School Board Briefing Meeting: April 26, 2021

001good evening it is six o'clock monday april 26 2021 and this is a school board briefing tonight we have one particular item on the agenda and it is our pre-briefing for the 2021-2022 student code of conduct and it'll cover pre-k five their code of conduct and also the one for six through twelfth grades so without further ado i'm going to introduce tammy scott she's the coordinator for teaching and learning who will introduce the gentleman sitting at the front of the room thank you tammy thank you very much good evening along with me this evening is mr brian mangan and mr chuck bradley as well as all of the other administrators in our student services department in the audience with us mr sills if you could display the presentation okay perfect thank you so much okay

002so tonight's conversation is going to be separated into two different sections the first section we're going to discuss the recommended changes inside the structure of the code of conduct itself then we have built in some time to ask questions or you ask us questions and we answer those questions as well as provide us feedback then the last part of our conversation this evening is going to be around the equity poster at the end there will be question answer time and feedback and then we will turn it over to miss betsy vaughn okay without further ado thank you board members superintendent to begin with i'm going to touch on the school environmental safety incident reporting system because it'll be important later on in our presentation the assessor as it's commonly called grew out of the public's

003concern that children be safe in the school environment in 1995-96 in response to this concern the assessor system was initiated to enable schools to track in incidences and not analyze patterns of violent criminal or disruptive activity mr megan could you go a little closer to your microphone please and thank you thank you the intent was to be complete and objective data from which to design interventions to improve the learning environment sessor operates at the school district and state levels school level data is sent to the district in a standardized format and in turn the district sends the data to the department of education where it's compiled into an annual report and published this report represents the frequency of assessor incidents by districts and for the state as a whole additionally the disciplinary actions associated with

004the incidents are reported and cesar operates on a four level system with the most serious receiving what they would designate as a one star all the way to a four star for the least serious of the 26 incidences that they have identified starting back in november with informal conversations the pr annual process to bring the code of conduct for board review and adoption began in december and january the working groups which consisted of a variety of different people as appropriate meant to work on reviewing our current code of conduct and also to review the other school districts that we were looking to for possible examples of best practices the left-hand side also shows the opportunities that district level administrators had to share some input in regards to the five levels that is being recommended for

005student discipline later on this evening and also the principal level groups that were presented to back in the later part of march did include those schools that are our special centers and our k-8 schools so all of our building level principals and assistant principals had the opportunity to receive the presentation that is similar in design to what we're talking about this evening on the right hand side we've had a variety of groups that were identified and we were asked permission to present the recommendations and gather input from the code of conduct to bring to you tonight the american heart association was very focused on tobacco nicotine use by students the equity and diversity advisory committee and the talc student discipline committee while there are two dates on there we only originally scheduled one but the

006leadership of both of those groups requested that we come back for a second opportunity to hear any further input that the different organizations wish to share with us so there was no second formal presentation but we were there to gather more feedback of the hundreds of individuals that we presented to over the course of the last couple months we had roughly approximately about 50 or so students from the success academy in the school board student advisory committee received a presentation and solicit feedback from them in regards to the code of conduct we also had individuals listening in on the 13th of this month in regards to the board meeting where this topic of the equity poster was discussed and then constituent services we had not received any phone calls or emails about the code of

007conduct until about 4 12 and then through last friday we received about 117 emails and 10 phone calls about the code of conduct but we're focused on the equity poster himself and tonight of course is our opportunity to bring to you these recommendations from the community for the first of a three-step process and looking for board approval of the code of conduct hopefully by later in june during these presentations we organized it similar to how we are presenting this evening where the recommendations are being done by exception by the major components that make up the code of conduct the questions on the left-hand side reflect the similar questions or word-for-word questions that we ask the different groups to provide feedback on the introduction rights and responsibilities interventions and corrective actions the discipline section and finally

008the essential information section on the right hand side there are two bullets numbers two and three that are in addition that we had looked at the other districts that make up the large ten and the four other districts that make up southwest florida and we noticed that there were some districts doing something a little bit different and so we want to bring those things to night for some board guidance and feedback on perhaps moving to a single code of conduct or staying with the two that we currently have staying with the annual process or considering a three-year addition of the code of conduct and then of course what we would ask on any of the presentations was there anything else anything else that the groups would like to share with us or contact comment on

009because the questions were only preparatory and anticipatory in nature in order to get folks thinking while we're doing the presentation and that brings us to the first major component of the code of conduct this is the introduction and asking the folks what else belongs inside the introduction we received a couple of major suggestions first beginning with the updated version of the focus parent portal account set up instructions the most noticeable change on this one is there no longer is a need to use social security numbers in setting up a parent setting up an account to monitor their students behavior grades and attendance excuse me mr mangan sir can you please sit down excuse me sir you're out of order please sit down this is your warning if you are if you excuse me if you

010interrupt these proceedings again you will be escorted out ladies and gentlemen there will be no all right there madam chair have decorum in the chambers if there are any more outbursts we will take a recess i'm sorry i did mr p bruno i did ask the officer to escort the man out because he did not listen to the first warning there is no cheering clapping please have respect for these proceedings well why don't you have respect for us here madam chair yes maybe have a five minute recess please i'm sorry recess five minutes five minute recess right now if we are to get through this presentation tonight and this is what you came here to see and i want to remind those of you who watched or were here two weeks ago for our board

011meeting when there was a large crowd you requested that we change our normal time of one o'clock to six o'clock and we were very respectful of that request i believe it was mrs kittens that brought it up and we went along with it and so we changed our time so that all of you would have an opportunity to speak your mind and give your opinions now please don't make that a mistake on our part to excuse me madam chair madam chair may i ask a question absolutely could we consider if if we're unable to get any work done because of the public speaking over us could i recommend an adjournment to a date certainly i will say ladies and gentlemen this is not your decision when we meet on this now again we pay to

012the person who called out yes mr priebudo so let me let me just advise the crowd there are policies in place that dictate how this meeting is going to be run board policy 2.02 talks about disruptive behavior if we continue to have the disruption the board will not be able to conduct the work that it needs to do we appreciate that you're here but they do need to do their work there will be no clapping hissing or booing this is the last warning thank you madam chair thank you and if you will please be respectful of this board as we do our work as we listen to what these gentlemen and their team put together this is a pre-briefing so it's important for us to hear that and make a good decision when it's time

013we will listen to what all of you have to say and again we changed our meeting time so that we could do this and we could have more people come in so please listen it's going to be a while on this presentation and hopefully it will be as enlightening to all of you as it is to us as board members as we make our decisions going forth mrs giovannelli i would like to make a motion that we allow everyone 30 seconds to speak in in the audience that wants to speak because i'm afraid that they're not everyone's going to be able to have the opportunity to speak and if it's the will of the board if we would allow that it would cut it down to only 30 seconds a person but this would show

014that we want people we do want to hear you and we do we appreciate you coming out and that's what i would like to see if this if the board would allow for that okay so this is a board motion well this is a briefing so we don't necessarily have motions during the briefing but you can make the request and if there's a consensus from the board to suspend the policy right now the policy is public comments are limited to one hour if there are 60 speakers then it's one minute per speaker and how many cards do we have we have an excess of 60. okay board comments before i take a consensus on whether to suspend the policy board comments on what mrs giovannelli proposed yes miss gins madam everyone wants an opportunity to

015speak and the audience is the community and like you said yes you pay our salary every dime we spend comes from you so i would like to propose that if you can follow the orders that we would ask the audience to raise their hands whether they would do 30 seconds to get more people or follow the policy well we already have a suggestion but that's an alternate suggestion other comments other board other other board opinions yes i would just like to see if we could move on with the presentation we were scheduled to start at six o'clock to do this briefing this is work that we had put off already and i think that we owe it to the staff who came here to give us the presentation and to share with everyone else i

016think this would answer a lot of questions let's see through any other board members have a comment and we do not answer questions from the audience from the deus sorry i feel like 30 seconds probably is not enough for most people to put forth what they want to say and that's that's my opinion on it but let's go for a consensus how many on the board wish to suspend our policy and allow every speaker who wants to to speak for 30 seconds what madam chair is it every speaker or is it every time sir no every speaker is that what you said well who i said i want to allow for everyone to have have the opportunity to speak at this point in time they will not have that opportunity i'm just trying to allow

017for that's all right and we can probably fit in you have a comment down yes ex go ahead mr madam chair so you do have your policy which was what speakers were provided when they first came there are some individuals who have left because they did not get on the list on time so we have to be fair to those that were here and that did not have an opportunity to participate because they were in adherence to the policy and understood that it was 60 speaking well 60 minutes as many speakers as we can get in in 60 minutes which is usually a minute per speaker because that's what the policy says so i do want the board to take that into consideration as well and i and i do also want to make sure

018that the public understands after the presentation there will be an opportunity for you to speak this is how the briefings are set up first the presentation is provided the board must hear this information with regards to the student code of conduct this is a process they have different meetings that they have to do with regards to this process in this policy after that is completed then you will have an opportunity to share your thoughts on what has been presented only on what has been presented we will not be discussing anything that does not have to do with the agenda which is the student code of conduct okay and that's another important point for all of us board members is there anybody else or does anybody else need board members a clarification on our consensus yes

019mrs i'm not clear on how we make an exception to a policy without an official vote i don't think that consensus is sufficient to override policy so at this point there is a request to allow additional audiences to speak you would normally have to have a two-thirds majority vote to suspend the policy you are not in an action meeting this is an unusual circumstance so yeah and we're just talking about for this particular one circumstance to suspend it just for this meeting so how many board members thumbs up if you support to suspend it okay and don't suspend it okay so we ha it's one to six we are not suspending each person who signed a card we'll have a minute to speak after the presentation so we are not suspending our normal policy which

020is up to 60 minutes total for all the speakers so let's continue with our presentation please gentlemen thank you mr vaughn to continue we left off at the part of a recommendation to add the whistle blower information into the introduction which is inconsistent with board policy 5.331 which we quote directly from our district website that's where we gathered the information and inserted just below the grievance policy in the introduction the last section of recommendations is to continue working with gender-neutral terms throughout the document except in the following sections where we cite directly from our mission statement grievance policy or any other board policy we're not changing those inside the code of conduct to remain consistent with what's in current board policy that brings us over to our rights and responsibilities section which focuses on school

021authority for administration teachers bus drivers etc parent responsibility and rights and also students the recommendation was to bring forward some information that provides resources to parents when we looked at the slide the parent resource portion of our district website it is quite robust with a lot of information that is being updated added to and sunseted as appropriately and so our recommendation is to use the hot link inside the digital copy and if it's a print copy then they would have that opportunity to enter that into a search engine and find all those resources that the communication department maintains on a regular basis for parents the last recommendation is to expand the model student behavior from the current three levels to five i'll talk a little bit more about that later in the discipline section of

022the code of conduct presentation because it is synchronized to match up with the behavior infractions being recommended to be expanded from three to five levels the right-hand graphic of the slide does represent what our expectations of student responsibilities are in regards to being prepared on a daily basis for their education our next section of the code conduct is the interventions and corrective actions this is where we were asking individuals to provide us as an anticipatory question how else can we recognize and celebrate student success there is a page that has a list it is not comp it is not absolute or finite and we did have a couple recommendations such as attendance awards and multicultural celebrations we're always looking to add to that list especially on schools that have unique and best practices the next

023portion that was recommended recommended to be added to the intervention section is the restorative practices at this point i'll turn it over to mr bradley to talk a little bit more about that so we're pleased to include in this edition of the student code of conduct our information about our district expectations concerning restorative practices particularly affective communication the use of proactive and restorative circles and restorative conferencing and so just a little bit more information with that we will be pleased to bring to the board information regarding our five-year plan for restorative practices implementation into the district as well as we would like to announce that we will be holding summer professional development this summer including the original journey to restorative sessions that we offered last summer that were well well attended as well as a

024journey to restorative the expedition summer conference we continue to offer our book studies and we'll continue that with our administrators and also our teachers and we look forward to recognizing our diamond double diamond and triple diamond recipients this summer thank you mr bradley moving into the discipline section we do have an update from the state back in late december of 2020 they've changed breaking and entering to be burglary while the definition has not changed the name is the is the noted change in this portion of it mentioned earlier that we met with the american heart association and their focus was on the student tobacco nicotine use what they're recommending is on the first violation is what something we would call in shorthand would be a student conference in regards to them being found to be

025using a tobacco nicotine vape devices or electronic nicotine delivery systems as the term that is reflected in our glossary that would be something that the designated staff member would do with the student and involve the parents in order to prevent further use of tobacco and nicotine products in our students second violation would entail a follow-up conversation and then also students enrolled in an evidence-based tobacco education program as an alternative to an is or an os suspension that is something that our interventions services department has already created and it's an electronic format that allows the students to proceed at their own pace and it is going to be monitored by one of the individuals at the school that is designated with that task the american heart association also had a third and subsequent violations recommendation but

