2022-11-22 - School Board Meeting

0:02 Good morning. The November 22, 2022 organization of the board meeting is now in order. It is my privilege as a superintendent to chair this meeting until such time as a chairman is elected. I would like to take this opportunity to remind the public that 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 common opportunity.

0:28 Your role in the meeting is as an observer. The first order of business is for the administration of the oath of office. Mister Barry Russell, pastor of the Grove Church, is with us this morning to administer the oath to new board member, Misses Megan Wright, District one.

0:58 Barry has been Megan’s pastor and family friend for the last nine years. Barry is a former Brevard Public Schools student and serves as the chaplain for the Titusville High school football team. So Miss Wright, if you would like to join Mister Russell, and certainly Miss Wright’s family is welcome to join her at the podium.

1:26 Barry, go ahead. Yeah, there you go. That works fine.

1:35 Okay, we’re. It’s all yours, sir. I. State your name.

1:50 Meghan Wright. Do solemnly affirm. Do solemnly affirm.

1:53 That I will support, protect and defend. That I will support, protect and defend the constitution and government of the United States the constitution and government of the United States. And of the state of Florida.

2:02 And of the state of Florida. That I am duly qualified to hold the office that I am duly qualified to hold the office under the constitution of the state. Under the constitution of the state.

2:13 And that I will well and faithfully and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties of school board member perform the duties of school board member on which I now am about to enter. On which I now am about to enter. All right.

2:42 Congratulations misses Wright. Thank you for going first. That’s one of the had to go first, so appreciate you getting it started.

2:52 Mister Trent, if you would like to make your way down front. Any family members? Next. Miss Katherine Delaney, a graduate of Brevard Public schools and former student of current board member, Mister Matt Susan will administer the oath to new board member, Mister Jean Trent.

3:09 District two. Miss Delaney is family friend of the Trents and has been an inspiration to many with her involvement in the school board meetings, advocating for students, parents and teachers alike. Miss Delaney, Mister Trent.

3:22 I, Jean Trent, do solemnly affirm. I, Jean Trent, do solemnly affirm. That I will support, protect and defend I will support, protect and defend.

3:31 The Constitution and government of the United States the Constitution and government of the United States. And of the state of Florida. And of the state of Florida.

3:40 That I am duly qualified to hold office. That I am duly qualified to hold office under the Constitution of the state. Under the Constitution of the state.

3:48 And that I will well and faithfully and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties of school board member perform the duties of school board member on which I now am about to enter. On which I’m now about to enter. All right.

4:20 And now we will have Dan Carter administer the oath to returning board member. Misses Katie Campbell, district five. Mister Carter is also a brevard public schools graduate.

4:32 A former teacher, coach and assistant principal serves as the director of the fellowship of Christian Athletes for Florida’s central atlantic region. Miss Campbell. Mister Carter.

4:50 Hi, Katie Campbell. Do solemnly affirm that I will support, protect and defend. I will support the Constitution and government of the United States government and of the state of Florida.

5:09 That I am duly qualified to hold office under the Constitution of the state. And faithfully. That I will well perform the duties of school board member on which I now am about to enter.

5:54 Well, congratulations again to our new board members and returning board member. And it’s nice to have families in the audience as well today. So thank you for being here today with that.

6:04 Mister Gibbs, roll call please. Mister Trent, Mister Susan. Miss Wright.

6:11 Miss Campbell. Here. Miss Jenkins.

6:14 Present. The board will now hold a moment of silent reflection and invite the audience to join us. Thank you.

6:50 And now, if you would please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the republic which stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. That now brings us to the organization of the board. First, we need to elect a chairman, at which time the person is elected, they will assume the responsibility of chair.

7:31 The board will then elect other officers and appoint individuals to committees where board representation is required or expected in various organizations across the county and the state. Before we begin, Mister Gibbs General counsel will explain the process of board chair election going to Robert. Of the chairman of the board, the presiding official will be superintendent.

7:57 Any board member who wishes to make a nomination should call out. The first person to call out will be number one. To make a nomination.

8:04 I will assist the superintendent in determining who is the first nominator. The superintendent will then call for the nomination by that person and go down to the second. And then the third will go back to the first person, the first nomination, and vote on that nominee.

8:18 The nominee that gets the majority vote, three votes, will be the chairman. If that person is the first nominee, that will end the process. If the first nominee does not get three votes, we will go to the second and so forth.

8:30 The nominations do not need to be seconded under Robert’s rolls. I would be happy to answer any questions before we get started. All right.

8:45 Again. Mister Gibbs will observe and inform me which board member makes the first nomination. As I may have trouble distinguishing simultaneous voices with that.

8:56 The floor is now open to nominations for chairman. Mister Trent was the first to speak. Mister Trent, your nomination please.

9:12 Katie Campbell was second. Yeah, I want to. I am stepping.

9:23 Putting myself forward to serve as a chair. I appreciate Mister Susan very much on his years of service. He’s now our elder statesman.

9:31 I know that you. That his schedule is very busy and the time required by the chair is pretty substantial, in addition to our regular responsibilities. And I am ready and prepared if this board chooses to serve in that role.

9:45 Doctor Mullins, please let it be known that I have no problem serving out the entire term or any other time. I have 100% attendance in both school board and workshop meetings and will always continue. Any other.

10:06 Any other nominations at this time? Nomination. Do I hear a motion for nominations to be closed? So move. Motion.

10:22 Is there a second? All those in favor of closing the floor, denomination, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right.

10:33 A motion was made and seconded to close the nominations and was approved. All members of the board. And so we will now go down the list of nominations with the first nomination coming first.

10:38 All members of the board in support of Mister Matt. Susan, do we get to have discussion first? No, I just asked Mister Gibbs. Mister Gibbs, there can be discussion.

10:56 Yeah, if someone wishes to make a comment. No. Close the nominations.

11:04 The nominations were open and then closed. So it is can be discussed. Thank you.

11:10 Mister Gibbs, is there any discussion? Yes, sir. Miss Jenkins. Yeah.

11:14 I’m going to lay it all out on the line. I am not comfortable with someone taking a chairmanship role who has actively participated in putting our students and staff at risk, and who circumvents public records laws when asked for the same exact phone calls they brag about on this dais in public. But then suddenly, when they get a public records request, they no longer want to reveal those phone calls that they claim that they take on a regular basis.

11:43 I also don’t feel comfortable voting for a chairman who has made it very known in his public political circle that he is going to file for statehouse any day in order to start fundraising and put his attention towards that. And I quote, 20% is only to school board. I give 20%.

12:06 That is a quote right out of their mouths. I know you say that you have attended all of our meetings. That’s great.

12:14 Many of the events in which all of the board members are invited to, you are not at, or you arrive late, or you leave early, one of which was recent. Just this past couple of weeks, you asked brevard public schools to sponsor a table at the central NAACP gala to put your name on, and you didn’t show up, you didn’t call. I don’t think that’s a responsibility of a chairman.

12:38 You also don’t sit with your cabinet meetings that you’re supposed to be in attendance with. Pretty sure they would agree with that as well. So whatever the direction of this board is, it is what it is, and I’ll honor that.

12:51 But I will always hold your feet to the fire and hold you accountable for the truth and reality of how much you actually dedicate brevard public schools. All right, if I can ask the audience to please, please hold your response. The floor is still open for any other discussion.

13:12 I’d just like to respond, and to the best of my knowledge, yes, sir. Okay, thank you. So, and I’m not sure where the rest of these quotes come from, but from my perspective, what occurred today was a bunch of inactive statements that are made for transcending.

13:52 Again. Again, I would ask our audience to please refrain from response as we continue to conduct our business. Yeah.

14:01 May I follow up for my second response? Mister Gibbs, did we get guidance from the state in those public records requests? Did they say that personal cell phones, Mister Susan are actually public records? Misses Jenkins. Mister Jenkins, there is an additional time for discussion for the board members in the meeting. Any other discussion as it relates to the nomination of the candidate for school board chair.

