001good evening ladies and gentlemen we are ready to begin this evening's board meeting the school board meeting of october 5th 2021 is now called to order the time is 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 in the district district mission i'm sorry vision to be a world-class school system this evening's agenda includes invocation presentation of colors and the pledge of allegiance acknowledgements public comments consent action items which include eight on eight items under academic services five items under business services one item under human resources five items under operations two items under public hearing and four items under other business board members is there a motion to adopt the agenda
002miss vaughn i move to adopt the agenda thank you can we have a second please i'll second thank you miss morgan it has been moved by miss vaughn and seconded by miss morgan please record your votes okay 7-0 motion carries mrs kittens will introduce her guests for the invocation after which miss patricka will lead us in the presentation of the color and the play pledge of allegiance mrs gettings please introduce your guest yes good evening pastor gregory ford is a native of naples florida he's been married for 33 years with his lovely wife i can attest to that and partner in the ministry pastor marjorie ford and together they have labored in the gospel for 31 years they proudly have four children and six grandchildren pastor ford has a master's degree in theology and is
003an ordained minister in the assemblies of god he is currently the campus lead pastor for first assembly cornerstone in fort myers where he has served for the past 17 years pastor ford has authored and published two books from no man to god's man which is his personal life story and get to the point a life and ministry instructional guide under his leadership pastor ford and first assembly cornerstone has been a community hub and beacon of light and hope to the families in lee county thank you for giving the invocation pastor ford can you all please stand us pray dear heavenly father giver of all good gifts we come together this moment in prayer requesting your wisdom your guidance and most of all your peace the rest upon us as we proceed in tonight's meeting let
004everything that be done lord let it be done in decency and in order grant this board the insight to lead with integrity that every decision that is made tonight will reflect your goodwill and the good of the people help us all lord god to make decisions whose ultimate aim is for the good of all the students the staff and the community may your will be done tonight for these and all of the blessings we ask in your holy name we pray let everyone say amen miss patricka please lead us in the presentation of the color and the pledge of allegiance thank you introducing the cadet who is presenting the national colors for our pledge of allegiance tonight is sergeant major james hoovener army instructor from cape coral high school sergeant major hoovner served 36 years
005in the army in numerous challenging assignments and retired as a sergeant major this is sergeant major hoovner's third year as a jrotc instructor in the district sergeant major i'd like to thank you for your service to our great nation thank you ma'am presenting the national colors tonight is cadet matthew parker the cadet commander of the cape coral high school junior rotc program cadet parker is on the cape coral junior rotc drill exhibition drill color guard and raider teams he is actively participating in all junior rotc events and is competing at the state level for exhibition drill upon graduation cadet parker has the desire to attend the highly prestigious united states military academy at west point please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of
006america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay please be seated pastor ford thank you very much okay the character word for october is respect others quote respect others and others will respect you confucius the design you see displayed on the screen was created by kate mackey an 11th grade student at estero high school acknowledgments for the month are as listed disability history awareness week national school lunch week national school bus safety week national red ribbon week next on the agenda item is public comment and before miss dupree bruno addresses the public tonight we do if there is a need for a interpreter we do have one that would be available for those who may need one mr pre-bruno if you would please
007address the item good evening and thank you madam chair school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda or any other matter relevant to the operation of the school district if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided in the back if you need a public comment card they are provided by our staff in the hallway outside of the boardroom the rules concerning public comment are posted and will be made from the microphone in the back of the room please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to
008provide 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 there is a process if you have an allegation or charge that you would like to bring forth which is found in board policy 1.11 subsection 6b speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there will be one warning and we ask that you govern
009yourself 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 thirty and one minute if there are thirty one speakers or more the maximum time allotted for public comment is one hour sixty 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 whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective board please state your name when you approach the microphone i will call you five
010speakers at a time please follow the staff's direction when lining up venom chair we have 33 speakers this evening that would be one minute per speaker thank you mr prairie bruno i'm sorry sir there's no speaking back and forth thank you please make sure that you have completed a public comment card if you intend to provide public comment the card is a public record identifying those who speak and providing contact information to staff for follow-up the cards are located with the staff in the hallway in addition if there is not a quorum door in this meeting i will call for a five minute recess we will continue to resist this meeting as needed increasing five minutes each time members of the diocese when a recess is called i ask that you leave the chamber of
011course it goes without saying that during the recess board members will not discuss any matter that is pending on the agenda or will come before this body to avoid any sunshine violations i will reiterate what miss dupree bruno just said and that it is unlawful and a second degree misdemeanor to knowingly disrupt or interfere with a school board meeting we would appreciate it if you would state your name prior to making your comment is there anyone who wishes to address the board who has not filled out the comment card in the room okay mrs duprie bruno please proceed with the public comments thank you madam chair will the following individuals please line up ali lock francis haas corsta ben tara jenner dr constance shipman before we before we start if one of the interpreters wouldn't
012mind reading the statement for me that i read in terms of the public comment in spanish i would appreciate that is this mic on yes you can make it fix it so you can you don't dip it down would you like to do it in english first well i was talking about the i got a request to have the public comment statement that i just read translated in spanish okay espanol mr bruno okay all right well the first speaker i think that's mislock you may when the timer comes up you may go ahead and begin hello my name is francis haas and i am a lee county resident a parent of two form two current and one former lee county district school student i am here again to talk about the cover 19 pandemic the
013last two meetings i was telling you the story of my brother-in-law tate walters who was a former teacher with the lee county school district he it began exhibiting symptoms october 19 about two weeks after the beginning of this school year and six days ago he passed away due to covert 19. i would ask every board member to please do a moral reflection and come up with a threshold for the number of bodies you are able to tolerate the number of orphaned children the number of widows the number of grieving family members that is tolerable to this board and just let us know what it is because this is devastating i've been working in a covert unit since the beginning of the pandemic and it is exhausting thank you speaker please here i'll just get down
014low you can adjust that sir sorry this is my first time you're fine thanks for watching by the way there you go hi i am carson branch i am a student at cypress lake high school i would like to thank all of you for what you do for the students in lee county i have the best principal in the county mrs rolls i went to her about the bathrooms and she told me that she has submitted it for many years and i know they need to be remodeled i would kindly like to ask for you to take a look at the bathrooms at cypress lake high school especially the ones at the football field and in the west wing since it is the seconds olden school and since it is the second oldest school in
015lee county you can imagine the need for a bathroom remodel and i wouldn't want it i wouldn't want to have a child right now but if i did i wouldn't want my child to be going in those bathrooms and thank you for your time thank you next speaker please excuse me ma'am if you can go on the other side of the stanchion we don't want anyone behind the speakers thank you good evening my name is ali lock bienvenidos fros amigos de guatemala me nobre es senora la isra i'm here tonight to ask you to please take the masks off of our teachers throughout the night and every board meeting i see you all pulling down your mask and adjusting them when you're speaking and i feel for you please imagine having to do that for
016eight hours while we're at school trying to teach our kids we the math mandate was just renewed for teachers this week without any guidelines as for when it is going to come off and a lot of us are scared to sign that mou tomorrow because we're afraid that they'll never come off so i ask you to please do the right thing and take them off of us thank you well the following individuals please line up dr edward drast danielle frances cook simone socho jinwata alvarez dr iris ramirez you may start when you're ready greetings to the lee county school board and each and every one that is here my name is dr constance shipman and i am an employee of the transportation department and my title is book attendance my concerns are when we are
017on the bus we have some children that have different behaviors and those behaviors will cause them to scratch kick bite even spit in the projectile for the stick there's no protection for the other children or for myself or the best driver now with kovic going on and my grandson is a student in middle school he received and contacted kobe from another student dustin was taken to my daughter who already had enough problems i thank god that they're both alive and they're doing well but there needs to be some protection thank you ma'am next speaker please tara jenner when the natural rights of the u.s and our natural rights protected by the u.s and state constitutions are abridged it's the duty of the people to speak up then franklin wrote in part and do good letter
018number eight that men ought to speak well of their governors is true while their governors deserve to be well spoken of but to do public mischief without hearing of it is only the prerogative and felicity of tyranny in short those who are acting righteously should have nothing to fear from free speech only those who are treacherous spirit without free speech and the right to redress the actions of those in elected positions we are not free repercussions such as removal and threats of arrest further silence the rights of the people and cause a chilling effect as is evidenced by board policy 1.11 the challenge to the board also is to recognize that any money that's received from the federal government as free comes with strings that are shaped like handcuffs say no to this grant and
019chris patricka excuse me ma'am time is up next speaker please dr edward grass i don't do theatrics i have no yellow hazmat suit covid is waning mass mandates are no longer a distraction children are not dying open up this room to the public and get back to the important task of running the school district dr savage you're doing an excellent job i support you and most people in this community do as well board members stop conspiring against him and work with him for the district's common good some of you are working with higher-ups in the fsba and teachers union to push social agendas that are extremely unpopular stop scheming to undermine parents in the community to quote a recent guest opinion choose a leader who will invest in building bridges not walls books not weapons
020morality not corruption intellectualism and wisdom not ignorance one of these board members does not exemplify any of those qualities thank you next speaker please all right daniel francis cook for the record i'd like to make a formal public records request actually of each of the board members oath of office i wonder if that's possible if i could follow up with somebody on the staff to get a written copy of each board member's oath of office and i think that's important because i see many men and women in uniform today all politicians swear an oath to uphold and defend the constitution for the united states of america as well as the florida constitution i know that in article 1 section 5 of the florida constitution it says that the people have the right to peaceably assemble
021which this tape on the seats is a violation of we have a right to instruct our representatives which is what these petitions are calling for a resignation and then we also have the right i think we have the right to be heard regarding these petitions so i'll follow up with whoever i need to about the oaths of office of all the board members thank you hello okay jennifer juan alvarez i have a child in lee county two of them actually and i'm here actually to speak to the public and not to the board i am an activist for lee county i a couple weeks ago i went to a non-profit called florida citizens alliance okay they're they've been working with the educators of florida and the legislators okay in the last five years lee county
022has been on their radar okay i moved here 15 years ago a-rated school okay now to learn as of 19 it is a b borderline b which probably since coveted it is now with c right at school academically got people and then you mean also excuse me when they graduated schools excuse me they cannot have excuse me ma'am you're out of order i need you to lower your voice please thank you 52 means they cannot read and they don't have reading proficiency when they graduate lee county okay this is what's going on last five years with this board people we need to wake up and people will wake up okay also math proficiency 39 39 when they graduate lead count thank you ma'am next speaker i'm going to ask ma'am you're out of order waking
023up don't worry i'm will the following individuals please line up lou navarro christie divijelli yvette bennerock carol hardy robert davis you can make your comment without yelling simon susco humiliating and racist comments about a group of students is bad enough but to say that is the most to say that is the most pressing problem principles are facing shows total ignorance regarding the true concerns in our schools kids are failing academically face bullying depression and abundance of other issues that are far more concerned students parents teachers and also the community flush chris patricka please keep your voices so this is the audience's first warning we're going to abide by the board policy no personal attacks if you want to make a charge or an allegation we ask you to follow the appropriate process for board policy
0241.116 b and you will have a special time to come in and make your comments otherwise if you have not done so we will abide by the policy no personal attacks dr iris ramirez i heard a rumor that this school board wants to celebrate alternative sexual practices for a month everything should go through the lens of how does this benefit students promoting sex to children is not what we pay our taxes for it is not what parents send the children to school for much less for exposing minors to non-biological slash non-reproductive sexual lifestyles this can actually confuse and even frighten children who are properly clueless on such adult matters it does not promote better graduation rates or literacy so why are we wasting time and resources instead of focusing on improving the education as mentioned
025by previous speakers me having to come here to speak on this is a waste of time the angst this causes in the communities a waste of time and energy do the things that benefit the students and nothing else if only i thank you ma'am next speaker please yvette banner roach save vice chairwoman of the republican national hispanic assembly of florida we acknowledge and appreciate the apology issued by lee county school board member district 3 for recent comments about guatemalan students however that is not enough and we demand her resignation immediately as a school board member and president of the florida school board association school member district 3 should reflect on and examine her cultural assumptions regarding latin american students in lee county we expect our education officials to have knowledge grace and decorum when teaching
026students from all cultural backgrounds school board member district 3 races and discriminatory comments express the lack of knowledge about the students in the lee county district which by the way the majority are from hispanic heritage by looking at this board you wouldn't expect that to be the case because sadly this board is not representative of the demographics of this district we americans of hispanic ethnicity do not seek special privilege or consideration which is what we treated equally chris patricka resigned christine divajilli i have a question about this part of an email that i read today the mask mandate for employees came from the interim superintendent and will continue according to the number of infections another part of this email says the other mou is how transportation employees around tracking their time for payroll all employees
027will vote on both voting no will not take away the mass mandate it will only take away the 10 days and the 1 000 bonus teachers support staff bus drivers you deserve better power to parent wants to help you we're ready to help you get in touch with us good evening board members my name is carol hardy i'm a school bus driver and my concerns i have two one is that buses have anywhere from six to sixty kids there's no social dust distancing and the parents are screaming at us we don't have to put mass on our children our drivers are dying because they don't have to put mass on their children we need masks if nothing else on the buses kill us off your kids won't get to school my other is that when
028we fill out our extra time we're made to sign a statement saying that if we're lying we can be prosecuted and go to jail in 70 years i've never had any of my people that i work for mistrust me like that thank you will the following individuals please line up jacqueline perez denise nystrom christine with here jane santagelo lori fahey please make sure you stand on the other side of the stanchion i think that's thank you sir go ahead please well once the timer comes up there you go sir hello my name is robert davis i'm a bus driver out of east zone and there's a lot of politics going on here i'm not about any of that i'm here about one thing money our drivers need to be paid most of our drivers are
