2021-08-24 - School Board Meeting

0:00 Sam, Fellow board members and the public, and call the August 24, 2021 school board meeting to order. For those joining us in the audience this evening, I want to advise you of a few things. First, if you must leave the building for any reason, you will not be permitted to re enter your seat will be given to the next person waiting to enter. Additionally, please note that this is a business meeting of the Board held in the public.

0:57 The Board is authorized to adopt rules or policies to maintain orderly conduct or proper decorum in a public meeting and your opportunity to be heard is subject to those rules and policies. The appropriate place for public participation in the meeting is during your individual public comment opportunity as identified in the agenda. Outside of your individual public comment opportunity, your role in the meeting is as an observer.

1:25 Pursuant to Florida Statute 877.13, it is unlawful and a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine for any person to knowingly disrupt or interfere with the lawful administration or functions of any educational institution or school board or knowingly advise, counsel or instruct any school pupil or school employee to disrupt any school or school board function or activity on school board property. I will ask persons deemed to be knowingly or intentionally disrupting this meeting of the Brevard Public School Board to stop or leave if persons receiving the warning do not follow my instructions.

2:09 I will instruct Brevard County Sheriff’s Deputies to take any law enforcement action they deem appropriate and you may be escorted, detained or arrested, depending on conduct. Persons who refuse to depart after a warning may also be committing the crime of trespassing contrary to Florida Statute Section 810.09.

2:31 These statutes apply to conduct on all school board property which includes this boardroom as well as the outside of this building to the sidewalk. In the event multiple individuals fail to adhere to these expectations and board business cannot continue due to disruption, I will call a recess and request that the law enforcement officers present clear the boardroom of attendees. When the room is cleared, the board will return and resume their meeting with no public presence.

2:59 Those who are signed up to speak will be seated under the front entry area and called in when it is your time to speak. If you continue to cause a disruption, you are in violation of Florida statute 877.13 or if you fail to leave the premises after being warned by the Sheriff’s Office, you are committing trespass and the Board has authorized the Sheriff’s Office to enforce these rules.

3:26 Miss Escobar, roll call, please. Misses Belford. Present.

3:34 Ms. McDougall? Present. Mrs. Jenkins. Present.

3:38 Mrs. Campbell. Present. And Mr. Susan.

3:40 Present. I just turned it on. Yeah.

3:46 Board members in an audience. For that matter, our mics still are not functioning correctly, so I’ll do my best to remember to turn yours on when you need it. But just feel free to remind me shall I need to.

4:00 All right. The board will now hold a moment of silent reflection in memory of one of our BPS family members who recently passed away, Donald Milkoff, a Transportation employee. Thank you.

4:26 Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Into the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. At this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and Dr. Mullins the opportunity to recognize students, staff, or members of the community who would like to get us started this evening.

5:02 Ms. Campbell? I will. I have kind of a broad thank you, kudos. But I just want to recognize the hard, difficult work that our principals and our assistant principals have been doing over the last few weeks.

5:19 You know, we are in Brevard, just like the rest of the world in a crisis, and our principals and assistant principals do the difficult work of all the contact tracing and making the phone calls and sometimes with some challenging people on the other end of the line. And so while we ask for grace and patience, I just want to. I’m going to ask our community to join me in the effort to recognize the great work they’re doing.

5:48 And I would just say, would you send a sweet email to one of your administrators at your schools? I think it would be. Or flowers, chocolate, coffee, Just a little token to let them know you’re with them and that they’re doing great work despite the challenges that they face. It is really one of the toughest jobs.

6:12 I don’t think there’s anybody who’s not doing a tough job, especially over the last couple years, but I just want to recognize our administrators, our school level, and at district level as well. But just when it’s boots on the ground. They’re really doing great work, and I appreciate them so much, and I would encourage our community to share your appreciation with them as well.

6:31 Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Anyone else? Ms. McDougal? Just got off the press. I just found out that Audubon Elementary School was recently awarded the Florida Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support Award as a model PBIS school.

6:52 And so for people who don’t know what PBIS is, it’s positive behavioral intervention support. And so congratulations to our school, Audubon and the principal, Candice. And I also think somebody named Lauren.

7:06 I don’t have a last name. So, Lauren, thank you, too. And Principal Jones, nicely done.

7:12 Thank you. Ms. McDougall. Not getting a signal.

7:24 So I wanted to say thank you for last week. I had a situation where I tested positive for Covid right before the board meeting. And I wanted to say it’s great to be back, but I wanted to say thank you to one individual that sometimes we don’t give these people as much credit as they are.

7:40 My wife, as many of you know, I have five children. So when I’m quarantined and I’m off on my own, my wife has to watch all five of those children. And at one point in the first day, I wasn’t sure if the COVID or my wife was actually going to kill me.

7:54 So I wanted to let you know that my heart goes out and my shout out goes first out to my wife for the dedication that she had for my family and myself. And that the fact that our Covid that we quarantined, none of them received any symptoms and I was able to get back and now we’re back to it. So many of the families that we have that are doing the same, the shout out goes out to them, too.

8:13 The other thing I wanted to say was thank you to Dr. Mullenson. Many individuals don’t know the war that we’ve been facing with all of our testing. We are trying to test thousands of kids that are at home healthy right now.

8:29 And Dr. Mullins and his staff have been on the front lines for the last nine days trying to get DoH testing centers, providers over and over again for hours every day to try to get them to provide tests so that we can get our people to come back that are healthy. And that is not an issue that any of us can argue whether we agree on everything else. The one thing we can agree on is that our kids need to be tested and come back in.

8:59 We’ve made a request as a board that we’re going to move forward and we’re going to ask the county commission to work with us and the EOC to establish testing centers so that our children can get back. Many of you don’t know that all of our testing centers are now only testing children that have symptoms. So that means that all of the children that don’t have symptoms have to sit and wait even though they’re healthy.

9:25 And I applaud the individuals that were out there that said that they would work on this. We need to come together as a community to understand that this is something that we need to do together. And I want to applaud Dr. Mullins, you and your staff for fighting that fight, along with all the other ones that has been a war.

9:40 And some of the largest frustrations is sitting inside of that scope. So if you guys all get an opportunity, when you have see a county commissioner or anybody else out there say, hey, let’s work together on getting these testing sites together, the next thing I wanted to say is thank you to Dr. Fede and Dr. Moore. They have been working around the clock.

9:58 Many of you heard in last meetings that Dr. Moore is the individual that sits there and catches all of the quarantines from everywhere else. Then she catches all of the actual positive Covid cases, Then she reports them. It’s all on her shoulders.

10:11 So everybody in here that knows all of the individuals that we deal with on a regular basis, and we’re looking back and you say, wow, that’s a lot of people. You look at the schools, some of our schools have those high numbers. Those all report to her, and then they report those to the GCR.

10:25 So a big shout out to Dr. Fedi and Dr. Moore. I want to say thank you to the testing centers that are in existence. Many of them have been taking unfair attacks because they are overwhelmed at the testing centers.

10:38 And I’ll tell you, Med Fast is the one that I saw that got hit in my area. That was an unfair attack. They can only produce so many tests, and their goal is to make sure that healthy kids stay in there, but that we test the kids that have symptoms.

10:51 They are maxed on kids that have symptoms. So the issue is, is that if you hear that they are only testing kids with symptoms, that is the reason. Understand that is the reason we have asked to have more testing centers so that we can open it up so that we can actually have our healthy kids get back in.

11:07 And then I want to say thank you to everybody here. I understand that we all come from different places and that we all are standing in here with the opinions that we have. But in the end, we are from Brevard.

11:18 And this is a crisis that’s never hit our education system. And we need to come together. Whether we disagree on one or two issues, we need to be together and stop attacking each other.

11:29 Because what I’m seeing out there on social media is disgusting. Because you have a situation that you disagree with somebody does not mean that you personally attack them. And I think we can do better.

11:41 That’s for those other places, we are Brevard. And that’s all I had to say. Thank you.

11:47 Thank you, Mr. Susan. Dr. Mullen. Sorry.

11:54 You’re good. I’d like to echo Mrs. Campbell’s sentiments to our administrators who are on the front lines managing the contact tracing. It is tremendously demanding.

12:07 It is compromising their ability to meet their other administrative duties. And they continue to come back and continue to work so diligently and so hard. And there isn’t a man or woman out there that isn’t totally dedicated to keeping our kids and our staff and our community as safe as possible.

12:28 I want to give a special shout out to Dr. Latasha Bowens, principal at Madison Middle School. As the board knows and likely the community, Madison was closed yesterday. Today, Dr. Bowens, facing some own health challenges, herself, broken foot or ankle, rallied the team, provided devices for students to pick up in a drive through opportunity.

12:53 We had testing set up there last two days. Also our food service folks ready to provide meals to our students for the two days they wouldn’t be in school. Just a tremendous, admirable effort to make all of that available for our kids in the Titusville community.

13:09 So thank you, Dr. Bowens and your staff. I’ll give a special shout out to the dean, who’s brand new Hauppenbauer, who barely got his feet on the ground at the school and he’s been running ever since and just done an admirable job to keep up with the rest of the team. So great job, Team Madison.

13:30 Dr. Mullins, I will certainly echo the appreciation for the team at Madison and I think also really all of all of the recognitions thus far. Right. But I think we also need to recognize the yeoman’s work that Dr. Mullins and his team have done on addressing mitigation strategies in general.

13:54 Right. And I think we can all admit that we are not perfect at this point in time. There’s, I think, going to be constant opportunity for learning and growth and adjustment as we go.

14:05 But Dr. Mullins and his leadership in, you know, continuously communicating with our school teams to ensure that they are reminded of the importance of social distancing and, you know, masking where appropriate and limiting, large group meetings and all of the various things that he and his team have put into place as we have continued to see these numbers rise. Just appreciate you, Dr. Mullins, and your team and your diligence in continuing to adjust each and every day to make sure that that communication is getting out. And then I also just want to say, you know, sometimes we forget that this district is made up of people from every position, right? And so, yes, our administrators are doing a phenomenal, incredibly difficult job.

15:03 And they are literally contact tracing throughout the weekend, most weekends, there is virtually no break for them. But our teachers and our custodial staff and our food service staff and our bus drivers and our transportation folks and our security folks, and, you know, there is no one that is not, quite frankly, overextended at this point, trying to ensure continuity of education in Brevard Public Schools. And so I just want to thank our entire team.

15:36 Certainly this year is not the way that we had started to or had hoped to start this year. But despite their disappointment, everyone has rallied and everyone has done what we’ve needed them to do to get our kiddos in the classrooms and learning. And so we will continue to learn and.

15:53 And adjust as we go forward. But just so many thanks to all of those individuals that are out there working tirelessly so that we can make sure our kids are fed and educated and safe and encouraged and supported. So many thanks to all of them.

16:09 And at this time, I am going to turn it over to you, Dr. Mullins, for the adoption of the agenda. Sorry, I was looking at your other message. Go ahead, Ms. Belford.

16:29 And members of the board. On this evening’s agenda, we have administrative staff recommendations, 1 presentation, 14 consent items, 7 action items, which include public. Which include public hearings for policies and a charter school contract renewal, as well as two information items.

16:44 Changes made to the agenda since it was first released to the public on Tuesday, August 18, 2021, are as follows. Items A7 on administrative staff recommendations, F13 on instructional staff recommendations, and F14 on support staff recommendations, all received revision. What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve.

17:07 Second moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Mr. Google. Is there any discussion? Hearing none.

17:15 Please vote. And the motion passes. Five, zero.

17:47 Dr. Mullins, will you please let us know about the administrative staff recommendation? Yes, Madam Chair. There are four persons on this agenda item for the board to consider. Give me a move.

17:57 Move to approve. Moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. Campbell and Mr. Susan.

18:02 I believe you had discussion. Yeah, I just. I’m sorry.

18:06 The microphone. No, it’s not your fault, Dr. Mullins. One of the things that we used to do.

18:11 Many of you guys don’t understand this, but. Cause you weren’t in the other meetings. But we always used to read who our new principals were gonna be.

18:17 And we’ve gotten away from some things inside of our district because of the COVID protocols and the speed and everything else. But one of the things that I would like to do is start getting back to the things that we used to do well. And one of those was honoring the individuals that for the first time in their lives are gonna be moving up inside of our administration.

18:34 There’s only four names, Dr. Mullins. It’s more appropriate for you to read them. Or I can read them off of the agenda if you would like me to.

18:39 If you can’t pull it up. But I would just like to take a second and honor those individuals for that. It’s something we used to do.

18:45 We used to have their families here. We used to have them speak. It was a big deal.

18:49 And now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re trying to move, but I’d like to try to bring that back. So I apologize for a second. Want me to read it, Madam Chair? Go right ahead, Doctor.

19:00 Oh, wait, no, I just was going to read it. He should read it. His deal, his people.

19:07 All right, I think I have them here. Good luck on some of those names. Yeah, thanks for The Heads up, Mr. Susan.

19:14 First we have the reclassified reclassification transfer of Roxanne Lail from the position of literacy coach at Imperial Estates Elementary School to the position of assistant principal, 10 month at Roosevelt Elementary School. An annual contract, effective August 25th. Congratulations, Ms. Blaial.

19:34 And a reclassification transfer of Christy Mraz from the position of Assistant Principal, 10 month at Endeavor Elementary School to the position of principal at Fair Glen elementary school. Congratulations, Ms. Moraz. And the transfer of Ms. Jennifer Julian from the position of principal at Gemini Elementary School to the position of principal at Columbia elementary school, effective September 10th.

20:02 And finally, the reclassification transfer of Ms. Jasmine Baez from the position of assistant principal at Eau Gallie High School to the position of assistant principal, 12 months at Satellite High School, effective August 25th. Congratulations, Ms. Baez. Thank you, Doctor.

20:23 Hey, Dr. Mullins. Sorry about not giving you a heads up. You did great, though.

20:29 Thank you, Dr. Mullins. And Mr. Susan, I have a motion on the floor. If there’s no further discussion, we’ll call for the vote.

21:01 And that motion passes. 5, 0. Dr. Mullins, will you please let us know about tonight’s presentation? Yes, I saved a little bit of a shout out for as Ms. Hand, our assistant superintendent of facilities, comes forward to provide us a sales surtax update.

21:18 But I’ll begin by doing a shout out and a repeat thank you to our community who last November gave a resounding support of our half Cent sales sales surtax renewal for capital projects. Ms. Hand is going to provide us an update on everything that was accomplished this summer. I think nearly 50 projects across the district.

21:40 And these projects are a direct result of our community support in our schools. I think it’s an exciting opportunity to see the great work that’s happening around our schools, but also the tremendous lift of Ms. Han and her team to make that happen. When you think about, I think last summer in Covid full on Covid summer, we did somewhere close to 20 projects.

22:04 This year, we did somewhere around 50. But I’ll turn it over to you. You take it away.

22:09 Thank you, Dr. Mullins. Good evening, Madam Chairman, members of the board, and thanks for the opportunity to give you a quick snapshot of what we accomplished on everyone’s summer vacation this year. As you all know, the students and the teachers go home and we go to work in facilities.

22:23 So we have the privilege of being the group that invests the sales surtax funds that were approved by the voters in 2014 and 2020. And this year, we did some really cool things, and we welcomed our kids back to some really big changes. So at a few schools, we did something that I would refer to as an extreme makeover.

22:43 And Saturn elementary really was kind of the highlight of that group. But we had several schools that had some fairly significant work. I’m just going to run through these photos real quickly.

22:53 At Saturn, we had a big initiative to improve the water and sewer systems. If you attended Saturn elementary, you would have noticed that the floor was sinking and had various other problems. So you can see some of the work that was done in our restroom facilities.

23:12 But this is something that I took one of these pictures myself, because five weeks or so before school started, we literally had dirt piled in the middle of the school. And to think that five weeks later we have students coming into this area was pretty astounding. So it gives you kind of a picture of what our folks can accomplish.

23:31 We do have really good teamwork. We have great contractors, great engineers, and so really proud of what we can accomplish in a very short period of time. Let me run through a couple of before and after photos.

23:42 This is a bathroom at Saturn. And again, it was completely torn up. And you can see what the results of the work are.

23:42 This is a before picture, an after picture. We tried to incorporate some of the school colors and just really do a better job of making the kids feel connected to their school. These are some photos that I took that kind of show you the trench that was dug the intermittent repair and then the final new flooring.

24:12 So pretty exciting to see what we can do. Another initiative at Saturn is we have some old classrooms with these kind of wood walls is probably an overstatement in between the classrooms. And so we wanted to try a prototype of taking that down and doing some improvements in the classroom.

24:32 So this is what the after condition looks like. And so we were able to do two classrooms and we’re going to hopefully be doing more in the future. And we’re trying to really step up kind of what a modern classroom looks like.

24:44 One of the big initiatives in the sales tax program is LED lighting. So you can see a big difference in the lighting classrooms and where we are doing work. Typically the lighting gets improved as well.

