001[Music] my name is tammy rule and i'm the assistant principal at floral avenue elementary every child needs every family needs a welcoming place to come to every day learning is hard enough i need to make sure that i provide them a great environment to learn students can't focus on learning until they know that i care and i care for each and every student and their family at floral avenue i have been at floral avenue for five years and all five years i have been blessed to have mrs rule as my assistant principal there's so much that i love about miss rule but the one thing that i think just makes her go above and beyond is that she puts the students first every day and she makes her entire day about ensuring that the students
002and the staff have what they need to learn and be successful here at floral i would describe miss rule as somebody who brings out the leadership skills in her faculty and the teachers that work for her i enjoy working with miss rule because she always gives us the opportunity to grow in our craft she also leads by example i do it for the kids and they are the reason that i really am privileged to do this job being able to support them in their learning is so important to me this rule is very nice and very sweet and is very caring to all her students she cares for the students at her school and she she helps people feel better when they're upset congratulations miss rule congratulations miss roll i love you mr rose my
003name is amy heiser-myers i am the principal of horizons elementary here in davenport florida my number one guiding belief is all children can learn and we as as practitioners and educators it is our responsibility to provide every student with the opportunity to grow not only academically but also social emotionally as well she's a great mentor and she's very supportive of teachers she is great about going into classrooms and she really cares about student learning and making sure that all students receive the education that the best education possible i cannot brag about her enough as far as being supportive when it comes to the safety and security of our kids every idea she listens to she goes above beyond helping us on our suggestions you don't find any people that are willing to go that extra
004mile and she has never hesitated to say yes to those things so it's it's been wonderful i feel very strongly and i have been very open with my with my battle with with breast cancer and i am happy to say that i'm in the clinical term what they call remission but due to powers above i consider myself healed i just am very privileged to not only be a survivor but to be able to share my story and to bring it full circle to how has that made me a better principal what i like the most about ms hassamer is that she is very a great kind leader and she never quitted even though when she was going through her treatments [Music] i think in education the cool thing about it is teamwork yes we're working
005towards a goal together but we're also taking joint responsibility for the progress of our students of our staff everyone i want every student to succeed every teacher to succeed so we work together towards a goal but we're sharing the responsibility [Music] it's early morning at union academy but that doesn't slow down the bluegrass band as they serenade the gathering crowd in the cafeteria [Music] they are all here to celebrate this man jj corbett one of the first black paratroopers in world war ii and long time teacher coach and school board member at polk county public schools in honor of his years of service union academy is naming their media center after mr corbett we have a very unique setting here at union academy and it's only based in our history with mr corp being here
006today and us naming the media center after mr corbett specifically we're putting his name on the building to represent that history i want to thank all of my friends who are here for this honor and i look back and wonder do i deserve it i hope that i've lived the kind of life that this honor could be in my name to find out more about the dedication check out our news story at polkschoolsfl.com news [Music] with my classrooms i don't have rules um i have expectations rules are made to be broken and expectations are made to be met okay so you raise the standard for what you want and that's i i don't talk about you broke a rule no you haven't met my expectation and the kids respond to that positively and the parents
007respond so you contact a parent and go hey um johnny is not meeting my expectations today he won't stay in his seat he won't be quiet he's talking over me he's bothering their kids those are all things that are expectations not rules when the parent is quick to go oh no oh they'll do it tomorrow don't worry no thank you mr crooner for letting me know [Music] okay wes what have you done if i could ask for bishop mincy to come forward to lead us in our invocation thank you if i could ask for bishop mincy to come forward to lead us in our invocation and for the public to stand shall we by his kind father in jesus name we thank you for the gift of another wonderful day you've been so good to
008us you blessed us you kept us you spared our lives and we are so grateful to you to be in this setting one more time thank you for this board thank you for the superintendent all of the staff thank you for everybody that have come here tonight oh god to be a part of this meeting we ask that you would be with us for we need your help lord in times like these as for your strength your guidance and your protection pray for all of our students and the staff throughout all of our schools tonight ask that you would be with them oh god it encouraged them by your divine power bless this district oh god to be the district that you would have it to be oh god be with us now and let
009everything that we do and say bring glory and honor to your wonderful name and we will tell you thank you for it all for we ask these blessings in the wonderful name of our lord jesus christ we pray amen amen thank you bishop menci and can i have chloe lewis come up to lead us in the pledge whenever you're ready go ahead i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all you may all be seated except for you chloe how's it going good thanks for coming and leading the pledge for us tonight welcome now what school do you go to davenport school of the arts davenport school of the arts so do you do lots
010of arts there um yes what's your favorite dance theater drawing dance i like dance too and what grade are you in first first grade and i hear that you enjoy playing with legos do you like building things love it what's your favorite thing you've ever built um my lego house your lego house very cool so what do you want to be when you grow up a vet a vet so you like animals what's your favorite animal dogs dogs me too i have a dog named oliver and he is just the best so but thank you so much for coming to visit with us this evening do you have some friends or family here yes would you like to introduce them to us yes all right who do you got my brother kyle my mom joanne
011and you all can stand my dad and miss brighton miss brayton awesome well thank you all for bringing chloe all this way we are thrilled to have you all with us this evening and thank you and i cannot wait until i can bring my animals to you one day so you've got a bright future ahead have a great night and we will officially call the meeting of may 10th 2022 to order our first order of business is to accept the school board agenda superintendent high do you have any revisions yes ma'am madam chair item b as in boy two donor recognition had an item amended or added um item n as in nancy won invo health care associates impact and ibu units was moved from consent to action item n2 invo healthcare associates behavioral support
012contract was moved from consent to action and item n3 was tabled at this time thank you superintendent hyde and i'll seek a motion to accept the agenda miss fortney and miss fields any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed and the motion carries and now we will move on to special recognitions superintendent hi madam chair members of the board members of staff committee thank you for being here this evening at this time i'd like to ask board member lisa miller to step down for special recognitions i'd also like to ask garner elementary school principal kavanagh blackman and miss clayton's first grade class to come forward for a special presentation we had the absolute pleasure of meeting these students and their wonderful teacher at their groundbreaking event ceremony back in
013march they struck us as being so inspirational i invited them to come to a board meeting and they have honored us this evening by being here so i'll also have you know superintendent hyde they invited us for go to p to go out to pizza with them right after they perform so the invitation is there then you won't mind if i excuse myself to go to pizza i think we could enjoy it in the meeting to go to pizza i think that's fair we can have the people we can't deny those faces show them that and how energy you do miss clayton's class welcomes you with an h e l l o the gardener tyler says hello [Applause] statement we strive to prepare today's learners for the world of tomorrow through beautiful relationships that inspires
014creates lifelong learners in exchanging global society [Applause] [Music] history we try to [Music] is [Music] is [Music] oh wow [Applause] am somebody i am smart i am intelligent i'm a leader i want to do great things one day just wait and see just wait and see i come to something great today i was here i learned and i did my best [Applause] now you know why we invited them to perform miss clayton thank you so much for sharing your wonderful students with q dna and for all that you do in your classroom every day that brought a rave sunshine i think to everyone [Music] next i'd ask miss susan copeland executive director of the polk education foundation please come forward for donor recognition we're all in a good mood now for sure i was at
015garner yesterday proctoring tests and they do have great stuff going on there so i'm glad to see them mrs miller do you mind helping in just the moment thank you so tonight i'd like to introduce you to pete galacto pete is the president and chief our minority majority owner of cps investment advisors and he recently helped us with our clays for classroom shoot he also owns the galacto ranch and i'll tell you how that works into all this in just a moment first let me say though there are four million sporting clays enthusiasts in the nation i happen to be one of them he happens to be one and there are lots in polk county so i've been to a lot of charity shoots and i knew that was something that i really wanted the
016foundation to do one day if we could but there are so many of them and i didn't want to have the same old shoot and maybe not have the best turnout because it's hard when you start a new event so that's where pete came in one day when i was at the galacto ranch at another charity shoot i overheard someone say about some lights maybe on the range and i went to pete with that idea that i'd always had of doing a night shoot so usually night and shoot those words really don't go together but when there's light involved they can so pete not only had some lights he was adding more lights and he was so enthusiastic from the very beginning about allowing us to work on this idea of a night shoot so
017we went on to think about other ways we could wait do the shoot and make it different we didn't want to have just the shooters we wanted to have guests that were there so they could watch shoots which is different we wanted to have firemen come and serve chile which they agreed to do they cooked and served for us we planned for a bonfire but the wind didn't allow for that but for our first night sporting clay shoot we had 27 teams and i'll tell you that that's a great turnout for a normal shoot let alone your very first one so all in all we about had about 130 people that came to the event that night and many of them had never heard of the polk education foundation until then so doing this new
018event allowed us to interact with donors who'd never supported us before two of our top sponsors were brand new and about 20 of the 27 teams had never been donors to the foundation so back to pete when do you do a shoot there's a lot of expenses you have the the cost of the course that you use you have golf carts and you pay for every clay that is thrown from that machine pete took care of all of that for us we didn't have to pay a thing pete also donated ammo for us to sell and us to keep the profits he also bought a shotgun to be used in the turkey shoot so no animals are harmed at a turkey shoot let me say hours we made an apple shoot for education and we
019had a worm coming out of it with an eye on a poster so no worms were hurt either and they shot the eye of the worm so again just trying to do something different so i know you think that has to be all but no then pete said a team from cps to help us set up he sent a team that was our scorekeepers and they helped us tear down that evening so then in the middle of it all when i'm already so excited pete calls me forward and he presents us a ten thousand dollar check right there so that was the cherry on top of it all besides netting 33 000 first event free and clear so so really that's all due to pete if he hadn't seen the vision for a night shoot
020if he hadn't allowed us to use his property if he hadn't done all the things that he'd done including that ten thousand dollars we wouldn't have been able to do that so we're already ready to do our next one i have folks that have already signed up and saying to make sure that they're they have a place next year so just to tell you a little more about pete and i'll wrap up he's known in our community for being generous he was philanthropist of the year for national philanthropy day i think it was two years ago he was recently recognized at the lakeland city commission for being a change maker and i truly think that's what he is he's a generous change maker that's what i would say so i brought him here today to
021thank him for everything that he did i have a certificate of appreciation that mrs miller is going to give you pete but i just want to thank you thank you thank you for everything that you did and i'm just so happy that i like to shoot and i met him so next year so we'll see how that goes there we go really all the recognition should go to susan she put in all the work to make this possible um i'm honored and really honored to be honest with you um didn't do this for this recognition i did it to help the kids and to do something i enjoy shooting so if you haven't done it you want to do it next time join up and come out and shoot with us and we'll have a
022great time thank you so much [Applause] if this like we'd like at this time excuse me we'd like to invite invite jeanette crowley senior coordinator for strategic partnerships to come forward for the focus on excellence campaign my goodness i'm struggling tonight well good afternoon i wanted to thank you all for the opportunity to be here focus on excellence this is the fourth time i've been here this year but it is a year-long campaign to spotlight the important contributions of polk county public school employees each quarter the program will accept nominations for a different group of employees a committee will select five employees per quarter as winners to receive prizes from our generous sponsors as well as attend a special luncheon in addition to being recognized at a school board meeting they will also be highlighted
023on the district's social media channels website and internal and external newsletters over the course of the year we'll recognize and highlight a total of 20 employees if you remember our first group of honorees we recognized in september were within our clerical custodial maintenance and warehouse departments our second group of honorees were in which was in december were within our para educator professional technical and administrator and then in march we recognized our third group and those positions were within our transportation school nutrition and non-classroom teachers tonight we're honoring our teachers our fourth and final group for the 2021-2022 school year in addition to being recognized they also will receive a appreciation luncheon next week with district leadership and program sponsors at the luncheon each winner will receive a prize package valued at over 600 courtesy of
024our generous partners i'd like to thank the following businesses who have partnered with us for the focus on excellence campaign this year chick-fil-a they have proudly sponsored four appreciation luncheons for us cpm investment advisors fleet feet formerly fitness running and fitness hand and stone massage and facial spa fields insurance and financial group image depot express lakeland magic logo out loud public supermarkets inc inc assigned gypsies which they just put a sign out today so that's their they just started their partnership with us and rhino sauce company now i'd like to share a little bit about our winners and what they love most about their job and working for polk county public schools our first winner is robin day come on robin robin is a kindergarten teacher at wendell watson elementary and when asked what she
025loves most about her job and working for polk county public schools she had a lot to say but she said she loves many aspects of her job she loves helping her students grow academically and socially she enjoys guiding her students to become more proficient readers mathematicians and scientists it's joyful to watch my students problem solve together with kindness and respect we are silly laugh a lot and have fun all while learning i am thankful for my students families and the community support given to our school i dearly love the camaraderie i have with my teammates podmates and staff members at my school we are all there for each other and help one another back up when we stumble my wendell watson elementary family including those who've moved on to new adventures and beyond have had
026an important impact on my teaching career i am thankful for the many times i've been helped given help guidance and grace along the way i have made many friendships that will last a lifetime she's truly humbled and grateful for this recognition and she said let's keep polk county public schools moving forward so i want to thank you for all you do for us and want to say congratulations on receiving this recognition hello thank you everyone this is indeed an honor i'm so excited to be here i was so surprised very surprised so i want to thank miss burgess my principal wendell watson we have an amazing school we love it there everyone works together thank you so much to my family i think they're out there somewhere so thank you i wanted to tell them
027i appreciate them because my kids have been cutting out lamination since they were toddlers so they've been my support my husband i affectionately call my room dad because he'll run out ten o'clock at night and get supplies for me if i forget something so i'm just grateful i'm honored to be a teacher in polk county so thank you so much [Applause] april johnson who is an ese classroom teacher at lewis anna woodbury she said working for polk county public schools allows me to make an investment in my community by equipping students with the tools needed to not only be successful in school but to succeed in life the love for my job has given me the opportunity to interact with students for two decades while watching them learn and grow watching students learn new skills
028and concepts and remembering to use the strategies that i have taught them daily has been the most rewarding being that i work with striving students i'm continuously researching and using new strategies to reach the students i have taken on the task to challenge them to reach their fullest potential i love that polk county public schools provides the necessary resources for all students to receive a quality education congratulations thank you and i'm honored to have been nominated for the focus on excellence [Applause] next i'd like to have kyle carlton who's an agri-science teacher at george jenkins senior high come forward please kyle said one of the highlights of his job is working for a dedicated and competent administration after over 30 years in teaching in polk county he still gets excited when his students show enthusiasm
029when learning new skills or applying knowledge that i play a role in imparting on them what really gives me satisfaction is when i run into former students in the community and they speak fondly of their time in my class many of these former students are making a living using some of the same skills that they first learned in their agriculture classes these skills cover the spectrum from forestry equipment operation mechanics welding electrical plumbing landscape skating horticulture construction and even several have become agriculture teachers thank you so much and congratulations [Applause] thank you is [Applause] next i'd like to have candace chappelle george who is a kindergarten teacher at highlands grove elementary come on candace says it's been a privilege working for polk county public schools for the past 25 years during this time she's worked