029up in the morning and working two hours before most of you people get out of bed we carry the most precious cargo in the world your children you should think about that show the drivers some respect that they deserve and they need all drivers and attendants in this room please stand i want you to know i want everybody in this room to know that we're all watching you just saw a few of us this time get ready for the next meeting louis navarre 76 year old widower 38-year teacher honorably discharged yet veteran i taught in the system i'm appalled at all you people you won't even let the children have a mask and the governor playing politics you know what did you ever hear the word in loco parenti apprentice it means the teacher like
030me was in charge of your child you have no business to tell me how to do my job you have no business and the governor too has no business he only taught one year and washed out i read about him now i want to see the kids with masks why would we hurt our children you people have lost it if you want to be the teacher go in and pick up the chalk i never told a man or a woman how to do their job for air conditioning or any other or a barter next speaker thank you thank you sir next speaker please good evening board the majority of students in league county school system are hispanic district 3's comments are evidence that she does not stand for the majority of our students and families
031district 3's multiple recorded public violations of the sunshine act her treatment of others her being the cause of multiple investigations and lawsuits and now her racist comments about guatemalan children prove that she is not an elected official for the people and she is certainly not an elected official for all the people i urge the board to not wait for her resignation but they must demand her resignation governance by passivity is governance by corruption district three's apology in the media was far from an apology today she was quoted as saying she regrets hurting people's feelings but she did not acknowledge the falsehoods in her statement nor does she acknowledge her obvious bias that brown children are uncivilized and let me remind you board last year in january i represented and helped an employee that was a
032bus driver here oscar jo misty where she stood up and demanded his resignation or his termination because he had sworn at another employee thank you next speaker thank you ma'am denise nystrom the discriminatory remarks about guatemala and mayan children show the lack of moral character by district 3 board member her insidious behavior has plagued the board for years two years ago she falsely set up district 2 board member with a watermark incident which was found to be false she did not want to hire the attorney that sits here today and she made her life miserable she's badgered rsm the auditing committee and they quit she has undermined the superintendent with the goal of having somebody else take over so that she can be back to her under-handed business as usual district 6 district 5 and
033district 2 board members speak a lot about the unethical behavior and manipulation that needs to stop carpe diem board members this is your opportunity to take a stand and represent the public tell district 3 to resign of course it would be better if she would just please please please resign on her own hi i'm christine i work out of buckingham transportation i have two concerns here one is why they keep messing with your rtm keep cutting your hours back but don't take no students off they put them on and another thing is why they make us pay back the stimulus money that they were given when irma was here they took one day out of every pay from the transportation department for to the end of february when they were giving it to them for
034free somebody needs to look into it thank you well the following individuals please line up stephanie hoffman rachelle jocelyn jan m jerry ware melissa hatter hi i'm laurie fahey i would like for one of you board members to arrange a meeting with these bus drivers and direct the superintendent to do the same they have some serious concerns here on another subject if someone is paid as an employee they are guaranteed employee rights as well as being held up to employee professional standards including those rules regarding discriminatory statements about students or stakeholders and rules against using the district logo so either district three board member was representing the district with permission and she made discriminatory remarks using the district or she was on her own time speaking for herself and violating policy by using the logo
035also requiring termination so if she doesn't resign the lee but school is bound by ethics to terminate her pay my name is jane santangelo i'm from cape coral florida and as a concerned american i am concerned about the educational level of our children and i hold you all responsible for that because if your paycheck was directly impacted by the fact that the stats of the educational level of our children go down i would like to see how fast your keisters would get on the stick and start producing and getting the children up to speed jocelyn as a former lee county school district teacher i would like to speak to first masks for our teachers give them the option the positivity rate for lee county has fallen the last three weeks consecutively this week being below
036eight percent i don't know if you're waiting for it to get zero but it's never going to get there because the only people being tested are the sick people so give them the option i'm going to also as a lee county teacher try to explain all of the struggles of our esau students none of which involves water or staring at water students are not given enough resources student students don't always have access to a teacher at my school it was a revolving paraprofessional with minimal training not their fault but not always qualified to help in the classroom thank god for the custodial staff at my school because they were always willing to jump in and help resource teachers like myself who don't speak spanish god forbid you speak creole or portuguese those poor kids the
037biggest drain on the students is the outdated esol test students are forced to take every year three parts speaking writing thank you ma'am next speaker please hi i'm melissa hatter thank you for informing us at unlawful to disrupt the meeting i will remind you of the case studies i shared with you demonstrating the consistent trend of courts ruling public comment viewpoint restrictions it's unconstitutional the verbiage public and personal attacks was specifically named a violation of our first amendment rights we are permitted to speak on any school district business obviously this would include specific individuals of staff and school board i'm here by making an official complaint against the school board and their attorney for the violation of our first amendment rights with uncle unconstitutional creation use and enforcement of board policy 1.11 you all signed
038a loyalty oath to uphold the constitution law and policies are protected constitutional rights trump anybody's pride or ego good evening my name is stephanie hoffman i'm a lee county resident for 15 years i have two children in public schools at this time including my son marshall who asked that i acknowledge him this time because i forgot to last time who's sitting up there fourth grade at edison park i'm here to implore you to reinstate a mask mandate or at least consider reinstating a mask mandate for students teachers have a mask mandate and people numerous people around here have cited that the positivity rate has gone down positivity rate has gone down i suggest that it has gone down in the county and in the school district itself because the teachers are now wearing masks if
039you remove a mask mandate then it's going to go back up again like it was at the beginning of the school year and i can do this too i also ask that you address the recent report that the florida department of education didn't request any federal funds for covered relief i know for a fact that the school board did expend money please get some will the following individuals please line up pebbles pool sonia isler elijah scary syllas oliver jamie kirschner hi my name is jan i just want to take a minute and thank lee county schools for a strong anti-bullying policy which with a little research on my part i found out that it's from the jeffrey johnston stand up for all students act that was passed by rarely unified florida legislator legislature in 2008
040and what i found out was this student there's 67 counties in florida but he was from lee county he was a age 15 a cape coral honors student who took his own life one night because he was tired of being called fat fat and ugly and dealing with cyber attacks so i want to thank you for having this policy and i want to suggest that we as adults hold ourselves to the same standards that we're asking our kids to hold to which is no harassment no intimidation anti-bullying we can do it thank you good evening my name is jerry ware and i'm here tonight to ask one simple question and that is what is the plan for the school district for the census is now out redistricting process is in place my question is what
041does the school district plan to do because at the county commissioners commissioner's meetings we've learned that was told that you do not have to adhere to the maps that were drawn by the county and my last remark is that i am very very happy to say that i was able to participate in the discussions for in the search for the superintendent and most of us and a lot of us want to say that we very much in support of our current superintendent hi my name is sonya eastner i'm a resident of the county since 2008 i have two girls at school and one of the things i want to tell you to the board the mask doesn't work there is no one study that shows that the masks work there's no study at all so
042i don't even know why you're using it and i don't even know why you're looking at me when i'm talking it's so disrespectful because we're here just to talk to you i want to tell you that the maths have been proved to be damaging and there's lots of deserves and i can share it to you the must decrease the oxygen intake increase tonics inhalation shut down your immune system and increase the virus risk so i don't understand why we have mass for kids for eight hours doesn't really make any sense there's not one study that shows that the mass work if you have one study to show me i would be more than happy to see it but there's no study at all the study that possibly put over there there's not showing any data
043it is nothing next speaker please hi my name is pebbles cool i'm a lee county school bus driver i'm representing all those drivers in attendance during the pandemic we came back to work we know everybody knows there's a shortage of bus drivers we were given five six routes to do and having to cover different runs we never left a child behind but we have to hear from getting yelled at from parents about why we're late what what can we do and every time we address it's the same thing we're sorry we still pick up the kids even if they're late but we still get them to school every year we hear we are the first ones they see the last ones they see but we're not considered first responders we get the kids to school
044safe back home safe we deserve a raise we have a raise freeze for six years they want to offer twenty dollars to new drivers ma'am next speaker please good evening my name is elijah scurry and i'm here on behalf of transportation before you step on a plane a massive before you step on lee county public street bus a mask is required no options why because the distance between you and the next person is less than six feet transportation does not have that option we are being told to be professional and deal with the problem the best way we can we are being forced to cover routes and double routes because it's within our rtm when the contract said this is accepted if 50 or more drivers out in each zone we are being worked countless
045hours without downtime because the drivers are quarantined and can't come can't come to work but but their routes have have already started giving us no time to sanitize our bus the cost of living has goals has gone up yet our pay remains the same we are paying hundreds or thank you will the following individuals please line up kate owens carissa knowles kathy stout tina harris my name is anastelis oliver i've been serving to the d street for 14 years like assistant teacher jumping to transportation for second year i'm so proud to be part of the team and i want to touch two things that hurt us a lot salary raise a salary we have to do we have to do a lot of things through the day and mask why they force ought to use
046a mask when probably we are in more risk to using this when they pass by us to our level be fair max for them mass for us no max for them no match for us because when they pass through us we are at the level we are that reach we have a lot of drivers are asthmatic diabetic and they need to take care we are more in dangerous to using this because we cash with the web we can small bacteria we catch more things and it's not fair parents are not happy because kids don't use mass it be fair plea ma'am next speaker please good evening i'm jamie kirschner i want to thank you all for helping me get that public request the last time i was here i appreciate that it's unfortunate that we
047have to go through these message are these methods to be able to get the response that we need we are asking you to please be transparent and please not retaliate any more against staff members that are trying to do what's right when it comes to our esc students especially district 3 met with a group of our parents and this started in april and this district did not get back with these parents multiple times after multiple meetings and then all of a sudden one of our members that were for the district got fired so we're asking for help we need systemic change for ac students i shouldn't have to be representing a seven-year-old who's been baker acted twice because his iep isn't being followed and i shouldn't have to go to due process with our district
048when we try to sit at the table of mediation what are you doing with your funds put it towards the kids and stop litigating parents good evening good evening kathy stouts i have a lot of concerns on education and my major one is why are we teaching the new staff how to do something called circles is the school board aware of that question mark do you even know what that is i was told by a new member on your staff who is a new teacher that they are taught and quote my training for instance was all about social and emotional well-being they discussed doing what they call circles where the kids meet and mentor share personal stuff where they all sit in a circle it looked very creepy not only that they also are telling
049us that we are supposed to discuss gender we're also disposed to discuss sexual preferences why aren't we teaching our teachers how to educate our children question mark why are we discussing about genders why are we discussing about sexuality and just recently thank you ma'am next speaker please ma'am if you don't mind standing behind on the other side of the stanchions thank you right here stay right here yes you're fine okay good evening i'm grateful tonight because i'm one of the few of the drivers or teachers and ones who work closely with our students is still alive i would i truly believe a person who has not had a person experiencing coping like i have i had a sister die and to see the progression has a deliberate debilitating disease and at the end it is
050you suffer and i do not want to live like that and i want every driver every teacher every every class every student every person has that worth and i want them to just let you know at the end but my sister died the only thing the only thing i had to do i had to sign a waiver to to go into the room and not to see her die by herself you know that's a it's it's hard to see your family member die by yourselves and i want everyone to know you are worth it thank you ma'am thank you thank you next speaker please hello my name is chrisa knowles and i'm a parent of a esp child in the district i'm sorry just don't want people to have to go through i had to
051with my child to get the services they need we had to go to a district facilitated iep meeting i know it could have been worse but we just want to help other parents we want to collaborate with the school other kids don't have to do what my child had to do and wait for those services we just want to work with you that's all we want we want the kids to get what they need thank you hi there kate owens thank you board and thank you bus drivers for getting my esc baby to school every day i appreciate it so much once again i'm addressing the board i tried for five years to do it your way and work with the school i want to know why i had to sue and go to due
052process to get my son the services that the federal government and fape and idea says he should get these kids are gravely underserved in ese we are way behind the times we whole bunch of moms and teachers and administrators want to collaboratively work with lee county system school system to make progressive change i'm asking again to please meet with us please work with us please hear us your teachers need support these parents need heard we are absolutely bullied in iep meetings and we're not going to stand for it anymore thank you madam chair would appear that is the end of public comment thank you very much first of all i really want to tell you how much i appreciate everybody everyone coming this evening and speaking to our bus drivers out there thank you so
053much we could not do what we do without you all and i know that you're to me you're really really important and dr savage do you want to maybe address i know we're going to be reaching out or you're going to be reaching out to them yes president yes madam chair absolutely yeah i actually do have a meeting scheduled this month on thursday evening with lehigh senior to meet with our bus drivers so i know it's on our calendar and it's a thursday evening i know the prior one was rescheduled due to conflict but they have it rescheduled and it's at lehigh senior i believe it's on the 21st of october okay well will you all will let me know it will be notified i think six o'clock i want to say let me just
054double check yeah it looks like 6 30 at lehigh senior high on october the 21st on on the calendar because he does want to we do want to hear your concerns and your comments and so dr savage will be reaching out and making that possible for you all just thank you to our drivers absolutely thank you for for showing up here like this we just really appreciate all of you i think you've heard us so many times to see you face to face thank you for what you do for our children every single day we want to hear every concern that you have and do the best we can to address those concerns so thank you very much okay and i apologize i'm trying to get my notes and dr savage i'm also going to
055ask you if maybe miss bowens can reach out to i believe it was miss knowles regarding her child i had notes for the last two speakers specifically with those similar pieces i made a note to to get in contact with them so i get a little more detail about that piece i know there's been some ongoing meetings but just to get a little bit more specificity i've got about 15 specific ones but those two in particular were there thank you i just want to make sure that we do that oh and then i'm going to have dr savage one more thing regarding the there was teachers here speaking on the mask and did you want to share with regarding tomorrow yes that is yes madam chair just as a priority of course we have our