026that recommendation is pretty robust and right now we're not prepared to move forward with that because we need to work with them and our interventions department to develop a strategy and a plan to implement their recommendation which revolves around a 60-day plan to work with the student that is found to be repetitively using tobacco or nicotine products along with several other things to try and mitigate that occurrence in our students the graphic on the screen represents the quick reference guide that we have in our code of conduct as the consequences and responses of moving from our current three levels to five as you see up there right now i'd like to orientate you to the bottom right hand corner of it those yellow parentheses numbers represent where the recommendation would be to move a discipline

027infra behavior infraction to the proposed expansion to five levels if there is no number next to it that means it is still residing in the same spot that it was in under the three levels you will note that on level one and two there are some repetitions particularly other rule violations petty theft and profanity the reason that they're in represent showing up in levels one and two is because under those sections when you look in the packet that was provided under board documents there are some nuances to those type of infractions and they're pretty extensive and so there needs to be an appropriate response an example would be petty theft last year the state removed the level of petty theft from 300 up to 750 as the limit in response our district proposing was approved

028to use the dollar amounts as a guide to have a response to to a student conducting on being caught with petty theft we surely wouldn't want to discipline a student who might have stole the chocolate milk from the line the same as somebody who might have stolen a pair of beats headphones from another student i think the response must be appropriate and our approach to discipline reinforces that as you look at the responses to these behavior infractions in our code of conduct there is a host of end of options that are available to the building level administrators that work with our students in disciplinary manners and this flexibility helps build relationships helps develop the context of the situation that they find themselves in gives them the opportunity to work with parents with the goals as

029stated by this board and our superintendent in the past are trying to keep students in school as much as possible however as you look left to right you'll see that there are increasing levels of severity mentioned before that the assessor considers level one star level to be the most severe historically we put our most severe offenses as a level three would it be possible to reverse this yes but that would be something we would look for a recommendation from you all on however we feel that staying with the level five being the most severe would keep with inconsistency with the practices already established in our district when you look at the middle level level three you'll notice that alcohol is listed there the state considers that their least one of the least serious offenses along

030with tobacco bullying and harassment however based on the input we received from our community members and different groups it was determined to move alcohol from a level two and keep it in the level three as it sits presently on the on the recommendation also of note is level five weapons possession the state considers this the second most serious level of offense however in looking at the other 10 large school districts and the four districts that surround us in southwest florida it was almost near unanimous that weapons possession is considered the most severe mainly because it involves students who might possibly bring a firearm to a campus as a result of that and looking at other districts best practices and on our feedback from the community we're recommending that weapons possession be a level five it

031isn't important to note that because a offense might fall in a specific category and there are responses listed to it does not preclude the administrator in the building from using a perhaps a lower level response so if you will if a student was in trouble for cheating and it might have been a minor case of cheating and the administrative worked with the student the teacher worked with the parent and realized that this was a one-time small affair they might choose to use a level one response instead of a level two response this is what allows us to maintain some flexibility and relationship building with our students under the essential information section we had to update our bullying and harassment policy to be consistent with board policy 4.14 which was updated on 10 620 well after

032we went through our normal cycle of board approval of the code of conduct so simply that just reflects the this fall update from the board action on the 6th of october our driver's license section for our secondary students was updated to be more explicit and aligned with the state statute that governs it and under our public health section we have added hotlines for students and individuals who are in crisis a new section underside on inside the essential information is our scholarship section these are a list of scholarships that are federal state and local in nature and are available to k-12 students most notably our hope scholarship which is expected required by statute to be in our code of conduct and this is our opportunity to not only reflect that but to give the opportunity for

033individuals to be aware of those other scholarships that might be available to students based on need mentioned earlier we were looking forward as we were studying the other large districts and the surrounding districts we did come across a miami-dade county county schools has a three-year document and that is something that was favorably received by the individual groups that we presented to we are not at this time prepared to say we want to do that right now what we are looking for is your feedback and guidance is this something you would be interested in doing or would you prefer to maintain the annual presentation of the code of conduct one of the things that guides this thought is also the jeffrey johnson stand up for all students act which requires an up a review and update

034similar to what we're doing right now with the code of conduct every three years that was done last year so it would be an opportunity to synchronize the jeffrey johnson bullying harassment policy along with the code of conduct if that was something the board was interested in doing the other idea was one single code of conduct instead of the two of the 14 districts we looked at 11 of them have a single code of conduct interesting to note that miami-dade does maintain two codes of conduct i say that to emphasize the fact that these are not joined together proposals or recommendations they are standalone they could be both they could be neither it's really what the guidance one of the hopes of for guidance that you would all provide this evening however it is important

035to note that there are some things that are incomplete in the code of conduct namely our table of content contents doesn't have page numbers because we need to be able to work with branding once board approval is achieved so we would ask that you excuse and give us the same latitude you have in the past not to put the page numbers in there until the branding and the recommendations are complete it's a small matter but one i think is important to note and also board approval also will trigger off our translations of the document into spanish and creole versions which we've been doing for the last several years with that mrs scott so at this time at this time we would like to answer any of the questions you may have we had a large

036discussion around changing from three levels to five levels adding whistleblower information the parent resource link and the scholarship information so if there's any questions that our team can answer for you ms vaughn please let us know okay who has questions comments thanks jordan thank you mr magnet can you please several times when you were speaking you spoke about state's recommendation could you kind of share that information when it's when you're stating that so that other people can understand are you talking about the assessor information yes how when we receive that we must you know the state identifies those 26 infractions for all counties and so that is something that forms the core of our 45 infractions the other 19 are local codes that have been developed historically through the years here in lee county however

037when we have a student commit assessor offense this is what they are tracking on what i was alluding to before so we are required to capture that in the form of a student referral it is reported up through the schools to the district where it is gathered together and then voted to the state of florida and then they use that information at the state level here locally we use it as well at the district level and the schools use it as an opportunity to mitigate and reduce student misbehaviors in those certain areas those 26 violations are again broken over those four levels thank you okay miss morgan the skittens do you have a question no i'm fine you have more to present right yes ma'am okay so questions on everything that's been covered up to

038this point okay so i think that my colleagues and the superintendent are well aware of my grammar fanaticism and as i look at changing language in the code of conduct to gender neutral terms i wonder whether we can do that and still be in compliance grammatically so for example page 94 technology use says the student takes full responsibility for their device could we simply say the students take full responsibility for their devices can we change the subject to make it match please would make my head not explode when i go over this with my kids at the beginning of each year i would assume this vaughn would would share that so if we can just make that grammatically compliant i'd really appreciate it the whistleblower policy as i read the policy attorney dupree bruno it

039is for employees so i'm not clear on why we're including a policy for employees in the student code of conduct it begs the question do we need to change the policy to make the whistleblower hotline available to students and members of the public i'm not clear on why we're including an employee thing in here anyone can call the whistleblower hotline so i don't know if that was the intent of staff to that's why it wasn't there but anyone can call doesn't matter doesn't have to be an employee the protection is for the employee okay i was brought up by one of the input groups and so when it was mentioned as an example of what else to possibly include in the introduction section the subsequent meetings did endorse it and so that's why it's just

040a recommendation at this time so i guess could i ask attorney dupree burnout if you could look at the language of policy and determine whether it needs to change to include it being available i understand the protection is for employees but i think the policy says that the whistleblower hotline is there for employees who want to report so if you could take a look at that language i'd appreciate it yes ma'am cheating when i first joined the board board i had an issue with the seriousness with which we tr we treat cheating i'm wondering whether in the elementary code of conduct it appears as if cheating could be a level two or a level three but in the secondary code of conduct it appears to just be a level two and that feels like it's

041it should be the opposite to me instances of cheating at secondary level should be treated far more seriously than at the elementary level and may i ask what is the maximum discipline that can be taken against the student who cheats it would be up to the school-based administrator the student could receive a zero on the assignment if it's proven to be that they were cheating typically it is an academic response to an academic misbehavior so i do have those other options available to them if they feel that perhaps a detention or a parent conference is appropriate as well so a student can leave our school as a 18 year old and go to college where expulsion is the maximum penalty so i just i always get concerned that we're not preparing our students for the

042next level of education and that you know academic integrity is really at the focus of what we do those are my comments so far thank you thank you jayva nelly thank you i just have mr mangan i just have one question has anyone consulted a juvenile cri someone that handles juvenile criminals because i see that the battery is treated as a five but i believe the law on the on robbery and it's treated as a four i believe a robbery is more you know what's the word i want to use it's it's weighted heavier in court system than actual battery so has anybody consulted with any of the experts juvenile experts criminal juvenile experts what i can say is that the battery is considered a level the most serious are level one by the assessor

043and robbery is considered a level two that is from the state so but no i have not and i don't know if anybody else has con contacted the juvenile justice system in regards to how that would apply to our student code of conduct i would have to check into that for you yeah that would help me i think a little bit more on those thank you okay second second round i know you mentioned the schedule somewhere that you had gone did town halls and all the different things where where are we in that state are we done with all of that at this point yes considering the timeline that we need in order to follow the three-step process this meeting the subsequent one and then gearing towards the board approval going back and continuing to

044get more feedback at this point would just kind of cycle us right back to where we're at right now so we wanted to reserve the last input for the board itself what is our what is your hard time right now i think a later slide will reflect that we have our next presentation scheduled right now for may 25th so any feedback that we have here taking notes on it we would go back and update the document and have it about a week before then i believe it's due into for board document publication whatever it is a week about the 17th i imagine in may this may be a question for attorney bruno but considering when we set the process up and the timeline for it not understanding the public interest is there any possible potential

045for having any other town hall so that the people that don't get to speak because it's so limited here that we would have an opportunity for more people to speak at another town hall a limited version and i'm not trying to put more work on you but i'm trying to look at where you know where can we meet in the middle since there's this is limited according to our statutes and there's only so many people that can speak so i would like to ask the board to even consider that if we did a limited maybe you know one in each district or whatever i mean one in each zone limited time and it would still follow our guidelines as far as how many people can speak but it would give people not more people an

046opportunity and and someone said this to me the other day and it's true we want to hear what the public is saying it's going to come down to us voting and it's going to come down to us you know listening to everyone but voting our conscience based on listening to everyone so can i do i make it's not a voting meeting so can i ask for a consensus if anyone has an appetite for doing some additional town halls one in each zone on a limited basis just to give more people an opportunity to feel that they have had their voices heard miss kittens the only thing i would re remind the board is that this will be coming back before the board on different dates i don't have those dates in front of me two

047more times two more times before that i understand that but when it comes back here we're going to end up with the same people that have spoken speaking again and people in other areas that don't have the opportunity to come here not have their voices heard as well okay board discussion comments can we talk about that yeah we can since it's been yes thank you in regard to that i know that i have had literally several hundred emails and texts and phone calls so in this day and age when virtual contact is so easy i would encourage people to continue to contact us that way and we can tally our information because a lot of it is based on one school of thought or another so i think that is another way that the public

048is able to access us and let us know their opinions and still allow our staff to stay on their timeline so that the code of conduct can be ready for the beginning of the next school year okay okay this is jordan did you have somebody just wait oh oh i'm gonna touch your hand okay this is patricka i don't think there's anything that prevents any of us from holding a town hall or a forum for members of our community either in the area from which we're represented or elsewhere in the community so i would invite ms gittins if you think that would be appropriate in your district go for it and if anyone in my district wants me to do it i'll do it i don't think it has to be a board thing yes

049okay thank you i'd like to get back to the agenda please is anybody else have a comment before we move back i think we have plenty of time to discuss this since this is a pre-briefing and this might be something that we can talk about when we have some additional time after some of these first changes are made and then they're also virtual town halls as well okay so let's move ahead with the presentation please all right at this time we would like to address the equity poster including misconceptions and recommendations moving forward so first the school district of lee county does not have a specific lgbtq curriculum the district utilizes the next generation sunshine state standards as well as the curriculum of other programs such as advanced placement international baccalaureate cambridge ace and others

050specific references to lgbtq is included in the health curriculum concerning human sexuality and reproduction parents may opt their students out of this portion of the curriculum by completing a waiver requ a waiver request the description of this process is included in the student code of conduct on page 14 of the parents rights and responsibilities i say page 14 currently we'll see where it winds up as we make revisions also the school district of lee county has not changed the designation of restrooms on our campuses we maintain separate facilities for boys and girls we maintain separate facilities for staff and we also have single use restrooms and we continue to provide those on all campuses likewise the designation of boys and girls locker rooms and showers also remains unchanged schools do work with students requesting accommodations

051on an individual basis to find a location that is safe and secure for the student and for all students on a campus the school district also recognizes that there are commun community concerns particularly around two issues one athletics and also the domain or the rights of parents we want to address those tonight for athletics the school district of lee county follows the guidelines of the florida high school athletics association as well we recognize that our parents have rights in the education of their children and we recognize that the state of florida has moved to pass a parent rights bill and we'll talk about that again here in just a minute we also know that the board has passed policy 1.27 our non-discrimination policy with the passing of that policy lee joins with eight other districts