14:38 With that, I will call for the vote of the first nominee. All members of the board in support of Mister Matt Susan’s nomination as chairman of the board, please indicate by saying aye. Any opposed? Absolutely not.

14:57 And that nomination passes three to two. That will conclude the board chairman nomination election process. Now, Mister Susan will take over the meeting as chairman and will continue with the organizational proceedings for selection of the vice chair.

15:22 First, I’ll call for a short recess to have the technology reconfigured to accommodate the needs of the new chairman. We will recess for a few minutes. We’re ready for the test.

18:40 Check, check. Yes, sir. That’s test.

18:48 Can you hear me? I can hear that. Hello? Hello, Miss Cable? Hello? Hello? Works. Check, check, check, check, check, check.

19:11 Mr. Gibbs, it’s on now. Okay, got that. Now that the handhelds are working, the chair recognizes the board’s attorney, Paul Gibbs.

29:00 No, not that. This leasing court I must call a recess to the organizational board meeting so that we may convene. The leasing corporation is now called to order.

29:14 Doctor Mullins, the item for the board to vote on is to elect the following officials to the Brevard County School Board. Leasing corporation president, chair of the school board. Vice president.

29:27 Vice chair of the school board. Secretary, superintendent and treasurer. Chief financial officer.

29:37 What are the wishes of the board? I think we have to recess this meeting and elect to vice chair. You don’t have your vice chair on your school board yet. You need a motion to recess the leasing corps.

29:56 Mister chair, I move that we recess the leasing corporation meeting. So we can go back to our regular meeting to elect a vice chair and then come back second the motion. All in favor? Signify by saying aye.

30:10 Aye. All opposed? All right. Now let’s open this back up.

30:17 Find the leasing corporation piece to it. You have the floor. We are returning from the recess to have the chairman take the seat.

30:57 And now, Mister chairman, you can open up the floor for nominations of vice chair. Welcome back. At this time, I’ll open the floor for vice president.

31:04 Nominations. We need a motion for nominations. The floor is open.

31:09 I nominate Megan Wright for vice chair. I second. Any discussion? All in favor? I close the nomination.

31:28 All members need a motion. In a second. Do I hear a motion to close the nominations? All motions are now closed.

31:46 All signify. All signify by saying aye. In favor of Megan Wright being the vice chairman.

31:54 Aye. Wait. Yeah.

31:59 Was there a vote? I didn’t hear a vote. There was a motion. In a second.

32:13 You need a vote. Do I have a vote for closing the nominations? All signify by saying aye. All opposed? The nominations are now closed.

32:19 The floor is open for the vote. All signify by saying aye. For having Megan write as vice chairman.

32:25 Aye. Aye. All opposed? We now have Miss Megan Wright.

32:38 Congratulations. As vice chairman of the board. Thank you.

32:43 Now, Reese asked to go back to the lease. Now I have to have a motion to recess. Just recess? I just recess it? Yeah.

32:47 Just recess. All right. Now we open it back up for the lease to the leasing corp.

32:54 Yeah. The leasing corporation is now called to order. Doctor Mullen.

33:04 All right. The item for the board to vote again is to elect the following officials to the Brevard county school board. Leasing corporation president.

33:11 Chairman of the board. Vice president. Vice chair of the board.

33:24 Secretary. Superintendent. Treasurer.

33:32 Chief financial officer. What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve the slate of officers that we have elected. Second the motion.

33:40 Is there any discussion? All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye.

33:48 All opposed? The motion is passed. Policing corporation time. Certain.

33:52 Meeting is now adjourned. That’s done. All right, now let’s get everybody inside.

34:10 Sorry. There’s three different sets of meetings, three different sets of motions. It’s interesting.

34:30 So do we have anybody sitting outside before we start the next meeting? Meeting that may want to come in? Is there any indication from his hand? Can we get a. Yeah, we just. So everybody knows, prior to COVID, this room was full, more than what it is now.

34:49 You know, there’s lots of room up there. Well, we don’t want them. We’ve never had anybody pass the speaker’s podium actually did it.

35:03 Yeah, he’s right out there with me. Okay, now we can get there. Guys, we have 44 speakers.

37:46 You. Hey, mom, just wait. Well, they can get them in a second.

38:43 They can get them in a secondary. No, they’ve been outside the whole time. It.

38:53 Miss Suhan, is that everybody? Thank you. Okay, everybody, we’re starting the meeting back up. One of the first orders of business that I wanted to bring up is a Miss savvy George is going to come up to the microphone, say some good words about our board.

39:06 This is in no way a recommendation by the school board. Has nothing to do with the school. This is my request moving forward as the chair for my first order of business.

39:13 Miss Savvy, good morning. Thank you, Matt, for allowing this, allowing me to speak to you. Okay, I guess the.

39:22 Okay, here we go. All right, Matt. Children are a heritage from the Lord.

39:37 The fruit of the womb, a reward. They are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. Train up a child in the way they should go.

39:59 Even when they are old, they will not depart from it. I pray God protection over each child in Brevard County. I pray that you empower them, strengthen them, give them what they need this hour, Lord.

40:22 I pray, God, that you guide them and let them be all that you have called them to be on this earth. I pray for everyone in a position of authority or high responsibility over the Brevard school board. Jean Trent, Megan Wright, Jennifer Jenkins, Katie Campbell and Matt Susan.

40:29 Courage. Give them discernment, understanding, knowledge, wisdom from above, to do what is right and pleasing. Give them every good thing and not to waver in doing good, that they will do good and not evil as they serve the children of Brevard county.

40:48 And we thank you. And we ask this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

40:59 Thank you, Miss George. Thank you, savvy. The other thing I wanted to do was as a teacher who started in 2005, who’s coached sports, who’s taught through and even has a student who was given the invocation and the swearing in of one of our other school board members.

41:12 I want to say that my commitment to everybody in this room is the same. We protect children. We are here for you, and we are going to do what’s right for this society and this community.

41:30 And I wanted to tell everybody here, just in case there’s any question. The one individual that makes me and makes everything here happen so that I can be successful is my wife, jennifer. And she never gets enough credit for keeping me in line, keeping everybody moving.

41:34 So all the credit goes to you, honey, and everything that we have here, my success is because of you. So thank you very much. At this time, if there’s family and friends that don’t want to stay for the rest of the meeting, you can take a second and you can get up and go.

41:48 Otherwise, we’re going to take 1 minute. We’re not going to break. But if you guys.

42:17 If it seems like the entire room is moving, we’ll just take a second. But if you guys want to stay here for a little while, we have 43 speakers, which means that if they’re all given three minutes, that they’re going to be quite a bit of time here. So you guys might want to get comfortable.

42:33 So I’m giving you guys an opportunity, as family members to go now, if you would like, can you grab my cup and take it with you? Thank you. Thank you. All right, the next is to adopt the dates and times for a place in the 2023 school board meetings.

42:45 I want to pause for a second because I want to talk about something. This is something that I’ve tried to do multiple times. One of the problems that we have inside of our community is that many of the individuals that are out there say that we’re not connected to it, that we policy, we pass policies, and we’re not part of the communities that we serve.

43:27 So it is going to be my recommendation to table this in the event that we are going to take half of our meetings and go to the cities that we represent. So we would like. I would like the board to table this as a chairperson.

43:36 I’m making a motion to table this until the December 13 meeting so that we can come back to a meeting in between and talk about how we can make this happen. The idea is that we would go to Titusville, meet with many of the city council members, meet with some of the leaders inside the community, and meet with the business people that are there then hold a buy a dual meeting with the city council so that we can find out exactly what those schools need, then move down to Palm Bay, move to Melbourne, and then come back every other meeting. How does that sound to the crowd today? So, with that, there’s a motion on the floor for the temporary postponement and tabling of this towards the December 13 meeting.

43:42 Do I have a second? I can. Small boards has the opportunity, as chairman, to make a motion. Thank you, Miss Campbell, for bringing that up.

