly it's not true god knows your hearts i i'm astounded at some of the stuff i've heard tonight it's actually worse than i thought some of you people think you're above the parents that maybe look like you are but you're not above god there's a book of the greatest book ever written sold more than any book in the world and i challenge you to read each one of you whatever revert revision in matthew 18 6 tonight what happens if you mislead children if you read that i don't know how you can sleep tonight i mean i couldn't with what i hear tonight gosh i don't even know what to say wow some of the

048policies and the books and the agenda you have toward the children in your heart you know what's right just think about your parents or grandparents or great-grandparents would they do this or allow this in the schools some of you all need to resign i think it'd be in your best interest to get in a different profession that you're better suited for i asked you who do you r who do you represent and what about the u.s constitution i mean it's still america i don't know i hope for a few more years well the following individuals please line up susan jackie perez jasmine miller just one second man please please make sure you go on the other side of the stanchion thank you no it's fine my name is marsha ellis and i'm here first of

049all to say that i'm i'm waiting for that verdict in hayes versus desantis and even though our covered numbers are looking better for the immunocompromised students and staff the wolf only has to find you once and if you haven't been exposed to covid you don't know your antibody level you don't know what kind of a reaction that you're going to have but today i want to talk about education as an institution and how it is central to the health of a community when i look at you all i think about my grandfather who served on his local school board for 30 years i was brought up to value education to respect teachers bus drivers school staff and the people who worked at the school they were my neighbors my family my friends and they were

050loved and appreciated today i'm speaking in support for school staff as a community member i urge the board to lead our community in finding ways that we can show support and appreciation for our school staff the teachers the bus drivers the support staff the cafeteria workers please lessen the pressure that this community is under by creating an initiative or a platform an outlet for our community so that we can express the positives so we can show our gratitude and our support so that businesses individuals and families churches can show how much we appreciate the efforts of our teachers and our school staff we've been through so much as a community and having some way that we can transform this tragedy by recognizing the sacrifices of our school staff it's going to lift the spirits of

051our community and it's going to improve morale we need to reclaim the respect that education has been the foundation of the american way i ask you to please lead us in these efforts and give us all the many many people that are here now in lee county the opportunity to be able to recognize the seriousness and the severity of what we have survived and show some appreciation and respect please provide us a way to show our gratitude thank you next speaker please good evening my name is jasmine miller jg now i'm a homeless woman in a community greetings from the camp i support the school board do not resign stand firm children are a trust from god almighty entrusted it to the school board and to the parents the ultimate teachers of our children are

052the parents yes do not come here meet up on a school board member now i must tell you exactly who i am i used to be a teacher for 10 long years in miami-dade i taught children that were severely emotionally disturbed and then i left and i became a defense immigration attorney down there in miami yes i battle the department of justice taking primarily guatemalan clients to the court and that's why i came to support the district member in district three yes it is a fact in guatemala the children have no running water as and that's a fact so she was not saying anything derogatory so i came here to straighten the facts now mr mario juarez i'd like to speak to you excuse me we want to make sure that you address the board

053not individuals in the audience please on behalf of the community i'd like to speak to you one day and explain to you if you really really blow this out the judges are listening and when you go to pursue a 42-bit cancellation of removal you'll remember that you made a big big thing issue saying that there's running water and watermelon is not running water so you know we got to be careful what we do yes as a homeless person we don't have running water so when i go into the bathrooms daily i play in the water oh yeah that's just common sense so if somebody said the children in the background playing the water conditions their countries don't want to run there's no big deal about that i'm i'm i'm moving on school board member stay

054right where you are now the fbi watching all you guys attacking the school board members you gotta be careful many blessings may god bless you all stand firm we're now living in very very critical times you must have the school board members don't come in here and assault them this is america yes you have your first amendment rights not supposed to come here and you've got these people they earn their wings they're in their seats goodnight this is obnoxious right here excuse me please i'm just letting you know this really needs to go for next time it's it's real susan this is your first warning warning me about what please just make your comment oh i'll make my comment anyway i'm so glad i have three minutes i really don't know exactly what i'm going

055to say but you know we've got hispanic month we've got black awareness month we've got this we've got that we've got gay we've got straight we've got all that you know what just stop this madness i want italian-american month okay and i want autism awareness month okay now that's a real problem all this other stuff that's just drama you're not getting down to the bare bone facts of a good education and teaching these kids to just just treat them all equally you don't have to acknowledge any certain population this garbage i'm tired of it i'm tired of all of you i'm tired of coming to these meetings i couldn't come to the last meeting because my son is in crisis again he is a senior in high school and all i could do was listen

056at home and listen to you all throw each other under the bus it's disgusting we need to get rid of all of y'all including the attorney who i won't name but yeah it's an attorney and just we need to regroup get people from the community and just start a whole new board why do you have to have a lot of money to be a board member that's really ridiculous and you know and right now i want to talk to the people of special needs kids if you have someone in the lee county school district get them out immediately i am from new england originally and i had heard how horrible the school system is in florida and i never took that into consideration until i had my child here in fort myers got his diagnosis

057and had him going up up through the ranks in school getting a crappy education the ieps are nothing but smoke and mirrors and now i find out within the last two weeks a new diagnosis on my child and i'm wondering why in the hell he can't get through senior year in high school it was worse than when i was told i had cancer and i have him through all this special treatment stuff that i don't even know how i'm gonna pay for and all of you all wanna bicker about all the stuff that's not necessary well you know what this is necessary i just found out in the last year we have now got a neuropsychologist in the school district and i'm going to ask all of you all why did it take so long

058when i haven't worked in 10 years and i'm looking for people to help me medically someone should have spotted this in the school system this stinks can you please start my time again good evening i believe in everyone's right to free speech but i don't believe that frees you from the immunity of consequences of your works especially when you are an elected official representing over nine thousand students when you speak such hatred and bigotry you have to face the community and those that you have injured with those words regrettably this is not district three's first rodeo this board member has a long history of making false allegations participating in the entrapment of board members and making false allegations of police investigations against respected citizens that were untrue abusing her powers by manipulating staff to participate

059in kinderstein investigations to take out board members and all her boorish and i say again boorish behavior physically assaulting a board member after a board meeting because that board member requested an investigation into corruption hindering and interfering with the outcome of investigations related to corruption lying to the public about achievement rates and the entire quadruple a project if we don't do something now who will be next in august of 2021 this board member was dissenting vote against hispanic history month yet she signed it for all the other ethnic racial groups i find that really interesting no one should stand for this marginalization and treatment of students last week i received district 3's letter she wrote to the fsba where she admitted that she was sick in this letter she begged them for help and that

060she wanted to learn well we don't need someone in the school district who is mentally unstable creating policies and making decisions over millions of dollars if she needs that help she needs to seek that help outside the district not while she's a board member collecting money taxpayers money the letter the next letter that was written on friday and sent by the high school principals was in response to her absurd racist statements of guatemalan's children they requested board members not speak on their behalf without requesting definitive information the board member this board member blamed carl burnsville oh excuse me ma'am i personally missed perez any principal hold on i'm not insulting anyone i personally do not believe that any principal said this at all but she is going around saying it we cannot forget the abuse

061of power in the misuse of office when blockley was swapped for three oaks parkway with the board member giving false statements related to parkland as to why the site needs to be moved these abuses cause for inequities between lehigh and asero these are civil rights violations under the department of justice this needs to be investigated she needs to resign she needs to resign tonight and i will be back every board meeting requesting her resignation we all will be madame chair that concludes public comments first i'd like to thank you all for coming and speaking your words we do hear what you have to say mr juarez i'm sorry that no one has gotten back with you dr savage i know we were intending to do that so that still will be taking place as far

062as all our lighthouse investigations they have all been completed and our attorney quick who is the conflict attorney will be contacting everyone to whoever was involved with those investigations and clearing those all out let's see and again we in our staff we do support we do support our staff and we cannot wait for the day that we can open doors again to have volunteers in there to make it easier so that you know it takes less stress off of the schools each and every one regardless of what position that you play in the district whether it's teaching the kitchen riding those buses everybody is important and we do appreciate each and every one of you so i never would want anybody to ever feel that we do not because we do and without all of

063us together working in the district this is how we keep going so again i really truly do appreciate each and every one of you the next is the approval of the consent action items next is the approval of the action items and 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