030for two elementary schools juanita elementary for 10 and highlands grove for the past 15. she spent 24 of her 25 years teaching kindergarten i think that deserves a round [Applause] what she loves most about her job is the daily inspiration she gets from her students being part of their academic success drives her to be the best teacher that she can be pushing herself and her students to not stop until we are proud of what we have accomplished setting the bar high for each student while at the same time giving them the encouragement and the tools needed to meet that daily challenge with pride is what she enjoys and about coming to work every day daily her students are reminded to never give up always try their best and to meet the challenges they face in
031their own way congratulations would you like to say a few words i just want to say it's an honor to work for polk county i enjoy my job and i love coming to work every day so thank you all [Applause] congratulations next we have tanya clayton who's a first grade teacher at fred g garner elementary who you just saw up here with all her students so come on i told her to bring her students to have him come up here too so um what ms clayton said she said i am a teacher i've been trusted with some of the most valuable human beings on this planet what is it i love most about my job my students i'm in awe that i'm allowed to be part of their lives by modeling and teaching them to
032be the best that they possibly can be i truly wake up every morning excited to go to work to see what the day will hold i take my job which is my passion very seriously the joy i receive from my students faces lighting up upon walking in my classroom lets me know i'm doing something right i'm their hero confidant educator role model and miracle worker i matter to them just as much as they matter to me they become a part of me that i can't describe in the simple words of a teacher-student relationship it's up to me to give them hope and to fuel their curiosity setting the stage for their love for learning while they strive to become the leaders of tomorrow to achieve that i must be the leader of today by teaching
033i am a teacher and that is the best job i can hold for polk county public schools congratulations [Applause] i would just like to say this is such an honor you know you don't do it for recognition i do it for okay y'all leaving well i do it for them and when they pose that question to me you know what is your best um the best part of working for polk county school board i say are you seriously serious about this i get the chance the opportunity every day to make a difference in somebody's life just as teachers made a difference on mine and i just want to be when they look back one day and they're doing the remarkable things that they're going to do because they're so great i just want to know
034that i was on their hand and i was their champion and i was incompetent thank you so much [Applause] me in closing i just want to say congratulations again to each of our winners and i hope they enjoy the spotlight because they certainly deserve it and we enjoy putting the focus on them the focus on excellence program was created to inspire others within our organization to stop and simply thank one another for the job that they do each and every day and we're doing that i get numerous employees calling me and emailing me thanking me for the being nominated and the little gift that they're getting so just a little show of appreciation and thanks is going a long way it's truly been motivating for me to see their love for polk county public schools
035i look forward to kicking off this campaign for the 2022 through 2023 school year we're excited to share new ways in which we can show even greater appreciation to our employees i can't thank our employees who have nominated their fellow employees enough they've taken the time to fill out the online nomination form the narratives we received have been wonderful and without them we would not be able to have these winners through this program so along with them and our sponsors who we will recognize in june i want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity don't go anywhere so at this time i'd like to invite susan copeland to join jeanette crowley for the employee giving campaign so please come forward for donor recognition okay um so this year we had an opportunity for
036employee given a campaign which we rolled out to support the united way and the polk education foundation because each year we hold a campaign and allow staff to get the opportunity to give through the the united way campaign as well so um i this time i'd like to have jess garcia who is a corporate philanthropy manager for united way and greg littleton who's the chairman of the board for united way to come forward with me and also he's with citizens bank and trust company as well they're going to help me go through the results and recognize our winners for this year can you get me the other certificates okay thank you both for being here and i'd also like um united way hosted a appreciation event for polk county public schools in april so i
037just want to thank them for that as well because that was a really nice event um to express their thanks to polk county public schools and all we do throughout the year united way of central florida knows that no one can do their best if they are hungry sick or in pain they believe that you cannot help a child without meeting the needs of the family and you cannot help parents without meeting the needs of their children neighborhoods are restored one family at a time for the 2021 campaign for united way we raised a total of seventy five thousand dollars and seventy one seventy five thousand seven hundred one dollars because of the generous support of our employees we increased this from last year where we raised almost 60 000 so we were up from
038last year in our campaign efforts we had 76 schools and 16 departments that participated in the campaign and because of this polk county public schools ranks um in the top of 50 of the top actually 15 with more than 500 companies that do a campaign so i think that's phenomenal considering the last two years have been super challenging for us i just want to thank all of our employees for all they do for a high school division yes for our top high school contributor we had lake gibson high school they raised three thousand one hundred and seventy six dollars we have melinda diaz and ryan van that are here with us and i'd like them to come forward they gibson i know mr van it's a very competitive for our high school area and so
039he really loves leading the charge for this so um he has raised like i said three over three thousand dollars so i'd like to give him an opportunity if you'd like to say a few words can i move this there we go if you're not keeping score you're not trying right so that's the rule but uh i'd like to thank united way of course i'd like to thank our community uh what they do for us for our entire community what my school does and i know ms crowley said mr van rays mr vanden raise anything mr van just allows all this to happen on this campus and it's something we take great pride in and look to continue to be here next year ms hardy thank you oh man thank i'm the best you thank
040you [Applause] our top high school contributor is kathleen middle school with one thousand six hundred and eighty dollars and twenty eight cents we have bucky day who is here representing would you like to say a few words so i definitely would like to thank all the partners from the united way you're a great partner with polk county public schools but especially with uh kathleen middle we are a title one school uh your services that you provide definitely touch our students on a one-on-one basis every day and without those many of our students would be in need and want so definitely from the bottom of our hearts thank you so much [Applause] thank you our top elementary school contributor is special holland elementary with five thousand six hundred and thirteen dollars and thirty cents we have
041ms melody butler here and not only did they win the top contributor for polk county public schools in the elementary level but they are the highest contributor overall of any school or department so i want to say congratulations again i think this is your third or fourth year in a row but um come on you like to say a few words thank you jeanette and school board members united way thank you for what you do for the community of polk county you're near and dear to the community at spessard holland and that's evident with being here again this year but we owe tremendous thanks to what you do for our children others in polk thank you [Applause] thank you for our top combination school contributor we have fort meade middle senior high who raised four
042thousand fifty three dollars and fifteen cents we have angie story and amy hardy with us hello we would like to thank united way we love partnering with them for this endeavor you know and united way is near and dear to our hearts at fort meade we have such a economic disadvantage population and so we want to give right back to our students families so i would like to commend our staff and students for all the fun that we had in all our united way projects miss story was my rock star campaign manager so i'm super excited about everything that she's done i understand mr van was in here earlier and the challenge gauntlet has been made so um so it is on with mr van and i for next year so just a friendly competition
043but again um we always love partnering with the united way thank you [Applause] our next award is for top department contributor which is public relations and strategic partnership with janet crawley and jason gary they raised over 2 000 dollars that's 2888 with six cents the things are important and jenna would you like to come forward and say something and take a picture i just want to thank jeanette she was the one that really took lead on this i don't think if any if you if you weren't aware she actually had a really creative way that she raised funds this uh this past season and it was through actually auctioning off her hair she's very proud of her hair and she actually cut off how how much was it 11 inches of her hair so that
044shows that she will go to any lengths even the lengths of her hair for the united way and for our community so thank you very much [Applause] madam chair that concludes our special recognitions for that i think there's one more we have a few more we have yeah a couple more okay we added a few more recognitions to yes we did increase some um opportunity um and try to get everybody engaged and so our next one is the highest contribution percentage increase our federal programs title one office had 812 increase and that was from last year to this year's campaign so i just want to commend them for the job well done that you did and say congratulations because i know you have a small team but you're mighty and i know you're already thinking
045of ways in which you can increase that and stay in that lead so i want to give you the opportunity to come forward ali if you'd like to say a few words thank you board for having us here tonight title one federal programs is excited to accept this award we serve our most polished schools and we know that united way serves them in such a way that we can't sometimes or in conjunction with the funds that we do have so we are honored to be here and we appreciate all that jeanette does and her team to help support united way so thank you thank you congratulations our next award goes to the school with the highest percentage of participation and this is louis anna woodbury with 63 participation so they had 17 of their 27
046employees that participated in the united way campaign that included employee giving so it didn't include the special events but i just wanted to commend them for the job well done of having 63 percent participation in the united way campaign so thank you so much ms davis would you like to come say a few words i apologize julie thomas i'm sorry i just would like to say thank you on behalf of fort meade we are so thankful to have the united way in our community we are a very small town we are able to refer a lot of our parents to the 2-1-1 resource service number that they give us they also provide us with wonderful reading pals and they help out our local help of fort meade store in downtown so thank you very much
047we appreciate the united way [Applause] i'm almost done uh our next award goes to it's an honorable mention award and they are second place in over all fundraising efforts and it's frank e brigham academy and they raised five thousand dollars five thousand eighty nine dollars they only had 61 employees but we have ms bolin here that's representing as well as ms penny lundqvist come on penny thank you very much i guess i couldn't hear the whole thing so i had to i didn't know i was supposed to talk i guess when you have a an organization that does stuff that is so wonderful for children in polk county it just makes it easy to give and i think our staff is very behind that so um i'm fortunate to have such a great staff and
048we're honored to have this this reboot this award and i think the whole staff's excited about that i'm gonna have you both stay here so we also wanted to give we have a philanthropist of the year award so um ms penny lundqvist from frankie brigham academy received this this is the first year we've done this award but she has 11 over 11 years of partnership with united way she's been a consistent giver she started out as a young leader society giver and made her way up to leadership giving association so she is a i'm an advocate she's a supporter and she um is greatly appreciated by us so i wanted to recognize her for the her award that she received for philanthropist of the year ms penny lundqvist from frank e brigham academy thank you
049i'm honored united way has been an important part of my life for quite a while i actually met my husband at a united way golf tournament years ago but i feel it's so important to give back to the community and united way does such a great job of promoting academic success for our students and so much more so thank you i'm honored [Applause] thank you so this next award is super important for united way every year we evaluate all the campaigns that run like janet mentioned we have over 500 corporate partners that run an employee giving campaign and we always like to select those special ones and this year we select selected janette crowley as our employee coordinator of the year so between those 500 corporate accounts she won employee coordinator of the year for
050running an accent an exceptional campaign so she is a district campaign coordinator she has been for the past seven years um like jason mentioned she had this amazing fundraiser where she cut 11 inches of her hair raising over 2 000 with this and also she's part of the highest department contributor it is because of genetic employee coordinators like her that were able to improve life and strengthen the community and jeanette we just wanted to say thank you for that we recognized her at our event in the last month but we also wanted to share that today so ms miller asked if i would like to speak so i just wanted to thank um i want to thank polk county public schools i want to thank united way i truly do enjoy what i do and
051it's an honor to lead the campaign it's an honor for work to work for county public schools and work with the wonderful staff that we have so thank you everybody for your support you've been so supportive over my years here in addition to before i was with polk county public schools so i can't thank you enough and i can't tell you how much i really enjoy what i do so thank you so much [Applause] all right so very quickly i have some notes but i'm not just going to go off the cuff and make it quick as part of the employee giving campaign this year it was not only united way but mr hyde agreed to let the pul education foundation stand side by side with them in that campaign it's one of the things
052we talked about at our very first meeting i've always wanted to increase this so in doing so as it was presented we had 283 new employees give to us some of you are probably here tonight some of you are here 283 new employees i just thought that was great they either gave a one-time gift or are now enrolled in employee giving at the end of this year those new gifts will bring in just over 23 thousand dollars to us and new funds that's an 81 increase over a prior year we don't charge our donors admin fees so 100 of that is going to go to support the programs and services that we provide and the really cool thing is is depending on how we use it it can be matched a dollar for dollar match
053is always a good thing we have some employees that have been giving for to us for over 20 years in the payroll deduction campaign one that's been giving the longest at 21 years i ask her to come this evening and ask another and they don't want to come they don't want to be recognized for doing this good stuff they do it because it feels good to them she said i want to remain out of the limelight i was literally literally raised by so many teachers and staff employees that have done have gone on to their just reward i wish i could give more in honor of them and the great teachers we have so that would have been my guess but she didn't want to make it so i understand um just doing things because
054it's the goodness of your heart and i appreciate that so some numbers to wrap up we have 32 employees that have been giving through monthly payroll deduction for the last 20 years the school with the most employees who give is valley view the largest amount an employee now gives is 2 400 a year the next is eighteen hundred some give as little as a dollar a month and that's great it all helps it all adds up twenty two elementary schools five middle schools eight high schools and twenty departments in our district office now make up our giving pool and with his permission i will tell you that mr hyde is the first superintendent we've ever had sign up for our payroll deduction campaign so i'm going to turn okay he didn't really want me to
055say anything i'm sure but it makes a good presentation so i'm just going to turn to everyone in the audience and to the school board members and everyone out in tv land and say thank you to our employees they help make the polk education foundation what it is so we appreciate it thank you all [Applause] and i believe that concludes okay mr mr littleton had a few things that he wanted to say okay it's my job to close the meeting i'll be for this portion of the meeting i'll be very brief i promise i just want to say thank you all uh thank you to the school board members and thank you to the staff and a special thank you to the coordinators who worked so hard to make this campaign successful you all have
056been part of this campaign for 27 years and over that time period that represents more than 3 million dollars in giving so thank you very very much appreciate your time thank you [Applause] at this point i don't dare say anything jeanette are we good yes we're good thank you i appreciate it thank you amazing job tonight appreciate it this concludes our special recognitions for this evening madam chair thank you and next on our agenda will be public comment sorry next is public comment for items on the agenda to be voted upon as adopted by at the start of this meeting before we begin i would like to welcome the public and go over our public comment process and the opportunities for this evening we will have two opportunities for public comment this evening the first
057will be for the items on this evening's agenda to be voted upon and at the end of the meeting we will have an additional opportunity for public comment on items that are not on this evening's agenda to register to speak community members must fill out a speaker card in the lobby prior to the meeting all speakers will be given three minutes the clock will give you a warning sound when you have one minute left and when you have 30 seconds left please give your name for the record all comments should be directed to myself as the board chair and as a reminder public comments are an opportunity for us to hear your thoughts and comments this is not a question and answer session however if you are seeking additional information i encourage you to contact