24:54 So it really makes a huge difference. We’re still doing some H VAC projects from the 2014 sales surtax, doing some work at Titusville High School, Jupiter and Riviera elementary schools. Creel was another school where we did a fairly significant makeover.

25:12 That is a school that had open classrooms. And so we’ve been really wanting to create classroom walls for many years. And finally we had the opportunity to do that with the sales search.

25:25 And so big differences. At Creel, new flooring, new walls, new carpet in the media center just really looks a lot different. To welcome our kids back school and our behind the scenes.

25:37 One of our sales tax projects from 2020 is an electrical renewal. That’s an initiative that we have throughout the district. We started with Lockmar.

25:45 This is one type of project where we actually have experienced some material shortages. So that’s concerning and will be concerning as we plan for future project at Edgewood to help keep the weather on the outside of the building. That’s one of our goals at Manatee Elementary.

26:05 New tiller drain building envelope improvements. Many of these schools need bits and pieces of work in a variety of categories. At Stone, we have been chipping away at the canopy renewal.

26:17 And if you’ve been at Stone over the past seven or eight years, you’ll recognize we’ve made some significant changes to the front canopies for the bus loop canopies. This year we also did the canopy over the outside of the cafeteria area, the commons area. And we have more work to do but really taking that project seriously and trying to help that school get some upgrades to their canopies.

26:45 Eau Gallie, we did central energy plant renewal. You can see a chiller on the crane in the middle. That was pretty exciting to see a chiller fly.

26:53 And then we also did A locker room renewal. And this is again, probably a model that we’ll be using at other schools as we do some capital investments. This was a capital project, and you can make a dramatic difference with a little bit of investment.

27:08 Myla is another school that had some very significant changes. We did everything from closing some exterior doors and painting drainage improvements to stop some flooding problems that we’ve had classroom upgrades with LED lighting and just maybe did a big makeover at myla too, and we’re very proud of the work there. Similarly, at Pinewood, doing some upgrades to H Vac, Changing out some classroom walls that are currently.

27:37 Well, they were bookshelves and now they’re actually walls, so it’s a nice change. The covered play area is getting a new canopy and some work in the cafeteria. Cocoa beach, we have some cooling towers and H Vac improvements.

27:54 This is one where the second chiller just wasn’t coming in on time. So our guys had to scramble and have a plan B. So we kept the old chiller running and we’ll bring in the new one and replace it over winter break.

28:07 Gemini elementary, we were able to upgrade the cooling towers and get the ice storage working, which will save the district money and energy. So that was kind of exciting to get that project done as well. Meadow Lane.

28:19 We’ve been doing H Vac improvements at Meadow Lane Central complex for the last three years or so. This is kind of the tail end of it. And even though we’ve had a few hiccups with school opening and putting loads on the system and finding little glitches, we’re very confident that HVA system at the Meadow Lane complex and Central Middle School is going to serve those schools for many years to come.

28:42 This was a project that we collaborated with, leading and learning to provide a reading room at Madison and very excited. I unfortunately don’t have any before pictures, but the after pictures reflect a dramatic. And I’m really proud of what we can do to support the learning environment at our schools.

29:05 Long time coming was middle school locker room air conditioning. We’ve talked about that for many years. And the board’s investment of capital in this project, we were able to get it done.

29:14 So we got all of the middle school locker rooms air conditioned mainly this past summer. Oak park, this was a joint project with the. With Brevard County Emergency Management with a.

29:28 Funded through a grant from the state. And we at Brevard Public Schools, we did the enclosure for the generator and Brevard county provided the generator. So this is one of our special needs shelters.

29:41 And so we’re excited to be able to provide that safety for both emergency conditions and non emergency. Merritt Island High School, they had a pre K classroom that unfortunately had the little kids using the adult bathroom. So that really wasn’t working too well.

29:58 So we were able to come in and make some adjustments and provide a bathroom suitable for those children. We also brought in three classroom portables and a bathroom portable to Merritt Island High School so that they could incorporate a BLAST program into their work. And if you see the middle picture, you see a new painting schematic that has the black and yellow gold colors or black and gold colors of the high school.

30:24 The high school administration asked if they could paint the. We could paint the portables, the school colors. And we’re kind of like, we don’t ever do that.

30:31 And then we got to thinking about it and said, you know, this could be really cool. So we did the trim work. It looked great.

30:37 And we think that’s going to be a model going forward because it really brings the portables into the campus through the paint. And so very simple solution, big impact. We did a number of food services projects with Kevin Thornton’s team.

30:51 We did a project at Astronaut project at Gulfview, Cocoa Beach. And I think at the high school level, we’re trying to have our cafeterias resemble more like a college environment. So really upgrading and changing the way that these facilities work.

31:13 And then we did a lot of painting. So another aspect of the 2020 Sales Surtax Program was funding for paint. And so we did some painting at Madison, painting at Oak park, painting at endeavor, painting at McNair and painting at University Park.

31:38 So I guess where we’re going now and the future holds a lot of excitement for me and for our team. We have a lot of investment in the surtax roof renewal. That’s kind of our big facility renewal type work.

31:53 But we have playgrounds coming. They’re on order, and hopefully they’ll be coming in this fall. We’re doing lots of LED lighting, lots of painting, have a little bit more air conditioning, building envelope, electrical, plumbing, all that stuff.

32:05 We’ll be getting into track renewal. You have, I believe, on your agenda tonight, award of a bid for bleacher renewal. Those are sail surtax projects.

32:15 And we’ll be upgrading bleachers for schools and then science lab renovation. I want to mention that because we’re collaborating again with leading and learning to kind of figure out what the model science lab will look like in the future. And we hope to be doing more with Science lab.

32:32 So with that, I just want to say thanks. I’ve got an awesome team in facilities, including our project team, our PlanOps folks, maintenance, they are taking on some of these projects like playgrounds and lighting. They’re helping us and working on the sales, technology, investment.

32:47 Our environmental, health and safety folks, they are with us every step of the way with asbestos abatement and things that come up, as well as taking over the code compliance function. So that is now under Mr. Powers. We also partner with Educational Technology and Security.

33:03 They are our partners in investment and they are doing great things in schools too with sales or tax. But I have to give a special shout out to our friends in finance and procurement because we push an enormous amount of purchase orders and contract, all that stuff through the system and we have people who support us every step of the way and we couldn’t do it without them. Government, community relations, Russ team have been out in the field.

33:30 I think you’ve seen the results of some of their work with the videos showing our certax projects. So they’ve been partnering with us as well, our independent citizens Oversight Committee. Those folks are very highly engaged and really support the program and provide a great level of oversight.

33:46 So you can look forward to their annual report in December. And then I have to thank Pam because she processes the enormous amount of paperwork that comes through. We do lots and lots and lots of contracts, so she typically gets a pretty big stack.

34:01 And also thank our legal team for helping us with our. We just, we have a great team and we couldn’t do it without everybody collaborating. And so I want to say thanks and thanks for the opportunity to tell you about our work this summer.

34:16 Yeah. And you know, Sue, I just want to highlight, and I know internally we have had this conversation multiple times, but the impact that our facilities have on our students, engagement and their educational process. Everything from buildings being too hot if air conditioning is not working, but even down to the environment in the classroom, the lighting in the classroom, the feel of the entire classroom.

34:48 We know that there’s a huge impact there for our students. And I have to say again, the ownership that you have taken and promoted of your role in academic success has just been phenomenal. And we are just so appreciative of your leadership.

35:06 And I know you don’t do it alone. You have a phenomenal team that supports you as we just saw. But I think, you know, the attitude starts at the top of that ownership and really digging in and understanding what your role is in mission.

35:16 So thank you. Everybody wants to say Something so you know how I feel about your team. Your team is amazing.

35:28 You worked on so many of my schools this summer, so thank you very much. And I walked through some of them. I thought, okay, is this really going to be ready? I remember going to Saturn.

35:37 I said, okay, the ducks are not here, but right now we have mud pile. So you guys really pulled it off. And that was the day before school opened.

35:46 So I thought, what an amazing team. And it looks beautiful. And thank you so much.

35:51 And I want to give a big shout out to your whole team. So my thanks to your team. Yes, you may.

35:59 Ms. Jenkins, give me one second. Go right ahead. Thanks.

36:03 I don’t want to be redundant in thanking you and your team, but I feel like I have to and like you guys are our very own hgtv. You know, in two months, everything’s done. It’s really nice.

36:14 But I also want to give you an additional shout out and thank you for not only managing your team and all of those insane amount of projects that we had this summer, but you go above and beyond to answer questions and emails of our citizens that are very specific and specific to some of our surtax projects. And so I appreciate you for being so responsive and so involved and invested in your job. Coming to you, Ms. Campbell, I’ll keep mine short.

36:44 I just wanted to add to all the obstacles that we had this year that it was a shorter summer than ever before. So kudos to your team and also to our contractors for getting that job done on an even faster timeline. So I wanted to say thank you.

37:00 At first, when I saw those pictures, I thought you were getting those from my house, because my wife says that basically I should have got a degree in archeology with the way that I do projects. So that’s awesome. I wanted to also say that many people don’t understand, but we were blessed to get sue to be a part of our team.

37:18 And she is known throughout this entire county, not just by who we are up here and what she does here, but all the other city managers. She is known. She can pick up the cell phone and she is.

37:29 They revere you as an individual and you set the standard for all of them in our county. So when we have an issue with the city council or anything like that, sue goes in and takes care of it before we even know about it and then makes us look really good. So I wanted to say thank you for all of your work.

37:43 Also, sue was. Was. They put sue as I’m her board champion.

37:47 And it was basically because sue is the best person to deal with me as an individual. I think they were all sitting around trying to figure it out. So thank you, sue, for working with me the whole time.

37:56 So thank you. All right. Thank you so much.

38:03 We appreciate you, sue, and your team and all of the collaboration that gets us where we need to go. So. You’re a rock star.

38:09 Thank you. All right, board members, we are now at public comment. We have 33 speakers signed up to speak this evening, and we have one agenda item.

38:27 So speaker on item H32, I will entertain a motion from the board as to how you would like to handle our public speakers this evening. Give me a hand if you want to. How many do we have? We have 33 public speakers, one agenda item.

38:46 Did you have a suggestion? My suggestion. Hold on. That’s okay.

38:52 My suggestion would be that we do who’s speaking towards the agenda, and then everyone else. We do our business, and then they speak. That’s what we’ve been doing.

39:01 So is that a motion, Ms. McDougall? Yeah. I have a motion for Ms. McDougall. Do I have a second? I have a second from Ms. Campbell.

39:11 Is there any board member. Let me. Let me back that up.

39:14 All board members in favor, please signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Same sign. The motion passes.

39:20 5. 0. All right.

39:23 We are now at public comment. Those. Each speaker is limited to three minutes.

39:29 We have a clock in front of me to help you keep track of your time. When your time is over, you will be asked to stop and allow the next speaker his or her turn. Always keep in mind that reasonable decorum is expected at all times, and your statement should be directed to the board chairman.

39:40 The chairman may interrupt. Warner. Terminate a participant statement when time is up.

39:44 It’s personally directed, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant. Should an individual not observe proper etiquette, the chairman may request the individual leave the meeting. Let’s all encourage an environment appropriate for our children who may be present or watching from home.

39:56 Our first speaker this evening is going to be Jody Hand. Jody, if you would approach the mic for me. Hi.

40:09 Dear members of the board and Mr. Superintendent, thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening. And dear fellow parents, I applaud you for using your First Amendment rights to address your concerns. These great United States of America provide us many rights and freedoms, and we should all be grateful.

40:27 My agenda item is H32, student code of conduct on page 84, the discipline plan, level one under student behavior. The double asterisk at the bottom of the page still shows failure to wear A mask is a dress code violation. As masks are no longer required, I ask you to please remove this condition back to those rights and freedoms we enjoy here in the US Today I come to you concerning my children’s right to medical freedom provided under the Constitution of the United States, as well as under Florida law HB241.

41:04 Thank you for continuing to keep masks optional. I realize the surge of COVID positive cases around our country creates valid concern for many parents around the county. Mitigation procedures can and should constantly be updated.

41:21 Better air circulation, smaller class sizes, block scheduling are reasonable strategies. But masks. Masks are not an effective measure to slow the spread of this virus.

41:32 However, research and data are essential. So I took the time to compare COVID positive rates between nine counties in Florida. Five of these counties were force masked and four are masked optional.

41:45 This information is provided for you here and I will email it to you later today. In each instance, I compiled the percentage of the student population that is COVID positive as compared to the overall student population. Only one county was over 1%, and that is a force mask county.

42:03 These figures are available on each school district’s publicly provided Covid dashboard. They reflect the numbers through 820, except for 1. As noted, for mask counties, 0.

42:32 01 to 1.3% of the student population was COVID positive. In mask optional counties, 0.

42:44 18 to 0.63% of the student population was COVID positive. To reiterate, the highest percentage of COVID positive cases are enforced mask counties.

42:55 The overall message, though less than 1% of the student population has Covid. And that is a good thing. Regarding the quarantine policy, you are accountable to by the Department of Health.

43:01 God love you. But please consider meeting with the DoH to effectively change the number of healthy children restricted from learning. I fear our learning gap will be even wider if we continue down this road.

43:23 We need to get back to the business of teaching our children. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your service.

43:33 Thanks, Jody. All right, that is going to move us to the consent agenda. Dr. Mullins.

43:41 Madam Chair, there are 14 agenda items under this category. Thank you, Dr. Mullens. Does any board member wish to pull any item from the consent agenda hearing? None.

44:20 I’ll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Moved by Mr. Susan, seconded by Ms. Campbell. Is there any discussion? Hearing? None.

44:32 Please vote. All right. And that motion passes.

44:40 5, 0. Dr. Malone, will you please let us know about the items under action? There are seven items under this category. The first one is G25 on procurement.

45:05 Do I have a motion? Move to approve. Moved by Ms. Versus seconded by Ms. McDougall. Is there any discussion? Hearing none.

45:14 Please vote. The motion passes. 5, 0.

45:47 Dr. Mullins, item G26 on department school initiated agreement wishes of the board. Move to approve. Moved by Ms. Versus seconded by Ms. Campbell.

45:56 Is there any discussion? Hearing none. Please vote. And the motion passes.

46:15 5, 0. Dr. Mullins, item G27 is to hold a public hearing and approve board policy 3124 drug free workplace. Is there anyone here to address the revisions in Policy 3124 Drug Free Workplace.

46:44 Is there anyone here to address the revisions in Policy 3124 Drug Free Workplace. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. McDougal.

47:01 Is there any discussion? Hearing none. Please vote. The motion passes.

47:08 5, 0. Dr. Mullins, item D28 is to hold the public hearing and approve charter contract. Is there anyone here who would like to address the charter contract for imagine schools of West Is there anyone here who would like to address the charter contract for charter school.

47:11 I’m sorry. The contract for imagine schools. Question Hearing None.

47:38 I will entertain a motion. Approved. Moved by Mr. Susan.

47:41 Seconded by Ms. Campbell. Is there any discussion? Hearing None. Please vote.

48:03 The motion passes. 5, 0. Dr. Mullins.

48:08 D29 is to hold a public hearing and approve board policy 5111.01 homeless student. Is there anyone here to address the revisions to board policy 5111.

48:33 01 homeless is there anyone here to address the revisions to board policy 5111.01 homeless students. Hearing None.

48:43 I’ll entertain a motion. Approved. Moved by Mr. Susan.

49:02 Seconded by Ms. Campbell. Is there any discussion? Hearing None. Please vote.

49:10 The motion passes. 5, 0. Dr. Mullins, item G30 is to hold a public hearing and approve board policy 8475 criminal background check for non district personnel.

49:37 Is there anyone here this evening to address the revisions to board policy 8475 criminal background check for non district personnel. Is there anyone here this evening to address the revisions to board policy 8475 criminal background check for non district personnel. Hearing none.

49:58 I’ll entertain a motion Move to approve moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. McDougal. Is there any discussion? Hearing none.

50:01 Please vote. The motion passes. 5, 0.

50:27 And item G31 is to hold a public hearing and approve the revisions in board policy 8500 food service. Is there anyone Present who wishes to address the revisions to board policy 8500? Food services. Is there anyone present who wishes to address the revisions to board policy 8500? Service hearing.

50:34 None. I’ll entertain a motion. Move to approve.

50:50 Moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. Campbell. Is there any discussion? The motion passes.

51:03 5. 0. We will now move on to the information agenda, which includes items for board review and may be brought back for action at a subsequent meeting.

51:09 No action will be taken on these items tonight. Dr. Mullins, there are two items under the information category this evening. Does any board member wish to discuss the information items that are on the agenda for this? No.

51:27 Right. That is going to bring us. To our additional public comments.

51:35 Board members. We. I kind of made a commitment to you last time that we would try to take a break about every hour.

51:54 Would you like to get a little bit into public comments and break in approximately 20 or 30 minutes, or do you want to go ahead and break now and then start our public comment? Okay. All right. We will go back to our public comment at this time, then.