052in the state of florida of the largest districts in the state of florida in protecting students based on sexual orientation and join seven others in protecting students based on gender identity and those districts include dade broward hillsborough orange palm beach duvall polk pinellas and of course lee with that we also have examined the legal case trajectory and the direction under title vii particularly after the bostic ruling which was interpreted to include sex discrimination interpreted sex discrimination to include lgbtq as well we abide by title ix and the 14th amendment in terms of providing equity for our students her lgbtq in terms of case trajectory adams versus the school board of st john's county st johns county was found to have discriminated against the student by placing a bathroom policy that required the student to use

053a bathroom consistent with his birth gender at this time we have put in place processes to make sure that we are in compliance with the law and that we also protect the integrity of our students and make sure that they are protected on campus and have a safe place at school we also recognize that lee county continues to diversify and we recognize the diversity of opinions even in this room tonight we maintain that we will continue to work on behalf of the citizens of lee county in maintaining a safe and supportive community in our schools that is productive for our students towards the outcomes which they are trying to reach so we bring forth and recognize that the poster that we have in place includes much guidance which will remain in place in this district

054it's under the non-discrimination policy but we do recognize that we need to make revisions to the poster we're recommending that it not be included in the 2122 code of conduct so that we can update it and or create additional guidance and clarity we want to make sure that we're also including more guidance around our non-discrimination policy for all students and especially all students in those protected classes that are identified and not in policy 1.27 this will give us also time to update in terms of additional advancements in title ix current case law title vii and other other law it will also give us the time to gather input from our stakeholders our board members our staff students parents and our community will also give us time to study other florida school districts and organizations we

055know that the following districts have either a one-page guide similar to ours or more comprehensive guides alachua brevard broward collier duvall indian river fernando hillsborough leon manatee martin miami-dade monroe okeechobee orange palm beach pasco pinellas sarasota st lucie and volusia to that end we commit to the board to conduct that input research and bring back recommendations for improved guidance concerning our lgbtq students looking forward this was mentioned earlier today our timeline as it's anticipated right now is to have the briefing and first reading on may 25th which would mean approximately a week earlier we will be responsible to make sure that the updated code of conduct recommendations are available for your review on board docs by by about may 17th approximately and then after that the second public hearing and reading would be on anticipated

056on june 8 and with hopes of securing board approval for the code of conduct for the 2021-2022 school year at this time miss vaughn we would like to turn it over to the board members to answer any questions you have about this section okay mrs kittens okay thank you gentlemen i have two questions there kind related of each other but i did want to ask about the out-of-school suspensions and the question is why are we including out-of-school suspension in level two for elementary students to begin with there there are a variety of offenses inside of there and it could be in regards without speaking about each and every one separately there are instances where a student might commit the same behavior infractions on a repeated time i know that our elementary school principals use oss

057as a last resort but at the same time did not think i did not want to recommend that we take a tool out of their bag even though it is kind of drastic because for elementary school students depending on the offense in the context of the situation the principal or administrator that's handling situation might feel that an out-of-school suspension is warranted after working with the parent i know that's kind of a general overview answer it doesn't get down to the specifics well no and i hear you i understand you and having worked in elementary school yes there are times that we need to do that i'm just wondering is it is it differentiated by the lower grades and like you know from third to to fifth i just i'm not sure how i really feel

058about oss for level two for elementary schools third grade and below it just seems a little bit but let me give the other part of the question and i know you don't probably have it tonight but i'd like to get a breakdown of the ethnicity of elementary schools that were suspended this year based on this policy okay and i know we you know we talk about programs to help students to bridge from not taking them out of school and that oss should be the last resort but do we have any thoughts of any other programs for students that may be that trouble that they need to have oss but then you know there's no parental person to watch them and you're really just making the thing worse because they're sitting at home or somewhere unattended

059and with elementary schools a lot of times and different demographics the parents almost rely on school to know where their kids are being taken care of and safe during the day and if they don't have that option because they're suspended it just is a bad situation all around so you can get the data to me later but i am concerned about making sure that it's equitable and i think you're spot on and i think our elementary principals and administrators would agree with you that yes it might be necessary in rare cases but to use it as leniently as limited limited as possible thank you because there are certain situations and this is where the relationship and the administrator knowing the student and the family and the dynamics of that would weigh in heavily as they

060make that individual situ call as opposed to the old progressive masters where it was up to the third time you did it you're going home right right i mean i know with like upper levels we had the stop gap for before they went to success academy there was an in between and i'm just wondering if we can't think about that because in the elementary levels especially that academic achievement in this first you know k through third grade is so essential and any time away from that is going to hurt them academically and when they're not attaining academically then the behavior gets worse as well very true so thank you for that and then also regarding the poster i did mention to the superintendent and others that i had the saturday after we had the last

061action meeting i met with the group of about eight students some high school some college and some just working and we spent three hours on a zoom meeting going through the poster and i believe that they have given you some of the notes and i requested that you have an opportunity to meet with these students and i want the audience to know that it was a very very vast from one end of the spectrum to the other there were students that were some were gay some were trans some were very you know on the left or the right they were all different kinds of students but the one thing i want you all to know before you get an opportunity to speak is that one of the things they said is sometimes adults can mess

062it up for everybody and i'm just quoting what they said they have suggestions and one thing was the poster even though it is in the book of the student code of conduct it is not a number in the policy a policy has a line number a letter or something it's like ae 3 line 29 this was a resource to my understanding to the policy and i remember in one of the meetings it was stated that it was there to help not only our lgbtq students but everyone else to understand what the whole situation is so the students would like to share what they came up with and for example on the poster they wanted to take out the word you know your gender identity and it was the lgbtq students that said we don't want

063to be singled out we just want to be normal students we want everyone to see us the students not the gay student or the trans student just students and we have to give them that opportunity to do so they talked about the restrooms and there was a long discussion about that and they said k through sixth grade should be allowed to just use the nurse's station and seventh and up and one of the students was saying you know you don't just come to school one day and say you know i think i'm gay so i'm going to go to this bathroom and they laughed about it because they said no and one student explained how there's a process that if you're going to do that you have to fill out pay am i right give

064me a okay you have to fill out paperwork you have to speak to the counselors you don't just one day come and have one address and say you know this is what i am so for parents thinking that it's just that simple it's not and this is from students the information in there about pronouns and those other types of things they said as reference material and the section that has title is it title 9 has to stay because it's title 9 information but the things they suggested when they talked about the section on pride overall they said why do we need this why does it need to be there and they said the part about faculty and staff being empowered was a bit of aggressive it's from kids or students not kids let's say so

065overall the dress they said especially like if you're at a school that has uniforms everybody has to wear uniforms and they looked at the dress code and they said the dress code is the dress code and if you wear a skirt and a polo shirt you still have to have it tucked in if you wear pants and then you could still have to have your polo tucked in okay is that i'm stuck yeah okay miss what students are you offering this as i am they were asking what comments okay ma'am excuse me they were asking what do we have to offer to add i am offering what the students said i did ask the attorney and others if i could have them present but there were rules or whatever that they couldn't present tonight so

066they asked me to present for them in this section so if the board is wanting me to stop then please tell me now i'm just wondering if you're offering this what the students said as as your guidance to this the staff yes okay i'm just clarifying it that's what i was reminding you of the ten minute rule okay so i will move on there are certain things and we'll share it with you and i would hope i have the names of the students i would hope you would be able to meet with them to hear it from their mouths and i up on the screen and i know we can't read it all but one of the students that was in the group wrote the article for the newspaper at at the cape cape high

067i really would suggest you all read it the student was at the last meeting when you all i don't say you all but when people in the audience conducted themselves in a certain way and i don't see my lighthouse i guess somebody took it down but i just want to remind you go online read this article the young man that was here that said just let listen to your kids and let them speak and this article explains from their eyes and their point of view how they felt in that meeting with the conduct that was there and my last statement is your behavior what you're teaching your students as a way to solve conflict if you have someone that's way over here and you're way over here how do you get together and part of

068it is you listen i'm done okay thank you comments from the board this morning well i guess i'm a little confused were you asking for guidance from us on on did you have specific questions i thought we had you were looking for guidance is that any guidance on anything we presented is appreciated i know we had that first checkpoint and then there was some feedback that we've captured on if there's anything at this point or anything that like mr gittins thought about the stuff in regards to the out of school suspension for level two offenses for elementary if there's something else that might have come to mind i have no no comments thank you okay mrs giovanelli thank you i just have a couple questions that you didn't mr ming and you didn't exactly say

069what the fsaa recommendation is can you clarify that florida high school from high school foreign on that to be honest with you and i can only give you a portion of it mr larosa would be the person to contact as far as the exact guidance but the florida high school athletic association does have a process in place whereby a transgender student can request participation in the sport of the gender with which they identify it goes through a process of review in front with a panel they must produce medical information it is a thorough review and a decision is rendered right so we don't actually determine that it's done at that level correct thank you my other question is regarding okay so when does the actual what grade does the sex ed start like what grade

070level is that i've had parents ask me that so when do they start educating i have to defer to one of our curriculum people if i may through the chair my children and they're not that far away from this it was fifth grade and i was given the opportunity to opt them out it was a very biological definitional this is how biology works in the body type of education and they actually went to fgcu to receive the instruction and then it's very specifically located in our ninth grade hope and health pe classes that are both located on our lee schools curriculum and instruction there's a unit there that's very specific to that topic thank you because i know the community is interested in this so also so there was an issue with the florida equality

071poster that was put in the agenda last year that nobody really was aware of it including teachers because i've spoken to many that did not know it was there including myself i admitted that so my concern is i don't you mention that's being taken out but what will be put in its place that information wasn't provided again today and i'm concerned that in next june or august or whatever that there'll be something there that wasn't in the briefing again so i want to make sure that's that's avoided so i would like to have that information spelled out completely so that's provided to all stakeholders including myself also i didn't see anything no one discussed anything about the masked mandate and i've had a lot of people mention that so that's that was in the code

072of conduct i believe as well right the mask mandate it's part of the it's part of the dress code that's opened a question as well and then this is actually a mess a question for the superintendent we're building all these new schools are we building schools with bathrooms that are unisex i mean i think we need to be if we're going to be progressive let's be really progressive and we need to be building schools that accommodate everyone thank you i'd be superman doesn't mind i just like to the mask thing the only guidance we have in there is what the board requested us last year after our first presentation was in regards to the public health and safety and the statement reads in the interest of public health and safety i cannot hear you the

073only other thing that we put in there in regards to the board input from last year's cycle of a presentation was the con the section about public health and safety and it was reads in the interest of public health and safety there may be a district addendum to the student code of conic based on recommendations from national or state organizations we did not come back with any specific additions to the code of conduct in regards to students who have an issue with the masked man mandate so i do not have anything else in regards to mass specific inside of here and we did not add anything in regards to the code to the dress code in regards to the mask specifically and policy issue you know that we i sent you a memorandum earlier that

074would really me requesting to be provided additional flexibility as we move forward to the 21 22 school year because right now our board policy is very specific in terms of the guidance that we have to the approval that we have to receive before we remove that mandate but in light of commissioner corcoran's guidance i believe that you know following the guidance of the department of education is something that we should certainly do and in order to do that we need to have flexibility in our policy so i am asking that at some point in the very near future that we consider revising that so that we have the flexibility as it relates to the mask mandate okay and then one more my last question and then answering your question about the facilities to my knowledge

075you know we build to the prototype so the prototypes are still the same as as they are there are areas in our buildings that do offer independent standalone restrooms where they can work with with a parent and a student you know that's something that would continue yeah i think we really need to talk about that we're building a lot of new schools and we need to be a little more accommodating the other question that i have that i sent an email a couple weeks ago after the this last meeting was regarding last year or in august or september the code of conduct was digitally sent to see people and i was concerned on we should know how many people i've spoken to so many people that i was unaware that it was there that they

076did not even sign off on it do we have the number of of how many parents and students received it and actually signed off that they did read that my understanding of staff is working on getting you that number oh so i don't have it in front of me now okay okay board members who else hasn't spoken this round and mrs fisher yes thank you so at this time i would like to save my comments for board comments and hear the public comment because that will help me in my decision making well we do have public comment time of course miss fisher and we're not there yet okay but we will be hearing everybody we will be hearing from everyone okay mrs jordan okay i know that you had asked about the annual versus three

077years and i would prefer the annual only because of the fact that we all we do have changes that come up and we want to make sure that we that we are adhering to what those are and then i did have a question too because i know ms juvenelli brought it up about the prototype do we not get our prototypes from the states is that i thought that's where miss eval said that our prototypes for the build outs for the new schools come from the state so that would be something i would like to find out if the state is telling us how to build the school schools and just to answer that prototype is something that we designed and for example if you look at the high school i think that one goes literally

078back to either ida s baker high school so that is our high school prototype that we continue clear through to gateway high school is a very similar design we do make tweaks and changes it's continuing to be you know revised moving forward but the basic layout of those buildings remains the same so if you go walk in ids baker and you go walk in gateway high school you will see a very similar layout for those buildings okay and then it goes to the state and gets approved and then it comes back to us it is approved at the state level yes okay thank you and then my other comment would be the reference to the equality florida that's just something that's really driving me crazy because that has been it's been over a year ago