058any of us or the superintendent's office outside of board meetings and we would be happy to have deeper conversations before we begin i have asked my new friend deputy knox to help me point out where the on deck area will be if you are on deck that means you are the next speaker in line and we have a beautiful red red box that our pr department outlined for you so if we could give deputy knox a round of applause for demonstrating the on deck box so we have over 40 speakers registered for this evening so if we can have you in the on deck box that will move us along so that we can get through all of our public comments and get you to speak to us as soon as possible so the first
059speaker will be anita carson on deck will be linda whitfield hi um good evening my name is anita carson and i hope you're not sick of my face yet um i know i come here a lot i know most of the people that are here or hear about the book ban and things that are happening with that however i would really like to talk about our staffing shortages i enjoyed listening to part of the work session today where we talked about redoing some of the staffing and having more support for our students i am worried that right now in the state of florida we have 4 500 instructional openings and the department of education is looking at 9 000 by the end of august we are hemorrhaging and bleeding out people as mr hyde said
060earlier at the work session it is not just pay pay is one part of it but it is a workload and as we lose one person somebody else has to pick up that load and we are exhausted um so i appreciate that there's a lot of community members here i am very much hoping that we can get community support behind getting more funding for our people so that we can keep people here so that we can reduce our workloads but so that we can serve our kids and then the other piece is making sure that we are advocating for people to be involved in positive ways right now we have a lot of things that are creating chaos in our schools in our school board meetings and instead of focusing on getting bodies into classrooms
061that are highly qualified we are focusing on other issues and without people in our classrooms our kids don't get what they need without new social workers without new school counselors our kids don't get the support they need so i hope that community-wide we can focus on those issues more so than the distractions that are happening right now so that's all i had thank you thank you ms carson and sorry linda whitfield and on deck will on deck will be sean fernandez good evening my name is linda whitfield and i'm the nurse at mclaughlin middle school in 13 days i'll be the ex-nurse i'll be retiring i'm standing to say this is my third time hearing of an expansion at mclaughlin 2019 would have been my grandson's senior year i was so excited when they talked
062about it the first year i was excited first of all because i was going to be there for the first incoming 9th graders i was more excited because my grandson would have graduated well here we are now in 2022. this is the third time i've heard it i'm hearing as i leave i wanted to be the first nurse to say hello to the incoming 9th graders i won't be the first nurse but i hope after the agenda item i'll be the first nurse to hear that my law firm has expanded i am so so excited i want to be super excited so excited that if i could do a cartwheel i would at the end of the meeting but i can't but once again um mclaughlin is a great place i'm not leaving because i
063want to i'm leaving because age and the body says it's time so please please please i'm asking everybody that have the voting voice the police say yes to mike laughlin our babies deserve it and i'm getting emotional i'm sorry because i'm so excited that it's finally going to happen not if i'm standing here believing that after tonight is going to happen and that mike laughlin will be a middle high school and i'll still be a part of that mike family as we're known i'll be a phoenix or whatever you all decide to make it i'll be a volunteer when they get that first ring we're going to get a state ring i don't know what it's going to be in but we're going to get a state ring they promised me i'm going to be
064a volunteer and i'm going to get a volunteer state ring so i'm asking everybody please please please when that agenda item comes up to say yes thank you thank you miss whitfield sean fernandez are you marcus are you sharing the names in the hallway as well sean fernandez and then on deck will be constance lee miss hudson the next several are mclaughlin so if you can have them all kind of ready all right shawn fernandez and then on deck is constance lee shawn and she's with your name okay can you say your name for the record when you get there thank you and you can begin when you're ready hello i'm sean fernandez the mclaughlin student body president my peers and i have seen the newspaper articles about mclaughlin transitioning to a high school i
065speak for all students when i say that mclaughlin turning into a high school will bring so many new opportunities for students of various backgrounds and interests mclaughlin is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the lake wells community for example the expansion of mclaughton would allow the new classes and experiences we have prospering fine arts academy and our duke donations will also create new opportunities for our students additionally mclaughton will fill the gaps which lake wales currently has by being a non-charter high school in our very own community many students who do not get the lake wells high school are forced out of area by having to go to frost proof or even bartow mclaughlin could keep those students close to home which brings less absences due to lack of transportation and chances to participate
066in after school activities dr hudson brings the best she can offer for every student she meets my fellow students and i have worked our hardest to meet the goals that mclaughlin has set for us for example many have increased our literacy scores i moved from a level 1 to a high level 3 in my star reading mclaughlin can offer the love and support which helps us reach these goals to many more students we will become an international model school for academic excellence mclaughlin supports superintendent hyde's vision of more k through 8 and 6 through 12 schools s-t-pain is common sense oh whatever he said in the revolutionary changes to our school changing from school to school but embrace the culture and instruction our bond is unbreakable allow us the chance to build upon it my
067fellow phoenix sarah medina is by my side and offering you letters in her support of mclaughlin transitioning into a 6th through 12th join us in making our dream a reality and in exchange as a student body president i pledge that we will have a hundred percent i set it one hundred percent high school graduation rate for the current eighth graders that are given the chance to stay at mclaughlin we will set the standard and expectation for generations to come we will also committed to taking care of building and ground expansions that may result from your decisions we will take ownership by not littering or damaging any enhancements made to our campus this will save the district money so you can continue to fulfill your mission of putting students first i strongly encourage you to take
068my word sarah's letter into consideration ignited by fire we rise higher thank you [Applause] constance lee and then on deck we have haley bottoms whenever you're ready good evening my name is constance ely i'm a social studies teacher here at mclaughlin in order to understand why i support mclaughlin going 6-12 i want you to understand why i chose mclaughlin see i graduated from fiu law so teaching is not at the forefront of my mind however while i was at fiu i interned for the state attorney's office right here in bartow while there at the state attorney's office i often heard attorneys call kids punks and say statements about them never going anywhere in life since that moment always knew i wanted to have a positive impact on the children in our community the pandemic brought
069me home to polk county and ultimately gave me a new home at mclaughlin originally i accepted teach for america in memphis however when dr hudson showed me the future of mclaughlin i understood that this is where i needed to be dr hudson has shown me nothing but love and dedication to see me grow as both a person and a professional she is extremely supportive in my efforts with the bar exam and as a mentor she's helped me set goals that i'd never imagined before coming to mclaughlin for example i now hope to one day fill the shoes that mr bridges holds [Applause] eventually i do hope to advocate for uh children on the political realm constantly 2032 i'll be old enough until then staying at mclaughlin and seeing my students all the way through high
070school is my goal i've developed a rapport with many of our students including sean fernandez and sarah medina and though they are not here right now they're eating sorry we have students from the sga avid art dance soccer track and even football who are here to represent mclaughlin some of them want to be psychiatrists some of them defense attorneys musicians artists and athletes of various forms and though i'm not quite an athlete i hope to help them in any way as they endeavor to learn something new every day i chose mclaughlin because i see the vision i chose mclaughlin because of our community i chose mclaughlin because i'm growing and getting the right push to meet my personal and professional goals now it is your chance to choose mclaughlin choose the students who came out
071to support us even though they could be home choose the school which grew in the face of an unthinkable pandemic choose mclaughlin six through twelve thank you [Applause] kaylee bottoms and then on deck is lynette zamette whenever you're ready awesome my name is haley bottoms and i'm an 8th grade ela teacher at mclaughlin almost exactly one year ago i graduated from the university of nebraska-lincoln and then two months after that piled everything i owned into a u-haul in a tiny white car to drive 1430 miles to florida to teach i knew i wanted to return to the sunshine state to teach and because i had recently acquired a degree in secondary english language arts education i also knew that it was to teach i decided to apply for polk county schools after several phone calls
072with different districts and even the florida department of education filling out the application on polk's website meant that i could apply to a lot of schools which was new for me what started as a really long list of schools eventually whittled down to just a few based on things like commute and community as i'm standing before you mclaughlin was on that list the more i learned about mclaughlin the more that i loved it as a teacher with endorsements and interests in fine arts such as theater publications speech and debate as well as english the fine arts academy at the end of the name was extra enticing in my interview there was even a fireside where i was able to talk to other teachers about the real life experience of teaching there which helped just reaffirm
073to me that mclaughlin was where i was supposed to go the community that i wanted is definitively strong at mclaughlin within my first few days in training i had already made teacher friends and started working in committees to enhance the culture my support system at work is more than just my teacher friends they're my family having that support from my peers has truly made the difference for me teaching at mclaughlin especially so far from home i know that there are several of that group in the audience supporting me and our school with love and loyalty but the community that i love about mclaughlin is not just the teachers it's my students as i stated in the beginning i teach 8th graders i've been able to see their growth and their development this year in remarkable
074ways not just academic students on and off my roster come to me for support love and care to cry to get hugs to vent to calm down to share their successes and ask for advice on relationships and friendships and families and to receive love that they need several of the ones here tonight i have grown especially close to and i'm incredibly proud of them and their accomplishments and i feel honored that i can support them as their teacher just as i have been there for them they've been here for me when i feel off or down they give me a hug ask me how i'm doing offer to help in any way they can and take an interest in helping me lesson plan with activities they think would be fun to learn new content we
075have developed a relationship of trust respect and love at this school though i may be standing 1 451 miles from the house i grew up in i know that i found a home at mclaughlin surrounded by staff students and administration my students mean the world to me and while i've loved watching them grow and develop i would adore it if on may 27th i could say see you next year instead of goodbye they've become a part of my life and i a part of theirs they're the reason i came here from nebraska and i want more than anything to for them to be able to keep the support system that i'll be able to keep in the coming years lynette zamett and on deck we have glenn jones hi my name is lynette um my
076son is josiah and i don't even know why i don't have anything to say i don't i didn't even plan to be here i'm a i'm a mom i just got home and i was like okay i have to be here and i wanted to tell all of you that the kids and the students and i call them kids and i call them students and i call the teachers they're we know when my son got up last time and he said that they were family you know i know he talked if you know what veggie tells us veggie tells us bumblyberg well bumbly burke is a big family to him and you know our teachers and our family they're a part of what make us into who we are and you know when joe we
077talk about how we want to make a difference in the kids lives us as parents us as teachers but you know they change us josiah makes me want to be a better mom a better respiratory therapist and there are so many students that go home and they have the most horrible life but to see teachers come across and pay for them to get to school on time so they can be there for testing nobody had to tell her to do that nobody had to tell dr hudson that well we need to do this she just says i need this and we give her what she needs and you know when we when we are a family like that together and you look at it as such it makes a difference in the life of the
078child that watches you do that my husband and i have had so many children along the time that we've been together or the short even time that that we have been able to help them and be there and be the parent when nobody else wanted to be their parent and their parents were not even taught how to be muslim and let's just face it you know just because we're parents doesn't mean we know what we what we should do tomorrow when something is faced in our direction and when we have the opportunity to grow and make relationships and doing that over six years as opposed to three is so much more valuable than just saying hey you're here for a few years and you're gone whereas now if we can have a school that is
079there from 6 to 12. i have seen my son go and be in a classroom with one teacher for six years and the most valuable relationships that were built on just being there with one another having those bad days together having josiah screaming and and crying and saying no no jojo it's okay building that in the five years i seen him do it in an esc classroom my son's class was the first class to be in asd and if i can see it make a difference in five years think about what a teenage years can do for those kids and for the teachers thank you thank you glenn jones and then on deck we have tyrone henderson hello my name is glenn jones i'm the owner and ceo of insure financial group in the beautiful
080city of lakeland florida and we are now also a farmer's insurance agency i had the privilege to come out to mclaughlin school and saw what a wonderful fire that's resonating in the students and the teachers they're the entire faculty it's exciting i met mr sean fernandez i was really super impressed with him on his ability to articulate and speak and his goals and aspiration and his whole mindset i'm attracted to that type of individual for our role that we're looking to play to hopefully create future business leaders to partner with the school to see the future business leaders of of polk county so we can bring more jobs here back to the community we can start now by creating business entrepreneurs so i was ecstatic to meet them the staff is very infectious infectious and
081to see them collaborating with one another to build relationships with each of their students very tangible i give credit to dr hudson wright in knowing her father dr wright he is she is him on steroids he knew students personally and tangibly and her vision her fire um to implant that in students to get them to speak and present you've heard sean speak here he's totally professional at such a young age i wish i wish i had it like that when i was just his age so our goal is to partner with the school to support them to mentor to to help steer students who may in the future take ownership to create businesses in the community to help improve our wealth and well-being and supporting schools and like this here in areas such as lake
082wells is is truly one of the best things going to have them to become a middle school or senior high school to provide their services so i'm ecstatic to be here and i thank you for the opportunity of speaking here there's a bright fire that's rising at mclaughlin thank you thank you tyrone henderson and then on deck will be drex tell drexitel robinson from dundee is on deck yes my name is tyrone henderson um i'm with the lac program lost and confused kids of dundee florida and we came to help dr hudson to um educate some of the kids of some of the life struggles and challenges that they would go through that we have went through everybody in ccod and um when i got there to the school i noticed that from when i
083went there in like 1990-91 there has been a complete change and all that is predicated on an individual that truly cares about her kids that truly cares about her staff and so i just want to be supportive of the expansion of of anything that takes place at mclaughlin middle school i thank y'all thank you and i am so sorry because i am sure i'm butchering your first name drexel drexitel and if you can say it for the record when you get up here and then brian epps is on deck good evening my name is drexter roberson i'm with the same organization ccod and we took a tour of mclaughlin a couple days back and the school is magnificent and i learned that she took it from an f to a c so that just shows
084how dedicated she is to her students and one thing i also like to add um you know teachers spend most of the time with the children so if you take a child and you're able to keep a child from from middle school or kindergarten already to 12th grade that means you you feel a bond with them so if you was to send them to another school where the students haven't had a chance to really know the teachers the teachers really want to have the time to nurture them like they've been nurtured at a school they've been for a long time so you know my personal opinion i recommend that you expand mclaughlin so the students and the teachers can grow together thank you very much thank you [Applause] brian epps and on deck is terry
085christian hello everybody i'm brian ellis representing mclaughlin junior middle high okay now i'm a motivational person now so i'm going to tell you just what i want to tell you okay y'all say we all know all of us in here are parents and we all say children are our future if they are boston why not start with mclaughlin you got a good you got a great principal that's there that's therefore the students i'm a volunteer coach at mclaughlin and i take time out my business schedule because i own a funeral home and i take my time to volunteer to come help the students at mclaughlin as well as help i have a daughter that go there too as well but guess what i'm going to support the kids because why they are our future okay
086so if they're our future let's make it the future by some with mclaughlin jr middle high that's right i said okay nah i don't see nothing wrong with megan mclaughlin junior middle high okay because i'm from lake wales i did 25 years in the military united states military army retired e9 and when i left i came back [Applause] when i left i came back to lake wales because of the family that's there and lake wales okay so now if you got a family in lake wells that miss hudson have established with the teachers and the students then let's him go from junior to middle to the high right or wrong am i right or wrong okay then so there [Applause] might be saying that anything else ain't nothing else to say all right ain't nothing