52:17 As a reminder, each speaker is limited to three minutes. We have a clock in front of me to help you keep track of your time. When your time is over, you will be asked, stop, and allow the next speaker his or her turn.

52:34 Always keep in mind that reasonable deform is expected at all times, and your statements should be directed toward the board chair. The chair may interrupt, warn, or terminate a participant’s statement when time is up, it’s personally directed, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant. Should an individual not observe proper etiquette, the chairman may request the individual leave the meeting.

52:39 Let’s all encourage an environment appropriate for our children who may be present or are watching from home. As a reminder for our speakers, the three minutes are made available to the person who is speaking, and we’re going to ask that the rest of the audience stay quiet so that we can hear what they have to say and get through all the speakers for tonight. Okay? Before speaking, please state your name, the organization you represent, if any, and identify the topic you will be discussing.

52:56 Our first three speakers will be Sarah Ray, Thomas Jefferson, and Elise Strobel. Sarah, if you would make your way to the podium, please. Hi.

53:09 Sorry. Good evening. My name is Sarah Ray.

53:26 I am a science teacher at Madison Middle School. I stand before you today not only as a teacher, but also as a parent. Last December, my son and I were featured on the news after he suffered a collapsed lung, the result of lung scarring from a COVID infection.

53:40 He spent a week in the hospital endured two chest tubes and the surgery to remove damaged lung tissue from his. From his lung. And they stapled his lung up on the chest wall.

53:51 I feel like I know better than most how this pandemic can affect us as parents. My son was healthy. He had no underlying conditions, and we went through extensive tests to rule out any underlying causes, including genetic tests.

54:36 Now he is forever at a high risk for reoccurrence and is considered to have a pre existing condition. I’m sorry. Sorry.

54:55 All right. This pandemic has taught us anything. It is a science that’s incredibly undervalued and undertaught in our society today.

55:14 How has our country gone from one at the peak of scientific achievement to one that refuses to believe in a huge body of scientific evidence that proves that when worn correctly, masks work? The CDC guidelines support mask wearing for all regardless of vaccination status due to the amount of community spread. The American Academy of Pediatrics does as well. Since when do we ignore the recommendations of our respected scientific communities in favor of a rhetoric that has no scientific backing? It is the absolute duty of our educational systems to stand up for facts and science and to lead as an example to the community for which we serve.

55:27 Failure to do this discredits our value to society. It is shameful and it is embarrassing. The school at which I teach, Madison Middle School, has seen a significant number of students, way more than 1% with COVID as a result of and they’re out as a result of quarantine.

55:54 Multiple members of staff are also infected. We have lost teachers in our district that we know and we love. As a teacher who cares deeply for my community, for the students, and for the coworkers who are all really like family to me, to see them suffer is unbearable.

56:21 We cannot teach students who are not at school. But the only way to ensure Covid is not spreading like wildfire is to require masks among students and staff with a medical opt out only. Anything less will simply not be enough.

56:34 I call on the board and the superintendent to do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing, and even if it means ramifications from the state level. And how can we live with ourselves if even one child dies as a result of our negligence? Thomas Jefferson. Thomas.

56:59 After him is. My name is Thomas Jefferson and I’m with the Patriot Party, Brevard. I didn’t hear any of the board members up here give a shout out to the people, to the parents of the 6,300 kids that were quarantined.

57:19 That have to deal with this quarantine. So I want to give a shout out to the 6,300 parents that have to take care of our kids. Not one member up here said anything about the parents that have to deal with taking off time at work and everything else to deal with these quarantine kids.

57:25 Okay, first of all, let me start by saying we, the people of Brevard, are fed up. We’re fed up with having to spend every Tuesday night coming to these meetings to discuss mass mandates, quarantines, lbtq, genders, critical race theories. We are fed up with having to convince five people that we, the people of Brevard, elected to do the will of the people.

57:37 Not once have I heard one member of this board stand up and say, I voted no on mass mandate because that’s what my constituents want. I’ve never heard that ever. Won’t I have been to enough of these meetings to realize that the five of you are going to vote however you want, regardless what we the people want.

57:43 Let me tell you something. Those days are over. We the people are fed up.

57:59 And if you will not abide by the will of the people, we will get rid of all five of you. Now let’s discuss the ridiculous COVID 19. Wake up, people.

58:08 This is a flu, okay? That they call Covid. It’s never, ever going away. Never.

58:20 So we need to go on living our lives just like we did when we had the flu prior to this whole COVID pandemic. We need to stop all the quarantines of the students that are not sick. I mean, stop all quarantines.

58:35 Not three days, not six days, no days. You are ruining our kids lives and these quarantines. Our kids are quarantined for almost a week.

58:51 Then they go back to school and sit next to somebody that tests positive and they get quarantined again for another week even though they are not sick. Stop the madness. This is insanity.

58:56 If you want to send your kids home that are sick or test positive for the flu virus, that’s fine. But stop sending healthy, non sick kids home. They are not getting any schoolwork sent to them and they are falling behind.

59:23 I say here and now to all the patriots of Brevard, if the school quarantines your kids, send them back to school the next day and the day after and the day after. Do not bow down anymore. Thank you, sir.

59:33 Audience members, I’m going to remind you. Please stop interrupting the speaker. Finish, sir.

59:52 When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. Thank you Elise Strobel. And then after Elise we’re going to have Alyssa Bobbitt, Charlie Graham, and then Katie Delaney.

1:00:07 My name is Elise. 16 and in 11th grade I go to Melbourne High School. I want to start off by saying how unbelievably happy I am to be in my junior year mask free.

1:00:31 I can see faces, emotions and I’m able to breathe. If Brevard county went back to a mask mandate, I would be de enrolling from school and switching to FLVs because there is no way I could go through another year like that. On just my second week back to school, I was already quarantined for supposedly being exposed to someone that tested positive.

1:00:37 But what doesn’t make sense to me is I was exposed on Friday, worked all weekend, went to school all day Monday, and my mom got the call after school. So I pretty much had a vacation because two of my four teachers didn’t even have a Google classroom set up. So I had to make it up when I got back.

1:00:47 The quarantining of healthy students is not okay. Why is it that I have to miss valuable time in my classroom when there is nothing wrong with me? And why is it the vaccinated people are told they can come back when? I have heard more stories of the vaccinated people catching and spreading Covid than the so called super spreaders or unvaccinated people. What I want to know is how many students that got put on quarantine actually got Covid? Oh, that’s right.

1:01:02 No one seems to have that information. Me or anyone I know that has ever been quarantined. Stop interrupting.

1:01:14 Has gone anywhere near sick. No teacher should be trying to talk kids into getting the vaccine. That is a decision for parents to make and does not involve the government or schools.

1:01:21 The next thing I want to address is the completely unfair dress code. I’m going to name just a few things I’ve seen this year. Dog collars, witch costumes, spiky shoes, chains, fishnet leggings with spandex and platform shoes.

1:01:32 I’ve not seen any of those people wearing those things getting dress coded. What I did see however is a record number of girls getting dress coded for showing their chest or showing their belly button. That’s considered to be a distraction.

1:01:46 But colored hair spikes and dog collars isn’t. As my dean said, that’s their fashion choice. Even though it’s clearly stated in the dress code.

1:02:06 Dog collars, chains and spikes aren’t allowed because those are weapons. I understand short shorts, but really a Tank top. When we live in Florida, my body, along with every other woman’s, is not a distraction.

1:02:15 When the dress code is fairly enforced and equal is when I will follow it. Until then, I will continue to wear what I want. Thank you, Alyssa Bobbitt.

1:02:24 Alyssa Bobbitt? Are you alyssa bobbitt? No worries. We’re almost to you, Alyssa. Hello, I am here again.

1:02:38 Oh, my name is Alyssa Bobbitt, and I’m here to speak again about two topics. First, I will start with the dress code. The dress code is very unfair.

1:02:44 The second week of school on a Monday, over 54 students, including myself, got dress coded. And can you guess who? That’s right. They were all females.

1:03:05 I was wearing a tank top that was not even showing my stomach. I get rudely told by one of the deans to go to the dean’s office because apparently my shirt is a distraction to people. I go down to the dean’s office and they told me to wear a jacket.

1:03:18 And I told them I will not wear a jacket because it is way too hot out. It’s 90 degrees in Florida. And I said, I’m not wearing a jacket.

1:03:31 And they said I can get suspended. How is that even fair that I can get suspended for wearing what I want to wear? You know what should be dress coded is the people who are wearing dog collars, chains, spikes, or even guys wearing skirts or tank tops. But how come they don’t get dress coded? It is very unfair and something needs to be changed because I know that my tank top is not a distraction.

1:03:40 And I know that every female at my school feels the same exact way. The other topic I’d like to talk about is the quarantining. My best friend got quarantined only the second week of school, and I got quarantined yesterday.

1:03:46 And guess what I did today? I swam at my pool because there’s absolutely no work that they are posting at Google Classroom. I’m completely healthy. There’s no reason I should be sitting at home doing nothing.

1:04:05 It has taken away our education in a student that is completely healthy sitting at home doing nothing. Our high school memories are being ruined because of all this. And it’s not fair.

1:04:10 Being quarantined for more than seven days when a student is healthy is way too long. It needs to be changed. Thank you.

1:04:30 Thank you, Charlie Graham. Charlie. And then after Charlie, we have Katie Delaney, followed by Ashley hall and Christina Harris.

1:04:39 Thanks, Charlie. Good evening. I’ve been a Republican ever since I voted for Ronald Reagan.

1:05:14 I’m a centrist that believes that Senator John McCain was one of our most dedicated, honorable public servants that always served with the highest integrity and never worried about setting friends and foes. I’ve flown military helicopters, airplanes fought during times of war. I flew the metlife blimp and supposedly I’m an IT guru.

1:05:43 I have six children. None of that matters. COVID 19 is a terrible virus that is highly transmissible and deadly.

1:06:07 The medical community is universally in agreement that the most effective way to eradicate the pandemic is by vaccinations. Now that the FDA has fully approved the Pfizer COVID vaccine for Those that are 16 and up, this board needs to modify its current vaccine policy to include fully approved Covid vaccines. That way, as additional vaccines and age groups are fully FDA approved, no further board action is required.

1:06:26 With taking into account medical and religious exemptions, all Brevard public school eligible staff, teachers and students should attest to having received the vaccine or those individuals should be required present a weekly negative COVID test. Masks are the best mitigation solution. However, they are most effective only if pods of individual all participate.

1:06:36 There will be a school child in Brevard that dies from COVID What will we have done to prevent that death? In the movie Crimson Tide, Denzel Washington’s character tells the radiotech bossler quote, it’s all up to you. It’s a crappy deal, but you can handle it. Well, this board is in the same boat.

1:06:58 It’s your job to keep our children safe. Most of the county is aware of the governor’s threat of withholding funds should you choose to implement a mask policy. So if the bully of Tallahassee does follow through, take the funds from my wife’s paycheck.

1:07:11 She is a teacher. I’d rather have her poorer than dead. A Florida third grader from Canopy Oaks elementary died from COVID this week.

1:07:34 Dozens of children are in pediatric ICU suffering from COVID These are facts. So you are left contemplating when a Brevard school child dies. Did I or did I not do everything to prevent that child’s death? From COVID 19.

1:07:50 I know what the maverick would do. He would give a big thumbs down to the bully of Tallahassee, just like eight other school districts in the state of Florida. Thank you, Charlie.

1:08:16 AUDIENCE I’m going to say this one more time if I have to address it again. You are not going to come into this boardroom and be rude to other speakers. We will give you the same respect that we are giving them, but if the behavior continues, we will Clear the room and only bring speakers in because it is absolutely inappropriate for me to have to interrupt them speaking.

1:08:41 Who ask you all to stop yelling out in the midst of them speaking or to boo them or clap at them when they leave the podium. So this is the final warning across the board. Their three minutes is their three minutes, not your three minutes.

1:08:55 Katie Delaney. Quarantining our healthy kids. There’s no point.

1:09:02 Children are not turning up COVID positive when we are quarantining our healthy children. Not happening. I believe it’s.

1:09:19 007%. The kids are testing positive when they’re quarantined through the contact tracing. So you are not doing your jobs and educating our children.

1:09:37 I saw a post today of a mom struggling with their kid because they have missed two weeks of algebra 2. Imagine missing two weeks of algebra 2. You might as well fail the kid now.

1:09:46 They’re not getting work, sent home. They’re not getting any help. There’s no e learning, there’s no nothing.

1:09:55 Stop quarantining our healthy kids. It’s illegal. Secondly, I really need to talk about this because I have emailed, I have spoken up here directly to the person.

1:10:22 Our teachers are not racist. The achievement gap is not because our teachers are racist. It’s because many different things which we don’t have time to talk about today, which I reached out to the naacp.

1:10:48 I’ve reached out to many of you. I’ve reached out to all sorts of organizations. I want to help our kids that are not getting educated.

1:10:54 And I know that you guys do too. Stop blaming it on racist teachers. We don’t have racist teachers.

1:11:06 And shame on you for calling our teachers racist. The last thing I want to talk about is the board’s public Facebook pages of. It’s important that if you guys have these pages that you guys are monitoring them because people are being threatened.

1:11:28 And it’s completely inappropriate that it’s happening on your guys’s, you know, school board Facebook pages. If you have them, you need to monitor them because, I mean, at the end of the day, you’re liable if somebody gets hurt. You know, put it out there to your constituents, say, hey, guys, this is completely inappropriate.

1:11:33 This will not happen on my page. I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on. This is completely inappropriate.

1:12:02 That’s what needs to be stated. Because this is getting out of hand and somebody’s going to get hurt and then it’s going to be, you know, a much bigger problem. So please, please address that.

1:12:18 Thank you, Ms. Delaney. Ashley Hall. After ashley, we have christina harris, lois lacoste and lacey saxon.

1:12:49 Hello, members of the board. My name is Ashley Hall. I’m the Brevard Chair for Moms for Liberty.

1:13:11 Moms for Liberty, Brevard Chapter is a 514c nonprofit, nonpartisan organization operating within Brevard County. We are dedicated to promoting the ideals of liberty, individual rights, limited government, and parental rights within the education system. Our mission is to restore the balance of our education system by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.

1:13:40 I wanted to bring the Parental Bill of Rights guide to all of our members today here, if you would like one. I have more, but I wanted to read a few of the parental rights that we are granted now that this is law. The right to make health care decisions for our minor children unless otherwise prohibited by law.

1:14:02 The right to make medical decisions to address any needs of our minor children. This is a matter between us, our minor children, and a competent health care professional chosen by the right to exempt our minor children from immunization for religious reasons. Those are just a few of the rights that are given to parents with the Parental Bill of Rights.

1:14:17 And we’re very thankful for Governor DeSantis passing that for signing that bill. I want to make clear that no one in this room, regardless of our opinions on the efficacy of masks or the opinion of the vaccine, wants people to be sick. And we certainly wish for those that are sick to get well and get well soon.

1:14:41 However, there has never been a time in history where healthy people have been quarantined at the rates and in the manner that we are quarantining now. I’d like to ask the board to put in motion or petition the Florida Department of Health to track contact trace quarantines and whether those contact traces are actually getting sick. If the data is showing that quarantine children are getting sick, I can see that continuing this practice is working and is necessary.

1:14:58 However. But if the data does not show that people are getting sick, and I feel strongly that we’re not going to find that evidence, then I think a petition from the board would be in order to the Department of Health and the governor. Moms for Liberty will be putting out some calls to action to our members to start writing and calling legislators to look at the data and change their rules.

1:15:22 If the data is showing that kids are not getting sick, we would greatly appreciate your collaboration in this effort because it would benefit us all. It would benefit all of us to be doing what works and stop doing what clearly does not work. Thank you for your time.

1:15:41 Thanks, Ashley. Christina Harris. Christina Harris.

1:16:04 Evening. As a parent of three elementary age children, my concern is about the current quarantine protocols. I believe the board should be working with the Department of Health to remove this policy for asymptomatic children.

1:16:17 We are quarantining 7 to 10 healthy children per positive Covid case. There isn’t proof that these quarantine groups of children are actually getting Covid nor becoming symptomatic just by sitting next to each other in the classroom. I asked the Department of Health for the statistics on what percentage of the quarantined children are actually coming back with a positive test or becoming symptomatic and they do not have that data.

1:16:33 These quarantines are forcing perfectly healthy children to miss out on school, sports and social events. Students are frustrated, worried about trying to keep up with their grades in school, especially if they end up with multiple quarantines this year. It is hard enough to miss school when you are actually sick.

1:16:33 Many of us have witnessed firsthand the negative impact these quarantines have on our children’s mental health and it is heartbreaking. Requiring a negative COVID test just to attend school needs to stop. The testing sites are not providing asymptomatic testing and are charging extremely high fees are completely unnecessary.

1:17:03 Quarantines are disrupting our children’s education and violating their right to receive equal educational opportunities in person. I want my parental rights back. I want to make decisions to send my healthy child to school.