43:54 I made the motion. I’ll second emotion. Okay, there’s a motion on the floor.

44:13 All in favor? Is there any discussion? Is there any discussion? Clarification? Yes. So your motion is to table this decision until our next meeting. Correct.

44:24 While, if I can just add in there, before we table it, for staff to take a look at, we have one meeting that was on the calendar for May 23. Because of the way our graduations fall, that’s actually a graduation night. So my recommendation, too, would be that we, if staff come back to us with an alternative for our May meeting, either only have one meeting in May or to move it to another Tuesday.

44:37 Because I know we don’t staff and us, we don’t want to miss graduation. So, just so everybody knows, I’m about to call for a meeting on December 5 or 8th, and this is where we’re going to discuss. That’s a great point, Miss Campbell.

44:55 Is there anybody else that wants to discuss any of what I just said besides yes, I would like to. Please. If we want to know what’s going on in our schools, in our community, then the first thing we can do is actually visit our schools and speak to the community leaders in those communities.

45:00 Step one. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. We have rules that we need to follow in terms of noticing the meetings, the type of technology that’s going to be available in those spaces, as well as the availability of our staff members to be there to answer questions, if anyone should have one.

45:11 So those are things that need to be considered if that move should be made. Absolutely. And just so everybody knows, that’s inside the audience.

45:16 Many other school boards throughout the state of Florida, including Sarasota and others, already currently do this. It’s a way for them to tie to their community. And I’ve already checked in with many of the av possibilities because.

45:26 Because this is something that I brought up before so that we could go to those locations. They all are live. They’re all on.

45:38 And Mister Michael Francisco, who runs our current system, would probably be the one to interact with them. I’ve also contacted many of the mayors to kind of give them a heads up and ask what they thought. And they thought that it was a great idea.

45:44 So, moving forward, I’ve checked out many of the things that Miss Jenkins has said, and I look forward to having discussion about it and bringing it back to the 13th. I’m going to call the question. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

46:03 All opposed? Nay. Okay, motion passes. We’re moving it to the 13th.

46:15 Next order of business. That brings us to board authorization. Doctor Mullins? It is the requirement to authorize the superintendent to have signature facsimiles made of the chairman and superintendent to be used for signing checks, and also to approve the continued use of the current signature facsimiles for district checks.

46:25 Until new facsimiles are received, a motion and a vote of the board is required for this issue. What are the wishes of the board approved. Second, is there any discussion? Hearing.

46:35 No discussion. All in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion passes.

46:41 Next. We need to appoint board representatives an alternative to various committees for the upcoming year. I’d like to postpone this to the December 13 meeting for a variety of reasons.

46:51 One of them to include. Sorry. One of them to include that there’s a many other committees that we don’t have on side of here.

46:59 Okay, so we have Civ mil that’s not represented. We have the associated builders and contractors, which is not recognized. Political business voice.

47:28 We have HBCA, we have the chambers. We have all of those. Whereas many other elected bodies all attend in person together to go to those.

47:40 We have never signified an individual to attend those. So what I would like to do, because the veterans Memorial center asked us to have a member be there, is to take this to the workshop and also work through it to include some of those others and also sit down and say, do we or don’t we want to add them? So I’ve made a motion. I’d like to table this again to the December 13 and bring it up in the workshop on a date that we’re going to talk about in a minute.

47:53 Do I have a second? A second discussion? Yes. Would we. Is your idea that in the meantime that those who are already in positions, do you want us to continue to serve? I know I have a SAAc meeting.

47:59 If I continue in that position until we make changes, I’m seeing the only one that we would need to. That we have a whole is the school health and safety committee. I don’t think they meet every month.

48:06 But then also the Central Florida Public School Boards coalition, which, by the way, does. I’ll take that. That meeting is.

48:13 Well, we can all attend. We can always all attend. And that meeting actually will happen in December or, excuse me, at our FSBA.

48:28 It’s a breakfast, and we’re all invited to attend. And so it’s okay to not have that in place till January. Yep.

48:47 So is there any other discussion on that item? All right, close discussion. Do I have here a motion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion passes.

48:58 We move on. Doctor Mullins, at this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and doctor Mullins an opportunity to recognize students, staff, or members of community. For those of you guys that haven’t done this, this is where we talk about all the great people that are in the crowd and everything else.

49:15 We usually start at one side or the other. I can give Miss Jenkins the first shot at it, move around, and then it ends up with you, then me. Okay, so, Miss Jenkins, you have the floor, if you’re ready.

49:41 If not, I can move to Mister Trent or Miss Campbell. I want to thank Seapark elementary for their Veterans day service. But there’s one thing I want to highlight in that service that was really, really special, and I don’t think it got enough acknowledgement.

50:03 Our school gave out two blue star ribbons to families who have family members who are currently deployed overseas and serving our nation. And Sea park is a special little school here in Brevard. It’s the second smallest elementary school that we have, but it’s one of our schools that, over the history of its origin, has been the most directly impacted by those serving our country.

50:19 And so I want to thank everybody who not only participated in that Memorial Veterans Day service and the in memoriam for those we’ve lost. I want to thank the 120 veterans who showed up that day for continuing to participate in that community and serve and love on that school and those babies that it serves. So thank you very much for that.

50:35 And thank you, C Park, for acknowledging all of those people. It was a really, really, really special day. I also want to acknowledge that November is national students that are homeless monthly.

50:54 And many people don’t know how many homeless students we have in brevard public schools. It’s an alarming number. I believe we’re at 1300 right now, and I believe in the state of Florida, it’s about 70,000 students.

51:04 And so I just want people to take a moment to realize that we serve all students, all families, who come from all different walks of life. And I’ve already talked about this, but I’m going to talk about it again. I want to thank the Central NAACP for inviting me through their gala.

51:17 It was an important night. There was a really awesome speaker. There was a lot of good moments.

51:32 And the theme of the night was a quote from Martin Luther King Junior. And it was our day. Our lives begin to end, the day we become silent about the things that matter.

51:41 And that night, that was so powerful to the people in the room. And that phrase is so fitting here today. So thank you, Miss Campbell.

52:01 Thank you. It has been a busy month since our last meeting. Busy few weeks.

52:15 On October 28, Central Middle School did their annual central stomp out bullying walk, where they started at the West Melbourne police station and walked back to campus. And I wanted to thank the coordinators and the teachers who walk with them, but also the West Melbourne City council, mayor, police, who joined us and who keep our city safe. And they did a great job.

52:31 We also had guest speakers, Michael Kadora was one of them, who gave lots of inspiration to our young men and our young women throughout the day. And it was a great event. On October 29, we had our marching MPA.

52:55 Congratulations to all of the bands for doing such a fantastic job. As always, even in the rain, they did a fantastic job and just made us proud. We continue to have one of the best music program in the state of Florida.

53:19 On November 4, junior achievement had multiple events going on. We did our JA in a day at Discovery elementary. We had volunteers from so many different businesses and organizations going into multiple schools on the same day, teaching, even down to kindergarten, the principles of financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and community involvement.

53:27 And so I just thank our leaders from junior achievement and for so many elected officials, business leaders, volunteers from EFSC who came in to teach our children. It’s always a wonderful day and that continues. I also just want to take a few moments, and I know Doctor Mullins may have this on his list, but I wanted to thank our community.

53:35 I’m just kind of going through my calendar. Actually, I’m going to say this one for last. Last Friday was the innovation games held at satellite high school.

53:47 That was your brainchild, I believe, a few years ago. Mister Susan, congratulations to all the teams. I think we might have had a record number of students participate.

54:10 They did such a great job, you know, in that STEM Steam world. And thank you to Molly Vega for coordinating that and keeping it going. But I will just end with this.

54:24 I want to thank our community for their vote on November 8 to approve the millage, which is going to go a long way in dealing with our wage compression issues. And I think it was pretty clear that it had bipartisan support, not 100%, but had with 58% over 58%. We had a strong community support for our, for our teachers as well as our other staff.