056expert panel that is meeting tomorrow that is their first meeting and again they're not just looking at masks they're going to be looking at all of our mitigation measures it's an ongoing body of work that way as we have a tiered rubric i do want to acknowledge that the conditions right now are substantially better than where they have been so we're all aware of that and very excited that things have improved dramatically at the same time we also want to be is even more prepared next time so that we understand what our mitigations will be as validated through an expert panel so that we're more prepared if we see any recurrence of this during the flu season as well dr savage mr pre-bruno and just one thing just so that the public knows as well
057with regards to due process cases i know that legal services tries everything it can do to try to get these things resolved prior to so prior to the filing of the due process please talk to our staff attorney because i know that she works very diligently to see if we can resolve these things prior to it going to a due process hearing okay thank you thank you for sharing that so we will go ahead and continue on the next is the approval of the action items in the agenda under the documents the documentation for action item listed under consent is made available to the board member seven business days prior to the board meeting we are expected to review all materials and we have the opportunity to speak with the superintendent with any questions we
058may have regarding the recommendations some of these items have also been briefed or workshop with the board in advance of appearing on the action agenda board members are there any agenda items you wish to pull for discussion under the unfinished business table item portions of the agenda miss fisher i have no polls this evening thank you miss giovanelli i have none that's patricka no thank you miss kittens i have none thank you miss vaughn i have none morgan i have none and i have none thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda's consent action items i'll move that we can approve the consent agenda action items mr may have a second right miss morgan okay motion by ms fisher seconded by miss morgan please record your votes seven zero motion carries dr savage
059do you have anybody to introduce this evening okay dr savage please introduce any administrators in attendance with new assignments that were approved under the consent agenda my pleasure madam chair i'd like to recognize sabah yassen gomez food nutrition services going from training supervisor to a staffing and operations coordinator i'd also like to recognize bertie alvarez in title 1 from district teacher on assignment to program administrators that's all i'm sure okay thank you okay okay we are moving to public hearings dr savage please present your recommendation for this evening's public hearing items yes madam chair p1 approval to adopt policy 2.062 the parents bill of rights in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date is october 6 2021. okay and go
060ahead and read the second the approval to revise policy 2.18 district management selection of instructional materials in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be october 6 2021 thank you we will now recess the regular school board meeting and open the public hearing as indicated the public hearing this evening is to consider approval to adopt policy 2.0262 parents bill of rights in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date is october 6 2021 and then number two is approval to revise policy 2.18 district management and selection of instructional materials in compliance with changes in related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best
061practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be october 6 20 21. at this time the public will be invited to speak on these two items the time allowed for comment is three minutes is there anyone on the right please go back and if there's anyone over here on the left-hand side as well you're welcome to go back please and then miss thomas will you be ready okay and whoever the first speaker please just step up and just please remember it's on these two items please thank you christine divijelli so while you are while you are reviewing the parental bill of rights and the policy and how it will be implemented and all that fun stuff i would imagine that the process in order you know for teachers and
062staff and administrators to go through when a parent wants to exercise their right is something that you guys are taking into consideration as well when taking that into consideration something that you might want to omit from that process because it lacks it lacks a what's the word well i can't think of the word right now but you'll you'll you'll know what i'm talking about in a minute here if i want to go into the school to look at my children my child's curriculum and her educational materials if i want to look at the instructional materials i have to ask the pre i have to ask the teacher so i have to let the teacher know beforehand what my request is when i want to come in what day like all where is the transparency and
063that there is no transparency in that i'm not allowed to take pictures or videos not allowed to talk to the teacher even though i've already had to communicate with the teacher that i even want to set up the appointment if i want to meet if i want to see the instructional materials in a specific teacher's classroom there is a reason for it i obviously do not want to give the teacher a heads up so they can clean everything out and make sure that their curriculum is acceptable for my viewing pleasure on that day that is absolutely absurd and the fact that this is even a part of your policy and procedure for this particular policy is completely uncalled for where is the transparency where is the accountability there is absolutely none of that here so
064what i would ask is that verbiage like that be omitted completely if i have a request and that from a specific teacher's classroom i should not have to give that teacher notice and an opportunity to clean things up i obviously have an issue and that's why i brought it to your administration's attention in the first place so since we're still in this drafting process can you please do me a favor and make sure that there is language in this that protects parents rights a little bit better than it currently does thank you very much denise nystrom on the same old role well except one thing is new the national school boards association wants to call us domestic terrorists isn't that interesting we're coming here to fight for kids yet they want to call us domestic
065terrorists i hope you pass a resolution in support of us not against us with regarding the parents bill of rights i've said it before i'll say it again you can pass any policy you want but until you are giving them an opt-in letter it really doesn't mean anything having a policy doesn't mean that they know what their rights are do they know if there are boys in the girls bathrooms do they know if teachers are teaching morality in the classroom has any of this been addressed we've been talking about it for months and months are you just going to hide the policy in the code of conduct and just let it all skate away just it's just oh and by the way that form that students have to sign the one if they're lgbtq that
066they somebody falsely amended and put the parents signature on it is once again online with only the student signature that speaks directly against the parents bill of rights i'm melissa hatter again i agree with the omissions needed from the parents bill rights but what needs to be included is the parents have the right to know the process and what to do if any of our rights are violated who do we go to who enforces it and staff needs to know the consequences of violating that's been the point of contention on many cases brought before the board and we need to eliminate that in advance from problems with this because it's going to arise thank you robert roper also known as ward cleaver to begin with the parents bill of rights was only an assembly of
067existing rights that parents had in other florida statutes and should have already been a part of what lee county school board would have granted to children secondly there are a lot there seem to be policies which are invisible to the parents concerning lgbtq things like bathroom use we know that it's going on we have first-hand knowledge of it but we can't find a policy anywhere your principals obviously have the policies but do the parents in order for a parent to know their rights shouldn't they know the policies lastly you have an anti-discrimination policy within that policy you guarantee the rights of freedom of religion and at the same time gender orientation they're diametrically approached you cannot have both within the same policy you have to choose one or the other it's impossible to enforce both
068tara jenner we've all heard the expression putting lipstick on a pig and i've been around long enough probably more than most of the people on the board maybe with a couple of exceptions like mary fisher and kathleen morgan who seem to have just grown roots and i was here when we were looking at opting out of standardized testing and fighting against common core and most of you know that we've changed to florida standard florida state standards and for an extended period of time and to a certain degree now all that did was take the words common core and scratch them and put florida standards on top of it and when it comes to this whole thing about parents bill of rights i have a big concern because the 59 million dollar grant that you guys
069approved tonight if you actually go and google search some of the topics that are incorporated in that you will find the national association of school psychologists and everything on their website is critical race theory but they're saying it's not critical race theory they're saying it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck but it's not a duck it's social emotional learning and by the way did you know that critical race theory isn't a dangerous thing at all it has nothing to do with the 1619 project which by the way they quote in there as being a pulitzer prize-winning journalist article it's all about indoctrination you can go to their safe promise website through the material that you guys had in your briefing earlier and it has in there how students can actually contact
070their local and their state reps in order to be able to push for gun control this is nothing but indoctrination if you're really going to be serious about the parents bill of rights you need to do a few things one you need to make sure the parents understand that there's still indoctrination going on in the schools and exactly what that is so they can opt out their kids from any of this psycho-social learning stuff and anything dealing with any of these school psychologists that may be indoctrinating them on the side also i know that the statute itself talks about opting out on a lot of things but there's nothing in this statute that would preclude or prevent this school district going above and beyond and offering an opt-in as well you have opt-in for going
071into sports activities we have online opt-ins which one of our board members seems to think we have to do everything by paper and it's going to be a big paperwork overload but it's not we can do everything online these days and we can make sure that the families actually know what it is they're agreeing to and i'm still vehemently objecting to the fact that our board attorney did not see fit to have in the prior code of conduct just a cross-reference to the statutes by incorporation there's no reason that can't be done thank you kathy stout again i just wanted to let you know one thing education is a is a big thing for parents and i want to remind you for the bill of rights there is something that's going on that i'm not
072liking so you're separating the children from the parents that's one and i don't like that and the other thing is i don't like the fact that we just had banned book week this past weekend that just happened and unfortunately some of those books are in our lee county school district libraries and some of the teachers were told were told and i repeat told that they are supposed to let the children know that they can still get these books in our lee county school district if we're already banning them from the schools why are we allowing the children to continue reading it and the other thing is too did you know some of them had pornography in it that's a huge thing it's going viral and i know you have seen some of these videos that's
073been a you know to your attention and if you haven't you really need to pay attention because this is in our school district and it's young as kindergarten and that's disgraceful and i am so tired of you know these children don't have voices until they tell their parents until they go home right so one thing that i need to know from all of you why are you teaching the new teachers coming in not education why are we teaching them sexual conduct why are we teaching them you know transgender and things like that what happened to basic basic basic education what happened to that i mean the writing skills the reading skills you heard the numbers that lady that you kicked out the other tonight you know our stats are there it's proven it's there so
074that's all i have to say thank you good evening stephanie hoffman again to speak in favor of the parents bill of rights merely to acknowledge that it is your statutory duty to pass it because it was signed into law by the governor in july and you're required to pass it i appreciate the difficulty that it is to formulate curriculum that will satisfy the multitude it seems like everybody that has spoken prior to me has been has taken issue with one thing or another such as banned books like to kill a mockingbird or with the fact that there are people with sexual preferences that may not agree with their religion i appreciate the difficulty of passing a parent's bill of rights that will meet the strict scrutiny that you have with all of these different and
075diverging views i would ask you to pass the parents bill of rights as written because it does satisfy the statutory duty that you're held to and also it satisfies the requirements that the state is going to hold you to and it allows the parents to have a sight into what their children are learning without the parents actually sitting in the classrooms i am not suggesting that parents should sit in the classrooms if they want to do that they can homeschool their children we teach you we are allowing our we send our kids to school so that you can act in local parents as someone else said in the place of the parents we are trusting you with our children thank you hi rochelle jocelyn again i just wanted to be able to finish my thought
076about the esau students as it does speak to best practice but thank you for providing water but that's much appreciated i'm sorry excuse me i'm sorry and can you stop her time for a second it's it has to be on this subject's only dear you said best practice was the second yeah it has to be just for let me two board policies the approval of the policy two point zero six two and two point one eight that's the only thing that public comments and i read i went through the board docs and thought that it was discussing best practice in the classroom is that not the case am i wrong i'm sorry if i am on policy just a second degree one policies with regards to the parents bill of rights pursuant to the statute
077that became effective july 1 and the other policy is also with the tweaking from the statutory language regarding instructional materials and the opportunity for parents to well really the obligation of the board to bring certain materials to them for a vote and review so 2.062 is parenting of esau students though that's that's completely off topic on this one okay thank you i apologize edward grass i was sitting here reading policy 2.18 and a question came up in my mind and an observation and a request first of all are there books in our school libraries that are donated by private groups that may be a questionable nature that do not go through the curriculum review process i'd like perhaps dr spero or someone from the curriculum department to get back to me on that they have
078my email my observation is i'm looking at paragraph two objection to instructional materials presently presently in use this is a long convoluted process to remove material from the district library and teaching shelves i'm wondering if there's a way this can be streamlined in a manner which parents can actually understand and then my observation is it possible to do a true audit of the library materials available in the district at this point and make that part of the public record thank you is there anyone else that may like to speak regarding these two topics cnn we will go ahead and i will now close this public hearing and reconvene the regular school board meeting of october 5th 2021 and dr savage please reinstate your recommendations for this evening's public hearing items yes madam cheer one at
079a time please approval to adopt policy 2.062 parent bill of rights okay you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 2.062 parents bill of rights in compliance with changes and related rules regulations and statutes to adopt best practices and promote transparency and accountability the effective date is october 6 2021. board members is there a motion to approve i move we approve the superintendent's recommendation to adopt policy 2.062 parents bill of rights i'll second that thank you miss fisher moved by miss morgan seconded by mrs fisher is there any a discussion ms juvenelli i am in support of this evening and i think it's really important to for and i brought this up earlier that the parents have the ability to know what their rights are and that it's information that's
080out there because i think that is one of the struggles is that the parents don't know about their bill of rights so i don't know you know and that they have these rights and it's unfortunate that we have to make sure that's the case but there's so many people are not afforded their rights or have the due process and so i think it's really important that they are afforded that as well and i think it's important important to point out that tallahassee had to strengthen the constitution because their their right their parents rights is already in the constitution and tallahassee had to make this bring forward and force this bill of rights to be more aware and public for our families and i think that's really important because i actually spoke to one of the
081local adel the local delegation one of the one here in fort myers and i said you know well the constitution affords the parents civil rights and he said this bill of rights or the parents rights he said this bill of rights will only strengthen it and that's sad to me because what has happened is we've had school boards over all over the state that's not afforded the parent the parents rights and so this is to help parents understand they are their advocate and the voice for their children and it's important that they know that and are aware of that because unfortunately somehow that's been lost so i i am excited about having the parents bill of rights and see how it affords our families what is needed to happen in our schools thank you any