064miss giovannelli i am none ms patricka no thank you miss fisher i have none this evening thank you miss kittens i have none thank you miss vaughn i'm done thank you i miss morgan i have none and i have none thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda cassette items i move that we approve the consent and agenda items as printed thank you mrs fisher i may have a second please a second that thank you miss jivanelli okay and please record your vote do we get discussion there is no discussion on anything it's not coming up here we go miss roman do you see them oh i see them thank you okay 7-0 emotion carries dr savage please introduce any administrators in attendance with a new assignment that were approved under the consent

065agenda it would be my pleasure madam chair i first like to recognize mary romo who is joining us as the early childhood learning services director at the early childhood learning services i'd also like to recognize richard carr who's joining us as the director of professional standards and mr john noland who from south fort myers high is a teacher to the fort myers middle academy assistant principal thank you very much if if you want to stay you're welcome to say otherwise we're going to take just a second to allow anyone who wishes to leave the opportunity to do so and congratulations to all of you okay we are up to board members comments and i will start with miss fisher please and thank you thank you i want to thank all who came to speak and

066share their thoughts and opinions with us we appreciate that i would like to also offer thanks to all of our students staff parents and community supporters who have gone above and beyond during these past months with the pandemic and other issues and we value you we appreciate you and keep up the good work thank you on october 27th here in the boardroom the drug free coalition will be presenting the red ribbon awards to our students who have excelled in athletics and arts and we would like to invite you to attend it begins at seven o'clock mrs fisher continue please yes thank you october 20th tomorrow is unity day it supports and recognizes that october is national bully prevention month and we ask our kids to wear orange t-shirts and to support and demonstrate kindness acceptance

067and inclusion at this time i would like to share some thoughts with are my fellow board members and members of the audience it's taken from the fish philosophy from the pike place fish market in seattle and mrs fisher can you is it possible to pull that i'm sorry is this better okay i'd like to share these thoughts on the fish philosophy from the pike place fish market in seattle it starts with relationships number one choose your attitude no matter what the day throws at you can choose how you respond number two be there when people need you they need all of you be fully present number three make their day find simple ways to show people that you value them play bring a spirit of enthusiasm creativity and fun to your work you'll accomplish a

068lot more we are challenged with diversity and adversity we can build caring relationships and lift one another up this is a community that's in this all together thank you thank you it's fisher miss javinelli can can you can i pass sure i need to run okay great sorry ms patricka unfortunately for my colleagues i've got a lot of updates to give you and it's going to take me a little while to get through this so you all received the florida school boards association letter in response to the nsba letter regarding references to parents and community members that show up to school board meetings being referred to as domestic terrorists we have taken a strong stand against that letter for a number of purposes or for a number of reasons i should say the first is

069there have been significant governance issues with nsba for quite some period of time that letter was sent without consultation with anyone in the association the executive committee the board of directors nobody was consulted compare and contrast that to fsba where i would say we deliberated the letter we sent for at least two hours and it was a unanimous decision by the board to send the letter we have not paid our dues at all this year not just in response to this nsba letter but in response to the other governance issues we i know i am confident that our local law enforcement who comes in here every single week and keeps us safe up for the job and are capable of following through with the appropriate agencies should should something more occur while we have had

070some incidents of incivility in the boardroom they have been dealt with appropriately and federal intervention is not necessary i would like my colleagues to think about reviewing not just the letter but the resolution and i plan to i plan to read the resolution at our next meeting and you know you decide whether you want to individually show support for that or not next i want to thank mary reader for keeping us on track with regard to our advisory committee she is phenomenal sending out those friendly gentle reminders as you know sometimes her emails get buried i want to thank our high school principals for the leadership they showed in sending us that letter yesterday it's a group that group is you know all principals really are front line leaders they are on the front line

071every single day during this really unprecedented time and they are operating at the very highest levels and they've done so without complaint and i really appreciate their leadership not just during this difficult time in each of our buildings but i also appreciate the courage that it took for them to send that letter to us so i will work to support them and to give them the respect that they deserve excellent work to dr spiro and excuse me lisha roy and team for the opt-out letter for parents i know that was a lot of work but the work you put out was incredibly comprehensive and i recognize that the work is not complete and that you will have to continue to put that work in but i really appreciate it so thank you the reason why

072i asked for comments during the consent agenda is i did have a chance to read the mlus just barely before we voted on them and i noticed there was no mention of vaccines in them and i was able to confer with dr savage that is not off the table and i will continue to suggest that as duvall county recently did we offer incentives for vaccines so that we can more quickly reach herd immunity more excellent work by the calendar committee it was just unbelievably amazing to go and sit in that room and watch our administrators from schools from the district union leadership teachers paras bus drivers talk it through and what was so evident to me was the high level of expertise that they each have in their own in their own area and it's

073always so refreshing i've said this to dr savage several times when you put staff in front of us and let let them shine it just it really opens my eyes to the work that we really should be engaged in here at the board table donna mutzenard and kerr fazon did an amazing job of the interest-based bargaining process just being surrounded by those professionals was incredibly refreshing to me i do have a question for attorney dupree bruno you do not have to answer this right now i'm just looking for an update on the chat feature in zoom and given the fact that you have an update so i'm going to be meeting with all of the chairs to explain to them i talked to pat gleeson who is the guru on sunshine and public records at

074the attorney general's office who advises us not to do the chat okay and honestly if might if the board was requesting a chat in a chat box or something like that i would absolutely say no so it's the same thing for the board advisory committees and given the fact that those chats are automatically savable what is it about it that violates sunshine we can we can discuss that offline a little bit but there is concern all right i appreciate that thank you and then i do have the rest of my comments are directed to to the equity and diversity advisory committee but i understand that ms vaughn is going to raise that issue so i think it might be more appropriate for me to respond then madam chair how would you like me to handle

075that oh that would be fine okay so those are my comments for now okay miss givenelli are you prepared now or shall i continue well i was gonna to attorney bruno had asked me to make a comment so after miss vaughn so mine i'm going to piggyback off that sorry because i wasn't put in in the loop so let's let's try this one miss kittens may we please have miss vaughn keeper okay i'm gonna have you speak now i was just going to ask can we go there you go thank you miss one well are you ready miss vaughn yeah absolutely okay i do feel obligated i guess it's the teacher in me to give a piece of information to the several speakers tonight that we're talking about the list the as it was dubbed

076the porn list of books that are in our libraries just a couple things and i'm just saying this for informational purposes first of all keep in mind that the word pornography has a very very specific meaning legally and book lists as i said during the last meeting the banned book lists that come out through the american library association yearly these are books that are not banned so these are challenged books and it is kind of interesting to look at why certain schools decided to challenge certain books there are other organizations there there are other organizations that publish their own lists and typically what you have on these lists are reasons now i know that because the board was copied on this email that at least several of you in the audience or who have been

077in our audience have received from academic the a way to lodge your protest and so we have a system dr spyro sent out the process document that we've had for quite a while in this district and the process that any individual who wants to challenge a book whether it be in our libraries or in as part of our curriculum there is a form to fill out so i just because it sounds like that some of you were unaware of that i wanted to make everybody aware that there is a process document and that there is a form and i can tell you from my own personal experience having been a department chair for 19 years in a dallas texas suburban high school and we were involved in a number of challenges of books so this

078whole idea of a form and a process is not something draconian that this district is putting out there it's it's it's typical policy for a large school district i have talked to a couple people that were supporting that list and i was it was interesting to find out that they hadn't read the books and i actually went to the public library after we received the list and i checked out seven or eight of the books and i have gone through two picture books which i honestly had to go through them a couple times to see what possibly could be the problem with the picture book and i have actually read three of the longer books which are probably middle school level and interestingly two of the books that mrs divigelli mentioned were actually books that

079i just read the one i'll just say this and she can contact me and we could have a personal discussion on it a diary of a part-time indian the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian that's a national book award book not sure what book review she read but the ones that i read were glowing it's the kind of book that has lots and lots of issues that i think are important issues so the other thing i might say and again not judgmental i'm just saying this for information when when you read these when you look at them please think about the overall messages the books sent out okay and drama is another one and just for the individual who mentioned about schools of the past teaching values and you know i went to school

