001no but there's um good evening thanks for coming out i'd like to call a special meeting in the school board order um tonight the only agenda item is your interview folks so thanks again for coming out and uh citizen comments we'd ask that you've filled out the public comment form so thank you for doing that we have seven public comments tonight and um we have certain rules to follow i guess the most important thing is is a three-minute timeout so barry schmidly my colleague here will give you a hand raise when you're about 15 seconds [Music] towards the three-minute limit so just keep an eye out for that and then we'd ask you to wrap up your comments at that point so with that being said first speaker is pat hoffman so you can come
002forward state your name and address uh i came to burlington 1988 lived here for 33 or 34 years 23 years served as assistant superintendent in the district i have to say to the board i have never seen a time like the time you're dealing with in ever in my life and i was in education as a professional for over 45 years i have to just tell you how grateful i am to you for the grace and courage to keep going on and on you've had not just a magnificent building program and rebounding redistricting all the boundaries kids in the district which usually is a political nightmare all by itself and a pandemic and an order for dpi and and i think that you've done a wonderful job and i'm very very proud of the work
003that you've done and i'm just afraid that you don't hear from the people that i hear from all the time who are very appreciative of your work so i want to make sure you know that and if the subject of banning books comes up against it i just think that our professional librarians know exactly what they're doing they vet their books very carefully and they're reading this very carefully and i think that we can trust our professions and if an individual parent or an individual student has a problem with the book we have a policy and procedure that we developed way back in the day but not this year so i think that that we need to be very careful about massive lists of books that ought to go i think that you're doing the
004right thing by sticking with that but i appreciate it thank you very much thank you next uh pamela my name is pamela schroeder i live in 885 mchenry street in burlington um i went kindergarten through 12 in this district my children all went through this district my grandchildren are in this district and i am very happy that they are and i am proud that they are i know quite a few staff members i have been involved and volunteering in the schools and i have to say that we are doing an awful lot that is right it has bothered me since the annual meeting um listening to a few parents thomas so i would like to speak to that even though it's quite a time since they were sad um screaming about parental control these days
005has become a political thing it is not something that parents have a right to exert control over outside of electing school board members states oversee the curriculum even online programs have to be accredited by the states and curriculums are all based on national standards in various subject areas these standards have been created for a reason to make sure that students throughout the country have access to the same opportunities and learning one political party is seized on the practice of sowing doubt with society's institutions most recently focusing on public schools a democracy cannot succeed without an educated public education cannot nor should not focus on safe non-controversial topics there is value in hearing all sides not before coming to one's own conclusions if we try to please only the loudest critics of public education we will
006stifle students thinking and we will all suffer from limiting students exploration of ideas critical thinking skills are valued by employers we have to teach those and if we are not teaching those it's a disservice not just to our communities but to our nation parents have choices if they choose to shield their children from all topics of which they do not approve in public schools they can home school they can have their children do online classes or they can send their children to a private school at their own expense they cannot force everyone else to abide by their limited views however that brings me to censorship censorship is often viewed as a way to protect children from exposure to indecent content but in so doing we are teaching students to hide from the harsh realities of
007the world rather than face them head on censorship promotes ignorance it widens the gap between people and encourages people to fear diversity rather than celebrate it schools should prepare students [Music] i guess i have a different view in the last two people i mean our school is producing one and three they can actually read and do math at their grade level the very first week of school i had to come in to meet with the math teacher because my son came home and said we don't have a teacher at school we have somebody telling us go to our computer if you have a question email me with my meeting with her a couple of days later we got to the bottom of it and she informed me that you know because burlington school kids are
008so far behind we're going to shorten the lesson plan for the year we're only going to do four of the lesson plans instead of the five that we're required to pass algebra 1. so we're going to just keep limiting our kids in order to what raise how many kids can actually graduate school yeah we graduate at a 98 rate but what of them kids are of good to a society when they're no good in society you have kids with ieps whose parents are told when they're done with school walk your son or daughter over to social services and sign them up for life because they can't do a thing this happens at your school when they leave you have 500 kids with ieps you our board was designed to stand up to the kids and