54:43 And so we very much. I just want to give my personal thanks to the community for that. Thank you, Mister Trent.

55:11 Well, I look forward to this time every single month from now on. As you guys know, I’m new at the board here and I look forward to the time that I’m going to be able to go through my schools and gather the list of things that had happened. I’m assuming most of you know where my time was spent in October and early November.

55:22 And I want to thank every single one of you who worked on my campaign, who supported me, who prayed for us. And I know we have a busy meeting today, but I absolutely am honored to be here and I look forward to going out and visiting the schools. Miss Wright, I want to also thank everyone that has helped me get to where I’m at right now.

55:38 So my husband and my children specifically, they sacrifice, our families sacrifice a lot to serve the public. And so for that, we are eternally grateful. It allows us to do what we’re able to do.

55:51 There were many organizations and groups that were behind me running, and I cannot thank you for the countless number of hours volunteers that we’ve had. I also have, I have a few special guests in the house tonight, and so I want to thank the matriarch of my family. Let’s just say she was born in the thirties.

55:58 My grandmother is here tonight or today, this morning. And so I want to thank her because she set an example of strong leadership and what it looks like to, to lead ethically and honorably. And she has prayed us up, up and down.

56:13 And there are many prayer warriors that are here tonight that are in that same boat. And then my mother as well. So my mom is sitting right next to her.

56:21 And I won’t tell you what year she was born in, but want to thank her. So I’ve been blessed with some strong female leaders in my life, and I’m grateful for those examples that were set for me. I believe that, that paves the way for us to learn and then obviously be effective leaders ourselves.

56:32 When I talk about the schools, I want to talk about two schools. So there’s two that I got to specifically spend some time with over the last month. And I want to highlight space coast.

56:39 So Space coast has this really awesome program which has the Space Force academy. Only ten schools in our country have this, and this is really an amazing thing. So if you guys have not seen it, I would say, get out there and look at this.

56:49 This is really. It’s pioneering what we’re going to see as far as the next branch of our military. And so that’s very exciting.

57:05 And then I also want to brag on Titusville High. So I got the opportunity to spend some time there at Titusville High, and they’re doing some amazing things. They’re helping their food pantry, they have a school store.

57:11 They have all types of clothing that they’re giving out to kids. So they really are truly seeing the need that their children have, and they’re meeting that need in an exceptional way. And I got to witness it firsthand and see kids come in and grab things like toothpaste, things that you and I don’t maybe necessarily think of, but we take for granted.

57:14 And they are meeting that need. So I want to give them a shout out for. For seeing a need and meeting a need.

57:46 Thank you, guys. Thank you. Miss Wright.

58:07 I did want to say something about the innovation games. Years ago, when I got started, one of the things that people said was, we are the Space coast. Why aren’t we leading the nation in STEM? We hear about all these things, the good idea fairies that come around, the companies that all of a sudden they want to be a part of STEM, but who’s to lead them? What school district in the state? What school district in the nation? So we created the innovation Games years ago, and Boeing, Northrop Grumman, a lot of the current space industry giants that we have, we have games inside of there, and our kids compete.

58:16 It’s up to us for the next year to open that up to the rest of the nation so that kids from around the country can come here to compete with us and that we can lead in STEM. Across the country right now, we have the most innovative innovation games that are going on, but it’s like, right here, we’re not letting the world know about it. So I want to say thank you to staff for everything that they’ve done to make that continual and make that happen.

58:26 I think this was the fourth year in a row that we’ve had it. Our whirly girls, there’s an all female stem team of drone racers that wins every year. They keep coming back and they go international.

58:46 What’s that? First and second place? Yep. That don’t. My wife keeps me in line but I wanted to say very good job for staff.

58:53 All the credit goes to them for continual this and our industry space partners that we have. The other thing is, is that this board years ago made a decision to be the first in the nation to make heart screenings a part of our school district. We made sure that individuals that were inside of our schools were going to be tested to make sure that they didn’t have any heart problems.

59:01 We did that. That is the first one in the nation. And when we said it, I don’t know if you guys know, they heart screened up to 8000 kids.

59:25 And at the end of it we saved almost between. It was like ten or 18 by the end of the year. And we had people coming in here with families thanking us to do that.

59:55 So that the reason that that’s important was is that the founder of that, Mister Macaron, was just won at Titusville High School three or four days ago. The actual award, the NASCAR Impact award for being one of the most impactful things across the country. Because after we did it, it spread across the country and literally saving thousands of kids lives across this state and across the country.

1:00:08 So I was just so excited for Mister Macaron and who we play for and what this board made the commitment to do. I also want to say thank you to Don Weaver who’s the president of the Veterans Memorial center. He has tied up and we are now going to launch, now that we have the new board in place, coordination for the expansion of ROTC programs, grabbing coordination between the veterans of foreign wars, american legions, amvets and others so that we can create what is becoming the number one veteran speaking project inside of the country.

1:00:19 We are number two right now, but the coordination factors of all of those groups might bring us over the top. So I want to say thank you to Don Weaver. I want to say thank you to Mike Herodotus for giving me a $22,500 check for our foundation.

1:00:30 Mister Herodopoulos said that we need to go ahead and work on, specifically work on helping tutor kids in the low socioeconomic areas. And that was his commitment to do that. And I wanted to thank him for his check.

1:00:45 I also want to thank Paul Alfre, mayor of Melbourne. Because Miss Campbell, you have a very unique one of these appointments that only you and Miss Jenkins can be a part of. And we were jealous.

1:01:00 So Mister Alfrey is going to create the Melbourne Youth Advisory board and we’re going to talk to Mayor Hal Rose has mentioned it. We would like to create some youth advisory boards that can meet with the school board members and move forward. I want to thank him for stepping up and doing that and coordinating that.

1:01:08 I also want to say thank you to Sue Han. Many of you may not have seen the agenda, but if you read into each one of those agenda items, you’ll notice that at the bottom of many of our procurements, there’s a thing that says we actually came under budget. Under budget.

1:01:22 Under budget. And if you look at the majority of them, I had to stop counting once I went over a million dollars. And the projects tonight were under budget.

1:01:44 So that’s coming back to the school district under her watch to make sure that we have fiscal conservatism and we’re going to be doing the right thing for the schools. I also want to say thank you to Miss Rodriguez, who is ahead of our procurement because she brought forward a job description tonight. A couple of them.

1:02:01 And guess what? We are getting to a point inside of our school district, under the direction of Doctor Mullins, that we’re going to recognize not only having a degree, but if you’ve been working for our system for many years, it’s been a limiting factor for some people. They’ve been working for us for 2030 years and they can’t get the next job. You know why? Because the job description made it a requirement to actually have a degree.

1:02:07 So it might be that an individual that just came out of college could supersede somebody that’s been in the system and knows it for the last 20 years. And Miss Rodriguez’s commitment to that was to add the years of service into the job descriptions for her per procurement. And that is a commitment to our people here inside the school district that we care about you.

1:02:26 And we want to see you move up inside of our community. I also want to say there’s one last. I have one more thing after this.

1:02:40 But coach McCormick. So there’s an item on here that gives the Space coast wrestling team the ability to go travel up into South Carolina for a match. And the reason that that’s near and dear to me is that as a teacher in 2008, coach McCormick was wrongfully suspended from Space Coast High school.

1:02:53 And I was asked, as a football coach that knew nothing about wrestling, to step in so that I could carry the team for a season so that he could come back. Now, the reason that that’s important is that somehow a football coach was able to pull off an undefeated season and win coach of the year for the year. I did.

1:03:13 And then I handed it back off to Mister McCormick, who still today is the coach at Space coast. So the commitment to our coaches is here. I just wanted to give him a shout out for all of his years of service to our Space coast high school wrestling team.

1:03:32 And I hope that they beat up on Palm Bay this year because Palm Bay under Ballard was always our nemesis. I also wanted to say that also besides the national day for our children is also that we have national military month. So we have in this district one of the strongest commitments with policy towards our military veterans and their families.