079when that was being spoken about policy 1.27 was our non-discrimination and i know that was spoken about multiple multiple times making sure that we had every all the proper verbiage in there and everything was what it needed to be and i believe that one sheet paper poster went in there to as a reference to strengthen the 1.27 not to hurt anybody to just to to secure and ensure that every child no matter who you are would come to school and be safe and have a great learning environment that's what that was about it wasn't to offend anybody or anything like that and i can honestly say that shame on me because i should have read every single detail perhaps but i know that it was brought before us and i thank you because you always

080do come here to us and you always do share the information to us multiple times so i want to thank you for that and just to say that you know we do have policy in place we're not taking just because we don't have a poster in there does not mean that we're not going to make sure that you know we follow you know title 7 title 9 that you know our policy for non-discrimination which protects all of us all of you all the children in this district and staff and we want to make sure that we understand that still will take place so i thank you for bringing this before us okay who else has a comment or a question or feedback yes mrs kittens i have a question based on what miss giovanelli was

081saying about the parents before pre-covet or pc any teachers out there know that you know the forms had to go home they had to be signed and came back and i won't even ask how many parents actually looked at what you signed but your child said if we don't we won't get a popsicle party so you signed it but did you read it and did you look at it and then my question is now that we were digital how did that affect even more so because we talked about the digital divide for one and not all parents can just go in their office in their house and pull it up and sit there and read the code of conduct so since it was digital and i'm not sure how did we do it digital did

082they have to go on the portal and check it off or what did they do essentially that would be it and when they would access the parent portal or set up an account it would be asking them to to acknowledge the reading and understanding of the code please make sure you i'm sorry speak yes essentially what you were talking about is a basic description of it as the focus player portal was set up to prompt the parents to look at the code of conduct and then to acknowledge it through an electronic sign-off sheet and how and if you know it's a kind of rhetorical that you don't have to answer right now but how did we look at the parents that did not have that opportunity are there more parents this time just because we

083did it digitally digitally it's hard to say with the mask that didn't do it and i know you're going to get the numbers to show us but i have a feeling it's going to be a lot lower than just reaching over and signing but i say to parents read what you saw okay this is patricka i have a lot of questions so you can cut me off and come back to me after everybody's had a second chance if you'd like madam chair my first question i don't know attorney dupree bruno if i should bring this up during good of the order because it was not presented as part of the student code of conduct but on at our march 22nd workshop we were presented forms that students are permitted to sign is that an appropriate

084topic for now or should i do that during good of the order if mr mangan or mr bradley can answer the question they may be able to okay so at that march 22 meeting you showed us forms that students are permitted to sign to ask the school to treat them with regard to use of pronouns and names with the gender gender with which they identify but there was no signature line for parents are we removing those as well and if we're not removing them are we adding a parental signature line so at this time we that particular form is a counselor form to use with the student and setting up a plan you're going to need to move to my point of order please point of order please he's going to answer the question just

085be patient mr bradley if you can speak a little louder please so at the at this time the form that you're referencing is a gender support plan it is intended to be a plan with the school the parent and the student in terms of how to support that student on the campus and make sure that they have full access to their education there are no signature lines on on the document at all it is merely a document that outlines what is going to happen for the student there are action steps that are listed at the bottom for each of the parties if they if they indicate certain action steps i recall there being a line for a student and somebody from the school but no line for the parent that was on both the forms

086both the one that was provided by an organization and the one provided by the school district of lee county so the one that you're referring to that is from lee county is the request to have the gender affirming name appear in certain district applications and that has been amended with a parent signature line and so it includes a place for student counselor or equity coordinator and parent to sign that form okay so can i now feel confident as a parent that if if a school is going to to refer to or treat my child as a gender with with which they identify which does not match their biological birth sex that i as a parent will be notified before the school takes those actions so as as i've we've stated before it is the full

087intent of the district to encourage that there is a loving supporting trusting relationship between parent and student ms patricka the other thing i would add to that too is that there is the parents bill of rights that most likely well it's passed we're waiting for the governor to sign it so upon that i know that the district will review all of its processes to make sure that we are in compliance with this new legislation i understand that but my comfort level doesn't exist i understand i understand that if a child goes to a counselor or a teacher or an administrator they are going to do everything they can to engage the parent but in the event the child doesn't want to engage the parent what are we doing about protecting parental rights and without parental

088signature and parental notification i don't believe parental rights are being protected i don't know how you can no no i don't i don't know how i don't know how you can we can do anything as a school district that doesn't allow for parental permission notification and participation i don't know if i'm prepared to provide a full response for you this evening we can certainly take that i do think that's going to need input from your board attorney as well as our staff attorneys happy to bring a response back again again ms patricka i do think that this new parent's bill of rights has some provisions in there that will require the district to reevaluate certain things and make sure that we are in compliance so there are some provisions that i know will be impactful

089okay so i will get a definitive answer at some point in the relatively near future okay may i go on so my next question is at the march 22nd briefing i specifically asked my daughter is a swimmer and she uses locker rooms to change for swim practice and for swim meets and if a biological boy who identifies as a girl wants to use the locker room that she is using and she feels uncomfortable with that i was told that she would have to find someplace else to go that is different that is different from what i heard you say tonight what i heard you say tonight is that students who are transgender will be provided with a gender neutral facility well first i want to clarify i did not say that particular statement you just

090attributed to me i said that we do provide accommodations for any student that requests a private changing area upon request so with our transgender students we do work with the student on an individual basis to find the most appropriate facility for them in terms of changing rooms and that happens case by case depending on the facility okay i would urge you to go back and watch the march 22nd meeting because i've watched it a couple of times and i remember being stunned by your answer so i can feel confident now that my sons will be changing in a locker room with other biological boys and my daughter will be changing the locker room with other biological girls is that a fair assessment at this time that is a fair assessment but we do work for

091equity for our students who are transgender to make sure that they have an equitable changing room madam chair if i may please just remind the audience just if you could just hold it together we're going to get through this these are important questions that the board members want answers to in order for them to do their job and now if mr mangan and mr bradley if you can speak a little louder because people in the back are having some difficulty but i would ask you to no booing no hissing no clapping no comments so that we can get through this process and the board can do their job thank you very much i have asked you before if you have a law degree because you're really good at answering questions without really answering them so

092i'm not i don't mean that as an insult i really don't you know that i meant that as a compliment the first time i said it and i mean it as a compliment now my my question i guess is do we need a policy surrounding bathroom and locker room use because as i read atoms i see that they passed a policy in a reactionary fashion which hurt them in court and if we were to adopt a policy that's very clear then no parent no student no stakeholder will have any question as to how these issues are being treated in our schools so that's would be my question and guidance i guess i think that as we wait for the session to be finished and we get all of the new laws that are coming in

093we will be able to assess and draft the appropriate policies remember that atoms we're still waiting to see if there's going to be any new developments from the case law perspective because they're still waiting for the umba we'll see what happens with that but again as the session ends and we get the new laws we will address and draft the appropriate policies i will say that adam specifically addressed restrooms and also specifically did not and specifically stated that they were not addressing locker rooms so i think that we're pretty pretty in in the clear in terms of the law now what what would happen if what is the risk to the district if we adopt a policy that is not in line with the holding in atoms what's the risk to the district in that

094i'm not sure i understand the question what do you mean by what's the risk if we don't follow i mean right now adams is the exposure yeah so looking at the federal government bringing in the so right now making us allow you know that's what i mean by what's the risk so adam's right now is controlling in the 11th circuit which is our circuit in florida so we are obligated to follow atoms the best thing that we can do is to make sure that we have the policies in place that are in line with rolling in atoms with regards to the bathroom that's all we can do i mean that is the law in florida at this time until we hear something further either from the courts that are reviewing for amba or if the

095supreme court jumps in to make a ruling okay may i continue we're we're at the ten minutes mrs patricka so anybody else on the board have any follow-ups to that i do want to ask a question that was actually something that was mentioned earlier the recommendation then is to take the poster out of the booklet but i think somebody else on on the dais i can't remember who asked well what is going to replace that i mean we have other documents and with the red lines and the crossouts and all of that but after the slash through the poster i didn't see alternate language and i was wondering about that where has that been drafted the alternate language for removing the poster so as as we printed presented this evening we would like to the

096opportunity to review where current law stands and especially in light of the fact that the new parents right rights bill was passed in the state of florida as well as we know that the federal government is working on further guidance on title ix and we'd like to get the community and in stakeholder input that we talked about before coming back with a revision so the recommendation was not to include the poster directly in the student code of conduct this year instead to look at creating a clearer better guidance policy or i don't use the wrong word there but guidance resource that helps to clarify our policy of non-discrimination and its enactment for students who are lgbtq okay for my part it would have been very helpful to have seen when you eliminate the poster what

097language you would have that would stand in for that omission because i personally feel that we need to even though we have policy non-discrimination policy that we need to reinforce that although we want we want all of our children to feel safe and we want all of our children to feel respected and i don't know that any of us well there may be some people in here i don't want to speak for everyone but i know as a parent a grandparent i would feel an as an individual i would feel very uncomfortable sharing facilities with someone biologically of the opposite sex now i think this takes on different dimensions when you talk about older transgender individuals because typically our students would not have any of the surgeries associated with a complete transition so it's you

098know even if from a classroom perspective let's say one might look at an individual in the class and it wouldn't be a problem for a biological girl to have transitioned to being male but on and i'm trying to use the correct words here but in restroom situations locker room situations that probably wouldn't be the case for for our for our students or maybe it might be a rare case for some of our students who may be 18 or so years old so i really would have appreciated to to see because it's a month from now that we are going to have our first reading and i want to have plenty of time for myself and to hear again from the community as they look at the alternate language that has come in to the code

099of conduct to replace the poster to see if it's more palpable to people and more understandable so that's that's my comment on this now are you are you gentlemen presenting on other parts of this evening that are posted on board docs or is this the board dock should have the what we call the red line what you were referring before right and then what we're referring to as a ready for branding without the red line obviously it's not ready for branding it's just a way to distinguish it and then the powerpoint that was shared tonight that's all we have for this evening yeah i just i just wanted to because whichever comes whichever comes first break after you all are done or by eight o'clock we're going to take a brief recess so i don't

100want to cut anything that you're doing short so we are reached the end of our presentation for the board this evening okay and for everybody in the audience of course there's a lot more information on board docs that you can look at and that we encourage you to look at okay so final comments before we close this out final comments from board members and then we will adam chair take a break yes if i could just explain something i'm not sure if i was very clear originally when the question was asked when we have a law the exposure that the district has is that somebody claims that we violated the law so these laws that we're talking about fall under what we call title ix and these laws protect individuals from discrimination so if somebody

101feels that they have been discriminated against be it because of their race or their gender identity or anything along those lines one of those suspect classes it exposes the district to a lawsuit where you know obviously money and all of those things fall in line so that's that's what the exposure is okay okay so before we close out this excellent summary of the code of conduct final comments questions mrs givenelli i just have two actually i had something you said made me want to ask this question can give me example of a gender-neutral changing area what would that be we're talking about a private changing area okay that would be provided to a student who requests an accommodation and that is provided to that student okay and then also who actually approved the poster to

102be put into the classrooms throughout the district because i hear they're even in elementary schools so i don't know who approved that so i was just curious i don't know the answer to that the posters were part where a resource that was provided as a support for our non-discrimination policy 1.27 speak up please poster was provided as a resource for support of our non-discrimination policy 1.27 but when that should i mean shouldn't that have gone to as a board approval i mean i don't know the answer thank you okay can any either dr atkins or attorney dupree bruno can you answer that whether or not it should have come through to the board right so i my understanding that it was in the code of conduct that the board had reviewed in various briefings and

103then event eventually voted on that's my understanding i think mrs giavinelli though is asking about the actual posters that were distributed to schools is that not correct mrs givenelli right because the first time i saw that poster was in october so that's it was already in the classrooms i guess so this issue has come up and this is why we have had the workshop and this is you know this topic keeps coming up to make sure that the board is aware because the board is supposed to be aware about the different policies and the directions that the district is moving so yes this does need to come before the board and it has and it will continue to come okay miss givenelli did you have anything else that was my two questions thank you one

104can be answered and i got an answer morgan miss kittens so i mean i'll just say that the first time too that i actually saw the poster was in october with the and i know it was in there and i said earlier that the statement was made that there would be a resource to help our lgbtq students and since to to me since it was not a you know line 39 of policy you know 3a it was not it was a resource that could have very easily been just the url at the end if someone wanted to find out more information so and i think miss fisher provided us with some copies of it after that because we hadn't seen it but i got it anyway that's all i have to say okay there's no

105there's no questioning of the board when they are doing conducting their business you will have time during public comments to make your comments i promise it's coming but right now they need to be able to do their work okay ms fisher yes so in october of 2020 i was the chair and that was in the code of conduct we did vote on it unanimously and when they were finished being printed along with the stickers they were handed to me as the chair and i passed them out to all of you my colleagues so i'm i don't know what else i can say miss laurie morgan miss jordan did you have any final comments i do not okay miss patricka this morgan has her hand up sorry yeah and since you brought it up ms fisher