080in the 1950s elementary school and we did have short bible verses that we read but you know i don't remember you know religious teaching in the schools and here's another interesting fact if you look at some banned books quote unquote banned books the bible the whole the christian the holy bible has been in some cases banned so it's a very very complex issue and i totally support a parent's right to monitor and to advise for their children on what is goes with their own family values but do do keep in mind that well i think ward cleaver is still here that we have please i know i'm sorry couldn't help it little humor sometimes that we are in a different era and there are those of us that may actually wish for times gone by

081but we really and this is something that we do as a school district we need to move with the times and again there are things that when i look back in my years of early years of teaching and i wish oh my gosh i wish it weren't this way now but again we have to move with the times and we hear at the school district that's that's what we're doing while respecting parents rights but there is a process on that all right so i am the liaison the board liaison to the equity and diversity committee and we met or the committee met a week ago actually a week ago monday october 11th and there were several constituents actually that were there and we had one two three four we had five people with public comment

082and on the agenda for that meeting dr savage was there and he gave an outline kind of an overview of his career and how he chose education and then did talk about in within his career about the role of diversity and you know his just his exp his experiences and i would say it was by way of an introduction since usually at the board meetings at the i'm sorry at the committee meetings usually the superintendent will will speak there was a an excellent presentation also by it's dr desamores susan malay and they did a brief presentation on small business enterprise program and they talked about how this program is there to foster economic growth and to create jobs and of course another thing that we are proud of in this district is our various partners

083and certainly with our emphasis on career and technical training this it's very very important that we have these kinds of partnerships now something else that occurred during this time we've had a lot of comments this evening about board member district 3 and i want to i'm going to so i don't misquote anything read to you the exact the exact motions that were made and passed unanimously by equity and diversity committee all right so and then i'll tell you the action or the what i'm about to put forward all right so this is from the recording secretary the committee unanimously approved a motion quote to condemn the statements about guatemalan students from board member patricka and recommended that the board take every possible action to hold the board member accountable not to be limited to a

084vote of no confidence and an official investigation that was the first thing that they voted on and it was unanimous the other thing was the unanimous approval of emotion in the equity and diversity committee quote to recommend that board member patricka consider resignation from the board now i'm passing this information along to my fellow board members actually i already passed passed the information on to them last night and i've made a revision on on some of it today so hopefully everybody read that and i know that some of the board me some of my colleagues have actually watched that meeting okay so it is as are all our advisory meetings it is on online for the lee school youtube all right so as the board liaison to fulfill my obligation i am passing along to

085you that the committee unanimously said this is from them to have board member patricka consider resignation from the board and the other thing is that they condemned the statements that the board member made now what they also wanted was to have the board hold board member patricka accountable and i think part of it may have been they wanted the board to be accountable or to go on record with with statements initially i sent an email out that i was going to make a motion to to just using the language that was directed to me as the board liaison but attorney dupree bruno and i had talked with her actually before i ever wrote this email and then she did some research and she and i talked again earlier today and she sent to the board

086a case a litigation that's that's going on right now and so i am not going to make that motion and again this is a motion that i s that i said to the edac that i was you know going to follow their wishes but there are issues on on that attorney dupree bruno did you want to is it appropriate for you to tell about that case at this point sure let me pull it up and i'll share it the case is wilson versus houston community college u.s court of appeals 5th circuit 2020 and basically in this case mr wilson was a member of a board of trustees of a public community college the board publicly censured him for publicly criticizing another board member wilson then sued the board the supreme court well this is the

087ruling part of the ruling from the fifth circuit it states the supreme court has long stressed the importance of allowing elected officials to speak on matters of public concern the order further states as a result this court has held that censures of publicly elected officials can be a cognizable injury under the first amendment the court further stated the court noted that a formal reprimand by its very nature goes several steps beyond criticism accusation and even beyond a mere investigation it is punitive in a way that mere criticism accusations and investigations are not this case has been accepted by the united states supreme court for review the briefs were provided in july of 2021 2021 so waiting to see what the us supreme court says but at this point based on this federal case censuring because

088of a public statement made by an elected official exposes the district to liability for violation of a first amendment right okay and of course i did that's that's very serious and i took it to heart you know the edac committee doesn't have a board attorney there to talk about these legal opinions right then and there but what i did tell the board that i was going to do and a few of my colleagues have referenced this is that i did want to open this up for board comments and before i you know through our chair of course but i did want to mention that during our last action meeting there was actually a motion for an investigation and that motion that failed in in the vote so are we good to open it at this

089point to any commentary chair jordan yes i definitely will okay mr freebur i'm thank you i just want to make sure there's no motion on the table does the board give give consensus for us to move forward with this conversation as requested by edit yes there's no emotion on the i've made no motivation they're just comments okay thank you miss kittens well i'm i'm not sure which direction we need to take my thought is with respect to our board advisory board community comment from edac some board members etc etc etc asking for some type of sanctioning i do understand that censoring would only put us in a position to be sued but my thought is a request to the governor to investigate abuse of power and the reason i say that please understand that to

090me behaviors of some board members is systemic it is just continuous as as recently as the last meeting as recently as today when i asked you know about giving a command to one of to the attorney and the response was well i thought i was getting something just for me i don't know how we get it across to all the board members the idea that was strongly in place when i was a the chair of this board that consistently i was told we do not operate individually over and over you can go back and watch the videos there was no i would ask to do one thing is we don't operate as an individual we operate as a board but just continually it happens with other board members if we cannot ask for some type

091of a control or some type of not control but just finding out how do we stop that or do we not we just are allowing it to go on it's it's you know i told someone today it's like i feel like a battered spouse you know you get slapped in the face and you're told well it's okay i didn't mean it and you smile and you go out and you slap me again and it's just we keep going over the same thing i don't know what the answer is i know that many of us have been investigated and all that type of thing so the only option is the governor the governor because that's the only entity over us but from fsba in the state all the way down to community members and everyone there

092there needs to be an answer it is just systemic and i'm sorry miss patrick i'm not trying to throw you under the bus but it is it's just very disturbing to me the behavior and i just i feel we need to do something i know i probably won't have the votes to do it but if there's nothing to hide then why don't we find out is there an abuse of heart if it comes back and it's not then we sit down and we shut up but you know consistently saying do this do this and behind the scenes you know we don't often say it up here but we know there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff there has been ever since i sat on this board and how do i know because the same

093behaviors that i get from some of the board members i get from staff so i know it's consistent and i community i am not arguing i am not fussing and fighting i am very calmly asking what can we do there has been you know things happening against so many people and against we are you know minority majority that just we have to face it and i don't feel like i read the letter from fspa with your apology and i honestly don't believe that we should have someone in charge of an organization that is having ojt you know learning on the job how to deal with people so that's that's my stance on it i don't know where it's going to go but i felt i needed to say it thank you very much miss chevelly

094i know you said you were waiting for well yes so actually the letter we received today from the guatemalan u.s florida chamber of commerce i was just going to bring that forward as well how do we respond to mr juarez and i see i think he's left this evening so but i i had it on my you know in my notes to bring that up so that we could have discussion so i wanted to piggyback off of that once this discussion you know i think we need to respond or meet with him you know and i don't know how those would be my recommendations i don't know who which one of us should meet with him but i think that we need to we need we cannot be silent that's what i think so i'll

095open that up for someone to just have a discussion on that thank you and then as i had said that dr savage will be reaching out to him so that way we can make sure that we set up time to speak with him so that will be definitely taking place yes we actually already gave him one of the cards and there's already been some contact know so i'll i'll just take i'll i have a few notes and i'm gonna say what i think but i've already you know two weeks ago i was pretty clear on how i felt about it but you know i just i'll just bring this back around just a little bit more you know for the past few weeks it's been very difficult and it's caused me to reflect a great

096deal about the dynamics of our board i know we had a team building today so i know we're we're trying to put things back in a better perspective but it's not my nature to create conflict because i prefer to work collaboratively collaboratively but i feel that we've been left with no choice because of what has occurred over the last three and a half years really things that's happened on this board this just didn't doesn't come down to the one incident that happened a couple weeks ago this board has has we've had many meetings and things have happened that's honestly it's like what's it irreconcilably differences i mean we just can't come to an agreement on things or see eye to eye and i just feel like sometimes it's like that one bad apple spoils a