1:03:37 I just wanted to say thank you to that. It’s also national Native American Heritage Month and many people don’t know about my connection to the native american history, but my wife and many of others, we have traveled throughout the west and worked with many tribes on different things. And that’s near and dear to my heart when we talk about diversity and everything else finished and we can move on.

1:03:50 Did you have something you wanted to say? Oh, Doctor Mullins. Yeah, Doctor Mullins, you get to say something. I’m so sorry I took all the credit.

1:04:11 No worries. Thank you, Mister Seuss. And I just want to acknowledge that in this season of Thanksgiving, it is, I would suggest, an extra special season of thanksgiving.

1:04:33 One, we as a community, fared extraordinarily well through two particular storms that came our way. I know that families were more severely impacted than others, and our hearts and our continued thoughts go out to them. But overall, as a community, we are very fortunate.

1:05:10 In addition, I want to say thank you to the staff of brevard Public Schools, who acknowledged that and recognized we needed to make up the loss of school. Time was accommodating. Being creative and identifying the time that we could use to make up the lost instructional hours while also preserving this week of Thanksgiving.

1:05:18 And I would suggest that this might be the most normal Thanksgiving we’ve had in a couple of few years, not having to deal with other challenges and so on. So it’s wonderful to consider being with friends, family, and lifting up our spirit of thanks at this time of year. But most of all, I too want to echo Miss Campbell’s appreciation to our community for their response on November 8 in validating brevard public schools commitment to our employees to tackle wage compression through the revenue that will be generated with a millage.

1:05:25 So my appreciation to our community as well, and their response. Thank you. Miss Campbell might have added something.

1:05:32 Sorry, I had to ask Mister Gibbs a question. Did you mention the employee of the year winner, Doctor Bowens? I did not. I did not.

1:05:40 Please go ahead. You probably have the name at your fingertips. So you gotta help me.

1:05:56 I’ll get you started right. Last Wednesday we recognized all of our. I think there were 87 employees of the year.

1:06:03 We’ll have our teacher of the year recognition later on in January. We recognize all employees of the year, which can come from secretaries, clerks, bus drivers, coordinators, sros. We had quite a few sros in the room and just wanted to congratulate all of them.

1:06:18 Our six finalists. And then our winner, who was. I’m not going to get his last name right here on the spot because it’s like right there, but I can’t get out.

1:06:49 But it’s Mister Rod, Mister Roderick, who is our technology associate, tech specialist at McNair Magnet Middle School. A most, most impressive. I say young man, hopefully he won’t be offended by that.

1:07:07 But dynamic, engaging, relatable, can do attitude rises to whatever and wherever the need is across their school from certainly taking care of their technology needs, but serving to fill the gap when another employee is out to cover a classroom. Or if a teacher needs some assistance with a student, he is one of the first ones there to respond. He does not hold to his lane is technology only.

1:07:23 He is a true ambassador across the entire. Across the entire school. And his principal, Doctor Stevenson, was just extraordinarily complimentary of him and a tremendous representative for brevard public schools to now go to the state and represent us at the state level.

1:07:27 So congratulations again, Mister Rod. You’re an amazing employee and we are so fortunate to have you as part of team BPS. Excuse me, Mister chairman.

1:07:32 I just got a text from a friend. It’s Foster. It’s Roderick Foster.

1:08:26 So thank you, Mister Foster. Thank you, Doctor Mullins. That brings us to the adoption of the agenda.

1:08:31 Doctor Mullins. On this morning’s agenda we have administrative staff recommendations, 24 consent items, seven action items, one information item and two board member discussion topics. Changes made to the agenda since release to the public include the addition of items K 48 State Board of Education Rule six, a 10.

1:08:47 086 and K 49 school board policy 25 21 and revisions to items a seven administrative staff recommendations F 24 Oak park elementary school generator closeout and G 44 department school initiated agreements. If you give me just a moment, Mister chairman, I want to double check, make sure I got that right. My script says school board policy 25 24.

1:09:12 But I thought it was 25 21. I did say it correctly. This policy 25 21.

1:09:21 Thank you. Yep. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Second, any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

1:09:29 Although opposed? Motion passes. Doctor Mullins, will you please let us know about the administrative staff recommendations? Mister chair, members of the board, there is one item for your consideration. Do I have a motion? Do I hear any discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

1:09:54 Aye. Those opposed? Motion passes. Okay, we are now at the public comments portion of the meeting.

1:10:06 On agenda items. We have 42 regular speakers and then we have three extras. So it’s.

1:10:19 I would like to make a motion to take the speakers that are at the end of the meeting and move them up to the regular public speaking policy time. It’s been this board member’s wish to continue to do that and give people. One of the reasons for that is because a couple of times we had people that had come to speak and they were outside while we were speaking, which almost happened again today.

1:10:30 So I want to try to do a couple of things. The first one is I want to move all the public speakers from non public speaking up to the end of the current public speaking. So there’s a motion on the floor.

1:10:44 Do I have a second, just to be clear, that will allow them more time to speak, correct? Yes. Cause that’s gonna be the next part is that I’m gonna give everybody three minutes. Currently, the policy for speaking reduces the amount of people depending on how many people are in there.

1:10:55 And I apologize for everybody in here that didn’t wanna come here and sit through over an hour of speaking. But that’s what the will of the people are and that’s what we’re gonna do, just to be fair. So the first one is to move up the speakers.

1:11:02 Do I have a second? 2nd? Any discussion? So just to be, just to be clear, you’re moving the non agenda items at the end to after the agenda. So the 47 is a non agenda. Correct.

1:11:06 Sorry, my mic went out. So the 47 is for who signed up for non agenda. We’re going to put them after the two who signed up for Agenda 42, regular speakers who normally would speak.

1:11:13 During this time, we are taking the public speakers from the non agenda item, which is three of them. This is the non agenda. Oh yeah.

1:11:16 Okay, sorry. So we’re taking the public speakers and moving the non agenda speakers off. Okay.

1:11:20 So in that process, we sometimes have people who sign up for both. Are we just gonna give them the one time? I’m just gonna give them one time. The one time.

1:11:55 Okay. So that we wanna make that crystal clear before we get started. Okay.

1:12:03 Absolutely. All right. Any other discussion? Yes, I have some.

1:12:24 So I had planned on bringing this up at the end of the meeting as a discussion. As the only board member sitting up here who routinely voted against changing our public comment policy from the beginning, I would like our new board members to consider us reverting back to our old public comment policy, where there is everyone speaking in the middle of the meeting instead of the end of the meeting, getting their three minutes to speak, and being allowed to address the board by name. So are you offering up an amendment to the original motion at this time? Mister Gibbs, are we allowed to do that without posting and going through policy procedures? No.

1:12:30 Right now I think she’s just saying that she wants to move that direction for board consideration. That’s a separate issue. We’d have to do rulemaking to do that.

1:12:47 Sure, we can come back, but what she’s mentioning is she can amend what we’re doing right now to mirror exactly what she’s saying, which is go back to the original way that we used to do things. So are you making an amendment or just a suggestion to come back later as a policy? I was making a suggestion to come back as a policy because it’s not very different than what you said. But I guess I’ll add to it.

1:12:50 I will amend it and add that board members can be addressed by name. Yep, that’s exactly where we were going to go. So that’s awesome.

1:12:56 So right now, there’s an amendment on the floor that not only moves all the non agenda public speakers up to the public speakers, it also allows them the three minutes, and it also allows everybody that’s going to speak to speak and use the board members names inside of their speech. So there needs to be a second. 2nd on this motion.

1:13:10 Second. You made the motion. You made the amendment.

1:13:13 I’ll second the motion. There it is. And any other discussion on this.

1:13:20 All right, those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed? Okay, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to have the public speakers speak first. No, she amended his original motion to include.

1:13:35 Yeah. So we’re good to go? Yep. You’re good? Yep.