082other comments mystery i'm sorry miss kittens that's jim vanello oh thank you i too am glad that there is the parents bill of rights that everything is laid out for parents to know what their rights are for their children my question is the 60 percent of our students and families what have we really done to ensure that they truly understand has there been you know when i look at this document all in red and all these lines and numbers and how has this really been explained to the 60 of our population have we had meetings or small groups where we sit down and explain this section here promoting parent involvement what does that mean translate that into spanish or creole and what does it really mean because if you're coming from a different culture some
083of this terminology does not translate well if you translate it literally it can get lost in translation what it really means to me as a minority parent so i'm just saying i it's a good thing but i think we need to take it a step further to make sure people understand and answer questions we need to take things down to the next level this is edukeys and you know we with degrees understand it but does everyone else understand what their rights are as well are there any other comments mr sorry ms fisher yes okay so as a longtime member of this district who obviously has grown roots i came here in the early eighties and started teaching here from new york and one of the biggest challenge is that we had as staff members at
084schools was getting parent involvement and i can remember having shows art shows theater groups dinners going in caravans to different areas of the county to try to reach the parents holding some of our school advisory meetings in different areas so that we could reach the parents of the kids the other night i heard the representatives from the esau department talk about how they are meeting with parent groups so there's a lot of efforts that i don't want for to go unnoticed by the members of our staff and the people at our schools who work very hard to try to get parent involvement one of the biggest things that i did was say parents are our partners and we need you so we have some parents who have really taken a very big interest and are
085educated and have the ability to find out what their rights are these rights this parent's bill of rights is nothing new parents have always had these rights this is just a composite presentation of this so i just want for us to really understand that every effort is made by our district staff by our school staff to reach out to parents and families to tr because without parents involvement the kids are not going to be as successful the research all says that so i just wanted to say that and to appreciate the people who work in this district and have worked in this district and really want parents to be a part of the process of the education of our kids in this community thank you yeah thank you ms fisher is there anyone else with
086any more comments okay did she have heard i just if i may just very quickly my comment had nothing to do with the fact that the staff isn't working hard to do things my question was how can we enhance that when when i make comments about things that we can do to improve it is not a negative to things that we are doing and i just want that on the record please thank you miss kittens see no other comments could you please record your votes it hasn't come up i'm sorry it's okay you'll have to put me in could you please it's not showing up it is a positive okay motion carries seven zero okay dr savage could you please read number two absolutely madam chair p2 approval to revise policy 2.18 district management and
087selection of instructional materials thank you have heard the superintendent's recommendation that the board approves to adopt policy 2.18 district management and selection of instructional materials in compliance with changes in related rules regulation and statutes to adopt best practices and to promote transparency and accountability the effective date of this adoption shall be october 6 2021. board members is there a motion to approve this item i move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation to revise policy 2.18 district mismanagement and excuse me district management and selection of instructional materials thank you have a second that's a second hit thank you it has been moved by miss working and seconded by miss vaughn is there any discussion seeing no discussion please record your vote okay seven zero motion carries thank you okay we are to board member comments and
088i am gonna go with miss fisher oh can we take a just say just a two minute break until we get this done before we come back to public comments sure okay five minutes because i know it's going to be longer what is this for just a five minute break and then we're gonna come back because we're gonna have more discussion find me writing here right now okay thank you miss morgan we're gonna we are back in our meeting and we are and i apologize for the i had to get sugar break so i apologize for that miss fisher we were going to start with you for member comments please okay thank you very much okay i want to begin as a longtime advocate of comprehensive health education and a long time member of the
089school advisory committee i want to thank our board members for supporting and allowing me to send a letter with letters of support from the community for the comprehensive health and i want to thank mrs morgan for bringing up that cnn report because that really was an important piece of information so thank you for that i attended the september csi meeting continuous systemic improvement attorney dupree bruno went over policies and procedures for advisories we had discussions about the student advisory committee the parent involvement and activities that support our strategic plan and continuous systemic improvement there was a student search a superintendent search student group selected from our district student advisory committee and i had i was on the list so i listened i didn't talk but the students were well informed they had incredibly intense comments
090good feedback they demonstrated a lot of awareness they were right on target with with what is going on in the community it was very eye-opening and for me inspired confidence in the future of our community to know that our kids are well educated well informed and interested in what is happening in their community so kudos to those student representatives and their parents and teachers i have a little a student sent me a little note a special note and i want to share it with you this is a high school student things that stress us out timed tests lots of homework work due before the end of class when teachers don't go over the answers high expectations but no motivations we use each other to get a better understanding of topics because the alternative is to
091watch a youtube video so i thought that was kind of cute and i wanted to share that october is a very busy month it's red ribbon month and the 2021 theme for red ribbon month is drug free looks like me our lee county drug free coalition will be having their annual red ribbon celebration here in the boardroom on october 27th and at cape coral high school on october 29th they'll be doing a break the internet with hashtag refuse we invite people to participate bullying prevention month is also in october and we stand up for students who are being bullied or who are committing bullying i happen to be fortunate enough to work with debbie johnson the mother of jeffrey johnson from 2005 to 2008 when students lobbied in tallahassee and in washington and got the
092bill from passed as a law in short time i want to offer some special thanks to our bus drivers for safely getting our kids to and from school every day they are the first people who see the kids in the morning and the last ones who they probably know more about the children than anyone else and we really appreciate them and i hope that we can really do something to improve their not only their working conditions but their compensation and i want to thank parents who do trust in the schools to take care of their kids and local parents october is also domestic violence awareness month it was launched nationwide in october 1987. as a way to connect and unite individuals and organizations working on domestic violence issues while raising awareness locally our abuse counseling
093and treatment center offers a hot help line three safe shelters children's programs counseling economic empowerment injunction for protection legal services life skills education job skills evaluation and training along with ged assistance and esol preparation they are really important to our community i spoke to someone who is connected with a local family court judge and the domestic violence incidents have really increased since the pandemic act also provides community education professional trainings and education they've been serving the five county area for over 40 years october brings us breast cancer awareness brings a healthy dose of hope to the forefront in the fight against the second leading cause of death in women breast cancer awareness month an annual campaign by the natural national cancer foundation raises public awareness in the disease that one in eight women will fight
094face while the statistics sound scary advancements in technologies and treatments have led to outcomes that are better than ever before october is also lgbtq history month this month-long column commemoration is celebrated in the united states canada and australia it was created in 1994. in 1995 a resolution passed by the general assembly of the national education association included lgbtq history month within a list of commemorative months why do we celebrate lgbtq history month the month a national co-awarded effort is made to highlight and celebrate the history and achievements of lgbtq people and learn just as much as we can about the movement elimination of the violence and unjustified hate towards the community can only be done by educating everyone about non-discrimination equality florida institute safe and healthy schools project aims to create a culture of inclusion
095and social emotional support while countering the bullying harassment social isolation and bigotry that dramatically increase risk factors for our students educators and community members who are members of that group i wish everyone a safe ride home and thank everybody for their participation in our school board meetings thank you thank you miss fisher miss giovanelli here please yeah first of all i'd like to thank everyone that came out and spoke tonight thank you to all the bus drivers that came out and spoke on everyone's behalf and i hear you and i am working for you to get that raise as i agree you need a raise although i'm deeply distraught over the circumstances by the others that came out tonight i am grateful that you made it a priority to show your concern with us it
096is not a secret that i have undergone numerous attacks and allegations since my time on the board by ms patricka and have stated publicly that i should be censored and by her and investigated and made it known that she did not feel comfortable sitting next to me asked her for fellow board member when i had when she had fabricated an ethics complaint falsely against me mr patrick made it part of my ethics complaint as she veered out of her lane and abused her power by directing staff to investigate board members i do not condone or agree with the verbiage and the xenophobic statements made by ms patricka during the ecl eccl forum well i will not pretend to understand racism at some level or excuse me at the same level the minority members in our
097community experience every day i am making it a pledge to not to you all to be more aware and intolerant of of it personally i believe that when a fabricated and false comment is intentionally made to disparage a group of people by someone of difference a different race it is a textbook definition of racism i feel i must stand up against that miss patrick stated today that she received the logo from dr atkins used to use for her zoom background i have never received such logo in in my early meeting today also i asked miss michiko where she obtained the information she provided regarding guatemalan students playing wit and with them the plumbing and she refused to answer the question miss patricka contradicted herself badly when she stated that she and i quote that she
098never approaches staff without going through the superintendent as as it is our policy and then also stated that staff provided her the information she received regarding students playing in the playing with the plumbing american plumbing towards the close of earlier meeting today ms patrick berated the board today to ask everyone to that we're a team and that and she made that behavior you know and that was i disagree with that and one wanted to have her own consensus for things for the board to change our own rules which she simply have clearly in the past said she's a rule follower ms patricka doesn't abide by the rules and she works so hard to enforce rules on the rest of us ms patrick often abuses her power and lets and let's let's think back last year
099when she stopped a prayer happening at a school athletic game it is clear that she does not abide by her own rules and her and her role as a and understands her role as a school board member mr miss patrick extremely is critical of school board attorney the auditor and the superintendent her comments against all three positions that we hire and supervise to lead and to lead to our respective auditor auditor who actually resigned from us that led to our auditor i'm sorry resigning firm rsm who are who by the way is a very respectable in the state of florida she has bullied and threatened the board attorney to the point that she had to write a letter to document the situation and to have it added to her file to protect herself from future
100abuse our own superintendent has been threatened by her on a regular basis she can sense consistently abuses her authority by similarly giving the superintendent and board attorney direct directives without consulting the board first while i believe the right thing for ms patrick is to do is to resign i am doubtful that will happen the board must address the problems we have frankly we have i've fired a far fired f employees far for far more for less making the same things we do not we are not showing that we are leading by example and being on being on this board with that is exactly what we should be doing and it's undermining everything that we do constantly here is an email i received from a teacher this afternoon after they heard what happened at our board
101meeting earlier today it seems if someone is paid as an employee they are guaranteed employee rights as well as held up to employ professional standards including those rules regarding discriminatory statements made about students or stakeholders and rules against using district logo so either she was representing the district with permission or she was discriminatory or she made discriminatory comments and statements calling for which is calls for termination or she was on her own taking speak taking the time on her own time speaking for herself and violating policy by using the logo also requires termination so if she doesn't resign lee schools is bound by ethics to terminate her pay my reaction to her statements today that is what someone sent me this afternoon tonight i want to make a following motion we need to conduct a
102full investigation into the actions of miss patrick a continued abuse of power i am bringing forward this resolution to censor miss patricka when she is representing the school district as a collegial board she needs to inform us of her agenda and what she will be saying this is this is not the first time she has said these or said these things are written in an email disparaging students in our district those students deserve to be protected when we have a board member that can cause this much harm we need to act as a board to protect students and employees and i just want to end with we must lead by example thank you so much or miss j finale did you make a formal motion i did and can you please restate the motion i
103would like to hold off on that formal motion until other board members have to speak because i know that there's another motion that was on the table or that was gonna that we talked about earlier today and i think this conversation can wait until that's presented so i'm just gonna hold can we hold off on that is it possible for you to send really probably the entire board should get it but i certainly want to see the motion as well if you could because i may withdraw my motion okay depending how the conversation goes and that's the reason why i i am reluctant at this moment in time right do you think it's a conversation that we need to have more in-depth at this at the table okay thank you okay mr evanelli was that's
104it thank you thank you ms patricka thank you a few things came up in public comment tonight if i may through the chair address the superintendent so i know that you have a meeting tomorrow regarding mitigation measures can you please get some kind of a definitive answer regarding plastic dividers so i did receive a call from a parent today who said that his young son has been complaining about not being able to see the board and it's because of plastic dividers and it's my understanding i'm no scientist you know that it's my understanding that they are completely ineffective i could be totally wrong on that but if you could just you know let the board know in the next update i'd really appreciate that and then also i thought there was a federal law require
105requiring masks on transportation on public transportation i see attorney dupree bruno is going to respond well it's a complicated response honestly and may i send a memo on that there is there was an executive order that was issued whether or not it's a complicated answer so i'll send a memo on that okay thank you finally you know there were a lot of issues raised by bus drivers today i don't have a thorough list i'm wondering whether the board has an appetite for either a white paper or a briefing on what the issues are how we're going about addressing them i understand dr savage that some of these issues are negotiable and cannot be discussed in public at this point but i do think that i mean you know i've been on this board now almost
106five years and i've never seen that kind of representation of any employee group in our boardroom and i believe they deserve our attention and a public discussion surrounding these issues please and finally i do want to apologize yet again for the comments that i made at the eccl my comments were absolutely insensitive and i do genuinely feel badly that i hurt people's feelings i was speaking as an individual not on behalf of the school board individuals hailing from guatemala are most certainly valued members of our community and i am absolutely committed to doing better now and in the future those are my comments for this evening thank you mrs kittens okay i'll run this around i have a couple of things that i would like to say the first thing is and miss patrick just
107kind of hit on it that it was the first time we've had that many people show up i personally believe the culture is changing i believe the culture in our district is becoming more inclusive and accepting of our employees because i agree i have you know even before i got on the board i never saw employees bus drivers you know employees show up we've gotten and you all can agree we've gotten more emails recently from employees that are not afraid to voice their opinion or say things that are happening and i really for one i want to thank dr savage and i also want to thank staff for you know their part in that as well as being able to listen and include our staff and everything that is going on that to me was