097whole bunch you know and so i until that apple can identify the situation i don't know how we can move on you know i sat today and with our meeting that we had you know board team building but i don't know that we're all on the same page and we and we should be embracing our differences instead of like trying to expose people for them being themselves and it's very difficult because everyone's different but everybody is valuable i said this is what i was i wrote down notes because for for my four years four and a half years actually being on the on this board i've never felt valued at all i walked in here being discredited by the prior administration completely i've had numerous staff people tell me the things that he would say

098behind my back and i was supposed to rise above it and i feel like i did but it went on i feel today is like a new day with the new superintendent and i'm very grateful in that i feel like the environment is different yet we have board members still trying to sabotage our new superintendent and so i feel like we're now we're starting a vicious cycle different but still the same cycle still the same culture and so that's those are the things that concern me how do we move past it because i was accused of being not being in my lane and all i did was listen to two employees that wanted to tell me the things that were happening to them in the maintenance department and that became an investigation against melissa instead

099of investigation again and the maintenance department i mean that's the things that are manipulated constantly for an outcome that's not even a real outcome it's a it's a totally fabricated one and so i'm excited about the new professional standers mr carr i'm excited about you know like again it's a new day and i so i want to embrace a new day right but it takes all of us to do that on this board so i'm just gonna leave it at that but here's what i'm concerned with we've all had our head in the sand for a very long time we've never held anyone accountable including the prior superintendent that we should have done and so accountability is huge we need to be held accountable we can't keep our head in the sand any longer so

100we're we're it starts here at this table because when you have and i'm just gonna i'm just gonna i'm gonna hold my hand fingers up rsm that fired us because of the board a prior board attorney quit because of the board principals have wrote us a letter because of the board our own board attorney and our superintendent is being harassed and being put in a toxic environment that's five things that are very bad that puts us liable at some point we could be liable and that scares me completely because we are not doing our job and i'm going to hold myself just as much accountable because it's seven we're seven people and to act as one and i am concerned we did nothing we just stayed quiet when our own board attorney told us about

101the environment that she's dealing with we stayed quiet when i brought it up the superintendent told me that his environment is becoming harassment these are our employees that i we have we know what happened with rsm because they won't even be our employee so now that's the three employees that we hire so that is alarming that is alarming because that's who that's only the only people that we do govern we do not govern anyone else in this district that is his job and i am here to make sure that he can do his job she can do her job and we can find an auditor that will do our job i don't even know if we're capable of doing that because of this board so yes i tried to make a stand two weeks ago

102because we need to be held accountable and that's where i'll leave it i challenge this board to be accountable thank you miss fisher did you have any comments not at this time okay miss morgan i'm not going to make any at this time no i don't even know where i'm right here oh i know miss patrick you wanted to so yes i did watch the video ms vaughan and i appreciate you sharing that information with the board and i would like to direct my comments to the equity and diversity advisory committee i do understand the condemnation of my words and i accept that i also understand edac's request for me to step down from the school board and while i certainly did consider their request i do not believe that is the best course of

103action doing so would mean that i'm willing to walk away from the difficult issues in the equity space that really do need to be addressed for our students our staff and our community what i am what i hope you all understand is that i know that i'm bold and i know that i'm direct i know that it's it's who i am and it's how i come across to people and i've said this a million times i'm not everybody's cup of tea i'm frequently told ms fisher chris it's not what you say it's how you say it and ms fisher i believe would attest to the fact that i own that and i am working really hard on that i think we can all relate everybody in this room everybody in the world can relate to

104saying things inaudibly at times i know that my comments sound bad when you hear them in the clip video i know that and i really want people to understand again as i said two weeks ago where my heart is i had absolutely no intention of hurting anyone and i am deeply deeply sorry that i have hurt people's feelings i am deeply sorry for that when i spoke with the community group i was trying to bring light to a real problem a real problem that our students face i was talking to a group of people who don't operate in our space the world of public education they don't necessarily understand the intricacies of the issues that we deal with but the facts are and i'm i'm often criticized for being too data focused in two analytical

105so i tried to tell an anecdote and i'm going to go back to being factual the fact is that year after year we have increasing numbers of students moving to lee county from other countries where the english language is not the official language in in the school year 2016-17 we had 9089 english language learners in the school district of lee county in the school year 2021 we had 13 387. that is a 47.3 percent increase in english language learners in just five years if you look at the 2019-2020 to the 2021 school year you'll see that we had a 16.6 percent increase in english language learners this data illustrates that we do have students who come to our district significant numbers of students who come to our district who do in fact speak english as

106a second language we do in fact have students who come to our district who face difficulties in terms of technological and infrastructure and societal changes when they move to the united states these are true challenges for our students they are real they are true and we as a district struggle to solve those problems they are issues that stand in the way of our students being able to receive the world-class education that we are so proud of i was trying to help the group with which i was speaking to understand the challenges that our students face and the challenges that our district faces when they're solving trying to solve those problems i cannot take my words back i cannot do that i cannot unsay what i said but i can ask edac if they would be

107willing to actually meet with me and have a conversation with me about not just this issue but a lot of the other issues that face our students i'd like i'd like to bring these statistics to edac and help them analyze the statistics in the context of our students experiences so that they can make recommendations to the board on how we can help our students through their transition when they move to lee county clearly we're not doing enough given the high level of public public awareness surrounding my comments i don't know that lee county has ever spoken this much about our english language learners i think this is an opportunity that we should seize to actually find a way to solve the problem and again i would ask that respectfully ask that edac give me the

108opportunity to come in speak with them create true equity in this space and ensure that every single one of our students can achieve a world-class education those are my comments thank you free bruno miss patricka what about the students do you have a message for the students those that were for example i heard tonight that there was 2 000 guatemalan students in our district and those students also heard the word this is conversations that's going on in the household whatever do you have something to say to the kids yeah well i mean obviously i'm sorry to the students but i'm working behind the scenes to set up can you guys please allow her to speak and be respectful i'm working behind the scenes to set up tours of community groups community centers and schools with

109high concentrations of guatemalan students so i mean that's that's the work i'm trying to do on that end to connect better with students and understand the challenges that they face so that we can find solutions i think that the problem i'll call you one second was kittens the problem that i see is that these are our children all of them and i don't think they were hurt more so offended by the comments that were made so i think that we have to make sure that we are all these are they're not challenges we have to look at everything as an opportunity to make sure that we are giving every one of our kids what they need we have to make sure that we're embracing them regardless of who they are where they're from i'm looking

110at all my pictures here i feel like i'm like sorry but this is i'm looking at it's a melting pot that's my family the skins go okay i'm gonna do something right now and i wasn't going to but it really bothers me for miss patricka for you to say that what your actions and your words are good because it brought light to a situation with our students i'm sorry i can't i'm going to make a motion that we contact the governor's office to find out is there anything as far as looking into the abuse of power or is there anything at all that is a board we can do about systemic issues with board members i'm i'm laying it out there that was the straw for me i'm sorry so what's your motion that we

111will contact the governor's office to at least see what recourse we may have into looking into is an abuse of power or what is there anything that can be done i know we can't sanction but what our possibilities may be i'm sorry i'll second that then thank you discussion i'm gonna start the discussion i don't think it's abuse of power i think it's just and i'm sorry to say this it was just stupid comments it just really we have to really think about what we say was it intentional we only know i mean only you would know what comes out of your you know your mouth i know you were having a conversation with with whomever they were however we have to make sure that it's not just it is not just the parents there

112are it is the kids as well so we have to make sure that those kids understand that they're looking at us so they have to make sure that you do care about them as well and not be not just be behind the scenes and i know that i don't think that you're evil at all because i know that you're you've taken other children in and you're good-hearted in that respect for children but we have to make sure that we understand that i just think that and we all say stupid things we all say comments that we wish the god we never said you know but it comes out of our mouth but it's what we do afterwards it's how do we how do we resolve what we did say what do we do to make

113that understood that you know i did make a mistake how do we correct that and that's what i think that we need to do and is it from you know is it and i know you're not a bushy person but sometimes people see that as you know not being concerned or heartfelt because we're all individuals and we all react differently so i don't think it's abuse of power miss davinelli so i'm just going to go down my list because i i have it you know the last four meeting validated what has been going on for the very very very long time there's been a few of us on this board that just like me for the past three and a half years i've tried to bring ethics and transparency to the community because that's this