009the parents not be run by the superintendent you are the board you tell the ceo how you want the school to be run are we going to stand up for our kids ever the football team two years in a row sam kipp is crying wolf and i haven't heard one peep out of the school board how they're gonna stand up for our kids or they're just gonna tell our kids to roll over every time somebody wants to cry wolf what is going on here are we going to have a board that actually runs this 40 million dollar company or are we just going to have a ceo tell you how to run he wants to run your company this is a company it's a 40 million company put it to work our kids you're failing
010our kids here i have one student that excels here and i have one student with iap my iep son reads at a third grade level and he's going to graduate next year thank god he has other skills other than what he's going to learn here thank you ryan just wanted to touch on a few different topics the first thing i want to say is really just give a shout out to nick ryan at kercher middle school we had an issue with some social media stuff in the last week and i thought he was very displayed a very high sense of urgency and getting it resolved and taking care of things so i just wanted to give him a shout out i think we've really got a really good one there um the esser funds uh
011i just want to say i'm a little concerned about the plan i know it's not finalized i know there's discussion i guess i'll just throw my two cents in here i know we're trying to do uh some things to try and catch our students up but the way this reads right now is we're doing spending money on a lot of things that are are maybe for a one year deal and then that's it right so hiring some teachers some special some teachers on some special assignments etc i mean this isn't a one year fix that we're facing with our students being behind my concern is that we're going to get these teachers in we will give students a help for a year and that'll be it i think it's a little longer term than that
012we've lost time i don't know that we're going to necessarily catch our students up we're certainly not going to do it in a year um so i'd like to just you know as we go through this just be cognizant of that and i i hope that if we go through this that we have a plan longer term to keep these teachers on board then if that's truly the route we go down with yes or funds the other one next last topic let's call it i just wanted to address an email i saw in the agenda from sarah jessie on uh some an issue she heard she's having with her daughter with the school bus um i mean i look at that her daughter's going to a central business point let's call it she's not the
013bus company isn't making special stop to pick her up anything like that i think we've got to use some common sense and be flexible if we have situations like that i think you know it's this time of year it's dark in the morning and sarah has i think very valid concerns about her daughter kind of being out in the dark and trying to get to school on her own in the dark and she's been her daughter's been taking the bus for the last couple years now so i think i would ask the board to just evaluate that situation and and let's i understand that the the statute is probably two miles i think is what i heard i think it's up to us locally to make sure it's at our discretion so i think if
014we can use a little common sense in in situations like that but we're right on the edge um and you know help a parent out with their kid and the last thing i'll say is thank you guys i hope you all have a merry christmas and a happy new year thank you thanks so much paul weber i have a local physician here i've been here for four to seven years and five kids go through this school system uh very successfully fortunately and i'm very much in support very much in support of public education and i want to thank the school board of the district for what i consider a good job that was done during this pandemic i wish we could have done as well with our adult population as we did with these i've
015seen my wife and my daughter doing the homeschooling or video learning at home and there is no way i would want anything to do with that over a long period of time so i really appreciate the teachers uniform and they did before all we had going at our house was buzzers here and buzzers there and kids running all over the place to be at different places at different times but it worked out none of them got behind in their studies the other thing i would like to say which i wasn't going to say but as a community member i have been very disturbed about some of the goings on at the school board meetings such as people deciding they're going to form their own school board i think this sentence it sends a very undemocratic
016picture to our children that this is how a democracy runs and we don't like it we formed our own group i found that to be disgusting to tell you the truth i am happy to say that i've seen very few children with koben very few i've seen a whole group of people with colon given our adults four of them died in our icu last week and i would encourage our community members to be very careful where they're getting their information megan crazy um first of all thank you for um allowing us to come and talk here even when you've been faced with volatile people um i'm just going to read this because i wrote this earlier and last time i spoke i got a little off topic um the education of our children should not