108very refreshing to see that many people willing and able and not afraid to not just come but to speak and if you think about it in the last couple of months there were one or two bus drivers that came and you know one or two would stand up there and then it got to be three or four they feel safe enough and fearless enough to stand up and say what is wrong and to me that is a change for the better a suggestion that i would have to i'm not sure to the the chair as well as dr savage there were a couple of questions that came up and dr savage says well i'm on it and i'll look it up how do we make sure that people know that it happened sometimes that the
109next meeting will say something but if there were a mechanism that went out even to people are going to look at their school website page before they look at the district page so if there were a section on q a of questions that come up here and the answers that you come up with a lot of people have the same questions but don't have the whatever to come here and make those questions so if we had some way to put it out there we may not have the same questions coming up all the time because people would know we addressed that so i mean just a thought just a suggestion i want to recognize because i don't know what's the date of our next meeting not before the 15th right correct okay okay so i
110do want to recognize national hispanic heritage month we are still a majority minority and 40 percent of our students and families fall within that destination and i was reading one article about it and it said it you know begins on september 15th to celebrate u.s latinos hispanics and their history and culture it started in 1968 by congress as hispanic heritage week and was expanded to a month in 1988 the celebration begins in the middle rather than the start of september and i didn't realize this why did it start in the middle of the month well here's why because it coincides with independence days in several latin american countries guatemala honduras el salvador nicaragua costa rica all celebrate on september 15th followed by mexico on september 16th and chile on september 18th belize etc so just
111a little bit of history about the cultures that make up 40 of our school district my last comment well let me just say them each week we get a vacancy report and it's the number of staff vacancies and it's broken down by core subjects and non-core subjects and each time we get it i crunch the numbers and see what the percentages are the last one that we got the east zone had 52 percent vacancies in core and non-core subjects south was 27 and west was 19 percent in i watched all of miss patrick's presentation that she gave last week and i'm still trying to find 117 capacity in three schools pelican elementary three oaks elementary and three oaks middle and i set up half the night one night with and went all the way back
112to 2016 and calculated the capacity of those three schools and i still have not been able to mathematically come up to 117. the e-sum the most portables the most vacancies the widest achievement gap what are our priorities and i am not pointing fingers at any staff or anybody it is a systemic issue that we must face what are our priorities and if our priorities are to spend 84 million dollars to build a school when in my opinion show me the numbers because i can't find them i work for equity for all students and until things are equitable for all students i'm going to continue to talk about it until someone actually hears me many times i say these things i was looking back through my notes months back questions and things that i asked and
113it seems as though the tenor is to it well just you know tell her yes and then forget it and she'll forget about it i haven't forgotten and i won't forget we have a need not a want and we need to look at our priorities i think that's all i have thank you thank you miss kittens miss morgan first of all i think since that young man came from cyprus lake high school to talk about the bathrooms i think it would be nice if somebody reached out to him and the principal and had a conversation so that he knows and they know when they come to a meeting and talk to us we pay attention i agree on transportation i heard things tonight that i was not aware of i'm pleased that dr savage will
114be talking with the transportation staff i think it's important that he give us some information about the issues that they've addressed if they can be discussed publicly because i really felt out of the loop when they were talking and i do want to say how grateful i am that they came because i know many of them are up at four o'clock in the morning getting ready to run routes so that was a pretty impressive turnout i am going to ask dr savage to repeat the information he provided this afternoon about the state and the conflict between the state and the federal government with respect to funding covid related funding and those are my comments this evening thank you mr keith dr savage is gonna are you gonna do that during your comments again the summary
115piece i mean i could do my best to summarize it but if you want me to read it again i'll have to grab the the document is it just okay to summarize the gist of it so miss fisher yes i'm sorry but i did forget one thing that i wanted to mention i want to give a special recognition to our employee wellness staff the opportunities that they are providing with their program has been resulting in savings to the district of an average of 22 million dollars per year for the last eight years so i think they deserve a hands up for that thank you miss fisher ms morgan you were completed with yours yes i was thank you thank you miss vaughn okay one one thing that i wanted to mention because it was mentioned
116by several different speakers had to do with comments on banned book week and first of all the banned books this is something that's been tracked might be the american library association i don't remember what group but for quite a few years and they come out with a list a yearly list that talks about challenged books throughout the nation and these these books have differed over the years in my prior school district because i was a high school language arts teacher i'm very very familiar with the whole thing with with banned books the books i think sometimes people think oh it was banned because it's it's a dirty book or it's pornographic or and and that's not it at all i mean it could be but many times there are very specific reasons why a book
117is banned in a particular area or the word that the association used challenged book when i was in texas we went through our whole school district went through a challenge and actually it went through the whole north dallas area at the time of the adventures of huckleberry finn and that made the news and that is a book that if you look historically it's probably one of the most challenged books and you would be surprised at some of the other books that appear on on lists for instance another title that has been challenged many times is to kill a mockingbird of mice and men that might be a little more specific because of language but it's it's not just because of language or mature topics and those kinds of things violence that books are challenged often
118it's because the books have racial stereotypes things that were challenged things you know if you if you look at even movies from earlier time periods that are now not necessarily banned but have have been challenged or have been in the case of disney like song of the south put in the vault so i just want to be clear another oh another one that i listed the harry potter series which of course especially i don't remember how many years ago but was extremely popular with kids and actually got a lot of children into reading because of fantasy the occult in in the harry potter so i want it to bring that issue up in case some of you misunderstand and you think oh it's on the banned book list and it's in our schools no this
119is a list for the year of the challenged books the other thing that was mentioned about doing an audit of all of our library books that's a herculean task to go through every book in every in every library actually the library books do not it's our textbooks that go through book adoption library books don't go through adoption i'm not sure now who exactly makes the decisions because unfortunately many of our schools because of funding have dropped the librarian position which is now of course the media specialist and i can guarantee that when books are ordered for any library they there's there's a process and they are looked at and reviewed the other thing that you may not be aware of is many especially our high schools don't have any books at all in the library
120i was shocked when bonita springs high school first opened and i took a tour and i happened to know the principal because i worked with mr estes at essera high school and because i was on a very friendly basis with him and he knows i was an english teacher i walked in that and i said what is this where are the books and he very proudly told me they're all online so what you also have to realize and this is college libraries local libraries many of our libraries now have fewer and fewer books and they rely on the databases as a matter of fact college students and i did the same with my high school english students no you're not going to google something you're going to use our databases so when when you say
121that you're going to do an audit of all the books it's a little more complicated than that and i just wanted to try to clarify that just a little bit the thing that i'm going to bring up next is a motion that i sent yesterday last night to the board we had brief remarks on this motion some remarks on this motion earlier today at our briefing meeting and so i during during our great between meetings with the help of our board attorney miss kathy debris bruno and with input from something that had been written and presented earlier for our board chair miss debbie jordan we came up with a memo and i what i'm going to do is all of us here on the board and this was hot off the presses when we started
122have a copy of the memo the memorandum and also of the motion i'm going to make i'm going to make the motion because it refers to a it refers to a memorandum i will read the memorandum and it will be if it's adopted it will be put in print and then i'll reread the motion so i move that we as members of the lee county school board adopt the attached memorandum that reasserts our commitment to uphold the ideals of respect and human dignity for the guatemalan community and for all under represented communities here is the proposed memo members of the school board of lee county believe that public schools and elected officials have a responsibility to ensure the highest ideals of education and that human dignity is upheld at all levels of public education in
123that light we are saddened by the recent public remarks of one of our members it is important for the public to understand that neither the law nor board policy allow for one individual board member to speak for the entire board there are seven of us that make up the school board of lee county when an individual board member makes comments those are that person's personal comments and should not be deemed reflective of the board in its entirety when the school board speaks we do so as a united board we as members of the lee county school board stand steadfast in our commitment to foster an inclusive educational environment where the guatemalan community and all under-represented communities are treated with dignity and respect by all members of the educational community including their elected representatives the school
124board of lee county is committed to being a world-class school system and to ensuring that each student without regard to race ethnicity religious belief national origin disability ancestry social socioeconomic status gender or sexual orientation achieves his or her highest personal potential that is the referenced the motion memorandum one more time the motion is i move that we as members of the lee county school board adopt the attached that would be this memorandum i just read memorandum that reasserts our commitment to uphold the ideals of respect and human dignity for the guatemalan community and for all under represented communities okay discussion please just kidding two questions i have on the one the second line my copy says inclusion did you change that to education did i miss reading yeah okay i just i just wanted to
125make sure and yeah i misread and i want to be clear that i understand when we say underrepresented i'm i'm not quite quite sure your definition that you have intended if you can change this please could you this one it means that you know we talk often about majority minority that sort of thing well within minorities we spoke about hispanic majority minority in in this district then we have the sub divisions and that list that's in this third paragraph without regard to race ethnicity and all of that comes from policy and from from statute and for and from our school policy so we look at any group that is viewed as a minority group that doesn't get the traditional support of what we have in the past and i think these terms are becoming archaic
126majority well i let me just say that's the only word that kind of gives me a little bit of angst and the reason is it is to say that we as a district and as a board have underrepresented people and and parts of our community and i know i mean we've discussed some of the initiatives and some of the things that we're doing to help like with the language gap and all those types of things and i'm not sure if underrepresented says what i what i would say i mean i don't know i can't put really put it inwards underrepresented sounds like we're not doing something and i think that we recognize the needs and that really doesn't have to do with this situation that we're trying to rectify okay and i if i may
127yes please complete the answer i thought of a good example i think it's the opposite when i say under represent it meaning the groups themselves for instance example i have been involved with the haitian-american community for many years five plus years and the first meeting that i ever went to which was actually right about a month or two after the group came into being one of the reasons that group formed was because they felt like they didn't have a voice that it that it was an invisible demographic okay so an invisible demographic we could we could say the same thing about guatemalans for instance because with the haitians even on testing and all of that they are put into the larger group black but black we have african-american heritage we have those people who are
128immigrants from africa we have island immigrants or people whose heritage and so it's the same thing with the hispanics we have a plethora of i would say under represented i mean there's you know there's certain groups that we know they exist and then there are other groups that are more invisible demographics so i'm not looking at it as how we that we under-represent them but they themselves don't have the presence in and putting themselves forward the way some other groups do so that's and that was language as i said that came to being from several of us ahead and this probably comes from one point two seven the non-description say under-represented and that went in can i beg the indulgence of the board to ask an opinion and i'm sorry i can't remember his last
129name he presented to us about the gentleman what is his name that presented about the hispanic at the at the briefing meeting the other day doctor that's vegas would allow him to weigh in and his opinion on on the verbiage that we have i mean i just feel like we need to to have some type of a weigh-in on this you're speaking on that one word yes you're speaking everyone that's going to have an opportunity to speak on the same thing so is that what you're concerned about is that one word that's what you want somebody to weigh in primarily but yeah i do i just think it would be good to have someone of latino latina descent you know to weigh in on okay so let's let's see what the others say and then
130we can if we still need to do that then perhaps we can do that because that's the only word that's concerning to you whatever is that you i'll go ahead i'm asking you miss kittens well no i said what i was asking i was asking for someone else and it's like no dissent to weigh in on it yes and if we could have everyone here speak first and then we can certainly he's here so you're saying that if everyone else doesn't want it then you're not going to do it i'm not saying that at all i said can we hear what everybody else says and then that way if there's something else that he may assist with then that would happen that's fine if that's okay thank you miss patricka i have no comments okay
131miss thank you miss giavanelli okay so i hesitate somewhat because i believe this is a positive things and i'm not opposed to anything being you know something a positive out of something that was negative that happened however it still doesn't address a rogue school board member and so i you know i was constantly i mean i had someone say please please please investigate me you know and carry on so much about something that i was not doing anything wrong i was just doing my being you know doing the duty of a school board member listening to people and without engaging and sending it directly to the superintendent but yet i had a fabricated ethics complaint filed against me and so that is a board member out of their lane when they're directing staff to do
132things this again to me was staff information that was directed there was information that she was privy to that i wasn't we built a school in gateway i never had any of the information about gateway and that was my school you know i thought about well you know how does she have this information and i don't have the information how does she have a logo i don't have the logo it's not equitable that's this is what i've talked about and this board doesn't hold anyone accountable not even the superintendent prior administration that allowed us to get in this position to begin with i mean i think that's what we need to talk about you know you know i am confident we're talking about the policy this memorandum but this memorandum and we and you're out
133of order because we are not here to attack one another we've all been investigated time and time again and i think we need to move forward we have a new supervisor and we well and that's where i was going because i like to finish and we are trying to i'd like to finish i don't see how this resolution is going mr bruno so there's a point of order that's been made madam chair you need to roll on point of order miss giovannelli i think you had said that you had an another i had another motion so perhaps that's for that conversation and right now the motion that's on the table is just whether or not you want to accept this memorandum well that's what i was saying that i don't think it addresses really the
134real problem how's that and so and i wanted and i wanted to finish because because i feel confident and this is what i just wrote down just a few minutes ago so i was okay on when to finish i was not privy to the information prior any additional information prior when building gateway and no one else i didn't receive additional information that somebody else made a hat may have and i think that's important to note this is a school that she's receiving privy information that we're not receiving so however and to your point miss fisher i think that was all the prior administration and my point i'd like just to point out is that this is a perfect example of the prior administration not treating each board member equally and i that was something i