087else to say am i right or wrong i said again am i right or wrong okay then now you see the support that that that miss hustler has that dr hudson has brought to the school board because everybody's supporting everybody behind us so if we behind and i volunteer i had three frontals this weekend and i still came out here so again what y'all about to make it right thank you terry christian and on deck i have bishop mincy good afternoon my name is terry christian and i'm a lifelong resident of lake wells slaughter that's a hard like to follow right there but anyway i also volunteer my time and thank you all for allowing us to speak today and thank you for your service and your time that you all put in a lot
088of times you don't hear thank you we always beating you all down but anyway the last month or so that i've been there you know when you get new kids on the block we consider dr hudson a new kid on the block over in the educational field and you hear all types of things you know and when you're in a leadership position it's going to be people that's with you and a whole lot of people that are against you so i heard a lot of good things i heard a lot of negative things i wanted to see for myself so i got an appointment with her she gave me a tour of the school they got some amazing things going on there you know i went into the media room and we were interviewed by
089seventh sixth and eighth graders and the in the uh the niners that they had man that thing blew my mind i'm like they doing some stuff that i don't even know anything about but i was amazed and i wanted to be a part of that it was amazing just to be there and to see the inspiration and the effort that the children are putting out so if you encompass to a high school level i'm old sports guy highlander if you encompass sports with that you have a deterrent when i was out there we had mr diego's team the history team was the board the paddle now that lakewood high school rex mercer his deterrent he had a board in the paddle but there's no deterrent now but if you got guys that's feeding into it
090and they want to play extracurricular stuff something you don't have to allow them to do you find the tendency they have a tendency to obey the code of conduct better and when you have the so-called jocks following the rules it makes it easy for the other students so i'm a firm believer if you all help make this thing happen we're going to see some great things in lakewood from mike laflin dr hustler and her staff thank you all for my time thank you bishop mincy [Applause] all right all right there shouldn't be no question tonight about what you all going to do should be no question you all have heard the story and the story is true i've been there i would like to ask of all you board members that have not been to
091mclaughlin i don't talk about what happened 10 years ago you need to go tomorrow walk to mclaughlin and see the mighty work of god almighty through that woman standing there i'm so proud of you superintendent you gave the recognition to the right people mrs dr hudson and her staff have worked so untiringly to bring about making mclaughlin a middle senior high school which is very much needed i am tired i'm a pastor in the county i am tired of our children having to be across this county y'all don't even think about how dangerous it is when you got a big old beautiful place sitting there and our children could be going there so i'm challenging you all tonight and i'm gonna be watching your mouth i'm gonna try to stay and watch your mouth and
092if i have to have another conversation with you later on i will have one you know who i am i'm not afraid because this is important as uh brother epp says we see our children is our future prove it action speaks what louder than any words that we can say i go there i've been there i've been through and i have uh i have been through all of the areas that they she showed me just the other day what she's going to do with the high school part and where we're going to bring the grades starting from this year this year this year y'all talked about it today i'm gonna hold you to it this year we're gonna start ninth grade right ninth grade starts this year ninth grade stars that's the recommendation of our
093superintendent and if you wanna oh god bless you miss fortnite amy you told us to do it the last time they had to have some more information 2022 we want to start our new high school in lake wales so our children won't have to be and they can play sports and do all the other things so i'm highly amen supporting dr hudson and all of our staff and every student in mclaughlin god bless you mclaughlin hang in there [Applause] [Music] and that concludes our public comment on agenda items our next order of business is to approve the minutes we have two sets of minutes the first is from april 26 2022 school board meeting and i will hear a motion second miss fields and miss fortney any discussion seeing none all those in favor please
094signify us by saying aye aye any opposed and the motion carries if you all want to wait just a minute we're going to be voting on it in like five minutes so please sit down i don't want you to miss it and can you please clear the doorways we are being asked by our our attendants thank you and the motion carries next on the agenda is the set of minutes from april 26 2022 work session i'll hear a motion second miss fields and dr allen any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed and the motion carries next on our agenda will be approval of the consent agenda i'll hear a motion miss fields second and miss fortney any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye
095any opposed and the motion carries superintendent hi do we have any new administrators madam chair members of the board we do indeed and i believe she is with us here in the audience at this time i'd like to bring dr lark and currently an instructor in osceola [Applause] she just dedicated this evening to mclaughlin from osceola county public schools who is now a new hire with polk county public schools she will be serving as the assistant principal at mclaughlin middle school and fine arts academy please come to the microphone thank you superintendent board members i am honored i am honored to be on this staff this staff the school the culture and i've been an educator since 1995. it's the type of things you read about in educational books the culture you can have successful
096students you can have ap programs you can have dual enrollment you can have many many things but the love the nurturing the cheering the holding one another accountable is one of a kind in this building and i am honored that dr hudson believed in me she sharpens me every day she challenges me to become our shopping buyer and i spend more time with my school family than i do my son is a senior at ridge and he's actually singing tonight he's not here but these are my children this is my school this is my community and the most important thing to me as a lifelong learner and educator is to pour into some other children with some sustainability and continuity i've never had an opportunity to do it and when given the opportunity we will
097see results thank you [Applause] that concludes new administrators this evening thank you dr lark all right and first on our action agenda is q1 berkeley accelerated middle school charter renewal contract i will seek a motion to approve berkeley admin accelerated middle school's charter renewal contract so moved second miss miller and mr wilson any discussion ms miller berkeley accelerated middle is in my district and i've met with the school and toured with their plans and i'm very confident that they'll continue to serve the students in auburndale and i am um honored to approve this contract for them tonight thank you miss miller any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi any opposed and the motion carries next on our action agenda is q2 the invo healthcare associates impact in
098ibus contract and i will seek a motion to approve the contract with invo healthcare associates in the amount of three million three hundred thirty four dot thirty four thousand one hundred forty dollars so moved second i have miss cunningham and mr wilson any discussion miss miller madam chair i have discussion um and i think the superintendent we've talked lengthy about this i'm not able to support this three million dollar contract we currently have 68 kids in these ib units which is and i know this isn't how the math works but if we divided the dollars out we'd be at 50 000 a student and if we max those units out it would go to 24 000. i am not in favor of extending the programs as they currently are but i'm hoping that we can
099grow them into what they should be and able to staff them to see improvements in those students but i at this time cannot support a 3 million contract for those services thank you miss miller miss fortney superintendent high can you uh share with us your concerns about not having this in um in effect so i think you need to start with the history of how you ended up with the impact units to begin with so respectfully this began as an extension of the work than the pilot that we developed in illinois we identified students based off trauma-informed care based on a kind of kaiser permanente study of adverse childhood experiences and students who come from households where there are four or more traumatic experiences during early childhood without a nurturing parent figure in their life
100are actually more at risk for suicide teen pregnancy substance abuse dropout and lower wage income or lower wage earning potential as well and so we developed a program that was aba therapy based as well as cognitive behavioral therapy based which is why the cost is so expensive within one year of implementing that program for over 200 students and this this data can be actually be confirmed it was affirmed by clemson university who did a white paper on our pilot program subsequent to that we had such great success we eliminated hospitalizations we eliminated self-harming behaviors we eliminated chronic absence absenteeism and truancy and those students at the end of their first year of treatment were actually performing academically commensurately with their peer group largest case study ever done on students across the nation historically and so
101very proud of the work that was done there so as a result of that work we were asked to share nationally a lot of the research behind this and so polk county public schools implemented invo at some point a number of years later and again we launched this program seven years ago or six sorry six years ago in illinois at some point polk county public schools adopted it had an initial great success because it was initially used to target students who otherwise would have resulted or were resulting in significant numbers of students being baker acted so due to threatening or harmful behaviors towards themselves or towards others and so this became what they called an intensive behavioral unit approach where these students were to get intensive supports through cognitive behavioral therapy and other resources in
102order to return them back to their home school the district has had incredible success at reducing the overall number of baker acts however the success rate of students and recidivism rate and other factors are still questionable and so students are going back to their schools may not have had the comprehensive wraparound service supports that they needed to have i've been in conversation in consultation with invo since over the last few months in fact asking them how do we move this to a model that more replicates what we did previously even if that's to move from behavior units to more of a center school approach and we used to have a similar model it's my understanding i don't recall the name miss miller but you have shared it go ahead county-wide county-wide um and so this
103would be a similar potentially a similar model to that i have brought the item forward simply because i believe that our students continue to have the need for these supports even if the program isn't exactly what it is or what we we aspire it to be that is an ongoing conversation but these positions fill a void that we cannot fill rbts registered behavioral therapists in the state of florida presently according to the bcba website there are only 37 or registered behavior therapists in the entirety of the state of florida and that is the easiest certification to earn bcbas are even increasingly difficult to fill and so an rbt has to work directly under a behavior therapist as well so there's a complication here and so yes it does become quite costly not because and there's
104a misnomer here that the contract results in a higher per hour wage it does not the contract company takes anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of that hourly wage for their services and their management structure and fees the employees doesn't necessarily see that entire the entirety of that hourly wage so as it relates to this topic i do continue to believe that it's necessary for our students but it does not necessarily reflect the comprehensive nature in which that program was initially designed but we are moving towards that um so i believe i've covered it in its entirety madam chair yeah i think my goal is and i've talked to the superintendent that countywide may be something we have to look at again polk county's second in the state as of a few months ago for
105restraint and seclusion so what i'm saying is a lot of these positions are not even be able we're not even able to fill them through invo and i would like to look at being innovative with that um and if we go to another site based setting where these these students are removed and to put at a different site if info is able to to provide the people there to support the site i think that will be good based on the results of what we have right now i am very much grateful for the work that mr hyde has done and i'm hoping we can improve those programs but 3 million 334 140 dollars to me um just is something i'm not going to support tonight and i hope i hope i'm sure it will get
106supported and i hope we can move forward in creating a program that helps these students long term thank you miss miller any further discussion dr alan thank you and you know i appreciate the process of this being pulled off the consentage in the when i did my agenda study i saw in the consent initially then to see it in the action item when i look at the budget impact analysis it's giving us 12 000 right 12 000 students that are being impacted by this budget no sir no no sir okay the total enrollment the maximum capacity for the program dr lutz well that's the current enrollment being supported but the maximum number yeah and that would be helpful because because on the analysis it says 12 000 units and i was curious on that so
107you know i look back i think we approve this same contract a year ago june and then it came back for an addendum and the addendum said that there was an increase in students i think it came back with like a hundred thousand dollar addition in regards to to that addendum so i appreciate that i think what i'm hearing as well is what's our return on investment um having some type of a presentation to note that what the successes of the annual contract and what that looks like is i i think beneficial to us as a board go ahead thank you doctor allen mr lex i do have some data for the board thank you for the opportunity to share this and i just want to clarify invo is a company and this is one
108of the services they provide our district there are several contracts they provide speech therapy occupational therapy physical therapy and behavior services so when we see the word invo on the agenda it's often assumed that it's a behavior contract but it's not always i just want to make sure everybody's understands that they do provide more services than this and we did look at additional service providers for this model or similar models and the closest one was 1.2 million dollars more expensive than invo we felt from a fiscal perspective this was our best option currently and i have semester one data obviously semester two hasn't hasn't completed yet but of the new students to invo unexcused absences in the students decreased by 54 office disciplinary referrals decreased by 99 and suspensions decreased by 98 percent of students
109who carried over from last school year to this school year unexcused absences decreased by 37 percent office disciplinary referrals decreased by 96 percent and suspensions decreased by 89 percent behavior levels were measured at uh significant behavioral occurrences occurring anywhere from 8.7 percent of the time to 14.5 percent of the time in the first semester which is significantly decreased from the met from the data that we had in the public schools and while uh invo is by no means perfect and there are areas that we do want to improve on they have returned about 15 percent of their students so far this year to the public schools with the support and the tools that they need to be successful thank you dr alex how many students do 10 students oh i'm sorry per unit no more
110than nine and there's 12 units so 108. how many do we have now 68 yes and that's ranged uh throughout the year it depends on withdrawals and enrollments and student needs but again that speaks to the manner in which the program is being utilized and how students are basically assigned to the program that was again not the intent that is how we've utilized it and successfully for those students who've been in however the the level of therapeutic supports is not there especially when those students return back to their zone schools there's a discontinuation of the majority of those services so there's a lot to discuss here as far as the future it is important to clarify and i appreciate dr alan doing so this is a contract renewal this is not a new contract additionally
111this is the totality of what we could be billed for based off services there is no guarantee that we would be billed the entirety of this so they bill us in regular increments in accordance with our contract um and we do verify their billing but in this is an issue that quite honestly if the board feels that it's not fulfilling the comprehensive nature and that or that the totality of which it could and we're more than happy to revisit the entirety of the program as i've committed to already we've already started that process without direction from the board so miss fortney uh i i just uh dr lutz i appreciate your information and your uh mr hyde explanation i just worry when i i see all this uh i am not an expert in the
112world of otp etc and i don't pretend to be but i know that we have administrators throughout this district that are dealing with these units and i would love to get their input on on what they think needs to happen for the students they serve and just putting that for the future thank you miss fortney any further discussion seeing none will call for a vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any a post no i have five two and the motion carries item q3 is the invo contract for our health care associates invo healthcare associates in the amount of 534 945 dollars and i will seek a motion to approve the contract for in for invo health care associates in the amount in that amount so moved second mr wilson and
113dr alan any discussion you want to give us some information on that dr let's i don't know so it's basically all the same what you just said the first contract which uh which you just voted for was specific to the impact units the intensive behavior units this contract is a separate entity and provides the school district with board certified behavior analysts to work in all of our schools it provides for up to five and that is the the cost for up to five as well as a program manager invo right now has one program manager made overseeing both programs so there is a cost state savings in place right now we do employ our own board certified behavior analysts we've had five positions approved and only two of them have been able to be filled
114this school year if we are able to fill our own direct hire positions with board certified behavior analysts then we would need less from the contracted side but that's the difference between these two contracts i'd like to provide some additional context because i think at times the data really does matter as it relates to this and it shows just as one of our earlier speakers spoke about it speaks about the gap that we have right now in qualified cert or certified candidates to serve in certain capacities so a bcba right now as of yesterday excuse me at 5 pm when i ran the analysis there were 387 current bcba jobs advertised for school districts in the state of florida 387. in january of 2013 there were nine hundred and ten licensed bcbas in the entirety