106i will say that at that at that meeting we agreed that there would be no quality florida labels on things we agreed that we would use our own materials and eliminate the equality florida because we didn't want to be associated with a non-profit that has a an advocacy advocacy arm associated with it but that was so i don't understand why these things are in the school either they probably went out before the board had the conversation but i think we need to revisit how we do disseminate promotional materials provided by other organizations in our schools can i just say too i know that we did i agree with miss morgan on that we did have that discussion because we were at an impasse about the resolution and i tried several times to have us address

107it close to that time but we did not get it on the agenda until what march i think we met about the whole issue so i just wanted to you know to put that out there we did discuss that okay ms fisher you had another comment well i'm going to reserve it for later okay everybody's okay this is patricka so i guess in terms of the law on this i'd like us to focus on the arguments that saint john's county failed to make i believe that there are a lot of constitutional arguments that can be made to support having facilities where children don't they're protected against exposing themselves to other students who don't match their biological parts and being exposed to those those things i think there are a lot of constitutional arguments that can

108be made in support of a policy that will allow four separate facilities and accommodations to be made for any student that feels uncomfortable using a facility that matches their gender identity i don't think it has to be specific to transgender students i think if we open it up to any student that feels uncomfortable using a specific facility then that overcomes some of the constitutional challenges in atoms i also think that we should look at the descent in atoms because i think it provides us a road map for those exact constitutional arguments we would need to make and the last thing i will say is the reliance on bostock continues to be very concerning to me because we are predicting what the united states state supreme court will do based on boss stock which is a

109completely different law and the dissent in bostock now comprises the majority of the supreme court the majority of the supreme court with the exception of maybe roberts they are strict constructionists and they will not define the term gender or sex to be anything other than what was contemplated by the legislature at the time that law was passed i'd i'd like us to to take a view of of legal trends with the reality of what the united states supreme court is actually likely to do so we will too thank you board member petrica so we'll take a look at that when we discuss the policies as well as look at what the what the laws are after the session i will say that there is a case the grim versus gloss sister case gloucestershire county school

110board from august 20th 2020. remember all of these cases came out at the same time last summer that case is pending to see if the supreme court is actually going to hear it the united states supreme court and if they hear it then that's definitely going to tell us exactly which way the court's going to go because that case is very similar to adams it's not within our circuit however we have to watch that to see what the u.s supreme court is going to do yeah that's that's not even in the federal system that's massachusetts state court case right no that is a fourth circuit case fourth circuit it must have originated in state court yes all right those are my comments for now thank you all right so mrs vaughn just one thing real

111quick one we'll we'll get you an answer to your question about you know how that how that got to schools my understanding was provided to the schools but in terms of permission i'll i'll get you an answer for that the second thing the question that miss giovanelli had earlier regarding the code of conduct and the number of forms that were signed etc that was provided i believe in an email to you this afternoon so you did have i believe off top my head's like 40 but then they followed up with paper copies so it's a higher percentage than that but anyway it is that information has been provided to you and we are in compliant compliance with the law as it relates to the code of conduct and notification but if you have any other

112questions after you see that and read that just let us know what they are okay thank you for that update dr adkins all right so i would like to thank oh i just i'm sorry i just want to see one more thing i know everybody keeps saying lgbtq this best practices went in there for equity and equality for all students every child in our district not just one certain gender and i will tell you the edac worked on this for months for policy 1.27 to make sure that everybody was included in this policy whether you were jewish dissent no matter who you were we wanted to make sure nobody was left out of this conversation or the protection so i just want to make sure that and i think because of the fact that it

113is equality florida and the map is in rainbow colors so the assumption is of course one way or another but it is the best practices that it was to strengthen up equality and equity for all for all i just had to say that thank you thank you miss okay i'm looking anything else all right i would like to thank ms scott mr bradley and mr mengen for enlightening us on this we're going to take a seven minute break it is 7 51 and when we come back it will be time for public comment amen okay seven minutes foreign okay please be seated everybody thank you all right we are now reconvening and we have reached that point in the meeting that where we welcome public comment attorney dupree bruno would you please read the guidelines

114thank you madam chair school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning this meeting's agenda which is the student code of comment conduct comments are limited to this topic as it is the only item on the agenda per board policy 1.11 subsection 5 c1 if you decide to go off on a tangent and talk about a different topic i will give you a warning if you continue to talk about a different topic the microphone will be shut down if you completed a blue card please put it in the basket provided at the back of the room if you need a blue card they are located in the hallway outside of the board room the rules concerning public comment are posted and public comment will be made in

115the central microphone in the back please be advised that the board does not respond during public comment to the remarks made by the speakers at the end of public comment the board vice chairman vaughan will address concerns or the assignment of any concerns to the superintendent board policy 1.81 is in effect and requires everyone to wear a mask speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner we do have students here with us today so i ask you to please please be very careful and make sure that everyone has an opportunity to speak the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback personal attacks on individuals or abusive language are prohibited and i will tell you if there is a personal attack or abusive language in addition clapping hissing booing

116unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or a display of temper are prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone poor board policy 1.11 and they may be removed from the chambers everyone has a right to speak and the board wants to hear from you again we have young people students here with us today they need to feel safe and have the right to express their opinions please be respectful of each other and i'll allow every speaker to have their opportunity for board policy 1.11 because we have 31 speakers or more each speaker will be allowed one minute the maximum time allowed for public comment is one hour you will find the

117countdown on the big screens in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective body please state your name prior to making your comment i'm going to call five speakers at a time you will line up in the back please follow the staff's instruction when lining up madam chair i have an excess of 60 speakers that wish to address the board this evening okay so at this time we will not ask for additional speakers because of our policy so speaker number one if you will i'll go ahead and start calling themselves them kathy horn nancy torreira robert roper danielle hagman arlene goldberg please line up you may go

118ahead and speak thank you i'm kathy horn from estero thank you for your comprehensive progressive lgbtq plus policies which lead the state don't let hostile homophobia reverse your admirable standards the angry aggressive comments of some people in the last meeting were horrifying yet also illuminating a gay student was harassed by adults yet bravely spoke of today's reality which is that while students support their lgbtq peers too many adults with ill-informed and fearful biases endanger their well-being i hope that crowd taught each of you exactly why lgbtq people need a safe space at school you must be as brave as your students maintain your proactive policies and use this opportunity to educate the public please leave all equity information in your code of conduct as you conduct your research to remove it would be to betray

119your lgbtq students thanks to that last meeting and tonight's behavior as well you know what an unsafe space feels like keep safe keep schools next speaker please hi my name is nancy torreri i'm the current president of the lee county chapter of the national organization for women i speak on behalf of myself and our local organization tonight i want to thank the board for its efforts and the school district in terms of putting in place positive policies to protect our all of our students including our lgbtq students i'm a little alarmed tonight by some of the discussion i feel like we're starting to go backwards now and that would be a terrible thing i have two asks tonight one is that all of us in this room educate ourselves better we're speaking many people are

120speaking from fear rather than truth rather than facts and i really think that our students deserve better my second ask is that the board please not just throw out the poster the if if next speaker thank you ma'am next speaker my name is robert roper this poster signifies a safe space for the lgbtq student yet the full policy written on this poster is for and i quote race color ethnicity pregnancy disability religion the list goes on farther than i can read in one minute they all have one thing in common they're afforded no special accommodations yet sexual orientation gender identification gender expression enjoys special accommodations the only fair action is one that accommodates all students equally the schools of lee county should serve as a space safe space for all students not just the segment

121of the population that's disproportionately represented by a political organization called equality florida please end this unhealthy relationship with equality florida and remove all references to lgbtq policies which are absolutely offensive terms to many people of faith for the following individuals please line up and read abigail reid sin tompkins tim dues and sean williams next speaker please my name is danielle and i'm working in conjunction with equality florida there are currently 2 227 high schools in the state of florida and 2.7 million students are enrolled in our state schools in 2019 a youth risk behavior survey was conducted at this with the cdc and they found that 18.2 percent of florida high school students identified as lgbtq as well as 1.5 to upwards of 3.3 percent of students identifying as transgender just like last time they're

122an awful lot of people here tonight many of whom have their heads in the sand these are children that are being attacked and the seeds of intolerance that you are showing in your homes can almost 100 guarantee your children will not come to you if they're struggling it's also probably safe to assume you have no idea what their opinions are about who is using the stall next to them forcing kids who are already in transition to use a completely separate facility as painting targets on the back of these humans your bigotry that you're disguising is good intentions will either make or break your child or fam next speaker please my name is arlene goldberg and in 2020 the 11th circuit court of appeals held that a school board policy that prohibited a transgender student from

123access accessing the rest the restroom consistent with their gender identity constituted sex discrimination in violation of the title ix of the educational amendments of 1972 and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the u.s constitution this ruling applies to all of florida during this appeals process there was no evidence of any incidents within florida nor the entire united states that and allowing transgender students to use the restrooms consistent with their gender identity compromises other students students privacy or safety next speaker please my name is ann reed and i'm a parent of two current lee county school district students and one alumni i'm also a member of the equity and diversity advisory committee for the lee county school district and i was a volunteer co-advisor for estero high school's gsa now is the time

124to stop listening to the adults and start listening to our lgbtq plus students policies and procedures including what is and is not included in the code of conduct should absolutely have their input currently adults are the ones in the room with only a very small number of those adults having any experience with or being part of the lgbtq plus community students know what they need and how best they can be supported by the district i call on the school board to create a committee of students similar to edac i also call on the school district personnel to find a way to listen to the lgbtq plus students and get their input on policies staff training and things that can actually help them i agree with board member giddens and the code of conduct presentation and

125commend the board for listening to us today my name is abigail reed and i'm a past student i will be reading a letter from past and present students of lee county dearly county school board members we the current and past students of lee county from elementary to collegiate level ask the district to continue to support lgbtq youth we recognize the importance of voice of students in creating the code of conduct it is time for the lee county school board members to show their support for lgbtq youth for this reason we call for the creation of an lgbtq student advisory committee such a committee would advise the board on lgbtq issues and to the student code of conduct ensuring they have received testimony from the students within their district we believe that the school board needs

126to remember their students and how their actions affect us we call for this committee to form a direct line of contact between students and board members sincerely 131 past and present students of lee county thank you sen tompkins vice president lee county lgbtq democratic caucus member lee county black democratic caucus pronouns he his him my mother informed me over the weekend of how to transform anger from what i've been hearing here into something better so i'm going to tell you about this beautiful 90 year old woman of irish german bohemian and dutch descent who dared marry a black man in the 1950s when it was illegal to do so and i'm sure there are people in this room who still don't like that and i don't care she said never let hate change the goodness

127of who you are she also said and if they come for your children fight with the roar of a lion and don't back down thank you with the following individuals please line up misty bruckner crystal saison deborah hopkins devin cranford maddie roizelle go ahead good evening my name is tim dues i'm a long time lgbt citizen of lee county i and many of my friends when we were younger in elementary school and in high school we were bullied to no end and there was no provisions for our support even one of my friends committed suicide because of the bullying i finally got out of high school went to college and became an air force civilian for 30 years and i watched the military handler handle lgbt issues safely and even in today's environment lgbt personnel

128and military are taken care of but not in lee county i am here to support the current lee county lgbt best practices the student code of conduct and i would like to see the poster included thank you next speaker please hello and thank you board for this opportunity to speak i'm here as a straight woman representing the lgbtq community because since the 60s we've been fighting for these rights i've been fighting for these rights not only those but those of the entire movement and i want everyone here who's lgbtq and especially your children all of you to please listen to your children they are more progressive than us in their mindset they are more accepting and they are more loving so please don't let this be something that just adults are discussing you need to

129talk to your children and board you need to talk to the students ma'am can you please state your name my name is deborah hopkins thank you next speaker please and don't forget to state your name when you come to the microphone please my name is crystal siskan currently one-third of florida school districts are using this best policy practice poster that is 22 schools it has become the standard moving forward to remove this poster now after it has already been put into place and while it was being used as the standard would have a very negative impact on the lgbtq plus students and staff here in lee county there was no problem here there is no problem here until outside agitators created a false narrative if you came to this are you not then the same

130are you not using our most vulnerable population to appease the mob you were elected to be the leaders and you represent all of our voices under title ix schools must provide equal access to educational opportunities and activities even in circumstances where others including students parents or community raise concerns a school's interest in providing privacy for students or another parent's discomfort with transgender students in the restroom do not relieve schools of the obligation to provide all students access to the restroom and facilities consistent with their gender identity keep the poster in board will the following individuals line up aldon joseph rivas jason beckman a.j ford katie ireland dylan jafama next speaker please my name is misty bruckner i'm actually the mother of a 17 year old transgender student that attends the lee county school district the