1:14:00 Yep. So now we move forward. So what I’d like to do is move the first way we’re going to do it is, is we always call up three people at a time.

1:14:05 So we’re going to call up the first agenda items only speakers, which is going to be Anthony Colucci, Gregory Ross. Sorry, talking about the state doe. And then Rebecca make Aline.

1:14:17 And who is speaking about board policies and teacher support. So those three people, if you can start making your way towards the podium and we’ll go through. You ready? Oh boy.

1:14:33 I’ve been waiting for this moment for a while. Oh, me too. Me too.

1:14:54 My name is Anthony Colucci. I’m the president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers. First of all, on behalf of our nearly 5000 teachers, I want to thank the residents of Brevard county for supporting the Milledge referendum.

1:15:04 Our teachers and staff have been demoralized the past couple of years and it truly means a tremendous amount to know that Brevard county supports us and the workforce we’re doing. Congratulations to Mister Susan on your appointment to chair. And congratulations to Miss Wright and Mister Trent.

1:15:18 We’re excited to work with both of you on issues that are important to our teachers. You will frequently hear me speak to f 16 instructional staff recommendations because I’m concerned when I see resignations listed today, I see 42 of them. While these might be a list of names to you as BFT president, they’re a list of stories.

1:15:39 And often these stories I know personally. They’re stories of why teachers left this district. And it greatly concerns me when these stories could have had a different ending.

1:16:06 There are stories of teachers who resigned because they couldn’t get support for unruly students. Stories of teachers who left because of the ever growing demands and expectations put on our teachers. There are stories of teachers who resigned because of difficult principles.

1:16:31 Stories of those who left because they wanted to transfer to another school and it was denied. As this new board begins its work, I implore you to start focusing on the issues that are the reason why there are so many vacancies. And with that said, right now it’s clear that the major issue we need to put focus on is student discipline.

1:16:50 We need to put all our energy towards a district wide initiative to get our schools back under control. When discipline improves, student mental health will improve, students will achieve more academically, enrollment will increase, more teachers and staff will choose to stay, and all students will feel safe at school. While I don’t think this is an easy task, I believe that together, teachers, parents and community can tackle this problem.

1:17:01 Brevard county and Brevard public schools are better than what’s happening right now. I urge you to make this the focus of our district for the upcoming years and not get sidetracked by every wedge issue that arises. I also have another ask on behalf of our teachers and staff, and that is to figure out a way to get us our agreed upon raises for the year in our checks fasters.

1:17:09 Teachers agreed to our contract before school started and most teachers still haven’t seen their raises. I believe if you ask Mister Trent, he can tell you he voted on a contract in August and left the classroom in November without ever seeing an increase. As it stands now, a part of our raise won’t start until April.

1:17:43 These are the kinds of issues that hurt morale in this district. Thank you for your time, and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us to work on any issue that arises. Thank you.

1:17:52 Mister Colucci, Mister Ross. Good morning board. I’m here to speak on agenda item number 48, the state rule 6810.

1:18:06 086. What I want to call on that rule is it mentions biological sex four times. And I know you guys just have this up for discussion today.

1:18:26 I’m here to encourage you to use science as you discuss this rule and make any implementations or changes on it. I have to admit what I have here, I didn’t write. I’m just going to read it and I think it says very well, kind of what I’m thinking here.

1:18:38 1936 Olympics hosted by Adolf Hitler. There was an american named Stella Walsh, commonly called Stella the fella. She crushed the competition.

1:18:55 She always changed her clothes by herself and had muscle tissue and facial features that resembled a man. The Olympic committee did an examination during which members found that Stella was in fact both male and female. Sort of.

1:19:01 She had ambiguous genitalia and it was impossible to determine her biological sexual. This fact remained a secret until Stella’s death in 1980, when she was shot and killed in the crossfire of an armed bank robbery in Los Angeles. Today we have genetics and DNA that allow us to examine karyotype.

1:19:12 That’s our collection of chromosomes. We know without question that humans are not just born male and female. There are at least six biological sexes that can result in fairly normal lifespan.

1:19:19 Those six most common karyotypes, a typical male has an x and a Y chromosome. A typical female has an x, has two x chromosomes. There are four other karyotypes that are common in our society.

1:19:43 Someone has a single x chromosome. This is roughly one in 2000. This is known as Turner syndrome.

1:19:59 You can have extra x chromosome xxy. This is known as Klinefelter syndrome. There’s roughly one in 500 to one in 1000 people who have this.

1:20:12 There’s also xyy. Roughly one out of 1000 people have this. And then there’s xxxy.

1:20:23 Roughly one in 18,000 births have this karyotype. When you consider that there are 8 million people alive on the planet, there are almost assuredly tens of millions of people who are not male or female. When you consider the 72,000 approximate students we have in brevard public schools, that means there’s almost 300 students who have this.

1:20:39 So what does it mean? It means it is possible for your brain, your body, and your reproductive systems to all have different biological sexes. Let me repeat that. It is possible for your brain, your body, and your reproductive systems to all have different biological sexes.

1:20:53 This is a scientific fact. Please use science as you move forward. Thank you, mister Ross, thank you for your comments.

1:21:20 Thank you for keeping inside your three minutes. Miss Rebecca. On deck we have Shelley Roden, Josephine Hunter, and William McKay.

1:21:34 Miss Rebecca, thank you. Growing up here in Brevard, raising my kids here, working in the school district, I am aware of the school board and what they do. The agenda of the school board members was rarely ever in the news.

1:21:54 As a very political family, we talked about all of every kind of politics growing up. But the school board was rarely in the news. Most folks didn’t know who they were, or the members themselves did not seek the limelight.

1:22:32 They were generally comprised of civic minded folks who may or may not be parents. Maybe they have axe to grind or wrong to write, but most were just local business owners with experience to land in this part time venture for the good of the community. A few considered this to be a stepping stone to a higher office in our state, but they were never partisan, did not seek or receive endorsements from outside agencies and races, were generally conducted under the radar of the general population.

1:22:53 They seem to believe in the actual motto, which continues to be serve every child with excellence. And our district has been in the top performing tears in the state because of that. Fast forward to today, where divisive, hateful rhetoric has become the norm.

1:23:08 Where people who have never or would never work in a school have decided that the people who do are suddenly not qualified. The book banners, the potty police, the angry soccer moms are joyful in their open disregard for children they don’t know or acknowledge. Even as children, their loud talking points are not representative of who brevard is.

1:23:17 Their hateful rhetoric does not represent everyone. I am not alone in speaking in support of our teachers, our media specialists, our faculty, our support staff, bus drivers, custodians, the real warriors who show up every day to serve every child with excellence, even in the face of hate and hurtful accusations from people who have nothing to gain except their five minutes of fame, to the teachers who put on battle armor every day defending themselves against claims that are disrespectful and disgusting, yet continue to sacrifice their own time and families to push our kids to be critical thinkers. To the media specialists who defend books from people who don’t even read or rely solely on a keyword search versus the context of the book.

1:23:30 To the principals who must continue to ask their staff to do more with less, we tell you we support you. To the parents of marginalized children who already bear the burden of anxiety for their children, we see you because your child is part of every child. To the hundreds of children who watch this despicable behavior from some of the adults in our county, we are sorry.

1:23:38 This board must remain dedicated to every student, every child with excellence. We hope that you will remember that our county’s children are your priority. The kids are here, not in another county or in Tallahassee or some political game or some political agenda.

1:23:46 All of our tax dollars are engaged in the process of success and failure. We are watching. We know who supported better paid for teachers and who did not.

1:23:58 What we sow for our future begins here. We believe in our kids, in public education and expect you to do the same every day for every student. Thank you, Miss Roden.

1:24:07 Thank you, Miss Roden. Josephine Hunter, please. Oh, I’m sorry.

1:24:33 Miss Roden, please stop. Thank you. You’re next.