115of the state of florida there are only fifty one hundred across the state at this time also there's a second classification of bcaa bas in florida there were no excuse me there were 576 in 2013 there are only 1870 at this time so there is a gap and that's the problem and that's what forces school districts like ours and it is important to separate invo imbo's info is not a program they support a program we design invo is a staffing agency that our district has utilized successfully for a large number of years the problem is they much like ourselves are starting to find finding certified licensed bcbas and mental health counselors speech pathologists and others is getting incredibly difficult and so as a result similar to what school districts are doing across the nation we're
116raising our salaries to be competitive with the private sector they in turn are raising their salaries so it's just kind of a cold war that we're in going back and forth but and really the the company is the one who truly profits because they get to take 30 to 40 off the top of the revenue in which we pay so this is a legitimate issue for us and but again in good conscience i can't allow kids to go unserved especially these students these are fragile students who require behavioral and or mental health supports so it's imperative because these are students who we're not identifying these are students who've already been pre-identified due to their iep their 504 behavioral incidents those types of things that we have an obligation to serve and so right now contracted
117service is it's not it's not something we go into lightheartedly but and again with an understanding that we need to revise and analyze the data further to ensure that we're getting the best roi we can but in most of these instances the staff just the most appropriate staff to student ratio is typically seven to one so it is not a cheap endeavor by any means um but at what cost to fail to address the mental and behavioral needs of our students and again the trajectory that that sets them on it is unfortunate that school districts are now faced with having to support these issues you know there was a long time ago we didn't deal with these issues they just weren't present in our schools and largely more so because they were probably hidden from
118us but now it's a very real issue that we're dealing with in our campuses and it absolutely serves as a barrier to learning and so again we enter we don't answer this lightly i appreciate the conversation look forward to further conversations and accountability that should come with this um and i know that that's where everyone's heart is but a center school model would allow us to consolidate our resources to arguably better serve our students and i don't mean just one center we as you know have some schools that are currently underutilized why not look at this as an option across the district and place multiple small programs there that we could better serve because right now the concerns that i'm hearing from building administrators has nothing to do with the program has everything to do
119with the fact that many of these students are not from their schools they're being held accountable and having to deal with issues on their campuses because there's no there's no connection there's no relationship to the students and the families that they're that they're serving additionally in many instances the principals want to be directly involved in some of the outcomes but that's not how the program and the supports are designed and so it creates a frustration there admittedly so there's a lot here that needs to be reviewed but again i'm focused more on the contracted service we can revise the process and the outcomes but that's what we're looking for here but i felt it was neat it was necessary to share some of the data about how many licensed practitioners are even available in the
120state and why we're facing this dilemma of contracted services in the first place it is not because of convenience i can assure you of that but it's unfortunate it's a necessary evil at this point thank you superintendent hyde miss miller i just want to say i think we explaining that kind of crossed two contracts the first contract was for those separate units which i think we do need to have conversation about what that looks like if it's going back to a separate school setting which will take a work session or two to figure out this contract to support is to support the um in the what i call the gen ed schools or the regular curriculum schools this would be bringing supports in how we did it 10 or 15 years ago as you worked
121with behavior analysts that was already working with the child usually in the community there are less of those but for real behavior supports to work it has to be happening at home so this is a this is a broad conversation about connect i can get a child to follow um in a classroom follow routine but if we're not working on that at home then it's going to be more expensive they're not going to follow a routine and generalize it across areas so i am supporting this contract for us what i call general school setting support knowing that they may not even be able to fill it but we need to go back and look we've had kids with behavior issues we've had kids with autism my son is 20. so we've done things differently and
122there are less providers but i would like to have the broader conversation including feedback because that's what i get from the general education schools that these people are going in to serve i think that will help us in planning absolutely thank you thank you miss miller miss fields did you have a comment i did i wanted to thank the superintendent for expounding on the contract and the services and as you said some of those are required we can't get around it as we talked earlier as it relates to the turnaround schools and the need for those contract services as well i do think that going forth it would be very helpful if we could have more information as you just provided up front to help us as we make those tough decisions yes pam thank
123you with no further discussion that's why i pulled these out because it was just so much and i so appreciate the explanation thank you you're welcome thank you miss fortney with no further discussion i will call for a vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed and the motion carries all right next on our agenda is the district organizational chart and i will hear a motion to approve the district organizational chart as presented move approval second miss cunningham and miss miller any discussion miss fields i want to circle back from the discussion that we had earlier today it's my understanding that this is one document and nothing can be pulled out to vote on separately so i i wanted to explain again and hopefully better than i did earlier for
124whatever it's worth the [Music] school board office the internal audit department the suggested upgrade for the senior senior director i looked at the comparison salary comparison information that was available and thank you superintendent hyde for clarifying that it's current because i was not sure and i looked at our county and looked at neighboring counties with similar total students and total employees and looking at that we definitely if this is approved would be almost at the top of the pay scale for that position i looked at duvall county i looked at lee county and i looked at pinellas county even looking at that if we were not to do the 22 percent increase in pay and did a 10 percent increase in pay this position would still be above those uh those counties if we did
125a 10 percent increase it would be a hundred and three thousand seven hundred and ninety two dollars and somewhat cents versus what currently is being paid for that position ninety four thousand three hundred and fifty seven dollars not the 22 percent which is a hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred and ninety seven dollars and because of that in looking at the salary schedule guidelines that's suggested it is a minimum of five percent and maximum of 10 percent i in good conscience cannot vote in support i have nothing against the person in the position she's doing a great job however i cannot support a 22 percent increase in in pay for just making those comments so that when it's time to vote that you all will know why thank you miss fields any further discussion seeing
126none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed no six to one the motion carries next on our agenda is the superintendent's recommendation on charter application for matter academy middle school davenport and i will seek a motion to approve the charter application for matter academy middle davenport so moved second miss cunningham and dr alan any discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi any opposed and the motion carries all right phoenixes i did look it up that that is the plural of phoenix are you ready have you all learned a lot tonight how many of you want to be a school board member when you grow up anyone i saw a couple hands listen i heard a couple eyes earlier how about a mental health counselor
127or a bcba or uh yes there we go i love it all right action item q7 mclaughlin grade level expansion i will now seek a motion to approve mclaughlin's grade level expansion for the school year 2022-2023 madam chairman i make a motion to approve mclaughlin's grade level expansion second i know lori miss cunningham made the motion i think i heard miss fortney with the second any discussion yes yes miss fortney uh bishop mincy i have been to mclaughlin numerous times and i wish we could take that model to every corner of this district that's all miss fields i would say that i am ecstatic i am elated out of all the years i've been on the school board i've never seen the support and the love for an issue on our agenda as i have
128seen tonight students you all were amazing you are very smart you are very strong and you are very bold and sometimes we hear that you're not but we know that you really are and and dr hudson your dad and your mom would be so very proud of you because we are and then lastly but certainly not least staff and parents thank you for coming out and advocating for your school and for your children and that is my message that i'm sending out i told superintendent heart that early today i'm telling people if you don't advocate for yourself who will so thank you for that and i will gladly support the expansion of mclaughlin middle senior high school whatever you want to call it i'm all in thank you thank you miss fields miss miller i
129just want to say i'm so proud of all of you when i came out to the school and saw the student leaders that you've created it was amazing i just want you to invite me back the donkey is my friend um me and dr hudson me and mrs wright go way back with donkeys so i want to come back and visit as you add to that program and i appreciate that dr hudson is keeping in mind kids of all abilities and i saw that when i was there and i see that in her leadership and i think that is very important so we're proud of you tonight thank you miss miller any further discussion i just would like to add i can't tell you the last time we had this many young people at a
130school board meeting and it is exciting and i encourage you to come back when you're in high school at mclaughlin so with that all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed and the motion carries seven zero [Music] all right we do love you all and we are so excited to see you in high school but if we could take the celebration to the lobby we've got some things to finish you know what happens i want to take a five minute recess now let's get through reports and then we'll before public comment oh i know because they're so excited case anybody was wondering what is right in polk county public schools this week there is your example all right superintendent hyde would you like to follow that with your report madam chair members
131of the board i will not steal everyone's thunder as i did last time by announcing all the great events that we're all attending i will say that i am incredibly excited that beginning next week well we've already had a couple smaller graduation events and they should be acknowledged for our center schools in particular that kicked off graduation season but it's an exciting time the next few weeks will be full of graduation events and and i want to remind all of our educators and everybody who plays a role in polk county public schools that graduation is not just for high schools it's not just for the student it's not just for the families it's a great culminating activity but what it really represents is 12 years of our investment in those individuals as they've grown and
132matured and from every single level and i was thrilled to learn that all of our schools do actually do elementary visits and so they to the best of their abilities they allow students to go in their robes caps and gowns and visit their elementary schools and i tell you if you've never attended one of those you should because the tears you will see and the comments you'll hear from teachers as these students walk to halls is i remember you and you were this big you know congratulations and the kids will see pictures of themselves in hallways and it's really a really memorable event because oftentimes only the high school gets to celebrate that moment with families and it really is about every employee in polk county who comes to work every day to make the
133difference make a difference in the life of a child so i'm excited by that finally madam chair and members of the board the next work session and board meeting will be held on june 14th 2022 the work session will begin at 12 30 p.m and the board meeting will begin at 5 p.m both meetings will be held at the jim miles professional development center located at 4270 wallace road in lakeland and there may be an amendment to that date in the very near future i believe we're looking at a may 31st date and miss vega will confirm that with miss winchester and i'll provide that information thank you superintendent and we have no attorneys report tonight and no auditor's report tonight dr alan madam chair no comments tonight thank you dr alan miss cunningham no
134report this evening madam chair thank you miss cunningham miss fortney right that was it uh i want to congratulate our retirees and thank them for our years of service uh i read those and i'm glad you made it please think about coming back and volunteering may 6 was school lunch hero day uh i want to give a shout out to our dedicated food service staff a lot of them are my friends uh for a long time and i appreciate their service tomorrow may 11th is national school nurses day and that has proven to be a most valuable role at our schools um may 18th is talking about speed speech pathologist day um their expertise is unmatched i see some out there tonight um the month of may means a lot to me with mental health
135awareness and i want to honor all of our mental health facilitators i went to an event that was well planned out at the well with a wonderful partnership between polk county public schools peace river uh lakeland regional and i want to give a shout out to that very informative somebody mentioned earlier about staff turnover yeah we have got to recruit and retain retain retain it is graduation season mr hyde i'll see you there um i already told you privately mrs byrd had the best delivery and you're gonna need to maybe get some pointers from her i don't know um but uh i can tell you this uh we did the hearth graduation uh to all those volunteers oh my goodness um it was wonderful um our center school graduations what a happy event and um
136the itv awards all that uh you know they're all winners i don't know who puts that on our staff our staff yeah but i mean like the individual names please because uh they're fabulous um i attended a farmworker banquet at the community center in mulberry to honor our graduates from summerlin and mulberry high school of the farmworker community danny higgins and her staff of volunteers that room was full of donations sit down dinner for the parents and the students and of course summerlin was represented mulberry high school was represented by both principals so thank you danny for everything uh you know just sitting there talking with those kids about their future plans the future is bright because every student needs to be protected and every family needs to be respected because pre-k through public schools
137just do it better thank you thank you miss fortney mrs fields i have comments but i'm going to save myself until the next meeting because i'm sure we have quite a few speakers and i want to be respectful of that thank you mrs you're welcome mr wilson um no comments madam chair but i would like to request a recess before we have comments yes sir miss miller i just have two quick things um first the center school graduation is always a good time and if if you've never been to one i i would you could watch it on youtube it's just a great experience i'll let you know that the kids who wanted hugs passed by me and sarah beth to go right to fred hyde and um it hurt a little bit yes but
138i want to tell you that while we were there we had a student have a seizure and go down right in front of us and in the audience and with ease our staff moved to them and helped that parent and help that child until she was better and moved her to her vehicle but i want to tell you that's what our that's what our staff does that's what our nurses do that's what our paras do it was just part of who they are because all of us even parents of special needs kids you almost go into a panic when you see that but for them it was a natural occurrence just to start helping administer meds get the kid back so i don't know if you've not ever been to a center school but i
139suggest that if you haven't it's a good experience to see what our schools are really doing um the other thing was the ittv awards john dittle and his crew which is located in this building somewhere is who met me at the front so i'm assuming that's who um put that on and the kids do amazing work i'm always very um excited to see the host and hostess i tell them they have a great job in broadcasting but that's all for my report i do want to ask the superintendent sometimes when we have um everybody wants to get up and give and have a their turn to give us our public comments and i just and i know we usually don't respond because it takes too long and it's too much for all of us to
140do but i'm going to ask the superintendent if there's something that he just needs to feel that needs to be corrected on camera i would like him to do that because unfortunately i think as this process has gone on information has been shared and shared again and um i need people to know what we what really happens here if there's something that we're going to do differently and he needs to clarify anything that was done at work session i would ask that he take the opportunity to do that tonight so people don't leave with misinformation thank you miss miller and i will very briefly just make sure that you all are aware that i will be traveling with superintendent hyde and pat barnes tomorrow to the state board of education meeting if you would like
141to watch and cheer us on from home it will be available on the florida channel and we are number seven on the agenda it begins at 9am so hopefully before lunchtime we will be able to present so but that again is on griffin and the turnaround program for griffin so i appreciate that miss fields with that we will take a 10 minute recess before we do public comment so that everyone can have the opportunity to use the restroom [Music] do [Music] uh thank you we will reconvene our board meeting for may 10 2022 and we will now begin our public comments for items not included on this evening's agenda i would like to start by recognizing that many of you have indicated that you are here this evening to talk about books there will not
142be an item on the agenda obviously this evening for a vote for our for a vote against library books the 16 books that were brought to us with claims of being in violation of state statute were evaluated by by diverse committees made up of community members and district representatives the committees have made their recommendations to superintendent hyde and he presented his plan for those books at our work session this afternoon our process for reviewing these books does not require a board vote as we discussed this afternoon the superintendent will be working to develop a more streamlined approach to opt in and or opt out policies for our library books and we look forward to his recommendation on that process this summer just as before with public comment to register to speak community members must fill