131bathrooms were a hot topic when she first came out and obviously we're all here for a lot of the same reasons we were two years ago there have been zero incidents that i'm aware of in the lee county school district in the last two years that fell cause for all of the hate and the drama and the misinformation that is here tonight many of these concerns are initiated from fear misinformation and uneducated parents my daughter like many transgender individuals has suffered from depression and suicidal ideation over the last couple years approximately 62 percent of trans individuals report depression 22 to 43 percent of trans individuals have attempted suicide in their lifetime that is extremely terrifying as a parent of a transgender daughter the federal laws are in alignment with what the school district has and

132i think that's just fair thank you max speaker thank you board my name is devin cranford i'm the student body president at north vermont high school you may remember me from last time where a little bit of a ruckus was caused and i would like to start by apologizing for some of the anger i may have presented that night and any ruckus that i may have been a part of i would then like to follow that up by saying as an ally of the lgbtq plus community i'm here to reaffirm my support for the poster being in the code of conduct and all of the practices that you have put in place to make our lgbtq students feel safer i would also like to notify the board that after the last meeting i have gone

133through my school talk to students from all walks of life all race all sexual orientation democrat republican liberal conservative and the overall consensus over the students that i know i actually did not have a single student to send me on this is that we do support the policies you are taking i have yet to find a student in sexuality alliance club the district's goal is to ensure all students can reach their personal potential we are just now making accommodations so that queer students can succeed in a safe environment and be able to reach their full potential every student has the right to feel safe and be their true authentic selves no matter where they are to say our existence is confusing dangerous or harmful is intolerant and apathetic trans youth are just trying to have

134a normal high school experience among their cis peers in this time we are just now taking steps forward in the right direction let's not confuse ourselves and go backwards thank you that is all hello i'm alden rivas and my pronouns are he him i'm the scary transgender student that you're all afraid of today i'm standing here in alliance with my trans brothers sisters and siblings who have been wronged over and over again this past month me and every other lgbt student in lee county needs representation because being lgbt in an area that is actively trying to take away our rights and representations is one of the most difficult things you can go through being transgender is very hard to begin with our homelessness and suicide rates are exponentially higher than our cis counterparts and taking

135our away our representation rights will only make it worse and to the board members i leave with you this quote from knight by ellie weasel we must always take sides neutrality hopes the oppressor never the victim silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented sometimes we must interfere board members please take make the right thank you thank you hello my name is katie ireland and i'm one of the founders of the pldms identity club i'm here in support of the trans community and i believe that they should have the ability to use the restroom that matches their gender identity according to the american psychological association in 2017 30.8 percent of trans people have considered attempting suicide and studies show that gender affirming practices improve the mental health of trans students and help them feel safe one

136of the most important steps in affirmation is the freedom of choice they should be able to choose to align with their gender identity or at the very least gender-neutral bathrooms such as bathrooms and classrooms or offices additionally trans students have a right to to express their gender identity in schools i am not dangerous and my fellow lgbtq plus people are not dangerous thank you good evening my name is jason beckman i'm a board member with southwest florida pride i just want to speak directly to lgbt young people whether you are living openly or struggling with how to come out your life has value and worth don't let people who reject your dignity and your humanity keep you from achieving your dreams that is something i never heard growing up as a young gay person not

137at my home not at school not at church not from anyone but i wish i had because it would have made all the difference when i needed to hear it most lgbt people exist and we are just trying to survive my message to the board is this anything you can do to make sure that lgbt students know they are supported in our school districts schools i encourage you to do it will save lives thank you will the following individuals line up dylan jeffema bob davidson stephanie brooks matt caldwell bradley mcmaster brian hammond good evening my name is aj ford and i'm the current president of pride cape coral i would just like to thank the board for all their efforts to maintain and protect the lgbtq youth in our schools and give them giving them

138the right to freedom of expression now there's something i want to talk about this piece of paper this poster that was in this code of conduct this is a resource is a resource it's not a policy and for us to be litigating litigating that resource here tonight and calling it all these different it's it's actually baffling to me that we have to litigate a resource that these kids can use it's not a policy it's not telling somebody how to be or what to do it is there to help these lgbtq youth thank you sometimes all we need is visibility and affirmation dylan jeb come on pldms middle school identity club advisor board thank you for considering these topics i'm a teacher that makes accommodations for my students to help them like we would any student

139eating accommodations the code of conduct changes are very helpful and so is our awesome restorative justice program now lgbt students have lined up to ask directly for accommodations that they need they are a minority group in need please listen to them so that i may better provide them accommodations hi i'm stephanie brooks did you know that florida ranks at the bottom across the u.s for access to mental health care or that florida is in the top five states for having the highest transgender identifying youth population well it's true it is well understood that lgbtq youth who reported facing greater rejection violence and discrimination reported a much higher rate of suicide in attempts but here's the good news we as a community can help combat that mental anguish caused by that discrimination by simply using their

140preferred pronouns and by keeping the current policies in place already outlined in this poster please don't buckle under pressure by bullying tactics used by those who are spreading harmfulness and inaccurate information good policies should not always should always be rooted in facts and laws not only because it's the right thing to do but also because the children you'd be discriminating against very likely won't have the access to the mental health care that they need in time to avoid taking their own lines please do your part in supporting the mental health their mental health by voting for the same policies you already have the courage to vote for last year it could be the difference between life you my name is bob davidson i've been shrimping and farming in pine island since the 50s i've seen

141a lot in these many years a lot of changes i'm dumbfounded at the amount of abdication that's been shown by the lee county school board in taking the position of lgbtq the alphabet people who are looking to superimpose their control over our traditional values i'd like to know how many members of the school board or that panel that was on the dyess have had any advanced training or accreditation in medicine in child psychology in development we are going down the sewer of humanity when we are superimposing the votes of a minority over the world thank you very much just a reminder to the speakers to avoid personal attacks on individuals or any type of derogatory language thank you good evening matt caldwell let me just first state that i believe and i think everyone believes

142that every single human being is unique creation made in the image of god and worthy of protection respect from conception all the way to natural death what you need to take away from this and all the other board meetings is the failure of the district's process to adequately engage the public and understand where we want this district to go i'm not living in a fantasy land it's 2021 it is a complicated world and the world that we have to deal with from kindergarten to high school is varied and complex it's not lost on me what you need to understand and take away though is that you are being misled by your staff regarding the legal cases you're being misled regarding the nature of the conduct policies you cannot adopt a poster and then expect it

143not to be presented in the schools you've empowered people to use it as a resource you need to get serious as a board you're the legislative body of this district take control thank you will the following individuals please line up terry miller danielle wyberg christian lebron lydia black anthony morales good evening everyone i'm brian hammond and i'm here tonight as a parent thank you for recommending the removal of the equality florida poster please remove those posters from our school we want our students to feel safe but how do we protect the sixth grade girl who feels uncomfortable undressing next to someone with different body parts they have a right to feel safe too please do not take the posters policies and then spread them out over the rest of the code of conduct it already

144appears that's happening by changing the pronouns today and there please create a legally sufficient code of conduct that reflects the values of your community and does not keep secrets from parents look around that's us look in the no mask rooms look in the lobby please listen as closely to us as you do the students you are our representatives elected by us to make sure that the school district reflects our values into the lgbt community you are valuable we don't hate you we are not bigots we are not uneducated in fact many of us are college educated thank you good evening my name is bradley mcmaster i'm a parent long time educator and school district employee i urge you to keep the posters in our schools the when i go to school every day we need

145to it is a safe place for all of our students all of our students and i we take that very seriously that all of our students are feel safe and included at all times thank you very much hear the facts wink news reports one of the biggest bombshells from last week's school board meeting was the fact that some school board members said they had never seen the poster being included in the conduct of a conduct draft school board member mary fisher says they will carefully read over every detail the next draft of this conduct of coda conda that leads me to believe dereliction of duty has taken place and i'm not trying to blame any fingers here but the facts are the facts everybody wants facts the facts are i when i go to work

146i have to do my job if my job isn't being done effectively it affects other people can you state your name please sir christian lebron no clapping please please don't forget to state your name when you come to the microphone my name is terry miller you know we're hearing words of hate bigotry and those aren't the right words this is about safety for all students and that includes my 15 year old daughter my 12 year old daughter when they go on a sports field being able to compete against individuals of the same physical strengths and abilities as they are should my 15 year old daughter be on a football or a soccer field or on a softball field against a biological male should they be on a basketball court with them is there a safety

147level there what about the comfort level of my children when they go in a restroom everyone deserves that same comfort level not one segment of the population not another segment every single one there are a lot of people here not everybody's going to get to speak tonight what we've seen is unprecedented i want to show a hand who supports the policy as it is who opposes it thank you well the following individuals please no clapping please for the following individuals please line up anthony morales jennifer eskelson kanye truett michelle waldron rachel spiller james murphy my name is daniel wieberg in my house my name is dad i came up here with some ideas i was going to have a little speech given but i've listened and it's there's both sides of the fence here there's

148everyone needs to feel comfortable everyone needs to feel more importantly anything else free space to be educated to become better people live long healthy hopefully stressless lives but good luck with that one school is for education get through it abc's one two threes i've said it before last time i was up here i'll say it again there's a time and place for this kind of stuff it's the family it's the home if you need more education as parents please reach out to the resources that are available to us they're all over the place but take care of it in the home this is not for schools to decide not for schools to impose on thank you hi my name is lydia black and i just want to recognize that sometimes it's the loudest voices that

149get to the spotlight quickly so i want to apologize on behalf of folks like me who have not been loud enough to the young students in this room that we've not been loud enough in sharing our voices about inclusion about equity and about kindness to the board we recognize that you are facing loud pressure from a group to remove language supporting lgbtq rights from the district's code of congress conduct however i'm here to represent the many many many families who can't be here tonight who sent emails and made phone calls to let you know that we do support your continued commitment to equity this language is so important to reinforce florida department of education standards and the school district's commitment to provide safe and inclusive learning environment for all students and all staff i can

150only ask that you don't use our kids as a political pawn or political target our kids deserve more than that i am encouraging board members to maintain the current language in the code protecting lgbtq students from bullying and discrimination and most of all next speaker please i'm jennifer eskelsen the school board and the local media are saying that some people have been spreading misinformation well according to a document straight from the lee county school board's website which most of you have a copy of clearly states under restrooms that transgender students are allowed to use the restrooms of their expressed identity that means that boys who have gone through the correct process and vice versa can use those restrooms of their choice and under confidentiality this states if a transgender student is not out to the

151parents or guardian school staff are required to keep the information confidential from the parents the school board attorney did not like me handing this document out so i was walked out to the front door thank you next speaker my name is michelle waldron and i'm a proud parent of two lee county schools first of all i'd like to commend the board and i accept their removal of the poster as an acknowledgement that it was a mistake i also accept that it was placed into that packet unbeknownst to them i do not accept that they did not get it because of kovid you were elected by us and you had a duty to read it i do accept that we were all under duress and i do accept that you need a second chance i ask

152you to rescind your vote i asked you to not only take it out of next year's code of contact but i ask you to truly truly take it out of this year's and make a point thank you mr speaker and before you speak could you just give us a second so we can check on our technical difficulties while we're waiting will the following individuals please line up gretchen scheibe cheryl harris curtis hook kaylee dombrowski and francis elmore my name is konya truett i'm here on behalf of my boys tonight five years ago i was in a church service where i asked the pastor to please baptize my child and i was told that the church would not accept that because of me and my wife that day i did not walk out of that church

153in with any ill will towards them that is their religious belief and that is their right to make that decision i still attended that church because again it is not my right to take their beliefs away from them this school district has no right to take my beliefs or any other parents beliefs ever i have a right to raise my children the way i want to without infringement from any group especially a group who is a low minority of the population including potentially under one percent and as part of the lgbt community i do not represent some of the beliefs that my child should be forced to learn the way the school wants to outside of education and education thank you next speaker please no clapping please hi my name is james murphy just waiting

154for the time so why do we have separate bathrooms i think the biggest thing i found online is safety there's other reasons if you're a wife and you have a husband or kids i think you might understand what i mean pretty sure my wife doesn't want to go in my son's bathroom why are we wearing masks i know it's getting old but if our president himself says one mask doesn't work he has to wear too all right this is your warning sounds good all right the poster i believe that's a political propaganda that should have been in our schools so take what you want for that my son is a christian and i'll let you know that he was bullied last year he's on instagram with a trump shirt trump hat and a flag and

155there's all kinds of instagram from estero high school students all saying they're going to kick his butt thank you sir my name is emery wakefield spiller and i'm a homeschool student under the county but i'm speaking for the friends that shy away from speaking out to people who have direct authority over them i am a homeschool student but i've had enough teachers in my life to know what is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right your decisions to include best practices from a trusted organization for lgbtq plus equity was right nearly half of trans youth attempt suicide nearly half if these practices save a single life if acceptance and equity grabs the hands of a single drowning student then won't you find it worth facing the complaints of those

156who stand against equity and justice on in our schools you think you're simply making decisions on a handbook but i beg of you know that you are making decisions that can come down to life or death you have a responsibility for safety of the students and tried and true best practices are what keeps all our students safe i beg of you not to stand on the wrong side of history today even though many people use their religion to urge you towards discrimination i am here to tell you the divine is always you my name is cheryl harris and i'm here as a grandparent of four children in the district and i'm appalled by the fact that when i saw the slide of the stakeholders who were included in generating this policy parents and faculty weren't