114is what the community expects and wants this is what we're supposed to be doing the fact that one board member made three motions over a period of several months to force the former superintendent to explain how the water marking incident even came about that's one that was one issue that this board never dealt with a board member here tried she tried several times thank you miss vaughn i would like to thank that board member because it's so important to be courageous and we must continue to try to bring ethics and transparency on this board and we're compelled to as a board to do it for the needs of our district and the students in the community it's basically always fallen on deaf ears as i said earlier you know we have a school built in

115bonita springs it's been brought to our attention and now we're having a middle school being built when that's really not where the need is so it's not just this what one incident with guatemalan students is my point and i brought up five other really important reasons i feel that could be a problem if this behavior continues so i encourage the board to think about this think about what edac has said and made a statement i think that's important for edact for us to listen to our advisory committee committee so i'm trying to make trying to think what else i had it's just important for for us to at what point her apology is for this but what about there's been no other apologies for anything else prior to this and there we just had spent

116i don't i would like to know the amount for the nine investigations that we went outside investigations which i believe she was involved in a couple of those and that's a whole other conversation so there is an abuse of power here if you start looking at the history thank you mr prieber if you can please guide us a little bit i know that this came out of miss vaughn's comments which was in regards to edac edac was regarding comments that were made in statements only it was not about abuse of power it was not about investigations it was not about anything else that is being discussed at this moment am i correct in that yeah there was some a little bit of mention about a few other things and i think that was in in

117response to the public comment from from that night but the actual motions as i said the actual just to go back and to be clear two of them we've already they've already dealt with the suggestion to resign and the condemnation of of the statement what they asked me to actually bring forward however i think we have two different topics going on here and actually i was about to ask the question to clarify exactly you know how how the statements were abuse of of power i can see i can see a small connection with other issues that came out of that but no you're you're correct they were not asking the regarding other i just want a clarification on that and miss miss jordan so there's a motion on the floor it's been seconded you've heard

118from miss giovannelli you've heard from miss patricka you've heard from miss vaughn i believe miss morgan has not spoken and that's for sure and then miss fisher they call i will have to open it up to public comment you haven't heard from me based on the motion and i don't this is i think that because my name is in the motion i'm not permitted to deliberate or vote is that correct i'm more comfortable if you don't deliberate and you certainly have to abstain from the vote but my question is the motion there's a motion pending so for investigation on you contact the governor's office to miss can you please restate your motion and let me just clarify this again i'm just getting just because i'm i'm a little okay just restate the motion please okay

119the motion is that we contact the governor's office to find out what abilities or anything that we can do regarding an abuse a possible abuse of power of a board member that and i didn't even that's the motion but i didn't even go into the things like speaking on behalf of the board having this insignia behind stating facts that weren't that weren't proven so that's my mother so we have a second miss jordan if make sure that every board member has an opportunity to speak we have to open it up to public comment and then go straight for the vote now i normally do not jump into these things however as we are moving forward which is what we're supposed to be doing which we spent the entire afternoon discussing i i want to make

120sure that the board thinks about that as well okay so you move forward with your process you have a parliamentary process you have a motion on the floor it's been seconded miss jordan if you can move forward with the discussions and open it up for public comment thank you miss morgan okay so really there are two things that we're talking about here so referring back to our conversation this afternoon what is the question the question is does the community have confidence in us and is the board credible and i would ask board members if they feel that this conversation inspires confidence in the part of the community and if it if it lends credibility to us now i first of all with respect to what ms vaughn talked about because this is all i don't

121know how to separate these things out the mission of the school board equity and diversity committee is to monitor the district's adherence to school board policies concerning equity and diversity and they have always done a great job and i would assume that this conversation that they had really was with respect to the board's policy on non-discrimination so that being the case then i look to what is our code of conduct in our district what happens when somebody makes a statement that is contra to policy or practice and what i come down to is restorative practice and the notion of effective communication conversations focusing on repairing harm and restoring relationships so to me that should be in in part how the equity and diversity committee would explore this matter and my i guess my request would

122be that if we are really going to look at this as a community and talk about it as a community then as ms patrick has said there needs to be an opportunity for her to speak to the committee secondly i would say that this really the statement ms patricka made we have already put out a statement that says we do not condone what the statement that was made it is on miss patricka to build those relationships with the community and to restore trust with the community i'm i'm concerned that by by by talking the way we're talking and going down the road we're going down by not sticking to what it is as as attorney dupree bruno said by not sticking to the goal which is to make certain that we act in a way

123that inspires confidence and makes us credible that well i just i'm afraid that what we're doing doesn't do that and i'm i'm just asking because that's what we've learned this afternoon i'm this is what i feel and i'm asking for your response to that do we when a child makes a stupid statement in school do we expel them no we sit in a circle and we talk about how that affected the people who felt that the statement was made to them what we're doing here is not that and so that's i think i've talked enough i i'm done thank you thank you miss fisher so first of all i'm going to say that in the 90s when i was a school counselor at an elementary school in north fort myers i had an opportunity to

124work with groups of students who had come to this country from other countries who were not familiar with the language the customs hadn't been in a big building like a school before some of the kids were living in migrant camps and were migrant workers so we had a teacher called an immersion teacher and the children who came to our school who were monolingual and very inexperienced in this environment were put into a classroom where they were immersed they talked to other kids who spoke english they learned how to do some things with different equipment and different materials and you know reading and writing and notebooks and things they had really not experienced before so with that experience in my mind and we visited the migrant camps and we waited for those kids to come later

125in the school year and then caught them up on their work and responsibilities because they were up north in the summer and then came here closer to the late fall and so i had that experience and had an opportunity to visit their homes and you know and learn more about where they came from and be able to empathize a little bit with what would it be like like how did i feel when i went to mexico and i didn't speak the language and i didn't know about the customs and we went to some places that weren't the tourist places and it was an experience so with that in mind and having those relationships that i was able to build in fact at the last backpack event some of the kids from one of the families

126were there with their children who looked exactly now as their parents looked then anyway i just want to say that we have just spent hours regarding this situation we have made an official statement as a board fsba has made an official statement we have a job to do as a board and not any one individual board member has any power to abuse because we have no authority or power per statute unless we work as a team a team who recognizes that every kid has the ability and right to a good education and because we can make a difference in the education of children and i think that we have lost track of our priorities and we are not focusing on what we're here to do which is to help all of our children regardless of

127where they come from or how tall or skinny or what color hair they have or anything like that is not what we're here for and we are not here for our own personal agendas and that problem is inhibiting us and not allowing us to do our job as a governance team and we are not focusing on the kids i asked a couple of weeks ago where are the children in all this we're saying that we're protecting them but are we really no we're not i have a picture of my family too i have eight grandkids and seven great grandkids i've been around kids all my life taught my first class in 1960 we are off track here and unless we each one of us take responsibility for our own behavior and do what we are

128thought we were elected to do and work to provide our students with an education that results in student achievement and kids who are well adjusted and good citizens then we might as well all leave because this is not what we're here for now let's call the governor again we have been investigated as nor ad nauseum the last letter to the governor gwen how did that work out i didn't hear anything it's still in the process please ladies let's not practice so how many times are we going to be investigating one another and fighting with one another and what are we accomplishing here this is not about me this is not about you guys this is about us as a responsible elected body elected to represent the people and provide an education for our students in

129this district we're the economic driver of this community what are we doing and i do not support calling the governor again okay miss patricka i'm not permitted to just answer i thought you said may i please so i went to what she said since she was referring to me mr preet bruno just kidding if we can keep it very strong because we're going to go okay i know i'm always told please you guys spend more time telling me how much time i have been letting me skate let's go ahead please okay the point i want to make is that it is not about a comment one comment that was made this is a systemic issue it's about a person that screamed in my face to tell me to follow the rules it's about a person

130who sat and tallied the number of times i said i in a meeting okay and yes i set it out it's not about one thing and it's it just bothers me that when it comes to certain people on the board calling the governor is not an issue but on others it is so i'm sorry like i said what pushed me over the edge is saying that making that statement brought light to a situation miss vaughn and then we'll go to public comment i've been listening to this and before miss getting spoke i would say that maybe five percent of what mrs miss fisher said was directed to this motion and i think we still and honestly this was a problem that i had two weeks ago when we have the muddy waters so to speak