1:17:13 Our children have healthy immune systems, have over a 99.9% recovery rate if they get Covid and will most likely only experience mild symptoms. We need to stop analyzing every little symptom and start using common sense again.

1:17:20 If my child has a close contact exposure, fine, notify me. I want to use my judgment to monitor my child’s own health as I see fit. If my child has a fever, I will keep them home until they are fever free, just like I’ve always done.

1:17:37 If my child is feeling well, then I absolutely they absolutely need to be in school. It is crazy to me when I hear a child is sent home from school for a week because of a headache or a runny nose. It is completely normal for young children to have up to nine colds a year.

1:17:52 We all experience headaches from time to time. Nothing a little Tylenol can’t help. Lots of us have allergies that cause runny nose sneezing and sometimes trigger a cough.

1:18:04 When I hear that if students are vaccinated. They don’t need to quarantine. It is 100% discriminating against non vaccinated person.

1:18:50 The vaccine does not stop you from being a carrier and we need to recognize that natural immunity is good as good if not better than a vaccination. We will never stop this from spreading and we can’t act like we can. It is just like the flu virus and will continue to constantly mutate.

1:19:27 Our children will get it and recover from it. Being vaccinated should not be incentivized as a get out of free jail card. Thank you Christina.

1:19:44 Lois lacoste. Good evening School Board members. Thank you for allowing me to stand up and talk before you.

1:20:19 I’ve sent all of you emails and I know you probably receive a few hundred every day, so I understand if you haven’t looked at my email, but I would appreciate if you would look for my name and please read my email and I would appreciate a response. I have appeared before you in the past and I have sent email messages to each of you as well regarding my comments this evening I would like to state regarding Critical Race Theory and the Equity and Diversity Committee in our schools and even the subject of reparations. I would ask each of you and especially those watching Livestream from home, please go and get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil as your teachers would instruct you in class every day.

1:20:31 I have something that I would appreciate you writing down. Please go to YouTube and do a search of North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and also Derek Wilburn, W I L B U R N Executive Director at Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Watch and listen to their posted videos on these subjects which also voice my opinion.

1:20:41 I don’t have enough time to go over what these two gentlemen have spoke about. I would appreciate you viewing their videos and they are voicing my opinion. And my final comment as far as mask wearing In Brevard County, Governor DeSantis did not ban wearing masks.

1:21:19 He made wearing masks optional. And as a reminder, I would advise our School Board members to read the Parents Bill of rights signed by Governor DeSantis. If each of you are so concerned about our children’s health and safety that mandate teachers, staff and bus drivers to be vaccinated to protect the health of the children they are in contact with on a daily basis, especially those under the age of 12 who cannot get vaccinated.

1:21:48 Thank you very much for your time and I hope you’ll watch those videos. Thanks Lois thank you. Lacey Saxon thank you for being on deck.

1:21:58 Lacey, keep us moving along. After Lacy we have Julie Bywater, Riley Seibel and then Samantha Brown. Hello, my name is Lacey Saxon.

1:22:16 My main concern is the quarantine of our what facts are these determinations being based on other than the CDC and the DoH saying so? I don’t understand where these conclusions are coming from and would appreciate some fact based information that justifies the quarantining of the healthy I had mailed each of you this letter with two pages from Florida Health Department. It is the COVID 19 weekly situation report County Overview as stated in the report from August 6th through 12th for Brevard county, cases per 100,000 are 710.7 that is 001 of the population.

1:22:23 Case positivity rate is 24% as defined in the document. Case positivity is based on the number of people for whom the department received PCR or antigen Laboratory results is the number of people who test positive for the first time divided by all people tested that week excluding people who have previously tested positive as indicated. It includes not only people who are positive for the very first time, but people who test positive for the antigen.

1:22:36 This is not 24% of the population. This is unrelated to the population. It is 24% of the people who are going to the doctor to get tested and are positive for the first time.

1:22:50 Which given they are going to the doctor because they are ill or think they are ill, I would say 24% is a low number. It is very discouraging that I can find this information with a bit of research online. Yet the doctors who were presenting at the August 10th Brevard County School Board meeting had no data to support their opinions.

1:23:04 Children will be missing school for no reason. They apparently can be quarantined an unlimited amount of times. Their grades will drop.

1:23:16 Children who are quarantined will likely miss out on scholarships. Students who are being scouted for college sports will have missed opportunities. Parents will be forced to miss work or leave their kids at home all day by themselves, creating even more problems.

1:23:26 What is the psychological effect? The consequences are immeasurable. All in the name of quarantining healthy children. Why is this being allowed to happen? The virus exists but is being exploited by the news and being made bigger than it really is.

1:23:48 Our children are paying the price. Our children are not the population at risk. Where is the data that supports quarantining healthy children? Where is the data that supports kids passing the virus to the at risk population? Where is the data that supports quarantining Healthy kids last year.

1:23:57 Can this please be explained to me? Many children are already being quarantined and missing school and sports. This is a situation that is already out of hand and we were at the time only in the second week of school. School.

1:24:08 If someone gets sick, by all means send them home from school, but the quarantining needs to stop. I never kept my child home from school because they sat next to someone with the flu. Thank you for your time.

1:24:19 Thank you Julie Bywater and board members. Just for your knowledge, we have Julie, Riley and Samantha and then we’re going to break. Okay, that puts us right about 15.

1:24:30 Julie, whenever you’re ready. Hi, I’m Julie Bywater and tonight I’m actually here on behalf of my high school kids. One is a senior and one is a freshman.

1:24:40 My son who is at football practice is a senior and he would be here to tell you himself, but he can’t be in two places at once. So here I am. This is the second homecoming affected by Covid.

1:24:53 His entire upperclassman career has been consumed by Covid. He watched his brother graduate in 2020 in a math. He’s afraid that that’s going to be his experience too.

1:25:06 I’m disappointed at the blanket cancellation of dances and the like. Six to eight weeks out. In fact, our high school’s date for homecoming was Halloween.

1:25:24 That’s nine weeks away. Not a caution, not a maybe, not a suggestion or a modification. Just a district wide cancellation.

1:25:27 Not to mention that we find out that our specific school will not have a pep rally at all and we find that out on Instagram. It felt like a blow. Again, he will never experience a normal upperclassman homecoming.

1:25:29 People are saying get over it. But they have the opportunity to attend their homecomings at his age. Stop telling kids to act or feel like adults when we plainly see most adults can’t act like one themselves.

1:25:40 Why aren’t we instead providing creative solutions to these events? It can be different than before without full on cancellations. You have a room here filled with people who obviously care very, very much about these students. Why aren’t you asking them to help out? Seek their suggestions, seek their volunteer efforts instead.

1:25:50 It’s just. Nope. We owe better.

1:26:04 I get it. It’s a lot of work. Everyone’s exhausted.

1:26:13 Teachers and staff are overwhelmed. But again, you have a room of passionate people who are willing to serve and they can come together on topics. Even if it’s not Covid.

1:26:30 We live in Florida for crying out loud. Pep rallies can be held outside and tailored to the school have a parade, mini rallies. Cheerleaders could lead rallies during lunch, in the lunchroom or in the courtyards.

1:26:45 Have the dance outside. I’m sure we could work something out with Space Coast Daily park and have something there. How about a homecoming kickoff fair instead with a stage for the entire for the cheerleaders to have their pep rally type events for the whole county.

1:27:18 Rotate times for each school. Get some food trucks, fundraisers, simple game booths run by volunteers. Again, fundraising.

1:27:35 Have some of those school bands play. Yes, it requires planning and people, but we have passionate people in this room that are willing to volunteer. Yes, it’s going to be a little different and a little uncomfortable, but it’s available and it would be optional for those that are uncomfortable.

1:27:54 I urge you to get creative and I urge you to use these passionate people. Kids can go to theme parks, games, scouts, concerts, the beach, museums, malls, shops, movie theaters, restaurants, get on airplanes, but we’re going to deny them homecoming. That’s disappointing.

1:28:20 Their mental health matters and this is important to them and you took it away. Thanks Julie. Good evening and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak on behalf of myself and many of my fellow classmates who are frustrated and worried about their education and have been directly impacted by healthy quarantines.

1:28:47 My name is Riley Seibel and I am a sophomore at Satellite High School and I am dual enrolled student on site at Eastern Florida State. I have been quarantined twice since the beginning of August. Both instances were due to school contact to case.

1:29:11 Both times I was healthy and remained healthy throughout the course of my quarantine. Let me explain what this process looks like from the point of view of a student as we are the ones experiencing firsthand the faults in this process. We go to school, mingle with our friends, then head to class.

1:29:26 In most instances the rumor mill circulates and we know we’re getting quarantined, or cued as we call it, before we even receive the official communication. We go to school every day worrying and wondering if this will be the day we’re quarantined again. If I’m quarantined, not only do I miss high school, but I risk getting dropped from my college classes unless I can get a ride to campus.

1:29:36 The stress and anxiety around that piece alone is exhausting. We can see the overload of added work and stress this is causing our beloved teachers and administrators as well. These amazing people who were called on by God and giving these special gifts of leading and educating are now spending an enormous part of their days Contact tracing with the DoH and fielding calls to and from parents.

1:29:44 Then when we return to school, they spend a large amount of time helping to get students caught up, which is quite a task. I implore you, please work with the DoH to renegotiate these protocols. We have tried to get stats on how many school quarantines actually result in a positive COVID test, but nobody at the DOH has tracked or analyzed this data.

1:29:56 Unfortunately isn’t part of the scientific method to collect and analyze data. Wouldn’t you like to see these stats in our Covid dashboard? I know I would. Especially since everyone I know at my high school has returned healthy from a needless quarantine.

1:30:08 We have a right to an education and those rights are being challenged here. Please work with us, work with the DoH to get this changed. Finally.

1:30:54 Still dealt with. We still dealt with healthy quarantines last year when masks were mandated. So masks aren’t part of the equation here.

1:31:15 What’s missing from the equation is elearning. I also implore you to push for elearning again. Elearning is the most fair and reasonable accommodation for students on both sides of the mask and quarantine arguments.

1:31:20 If we have to be quarantined, we need online learning accommodations. If students don’t feel safe in the mask optional environment, they also deserve online learning accommodations. Thank you, Riley.

1:31:50 Thank you, Samantha Brown. Children in different BPs the common theme I see is that while everyone is arguing about masks and vaccines, no one is noticing that our kids are not receiving a proper education. Maybe that’s part of the plan because, after all, uneducated people are easier to manipulate.

1:32:16 We are living in a time. We are living in a time where people can be doctors, journalists, and even board members while also being completely ignorant of the more important issues in front of their face. It does not take a degree to notice when things aren’t right.

1:32:34 These children are suffering. I see it. And the only title I hold is Mom.

1:32:53 We have members of this board who are using their position to push propaganda. And to be honest, it wouldn’t be such a slap in the face if you actually believe the agenda that you’re pushing. I’ve seen each one of you quickly putting your mask on just as the cameraman yells action to record your next virtue signaling interview.

1:33:15 Last year, my child’s teacher called to tell me that she kept taking her mask off, which I gave her permission to do after learning that despite the mandate, her teacher hardly wore a mask. I heard the teacher out and replied with One simple question. Do you think she’d have such a problem with wearing a mask if she wasn’t being told to do so by a person who doesn’t? The call went silent for a few seconds, and then I was thanked for my time and asked to remind my daughter to wear a mask.

1:33:21 I recently commented on a board member’s post about quarantines from last year, only to be lied to. As if I didn’t experience the quarantine process firsthand. As a mom of three, my oldest daughter was quarantined five or six times despite never having Covid before I finally pulled her out.

1:33:51 Stop quarantining healthy kids. My youngest daughter brought home a permission slip last week for a field trip, only to be told the very next day that all field trips were suspended along with homecoming and even going as far as canceling my son’s school for two days. But don’t worry, because athletic events are still permitted with proper approval.

1:49:24 Maybe because sports are one of the biggest weapons of mass distraction. These kids are together all day long in school and most hang out after school. Why can’t they have field trips or homecoming? Call me a conspiracy theorist or a science denier, but it’s starting to look like the psychological damage being done to our kids under the excuse of COVID is being done on purpose.

1:49:47 All the reasons why are mere speculation. But I know one thing for sure. Something is not right.

1:49:54 How many times are you going to set these kids up for failure? How many coincidences before it’s mathematically impossible? If you don’t want skeptical parents, then stop giving us reasons. These board meetings should not have to be filled every month with parents calling out the people that we trust to educate our children for being. Thank you, Samantha.

1:50:05 All right, board members, we are going to take about a 10 minute recess and then we will resume. Sa. Sa.

1:50:15 All right, we are back from recess and we’ll resume our public comment. If I could ask for a few favors when I call the next three people, if you all could please line up socially distanced on this side of the room so that we’re not waiting for people to come from all the way across and we can go ahead and get through everyone. And if you would please hold your applause, boos, whatever, after the speaker.

1:50:30 Because what I’m hearing is that people can’t hear me calling their names to come up to the mic. And so if we can just. Let’s hear what we have to say.

1:50:47 Get to the next one so you guys can get home to your family. We can get home to ours and all of that good stuff. Okay, so our next three speakers are going to be Janice Criss, Peter Fuskus and then Michelle Beavers.

1:51:14 So if you all would please be on deck over there. And Janice, whenever you are ready. Thank you.

1:51:25 First, I just want to read this. There is no justification for taking away individuals freedom in the guise of public safety. I’m here tonight for a little different reason than most of our speakers.

1:51:47 But I do agree with them. I want to ask you, Madam Chairman, to investigate something that’s very serious. One of your board members has violated sunshine laws and I want you to investigate this.

1:52:09 We believe that she has electronic messages with members of the public during the course of meetings concerning the meeting which is going on that has not been logged into the meeting record. That goes against sunshine laws on her cell phone where she is passing back and forth messages with unknown people. One instance was with the.

1:52:35 The vaccine issue. The vaccine hoax issue that went on. I would ask that that be investigated because that should have gone on the meeting record.

1:53:11 That goes against sunshine violations. She’s using social media to inform other members, the board of her intentions of her voting on issues that are on the agenda. That goes against sunshine violations because she’s using social media as a third party and that is very much against sunshine violations.

1:53:26 Social media is being used to communicate with not only board members but other members of the public to inform them of of her intentions, what they should do, how they should act. And this is. This is a concern for the public and I’m asking you to investigate this.

1:53:33 Any forms of communication she uses while she is at a board meeting, including her own personal cell phone. We have photos of meeting with other board members without proper public notice, which is demanded that she do and the board do in sunshine laws. So we ask that you start an investigation and we have all.

1:53:52 I have also filed a complaint against this person and this person is Ms. Jenkins. We have also sent this complaint to the Board of Education and I’ll also show up there to the next board meeting to inform them of what is going on with the issues here. We believe that many of the problems that we are having here with mask mandates and the quarantines have come from just bad behavior of this person and we ask for an investigation.

1:54:40 Thank you very much, Peter Vasquez. Did Peter have to leave? Oh, sorry Peter, I couldn’t see you behind the mic. The monitor there wasn’t trying to skip you.

1:55:19 Thank you, Peter Fuskus. Alabar. Here we are again.

1:55:52 Face mask. I did some research I wanted to share with you. I came across the publication and it’s called the Universal Masking in Hospitals in the COVID 19 Era by Michael Klumpas, MD.

1:56:13 This is a US study addressing hospitals, but the science is applicable to classrooms as well. A list of authors and their affiliation Harvard Medical School, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Infection Control Unit, Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital. Affiliations with Charles Morris, MD, Julia Sinclair, MBA Pearson, RN and Erica Chinoy, MD, PhD the publication summary what is clear is that universal masking alone is not a panacea.

1:56:34 A mask will not protect providers caring for a patient with active COVID 19 if it’s not accompanied by meticulous hand hygiene, eye protection, gloves and a gown. A mask alone will not prevent health care workers with early COVID 19 from contaminating their hands and spreading the virus to patients and colleagues. Focusing on universal masking alone lead to more transmission of COVID 19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection control measures.

1:56:50 This was followed by 11 infection control measures necessary for protection against COVID 19 applicable to the classroom. It should go without saying children and their teachers are not capable of instituting any of these clinical infection control measures without clinical education, clinical training, clinical experience and clinical procedures. Putting on a mask and wearing it all day is not adequate for surgical masks to be effective.

1:57:08 So herein lies the medical science. Masks are not effective outside the infection controlled environment. According to the UK Medical alliance, most studies found little or no evidence for the effectiveness of masks in general population, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control.

1:57:34 And according to the Swiss Policy Research Group, the coronavirus indeed transmitted through indoor aerosols. Masks are unlikely to be protective. By the way, cdc, WHO and the National Institute of Health were for masks before they were against masks several times.

1:57:48 We appreciate you joining us this evening. All right, we have Michelle Beavers, then Sharon Barone Hodgers and then Mia Hosey. If you guys could get on deck for me, that would be awesome.