157included in fact that went on to be recommendations for later and i'd like to know why as as a grandparent i look at this room and i'd say this crowd is interested in what's going on in this community and we've been deprived of the access to know what's going on thank you my name is gretchen shivey at newsgallup.com the percentage of lgbt adults is five percent so why should 95 percent give consent for a radical change in our local school policies thank you hi my name is kaylee dombrowski i'm the current president of gcu's college democrats one of the incoming co-chairs of fgcu's young democratic socialists of america and i'm here today to comment on the non-discrimination policy this policy which protects students and people who operate within the school system from discrimination against gender

158identity and sexual orientation creates a safe and a healthy environment it is important that you as members of the board are able to look past the bigotry the hatred of some people holding for the identities that belong within the lgbtq plus community your job is to cultivate a safe school system for all those who inhabit it and that means you must look past whatever your personal feelings are to protect students and its faculty please do not make concessions based off of the fear-mongering and bigotry brought here by today by today by some and listen to the students who have spoken thank you for your time will the following individuals please line up carrie what quentin jeske michael churbini your prom dervahanian henderson hello my name is francis elmore my pronouns are he him his i'm

159a rising graduate student at florida gulf coast university i graduated from dunbar high school in 2016. good inclusive policy is the first step to undo the harm that my trans peers and i have historically faced thank you board and i encourage you to keep this policy and this poster in so that more students like the trans high schoolers and middle schoolers i've spoken to tonight who i think i miss a sentence to give more futures like the ones to the trans high schoolers and middle schoolers that i've spoken to tonight that know they are empowered to stand up to adult bullies and bad faith actors who don't want them to be safe i couldn't imagine coming out in high school i didn't have my parents home to sign paperwork to jump through any hoops you

160wanted me to jump through they were not there for me and i didn't know i could reach out to people who were there for me at my school thank you trans people matter and trans students won't be erased my name is curtis hauck i just want to ask our leaders to treat this issue with the same two strategies that our state has successfully used during the coronavirus experience one provide loving care and support for those most effective but don't destroy the rest of the population in the process two leave the freedoms to choose in the hands of the people and in this case that is the parents thank you got to keep my time back i haven't started please try to cheat everything here my name is jeff from devonian lehigh acres florida i had

161a list of things but i'll just get to the chase i'm against this board for what they're doing you know what i have i have a neighbor that's from iraq and he can't believe he says they throw transgender and gaze off roofs his son can't believe what's going on and he's attending his school system you know our religion is just pushed into the ground but you put this gay community and transgender stuff ahead of everything else god is great and god's you've cut out prayers and at the school board meeting every every government agency has prayers they have this third meetings all of you should resign yes our next speaker please hello my name is kerry west my pronouns are she her i am the president of the florida gulf coast university gender and sexuality

162alliance and i'm here just in support of trans students i would like to speak on the thing that matters to you the most and that is our students and their safety i lived through four years of high school and fear being hated for who i am afraid to be myself and a time so pivotal to a child's development every person i came out to was one more risk i was taking of being outed and harassed from my identity and this is a universal experience for trans people the rhetoric tonight revolves around bathrooms and imaginary predators but allow me to point out that just recently a bill was nearly passed into law by the florida legislature it allows for adults to inspect the genitals of student athletes transphobe spent so much time building up this idea

163that trans people are sexual predators and then decide to attempt to pass molestation into law i for one just need to use the bathroom and i'm terrified the entire time someone will take an action based out of interest so i ask who is the predator thank you will the following individuals please line up sharon matey reverend john matey angeli vazquez janice vitale and holly marth greetings my name is michael trabini and i speak as a card-carrying member of the democratic socialist of america as a member of fgcu's gender and sexuality alliance and as a student of cypress lake high school on an issue that i think is pressing for some students here in lee county transgender students deserve to succeed as much as any other student in the county and we are happy to see

164that accommodations for these students are in place trans students deserve to be in a nurturing environment where they feel safe anyone who is against these accommodations are doing harm to children where all they want is to feel safe in their schools as i come here i saw people with placards with biblical passages in opposition to trans accommodations it's sad that the lord's word is being used to degrade the rights of children if you are a true christian i kindly implore you to reconsider your minds and bestow grace and love to all thank you next speaker hello my name is quinton jeske i use he him pronouns i'm a pre-medical student to fgcu and treasurer of gsa and ydsa i graduated from north fort myers high school in 2018. i can't imagine what it would have

165meant to see a poster affirming i had a valued place in my school to know my school district cared about me and that those values were reflected in the code of conduct and best practices to know i'm not considered a hush topic for in the home my heart is warmed by the lgbtq students and allies that have come here tonight i'm a voter as well and i urge the board to defend these students listen to them and stick to the values of progress this board claims i origi i urge you to keep the code as is and parents you're here because you care about your children i ask that you that care extend to their transgender peers as well they're just kids my name is dd henderson and i wanted to let all of the

166lgbtq people no i support you guys 110 i do not discriminate that's not who i am but as far as the bathrooms go i personally do not agree with that i do not feel safe with another person who identifies as a as a female but is biologically a male i personally do not agree with that now that is not saying that i do not support neither one of you guys i support all of you guys i personally have friends who are part of the lgbtq plus community and i do support them on the daily now they have also told me that they also do not feel safe going into another bathroom with their gender identity meaning that me as a female if there's another person in there that's a male that identifies as a female

167they have said that if there's a female in there they do not get along then what's going to happen is for safety for both parties that's all i have to say thank you hi my name is angeli vasquez i'm a mother of a third grader in cape coral school there's a lot i can say but i'll start with a quote from another mother named mary lou walner undoubtedly the most difficult part of your letter is the gay thing i will never accept it i feel it is a terrible waste despite being spiritually and morally wrong i have a harder time dealing with that issue than almost anything in the world i do and will continue to love you but i will always hate that is an excerpt from the letter that preceded her daughter's suicide

168the loss prompted a learning journey about lgbt people and faith and where and the conclusion that she came to is that what she'd been taught was empirically wrong there are parents here speaking against lgbtq students that have kids in the lgbtq community they just don't know it yet all a child i imagine that parent is going to find that love and understanding but maybe the difference between a good parent and a good person is whether you want that for other children is the same as you would for your own thank you hi good evening my name is holly marth i actually sit on three different diversity and equity committees so i do know a little bit about what i'm talking about i'm also a mom i'm also a brand new grandmother i went through the

169lee county school system all three of my kids went through the lee county school system as i'm listening to all of y'all i'm writing down notes personal potential safety rights parents rates everyone's life has value and worth this life has value and worth the lgbtq folks i love y'all the straight folks i love y'all i'm a christian it is my job to love not to judge as a christian but i'm gonna tell y'all something i'm also chubby my daughter is bisexual she came out in high school she got picked on more for being chubby than she did being bisexual i think we all deserve to have rights and we all deserve to be listened to but don't just be nice about it guys please thank you hi my name is jenny vitel i have a

170first grader in the lee county school district i want to thank miss kittens for bringing up what students had shared with her as far as not wanting to be singled out or labeled it completely changed what i wanted to say today nobody in this room has the right to tell somebody else's when somebody else's child is ready to be discussed with these types of topics it shouldn't be forced upon parents with young children in elementary school how you cover this topic in elementary school should not be the same as how it's addressed in middle and high school thank you my name is sharon matey and i've been teaching children for over 50 years so in my circle of friends that are children there are many many different types and among them are those who have

171chosen to do what we see represented here tonight i love them i've gone to their birthday parties i've embraced whatever i can support them but tonight we have not seen another type of child representative represented here tonight those are the ones i'm concerned about tonight do they feel the same sense of freedom that these kids are expressing for themselves tonight you would be surprised how many of those kids do not feel safe in their own school because of what we see presented here tonight they feel like outsiders that should never be in the country called freedom so i ask that we reconsider about that poster and take them down for the following individuals please line up jeffrey hercombe shelby tyndall matthew mc waters alyssa bernhardsette bella laurice my name is john mady on december the

1727th 1941 japan attacked pearl harbor shortly after that japan said oh i think we made a mistake i don't think we should have attacked them i think we awakened a big giant well let me tell you something i'm a pastor and i know a lot of pastors in lake county i belong to a big group of pastors i belong to a big group of pastors in florida and i'm afraid school board the decisions that you've made that you have awakened a big giant and you better build a bigger auditorium because we pastors and our churches are going to start coming to these meetings thank you next next please no clapping we've been doing a really great job everybody's been respectful i appreciate your cooperation we have some more speakers so please let's allow them to

173speak sharon mcgill and i'd just like to thank the board for giving us the opportunity to come out like this and comment and for your service to the community it's not always an easy job i support the poster and the code of conduct because everyone had the opportunity to read that code of conduct it's been in place since september of the school year now it's everybody's responsibility to know what's in that code of contact conduct the poster is only a representation and a resource of that code and i hope that going into the next school year the board really thinks about keeping that inside and students in general want to be accepted it seems like more it's the parents who are projecting their thoughts and actions onto their onto their kids thank you good evening

174my name is jeffrey hirco i am a member of the florida bar and a local attorney in this community first thank you for moving the meeting time to this evening it is obviously difficult for many working people to make daytime meetings and the ability to come out here and speak is invaluable a second i want to continue to thank the board for prioritizing the safety and acceptance of our students in our community i want to encourage you to continue the process you have started you have hired experts and panelists to review the information gather knowledge from your community and review it thoughtfully you consult with your board attorney on the florida law and what is the appropriate practice for the future of leagues county students if you focus on the safety and acceptance listen to

175your counselors listen to your attorneys i know that the board will make the right legal decision thank you good evening my name is matthew mcwaters i am a member of the community i just wanted to compliment the board on including the poster in the code of conduct and i would like to urge them to continue to keep it in the code of conduct our community works best when it embraces diversity and includes everybody at the table and i think that we should continue to do that thank you very much my name is shelby tyndall i'm a guest teacher for the lee county school district as well as a former student at riverdale high school i'm here today in support of the lgbt community and in the support of the inclusion and the student contact and

176the student code of conduct at the very least i'm here to ask you to listen to our students that are students best interests be the deciding factors and ensuring that our lgbtq students are safe does not take away the safety of any other students many students that i've heard at these meetings discussing their safety and their inclusion have asked you to listen to them for they themselves know who they are best and they know what they need to succeed more than any strangers claim to it is not just our job to teach our students a basic education and send them on their way it's our job to make sure our students feel safe respected supported and included while they learn we need to listen to our students for it is their lives and their experiences

177that will be directly affected by your decisions will the following individuals please line up rick stevens brenda clark ricardo andreas brauren negra mike rodriguez and bella perez hello my name is alyssa bernhardt i'm a sophomore at northwest irish high school and i'm here to provide a student perspective on this issue never once have i ever felt harmed or confused by an lgbtq plus student or teacher expressing their gender identity in fact it is basic respect to allow these individuals to be who they are using the correct pronouns is not an issue this basic respect i have heard many arguments against this poster that could harm lgbtq plus students taking away their representation in schools and treating the subject like it doesn't exist will only take away the respect that everyone deserves and cause more confusion

178suppressing the rights to be who they are is dangerous as a matter of fact trans students are four times more likely to experience depression and young lgbt lgbtq plus individuals over two times more likely to feel suicidal and more than four times as likely to attempt it please take this into consideration when you are announcing your dislike of the inclusivity and respect that this poster promotes please keep it hello my name is alessandra bella lanis and i'm a current student government representative at norfolk rights high school i came here today to give a student's perspective on the recent proposed rules for transgender students in lee county schools many of my peers do not believe that these rules are an issue however the main concerns from the student body are possible sexual harassment or bullying based

179on identity these fears have been in many students minds recently if you are unaware this last saturday april 24th was known on social media as a national sexual assault holiday by pedophiles these people would harass females specifically airport to each other how many they had harmed that day i feel that this is relevant to the school board because it is your job to have hotlines and resources available to those who have been affected by harassment such as this i feel like higher securities and restrooms and schools can reduce these occurrences therefore making sure that all students feel safe on campus and also please make sure that you listen to your kids about these issues being presented today thank you good evening i'm rick stevens a resident of lee county as i've listened to this conversation

180over the last few weeks it seems apparent and even it's come up tonight that we agree on a few things one is that all students deserve respect and we who believe that people are created in the image of god understand that all people deserve respect we're happy to do that we've also heard from many people including a number on each side of this issue that parents need to listen to their students listen to their children and i think most of us agree that's the case we want our parents and our children to have these kinds of conversations the problem seems to be that our schools have inserted themselves in that conversation in a way that we find inappropriate and not helpful for families or students this policy must be changed apparently equality florida and other