135raised those issues numerous times numerous over the year over the four years that i was not getting the same information that everybody else is now with that being said finally i am hopeful that board members are being treated equally with by this new administration and this is why we must allow him to make the necessary changes needed to do his job and stop the resistance by those that were given preferential treatment and information in the past so i will support this if this is the will of the board and i will withdraw my motion but we have to do what's right for this community and to get back on track we cannot have rogue board members acting acting out with information and answering questions that i don't have the same information and that i'm sorry
136doesn't address that in this resolution completely it just says that they can do it because we're they're allowed to do it but they don't represent the rest of the board so and then back to my motion my motion was hold on hold on this giant vanilla we have a motion now we have to finish this one first that's that's what all i wanted to say to that and i was just going to read my motion and probably pull it but that's because people wanted to hear that so well let's let's do this one first and then we can go back so miss giovannelli with regards to the verbiage that is that is stated here for this memorandum is that acceptable to you because it mis has has one thing that we're going to discuss maybe
137dr negron can speak on but is there anything i ask a quick question about it can i finish just asking so is there anything that verbiage in here that you're concerned about it doesn't really apologize to any community just says that we're going to make sure that everybody is inclusive we should be doing that already we don't need a resolution telling us to do that i'm sorry i mean that's how we should be acting to begin with okay and this is again this is not a resolution this is just a memorandum so i just want to make sure that's perfectly clear either way i'm i'm saddened that we have to go to this extreme to to do what's right thank you and then miss gettings i'm going to let you miss jordan i think nice
138fish has not had an opportunity yet though can i can i just say it may clarify my part of this okay what is the goal of this is the goal of this to assuage the guatemalan community for the hurt that they may have you know that they have that has happened to them by the statements that were made or is the goal to to do something that's going forward i think we're looking at two different things and we need to decide that either we're going to add something else to this or do two separate i believe this and i'm going to refer back to miss vaughn because my understanding it is we could not put a statement out we could not put a letter out without us all being here at the board and having
139a conversation so this basically is what i am believing that this is so miss vaughan could you please state i want to state since this was something that i brought forward in two steps just for for the public last wednesday i think it was wednesday wednesday of last week after i first heard the comments that were made i sent a letter and copied the entire board to my goal was to distance myself and i basically said i want to be on the record that not all board members agree with this and i made a statement just to be on on the record i did not go on tv i did not put it on social media that was not my goal i wasn't out to blast anything more on social media i was just it
140was me as a person feeling this then what happened the next day when i sent my original motion the the response took on a new life because both the news and local local news tv and print news as well as social media really picked up on this and i felt that we were in a position that perhaps and i will have to add that it's another discussion but that mrs patricka did have the seal of the district behind her and this was one of my motivations and i felt like at that time it wasn't enough for me just to put this out there to the rest of the board and to go on record such that it was because i'm not the kind of person i'm not out there to be interviewed and and all
141of that i did it for my own personal the goal is not to assuage guilt or it's not any of that it's that we are reasserting as a board that we are and the word that we used saddened by hearing the remark from one of our members and the idea that anybody who saw that video clip and saw a board member with the feel of the district behind her might think she was speaking for all of us now miss patricka has said asserted that she was speaking on her own i'm not dealing with that at all that's another issue can we focus let's focus on what this is distancing us as a board and as a district so nobody misconstrues so nobody believes that this is our statement as a district okay now as far
142as what miss giovannelli said sure there can be two steps but to me right now the most important step is for everybody in the public to understand this isn't what we are all about and we want to clarify that's what this is and i thought that my motion that said reasserts our com our conviction and the verbiage here it seems clear to me so i hope that clarifies for everybody thank you miss vaughn and we did speak about the logo and everything else that would come up in our reorg so that is not that is still a conversation that we will be having miss fisher i apologize would you please did you rule on my point of order your did i roll on it but i allowed her to finish speaking she allowed her to
143to finish and the conversation continued so at this point mrs fisher you can make your normal comment thank you i would support this memorandum and i would say that it reinforces our existing non-discrimination policy and then there are definitions of unrepresent underrepresented groups it's racial and ethnic groups individuals with disabilities individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds so there are a number of there are a number of different interpretations regarding underrepresented groups it could be women in medicine it could be everybody anybody who's not the general population so it's a broadly used term and i have another comment that i'll save that because it's not pertinent to this memorandum okay thank you yes so going back to miss gittins with the word on under represented what would you like to to see happen with that please i believe
144i already said i would like to dr savage would you just respectfully you know just knowing the gravity of kind of the situation and the very topic of what we're even discussing today and in a really not wanting to reinforce any potential tokenism or just you know at all in any way identifying a person who simply is a member of a group i would not want to subject any individual on demand in a public meeting to have to carry the weight of having to a certain opinion on that matter i would say that it's very serious and potentially personal and so respectfully if the board would like a written evaluation of a particular term i'm happy to assign that to staff and i'm sure folks are more than happy to to weigh in but just
145as a matter of what i would expect of any of the staff i would never want to subject anyone to that individually so i would say i'd be happy to provide a given time a written evaluation of that by qualified staff members together collectively if that's necessary if the term is questionable and if it's a suitable replacement can't be done of course the board directs otherwise but that's my position as a recommendation to the team thank i appreciate that as well i agree with you so hearing that miss gittins is there a different word that you would want to see there i guess i feel that in the statement itself you explain race ethnicity religious beliefs and all of that disabilities etc i just i it's up to the will of the board i just
146don't feel that underrepresented just says what we need to say and you know all due respect i will follow what the superintendent says i'm not trying to put anyone on the spot i just anyway okay if that's what everybody wants to say i just it just doesn't the words it doesn't sit well with me thank you just mr pr bruno and then i'll come to you so let me ask miss vaughn a question ms vaughn i the underrepresented i think comes up one time in that first sentence in the third paragraph so if we take out that word and just put where the guatemalan community and all communities are treated with dignity and respect by all members i will accept that honestly you know for the school system it's really all communities that need to
147be respected with dignity and so and then we have our discrimination language anti-discriminant language discrimination language after that sentence so that makes it very clear too thank you attorney well and you asked me am i can i answer that please this is not my it's my motion this is not necessarily my memo i had a draft i took some of the very i took some specific language from the florida school board association letter that we received ms jordan had said something and we took some language from that you contributed so it was you know we had all of an hour and 20 minutes to pull it together get it typed and copied it's it's the will of the board i like the under represented i explained what it means to me i'd like to hear
148okay so others on on that but again it's not it's my motion but it's up to the board if they want a memorandum and this isn't the right verbiage i would like to hear from everyone what would make it right thank you so miss miss i'm gonna go back down the line here miss morgan and i'm going to ask the board attorney to read again what the recommendation she made the recommendation would be just to take out the underrepresented so it would read we as members of the lee county school board stand steadfast in our commitment to foster an inclusive educational environment where the guatemalan community and all communities are treated with dignity and respect by all members of the educational community including their elected representatives and then we will keep that last sentence the
149school board of lee county is committed to being a world class school system to ensuring a world-class school system and to ensuring that each student without regard to race ethnicity religious et cetera that's fine hey thank you and then miss kittens you already stated that was fine with you yes moving that is fine with me to take that out okay and miss miss bond if that's the will of the board i'm fine with it ms patricka as well but if an amendment is to be made i would ask that it also be deleted from the motion itself the last part of the motion refers to unrepresented underrepresented communities as well so it might make sense to be consistent and that's what i was talking about in the first place in my life otherwise i too
150am i'm happy to follow the will of the board and miss giovannelli well that's exactly cause you keep saying all is all that when you went to her and said to me that was what i was going to say is just take out underrepresented so in both places thank you mr nelly miss fisher we move underrepresented in both places the motion and the memorandum is so then we would have to go back to miss vaughn to restate her motion or amend her motion let's make it easy miss vaughn my recommendation is withdraw your motion and then restate it all right before i do that i want to smooth this because we they were already too late we're all we're pretty late in in doing this i really don't want to amend the motion and i'll
151tell you why because in the memo it lists after that it clarifies the kinds of groups that we're talking about it gives a list it does not in the motion i think it helps to make the motion clear you know let's let's face it when we talk about the somebody mentioned the general populous or population or something to that in that way i i will withdraw and then i will amend it only i like the way it was the first time but i will just so we can get this show on the road with this it seems like we have another board member with another motion that might be step two or not so i will withdraw that motion motion madam chair okay i just want to make sure you we're not going to go
152through the amendment we're just kind of withdrawing you're going to restate the motion the way that you were with the changed language okay so could you restate the motion please restate it do i need to second the word yes we have to re we're doing the whole thing again you don't have to second the withdrawal she was true now she's going to be stay true i'll read it now the amend it i move that we as members of the lee county school board adopt the attached memorandum footnote it has a change also that reasserts our commitment to uphold the ideals of respect and human dignity for the guatemalan community and for all communities second okay so at this time we have public comments yeah is that correct any further discussion by the board on this
153okay with no further discussion now we move to public comment okay is there anyone out there that would like to speak on the memorandum and what is the time for that three minutes thank you board member vaughn for having a moral compass and presenting your motion this board should not even be in a position where you should have to present such a motion that being said board member giovannelli you're the only board member that stated publicly what has been going on in this district for years three board members and the board attorney have been abused by this woman for years the fact that five other board members did not use this opportunity to validate what ms giovannelli said just shows a lack of moral fiber to right this wrong so that this board can become
154a functioning board the community can clearly surmise that they refuse to acknowledge the wrongdoings of the district 3 board member this board will not change until the district 3 school board member is gone followed by a few others that support her habitual insidious behavior the ethics complaint that i filed against board member district 3 contains information that is concurrent with what mrs giovannelli stated and i figured all of this out by watching youtube videos i allege then and i allege now that the district 3 board member misuses her power because of her need to control ms giovannelli stick to your guns and make your motion this community is begging begging for change on this board and that is why we are not backing down in case you haven't noticed if anybody here would like a
155copy of the ethics complaint please let me know i'll be happy to share it with everybody it's a disgrace you need to resign patricka just a reminder about the personal attacks tara jenner there was a great deal of discussion when the bill of rights to the u.s constitution was being drafted whether or not it should actually come into play for those of you who are students of history and the constitution you'll know there were the federalist papers and the anti-federalist papers and one of the biggest concerns that the anti-federalists had was that by creating a bill of rights you would basically be giving the government the authority to be able to define and redefine what it is that those rights were and they could actually become a more dangerous document than by leaving it alone
156and leaving it to the rights to begin with in this particular case we're looking at a very similar slightly different but a similar kind of thing you have a policy on how to act and behave and be respectful with one another there's really no need to have another memorandum to restate what's already been stated in the first place what needs to be done is enforcement of those responsibilities that are those individuals that are sitting on the dais to begin with to state a new or restate the same thing over and over again what have we said about that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity something needs to change and what needs to change is accountability personal accountability by those who made the comments
157that resulted in this entire discussion from the get-go without that personal accountability you are sending a signal to the children in our school district that they can do whatever they want to and a passive eye sorry just because they're caught at something is going to be sufficient to allow them to get away with whatever it is they want to do i do commend you guys for modifying the language in this proposed memorandum to include everybody what a concept if not what we're doing is just discriminating against another group of people which kind of flies in the face of the whole let's not discriminate concept of the memo to begin with miss giovannelli stick with your guns go forward with your motion we are behind you because we recognize there needs to be accountability when someone
158behaves the way that's been done by the district 3 board member miss patricka she needs to be called out for it christine divajilli power and parent so i have a couple of things first i'd like to know why we needed that five minute recess everybody in here most everyone using on the days right now had very strong opinions about a certain board member's comments prior to today's meeting prior to even probably that five-minute recess that we had did we make a deal back there is that why everyone has a different change in opinion now is that why everyone is so docile now where where are the pitchforks that you had before like where where where's the justice where where's the accountability and the transparency that i heard from so many of you before it seems
159like everyone is now hiding afraid of one board member like we typically are in this meeting i would really love it if the people sitting behind the deus right now that we have elected and placed in these positions of power to do the will of the people that elected them do the will of the people now you had a you had a mass of people outside today protesting peacefully requesting the resignation or termination of district 3 board member i'm not sure why they are not being represented currently something has been asked of the board today we have asked you the public has asked you to act that does not mean to make a memorandum or a resolution that you're going to abide by ethical standards like that's your job that is not what we're asking
160you to do today we're asking you to take real action and demand that you do your job another board another person brought up today and the board member sitting up there that you guys have an ethical responsibility to terminate that particular district board member an ethical responsibility why are you ignoring that right now why is that just a moot point why is it that this particular board member cannot even stop scribbling for five seconds and look at us when we speak to her it is super disrespectful and it is the same type of disrespect that caused her to say the things that she said in that interview that day that's not the only interview let's talk about the beach radio interview where she encouraged underage drinking of her own children is that also the board's
161stance since we're since we're sitting here and we're going to put in a memorandum all of the things that this particular board member does that are not right maybe we have to include underage drinking that is not a position that the board takes too or maybe we could just stop dealing with this all together and get rid of the problem thank you robert roper ward cleaver i'm conflicted because for one i feel badly that district three made a serious misjudgment an error you know i've been praying for district 3's representative all day because that's what i'm called to do however consider the precedent that will be set if action is not taken because if this were a principal or a teacher or any other employee representing the district or not even on social media the