1:24:46 Good morning, Doctor Mullins. Members of the board, my name is Shelley Rawdon. I am the youth director for Space Coast Pride, as well as a board member for the Melbourne PFLAG chapter.

1:25:07 I was asked to read a letter today from a mother. I’ll go ahead with that. I am the mother of a transgender girl in Brevard county schools.

1:25:19 I’m having Shelley speak for me today because I didn’t want my daughter to have to witness what is happening in our school system. She already struggles every single day to love herself, and she already feels unsafe. In Florida, there’s been a lot of talk about requiring children like mine to either use the bathroom of their, quote, biological sex or use a separate but equal facility.

1:25:40 If they aren’t comfortable with that, like the nurse’s office. I can tell you how this will impact my child. My daughter would be horrified to use the boys bathroom because she is a girl.

1:25:53 It would be humiliating and terrifying for her. The nurse’s office, on the surface sounds reasonable, except that this automatically others her. It’s only a matter of time before other girls notice that she never uses the girl’s bathrooms and want to know why.

1:26:15 Even if she doesn’t get outed, this sends a clear message to her that who she is is wrong. Transgender students are not a threat to other children. This is not a manufactured.

1:26:24 This is a manufactured issue. And if seriously pursued, best case is, you will be wasting tons of our school’s money on lawsuits because you are breaking federal law. Or worst case, you contribute so much to the dehumanization of this group of people that you actually encourage hate crimes on our students.

1:26:55 All we are asking is for our community to not add to the already immense struggles of a transgender child and those like her. Everyone deserves dignity and compassion. Thank you.

1:27:21 Thank you. Thank you. Miss Roden, Miss Hunter, the next three up are Mister McKay, Mister Bernard Bryant, Mister Darrell Moody, Miss Hunter, you have the floor.

1:27:32 I’m here to speak regarding. Pardon me. Right, because I normally speak loud, so it must be the mic.

1:27:50 Okay, go ahead. Good morning. I’m here to speak, and I’m asking for assistance or help or more attention paid to the poverty, children of poverty, those who are homeless, those who come from areas that don’t have the resources that others do, or, as some people say, that every child be seen, not just those who are in a better class, but every child.

1:28:10 And so the issues that we’re having, one of the things is that there is no Internet service available for everyone. And I understand, even with parents, that there’s no platform that parents can check on their children if they don’t have Internet service. And I don’t understand, because I know when the pandemic hit, everybody had Internet.

1:28:21 A card went on with everybody. So I don’t understand why we’re back to the point now that it’s not available for them. But we do need to reach every child.

1:28:31 That’s one of the things I wanted to ask about. The other thing was that we need for the board to partner with us, with the community on issues that are going on. We just need help.

1:28:47 And when I say we need help, I’m talking about the children need help. You know, and I agree with the lady who was up a few minutes ago who spoke that the division, you know, the behavior that the adults and some of us are, disparities playing is not good for our children. It’s about the children.

1:28:56 You know, we have to look out for what’s best for them, and we’re not doing that. We have to put some things aside for our kids, and we’re not doing that. You know, we’re bigger than this.

1:29:02 We’re better than this as people. We’re better than this, that we have to put our children first in meeting their needs. So, you know, we need help.

1:29:21 We need to find better ways than what we’re doing. And when you say you’re going to come to the community, really come to the community, not somewhere else, and sit and talk with us and actually hear us. You can’t meet the need if you don’t know what the need is.

1:29:35 Do we at least agree with that? So I’ll. You know, I’m on several organizations. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.

1:29:51 I’m Lady J on the radio. I’m with Chicago. I’m with NAACP, I’m with Evan.

1:29:58 I’m with a lot of places. So when you come around, I want the opportunity to sit and speak with each of you and talk about how you can help our kids, because it’s not happening. Okay? Miss McKay, Miss McKay, Miss Hunter.

1:30:09 Sorry, Miss Hunter, can you go to Mister Russell Broom, make sure he has your contact information so when we come to your area, we can get ahold of it? Please get over there and talk to him so we can make sure we follow through with that request. Mister McKay, please. Your floor is yours.

1:30:36 Yes, I’d like to welcome the new board, actually, my name is Bill McKay. I’m the community director for Space Ghost Pride, and I’m just here to ask and hope that you will continue to follow federal and state guidelines and laws. As always, our LGBTQ students, they don’t need your approval to exist.

1:30:51 They need your protection to survive and thrive. And that’s all, really. Thank you very much.

1:31:08 Thank you. Mister McKay. Mister Bernard Bryant, you have the floor first, thank you for allowing me to speak today.

1:31:29 My name is Bernard Bryan, and I’m representing the self Brevard branch of the NAACP, as well as the concerned citizens of the South Brevard area. I have been volunteering in the south Berwad area for about seven years, and I’m on three SAC teams. I understand the needs of our community, but just a couple of things that I want to share with you today.

1:31:39 The Bible says, love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the back end of that scripture says, love your neighbor as yourself. So I just want this board, this new board to understand that our neighbors are really, really important.

1:31:55 I just want to share some facts with you today. I’m concerned about our kids education level. Our kids are.

1:32:10 A lot of them are reading one or two levels behind. When I look at the african american set, the math level is behind, the reading level is behind, and I hope this board make this a priority. I do a stem program in the south Brevard area.

1:32:30 And I see that all kids can do it. I want to thank Doctor Mullins. He understands the need of partnering with our community.

1:32:45 Thank you, Doctor Mullins, for all you’ve done. I want to also thank Doctor McKinnon. I had one student came to me and said, who’s that lady? That african american student saw Doctor McKinnon in a very key role.

1:32:49 So all kids need to see that. When you look at the hiring staff, the population of equity, we only had five or 7%, but there are 15% of african american students in this population. So I want to challenge you.

1:33:02 I want to challenge you to work with us, work with all communities, because I’m not paid. But I love every student in the Brevard public school system. And I just want to say thank you to a lot of people that have answered my phone call, like Miss Klein, doctor Sullivan, Miss Hahn.

1:33:17 We all trying to work together to build a stronger educational program for each child. Every child matter. I have no children in the school system, but I’m fighting for all.

1:33:28 So work with me. Give me a call. I’m willing to come talk to you.

1:33:37 I’m a guide that just don’t only talk, but I let my actions speak for my word. And I’m willing to do everything I can to help this board support every student. So give me a call anytime.

1:33:54 God bless you. Mister Bryant, please go see Mister Russell Brune and make sure we have your contact information so that we can make sure you’re on the list. I know that you’ve been coming to our meetings and doing great speeches and promoting us and everything else, but I want to make sure that we call you when we get down there.

1:34:02 Okay? Thank you so much, mister Bryant. Next up is Mister Daryl Moody. Then behind Mister Moody is Diane Haims, Karen Moser and Roger Osgoode.

1:34:21 Good morning. I want to thank all you for inviting me out here to allow me to speak also, and I’m here on behalf of. I came down here and to volunteer.

1:34:51 I’m a coach also for basketball and I’m a graduate from Devry University. I retired from Lockheed Martin in Orlando and I’ve coached kids and trained kids for quite some time. I won state championship as a head coach as Orlando Christian prep.

1:35:19 I’ve trained kids. I got kids that’s in the NBA, that’s playing basketball and everything. And I can talk, listen to the coach here.

1:35:39 And I moved to Coco and I volunteered and I’ve coached at Cocoa High School with the girls basketball for the first time, girls, for the last four years. And I filled out information, and I was accused of a crime that I didn’t do, and I was arrested, but I turned myself in. So they arrested me after I turned myself in.

1:35:47 So when I come down here to check myself to make sure I was qualified to continue to help train kids, everything, and I was denied because of an arrest. And I’m kind of like, don’t understand how could you hold something against someone where you’re not really charged? And I’ve coached in Orlando. I’ve been all around the country coaching basketball, the training kids and all the kids that I’ve really worked with that’s going off to college and did well, and I still would like to volunteer somewhere.