1:58:24 Michelle, whenever you’re ready. Michelle Beavers and I wanted to first in our school system it’s really been important for my kids to be able to go to school this year and not have to wear a mask. There’s several little points I wanted to just touch on real quick.

1:58:43 The first one is that like we’ve already stated, you can search and you can find schools that have mask mandates and you’re finding that those schools have a higher transmission rate than schools that don’t require them. There’s several examples out there. Also, the person who’s in charge of contact tracing, you said it was one person who was doing all of Brevard schools.

1:58:49 Right. And I’m finding from several parents that I know that their child has been told that they have Covid or they have a Covid contact need to be quarantined three to five days after the contact. So maybe there needs to be more than one person who’s helping this person.

1:59:02 If it were really a life or death situation, I would think that that would already have been done, that we wouldn’t be waiting three to five days because what is the point of telling them at that point that they need to go home? At that point you can take a test and come right back to school. So it doesn’t make any sense. If it’s that important to you, why has that not happened already? The other thing is, so between February and March of this year, there was a 51% higher suicide attempt rate of kids admitted to hospitals who were female.

1:59:15 I would be much more worried of the kids that you’re denying an education to who are now two weeks behind, say in algebra 2 and are concerned and pressured because they’ve got college that they’re looking at. Their transcripts are going to be painted because they’re not going to do well. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.

1:59:27 And that can cause suicide. That along with the fact that they don’t get to go to the prom with their peers. They’ve taken away homecoming.

1:59:40 They’ve taken away everything, of course, except for sports. But you’re putting all this pressure, taking away all of their ways to cope. And you’re not going to expect some suicide rates to go up in our county.

1:59:55 I would be much more concerned with that than the. What is it?.007, I think, is the number that we have for all the kids who get Covid who actually end up dying from it.

2:00:11 You’re much more likely to have a kid in our county try to kill themselves. And that’s really about it. I just want to make sure that we are understanding.

2:00:32 The real concern here is these kids who are getting quarantined and are stressed out because they can’t get the education, keep their transcripts up. Thank you for letting me talk. Thanks, Michelle.

2:01:03 Sharon? Sharon Barone. Hi, I’m Sharon Barone. Thank you for having me and I appreciate being here.

2:01:23 I actually didn’t prepare anything. I just prayed about it and asked for God Almighty, give me the words and the wisdom to Speak impulsively. So basically, I’ve done my homework.

2:01:50 I’ve researched this disease and the masks and the vaccine and everything else. I’ve watched a lot of videos. I’ve watched frontline doctors, America’s frontline doctors, who are extremely credible pathologists, immunologists, and virologists, and they are subject matter experts.

2:01:58 I just recently watched a video from Steven Petty, who is a senior industrial hygienist, and he works in occupational and environmental toxicology. And he and along with his colleagues, they train doctors. They do air sampling and risk mitigation and decontamination of buildings.

2:02:14 They have proven with their expertise as subject matter experts that masks do not work. They’ve proven that powder and all different particles can penetrate these masks. That’s number one.

2:02:26 Number two, they don’t stop the virus. And number three, I would suffice it to say that nobody in this room has had mask protocol training, okay? If you did, you would know the minute you went like this and readjusted your mask, it’s contaminated. And I’ve seen people in this room touch their mask.

2:02:38 It’s contaminated. It’s worthless. You just throw it in the trash, okay? That’s a scientific fact.

2:02:52 Check it out. In the hospital setting, they do have this protocol in place. So you either have to walk around with 100 masks in your pocket or your purse and continually change them for them not to be contaminated.

2:03:02 But that is part of the increase of the bacterial pneumonia that is occurring right now that they’re calling Covid pneumonia. That’s not true. Masks are ineffective.

2:03:14 They do not prevent Covid at all. But they do create anxiety, and it’s hurting our children. I thank God my children are grown, so I don’t have this issue.

2:03:28 But it breaks my heart. And I know that every parent who has children in school are hurting because of this mask mandate. Thank God for Governor DeSantis and God bless America.

2:03:38 We appreciate you joining us. Susan Hodgers is next. After Susan, we have Mia Hosey, Jabari Hosey, and then Ryan Schlip.

2:03:59 If you guys could be on deck, please. Susan, you’re up. Good evening.

2:04:10 Thank you for. I’m coming to you as a previous student from the Brevard Public Schools. I grew up here in Brevard County.

2:04:31 Current Brevard Public Schools parent and as a health care provider for 20 years. Masks do work. I’ve been seeing patients for over 20 years.

2:04:49 When I do examinations, I put a mask on when I’m up close in your face, and I rarely get sick. This I give it to you guys for serving up there. This is truly a balancing act of finding what’s best for the health and safety for our children, schools and community as well as trying to maintain operational sustainability.

2:05:12 You have elected officials threatening to defund you guys when you guys are trying to do your best. Let’s get back to the basics. First, I do want to say I am a lifelong registered Republican.

2:05:40 Unfortunately, a lot of people have politicized this health issue, which saddens me. Yesterday we just had a deputy die at the clerk house and the chief judge, she imposed a mask mandate to help protect the safety of the employees and the constituents. Let’s get back to the basics.

2:05:52 Tonight let’s have an open, honest discussion on what parents want in the classrooms. First, we need to listen and respect everyone and everybody’s opinions and experiences. For example, a press conference at the Department of Education a few weeks ago, somebody gave an excellent analogy.

2:06:10 If Mr. Susan, if your child has a peanut allergy, a severe peanut allergy, and Ms. Jenkins is the teacher and said, okay parents, you can’t bring in peanut butter because somebody has an allergy. I’m not going to say screw that, I’m just going to pack peanut butter. I’m going to comply because it’s for the safety and the well being and the common good of the classroom.

2:06:21 This is supposed to be a nonpartisan board and what is best for the children, teachers and staff, not what party lines are supposed to be. It seems like people need to get away from their political platforms and do what’s best for the children. The American Academy of Pediatricians, which is over 67,000 physicians trained in medical school, recommend masks and vaccines who are eligible over the age of 12.

2:06:29 We need to slow the spread and get under control. It’s time to stop playing games. Last year, August 11, you passed an emergency rule for 90 days for mask coverings.

2:06:46 Why can’t we do it again? I was actually surprised to see somebody here tonight as a speaker who went to an elected official’s office for a meeting and a few hours later ended up at the hospital with COVID He had to quarantine the whole office for two weeks. That’s very considerate and selfish. Let’s protect our children.

2:07:08 Thank you. Thanks, Susan. Mia.

2:07:37 Good evening. Mia Hosey. Some say that it’s okay to spread COVID 19 through schools to have kids.

2:07:58 Spread COVID 19 through schools because it doesn’t kill that many of them. Pediatric hospitalizations, intubations and yes, deaths are on the rise. But these worst case scenarios should not be the sole gauge of whether or not we should be concerned.

2:08:12 This is not the flu. Covid affects the lungs, the heart, the nervous system and other organs. An article published by John Hopkins University in April points to a concerning study that showed that 60% of subjects who recovered from COVID 19 had signs of ongoing heart inflammation months after clearing the virus.

2:08:27 This occurred even in patients who had mild symptoms and patients who had no medical issues before they got sick. It goes on to say that heart inflammation after COVID 19 is a concern, especially among young athletes returning to their sports after a mild or even asymptomatic case. There are kids who suffer long term bouts of cough, loss of smell and taste, long term brain fog.

2:08:51 We don’t know what the ramifications of this damage is going to be moving forward. The community spread in our county is so great that Covid will continue to run rampant in schools as long as masks remain optional. And with the COVID spread comes widespread quarantines.

2:09:07 It is a virus more contagious than the chickenpox and it is spread asymptomatically. I’ve heard tonight a lot of talk about quarantining healthy children who don’t have symptoms. It’s spread asymptomatically.

2:09:22 They don’t have to have a cough, they don’t have to have a fever. On any given day. Parents are unknowingly sending their sick children in because you can’t tell by looking at them that they’re contagious and they’re coming to school without masks.

2:09:33 And if your child is wearing a mask, he is somewhat protected, but not if he’s the only one wearing it in a crowded classroom. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to pull our unvaccinated children out of our public schools. Here it was if we were to send them into school under the current conditions, we would almost certainly be sending them in to get exposed.

2:09:46 We actively work hard to keep our children safe and healthy. We’ve been dedicated to keeping them safe and healthy since day one and we’re not going to stop now, even if the board is asking us to look away and hope for the best. A multitude of parents have the same concerns and they feel like they’re stuck.

2:10:18 If you ask them, they will tell you that they’re scared to death for their children. The mask optional policy is not a policy that protects the rights of parents. It is a policy that protects the will of some parents and rejects the will of others.

2:10:29 Thank you, Mia. We appreciate you joining us. Jabari.

2:10:32 Closing about our current health crisis. Two of you on this board have made the statement that not requiring masks in school is law and there’s nothing we can do. That is a lie.

2:10:39 That’s something that someone says when they don’t want to fight for our children but rather give in to fear. My question to you today is does that make it right or something we follow when we know in fact it’s detrimental to our kids health and their ability to have consistent learning experience. If our schools were on fire and the governor signed a bill to not put our put out the fire to any school, will we just sit and watch them burn? That’s what’s happening now with our entire infrastructure of the very thing you have all vowed to protect is crumbling and you won’t help due to fear.

2:11:07 Many things were law but weren’t right. We took necessary action, in most cases even defiance, to make sure it was changed. It was law that women could not vote.

2:11:15 Segregation was law. Lynching was law. It was legal to smoke indoors in public.

2:11:37 The list goes on. Should we have put our hands up and said, well, there’s nothing we can do. This is law.

2:12:12 What country would this have been if we see something wrong that is detrimental but just gave up because it was law? If that was the case, four of you wouldn’t be up here today. A law to force us to be overcome with COVID protects no one but panders to a handful of parents with hurt feelings and a small portion of students who could opt out anyway due to medical issues. The funny thing about this is that those that oppose masks and those that seek to protect our students all have a common enemy.

2:12:18 Covid. I would think the goal for all of us would be to get to a mask free world. In order for us to do that, we have to ward it off to the best of our abilities.

2:12:33 Could you imagine if we were in a football game where two football teams and students had the ability to opt out of wearing a helmet due to comfort? What would that outcome look like? We need to be equipped equally in this fight. I hear the opposition saying, please stop quarantine our healthy children. Well, there wouldn’t be healthy children or children being quarantined if kids in that class were not passing Covid.

2:12:46 Right now we’re retroactively putting things in place, like more testing, shutting down schools, limiting extracurricular activities when we could be taking preventative measures by wearing masks to slow the spread. We need to realize everyone doesn’t want to roll the dice with their life or long term health and hope that we make it through Covid over and over and over again. So for a third time, in person, countless times from afar, I’m asking this board to stand up, whether it’s in defiance or not, to do what’s right for our kids.

2:12:56 And please require masks for our children. Thank you. Thanks, Jabari.

2:13:06 All right, up next, we have Ryan Schlip. After Ryan, we have Erin Davison, Tara Chavario and Lewis Schaefer. Ryan, whenever you’re ready.

2:13:40 Everybody listening? Because you haven’t been listening. Last two meetings, our experts spoke. Federal government has offered its support to school districts that decide to work for the welfare of the children.

2:13:51 Over the governor’s wallet and you didn’t listen. Countless phone calls and emails have been ignored. The BPS dashboard is updated twice weekly.

2:14:11 Cases are out of control, impacting families across the county in innumerable ways. And you aren’t listening. People are dead and more are dying.

2:14:30 Those that survive are faced with long term illness, guilt, financial loss, and in many cases, loss of a loved one. Those numbers on our dashboards, those are educators, those are counselors, those are administrators, friends, students, and they are fighting for their lives and you’re not listening. The lack of a mask mandate is turning our schools into a breeding ground for a virus that is increasingly infecting, disabling and even killing people our age.

2:14:49 The parents that are trying to protect children. Florida Today reported 242 COVID deaths in Brevard county between July. Sorry, June 3 and August 21.

2:14:58 That’s an average of three a day. You do not have the right to put me and my family in that slot. Parental constitutional rights, they take a back seat to the child’s best interest if the parent’s behavior itself has an adverse effect upon or actual harm to the well being of the child.

2:15:20 In this instance, we would seek expert’s advice and they are telling you we need a mask mandate to give all students all grades. You swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and an oath. That oath comes before the state.

2:15:26 Amendment 14, Section 1 Constitution states, no state shall make or enforce any law which shall be abridged, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of its citizens. I’d like to share a quote. What we do not understand, we fear.

2:15:33 What we fear is judged as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. What we cannot control, we attack.

2:15:48 Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real. And attacking people for following the data and believing in science is harmful physically and Mentally, there’s a loud minority of people that fear masks. There are far more of us that fear the long term impacts of allowing Covid to continue to ravage our schools.

2:16:02 All excuses previously made are just that. They’re excuses. You’re already drowning in paperwork.

2:16:15 Games are being canceled. Illegal Nazi sympathizers were also just following the law. Thank you.

2:16:30 Thank you, Ryan. Erin, At the previous board meeting, I showed you that last year, more people than it ever had. COVID positive.

2:16:46 It appears the same thing is happening again this year. Since you’ve been updating the dashboard. Including today’s data, there have been just over 2,000 COVID positive cases and nearly 10,000 quarantines.

2:16:55 That’s a total of 2.7% of bps COVID positive and almost 12% of the system quarantined. This means that once again, you’ve quarantined nearly five times more people than the actual number positive for Covid.

2:17:11 If we continue at this rate, the entire bps Population of 83,500 students and employees will be quarantined by early November. You’ve caused nearly 10,000 kids to miss a week of their education. And we’re only 11 days into the school year.

2:17:32 A breakdown of our current Covid dashboard gives more evidence as to why we should stop quarantining our healthy students. Statistically, they are far less likely to be positive than your staff. Based on your reported numbers, the rate of infection for staff is nearly double that of our children.

2:17:46 Since the first day of school, 2.4% of students have been COVID positive versus 4.7% of staff.

2:18:04 Our children aren’t the problem, but I bet they’re the majority being forced to quarantine. Please consider changing your methods for quarantining. You have no data to prove the effectiveness of what you are doing, yet continue to cause unnecessary stress on our entire community.

2:18:26 With an overzealous contact tracing policy, our kids have no at home elearning option. They’re losing out on their education because of adult irrational. In addition to changing how you contact trace, I am requesting you update the COVID dashboard with the specific percentages next to the total number of quarantines and positive cases.

2:18:42 At a minimum, post the total number of students and staff on each dashboard. I shouldn’t have to do a public records request to find that information each time. It’s far easier to compare all of this data as a rate rather than deciphering raw counts.

2:19:02 The American Academy of Academy of Pediatrics in a joint report with The Children’s Hospital association posted a report on August 19, 2021. According to page 28 of that report, the percent of child cases in Florida resulting in death is 0.00%.

2:20:28 There is statistically a 0% chance a child in Florida will die from COVID We have to stop making fear based decisions and start using bad thank you. Thank you Erin. After Sarah we have Louis Schaefer, Shannon Marsh and then Danielle McDonough.

2:21:10 Can you hear me? Good evening Madam Chair and Board. My name is Sarah, I’m a taxpayer registered voter and I have two children in bps. I’m also pursuing three degrees in Behavioral Science and my husband is a part of the commercial space industry.

2:21:31 Science is very important to our family. Thank you for continuing to follow the law set in place by Governor DeSantis and keeping masks optional in BPS for the students and staff. I know this isn’t a Q and A session, so the questions I ask are for the board to consider as they make policy and district wide decisions.

2:21:42 I have some questions and concerns for the new restrictions put in place by bps. What are the metrics the district is using to put this in place? How do you plan to facilitate and enforce only 50% capacity at indoor BPS events? Why are you punishing healthy children by canceling their homecoming and field trips until the end of September? Did the district consider the mental health downfall of these decisions? Who gets to pick and choose who is allowed into the indoor events with 50% capacity? Why would you separate families and not allow parents to be there to support their kids when 50% capacity is reached? If this truly isn’t about politics, then let the parents choose for themselves and let all parents, grandparents, guardians and family members who want to see their kids perform or play sports and not put any restrictions in place. I am grateful to hear that hospitalizations are down and Covid has a 99.

2:21:53 7 recovery rate with quarantining so so many healthy children. I support the school board working with the DOH in revisiting and lessening the quarantine guidelines that has overwhelmed our urgent cares and pharmacies with healthy children and individuals not being able to care for sick people in a reasonable amount of time. I hear the board discussing physical health but not the mental health of students.

2:21:58 The board has been ignoring this issue so I will bring it up again and again. Why would you not consider mental health as a component in your district wide decisions that affect some 65,000 students and staff? I take offense that the stakeholders and constituents were not able to Ask questions to the health panel in the last meeting, as well as the physical and mental health issues that children suffered wearing a mask for six to eight hours a day last year. Mental health clinicians as well as other doctors, including pediatric psychiatrists, disagree that there is no harm to a child wearing a mask six to eight hours a day.