143out a speaker card in the lobby prior to the meeting all speakers will be given three minutes the clock will give you a warning sound when you have one minute left and when you have 30 seconds left please note that although the board encourages community participation no immediate action will be taken on items presented during this public comment portion of the meeting if follow-up board action is required then the matter may be placed on the agenda at a subsequent meeting in accordance to school board policy and i will again ask my friend deputy knox to demonstrate for us where the on deck box is he's really good at it so thank you deputy knox if you are on deck that means you will be next to speak and we ask that you come to the
144on deck box so that we can keep public comment moving smoothly first we will have lola smith and on deck will be eddie lorenzo madam chair as our speakers approach and present themselves in the on-deck battage box i think it's important to clarify what took place in workshop today so up until this point the recommendation has been to remain consistent with state of florida initiatives and policies to empower parents to make an informed decision about what materials their children have access to up until today the conversation revolved solely around an opt-out where every parent would have access to the comprehensive list of books available in their child's school and they could then subsequently opt out of certain titles and or themes it would have to be done annually based off compensation today and workshop that
145was further clarified and based off direction of the board we'll be developing an opt-in policy as well to run concurrently which would mean that the books in question would be essentially shelved and unavailable to those unless the parents provided explicit permission now that's with also the understanding that certain books that are directly linked to the curriculum would be addressed potentially in two ways because parents would have to be provided with a permission slip or list of books that will be read as part of a classroom especially for our more advanced classes ap and whatnot where beloved and or the kite runner are often included and or recommended readings for our students they're not required readings but they are recommended readings so again there'll be a transparency process where parents can both opt in and opt
146out it would be required to be completed each year but the board directed me to bring back a formal process for how that would be conducted so just to provide clarification the process did evolve based off our dialogue today earlier at the board meeting based off recommendation from mr wilson and affirmation from several other board members as well so thank you and it provides an opportunity just to provide further clarification for our stakeholders thank you superintendent hyde and lola you may begin when you're ready my name is zola i'm a student at clearance boswell elementary and i'm a proud young member of the lgbtq plus community and i exist i don't exist because of all the books i've read or the music i've watched they are adjusting the mic as she speaks thank you it's
147this is for us to be able to hear her comments continue lola my name is lola i'm student at clarence basel elementary i'm proud young member of the lgbtq plus community and i exist i don't make this because of all the books i've read or the movies i've watched i exist in spite of them because since birth i've been surrounded by straight cisgenders heroes and main characters i've been shown nuclear families with one mother and one father i've seen countless princes kiss the princess yet here i am i'm not a reflection of the media i a book will not turn child gay any more than it will turn me straight that's not how it works when you move to police access to books simply for acknowledging the existence of lgbtq plus people what you're doing
148is cowardly you're announcing to the world that you fear them that you don't understand do you think if you burn all the books of rainbows on the cover we will turn ash with them i have no intention of disappearing i'm sorry if my existence makes you uncomfortable you know what makes me uncomfortable classrooms that teach climate change like it's theory pledging my life to a flag each morning my little sister going to school not being able to mention me because my existence has been deemed inappropriate starting this meeting with a prayer belonging to a faith that labeled me as sin that makes me uncomfortable but here i still am existing life's uncomfortable and books are meant to reflect life if you start by banning all the books that make you uncomfortable what's next banning history
149banning people will you try to ban me you can try but like those books i will go on existing and like those books i deserve to be in that classroom thank you [Applause] eddie lorenzo [Applause] eddie lorenzo [Applause] chair to clarify none of the books were recommended for removal from our libraries thank you thank you eddie lorenzo natalie cole and on deck will be david bunting hi everyone i just want to say i really enjoyed the work session i thought it was very very productive i thought that kind of discussion is what needs to happen just a variety of different points of view figuring out how to put it all together i'm a teacher i'm an educator i'm a mother and we have a lot of different kind of students not every student is the
150same not every student fits a certain mold and so we need to have a variety of literature available for all those different students we have homeless students we have students with fathers and mothers in jail we have students that have been assaulted we have students who have been through this and they need to have some representation of themselves what makes me uncomfortable is when one group or one person tries to decide what's right for everyone i'm a little concerned about it opt in for that reason um what about the gay kid whose parents are against him and he's very scared and he needs to reach out and find a book that's right for him his parents aren't going to opt in what about the student that has no parents paying any attention to what's going
151on in his life probably about 75 percent of my students who's going to opt in for that child when you do an opt-in you basically opt them all out especially if they don't have that kind of parental support i respect every single person's right to to figure out what's best for their child if they're involved i totally respect that but what i don't respect is anybody's right to try to figure out what's right for every single other person and that's where we are with this um you know there's been a lot of words thrown around indoctrination things of that nature to just try to perpetuate myths and and um and just misinformation you know i i tell my students it's their civic duty to vote i don't tell them who to vote for i'll tell
152them who i vote for i tell my students i reread stories impactful stories i don't tell them my opinion on those stories those are not things that i do i respect every single one of my students for their unique situations their unique lives and and i really appreciate this board having that discussion trying to find solutions there is nothing wrong with different points of view but when we try to take out all the points of view from others that's a concern so i think we've made some great progress on your work session i really appreciate every dedicated member of this school board um thanks for standing up for our students thanks for standing up for our staff we really really appreciate it you've handled this you've handled this really well i do want to say
153i think that opt-in needs to be talked about a little bit more and stick with the opt-out but i just appreciate your time and thank you for standing up for all of us thank you david bunting and on deck will be bonnie patterson james whenever you hello uh mr superintendent and honorary members of the school board my name is david bunting i'm an educator and a product of polk county public schools in my years i have never seen a book ban or this strong of a movement for banning literature within our schools i am here to address my concern and the concern of many of my colleagues over book banning when the rights of my students are being trampled upon it is my duty and responsibility to speak for those that are our future children
154in america have always enjoyed the basic right to education who are we to hinder their growth and progress why is the school board and other bodies constantly placing regulations or blocks on the material that is accessible to our children for a country that holds freedom and self-governance and accountability in such a high regard why are we moving backwards i am appalled and disgusted seeing that most if not all of the books on these lists are stories that circulate around minorities non-christian faiths people of color and those in the lgbtqia plus community as the guardians of the future and people who value a free education we should be upholding the ideals of diversity and acceptance one person or one group's ideal should not be forced upon our children whether they be deemed liberal or conservative our
155district scores are at an all-time low in both reading and writing as an ela teacher it is hard enough to get a student to delve deeper than just the cover of a book these books all although deemed inappropriate by some are stories of hardship and adversity a reflection of real life and people i have seen my students experience homelessness rape abuse and other forms of adversity these books condemn the abuses that these students face and show that our students deserve so much more out of life than where they currently are on their journey i say to the people in this room and beyond that if you do not want your child to be exposed to real life lessons in the hardship of others and by all means lay in your bed of roses and please
156use the resources that have already provided to prevent your child from reading them i also say to the people that deem this material pornography that maybe you should take a look at what you are watching on the internet what or even what your students are watching because books that condemn violent acts against children are not pornography open your eyes we are not in nazi germany or a dystopian society we are not in some antiquated society where access to information is impossible so why make it impossible keep the opt out system and the infrastructure that we have worked so hard to build we should not be in the business of banning books we should be celebrating them thank you thank you [Music] bonnie patterson and on deck will be shirley daniels pilarki whenever you're ready my
157name is bonnie patterson james and i have no children in school i have a grandson starting school and i came tonight because since i entered school high school 300 books books in florida have been challenged or banned since 1982 i don't know about you but that's disgusting 1984 the great gatsby the catcher in the rye romeo and juliet the adventures of huckleberry finn of mice and men forever blubber to kill a mockingbird these were in my high school these were mandatory littering at kathleen junior high school we didn't have middle it was elementary and junior and when i saw miss clayton getting her award all i could do was throw my book down all my notes went out the window because that's what real educators do that's what real leaders do they open your mind
158they teach you to think for yourself the books are there for you to inspire you the leaders have dialogue with you about what your mind is experiencing dr clint wright was just mr right at kathleen junior high school he was our friend he was hey bonnie p close your mouth and get to class get to the library and get a book we weren't gay black white trans we were kids going to school and learning we wouldn't have lawn mower parents telling our teachers how to teach we didn't have bipartisan boards pretending to be non-partisan we didn't have teachers doing more than they can handle wake up and get involved our students need us our teachers need to face this direction our school board i i've never been so disgusted i mean come on our kids
159need unity and leadership no more lawn mowers no more bands we're in this together stop it please face this direction you should be ashamed of yourselves ma'am please face this direction [Music] please don't touch the mic [Applause] shirley daniels and on deck will be michelle jarrett i'm shirley pelarci with stakeholder coalition of polk county hidden under the cloak of guy or guise of graphic violence expression of disrespect sexually explicit exalts evil likes literary merit or includes offensive language in certain single out public school library books lurks and unfathomable threat and challenges of some groups to the first amendment rights of our future our children known as censorship this practice suppresses ideas and information by restricting knowledge and discouraging freedom of thought this practice undermines one of the primary functions of education that is teaching students
160how to think for themselves censorship also erodes the ability to embrace tolerance and destroys free expression moreover censorship violates the first amendment right to freedom of speech a constitutional right we all share both old and young alike on the united states the united states supreme court has repeatedly stated that the first amendment protects students rights to receive and express ideas i can i recommend you see school board of education island trees union free district versus pikel found at 457 usa 53 in 1982. subsequently quoted by hundreds of courts throughout the united states this case continues to be the measuring stick of first amendment rights in public schools in paico the court stated that students do not shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate and such rights may be
161directly and sharply indicated by the removal of books from shelves of a school library the court went on to say that books may not be removed from school libraries simply because of a dislike of ideas contained in these books one cannot remove books to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics nationalism religion or other matters of opinion if such action would be the case it would be a violation of the constitution like in pico case here today there is no argument to prevent adding books to the library but thank you next ma'am no ma'am you had your three minutes thank you michelle jarrett and on deck is going to be a new heya sonic genie and hold on just a second before you start i just want to reread one of the things that i
162say in the beginning you are here to speak to the board please face the board while you are speaking if you are not speaking towards us where we can see and hear you then i will ask you to sit down please face the board while you are speaking thank you so much thank you so good evening board members my name is michelle jarrett i live in winterhaven florida i'm the parent of a winter haven high school junior and a graduate of winterhaven high school in 2020. i have the honor and the great responsibility to serve on the book review committee throughout the spring as both a parent and as the president of the florida association for media in education also known as fame even though none of the complaints filed during the book review process
163followed district procedure nor were the books read in their entirety by polk county residents or parents before the complaint i want to stress to this board that the committee's worked with incredible integrity throughout the review process it's been mentioned at past board meetings that committee members did not evaluate books for age appropriateness and that committee members were hand-picked to obtain a specific result and quite frankly i find that disrespectful to the committee members who willingly gave their time to serve this district [Applause] state statute 847.001 defines harmful to minors and specifically references material that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole these committees were comprised of adult community members of this county parents taxpayers professionals in their field as well as students who are future voters and throughout the
164process committee members regularly referred to state statute in their discussions and decisions these decisions were not made lightly as you can see from the results of the committee votes every book was voted to remain in the polk county school libraries as free choice options for students let me repeat free choice options these that students must seek out these are not books required in the curriculum i believe the committee made these decisions because we feel students should be heard seen heard and valued especially when they're dealing with hard topics research says that reading fiction increases the emotional intelligence of students reading helps students develop empathy and compassion books serve as mirrors and windows books with hard topics must continue to be found in our school libraries so that students can see themselves in the books they
165read and they can develop compassion and empathy for peers that have different experiences than their own yes these books are hard hard to talk about hard to wrestle with and hard to read but it's through these books that students will learn about the past about the present world they live in and about the future they want to create i thank you for respecting the recommendations of the committees and the superintendent to keep the books available to students of the polk county school libraries and i urge you to continue to follow your procedures and allow each parent to make choices for their own children thank you and a new hair [Applause] frost proof and on deck will be emily hill and i'm so sorry if i mispronounced your name i know you gave me direction and
166i'm sorry pretty good that's funny hi my name is anujaya sanognini and good evening dr hyde and school board members last week tuesday may 3rd my 12 year old daughter was sitting in class after just finishing up with testing and a male student classmate of hers decided to airdrop a photo to her of two individuals engaged in sex it wasn't just my daughter but also another female classmate and friend of hers who was also exposed to this pornographic image to say she was emotionally and terribly disturbed would be an understatement my daughter loves her school loves her teachers and loves her classmates and school should be a place where students can come to learn and grow but also be an environment for them to come to and feel safe as a concerned parent i am
167compelled to ask the school board how these issues will be handled and how my daughter and other unsuspecting juveniles will be protected from things of such obscene nature from happening again i am aware of where the issue stands in regards to the 16 terrible books but i highly encourage you to remove these books from our school libraries because of what happened to my daughter i am concerned what effect these books will have on our students these books will only encourage and further promote this type of sexual behavior among the young and innocent children and allowing access to these books could potentially harm another innocent child like mine if a student were to act upon what they've read or be influenced on the images within these books this is not okay with me this matter deserves
168immediate attention and we need to put a stop to this now we need to do more and i would like your help in addressing this issue and ask you what we can do going forward to protect our children and prevent this from happening again thank you for your time thank you [Applause] so just just to clarify this issue did not happen on our network we have a very strong efficient filtering system we cannot control what individual students send to others however in this case the school did investigate this matter and the other student was disciplined in accordance with our code of conduct as it relates to this matter [Applause] the district acknowledges that we have a responsibility in ensuring that our students understand how to appropriately interact with technology and media especially when in public
169settings such as a school however this is a shared responsibility with parents that need to talk with their children about filtering and by no means can the inappropriate behavior of an of a separate individual be referenced or is that a mirror on the entirety of the school district because we do a very good job in protecting our students from inappropriate contact content so as it relates to the books we have provided and it's been flaired multiple times as to the limited frequency in which books have been accessed over the last three years and so to to make an argument at times that those books are pathways to these behaviors i don't believe that the data supports that in any way but however that being said we do have an obligation to ensure that content and