181such advocates are having more influence on school policy than the taxpayers residents parents of lee county this must change hello my name is mike and i'm here to speak on behalf of patriots for freedom organization and myself and regarding this policy i asked my 12 year old daughter about sharing a bathroom for a restroom with a biological male or boy and her exact words were that i would be terrified but outside of that or more than that i'm here extremely concerned about our children you know they're this policy supposed to start i guess five years and over right so you're telling me that out there there might be a five ten year old transgender kids i mean seriously and if there are i'm telling you right now that's the radical parents indoctrinating them and schools

182with policies like this one indoctrinating them okay because the thing that just by thinking a five-year-old a ten-year-old heck even a twelve-year-old they can barely wipe their own behind correctly and they're gonna be thinking about being transgender that's absurd so please stop confusing these children and repeal this policy thank you very much hi my name is bella perez and i'm here today because a few weeks ago at this meeting regarding the same issue there was a boy and he said parents for once talk to your children and i'm willing to bet that many parents here actually do talk to their children and that is why they're here today including my father who is also here today he asked me what i would feel if there was a boy a biological boy in the bathroom at

183the same time with me i told him i would feel very uncomfortable and terrified i told him i don't care if he identifies as a girl superman batman heck even an animal i was still very uncomfortable i would still feel very uncomfortable so i'm here to ask you to please repeal this policy and remove the posters thank you hi my name is ricardo bocanegra my pronouns are he they i just got something to say we won't disappear if you take down a poster and we won't be silenced by grumpy geriatrics who don't know how to show up on time enough to abide by the time that they asked for we aren't asking for a heck of a start wait sir sir sir please no personal attention let's be respectful to everyone we aren't asking for

184a head start we are asking to meet you at the starting line so we can have a fair chance at this race for years we were either dying of aids or as he looked to the side or we were murdered in dirty motel rooms since he wouldn't hire us in the first place and since i had the opportunity never mind i'm going to end this with respect and love today have a good day listen to your kids we just want to exist i'm literally here because i have tried to kill myself multiple times because students have called me a in the classroom teachers even actually behind their backs that i have heard of i have tried to take in my own life multiple times thank you sir thank you hi my name is brenda clark

185i think we're ignoring the fact that all children need to be acknowledged everybody thinks that only gay and transgender people commit suicide that's not true my cousin committed suicide he's not gay he's not transgender he needed help but all i'm seeing is that the only people that need help are gay and transgender i think all children need to be created treated equally everybody needs to have the attention of counseling and you know i was here a few weeks ago there was a sign on one of the doors that had a rainbow flag on it that said safe space to me as a straight person i was i felt like i couldn't use that space because it was only allotted for gay people so to me if my child saw that and she was straight she

186wouldn't feel like she could be in a safe space so i think we need to get it out of the schools let the parents thank you madam chair that concludes public comments for this evening okay i've taken so many notes from everything all of you have said and i first of all want to say that we do appreciate and we do listen to what our constituents and our community says i have my own personal thoughts on this and i wrote down a lot of notes however it would be inappropriate for me to say any of my own personal beliefs on this as the presiding officer for this meeting so i'm going to leave it at all of us i believe in this room are committed and all of us in this school district on this

187including the board and everybody in the school district we're committed to ensuring that all our students feel safe and respected and included it doesn't mean this particular meeting the focus has been on lgbtq and i've heard a few people saying well we can't have the five percent ruling that it's it's not that the focus here has been on this one particular community but we here in the district embrace all the children the children who are disabled physically disabled who the children who are from families of immigrants a lot of families that may have religious beliefs that are not in the mainstream of the religions here in the county all of these children they're all our children and i was a little disturbed and here's a little bit of my personal i can't help it when

188i heard a few people make a comment about not accepting certain people that it was an anathema to people of faith i take pause at that and i'm not going to comment any further on that but if you can take one thing away tonight remember that we are here because we are dedicated to serving your children and our next generation and i'll end it with saying that about a month ago i sat in on a meeting at astaire high school and it was the let me make sure i get the exact name right the gender and sexuality alliance group and the youngsters that were there the teens that were there i was so impressed because they weren't all gay and they weren't i mean they were supportive of each other and they listened to each

189other and they were empathetic to each other and when i wrote my note back to mr emmable who's the principal of astaire high school i said to him how much i enjoyed being at that meeting and listening to what those students had to say and i said and he agreed we as adults can learn a lot from our children so that's all i want to say for board comments or actually for comments on the public comments all right so this takes us to board member comments i'm going to start in the middle with miss jordan do you have any comments tonight we definitely have heard a lot this evening and i appreciate each and every one of you coming out and sharing your point of views and this is something that we definitely will be

190looking at as we move forward and i just want to reiterate it again you know we want to make sure that all of our children are safe and that they always will have a place to come to in the schools and to learn and not worry about being bullied or hassled or anything else so i just want to just remind you all that again we are here you know for all of you so we again appreciate you coming here and sharing all of you thank you miss fisher yes thank you first of all i want to thank everyone who came to share their opinions which i hear and i respect i am especially proud of our students and their behavior tonight because they were definitely reliable ready and good role models so thank you we

191are a public school system and we have to comply with the federal and state laws our own policies which now include lgbtq so we look at the first amendment the 14th amendment the 1964 civil rights act title ix of the education amendments act of 1972. the florida constitution the florida anti-discrimination act and the jeffrey johnston stand up for all students act which i actually had the opportunity to work with jeffrey's mother and a group of students in advocating for that law not only in tallahassee but in washington our policy 1.27 as i said now includes sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression which it did not previously we want as a school system to be diverse inclusive accepting and welcoming of all students for any group minority or marginalized and then i have a statement

192that my great-granddaughter who is a freshman at a local high school sent because she could not get in tonight she said what should i do i said come early next time so i just want to get to her statement and try to read it to you guys she says the reality of having more eyes on a topic no matter how controversial or not is that we have even greater opportunity to learn more the fact of the matter is that by the board acknowledging this community and our student body it gives a voice to those that may have otherwise gone unheard the freshman class of this high school thanks the board for their care and attention so thank you for your continuation of what is happening allison thank you all yeah mrs patricka please i want

193to start by i'm saying i'm going to give my full board to report tomorrow night if that's okay it's getting late thank you ms gittins for the suggestion and working with chair jordan to move the meeting to tonight as opposed to the morning thank you to law enforcement chief newlin and staff for keeping order here tonight really really really appreciate you guys thank you everybody for coming tonight thank you for the emails i cannot tell you i'm in my fifth year on the board and i have never received more emails on one topic than i have on this and i have read as many of them as humanly possible i can almost guarantee you i will not be able to respond to all of them i'm not like a county commissioner who has a an

194assistant who can respond to my emails for me it's just me so i don't want you to think the emails have gone unread i mean some of them have i haven't read them all yet but they will all be read i want you to know that you know when you reach out i am i am reading i am hearing mr cranford devin is that you in the back i am mortified by the way you were treated two weeks ago in this boardroom i am absolutely mortified and i will tell you that for the first time i think i really understood the way some of our students feel and the need for protection so i'm sorry that you had to go through what you had to go through but it was a really enlightening moment for

195me as as a school board member just to see what what you went through and i'm really really sorry that we couldn't protect you in that moment you apologize tonight there is no reason for you to apologize so just you and i mean you made me so proud two weeks ago and all of the students who came out to speak tonight made me really proud as well i believe that there is a way for us to protect all students and i also believe that there is a way to protect parental rights parental rights are fundamental when you look at the constitution there are certain rights that receive more protections than others and parental rights are amongst those rights so i understand the need for protection and i understand the need for student rights but i

196also understand the name for parental rights so those are my comments for now i look forward to future discussions with the public on this thank you thank you and if if any i it would be nice it would we would appreciate it if okay i was just going to say that those who are standing in the back of the room having conversations if you could please step in the hall to continue your conversations but that appears to have ceased so mrs gionelli thank you i just want to remind the board that a few months back i did request to have a an lgbt advisory committee i think that would have helped us with this process giving them a voice and a seat at the table i think that committee's something that we should probably think

197about but i also want to apologize for those who were unable to that did not get a chance to actually get to speak tonight but i want to thank every person that came out all the emails i received like there was way too many for me to even respond to but i wanted you know the stakeholders everybody's voice kept matters your opinions matter all matter to me this controversy surrounded the 2021 student code of conduct has brought to light the clear intention to implement language and directives that the board was not aware of the implementation of this graphic into the current code of conduct has failed to benefit anyone as our own staff students and parents were not able to be made aware of this information it contained and training was not provided at tomorrow

198at tomorrow's action meeting i will bring forth a motion to repeal the equality florida graphic from the 2021 student code of conduct i have been made aware if had i have been made aware of these changes before the 2021 codec code of conduct i would have made a different decision and if it had been brought to my attention if my motion fails tomorrow night i will move to strike my yes vote from the record i appreciate the feedback i've received from everyone in this community on this matter please know that i am here to serve you thank you have a great evening okay mrs kittens okay i want to remind everyone to please check out the seahawks eye the cape i keep getting it wrong cakewalk right cave coral highs paper the title of the

199article is controversy over lgbtq poster a year old poster causes a stir in league county one of the students that participated in the discussion that we had for three hours on that last saturday wrote this article and one of the things i loved about the graphic that she did it was her decision to do that graphic with the hand and the different colors i just want to give a shout out to the students that worked on the comments that i mentioned earlier jace hall reese hall frankie just eden and ellie hoffman keith moreno carly carey and melanie pina this article really i would hope that everyone would sit down and read it kind of encapsulates all that many of you have said i said earlier we have to find some common ground we can't start

200from just polarization and expect to get anything done a lot of you mentioned the founding fathers and the constitution and when they were preparing the constitution they found common ground which is why we have it if they never found common ground there would not be one constitution there would be two or three i just want to i'm going to say something else here real quick and i had on our last workshop on the 12th i had asked about rescinding the portion of the student code of conduct that had the poster in it so that we could do just this discuss it and decide what we needed to do and i did not have any support from the board to do that they said that we were going to meet today and so they didn't want

201to discuss it i mentioned before about making sure we talk about inclusion and i was going to say something else i changed my mind so i just want to finish off by saying in my mind the poster was a resource to our student code of conduct and a policy when you look at our policies they have numbers and lines are numbered and all of that okay so specifically it was not in the specific policy but the students that i had worked with said for example with the dress code we already have dress code policy so there it is read that article that i was telling you about and as far as what i feel about this the policy as a whole is not to discriminate against anyone it's more about finding ways to help everyone

202feel comfortable including students parents staff and taxpayers we know that we're here because of you we know that the lights are on in the school down the street from you or the one that your children go to are because of you we know that and we want to get your input i thank you for being calm and going through this process and listening to everyone else i appreciate that from all of you and thank you for coming out tonight okay mrs morgan so coming almost at the end there's really nothing i can add i will second the comments that have been made by my colleagues i am really grateful to the students who came tonight and spoke and i'm also grateful for all the emails that we have gotten and like everybody else there is

203no possible way i can answer every email that i've received but i will tell you that i do read each email and there were some that came from students and from parents that talked about their personal experiences and those were the ones that really resonated with me i'm grateful that everybody came tonight and that we got to hear from all points of view everybody was essentially speaking about our common humanity and how we find a place together where we can respect the rights of students and respect the rights of of parents so as i said i can't add anything to what other board members have said but i just want you to know where i'm coming from so thank you for being here and i look forward to more conversations about how we proceed thank

204you okay and i'm going to echo some of the things that the six people talking before me have have said emails yes i have read the emails i'm still reading the emails and i have answered as many as i possibly can even sitting watching tv putting the tv on pause during a commercial reading a few more answering a few more so i've i've done the best i can but rest assured as most of the rest of the board has said we are reading what you have said and we do take heed from it and i'm so glad miss patricka mentioned devon because i had that i wanted to mention actually in my early earlier comments that was that that was heartbreaking to me that adults in the room would have treated a student that way

205and devin's principal wrote to all of us the next day and just fyi all of our students are stars but devin is a superstar student he's an outstanding student from leadership and grades and contributions that he's made to his school and we need to keep in mind that as i said before we as adults and i'm not i'm including myself we could learn a lot from our children from their humanity as somebody said their their loving nature their empathy sometimes things that we as we get caught up in too much politics and in in the world as we get caught up in that sometimes and again i'm going to put myself right out there on the guilty list get involved too deeply with and we forget that god created all of us and were all

206his children so attorney dupree bruno do you have comments no no i do not but i do want to thank the public for your cooperation this evening and having a smooth public comment yes dr atkins comments from you yeah i agree with our board attorney i think this evening everyone was able to to talk and be heard and so i appreciate that i'm very proud of our students you guys have already recognized that they always continue to to amaze and the courage to to come down here and speak again it's just amazing to me i do want to say thank you to our staff that presented this evening and also those behind the scenes it really we're accommodating much larger group than normal so trying to do that and manage it in such a way

207that makes it efficient you know is they put a lot of effort into it as did they the folks that gave the presentation under you know less than desirable circumstances so my hat's off to them and then finally to our security team and law enforcement who have always been wonderful partners i just want to say thank you very much that's all for my comments this evening thank you okay so at this point seeing that we have concluded the business of this meeting we are adjourned you