162repercussions would be great and if it's okay not to do it there then it's okay not to do it here but just consider the the need to be consistent one way or the other oh yeah you're kind of making this way too complicated pretty much everyone's in agreeance on like a couple simple things can you just like like okay district 3 said something our district 3 representative said something that they should not have that painted a very clear picture of someone we do not want on the school board plenty of people on the school board have said they don't want district three's representative on the school board anymore as far as the other thing you were talking about talking about before with the including all minorities or underrepresented communities just say communities there's no problem
163you don't have to worry about that oh so it's in the memo i don't know just scribble over or something you're making this way too complicated get over it i'm confused on how in the past you can sit here at one meeting and say that the board represents itself as a whole but when one of your board members makes racist comments then you are claiming that you don't represent each other you make comments as individuals if you have a lee school district seal behind you wouldn't that mean you are representing the school board of lee county miss giovannelli is the only person that is willing to address the actual situation at hand please don't back down are there any other comments see no other comments we will now take a vote and this will be
164a hand vote correct miss thomas okay and i'm just gonna go down the line all in favor miss miss morgan miss vaughn yes miss kittens yes with the changes i miss thank you mr patrick mr evanelli yes with the changes yes mrs fisher and yes with the changes so motion passes and we will get this out this bond did you have any other comments miss fun because this was part of your comment i'm going to comment on something that one of the speakers said which is i really resent the implication or actually wasn't even an implication it was well i'll say implication that a deal was made during the break absolutely not and that's all i need to say on that thank you miss vaughn i will go back to mr evanelli did you have
165something else to add before i do my comments and move on to the i'll okay so i'm gonna i'm finished with my motion then so i'm making the following motion that we need to conduct a full investigation into the actions of ms miss patrick's continued abuse of power also i'm not requesting that we censor miss patricka when she represents the school district as a as we are collegial board and she needs to inform us about her agenda and what she will be saying when she speaks to different communities i don't really know and maybe the board would like to discuss that on what that should you know but i think we just have to be very cautious and i don't know how do we continue to to allow her having conversations that we know nothing
166about and that's the concern and the information without us knowing about it so mr pree bruno so miss giovanelli i heard two motions in what she said motion for investigation on abuse of power is that one yes and then i heard a motion to censor with regards to i'm not sure speaking on school board can you elaborate on that one a little bit first of all i don't we never really know when she's speaking so i don't know how you handle that and not and i i normally would not have cared before because other board members i'm sure speak and it hasn't been an issue or hasn't shown up in the media so i think that's the question is as a board you know when we have a speaking engagement that pertains to the board
167should we know about it beforehand and be aware of it so that's really the conversation does it need to be emotion i don't know i i think that's the conversation i know everybody wanted to wait till november but i mean honestly this is in our face right now by the time we always kick stuff down the road and i think addressing it now and owning it's a mistake we need to own it because how else do you move on from something i say this all the time i feel like a broken record but how can we move on from something without correcting it making those corrections how did we get here how did we get here today and how do we not get here tomorrow i mean that's just all it is for me it's
168it's it's not particular it happens to be a particular action of what was said by a board member and that wasn't appropriate and now we all feel that it we know it's not appropriate but unfortunately it could happen again if we don't if we don't stop it now and what that how to stop it is something that as a collegial board i think we should decide together i don't think it should be lisa giovannelli's decision i don't believe in that i do believe in being a team okay as much as so mischievous because we kind of went into discussion so there's a motion on the floor motion motion for an investigation and abuse of powers there do you need a second issue so at this point madam chair you have a discussion i think i've
169said everything i mean it's getting to be 905 so i mean i've said why everybody understands why i don't need i don't think i need to reiterate that i just think that we need to just deal with it and we can say we do dealt with it as a board that's really what we need to be doing so and i'm going to ask for discussion too but so who are you asking to investigate the and what is the which abuse of power because i know we're going to have that conversation i wanted to bring that up but everybody people had said to bring it to november third regarding the i understand the use of the seal and all of that so i guess as far as clarity for conversation i'm okay with asking the superintendent
170so this is probably changing my motion but asking the superintendent to do a full investigation to the actions of ms patricka and the abuse of power and the information she received so i mean that might sum it up well i don't think mr preet bruno can dr savage investigate well then we have an elected official well we've had this discussion many times with regards to investigating board members mrs giovannelli does have the right to bring forth her motion in my understanding that the motion is for an investigation on abuse of power by board member in district three so and there was a second so at this point you go it's the same discussion that you guys have had before in terms of whether or not this board will investigate its own members in the past
171you have said that you are not going to do that and that was basically the protocol in the policy that you had that you do not investigate board members the superintendent does not have the power as we know to investigate the board so if there's going to be an investigation it will have to be an external investigator the only other person i can investigate will be the governors for the oig so you guys have had this discussion before okay so comments is the issue for me is the systemic behavior i've been on the board you know like i said for three years like some of the rest of you and it's i can only speak for for what i have endured and what i have seen and it the behavior is systemic and it's what
172has happened with me is it's a control issue that if i do not do or say what certain board members think i should do or say then there is a underground attempt to censor me and like i have said before i wish i had some of the information about the district as all the other board members have or that ms patrick has i would love to know what's going on in my district to the depth and breath that she does in a timely manner and not after the fact the investigation of miss giovanelli it came up over and over again we need to do this we need to do this and the board said no and then she went around us and did it with someone outside of the district so watermarking and at first
173it was no it didn't happen and then it was yes it did happen i mean it's just to me it's systemic and i don't know unders i don't know what investigating would mean i just feel that we have to get a handle on behavior of potentially rogue board members that do and think what they want and maneuver situations because drink is here for four years she just got reelected i may not be somebody else may not be or i may be back who knows but for the people that are here are we going to continue to say oh it's okay to me the behavior is just not okay some of the investigations of the rest of us are just it's just not okay it's not okay to me so i don't know the answer to
174what we do but i do feel there's if we don't get a handle on some sanctions then what's to stop everybody else from doing that as well what's this stop me from doing the same thing we should you know and what irritates me more than anything is board members say we are a team and we no we're not some people know things and do things and participate in things and others are not privy and not allowed i cannot tell you how many times and one way or the other i was told to stay in my lane but the whole highway is the lane for other board members so i'm sorry but i just feel like something has to be done or we will continue to go down the same road until we figure it out
175miss morgan and then miss fisher please i'm going to let mrs fisher go first okay so our student speaker before said get over it we're making this way too complicated and we are we have been investigated as nor ad nauseum by the ethics department by the department of education and then basically the message is people this is your problem fix it look at those letters as the chair mister okay so you know we have a mission and a vision and to and in my opinion it revolves around children and my question is where are the children in all this we have board members that are consistently in fighting publicly it's embarrassing it's humiliating it's inappropriate it's unprofessional it's unethical mrs kittens you sent a letter to the governor and had us all investigated how many
176times no ma'am point of order i did not excuse me i'm talking now it's getting yeah this is the last time anyone's going to interrupt you do not make accusations hold on a second we have miss fisher to finish your speech i finished thank you so we can keep playing this game over and over again we have rules about public speaking we do not enforce them people are allowed to get up and attack publicly and criticize and that's okay because we don't enforce our rules so why do you think anyone should pay attention to us or have respect for us as a governmental body and we are not a team you're correct because we are all working on our own agendas and not focusing on the business of the district which is what the purpose
177of this meeting that we've been here for three hours and 13 minutes now to do and i think as the senior board member i need to say it's a waste of time and we look like a bunch of ridiculous women we are intelligent educated people with good hearts with families who are embarrassed by us and i think it is time for us to take a look at ourselves and stop attacking one another and get the job done thank you miss fisher miss morgan so i would have to follow that follow her by saying that yes we look bad we don't look bad because of one board member we look bad because of each one of us so let's stop beating on one board member let's stop letting the public pick out the token board member
178they're going to beat on and let's do our job and let's put this conversation to bed miss patricka and then i'll come back to you miss kittens i would go back to attorney dupree bruno i don't know that it's appropriate for me to to engage in the discussion or the vote on this because it is about me am i correct i would agree thank you thank you miss skins okay i have one comment which i have said pretty much at every meeting pretty much twice a month i represent the east zone the most portables the most vacant season staff and the widest achievement gap so if i'm talking about myself i don't know where i say it over and over and over again and i feel i am representing children and staff in what i
179say when i sent the letter to the governor i did not name any one of you i didn't name any department i named situations i named the largest number of portables the most vacancies the widest achievement gap and i will sing that song until i can't sing it anymore if i have to sing it from the microphone back there i will continue to say it has nothing to do with my ability to get along with people and trust me in three years the way i've been treated by the people up here i think i do know how to get along with people okay again portables vacancies and widest achievement gap tell me what has been done about that regarding the motion the motion to the motion for abuse of power please and thank you on
180abuse of power it's laughable to hear some of the comments and where they're where they're coming from let's i'm going to cut to the chase here first of all ms fisher you're the senior board member you've been on the board the longest but i don't if you've been on the board 100 years and i've been on the board three days we have equal votes okay what has happened on this whole abuse of power yeah i see personally my observations have been yeah miss patrick is guilty of that but so are a couple other board members and i think where it emanates from is the culture in the school district and the culture in this school district with the prior administration was that certain board members could go to the prior superintendent and yes be privy
181to information whether they went through the channels of asking oh can i talk to this chief that chief this executive director we have people here that because they think that longevity equals special privilege that they can ask for favors i'm not going to bring up all of the special favors that some board members have have gotten and if that's not abuse of power i don't know what is i'm really tired of hearing you know my district my district is yeah well my district and all of our district is lee county and i do believe and when i was campaigning four years ago or however many years ago it was yeah i was out in in lehi and i've heard other people say it's the stepchild and yeah i believe that there are too many pieces
182of information that mrs patricka has been privy to in estero especially in the village of estero we have when we talk about abuse of power here it's not limited to mrs patricka although i would say she is pretty high on the list as guilty and going into our new superintendent's office and making demands and other board members making demands i don't want to say be me me but i'm going to say maybe i've been the stupid one the really stupid one on this board because the power has not gone to my head like whoa i can go in and ask anybody in this school district i want this i want to see that my district i want to be that's not what we're here for so if you want to cut to the chase board
183members that have asked for special favors for relatives for special favors for their particular district to help their campaign special favors to make them feel better about themselves and their own self-worth although i feel that mrs patrick is guilty i don't know how i can support this without pulling in several other people that i know especially in the prior climate and now maybe grasping up the ladder and having to cut deals to be oh let's i won't bother you anymore i won't be bad anymore let's hug and make up is that really is that what we're talking about it is bull the whole board i'm really really sorry to say that but i cut to the chase and if we investigate miss patricka i see other people going back years on special favors on special
184deals on going in and harassing our superintendent harassing other of our people and that's all i have to say on abuse of power okay again my question would be who would be doing this investigation so in stating this where do we i mean i need to know how that would work for us because do i believe that what was said was right absolutely i don't believe that was correct but as far as the logo and i question that logo too the logo is not trademark which i think we should try to do that so anybody can use that trademark which is very concerning to me so and this is why we really need to have this conversation on what what does it look like for us when we're out there we're speaking and we're the
185liaison and everything that conversation definitely has to come back so mr priebun i don't know if you can shed some light on how that would work before i close and go to public comments the administration cannot investigate a board member if the board chooses to have an external investigator that's within your purview the only person that can investigate would be the governor most likely through the department of education's oig office the board cannot remove a board member board cannot terminate a board member cannot fire a board member only person that can remove a board member is the governor so okay thank you so manelli and then miss fisher so this isn't about removing a board member this is about us acting as a board and how are we going to do that i mean if
186we if we if we're continually having another board member compromise the board like this so do we set boundaries as a board do we set guidelines and then they're not followed but yet when somebody else might step out of protocol they're reprimanded for not telling everybody about the motion prior to that might happen at the night that night of that comes up at that point in time so i mean my point is we just we do need to address our situation we can't my motion is to get your attention that we have to be better i mean my concern is in three weeks we could be back here at the same diet with the same issues and we didn't learn from this moment in time so the only way to to move on is to
187own it and do better and so i mean my concern is a couple things that i brought up in my speech tonight and i'm gonna come back around to that because it's really important we know for a fact we were told before dr atkins left there was a board member harassing and bullying his staff we know for a fact that our board attorney felt harassed and dr rakin i'm dr excuse me dr savage has told me personally dr savage tell me how your conversations go with miss patricka when you have your meetings please and i need for you to be truthful and honest how long are you how long are your meetings i'll tell you how long mine are can i call and can i yeah paul something on that is really i don't think
188that's fair to put i would be nothing my point is it's abuse of power because i talk to him for 45 minutes he gives me his information just like i did with dr atkins it never has never changed i don't cut back room deals i never have we really want to put our superintendent on points this is out of the way i'm going to try this one more time miss jordan thank you point of order we are continuously attacking one another to know but we're going to positive outcome we're going to be in the same boat in three weeks every month because we keep feeding it i know we need to stop this and decide as a team that we're going to stop this now look for the positives look at our vision and mission
189look at our district seal is available to all of us on our personal stationery and it is available to us you just have to go online and you can get it all you have to do is ask if you want the zoom backdrop i mean that is not a big deal as far as information to the board as far as i know regarding building of schools we have gotten our information here at the table with our capital and budget updates in in in a very timely manner every few months we get an update and the information is there if we're paying attention we hear it and we know it and we remember it so that's all i'm gonna say okay but i've never received a powerpoint from a school so that was not not given