131that we need to be clear and we need to be focused on only this particular motion and it was sparked by what i brought forward what i felt was my duty as the liaison to to equity and diversity committee and it's it's gone to something entirely different and yet i'm hearing all kinds of comments so i you know i'm i'm having a real problem when the conversation keeps veering in so many different directions as to what exactly we want to do and hearing from my board colleagues specifically on this motion not editorializing thank you miss vaughn and miss morgan you had i was just going to ask for break before public comment if we could we've been sitting i'm sorry we've been sitting here for two and a half hours it's me i need to

132go to the bathroom may i please be excused thank you elon mr bruno this is me with that board are you doing it's up to you manager if you want to take a five minute recess do all of you need to have a guess well i had to go earlier i disagree but at the moment if we could give everybody three minutes please okay we will resume the meeting and we will now have public comments miss debri bruno excuse me miss kittens can you please restate the motion i wrote it out would you mind reading what i wrote out please okay it's a motion for ask the governor to review a systemic consistent abuse of power and accountability for restrictions abusive position abusive position i'm sorry what was the last part i wrote it down

133too oh miss miss jordan can you read it yes it's and this was the second time i asked and so that's why i made sure that i wrote it down contact the governor a motion to contact the governor of possible abuse of a board member abuse of power no can you read abuse contact the governor of possible abuse of a board member can can you please afterwards then she went into the whole porn of a point of order can a preview appreciate that attorney dependo can you please read what i just gave you okay so you will be two motions are not the same thing so what you wrote okay the first motion and this is the motion that i want to say so i have here a motion to contact the governor to investigate

134a systemic consistent abuse of power i mean i'm sorry position and accountability for actions that is the motion i need a second i second that earlier you've had discussion so now we have to have a discussion again for this new one unless the board wants to waive that since you pretty much had a similar discussion already and move forward with public comment okay is there any discussion regarding this the new motion so at this time madam chair you can open it up to follow comments public comments please if there's anyone who would like to make a comment on the pending motion please line up and is that motion being given to miss roman so that way she has the correct one i just want to make sure she has the position and miss dupree bruno

135can you please refer to how minutes and i'm sorry madam chairman it's oh speaking and well it's going to be three minutes per person it will be three minutes per person and the motion that is pending does not have a board member's name so the we i will continue to ask that you refrain from utilizing a name and it's only speaking on this exact motion and this is only about the pending motion and make sure please state your name for the record my name is yvonne wortzinger and i have been listening to this silliness juvenile discussion about a situation that apparently goes much beyond some derogatory and discriminatory comments made by one board member this is a situation that has a cancer and when you have a cancer you cut it out there is no

136reason for there to be continuing discussion this is my fourth board meeting and this has gone on every single board meeting some of you have to have excuse the language but some balls don't understand why a couple of you are talking about things that ex that you experienced in 1990 when another board member tells us that we have to get with the program of today's work today's environment you have a board member that has talked tonight about no one but herself and how she reacts and what how it affected her she said nothing about anyone else it is all about her and i don't even know her i just listen to her closely tonight and you should too you guys are not taking the children into consideration at all i don't care what you say

137you can talk and you can gravitas all you want but you are not acting civilly nor even i mean it's it's unc i've been a board member i've been a county board supervisor and i have never seen anything like this before somebody needs to stand up and i thank a couple of the board members who have said it is not about what she said about one certain group of people she doesn't care she never did care she cares about this person behind the comments i don't know what else you need to know get together as a group and begin to function but get rid of the cancer have some balls denise nystrom as a board two weeks ago you had a meltdown and you had a tell all and it wasn't about one incident and

138you know it was about numerous incidents seven months ago i didn't know any of you i didn't know district three unfortunately i came to understand her egregious behavior why do you keep talking like it's one incident to us and district 7 not taking actions deepens the lack of faith in community and creates a further lack of of not having credibility earlier i thought you had a moment of sincerity was i wrong i hope you still get your sound bites from andrea messina for the 2022 campaign election excuse me that's a fact it's a document it's an email reset the clock i'll take two minutes please miss nystrom continue i'm gonna take extra time this is a dereliction of duty for you to do nothing about it you have been involved with this malfeasance for years

139it's just like the getaway driver and the and the murderer gets in the car and off you go you are as culpable you say you say that you want us to trust you that you want to be honest you need to prove that you need to prove it tonight if you can't be honest you might as well stop that touchy-feely conflict resolution bs that you were doing earlier today because you will never trust each other because you have not gotten to the heart of the matter you're lying you're sweeping it under the carpet you're protecting you're doing the same things that you always did while the community is begging for you to be honest let her face what she needs to face if she has nothing to hide say investigate me i don't have anything

140to hide investigate me people that are innocent don't mind really being investigated in that way and i have to tell you district six i am really disappointed in you okay you were the one that fought for justice fought for it for months and months i watched those videos i was depending on your credibility if you don't do anything shame shame shame shame shame and shame for trying to solve something after you've been abused the circus robert roper ward cleaver district five asked a little while ago what can we do now i like district 3 personally and i pray for her but this is what you can do you can enforce board policy 121.27 which says clearly the school board of lee county florida does not discriminate nor tolerate discrimination on the basis of race including

141anti-semitism color ethnicity national origin sex sexual orientation gender identification gender expression disability physical or mental pregnancy marital status i could go on but it clearly says the school board of lee county florida does not discriminate nor tolerate if the district 3 person cannot come to the reality that her continued service on the board is only counterproductive not only counterproductive it is a violation of board policy and if district 3 cannot do what needs to be done herself the task becomes the duty of the board there's been a violation of board policy i read where a school bus driver was dismissed earlier this week for violating board policy enforce your own policy because i have a feeling the citizens of this county are not going to go away until you do district 3 criticized a person

142that supplied goods and services i'm trying to do this without saying a name which costs the county a very good contract and it's going to cost them in legal fees and the reason she objected to that was hateful language ultimately it's going to cost the district further the use of legal precedence not to censure someone when the legal precedent has not been finished yet it's still not past the supreme court it's how we got into the lgbtq trick that we got into because we were citing possible outcomes in case case law and we made policies based on things that weren't enacted yet they weren't case law yet we're doing the same thing now someone tonight said we need to do what's going to restore the confidence and the credibility of the public the way to

143do that is to follow and enforce your own policy good evening this is the first time i've come to one of these meetings i've watched you all on youtube videos i followed some of the audience participants that are here but i think to help you understand what we're seeing or what i'm seeing is you all are out here on a playground you've got one member who's supposed to be leading the playground and that person is bullying harassing using poor judgment and you wouldn't accept that from children and here you are adults here you are professionals i'm a professional nurse locally for 33 years i worked very hard i've never seen this in the meetings i've been to in the boardrooms i've been to i see a couple people on the board that i think are

144really earnest in what they're trying to accomplish i think the rest of you are just pushing back you want it to go back to status quo but that's your problem and i really think it's beyonce i think you need to take it to the state i think this needs to be you need to be held accountable and you don't want to go you don't want it this is embarrassing but you've created your own embarrassment i think many of us have been to these kind of workshops where you try to get along but this is systemic this is really dysfunctional and i hope the best for each one of you wherever you go in life but this obviously isn't it and the leader is probably the biggest bully of them all and that's selfish to want

145to hold on to a position that you cannot maintain that you don't have the judgment to maintain it ma'am could you please state your name good evening my name is dana burton i wanted to address one of the board members who just made a comment stating that kids are not held responsible for comments they made at school my daughter a few years ago was kicked out of middle school straight a student had never been in trouble at all because she asked the principal to repeat something she said to her they accused my daughter of insubordination expelled her from middle school i brought it here to the district and i think it was an advisory committee we sat in front of and every single one of them backed her up that principal at the time and

146said that my daughter was had every right to be expelled from school so children do get held accountable for what they said so do teachers and bus drivers as we just heard got in trouble for it so it makes no difference so this is a board member who has done something like this again you need to be account held accountable for things you do and say good evening district 3 board member may claim to be sorry but i assure you she is not sorry she spoke with such confidence as if the hatred and racist comments she made were true about guatemalan children and she proved that again tonight it was i was cringing listening to her speech about everything she said was true she basically is saying that brown children are uncivilized they just walked

147out of the jungle and went straight to school and for the first time they saw water my grandson is guatemalan and it's an insult he has more culture than you will ever have in your whole life and that is insulting to me he is an a honorable student and he is a good student and for you to make those comments and not to denounce them and to continue to spew this hatred for children and you say you're for the children and all of you that defended her and said she made a stupid comment like a child no she made racist hateful comments and at her age she should know better than that and i was a speaker at edac and let me tell you we spoke extensively about an investigation into a sterile and how