2:21:59 I say that to share that there is science on all sides of this issue. I’m not understanding why no one on the BPS board cross referenced the studies the governor’s roundtable of experts shared. Why hasn’t BPS board considered all the science on this matter and just consider one side? Mental health is just as.

2:22:12 Thank you, Sarah. I do not see Mr. Schaefer in the room. Correct.

2:22:23 All right, Shannon Marsh. And then after Shannon, we have Danielle McDonough, Karen Colby and Michelle Barano. If you all would not mind getting on deck for me.

2:22:49 You’re ready, Shannon? Yeah. Good evening. I don’t think this is on.

2:23:14 Hello. There you go. Okay.

2:23:32 Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. Also, thank you to the superintendent and the board for your service to our county. My name is Shannon Marsh and I have a Master’s of Public Health and epidemiology.

2:23:55 And for the last 27 years, I have been practicing public health around the world. I was a U.S.

2:24:17 foreign Service Health officer and diplomat overseas, and my job there was to control disease epidemics. As part of that, I also ensured that there were enough staff tests, vaccines and treatment to support the disease control programs. The woman.

2:24:42 I’m going to address a few points that were made tonight. There was a woman who first gave public comment tonight, and she gave you a data analysis that she did that supposedly proves that masks don’t work in Florida. It is evident that she’s not trained in epidemiological analysis, and because she did not use the correct assumptions or methods, nor account for the confounding factors, her conclusions are erroneous.

2:24:57 There was also a woman who disputed the health department’s published 24% positivity rate. Also, I would like her facts to be checked. This is a problem these days that every layperson thinks they are armchair epidemiologists.

2:25:02 So I would like to ask that the board please run these analyses by the Brevard Health Department epidemiologists for verification before accepting their conclusions as fact. There’s also an infodemic of misinformation and disinformation occurring these days. Pseudoscience articles and videos that look real and even have MDs in them are out there on the Internet.

2:25:13 And they’re giving misinformation and they’re linking people to research sources that are not credible but instead promote biased and incorrect information. We must remember that there are quacks in every profession, including medical doctors. I would suggest that you also verify the gentleman and woman’s articles proving that masks do not work.

2:25:26 I can guarantee you it is either false information or incorrect conclusions from real research. I also want to address the fact that the woman was saying that there were five times the number of quarantine people than were positive cases. The reason for this is because we are not able to distance our students far enough apart and they’re not wearing their masks.

2:25:51 If there’s universal masking, they can be three feet apart, otherwise it’s six feet apart. And there’s plenty of science to support distancing masks and quarantining. In fact, I have over 100 articles.

2:26:13 Thank you Shannon. We appreciate you joining us this evening. Thank you.

2:26:41 Danielle McDonough. Hi There, I’m Danielle McDonough. I was pretty mortified to see the dashboard today.

2:26:50 626 new cases. That’s about a little more than a thousand active cases currently in the Brevard Schools. 7,600 something kids out on quarantine.

2:27:09 So you know our kids education is being disrupted. I was even more disappointed to read an article this past weekend with Mr. Mr. Susan. He states currently Brevard as well as other school districts are seeing 99% of students being contact traced in quarantine testing negative or showing no symptoms after quarantine.

2:27:23 This implies currently that this is current data. This article was published after nine days in school. Was that contact tracing to negative case to negative based on nine days in school? Because those students that tested positive on day two could still have tested positive when you wrote that article.

2:27:42 So that information saying 99% of the students are not testing or testing negative or not showing symptoms is false, misleading information. Furthermore, he went on to say that this is true in other districts. If this is true in other districts, why are other districts creating mask mandates after the fact? Today or yesterday, Indian river county made a mask mandate for their teachers and staff.

2:27:51 So that’s the county to our south. They’re not in the same agreement as Mr. Susan. Because Ma’, am, if I could ask you to please keep your comments directed to me.

2:28:02 Okay. So in the interest of transparency, I think this needs to be addressed on the dashboard. We need information showing us exactly how many students are testing positive and how many students sent home to quarantine are also testing Positive.

2:28:10 I know of several cases in Brevard county of students who have tested positive after a school exposure. So I believe that needs to be taken care of. I’ve also emailed all of you.

2:28:23 I think that there should be a mask mandate. You guys have to deal with the governor’s rule, whatever, but there’s things that you can do that go around his rule. There absolutely should be mandatory masks on every visitor and volunteer and business person that has to come into the school to protect the students.

2:28:29 Those people are not contract traced back to our school. There’s no reason why our teachers can’t be mask mandated. All the staff should be wearing masks.

2:28:40 That would help reduce community spread. You know, you can’t get around the CDC guidelines for quarantine. It’s a public health and safety measure.

2:28:58 You have to take the advice of the Department of Health. And I appreciate that you’re working with our local Department of Health to deal with that. Thank you, Danielle.

2:29:17 We appreciate you joining us this evening. Karen Colby, followed by Michelle Barano and then Daniel Espinoza. Karen, whenever you’re ready.

2:29:28 Hey, y’. All. I’m a mom of six and I’m a graduate of Satellite High School in Brevard County.

2:29:37 So is my husband. So you can say you’ve got a solid score here. I want to get into role playing so we can remember what all our jobs are.

2:29:53 My role as a parent was to raise my child, all of them, all six, healthy, all the way up through elementary school races, Vancouver, then Satellite, cheerleading, football, broken bones. Attending graduations was wonderful until 2020. We hit a wall.

2:30:03 That child that graduated experience was in no way comparable to the other four in front of him. And number six had it real bad, too, as 2021, although he did get to graduate with his mask off in his chair, but he had to wear it as you went across the field. What did that prove? Nothing.

2:30:18 There was no outbreaks from that graduation. There was no outbreaks from 2020 graduation. And I will lay you $100 right now that there will be no outbreaks from this year’s graduation.

2:30:30 I think you got to think about the health of the kids in their heads. The kids from 2020 are a different set of youth. They’re in the public with us.

2:30:45 They’re upset. They don’t know what to do, what to think, what to wear if they’re boys, if they’re girls, if they’re going to eat that day at fast food or become a vegetarian. The flip flops in them reminds me of Dr. Fauci one week it’s don’t wear a mask.

2:30:47 The next week it’s wear a mask. Then it’s nanoparticles get through, but the other particles won’t. Then it’s if you’re 6ft, you won’t sneeze on somebody, but a cough can roll at least three feet.

2:30:51 Look, nowhere in the constitution does it give you guys the right to raise our kids and to tell us to make the medical decisions. If people want to not abide by public school, they can private school. My son is in private school for college.

2:30:58 He chose to get vaccinated so he could travel and it’s an out of state college. So I’m not a freak And I’m not 100% against this. This was an 18 year old’s choice.

2:31:12 I see the kids going into school and I see them scared when they come home if they’re going to get a phone call, get told they can’t go out, that they’re now quarantined. Picture Suzy and Bobby breaking up. Suzy’s best friend Linda’s with Bobby.

2:31:23 Linda makes a phone call. Boop, boop. There he goes.

2:31:31 Another two weeks of quarantine. It’s happening. The kids are doing it to each other.

2:31:37 How can you shut a whole school down and then none of the kids actually get sick? It’s just not. It’s not. Doesn’t make physical sense.

2:31:55 I’m at 25 seconds. I didn’t come up here to dispute everything that everybody said in front of me, but you guys cannot make our medical choices for us. The role of the school is to educate the students academically and athletically.

2:32:22 If the kids are enrolled in athletics, you can’t say that we’re getting our way here or they’re not. We want everyone to live and be healthy. Okay? Be fair.

2:32:30 Thank you all. Thanks, Karen. Michelle Barano.

2:32:43 Michelle Barano. All right. Daniel Espinoza.

2:33:14 After Daniel, we have Kathy West, Chris Bird, and then Sandra Sullivan. Daniel, whenever you’re ready. My daughter is in elementary school to do everything to protect our children, especially our children under 12 who aren’t yet eligible for the vaccine.

2:33:36 Listen to our public health officials and not our misinformed citizen scientists. Please use all the mitigation tools we have to their maximum ability, including testing vaccines and masks. How many more children need to get seriously sick before you take seriously action? In the end, the anger or personal liberty will fade, but the deaf of child won’t.

2:33:57 Thank you, Daniel. Kathy West. I believe I saw her leave as well.

2:34:12 Chris Bird. Good evening. My name is Chris Bird and I am a parent of a freshman at Satellite High.

2:34:25 First, I want to thank you for keeping masks optional. The last time I spoke was to plead for quarantine policies to be amended because of the effect they are having on our children. I emailed you the results of an informal and anonymous poll I. An anonymous poll about the effects that quarantines are having on our kids with Brevard students for the last school year.

2:34:41 The result of that poll showed of the 105 students that were quarantined sometimes up to six times, only two tested positive for Covid. But the effects of the multiple quarantines had devastating consequences. If you haven’t read the comments from that poll, here are a few My son was quarantined three times.

2:34:51 His entire football season was destroyed, his grades suffered and he became deeply depressed. My child ended up in therapy due to severe depression. I had to leave my 10 year old child home alone as an essential worker who does not have the luxury of being able to stay home for what amounts to a bad cold going around.

2:35:04 We were quarantined seven times. The third time my child had a breakdown and cried every day. Of the 14 days my child missed 55 plus days of first grade.

2:35:21 After a month of in person learning, missed. My daughter lost interest in school. She is an AB student who flunked every one of her classes.

2:36:00 My child was very upset to miss school. Several school events including three track meets and all county orchestra. My son missed his entire baseball season and there’s a hundred more like that.

2:36:17 I ask that you read them now. I have my own story. My daughter’s freshman volleyball team at Satellite was quarantined yesterday.

2:36:26 Their very first game of the season was to be today. I should be there right now or earlier. Thursday’s game was also canceled because the Rockledge volleyball team was just quarantined.

2:36:45 Satellite’s JV and varsity volleyball teams will not play today either because Merritt Island’s teams have been quarantined. At this rate I wonder if we will even have a season. By the way, my daughter’s back at school today after a negative rapid antigen test.

2:36:58 There was a line of 10 students deep at the nurse’s office this morning just to turn in their negative Covid. Please work with the Department of Health to modify these quarantine policies and reduce the contact area from 6 to 3 as one member has suggested. Is Sandra Sullivan here? Sandra Sullivan I have three children at Satellite High School but first I want to talk about I’M the lady who lives on the dump that dug up a bunch of stuff.

2:37:19 Patrick Shores, that we got the FUDs eligibility. Brevard Public Schools has not filled out the right of entry form for the Corps of Engineers to be able to go in to Sea park elementary and do testing. We this has been about six months.

2:37:31 Outstanding. So I have some forms I’m going to leave on the counter. I would appreciate at the next meeting that you put this on an agenda item and handle it.

2:37:54 The second issue I want to deal with is talking about the health of our kids. So I’m reading here a couple things. With previous variants, the virus was detectable in infected individuals an average of six days after exposure.

2:38:22 But with the delta variant, the window has shortened to four days. Two of my kids have already been quarantined. I wasn’t happy about that.

2:38:38 For them to be home and not learning that particularly affects my oldest child. The other thing is that was interesting about this. I’ll leave this with you too, is it says both vaccinated and unvaccinated people have the same virus loading levels for both groups.

2:38:45 And that’s, I think, relevant. So I want to talk about my kids here for a second. So it’s important that actions and decisions not be politically driven, but based on science and data.

2:38:51 Last week I had two of my three children home quarantined from bps. When my daughter was quarantined, I was told on the phone that if I vaxed her, she could return the next day. Since a person can be COVID positive with a vax, this makes no sense and left me with the feeling that the quarantine had become politicized.

2:39:09 I called the school back and I spoke to two separate staff, including the nurse, to confirm what I was told on the phone. Yes, it was confirmed that my child could go back the next day if I backed. My son was not in school Monday and Tuesday, but he says his entire math class was quarantined on Wednesday, including him.

2:39:14 From my perspective, from my perspective, I would like to request that BPS stop politicizing. Covid, you’ve had nearly 8,000 kids quarantined. It would be common sense.

2:39:35 Tests are so easily. I mean, you go to cvs, you can self test yourself. You have nurses in every school.

2:40:02 Why not have testing after four days like this article suggests? And get these. Thank you, ma’. Am.

2:40:27 We appreciate you joining us this evening. All right, that actually concludes our public comment for this evening. Dr. Mullins, I think you had a request to update us on the testing after public comment.

2:40:43 Yes. You’re good. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

2:41:01 There’s been a lot of question, a lot of concerns, community concerns. Mr. Susan certainly addressed those earlier in the meeting related to testing availability across our district. We certainly have faced that for our own students and staff as we are experiencing the numbers of quarantines that we’ve had.

2:41:12 The opportunity to return to work or return to school is potentially dependent on a negative COVID test. We’ve been working closely with the Department of Health to try and evaluate how can we find new ways or alternative ways to get staff and students tested. We began that effort in great, great attempts almost a week ago.

2:41:30 I’m pleased to share that we have some alternatives. It’s not a great solution, but I wanted to share some of the barriers and the obstacles that we’ve experienced, but also how we’ve overcome some of them. And I would be remiss if I didn’t do a huge shout out to my staff, to our staff, for the great work they’ve done to overcome the community barriers to making more testing available for our students and our staff.

2:41:43 First Health first reached out to us and said that they could dedicate up to 30 tests per day at their site which is over here off of Murrell Road. So they have been accommodating that for I believe about a week now. 30 tests a day for our our employees only.

2:42:17 So they’ve reserved those slots for them. Our own Marathon Health well Care centers will be offering testing for employees and their dependents on our benefits plan. Employees simply need to call the nearest location to them and set up an appointment.

2:42:39 Brevard Health alliance is a community health provider. They will be providing employee only testing by appointment. It’s coordinated by our risk and benefits office.

2:43:00 There’s five locations that they are standing up, but availability to those testing sites are only available Thursdays and Fridays from 8:30 to approximately 8:30 to 4:30. They will take. They do have set asides for Brevard Public School students.

2:43:27 Those sites are located from Titusville, Rockledge, Melbourne, Palm Bay and Malabar. So there is considerable availability across our district. Again, student testing by appointment only.

2:43:58 We also just secured a third party vendor to provide testing for our students and that’ll begin tomorrow for the Space Coast Junior Senior High School food feeder chain. We’ve diverted some specialized testing opportunities to specific schools that are experiencing increased positive Covid cases and rising quarantine results. That’s why we went to Madison yesterday, today and that’s why we’ll be going To Space Coast Junior Senior High School, that area tomorrow.

2:44:12 Well as Thursday we’re actually partnering with Coastal Community Church which is going to offer testing for our students only. That is only for our students at that site from 8 to 4. And students will have to show identification and need to be accompanied by an adult.

2:44:36 In addition, the department of health is working on a walk up testing clinic for, for our students and employees to begin tomorrow across the street where the vaccinations have been provided as well. So that testing will. I don’t have the hours on that.

2:44:54 Dr. Thetti, do you know when the DoH is providing that testing? That was 8:30 to 11:30 and 1 to 4 beginning tomorrow every day. So Monday through Friday appointment only across the street. We’re going to publish that information to our parents through our media sites.

2:45:22 Mr. Bruun has already pushed out the information to our community about the availability of testing at the church near Space Coast Junior Senior High School. There have been lots of suggestions. Why doesn’t Brevard Public Schools just open up more testing? We’ve literally gone through five vendors who have promised the world I won’t identify who they were, but said we might be able to get there in four weeks.

2:45:38 We don’t need testing in four weeks. We need testing right now. So we have gone lengths and lengths to overcome the barriers and the challenges to get testing available.

2:46:06 We’ve been meeting with the emergency operations center, we’ve been meeting with the Department of Health. We’re going to be making a call out to the county again to say is there more that we can do together to make testing available to our kids in our community? The positive outcome of the last two days of testing at Madison couldn’t be overstated. It was very beneficial.

2:46:28 We tested yesterday. Over 130 individuals from Madison were able to get a better handle on where the positive cases are and get those students where they need to be. So we recognize the necessity for testing.

2:46:45 Our hands are somewhat tied when demand far exceeds supply. But I don’t think it’s been a fair characterization that Brevard Public Schools has not been working overwhelmingly to secure testing. And I appreciate the opportunity to clarify, you know, the efforts that have been done and I’m pleased that we’ve made some strides to make more testing available.

2:47:10 It’s not all that we want. My desire is six sites across the district, Monday through Friday, various hours. That’s probably a bit of a pipe dream right now, but that’s, that’s what we’ve been setting our sights on.

2:47:33 To make available for our schools to help school help parents identify if their child is COVID positive and then keep them home. There’s been questions about other additional mitigation strategies that we can utilize across our schools. I sent communication to our leadership team and to go back to Mrs. Campbell’s earlier comments.

2:48:02 Our administrators are doing everything they can. There is nothing they want to do less than quarantine students. They are following the guidelines, they’re following the rules and they’re striving to keep kids and staff safe.