170materials that we put and make available to our students is appropriate and is properly vetted and i believe that we've taken steps to address that issue moving forward thank you superintendent hyde emily hill and then on deck i have dorothy schwartz all right hello my name is iris denner and this is my partner emily hill and liliana antunes we are seniors at central florida aerospace academy and we conducted a research about women in stem and polk county schools so we chose this topic for our capstone project because we always notice the lack of females in our classrooms cfa's population is only 19.5 percent female that number has grown since our freshman year but not by very much we did a survey and reached out to four different stem academies in polk county including our own
171to gather data our survey consisted of only 25.4 percent female a refu roughly a one to three ratio out of the uh 228 respondents of our survey half of the surveyors think that stem programs in school could improve and only 42 percent of them feel welcomed by stem from our findings the biggest problems in polk county stem academies are lack of female representation in stem and confidence issues in all students we believe addressing these issues could would bring more women into stomach careers we think that incorporating female stem models and core classes in middle school level would help foster interest in going into a stem career we have no clear solution on the confidence issues in all students but we believe that by incorporating female role models it would significantly increase confidence among the students
172that would like to pursue a stem career some potential ways to improve female participation in stem academies would be to change math and science tests to open answer questions instead of multiple choice males score significantly higher than females in multiple choice tests whereas in open-ended questions both genders score equally having teachers grade tests blindly can increase female confidence since females are often graded more harshly than male counterparts often unknowingly due to teacher's bias ordering textbooks and online curriculum that includes pictures of female scientists can affirm feelings of belonging in girls we wrote an entire research paper that was approved by our engineering board if anyone would like to read it liliana has a copy please reach out to us with any questions we'll be at central florida aerospace academy and you have our number thank
173you if you wouldn't mind sending a copy of it electronically i think many of us would be very interested in reading it and i appreciate you not only doing the research for us but coming and presenting us and you're finding so thank you [Applause] dorothy schwartz and on deck is danielle doyle good evening i'm as you said i'm dorothy schwartz i live in poinciana and i am addressing the issue around critical race theory because i believe from what i see in the discussion of some of these books that some people have wished to eliminate that is an underlying theme and so if i will refer to that as crt crt is a movement of scholars who seek to examine the intersection of race society and law in the united states those studies are on a
174graduate school level and since racial bias and laws is studied it is also a conceptual study in law school to my knowledge crt has never ever been a part of the curriculum in kindergarten through grade 12 in polk county schools unfortunately crt has been misconstrued as anything that teaches about social and racial justice it apparently eve it even entered into the state's evaluation of math textbooks i would hope that all parents want their children to learn history as it actually happened this would include age adjust age-adjusted learning about the history of slavery reconstruction and jim crow as well as civil rights activism i am 78 years old i'm a white woman 78 years old in the late 1960s when i was in my 20s i began to learn what i had unfortunately not learned before
175i learned about the influence of racist ideology on our institutions and on my own thinking did this lower my self-esteem no did this learning cause me to feel guilt no what it did was make me much more sensitive to the social racial situation in our country and to elements of my own behavior which needed examination i have continued learning about institutional racism ever since that time and rather than feeling bad about myself i feel good that i can be open to these learnings and as a result help in the work toward resolution of these issues in fact that is why it was important to me to speak here tonight thank you danielle doyle and on deck on deck is joan sprain danielle when you're ready hello my name is danielle doyle i'm the media specialist
176at lake region high school and i just wanted to bring a book to show you today it's the island keeper this was actually the first book that i ever read well not the first book i read the first book i ever found myself in i read it when i was in middle school and i was so surprised when i was doing inventory and i found it in my library it's a little out of date now for our kids so it has been removed from the collection because we do curate our collections and there are much more uh modern examples for kids with similar themes that they can read and that's what i do fill the shelves with today but i this really was the first book i identified with when i was reading and i
177think it is very important for all of our students to be able to find themselves in a book when you don't find yourself in a book you're just you just feel alone you feel more alone so it is very important that children all children have access and can find themselves in a book and i also wanted to thank mr hyde for spearheading the plan to give parents the choice as far as what their children can read as a parent and a librarian i believe in a parent's choice to direct their children's reading i firmly believe that if a parent tells me i don't want my child to read ex book goes right into destiny they do not check it out that has always been the case but i don't think parents always knew that they
178had that choice i think they kind of knew in elementary but then along the way they kind of forgot they still have that ability to call the school let the librarian know we we do that and mr hyde you were making this more well known to the public that they have this right and i think streamlining it with the opt out option is the best method um because it is true a lot of students do not have someone to opt them in and if no one can ever opt them into the books they may never find themselves a concerned parent who wants to make sure what their kid is reading and what their kid is not reading they do need that option and a streamlined approach i think will help tremendously so thank you for
179that joan sprain and on deck is nicole grassel i'm not even i can't read it so i'm sorry torres maybe gracel taurus nicole okay my name is actually joanne sprain and i'm from poinciana um i'd like to thank the school board and superintendent hyde for your response to this challenge um looking at the book banning and for allowing us to speak as a parent educator i helped lead a research and educational outreach project with university of minnesota the project was called all parents are teachers it was then changed to partnering for school success the goal of the effort was to help parents teachers in the community partner together for school success research was conducted in several different communities throughout minnesota the research showed that parents in the community who partnered together with teachers in the
180district helped produce better outcomes for students the results also showed that respect for multiple views of the world an understanding of child development by all and an understanding of how children learn were key to learning outcomes and student success unfortunately what i saw happening here by one group is not about partnering for school success or to increase student success it does not match the criteria for student success the group says they are about age appropriateness but i would challenge any one of them to define child development milestones for any age and match appropriate reading material i'll name this effort for what it is i have family members who are lgbtq plus and what this is is fear mongering against them and all the other people in the community and other students of color and ethnic
181backgrounds they are forcing their beliefs on others under the banner of religion for their purpose only not truly for all students in the polk county school district they are not fighting for all parental rights as a group they are fighting for what they think are their rights to control our schools without a care about all god's children who may be different and have different life experiences if we really cared about students as a community we would commit to doing what was featured earlier with united way we would work with united ways and other agencies to read to our students to be a volunteer to tutor to have fundraisers to support public policies that help families help their children be ready for learning this is what creates student success supporting all students families and the school
182district thank you nicole grassel torres [Applause] nicole grassel torres all right and next will be terry coney and then on decks will be jason katz whenever you're ready terry terry coney 422 el salvador drive lakeland florida uh representing the naacp lakeland branch plus several other hats i wear around the community uh to madam chair the school board members superintendent hyde i'd like to thank superintendent hyde and his staff for allowing me to be on one of the book review committees the experience was exceptional reading eight books in eight weeks uh probably was a little more than i thought it was going to be but the whole process i think uh one of the book review committee members has already been up here we thoroughly went through that process we consider all facets i will give
183it to mr bridges when he gave us our initial instructions to not just look at one portion of the book not one statement not one sentence not one paragraph but the entire entirety of the book polk county public schools is an educational entity and that's what you're here for the teachers are here for to educate our kids i'm gonna throw some numbers at you in polk county we're approaching if not already there are over 750 000 residents we have over 465 000 registered voters and then we have a school population over 110 000 students at the end at the end of the pledge of allegiance that you do every week we say liberty and justice for all so that means unlike anybody back in the gallery here you all of you you have the responsibility
184to educate each and every one of those 110 plus kids books are a primary tool in education unfortunately we're living in a society now where very few people live we have a generation that they do things and snippets of maybe three minutes and beyond that they can't they can't watch a longer video they can't read much longer than that so it's incumbent for everybody in this room make education the primary reason the primary goal rather than complaining we need more volunteers we need more mentors go in the school i have a granddaughter there you know i i deal with rochelle school of arts lake gibson north lakeland elementary so we had more people volunteering in the schools we wouldn't have to worry about the books in the library so please please if you can get
185more people out to as as tutors as mentors as volunteers polk county's public schools will continually be in that bottom of 15 we'll be moving toward that top one quarter of top ten thank you very much thank you jason katz [Applause] jason katz next will be carrie mccoy and then on deck will be john ruffin whenever you're ready miss mccoy okay so school board meeting after school board meeting we've heard one group talk about these books and how they want them removed the group's name contains the words defending freedom exactly whose freedom are they defending because it's certainly not mine or my child these books are not assigned reading they are for book selection in the library being a parent means i have the right to decide what my child reads just as much as
186they do but i don't think that one group should decide this for me for my child or for anyone i was on book committee one and i did not know anyone i'm not affiliated with the schools most of the committee didn't know each other and we all came from different walks of life however we all agreed on one thing not to remove the books except for the one person that represented that one group there are certain protocols in place that if you don't want your child to read certain books then utilize that system the group can as well as any other parents but let the rest of us broaden our children's minds the group wants to push their beliefs on everyone and not everyone shares the same beliefs they do they have spoken about politics
187they have spoken about their bible and i say there because not everyone has the same beliefs schools are multicultural and that's how it should be if you want your child to believe your way and your way only there are private schools that may align with your beliefs or homeschooling might be a good choice when we discussed a book about transgen about a transgender child a person on my committee from that group said this book can cause more gender confusion for a normal child to me this shows their true colors and says a lot about the group's beliefs most of the group most of the books being challenged involved involve issues of race or lgbt lgbtq related topics although these books are not true stories they are real topics and lived experiences for many kids that
188group may be louder than the majority they may have shown up more but it doesn't mean they're right it just means that they have more time on their hands i think that we all care about our kids maybe we even care about our kids more because we provide different ideas and let our kids think outside the box if we remove these books what will be next from this group more book reviews in the 11th hour we got a two and a half page email from that group on my committee complaining about the book process questioning uh the committee and how the committee was selected why didn't these topics come up before the 11th hour so that they could later use this to further their agenda by supposed fairness of this process mr hyde and the
189school board members i want to thank you for giving books for our children thank thank you john ruffin and on deck is lindsay person mr ruffin when you're ready good evening august school board members i have a prepared statement that i'd like to read to you all it says we the concerned citizens of polk county concerned citizens of florida stakeholders coalition on voters rights come this evening to let our voice be heard in support of intellectual freedom more specifically we number one support the book selection process used by polk county public schools why number two the selection process is guided by educators who have dedicated themselves through formal academic training in understanding the reading needs of students in polk county k-12 system number three research has proven that children who are exposed to a variety
190of print literature and have access to a variety of information resources of better critical thinkers and problem solvers therefore tying the hands of the educators in doing what they have been professionally trained to do will limit our students ability to become critical thinkers thinking leaders in our community as well as contributors to solving problems in our community in closing where intellectual freedom has been limited dictators have risen and innocent people have died because limits on intellectual freedom closes the minds of people i have a few minutes so in closing i'd like to say this to you all um you all are doing an outstanding job you mr hyde and all of the school board members have been beat up on lately by a faction here locally and i'm just going to speak to it shame
191on you please face us shame on you because they're doing a great job and and they've been held hostage by some of these local groups allowed them to do what they've been trained to do mr hyde was hired because he possesses the competencies to do his job all of you were were were hired in essence you were vetted by your constituency to do the job that you do and i hear even things like you some of you that are seeking re-election are being threatened that if you don't comply with what you that you've been asked to do by this faction that they're going to vote you out shame on shame on the people that are making those those threats to you all so i say to you keep doing what you're doing stand boldly and
192do your job because you're doing a great job thank thank you mr ruffin [Applause] lindsay person and on deck is kathy bucklew hi hello madam chair members of the board mr hyde um i i'm here as many of you know i wear a lot of hats in the community i'm here today as a an academically trained librarian and a former school librarian i also had the privilege of serving on one of the review committees so i do want to thank you all for the process you put in place i had my doubts at first about the way the challenges were being handled but i do appreciate the protection of staff and other school members from any sort of legal repercussions that we initially thought they might come across i want to say and i'm going
193to try not to repeat things that other people have said in the interest of time but libraries are for everyone and that's what libraries are here for i heard today about an opt-in process which i think could certainly hinder some folks from having access to materials that they might otherwise not be able to have there's one other point i highlighted in one of our committee meetings that i want to emphasize here as well self selection as with all library books means that you can also deselect if you grab a book and you don't like it or you are disturbed by the content you return it you can stop reading it that's how that works and i think that that's why libraries are such an important space for our students to have access to and have
194full access to um so i i thank you all for the process um i thank you for the time and of course i also thank other committee members and other members of the community for giving so much of their time um so libraries are for everyone i will i will say that again um and i appreciate i like i said i will not repeat others so thank you thank you and see happy buckley [Applause] and on deck is joe ellen mcpeek good evening thank you all for taking this process very seriously um it is important i don't i'm not here to talk about the process or the books i'm here to challenge you to do something that takes a lot of courage that we could be the first school board in our state to advocate
195to the department of education the governor and our legislator for a rating system for library books in our schools similar to cara that does the rating system for movies it would make things easier for policy for decisions for librarians for choices for parents for selections for different age groups and i just want to make that recommendation to you and i hope you consider it thanks joellen mcpeek joellen mcpeak final call next will be isabelle mckenzie isabel mckenzie and then on deck will be alexander stagg good evening thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to speak here today first of all i'm a retired teacher 30 years i work for polk county as well as for the charter schools as well and i'm a parent as well of two boys two grown boys
196and i have to say that i'm an avid reader and yes i do believe that there needs to be some diversity in books and in literature you know i may like uh certain things like you know novels like romance or i may like also some topics such as some poetry and i like mystery and not everyone's gonna like what i like i'm aware of that and yes some children should like to read bug bugs may like to read about a little bit about government and things of that nature so i believe in that absolutely but what i don't believe in is some things that children may be exposed to because they are children such as you know sodomy or sexuality or things about um you know rape or things of that nature kids will grow
197up to be adults at some point in time and you know we're not going to have a say as to what they get to read but when they're in school like kathy buckley said i think there needs to be a system in place where the kids will see what is appropriate for them what is not appropriate i do think that there's a time when kids as they grow older they will make those decisions but while they're at school yes they need to be educated i believe in that and yes they need to make friends i believe in that teachers need to teach as well but please you know when i was a teacher we were only allowed to show movies that are rated g we were not we're not allowed to show movies that were