190to us that powerpoint that she has was never given to us did you ask for it didn't it existed did you watch the planning and zoning board meeting in estero nope so that you could know that it existed not until after the fact you had it before that okay okay ladies and gentlemen so through the chairs so hold on a second support you guys are in crisis i gotta tell you you decided i think either yesterday or this morning or during our briefing to i think it was yesterday to try to find somebody local to help the board with you know the board counseling or you know i think lee was who you were going to use and then you change it because you wanted somebody local i think you need to get somebody as
191soon as possible to be able to try to help work through some of these these issues that are that are happening on the board and be able to no i and we did have that and we do have that still waiting to wait for mr lee to call me back however i think where we got here it wasn't because of a presentation regarding the school or anything else it was because of the comments that were made that's what this whole thing became so real and i think that we're going you know to a whole another range i'm sure i apologize if i got out of my board attorney lane but at this point you have a motion on the floor it's been seconded you had a discussion you need to open it up to publicly
192i did not i did not have my say in it so colin that's why i did not have any an opportunity to speak as everyone else was speaking sorry so that's why i was saying we did not it was not because of the power it was because of comments that were made so that's where i'm having some issues and where is that going so i will call that and we will open it up to public comments anyone would like to speak please step to the microphone ugh and please state your name and you have three minutes thank you i think we've made it evident that at this point an investigation needs to take place if you have nothing to hide you should have nothing to be worried about it should be our right as citizens
193to encourage you to please investigate the board and for those of you that have been on the board for a very long time clearly what is going on right now is not working nothing you have been nothing you have done has been working so why not take it to the investigation it is very clear that one board member specifically is doing a lot more than the rest of you now if there are others that are not doing the right things then yes you should be investigated miss vaughn it's not often that i agree with you but i agree wholeheartedly with your comments tonight and i appreciate you speaking out miss kittens i appreciate you speaking out miss giovanelli i appreciate you speaking out this board needs to be investigated and i'll say it one more
194time if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about thank you christine tv jelly i hate to sound like a broken record up here but i'm going to because apparently unless we all say the same thing to you over and over again it just falls on deaf ears otherwise an investigation needs to be done on all the board members in question it needs to be done with the governor's office it needs to or not we don't need to wait for mr lee and have just more of the same going on right now there have been obvious occurrences from a specific few i'm not even gonna just put this on one board member right now because it's not just one we all know it's three sometimes four the same three that are up
195here arguing with the public tonight the same three that in every meeting want to shut us up the same three that look for every opportunity available to rip the rights of parents away from them and you can stare at me all day long with your eyeballs it doesn't matter to me you don't intimidate me i'm a member of the public and the reason i'm up here is to implore you to do the right thing if you don't have anything to hide you won't have anything to worry about but we know you have lots of skeletons in your closet and that's why you don't want anyone to know guess what some of you are not even going to be sitting up here this time next year what is an investigation going to hurt it's not going
196to hurt anyone except for the at fault parties where is the transparency where is the accountability all of these things that you sit here where's the respect that's your motto for this month is respect respect others respect us we're begging begging for accountability we are begging for transparency we are begging for our rights not to be stripped from us every single time we stand behind this microphone please do something vote for the right thing for once please we sit here meeting after meeting for months now and you know how many meetings we leave here defeated because you never vote for the right things you passed millions of dollars in agenda items tonight without been a second look because you knew you had to get to this part of the meeting and you didn't want to
197take too much time that is ridiculous it is unacceptable do the right thing please for the members of our community for our children thank you the band-aid is off the gashing wound the blood is spewing out we have wanted to know for a very long time where the children have been in all of this for you it has been three or four of you that have not had the children's interest in all of this we are here because of the children and the reason that many of you have investigated other people was to investigate them falsely to create problems and maintain control request that the governor conduct an investigation based on the last three or four years or however many years you need to go back and and get down to what all of the
198abuses that have occurred after 30 years of being on the board you should have had the capacity of having handled this situation a long time ago so i don't even know what you're talking about now some of you are not looking at yourselves because you don't have the capability to reflect and you're right there is more than district three that abuses their power seven four and one fall into that category and i say again that this abuse of power has been against mrs giavannelli mrs gittins mrs vaughn attorney bruno and superintendent savage you think we can't see while we're sitting here what is going on mrs giovanelli you can't fix people who can just not control themselves they're not going to change stick to your guns don't leave the band-aid on the gashing wound fix
199it now or it's not going to be fixed these board members should be calling for investigations on themselves resign tara jenner this is what i would say this whole scenario dealing with the guatemalan comments by the district 3 board member mr patricka was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and the reason that made such a big wave was because it was dealing with one of our minority groups whereas a vast majority of the time she tends to attack those individuals who are not in a minority group because she recognizes that we're not going to be as vulnerable when it comes to consideration i was at a town hall meeting that she had a few months back in estero where she gave a lot of individuals an opportunity to ask multiple questions but when
200miss nystrom who just spoke now went to speak she got up to introduce herself to give her credentials so that miss patricka and those in the audience would know from where she was coming and miss patrick literally got in her face and started cramming the microphone in her face going ask a question ask a question and was being extremely rude and point blank said to her i don't read your emails because they're mean what kind of representation is that when a board member specifically talks to somebody who resides in her district takes the time to come to the meetings and be informed and involved and is told i'm not even going to read your emails because i think they're mean interestingly enough i've copied on almost every one of those emails and the only thing
201that's mean about them is they speak the truth and they're factual and they don't go in favor of what that board member wants to have accomplished and i agree the board may not have the ability to remove anybody but this either needs to be elevated to the governor not a local person or district three board member patricka could save us an awful lot of time and money and effort and just resign on her own accord and acknowledge that this is the time period when she needs to cut and move on somewhere else because she's made a number of errors along the way that are egregious and they need to have her take personal accountability and responsibility for and be able to exemplify and to show to the students in this district that you're accountable for
202your actions and your words and your behavior and your tone of voice and everything else thank you yeah this is just a slight clarification i was slightly misunderstood i meant that you are wasting time not that the matter at hand is a waste of time it's a very important matter it's just it's been like what is it three hours or something now most of it's been dedicated to this one thing and a lot of it does not take three hours to call a vote and say you're forward or against it on as well as just another thing what miscountry what miss patricia mccree said i forgot i can't see it or whatever district three yeah said that started this whole thing not only displays prejudice but also ignorance to in what is actually going on
203in the schools considering that she thought that was the biggest issues principals have to face and as someone who is in school right now i can tell you that is not it at all there are tons of problems that take way more priority so extreme prejudice and she has no idea what's going on with the very thing the job is about so yeah thank you are there any further questions just getting you have one my only last comment is that i said before that i feel that certain things that happen are systemic and i go back to when i gave policy and line in number as to miss patricka being out of her purview and all the rest of you did was just vote unanimously to retroactively make her a liaison to me that spoke
204volumes there was no comment about you know not doing it's just that oh she's doing such a fabulous job let's forget about protocol and statue and let's just retroactive i just think there needs to be some investigation and as far as the governor's situation don't think that it's over and i didn't name any of you i named situations and our attorney gave all of you a copy to read there was no one's name in it but just don't think it's over again and i would i'm not sure where mr pre-bruno just went to so she had to step away for just a second she'll be right back okay because i again i'm going to ask how with this motion and i'm sorry miss jiminelli could you please repeat your emotion and where you believe that's
205going because i know i have to call the question yeah miss fisher if we take the vote and see that the motion passes we can work on the details okay well i would prefer to wait for our the attorney to get back and then we will do that fine and then miss juvenile i'm going to ask you to repeat that when she gets here exactly what you would like it to what it's to state okay mr preet bruno i'm just getting ready to ask miss giovanelli to restate her motion miss giovannelli i moved to conduct a full investigation into the actions of ms patricka and her continued abuse of power nice second second okay and i will then we've already had discussion so if we could go down it's a hand vote so we will
206go down the line i will not support the motion okay miss fine nay kittens yes oh no you cannot vote to abstain based on conflict of interest and will you assist me in filing whatever needs to be filed with the minutes please yes thank you is that a sufficient oral explanation oh it's clear it's the conflict of interest so okay thank you miss giovanelli yes and miss fisher no and i will not so motion does not carry was there is there anything else miss giavanelli no i will leave it at that i will send the motion to you both just so you have it for the record okay so you'll have it thank you and i would just like to because we still haven't gotten to the comments we have a couple more comments and
207we're it's done thank you to everyone who has been here throughout the evening and especially to staff who has been here with us we really appreciate that but i also want to thank all of those who participated in the surveys and in the two days stakeholder meetings for the superintendent search and i'd also ask especially because we were talking about parents rights and parents this evening i would ask parents to please talk to your children regarding tick-tock there's a lot of things that are going on out there where they're destroying your property and posting it up and we really don't want our children to be doing that and then the the other thing that has taken place is the slapping of teachers this has been going on i know there were three teachers that were
208slapped in one day and i just think that is definitely not appropriate for our children to be doing i know my children better never do anything like that and i and i do want to say that we are a very diverse community and you know we need to make sure that when we do speak no matter where it's at that we are speaking to everybody with respect and dignity again as i stated i don't agree with how some of the things came out and something that my granddaughter said is she's ten and she made the statement to me because she as well watched the video and what she said is you know it's not what when you do something it's what you do afterwards that really counts so we need to make sure that we
209don't continue to do the same thing and we need to make sure that we improve in whatever we do just in being human beings and that's what i really have to say tonight miss dupree bruno i had comments i actually had two with regards to the parents bill of rights i just want to point it out point out lines 9-11 which says that the foregoing policy supersedes all current practices and shall be deemed incorporated as it fully set forth in the student code of conduct because i know there was a question about that so and then the other thing i did get some emails with regards to the new safety and security that is being implemented we do not discuss safety and security plans however i do want to make sure that the public knows
210that if they want to speak to a board member they are welcome to set up an appointment face to face or a telephone or anything that you know makes sense for you and the board member thank you dr savage just one one quick point we do have the bathroom remodel at cypress lake high school it's on our approved projects list and it's scheduled for actually for this year so the speaker that brought that up just want to make sure they're aware of that maintenance is also going to be reaching out to school to make sure it's the same bathrooms that were in question and then someone will follow up with that student as well at the request ms morgan mentioned the cnn report but it's been reported on a number of news entities there's really
211just generally a disparity between the federal department of education and our state and i would say it's not just the florida doe it really is with a larger state apparatus both the governor's office as well as with the legislature and so there's just some discrepancies between the way that what's being reported so the quote specifically is for florida was allocated more than seven billion as part of that funding to support students health and safety and address their social emotional mental health and academic needs in response to the covet 19 pandemic and two-thirds that allocation was released in march but the remaining third totaling more than 2.3 billion has not yet been released because florida failed to meet a june deadline for submitting its state plan the letter explained now the state also missed july and
212august submission timelines that were anticipated following conversations with the state and this is a letter to commissioner corcoran in a statement to cnn monday the florida governor's office said quote at this time no district has articulated a need for funding that cannot be met with currently available resources whenever this may whenever this may change in the future the state of florida will coordinate with the u.s department of ed to ensure florida students and educators have all the resources they need end quote monday's letter also noted that florida's education department has drawn down some of the american rescue plan funds at the state level but has not yet awarded funds to local agencies so this really just tried this really goes into some detail to explain some of what we heard in the esther briefing and
213just really kind of highlights that there are some discrepancies in how the state is viewing these unrestricted federal funds certainly our position as a district and this is pretty much the entire state is that these are funds that we're entitled to they're just it's it's something that continues to evolve and we continue to work through that but by no means are is anyone in from an educational standpoint advising we don't need the funds that the federal government has set aside for us i also will just say that the commissioner corcoran when he spoke to the superintendents did say that you know we would take advantage of every dollar that is offered to us so that was his position to the superintendents that he stated so over over a period of time this is a multi-year
214award situation so i don't anticipate that we'll have it resolved right away but it's something that we'll continue to bring to the board as needed on that information anything else you wanted me to highlight on that particular piece next just wanted to acknowledge that with the dramatic improvement the coven 19 transmissions were clearly moving briskly in a better direction and so we're just asking that expert panel to transparently evaluate all of our mitigation efforts and assess their health benefit the health benefits will be really determined by our health science experts balanced against for us the educational logistical really are practical practical considerations for the best cost benefit that's what our expert team is charged with doing and that work begins tomorrow last but not least just something on a very school focused note there have
215been a number of tragic circumstances at a number of our schools and sites both some schools as well as some of our sites you know there's a few that i can just mention harness marsh elementary colonial elementary one of our transportation compounds to name a few certainly in the district of our size it's it's unfortunately not rare that we do have fatalities and things of that nature however the frequency you know it's a fair litmus to say that our trauma support team that goes out and supports these sites gives us some indication of the frequency of this type of action and we're certainly seeing an increased level of trauma and traumatic events and crisis level events in our schools and so i just ask for everyone that we just continue to keep that at the
216forefront of everything we do and just really think about all the people out there that are going through such a difficult time not just in the normal conditions but then also taking and then dealing with loss and dealing with other traumatic incidents that have been happening that's such a big piece i just want to make sure i closed with that focus because it's been very heavy on my mind as well this week thank you the next schedule meetings of the board will be on monday october 18th there will be a board workshop at 1 pm on tuesday october the 19th there will be a board briefing at 1 pm followed by an action meeting at 6. at this point having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objection this meeting is
217adjourned thank you very much you