148that happened last may because for two years this board spent millions and millions of dollars on block lane and in the dark of the night with a secret meeting with her friends that whole property got switched to three oaks and the federal council got 40 to 50 acres of a free park that you're off of the motion at this point the comments are not germane to the motion you're talking about abuse of power that is the motion and that's what we spoke about in edac i was there i was there play the video you guys should learn to watch what is going on in this district graham and juan and dr neduji and the chair spoke about an investigation into a sterile and the disparate treatment which are civil rights violations when you give more

149money to one environment because it's 93.3 white and you have over 87 of children in lehigh that are minorities that are not getting the same care and attention and money being funded to them you have a civil rights violation and that needs to be investigated that ends abuse of power tara jenner i grew up overseas and i lived in a small town in southern spain and my best friends were gypsies and they lived in an entire town that did not have running water they did their laundry at the local fountain and i can tell you they all wore the sparkliest whitest clothes you've ever seen because it was a sense of pride for them that despite the fact that they did not have running water in their town they were still able to maintain not

150just high levels of hygiene but exceptionally high levels of hygiene it offends me greatly every single time i hear any group that is lumped in as one big group of individuals and we're using terms like always everyone these imperatives that include every single individual in that classification it is dangerous to do so and as someone who has been trained in the use of language the board member who's being looked at tonight for her actions and behaviors should be intimately familiar with the fact that words matter earlier tonight i can't remember which board member it was and you'd harass me if i said it anyway said that children make mistakes the people on the deus aren't children they're grown adults and they're speaking in a position of authority and whenever you dismiss downgrade or in any

151way humiliate a group of children or even an individual child based on their actions in an open forum that should never be tolerated it really should never be tolerated especially when this in my opinion is nothing but the straw that broke the camel's back traditionally people don't get up right up in anybody's face until it impacts them directly and i see this is now happening a lot of people find this and take this personally but here's the deal this has been going on for a long time and if this board member doesn't want to resign at a bare minimum she should be willing to allow and encourage an investigation of this potential abuse because you know how much money we've spent tonight on overtime on sheriffs on air conditioning you name it not to mention

152i think it was five hours the other night as don armstrong pointed out on this very subject matter that could have been going towards the very education of our children payment for good quality teachers this is a waste fraud waste and abuse shame that you do not say investigate me i have nothing to hide unless you have something to hide i have observed tonight from district 3 a quote-unquote apology and yet it reminds me of the kinds of apologies of a lot of abusers that i've done therapy with and it's a kind of apology that turned away responsibility to edac to other board members to all kinds of things and focus re try to refocus blame responsibility on other people and i'm concerned because i mentioned earlier tonight about the unhealthy system so many of

153you have come to try to keep things the same in the same way that abusive families try not to have the whole system changed because it's more comfortable and those of you who are trying to keep things the same one of you said in order to inspire confidence in the board passivity keeping things the same does the exact opposite acting with strength to change the system is what inspires my confidence some of you talked about children's bad behavior and how should we respond to them we certainly should be accepting and loving and sit down and have a conversation with them i agree the first time the second time the third time however continuing to do that has a way of instilling repetitive behavior because there's no consequences you're all teachers you're educators you know this

154you know that at some point you've got to change your response to the bad child and change their in order to change their behavior if the child refuses to change their behavior then sometimes a suspension is required then sometimes an expulsion is required if we don't do that with children they often get more and more depressed laps into conduct disorder oppositional defiant disorder and that can lead into narcissism and other kinds of patterns of adult behavior and there have been in this situation systemic long-term problems that you have talked about that we have talked about observing and it doesn't change by sitting down and having a conversation and trying to make a good impression it changes only by making a dramatic move which i think should be forced resignation dr grass wow you sensing some

155anger in the room you think that is a show of support for the actions of the board you sit on the board of a fortune 500 company a two billion dollar company with an educational product to educate 95 000 students get your act together this is not time for touchy-feely kumbaya moments you have an issue this resolution this motion that miss kittens has put forward it's weak take that off the table six of you need to sanction this board member and ask for her resignation let the lawsuits fall where they may but this is what must be done to bring unity back to this board you've wasted hours and hours on this issue that you could have put into the school district and into bettering the educational system for our students let's get back to

156work board members do your jobs take care of this problem and move on thank you my name's heather i just wanted to say that i agree with the motion the district 5 board member put forth tonight and i want to thank her and district 2 board member for being brave and attempting to bring accountability to the district i would highly encourage the rest of the board to vote yes on this motion during discussion one board member asked how credible that do they think this makes the board look guess what it actually makes you look more credible when the public can see that proper actions are being taken to hold everyone accountable bullying and harassment is a level two violation for students which eventually ends up in recommendation for placement in the success academy and or

157expulsion faculty would be terminated if they violated board policy or acted in the same manner as district 3 board member has over the years there has got to be consequences for her actions the public needs to be shown that the board members who are elected officials are held to a higher standard than students and staff and yet here we are letting certain board members issue a small apology and get just a talking to when something like this happens i implore you to please do the right thing tonight show the public you're dedicated to improving transparency our confidence and trust in you hello christine divajilli again i don't have much to say because everyone literally said everything for me but if we don't get up here and engage in these conversations then you'll you'll then have

158the opportunity to say oh well it was just a couple of people and not everybody feels that way so this is going to sound a little redundant and i'm sorry for that but you know if this was one of my children if these were two of my children if one of my children assaulted verbally or otherwise another child my there would be recourse for that action above and beyond now the first incident sure my child would have to apologize which this particular board member did a very poor job of if that was an apology if my child gave me an apology like that i would be demanding another after they took some time to think about what it is that they really want to say especially to our children because they are the most important

159stakeholder in this conversation and they were an afterthought to you and that is devastating going back to my kids if this was the third or fourth or fifth or sixth year of dealing with this type of behavior from them more serious action would need to take place you are not a family so i don't expect you to deal with this person's actions in the way that i would my own children i expect better i expect more i expect accountability i completely disagree with board member number seven over there and her comments about i believe that by taking action you give yourself credibility for once for once you do the right thing it is not that hard actually it is hard it is very hard to do the right thing i shouldn't say that it's extremely

160difficult to do the right thing and there were people throughout history where there was only one person doing the right thing and thank god for that one person because without that one person we wouldn't have the united states that you see here today i wish we could have some of that courage some of that behavior from our board members from our from the people that are supposed to represent us i would love it if my board member would be brave and would not just follow the status quo seeing as my board member has been sitting in the dais the longest and has seen this behavior the longest i would love to see that from my board member personally i would love to see that from our at-large board members because they are my board members

161as well represent all of us please not your own special interests is there anyone else who would like to speak and i would just like to say too i don't believe that we are wasting time we have a process that we're going through so we must make sure that we hear from everyone up here and we must make sure that we give you all time to speak as well so unfortunately we're fortunate it does take time so i just i had to say that so seeing no other people public comments i'm going to go ahead and call for the vote and this will be a hand vote so miss repeat one more time okay could you please repeat the actual because my motion you said was incorrect so it was a motion to ask the

162governor to look into a systemic consistent abuse of position and accountability for actions of a board member miss morgan no miss vaughn yes miss kittens yes miss givenelli yes and miss fisher no and i believe that your vote yes i know i just think if we has nothing to do with you also please i just think that we know that out of order please as far as i think this is this is definitely on you to make it right and so but i don't know how that the governor does that or who is the person who's supposed to do this point of order at madame chairman i'm sorry okay i think we need to hear your vote i know what i'm thinking well we need to thank you thank you mr bank thank you i

163am going to yes i guess yes the motion carries may i please ask the another question that the board come to a consensus to let attorney bruno at least draft something to follow through or that we can work with her to do that's that's fine mr bruno would you since it was my motion i would work with her so if it's a motion then we need to have public comment again no no no no i don't think it's emotional you i am not going to make a statement for our employee to do something i am asking the board is it all right to ask her i will to do that and then get it back to the board so this is this is a request for a directive from the board to instruct me to