2:48:28 But in addition to that, we are working towards increased social distancing. It is challenged by full classrooms, full schools where we don’t have 20 to 30% of our students. On elearning like we did last year, we’re utilizing plexiglass across our classrooms.

2:48:51 Principals are going through our classrooms and working with teachers to adjust spacing of desks and so on. We also moved our orientation and open house events at our schools to virtual. Our principals have been put in a terrible position to have to pivot and turn and reschedule those events very, very quickly.

2:49:13 And I commend them for the great responsiveness that they have provided the district and their schools. So in addition, our elementary programs have been some concerns expressed about the numbers of students we have moving across our campuses, particularly elementary school. Walk to intervention is a common practice in our elementary schools.

2:49:28 Our elementary leading and learning team reevaluated that process, instructed our principals, we look at it. We have statutory requirements to do walk to intervention and they’re reducing that transition time to limited to our statutory requirement. It’s not our instructional preference, but that’s what we are doing to maximize the safety of our kids and our staff on our campuses.

2:49:40 So we continue to evaluate mitigation strategies as we move forward and strive to make the best decisions we can to keep everyone in a safer environment. I wanted to provide the board, the community some of the additional things that are going on in our schools and we’re working with our administrators with to make those changes. So thank you.

2:49:55 Thank you Dr. Mullins and Dr. Seti and the entire team for all of your work on those areas. We appreciate it. Steny board member have any questions for Dr. Mullins on or comment or Susan One of the issues that I would like to bring up, Dr. Mullins, is that the marathon health clinics try to do like these only like 10 appointments, a type scheduling or 16 or whatever.

2:50:10 If there’s a way for us to speed that up for the testing, that seems to be a really good vehicle for us because we can kind of control that with what we do. So the idea would be if we can get those appointments tighter, because when you’re doing that test, they don’t need to be in there the whole time. Just a suggestion.

2:50:20 Thank you, Mr. Susan. Any other board member I know we have a request for a board discussion item as well, but Anything else on Dr. Mullins updates? All right, then, Ms. Campbell, I think you had requested a board discussion item. Yes.

2:50:42 For me? Yeah. Okay, thank you. I asked if we could add the topic of quarantines because it has come up so often this evening and emails we’ve received.

2:51:41 And I think I’m going to ask Ms. Moore if you would make your way to a microphone, because I do have a question for you here in just a little bit. But I just want to start out. I appreciate the acknowledgment that we have had by some people that it is.

2:51:54 It is no longer a decision by the school districts in the state of Florida as to how they’re going to do the quarantines. But as of the new emergency rule that was passed by the Department of Health at the direction of our governor, the new rules state. And I’m going.

2:52:08 It’s not too long. I’m going to go ahead and read it. Emergency Rule 64, DER 2112, sets forth the procedures for controlling COVID 19 in school settings.

2:52:34 And if you want to look it up, you can actually look up the name of the person who you can email or call if you have questions regarding it. I’m going to skip down to the part that has to do with quarantining, which says that for purposes of this rule, direct contact means cumulative exposure for at least 15 minutes within 6ft. Protocols for symptomatic or COVID 19 positive students.

2:52:49 Students experiencing any symptoms consistent with COVID 19 or have received a positive diagnostic test for COVID 19 should not attend school, school sponsored activities or be on school property until either A the student receives a negative diagnostic COVID 19 test and is asymptomatic, or B 10 days have passed since the onset of symptoms or positive test result, the student has had no fever for 24 hours and the student’s other symptoms are improving, or C, the student receives written permission to return to school from a medical doctor licensed under chapter 458 and so forth. Then number three. Protocols for students with exposure to COVID 19, students who are known to have been in direct contact, which was already defined with an individual who received a positive diagnostic test for COVID 19 should not attend school, school sponsored activities or be on school property until A. The student is asymptomatic and receives a negative diagnostic test after four days from the date of last exposure to the COVID 19 positive individual.

2:53:08 And Ms. Morris said they’ve clarified that that means that’s actually day five. Or B, the student is asymptomatic and seven days have passed since the date of last exposure to the COVID 19 positive individual. Or C. If a student becomes.

2:53:21 Excuse me. C, if a student becomes symptomatic following exposure to an individual that has tested positive for COVID 19, the student should follow the procedure set forth in subsection two. Then final section that applies is a protocol for students with prior COVID 19 infection.

2:53:36 A student who has received a positive diagnostic test for COVID 19 in the previous 90 days and WHO is known to have been in direct contact with an individual who has received a positive diagnostic test for COVID 19 is not subject to the protocol set forth in subsection three. In other words, they don’t have to quarantine so long as the student remains asymptomatic. If a student with a previous COVID 19 infection becomes symptomatic, the student should follow the procedure set forth in subsection 2.

2:53:57 This subsection applies equally to students that are fully vaccinated for COVID 19. That is the rule for every county in the state of Florida. I know I was sent earlier in the summer something Santa Rosa county was doing something different, but if you look now, they’ve actually changed theirs.

2:54:06 And all the school districts in the state of Florida are having to follow these rules because this is now prescribed for us specifically. Whereas last year it might have been a little different county to county. I know that the topic has come up of the data as far as the numbers of our students.

2:54:22 I want people to recognize this evening that our principals are doing the contact tracing. All the information is then going to two particular staff members who are here. Ms. Moore who handles for the students and Dr. Who handles for employees.

2:54:38 So it is next to impossible to keep track. You guys are already doing the impossible task of keeping up with all that. It’s next to impossible to keep track further of information that some of which we don’t have, which is who is going to then test positive afterward.

2:54:52 But Ms. Moore, I just would like to ask you because even though we’re not tracking that specific information, you do have knowledge of cases because they come back to you eventually. Can you say to us that every week we are finding out the students we have quarantined, have indeed tested positive. Yeah.

2:55:19 Thank you. And I know we’re not tracking it, and I know people on both sides want us to track the information, deliver it, but we just, we can’t. And we don’t have all the information.

2:55:46 Not only do we, in addition to that, we have students, some of whom don’t ever go get tested. They just go ahead and stay out for this. So I know everybody’s frustrated and I, as a board, we’ve, we had discussion today as to what, what can we do.

2:56:23 We’ve also looked at some other districts who are reporting a little differently that seem to not have as many quarantines. But then we found out that Orange is not reporting like we do. Do you have any insight as to far as, like some of the other counties or lag? No, listen, I can’t.

2:56:57 I am just keeping track of Brevard County. I will tell you our local DoH this evening. I want to clarify something.

2:57:21 So when our students, when our schools get cases, sometimes we’re really fortunate that they may have one case a day or two. Some days like today, our schools are handling 22 cases a day. And that’s 22 cases that they have to go back 48 hours from the last time they were at school before they.

2:57:43 And they are going into seven classes and pulling seating charts and tracking down lunch and going and calling the bus compound and getting 22 seating charts on buses and going to the athletic director and finding out what activities they participated in. And the particular school I’m talking about today worked all day on quarantine tracing and still had nine left. So I do want to address that.

2:58:04 As soon as we are notified that there is a case, we activate on it. So the question was that you asked me is how do we know that some of these contacts case that we’re quarantining later test positive? It’s because every day at 4:30 we are looking at the overall spreadsheet. And as we begin to talk about schools that have high cases, cases, not quarantine, some schools currently are sitting at 59 and 60 cases.

2:58:18 We’re calling the principal and saying, what do you know? What can you tell us? We’re asking the DoH to call the school and begin to do contact tracing on the families and to see if there’s any connections between kids and seats in schools we can’t possibly do. More importantly, I can’t possibly ask our principal to take on one more task as it relates to documentation instead of education. Well, I Appreciate the opportunity that you asked.

2:58:47 When we spoke to the DoH this afternoon about quarantining, I literally said, we’ve hit a wall. I asked the DoH to send their staff to one of our schools tomorrow because we physically have hit a wall. And so they are going and they are going to support us.

2:59:16 And they also said we’re going to call some other counties and see if. If they are in the same situation that we are with their schools or if they found a solution to this. But following the standard you just read and quarantining students, not anything anybody as an educator signed up for.

2:59:34 We signed up to educate kids, but we also made a promise that we would keep kids safe. And so we provide mental health counseling. And we have policies and practices for suicide risk assessment, and we have security officers and threat assessment processes.

2:59:46 And yes, we have quarantining. So we will continue all of those processes. That’s also what we signed up for, even if it means that we hit a wall.

2:59:55 In addition to the documenting that we did last year, we added a new category this year, and that category is documenting how many of our employees are in the hospital. We did not have to do that last year. Thank you, Ms. Moore.

3:00:01 So I think when it comes down to what can we do to reduce quarantines, I would go back to what I said the last meeting, which is we have heard a lot from our community about what we need to do as a school district to help our community. But I would turn it back around and say again to our community, what can you do to help us? And that is going to be different for each individual person. I would just reiterate again that it is so important for our families to keep their sick kids at home.

3:00:17 And that doesn’t mean give them some Tylenol and ibuprofen when they have a fever and send them into our schools. And I don’t say that flippantly. I say it’s because it’s happening, because we’ve heard about it and it’s so important so we can get ahold of this so that we parents do what they can.

3:00:21 And I know it really stinks, all of it, and I’d say a harsher word, but I don’t talk like that. It really does. And so.

3:00:56 But we need our community to help us so that we can reduce the quarantines. But I’d also ask our parents to please have grace and flexibility. We keep saying that, but.

3:01:18 Because when we do these quarantines, it is not intended to hurt our students. Because as Ms. Moore. Thank you.

3:01:45 Already said, and Dr. Mullins already said, the last thing we really want to do is to pull kids out of the classroom where they need to be learning and being around their peers. We understand how important that is. And so we please ask the community to do what they can to help us so that we can pull out of this.

3:02:09 Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Campbell.

3:02:39 If I. Do you guys mind if I weigh in just really quickly on this one? Typically, I wait until the end, but if I might, while Ms. Morris sitting up here with us. So I have spent an enormous amount of time digging into data and looking at what’s going on in the district around the state and how are they functioning and what are their job looking like and how, you know, comparing all of that. And there was a comment made earlier that we needed to put more people on contact tracing because people were not getting notified until like three to five days after exposure.

3:03:14 And I just have to tell you that our team here, led by Ms. Moore and Dr. Fedi, but really, let’s face it and say it’s been a whole district effort, right? It’s you guys, it’s your assistants, it’s. It’s Dr. Mullin’s assistant. It’s our principals and our assistant principals and our GSPs, and our.

3:03:50 It literally is taking tons and tons of people in our district to keep up with what’s going on in our schools and to get that notification out right away. And so if someone isn’t getting notified until three to five days after closure, it could be because the district wasn’t notified until. So for example, maybe Susie went to school on Wednesday and she had a little bit of a sniffly nose.

3:04:17 Maybe she had a headache, but they didn’t think too much of it. And so Susie went to school on Thursday and she went to school on Friday and oh well, Saturday she starts running a fever and they take her in to get a COVID test and she tests positive. The exposure date on that is going to be when the symptoms started and not the testing date.

3:04:50 So when we then go to notify Steven, who was in class with her on Wednesday, but happened to be out on Thursday and Friday for a family vacation, it’s been three to five days since he was exposed to her before we’re even notified, be able to tell him. So I want to make sure that our community understands it’s not because you all are running slow. It’s not because nobody’s doing the work.

3:05:06 And I think that’s really, really important to address. Because quite frankly, in some districts, Orange county is one that was mentioned earlier by Ms. Campbell, they are utilizing their Department of Health to do their contact tracing. And if you look at the Orange county dashboard, you will see that they are horribly behind on reporting their quarantine because the Department of Health is running so far behind that they truly are not getting to the majority of their cases until 3, 5, 7 days to even notify.

3:05:40 So I just. I think it’s important that our community understand the phenomenal work that these people have been doing and the difference between what we’re seeing here in Brevard and what we’re seeing elsewhere. The other thing that I would say, and I promise I’m going to wrap up quick and turn over to the rest of you, I’m sorry, but I had the opportunity to be at Madison yesterday, assisting with the test because we stood up a clinic there and we didn’t have enough staff to handle all of the pieces of the pie, right? To make things function.

3:06:00 So my role was actually going out to the vehicles when a positive test had been identified by the Health Department staff and running through the questionnaire to identify when was the person last in school? Are they symptomatic? Have they had Covid in the last 90 days? Do they ride a bus? All of those things. And I will tell you all. And Dr. Mullins alluded to it earlier today.

3:06:28 I called him when I left there, and I said, we absolutely did the right thing by shutting down Madison and getting this testing here today. Because the most alarming thing that I saw was the number of students who were testing positive with zero symptoms. So when we say we shouldn’t be quarantining healthy kids, the truth of the matter is that those kids may be healthy, but they also may be spreading.

3:06:40 And they may be spreading to the student who is immune compromised. They may be spreading to the teacher who is immune compromised. They may be spreading to a pregnant teacher who is high risk.

3:06:55 And I think that is what we have got to keep in mind, is that just because someone’s not symptomatic doesn’t mean that they’re not contributing to the problem and increasing our quarantine. And I get that it’s super controversial, but the truth of the matter is the majority of students that I interacted with yesterday who were testing positive and. And not at all symptomatic, maybe symptomatic three days from now, we don’t know, but they may have never gotten tested.

3:07:09 So for us to be able to even Identify students who are. How many students are actually testing positive when they’re quarantined. That’s a really difficult thing for us to be able to identify because if people aren’t getting tested, then we don’t know they could have been positive.

3:07:31 Maybe they had, you know, a sore throat or a headache and just not never got tested positive. But that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have been spreading it in our school if they hadn’t been there. But to define the data that’s being provided on number of people who are quarantined that actually turned positive, it’s just incredibly complicated to really give decisive response, I guess is the best way to say it.

3:07:35 Thank you, Ms. Moore, for the work that you’re doing. I know it is such a. Has been incredibly challenging and by all means we will, you know, we’ll continue to do what we can to support and make the best decisions possible.

3:07:44 But there’s just so much misinformation out there and I think sometimes assumptions made that are counter to what we’re. Actually, I do have the data from that. On Monday, we tested 139 people.

3:07:47 12% of them were positive. Today we tested 193 people. 18.

3:08:02 6% of them are positive. Yeah. And your data probably doesn’t identify how many were asymptomatic.

3:08:24 Right. And I will tell you just anecdotally from having been there yesterday, I was not there today and I wasn’t there the entire day yesterday. But I will tell you that anecdotally, I would say upwards of 70 to 80% were asymptomatic or claimed to be asymptomatic.

3:08:45 Right. Didn’t recognize symptoms as. All right, I’m sorry.

3:09:10 I took way too much time and jumped in front of you guys. So who, who was the next request? Mr. Susan. Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Dinkins.

3:09:46 Sure. Thank you. Go ahead.

3:09:58 Ms. Campbell, I just want to say thank you for reading that entire long thing. I appreciate that. I appreciate the clarification that that is being directed by the state and not you.

3:10:23 I also appreciate board members who spoke before me for being open and transparent about everything because I think it’s important for our public to be as aware as possible of what’s going on in our schools in order for us to have more buy in with mitigating. What. What’s going on? Our dashboard today.

3:10:59 626 new cases, 3400 quarantines. I’ve asked to get an update every morning of the total amount of cases that we have actively as well as the quarantines that we have actively. And so as of this morning, I believe at 8 in the morning we had 10, 93 cases.

3:11:27 86% of those are students. And I don’t know if the public’s still watching, but I feel like we need to be talking about that because that’s the biggest. Never mind the number, but it’s the people who are seeing show positive 7677 corn.

3:11:31 And for the sake of transparency, you know, we brought up Orange county and we talked about all their numbers off. I think it’s really important for us to be transparent that our first dashboard that people were really, really overwhelmed by the thousand quarantines we saw wasn’t accurate because we were using the local overwhelmed department of health. And I think it’s really important for the public to be aware of that because the numbers we see now would have been even higher if that was accurate.

3:11:41 We had I think like almost 500 cases, but we had a thousand quarantine. And at first I thought, oh my God, that’s such crazy numbers. And then afterwards I thought that doesn’t make any sense mathematically.

3:11:57 Which is why our amazing staff who goes above and beyond for their job, hook it back over, probably don’t sleep. I don’t know how you guys function, seriously. Because they knew we weren’t doing a service to our staff, our students and our community by ignoring that the right thing wasn’t being.

3:12:04 And so I know everyone up here praised you and Dr. Theti and of course everyone else who’s a part of this puzzle. I’m aware, obviously our administration is well and all the staff, but this is an out of control task that we have put on top of you, but also one that you basically requested yourself to take back because it wasn’t being done correctly. And so we are really fortunate to be in a county where we have people like you and Dr. Thati who take on a job that isn’t necessarily yours to do the right thing for our children.

3:12:10 And I appreciate, and I appreciate you being emotional about our staff members because I spoke very honestly with all of you today. We have so many staff members in ICU and on ventilators and we don’t talk about it and it’s not right. It’s a problem.