198pg as a matter of fact once in a while when we had a good movie there might be one little word that wasn't appropriate we had to send a letter to the parents and they had to agree that all the students were allowed to watch that movie that was pg okay so why did we do that because we need to protect the minds of our children we really need to do that they kids need to remain innocent they really do and my child when he was in fifth grade his teacher said he read at a high school level and she said he needs to stop reading these baby books he needs to start reading the high school books and i said my child is 11 years old i will not let him read those books
199in high school knowing the content of some of those books in high school so i made sure that i picked books for him that he would be interested in but they were at his level again why because i knew one day he would become an adult and at that point i may not have as much control and he will decide but please please please keep and i think it doesn't matter with your black white because i'm i'm white i'm black i'm chinese it doesn't matter where you come from children whatever they put in their in their minds their hearts comes out goes in will come out so we need to protect that please love our children thank you alexander sag and on deck will be [Applause] on deck will be charlie warren whenever you're ready
200my name is alexander stagg but i'm mostly known as alex i'm a citizen of resident of lakeland i'm a father grandfather great grandfather and us even aside from these books that were talked about i'm concerned about the future of our our children and their everybody's future i'm not opposed to um proper introduction of valid ideas and ideologies and discussion of such things i'm not opposed to those things at all i am opposed to pornography i was affected by pornography as a child and it it really screwed me up for a long time and i think that if you really want to protect the children you have to at least use an opt-in process an opt-out process will not protect them thank you on deck is reverend lynn garner good evening thank you charlie warren polk
201county educator thank you for your work on the books i'm here to talk about just some other issues that kind of go along with the books pornography on the phones is definitely a concern that i've seen in our schools it's very troublesome about i think it was a year ago tim williams came and proposed some things on settings on phones i think they got sent out to all the schools through grady judd on the settings program where they can put their iphone whatever and click on it and it can actually show you how to change your settings i think that was a good start but i think we need to make sure that parents know that's coming to them because i think it was just one of those things where boom they got it and
202probably most parents didn't get it didn't get that information um again tim williams goes around and shares about this information because the settings now can be on anything but we have to be able to teach our parents how to change the settings on the phone because it has become more and more rampant that we've been having to deal with in our schools students have are really unable to say authentic nice things to their friends we deal with a lot of kids that will be mad and say like so-and-so's bullying me and we find out what they're saying and what we find out is that their friends are actually calling them that but they're okay with their friends calling them that but then the people they don't like find out hey they're calling me that and
203then it becomes an issue and we're trying to deal with those issues so as we talk with students we're finding out you know they can tell their friend i like your hair i like your shoes but they're having a hard time so i think as educators we're going to need to brainstorm on how to do that on how to teach our kids how to love i think some positive books by john gordon that might not be in our school system could be a nice start just really nice awesome books that try to energy bus is a popular book but there's other books that probably be more appropriate for our kids even though that one would be inclusive equity and diversity is very important i really think some from being a history teacher i love stories
204like the woman at the well the woman at the well is actually a biblical story about a woman who had five husbands was living with a sixth person and they were the samaritans were hated by all all jews but yet that's who jesus went to so jesus broke that barrier he broke that berry with the good samaritan which is in our history books jews and gentiles broke the bears which takes all nations all humans one race many cultures one of the most famous churches that was done by apostle paul was in antioch where he had many ghettos all throughout but yet you had one church together so we can do that here in polk county schools it might be a good idea to bring some of these ideas back maybe these are some opt-in books
205that we could bring in that could give kids a choice to look at god bless you [Music] reverend lynn garner and on deck is dj ross good evening wonders are many and none is more wonderful than man these lines from the play antigone were written by the greek sophocles around the year 441 bce the reason i'm able to quote from this engaging and disturbing play is that throughout the ages it was valued by scholars and ordinary people enough to preserve it and hand it down to us so that i was able to read it in 9th grade english class it's a quotation that has stayed with me throughout my life even as the play provides to say the least a cautionary tale and the times in which the play was written were as unpredictable as
206the times in which we live just 10 years later the athenians and the spartans went to war in a conflict that would last 27 years the peloponnesian war we humans are both the most marvelous creatures in all creation and the most destructive we have potential for both greatness and horrible cruelty our children must be exposed to the full measure of humanity in order to simply live wisely in this world i have the utmost respect for those of you who serve on this board even those of you with whom i often disagree you are the most important elected officials in our country it's not the county commissioners and it's not the mayor's it's not the sheriff don't tell him it's not even the president of our country you have the power to shape our future with
207your decisions on what our children are taught mr hyde you are the flag bearer of this group of brave people who volunteers who sit through all of these meetings the work sessions and everything else you do and not only manage to make a difference in children's lives but you shape the future you are the champions of the teachers who face the future and the faces of our children or not today i learned that our governor has signed a bill entitled the victims of communism day which will require teachers to spend at least 45 minutes every november 7th remembering those victims aside from the sure political groveling of this latest interference in our schools and no disrespect to cuban refugees i'd like to ask the question what day is being set aside in florida for the
208victims of slavery and jim crow day what day is being set aside for native american genocide day what day is being set aside for trans girls who love sports day i realize that you the board have your hands tied in some of these issues however i also would say that sometimes the hard decision is not to accept the inevitable unfair law but to fight back in the courts i therefore urge you to join with other districts in lawsuits against those decisions that adversely affect our children you the members of our board must think deeply on how to protect our children against the fear of wokeness children are born woke it's your job to help them stay that way thank you yes superintendent hyde superintendent i'm waiting for the mike to come on um with respect
209the the piece of legislation that was just immediately referenced is a 2324 implementation but it is effective upon the governor's signature but it's not expected to be implemented until the 23-24 school year thank you and on deck we will have bob nichol whenever you're ready miss ross good evening after watching the last few board meetings i felt a need and a desire to speak before the board tonight i have found the past public comment commenters to be rude belligerent bullies and threatening to all of you with their comments and their demeanor i'm astounded at their behavior are they setting good examples for our students i think not would this type of behavior be acceptable for our students or staff at a school not in the least this type of behavior would not be tolerated or
210accepted as defined in our student code of conduct i wanted to be here tonight to personally thank you for your time your service and your support you give to our students and the polk county public school employees have i always agreed with all of your ideas your opinions your votes no not in the least however never once would i have considered coming before you yelling at you pointing my finger at you saying i'm watching you or we're coming after you throwing books or papers on the floor and discussed with you never i'm retiring at the end of this school year after 38 years of service in polk county public schools over the years i've had the great opportunity of working with many students families teachers administrators at the school level and district level i see
211on a daily basis the dedication the love and the support all of these people give towards our school district and students and staff i guarantee you that many of these bullies that have addressed you in the last few board meetings have not stepped in their foot in a school to truly see what's going on how our students are loved cared for by our school staff so in closing just a simple thank you thank you [Applause] bob nichol and on deck is sharon miller whenever you're ready please don't touch the mic i promise they'll pick you up oh i'm sorry my name is bob nicol i'm an esc inclusion teacher at boone middle school in haines city and i come here tonight because i just wanted to say thank you to this board and to this
212superintendent for having the courage to stand up for what is right the majority of people in polk county support you tonight we have people from enough tonight we have people from all over the county who support you davenport sola vita in poinciana winterhaven lakeland they're here to support you our teachers our schools and we need that support we don't need to be called groomers we don't indoctrinate students we give them a shoulder a safe place we call parents we teach we need to make teaching a career that people want to get into we don't need chaos we need peace thank you [Applause] sharon miller and on deck on deck is robert goodman whenever you're ready superintendent hyde school board members thank you for your service thank you for your time i come before you this
213evening to share two points first many frequently challenged books help people to get a better idea of the world and their place and secondly books are portal to different life experiences and reading encourages empathy and social emotional development at a very young age i had an experience with the ku klux klan the kkk my grandmother and i were uptown and at a young age i was a reader and i just naturally assumed that they were the hood milk men so as my grandmother and i are walking uptown i began to call out to them i could feel my grandmother's body began to shake her putting her hand over my mouth and dragging me into a store that had the hood handle on the door and my saying to myself i don't know why she's running
214from them because they're coming into the store they're just a milkman from that day on no one in my family had that conversation with me why my grandmother put her hand over my mouth by the time i was 10 years old and had read james baldwin claude brown and the others i saw people who look like me washed down the street with water hoses by that time i knew i'd had enough so fast forward to my graduate years a cohort of 18 phd students i'm the only african-american in that phd program i had one of my peers to give me the bluest eye i met piccola breedlove who too had an issue but i was more fortunate because i had books that i could access to help me process that i had a community that
215embraced me and for those of you who read the bluest eye you know piccola did not have that outcome so i'm going to ask you as leaders in this community to be those critical thinkers don't leave the books in quarantine too long the children need them i needed them that's why i'm able to stand here and talk with you this evening thank you for your service thank you miss miller robert goodman and on jack is amy lee stuckey hi i'm robert goodman from lakeland florida i'm actually disappointed to hear the confusion and vitriol of the topic of the books tonight we heard people talking about book banning and that one group and that one group's ideas let me be crystal clear no one in that one group wants to ban the books if you want
216to read the books that's fine what we're talking about is the exposure of the topic of these books to minor children in the florida law to hear people entrusted with the care of our children speak so ignorantly and show they cannot understand the difference between book banning and protecting our children and a parent's right to control the education of their child is not only disheartening but it's a sad statement of today's society what's in the books that we're talking about what content are we looking at somebody came up and said well they tried to ban catcher in the rye and huckleberry finn that sounds great in these books there's rape bestiality pedophilia and sodomy you want to hang your hat on that hang your hat on it you want to stand up and say our
217kids need sodomy and bestiality do it what does the law say i mean what does the florida statute say because that's what it comes down to any book pamphlet magazine printed matter however reproduced or sound recording that contains any matter defined in 847.001 explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement and let's go up and look at what that says if it talks about nudity sexual content sexual excitement sexual battery bestiality or sada mystic sadomasochistic behavior which is harmful to minors that's what we're talking about and that's what the group coming up here talking about the group that wants to ban books no one wants to ban books children should not have access to that and the florida law protects our children doesn't matter what you think what someone says about it
218what happens if someone distributes that on school property any person who distributes that on any elementary school middle school junior high school or secondary school whether public or non-public is violating the law with a felony of the third degree and every act thing or transaction forbidden by this section constitutes a separate offense and is punishable as such that's the argument take your emotions out of it it's illegal thank you emily stuckey on deck on deck is john freed can i make this stop please good evening superintendent hyde and school board members i had prepared a speech and then while i was waiting outside i saw the the press release that you had come to a decision regarding um the books the book review committees um oh and by the way my name is amy lee
219stuckey i'm a citizen or resident of lake wales i'm in the mother of two school-aged children and so i came here with my prepared speech and then and then i sat out there and prepared another one but i have to just speak from my heart i was the child lights went out at nine o'clock in our house my dad had to get up early but i was the kid under the blankets with a flashlight and then my mom would come and find me at one two in the morning and she would gently because she was just like me make me put the book away and make me go to sleep and of course i woke up exhausted every morning because i was a bookaholic okay and i'm admitting that all to you now but and
220so my parents would tell me go outside and play and so what i did was i went outside and i built a fort i threw the remnant of a rug down there and i laid there and read books so i was outside i was satisfying everyone and the books that i read were books about uh you know there were biographies about florence nightingale and you know clara barton and benjamin franklin and abraham lincoln and the speaker who talked about getting the you know we lost to kill a mockingbird they took that out you know and books like across five aprils and um where the red fern grows all these beautiful books that i spent hours reading and i was transported to other places but i never read anything that we're talking about getting rid of
221in these books one time i snuck into my mother's books and i read edgar allan poe the pit and the pendulum annabelle lee the raven all of those and then i had nightmares for weeks and mama said that's what you get for not reading the books that you were allowed to read so what i say is thank you for giving the power to parents to decide what their children are going to read but but remember these books that that we this group this that everyone says is the minority we believe the books about rape and sodomy and bestiality just don't belong what kind of nightmares are those giving children i children should be transported to foreign lands and learn about other cultures and other people and be exposed to all types of things but not
222that garbage and so i just um i thank you for what you've done and i hope that when you implement this program that your policy will help those children whose parents aren't engaged the parents who don't care about their children's education be mindful of those parents and so make sure that the policy that's implemented thank you so much jonathan freit [Applause] jonathan freed and on deck is judy duckrans hello again um i don't think the mic is on quite yet it'll pick you up it's coming here we go um i want to make reference to a couple different things and i guess a couple people have already about the idea of of the one group i have not come a single time as a representative of that one group i have come as a citizen
223of this county and as a member and i'm not a member of the school board but having students and family members that are part of the school system here it just so happens that many of my views do align with that one one group and so if we look at and say why does that one group exist it's because many people in a community decided to come together and let their voices be heard so to speak as one because they agree with many things alike we see that take place over a lot of different issues and it's a powerful thing and it needs to take place and i'm glad it's taken place i think it's also appropriate to recognize that when people come up and speak they are individuals speaking and although they may reference
224a group and all they may although they may be coming from a group they stand here as an individual and speak uh today many people wearing red shirts you can't say that everybody wearing a red shirt is part of the pea they might be but just because they're wearing a red shirt does not mean they officially represent the pea it would be inappropriate for us to take the words of that one even individual and smear it across that that whole group every time but i do want to reference something that was said by our our pea a couple different times today making statements to the issue at hand and being discussed for so many months and taking so much time with committees as being a distraction i find that term very harsh in recognizing this
225another pea member stating this i have never seen this strong of a movement now they went on to say for banning literature which we've been corrected that is not taking place there's no banning of literature but the statement was i've never seen this strong of a movement for banning literature in our schools that is a very very powerful statement by one of our pea members there is a strong community movement concerning this issue i think it's wise for community members to come together in the things that they agree with it should be recognized as since that there is a such a strong community movement i hope it is recognized from this board that wow maybe our community really is engaged in what's happening in the school system instead of the accusations to say that most
226people have no clue what's going on the fact that hundreds of people have shown up over the last few months say that the community is engaged with the issues that you guys have on your on your table i do uh think you have an incredibly difficult job i would warn anybody that's running to come and take any seats that are here they are going to be faced with the same incredibly difficult job and i hope everyone treats you kindly in the process thank you trudy duck runs trudy duckrans ronnie townes and bishop mincy i believe you all right and that is all of the cards that i have for this evening thank you so much for joining us and that will conclude our may 10th 2022 board meeting [Music] you