017be a political issue politics have interfered with public education in order to devalue it for decades as long as i've been alive teachers have been villainized um the latest stunts in wisconsin have involved getting radical groups to show up at school board meetings throughout the state with violent and pushy intent to change education as we know it there was a push to undo the protection of mandatory masks there was a push to force our schools not to teach actual history and to scare parents into um with false information about critical race theory and now there's a push to audit our school libraries um at the annual school board meeting a book was presented that was claimed to be from the school library and this salacious paragraph was read in front of the crowd in order
018to anger them and push the school into doing a complete audit of all texts and materials the book in question is called sex and violence at the time it was claimed to be in the adult section of the public library so i went and did my own research on this the book is four grades nine through 12. it is a young adult book which involves sex and violence as the title would suggest um the book is 90 about a terrible incident in a voice trauma how he deals with his ptsd and how it helps him understand and become a better person who respects others the book is not pornography while there's language and talk of drug use conversation about sexual activity a couple violent scenes these are all just pieces of the narrative i would
019encourage anyone curious about this book to actually read it um it is about a boy who's forced to move constantly due to his father's work and is difficult in building and maintaining real relationships with friends of romantic interests again the book is not about sex and violence but they have hurt to push the narrative and it is about responsibility understanding our actions analyzing those actions to become a better person and it does touch on themes of rape consent and peer pressure all of these issues are ones that are typical typically uh 9th or 12th graders find themselves dealing with and while it might not be everyone's cup of tea there is no reason why teenagers should not be allowed to read this book if you want to know anything about the book come find me
020i'll talk to you about it um now i can take any piece of information from any text or interview on tv or what have you even cherry pick it to support what i want to say um but that reality is that book was being misrepresented in order to push our school districts into auditing the libraries and removing the availability of such texts from students who knows what else these people want to support removing the people pushing these agendas do not have public education um that the best interest in mind they're a minority just because they are loud and verbal does not mean that they are speaking for the majority such parents have options when it comes to schooling for their children they can homeschool them send them to private schools share the same beliefs they
021do have the right to control their children how that they do not have the right to dictate what other people's children learn this is an institution thank you [Music] our last speaker david thompson uh good evening um i'm david thompson i'm a clinical psychologist and child psychologist here in town where i practiced for about 30 years and i also of course i was a school board citizen representative for about 10 years while my children were in school and for those of you that are interested in the school board i would encourage you to to sign up as a citizen representative and actually become involved it's a very educational uh experience and i would encourage you to do it um i also served as an elected member of the school board for for i think it
022was six years and for three years that i was the president of the board so i first of all want to tell you that i'm very impressed with the way that the board has handled things over the last several years there's been a lot of controversy um but the board has i think stepped up and done a very very good job under very difficult circumstances so i personally want to tell you um thank you very much and please keep it up i think it's important to support the school superintendent who has the unlucky job of being in a valley where everything rolls downhill it's a it's quite a quite a difficult position but i think with the guidance and support of the board the school district was doing extremely well over the last year with
023colbit i know there have been particular challenges to the board and to the to the educators i want to share my experience as a psychologist i treat children i and during the during the uh the cloven lockdown speak uh everything has everything went completely virtual and my my experiences providing therapy uh via zoom and other virtual platforms reflects i think in a very small way what the teaching staff had to encounter and had to deal with which was just incredibly difficult although therapy can be effectively provided across video platforms it is still very difficult particularly when you're working with a an adhd five-year-old and the laptop keeps going like this so i i certainly understand the challenges that you're facing um i want to encourage you to please continue to do a great job i
024have three grandchildren now that are uh here in the uh in the city um and will be i'm sure successful graduates from vhs okay thank you very much all right that concludes citizen comments for this evening um i want to thank you again i can't say it enough for coming out tonight and sharing comments it's good for the board to receive this input we also receive emails so please keep them coming too because we value assistance so thanks again for coming out we do have a regular our monthly board meeting is monday night the 13th and our agenda will be posted and please come join us then um after that thanks for having everybody that being said before uh all in favor