3:12:38 Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Betty. Oh, there you are.

3:12:46 I’m sorry, I thought you were in the chamber. But seriously, thank you. Thank you for doing the right thing for our kids.

3:12:48 But please leave. Thank you. Ms. Moore, if there was a change to any of the quarantining procedures, that would be have to do by the Department of health’s recommendation.

3:13:04 That was read here. Correct. So that wasn’t the Department of Health recommendation.

3:13:22 Last year we were operating on department of health recommendation. This year we’re operating under department of health rule. Okay.

3:13:44 So in order to change or make a recommendation, change to whatever we are seeing today from the quarantining, that would be a recommendation of change to the Department of health ruled that this Campbell so eloquently read. Right. So currently every time a student tests positive, we have reported from the schools, the actual student number gets sent to you, Correct? Correct.

3:14:12 Okay. And then what we do is, is we Q code all the other kids and then just send you a total to you. Right.

3:14:24 So the schools. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Yeah.

3:14:50 So contact the tracing is Q coded at that moment and then they send the total number of Q codes, not their numbers and the student positive to you. Is that correct or if I’m wrong, can you explain it? I shouldn’t lead you. You can explain.

3:14:56 No, that’s okay. I’m going to give you a yes. But so what what schools are now doing, they have to complete the entire, they are completing the entire process before they are documenting it.

3:15:18 So, you know, interestingly enough, while you guys were meeting and we were listening, we were also watching our dashboard because it’s now that our principals are inputting the numbers on dashboard. It’s not a dashboard smart or tomorrow morning they’ll be input. So it’s not a real time impact.

3:15:40 So when our principals or their designee, our assistant principals, the school secretary, complete the process of identifying the contact case and notifying the contact case, then they would input that data. And at that point, all of those students that are quarantined get as that student said, Q code. Right.

3:15:58 And there’s a Q code inside of our schools that we will be able to go back and check that has the dates that they were quarantined on. Correct. I want to make sure I’m not giving you wrong information.

3:16:15 No, no, no. And I’m trying to get down to the bottom of it because. So in order to find out if we’ve had students that are testing positive that had been Q coded, all we would have to do is cross the kids that are currently on quarantine or on that have tested positive, find out when their started, and then find out if any of those were overlapping on the Q code.

3:16:26 The way to do okay, well then explain how we would do it. Yeah. Oh, I can’t tell you how we would do it.

3:16:34 If it was an easy easy to resolve, I. Here’s how we could do it. We could hire contact tracers and put them in all schools. So if I understand you correctly, so it used to be that contacts to case and cases had two different quarantine periods.

3:16:55 And then midway through the year last year, that was changed. So they had the same contact period. But students who are identified as a contact to case and they’re quarantined for that contacted case say it goes out seven days and then that next day they get a test and test positive.

3:17:09 Oftentimes those students remember rightly or wrongly that three days previous they did have symptoms. They may have had a scratchy throat, they may have had a headache, they may have had a cough. So oftentimes the cue period never changes.

3:17:33 So if I understood you correctly, there would be some kind of problem cross reference on the Q codes in attendance in terms of our smartsheet. They would be entered only for the first time as a case. There’d be nothing to cross reference them to.

3:17:39 So I apologize if I misunderstood you. No, no, no. We can run right now in our school district a report that shows every student who’s on quarantine through the AS 400.

3:17:59 Because it’s Q code field inside. Yes, we can run it two different ways. Yes, we can.

3:18:13 And if we can run that, and we can also run a report that shows when those students were out on their quarantine because it would say for this many days or however that is if they were out seven days, if they were out four days, if they were out 10 days. We have that data through the Q coding through the AS400. That is correct.

3:18:24 Okay. So what I was saying is, is that we also have the data on all of the students that are actually testing positive on that day. They have their student numbers that are being reported to you on that day.

3:18:36 So what I’m saying is, is that when we test those kids positive for Covid and they come in, they get put on a 10 day quarantine. Well, when we test positive in the contact trace, they’re put on a less of a corn, correct? Not necessarily. So if I’m.

3:18:50 When I work with the principals, what I’ll tell them is I will not answer. I’m sorry, I apologize. I don’t mean any disrespect.

3:19:01 I can’t answer any hypothetical question because if I give you an answer, the next phone call is going to be the exception to the answer I gave you. So let me explain why I think I can’t. A child is symptomatic on Monday, keeps coming to school.

3:19:05 We’re notified they take a test on Thursday, we’re notified on Thursday and they don’t show up Friday notified that they tested positive. Notified that they tested positive. Right.

3:19:30 Their Q code actually starts back on the day they were originally symptomatic. Even though they continued to come to school. They will only show three or four days of quarantine as a positive case.

3:19:54 So it won’t look like a 10 day quarantine in our system. It’ll look like three or four day quarantine. So I guess I’m still not understanding what you’re asking me.

3:20:02 So I was under the understanding because when I was told to be quarantined, they told me it doesn’t matter when you get your symptoms, it’s from when you test your date. So we go 10 days out from when I took my test date. And so I was quarantined all the way past if I didn’t.

3:20:18 Okay, so I apologize. So we’re not. What we’re doing is asking them when they test positive, when they receive symptoms, and then quarantining them 10 days from that period forward.

3:20:31 That’s correct. And then we’re Q coding those in. Correct.

3:20:39 And then if an individual test is contact traced, how do we input that into the system? So that’s based on their last date of contact with that person. So if their contact traced on, they go to school with that person and it’s a Friday. We start their Q code on Monday based on the Friday.

3:20:55 But if their last date of contact again, we contact trace 48 hours prior to either symptom onset or test date. If we think their last date of contact Friday, and they say to us, I was absent on Friday, you got the wrong person. Then we say, okay, what about Thursday or Wednesday? And then we start their difference because they would have had last contact with them on Wednesday.

3:21:08 So they’ll only show up with 3 or 4 days the following week. So it depends on the last date of contact. Absolutely.

3:21:22 So there’s a definitive amount of individuals in the AS 400 that are contact traced that have Q code. Correct. We don’t have any students that are not Q coded that are contact traced or test positive.

3:21:50 That’s incorrect. Our students who go to the clinic and have a Covid symptom for the department of health are also Q coded. And it, you know, it could be.

3:22:01 I’ll be frank. I understand the way this is going to go over, but it could be a headache. And so those show up as Q codes until we either get a doctor release or a negative.

3:22:07 Sure. So we have those individuals are getting Q coded, the people contact traced, and then the other people are getting contact traced and put in the Q code. But we have a definitive number of individuals identified by their student number that have tested positive for Covid.

3:22:26 Yes, that is one category. Then we have all of the individuals, whether they have been tested positive or they have been put Q coded because of quarantining. Also in as 400.

3:22:34 Yes. Okay. So all we would have to do to run a report is to run literally all of those quarantines that we have and then cross them to when and if those individuals had tested positive.

3:22:43 So, for instance, if we have 10 people that tested positive and their date was, say, Monday, that all of these people went on quarantine or tested positive, then the individuals of those 10 would have positive test dates going into that week. So the first five could have been the ones that tested positive that sent the other five, say, for instance, down the quarantine. Well, those kids would be out on quarantine, and then they would test positive coming back.

3:22:47 We could definitively find out during that time because of those Q codes that there was an opportunity by cross referencing it to those numbers. We can do that. And that is.

3:23:03 That we can do with our data. That’s the reason that I asked for what I asked. No, I understand.

3:23:19 I understand where you’re going. The only, you know, piece of the puzzle is based on the public comment and you may not be going to is they want to know how many school quarantines were causing cases. And we also put in family quarantines.

3:23:38 And I’ll be frank, family quarantines cause far more cases. I use the word far more. I can’t back that up with data.

3:23:56 I just know that when we do have a family quarantine, we’re going to see cases out of it. It just is what it is. And those family quarantines come from the DoH.

3:24:17 Correct. To us, that’s how they come to majority. Mostly they come from our families.

3:24:42 Our families call in and self report. And so there’s no way to differentiate a school quarantine from a family quarantine in as. But we do have it already into our system based on what we have on the COVID dashboard.

3:24:50 We do differentiate on our smartsheet. But now you’re talking about different systems. I mean, if you have a smartsheet with student numbers, you can upload those student numbers into as 400 so that you can run a scan too.

3:25:06 I don’t think you can upload a smartsheet into AS400, but I’m not the tech person. I apologize. Can you upload student numbers into as 400 in bulk? You would have to ask somebody in ET okay, but what I’m saying is, is that we have individuals that we can go the other way with.

3:25:13 So you can take a smartsheet and run it on one, and then you can take the Q coded individuals on the other. You can take smartsheet, copy and paste it into Excel. You can take the Excel spreadsheet from the Q code, run them next to each other, and within a couple of minutes you can run the variables and the connect.

3:25:24 I do it all the time in Ninja. So the thing is, is that, okay, if we have the Q code, we know when they were quarantined and we have the individuals in the smartsheet’s information, when they tested positive, it would be easy to cross the date and the time to their Q code. And if it started on the day, then you know that those were the individuals that started that day.

3:25:39 And if it started in the middle of their quarantine, that they were quarantined and they were tested positive, I’m going to disagree that it would be easy. If that is what you are going to choose to direct Dr. Mullins to see if we can do, we’ll figure it out. But I disagree.

3:25:43 Nothing has been easy and I doubt that would be either possible. Maybe, but not easy. Okay.

3:25:53 So getting back to it, there is an opportunity through the data that we have that we might be able to make the report. And then if we were able to make the report, then we would be able to make a recommendation to the DoH, which is the rule by making authority. Right.

3:26:10 If all the things aligned, you had all the time in the world to pull reports. That would be the proper process. Right.

3:26:23 We would pull the data, say, hey, here are the numbers. We would then come back to the board for direction because not one board member can do it. And then we would ask the DoH to make quarantining adjustments.

3:26:34 That would be the proper process for somebody to make that. Right? Right. I believe the DoH rule process is much like the DoE and we would have to explore what their process is for changing rules.

3:26:47 But it. I would. I’m sorry, I’m going to push over To Paul.

3:26:52 He knows I’m about to push over to him. They have a process for data gathering and public comment, much like we do. I would.

3:27:10 You know, I would also say that the DoH is making. Making decisions for all of Florida and all counties. I would assume that one county would not have the impact that multiple counties.

3:27:23 I don’t know what that means in terms of the work of the board or the work of our superintendent. But our DOH operates as a. Can’t remember what our.

3:27:39 What our local DoH calls it, but basically it is. They are one voice. And so I expect that as one voice, they are representing all of the districts.

3:27:45 And so our information probably would be of interest to them, but only in the context of. Of all the other districts in the state. So the DoH is the rulemaking authority.

3:27:56 We would petition them for the rulemaking authority. There’s no question. Correct, Gibbs.

3:28:10 And if we have to go to Gibbs, the board’s free to petition whoever they want. DOH has no obligation whatsoever to take up additional rulemaking. They did their rulemaking that we’ve got based on an executive order from the governor.

3:28:34 So absent the governor issuing another order for them to amend, I have no idea whether or not they would even entertain amending that rule. They may not. They may not accept our offer.

3:28:40 But the proper process would be to pull the data, bring it to the board. The board looks at it and says, there is an anomaly here. We, as a board in a majority would be able to make the recommendation, and then the rulemaking authority we would petition to at this point would be the DoH.

3:29:02 Is that. Am I following a. The DoH issued the rule in question so they can amend their rule.

3:29:12 You don’t need data. The board can pass a resolution saying or asking the DoH to amend their rule, but the DoH is not going to amend their rule unless we send them data. I mean, let’s say it.

3:29:36 Let’s just be honest with you. The other issue that I was looking at, Ms. Moore, where you say that the DoH has made this rule and that all school districts are following, we have variances in that, and it’s been. I pointed it out, Duval.

3:30:06 But there’s other instances throughout the state where the local DOHs or somebody, the schools have made changes to their quarantining policy. And Duvall, under 12 years old in elementary schools, they decided that instead of going towards quarantining kids within six feet, that they just did two positives in the same class in the same week, then they would quarantine the class. That was what was reported.

3:30:16 Are you aware of that? I’m aware that you told me that, yes. Okay. All right.

3:30:29 But you’re making the assumption that the DoH makes the rule authority throughout the entire state. I know for a fact that Duval has changed theirs, and there are other counties that have changed there. So there’s some sort of a variance that is happening, that school districts are changing theirs somehow, and I’m getting wind that it’s coming under the local DoHs that are doing that.

3:30:49 I don’t think that’s the proper process. I think that the proper process is. Madam Chair, I just want to intervene on Ms. Moore’s behalf.

3:31:00 I would remind the board that I made the recommendation that we follow the Department of Health’s rules and guidelines. And if the board wants to take action against that, that that would be a more appropriate action than continue to question Ms. Moore. Can I follow that, Dr. Mullins? Can you explain that to me? I’m just trying to ask questions to Ms. Moore about the process.

3:31:15 Well, I just don’t know that Ms. Moore is the expert to question what the Department of Health’s position and what their rulemaking process is. It’s appropriate question for Mr. Gibbs from a legal perspective, but that’s not my staff’s role and function to interpret and identify what the Department of Health’s process is or how to question that. If you want to direct your question to me, that’s fine.

3:31:30 In terms of what the recommendation was and what the decision of the board was, I just. I was becoming uncomfortable with the questioning to my staff. That’s a fair thing to say.

3:31:41 Okay. So right now, the process that we would do if we wanted to make a recommendation that I’m hearing you, Dr. Mullins, say, is that we would pull the data to support what we’re seeing. We would bring that to the board.

3:31:47 The board would then make a decision whether they want to make a request for quarantining changes, and that would go to the DoH under your guidance, to try to make a change. Is that correct? Again, I don’t know the process for taking something to the Department of Health. That is a legislative process.

3:31:54 I’d have to confer with Mr. Gibbs and determine this. I. I don’t know that that would come from a superintendent or it would come from an elected body. So that would take some time to research and determine.

3:31:59 I don’t want to make any assumption that I know what that process would be. Sure. So if one board member requests data, they should be able to get that, they don’t need a board, a motion from the board, or a majority to do that.

3:32:12 Correct? Actually, Susan, according to our agreement, we. So that request should go to the superintendent. The superintendent that can then determine, is this reasonable and doable based on our systems.

3:32:20 Right. And how much time is it going to take our team? But, yes, you as an individual, can request from the superintendent to pull that data. Absolutely.

3:32:31 So you are certainly free to have that conversation. Thank you. You’re welcome.

3:32:39 All right, are we ready to go home, folks? Anybody have anything else? I just. I want to add one thing. One second, Mr. Higgins.

3:32:51 I just got to get you. There you go. I just want to add one thing.

3:33:00 Ms. Moore. I appreciate you kind of navigating through that as 400, but just for our public, that’s happening. That is the most ancient system on the planet Earth that our school is basically run by.

3:33:11 And it is not as simple as things that we’re used to, like interacting with at our home. Like the. The most ancient thing on the planet.

3:33:25 I am shocked they don’t have floppy to run it. And so it’s not as easy to be manipulated as something like Excel. And I understand there’s a smartsheet and stuff, but I just.

3:33:34 I want to make that really clear to the public that’s listening when she. When she’s talking about something called as 400. I had it interact with it myself.

3:33:40 It’s not easy, and it’s beyond limited when it comes to information and running reports. So again, I just want to make that really clear. That’s not someone trying to circumvent anything by any means.

3:33:44 It’s a dinosaur. So thank you. I’d like to follow for clarification on as 400 quality capability.

3:33:51 Go ahead. Ms. Madam Chair, I would like to say that I’ve received multiple reports that have come out of as 400 that have gone into Access. I have requested data that has then been put into Excel.

3:33:54 There is an option that you can do that through our systems to pull that off. Regardless of how old as 400 is, it is strong on its data reporting. The reason that we keep it is because it literally is black and white.

3:34:00 So if you request it to give an Excel spreadsheet on it, it’ll do that. Thank you. I don’t think that was perhaps a misinterpretation, what was being said, Mr. Susan.

3:34:07 I think it was just an explanation that as 400 is cumbersome. And so I don’t. I don’t.

3:34:12 I just want to make sure that we’re. Yeah. No, it’s.

3:34:27 Type it in. I know exactly how to do it. All right? So I am going to go ahead and it’s not a bickering, I promise.

3:34:32 I promise you it’s not a big if. It is. I’m cutting off your mic, Ms. Jenkins. That’s fine. Go for it. I just want to clarify that is. I’m not. I’m not saying what you’re asking is crazy because there is a smart gm. I just wanted to make it people aware that are listening that the person who’s answering the question. I don’t want them to think that. What do you mean? You can’t just pull it. I wanted to be clear about that. And our ET or ET department is literally in the process of trying to upgrade us out of it. That because it is limited to many. Just want people to be aware that Ms. Moore has gone above and beyond. Thank you. All right, folks, ready to go home. Have a great night. I wish you would have given me a hand, Sam.