164wrap the letter need direction from the board so miss kittens is asking if for you to to get consensus for you to draft up something to send to the governors so do i consensus on this please that miss dupree bruno does this i don't know how else you would do it she would be it's her job that's her job right it passes so would you please draft something up well it is mr priest as the attorney she would draft up something to send to the governor are there any other board comments i never did mine and i didn't either oh you gotta finish then i'm sorry i know this was all board comments this whole entire no we didn't know that this is so she was still again i apologize so the meeting will continue

165so you can enjoy some more time there am i going for miss kittens okay i'm making it very quick first of all to pastor ropra i apologize that you've not received any information i will definitely follow up and get back to you within the next 24 hours i guarantee that whether we have an answer or not i don't know if it's something that's a public records request or how we would do that but i will ask the attorney about how to get that information today we had a presentation about capital projects and i just have to say that the quadruple a project has now gone to 93 million and that the cost of building schools and our inflation is up 14 percent which really really concerns me because if the next schools that we try

166to build in other areas that have need and being generic are we going to be able to do it because we are running out of funds that we were we end up being back where we were before we got the house in tax that was supposed to help us build schools because we didn't have the money and today so we were talking about that and somebody mentioned how many portables well in february of 21 we received a report there were 178 portables and 19 were in the south zone that was 35.5 or 10 were in the west and 70 or 126 were in the east zone that was in february we have not built anything to give us any additional seats so i know we're working on it and no offense on the projects that

167are coming but it's kind of like you know saying christmas is coming and it never comes we can't keep saying in two years and two years and two years and spending 93 million dollars on a building that when i looked at the utilization of the three schools that ms patricka mentioned in her report three oaks had middle at 101 percent utilization three oaks elementary 112. pine woods had 103. unless it's new math there's no way to get 117 out of any of those numbers so and i continue to bring it up because it just is an issue of the taxpayers money of the resources and equity in this community we're just moving ahead with things and i have to be the voice of reason to speak for the students and the and the teachers and

168everyone in that zone that don't have the same things that everybody else has in 2021 they don't have the same things so i just wanted to bring that up i want to finish on a good note the principal's letter i want to say to the principals i know many of you are watching as you have wine and popcorn because it takes that to get through our meetings sometimes the principal's letter thank you for the courage of speaking up thank you for making that statement after a couple of issues that had happened that went to the news i did bring it up that we need to look at how we vet information and if you read the principles letter that's what letter that's what they were talking about as well we cannot put ourselves in a

169position of defaming someone and not have all of the details and one of the things that i had suggested is that when situations happen in a school that rather than having a district person to speak have the principal or administrator from that school to speak about it's a familiar face for the parents it's a familiar face for the community and it calms them down but i was told that they're afraid to speak i don't think so i think out of the whole group you can find someone that would be willing to represent your school and speak so thank you i look forward to the superintendent letting us know when we can relax the max masks mandate for our teachers and it's interesting because i was in several schools last week and the number of kids

170and people wearing masks was a ton most of them are wearing them and it's an option so let's just give them an option is all i'm saying thank you so much thank you to staff thank you community and everybody that supports our students in the lee county school district and thank you good night miss vaughan did you have anything else to say because i know it was your turn when we started this whole i just i actually i just wanted to clarify that what i see what i said earlier when you asked about edac and i do believe that i did absolutely represent what edac asked me to represent there was some discussion on other issues but the final requests and recommendations from edac were what i said the first time so i just since

171one of the speakers said implied otherwise i just want to go back and say again yes those things were mentioned but that was not in the two hours and 15 minutes that we had that meeting that was not the requests and recommendations from from vdac thank you for clarifying that i appreciate that miss morgan did you i have no comments thank you miss chivanelli okay i'll be quick so i would like to thank and actually i would like to praise the superintendent staff bus drivers students and parents as we complete the first quarter of the school year all we must all we were all committed and to this as i can't even talk i'm sorry in the stuff i wrote earlier today we are all work all must be commended as we hit the pandemic

172wall yet again at the beginning of the school year i'd like to really thank the superintendent leading us through this most difficult time i value everyone throughout the district working hard for all our students i also want to take to thank everyone that came out tonight and spoke and taken an interest in our schools in in lee county it doesn't matter to me where you live or if you have children or students in the schools as i don't care because i'm glad that you want to be involved i think that's important and i just want to commend people for coming out and doing that because so many feel like their voice isn't heard and believe me we hear you as we educate our students they will be going out into this world and i want

173to welcome the community that cares about our students so i am grateful and i believe in public awareness so thank you in fact i encourage every community to be involved everyone in the community be involved i will admit it's been difficult coming to meetings the past five years the board had had a team building assignment today and this was stuff i wrote and that started just today and and i do feel that it's much needed i still feel that it's needed and we must continue this journey to be a better board and the more i thought about it i think there is a way to move us in the right direction and mend fences if this board is truly wanting to move us forward they will consider this as an opportunity to be a team

174and elect me as the next school board member chair and i am the only board member that's never been a board chairman i feel with the unanimous vote it will send a clear message that we are finally a team i am committed to this board and i should be allowed to show that we are all committed by by electing me as an ex-board chair can we be a team i'm willing and prepared to bring us together let's see if we can be a team by electing me thank you and one more thing one last thing unmask our staff make it optional dr savage thank you mr did you have anything else no i gave my comments thank you and miss patricka and the only comment that i wanted you know i was i was put

175on the spot tonight to talk about what i'm doing for students and if i make that public then i'm in the wrong for making a big deal out of it and putting it out in public and then i get bad headlines for trying to make amends and trying to make a big deal out of it don't appreciate being put in that position and the work that i'm doing behind the scenes is meant to be good work not to be work that gets the attention of the public thank you ms patricka and i just want to say too we all sit up here and we need to make sure that we're not we're sitting up here on this pedestal or whatever we have to look at ourselves and make sure that we are doing what we're

176supposed to do we all make mistakes and we do need to make sure that we keep ourselves in check as well as we move forward and i think that it's going to be hard to bring this bring everybody together but i think that we have to continue to do that because we have a job to do we need to work together to get it done and it's going to take each and every one of us to do this so that's what i'm asking of all of you to just let's not constantly call out one person you know before we start doing that let's think about our words as well so please let's let's just think about that mr pre-bruno i don't have any comment thank you dr savage i just have a few just want

177to first thank miss fisher for bringing up the october and specifically the entire month is dedicated to a national bullying prevention month just to really reiterate for our children out there our students are a top priority and we've talked about the mental health issues we've been dealing with the bullying is just such an important thing because even as adults you know we really develop a capacity to to withstand and try to diminish some of the impacts but for students as they're going through a lot of their more formative years it can have a really pronounced impact so just as a message to our children who are out there whether you are bullying whether you are a bully whether you've witnessed bullying it is so important to acknowledge the harm that it can do and to

178be not just one board one governance team but one district one one community all of us standing up for each other and helping to lift each other up that's what we can do that's what we want our kids to do and it's what we want all of us to do so i just wanted to kind of reiterate thank you for bringing up that piece because i don't think i'd have another opportunity to bring it up in october so thank you for those comments my pleasure also i just wanted to answer one of the questions that we received was just about the objectionable materials banned books and so forth so just want to reiterate some ms von you mentioned about that there is in the form that form is very accessible to our public so that's

179through the parent bill of rights web page as well as the curriculum and instruction department web page both of those have that form to make it very easy for folks to identify that piece so what happens is a committee actually reviews those materials and can look through any particular material that is done so you want to make sure that was known as well also the topic of masks game which i just want to reiterate for those who didn't catch our comments yesterday today i'm sorry tomorrow the district's medical educational panel is again convening and certainly that the top issue that i really wanted to get resolution on is the mask even though they are looking at all the mitigation factors they did also look at the they did select the community transmission rate as the

180critical metric they would be using for all of our mitigation measures just we know how critical the mask issue is and so they are reviewing that tomorrow we certainly will have a decision on on how the mass policy will be enforced and whatnot prior to close of business on friday if not sooner just in and a chance to have that panel evaluated then all the issues that go along with that so thank you those are the comments for this evening thank you i just want to thank staff as well for staying here with us all evening and all the deputies out there really appreciate you all the next schedule meeting of the board on monday november the 1st there will be a board workshop at 1 p.m on tuesday november 2nd there will be a

181board briefing at 1 00 pm followed by an action meeting at 6 pm at this point having no further business to come before this board see a new objection this meeting is adjourned you