1:35:51 And when your rules change over here in Brevard county, all of a sudden, when I was already in your system, I’m not understanding what makes a difference now when I don’t have anything charged against me. And I think that happens to other people that I’ve been talking with over here in Brevard county. And somehow that might need to be adjusted or changed somehow, you know, that’s my concern, and that’s why I was here today, to see how that can be worked out in a different way.

1:35:56 You know what I mean? Thank you, Mister Moody. I just want to say this is something that’s been brought up also, and I think that it’s. There’s a couple individuals that are in your situation, and I think that that’s going to be one of the issues that we go try to get behind the scenes and workshop on and maybe see something come up on the December 13 as a different board direction.

1:36:11 We had to go to a. Create a new policy based on some situations that occurred. And I think that there’s some catchalls that may not have gotten in there.

1:36:29 So I think that you’re right. We need to make some. We need to rework that policy.

1:36:50 So thank you. Like I said, I already was in your system four years already. Thank you, sir.

1:37:03 Thank you. Thank you for coming and being with us. Next up, Miss Diane Haynes.

1:37:27 Good morning, and congratulations to each and every one of you. You fought hard, and this is your reward. A new beginning, a new board, a new direction, all based on the mission that to serve each student with excellence as a standard.

1:37:41 I do not believe one single board member up there has hate in their heart, or is their agenda. I personally, however, take the signs in the audience as hate speech, hate against this board, hate against myself, hate against any and all who believe something different. We don’t hate, and I resent the implication because beliefs differ.

1:38:06 That doesn’t mean you hate someone. That is a very strong word to be applied on any agenda. Please don’t let the barrage of accusations sway you from that very statement behind you.

1:38:28 Education is your number one priority. And no one other agenda should be that we all look forward to progress and the betterment of all for all of our children, the increase in test scores, the excellence in their education, both physical and mental. Please do not let any other issues sway you on what your mission should be.

1:38:51 Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Haynes. Next up, Karen Moser.

1:39:09 Thank you very much. I wanted to endorse Greg Ross’s points and point out that the mission of public schools, of course, is to educate all children, not just those who might conform to some religious or politically driven pigeonhole. By all means, every parent is entitled to no school policy.

1:39:14 But we don’t do it in such a way as to single out children who may not conform. I have always thought that education is absolutely important for the continuing progress, social and economic. That’s how you have an educated workforce.

1:39:20 That’s how you have an advanced society as an educated population. So please don’t let yourselves get sucked into national level culture war. Things that has come out as anti trans most recently.

1:39:24 Please don’t invent problems or let them invent problems that I have never seen in all my years. Or let yourself get sucked into political culture wars, please. Thank you very much.

1:39:30 Thank you, Miss Moser. Thank you, Miss Moser. Next up is Roger Osgood.

1:39:44 Behind Mister Osgood is honey walls. Allison Enright and Paul Raub. Please make your way to the podium.

1:39:55 Thank you. The floor is yours. Thank you.

1:40:07 I am Regina Lee. My legal name is Roger Osgoode. I’m a transsexual.

1:40:18 When I went to school, there was nobody to help me. Nobody that could explain what was going on in my life. I saw myself as a girl.

1:40:34 It hurts that you all think that it’s okay to make kids do something different than what they are. I went through that. Please don’t go back to that.

1:40:55 I live in Brevard. Most of the kids that I knew that are transsexuals know between five and seven years old that they are different than the others. That’s proven.

1:41:13 You can look it up. I’m not making it up. Why take away anything from an lgbt kid? They are who they are.

1:41:23 Your previous board worked with superintendent, the board lawyer, to meet all the requirements of the state and the nation. There’s nothing wrong with what you had made. Keep it the pulse nightclub club.

1:41:39 Q that is because of misinformation and horrible hate from the christian religion. No, I’m a pastor. I can’t imagine that anybody would kill somebody because they don’t like the LGBTQ people.

1:41:55 I just don’t get that either. I’ve heard loud and clear that some of the board members intend on banning books and doing basically what the Germans did and the Italians prior to Hitler and Mussolini. That’s not right.

1:42:03 Why would you do that? There’s a claim for religious regions. I’m a pastor. I read the Bible a million times.

1:42:14 Where does it say to hate someone? Jesus would have stuck with us. Do you think that he would have been white when he showed up here? No, he would have been dark. He probably again would have had long hair and looked a lot like transgendered people.

1:42:23 How many other children have different religions? You’re picking only one religion. I don’t believe that’s how a school board should work. Follow your religions.

1:42:26 Don’t hate anybody. I was a teacher for 30 years. I fully understand how board of education is work.

1:42:45 The superintendent and board lawyer really have the work to do to get you new members up to speed. Protect all students, not just your christian ones. Muslims, agnostics and Buddhists exist.

1:42:53 You can ignore them. Your actions can kill a student. They will and can because you don’t understand it.

1:42:56 Might have signed their faith. Thank you. Thank you.

1:43:01 Mister Osgood, Miss Honeywalls, you’re up next. Miss Walls, can you hang on just a second? Normally what we do is we get through like one of the pages and use the restroom. But if there’s a call for it right now, we are on.

1:43:14 So let’s let Miss Walls speak and then we’re going to take a recess so that our board members and others can use the restroom. And then we’ll come back. Usually takes about five minutes.

1:43:28 So there we go. Miss Walls, please go. I’ll be quick.

1:43:47 Thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here with you. Congratulations to everybody.

1:44:03 It’s an exciting time to be part of this community. I’m a grandmother. I’ve been living in Melbourne for almost 30 years with my husband, who is now 90 years old and he’s black.

1:44:16 When we got together, we were in Oklahoma. Not sure if even black and white could mingle together then, and that was a long time ago. We were happy and surprised to see that we were accepted by one and all.

1:44:16 So when I tell you that I’ve come to my family of LGBTQ, it is because they have accepted me. And you see me for all that I am. It’s the first time in my 68 years of life that I felt this kind of acceptance.

1:44:35 So I come because I listen to the national news and la la la. And I just want you to know my husband this morning said, I’m afraid for you. You know, there’s all kinds of crazies who come to these meetings.

1:44:42 I’m afraid of what you’re doing. I said, well, honey, I’m just coming to support the kids. He says, I know, but there’s crazy people who come to these meetings, and I’m afraid for you.

1:44:47 Well, I want you to know I tried to assuage his fear because I have to stand up in strength for these kids. And that’s all. That’s why I’m here.

1:59:22 I want you to know that there’s just this old lady granny out here in Melbourne. My own kid went to satellite high. He’s 45 or six now.

1:59:33 And I’m just here still supporting the kids. Thank you for all the work you do. You’re really special to all of us.

1:59:37 Thank you. Thank you. Miss Honeywalls, we’re going to recess for ten minutes.

1:59:41 It sa sa sat sa sa. Hello. Next up to speak is going to be Miss Allison Enright, then Paul Raub, and then Benny Jackson.

1:59:54 Miss Enwright, you have the floor. Good morning. My name.

1:59:59 You can’t hear me. Let me stop it. I don’t want to get you full three minutes.

2:00:04 Now. Go ahead and speak through it. Hello.

2:00:08 We’re having some mic. Can you turn on the microphone back there? He is coming through over the broadcast. Must be something.

2:00:16 Yeah, go ahead, Miss Enright. We’re good. Hello, I can.

2:00:20 Can you hear me? I’m a teacher. I can do it without the mic. There you go.

2:00:31 Let’s just roll with it. As long as he can hear you for the public comment online. That’s good.

2:00:55 Okay, let me get back to this. It’s not that long. It’s just let me stop it and start it again, Miss Enright, so you can get the time.

2:01:13 Let’s try this again. Good morning, my name is. Go ahead.

2:01:41 Good morning. My name is Alison Enright. A year and a half ago, I stood in this very room asking the board to allow me to return to my classroom to my students.

2:02:00 Instead, my employment was terminated. I stand before you today to thank you. Thank you for terminating me, because if you hadn’t, I’d be faced with the decision of either having to resign or feign support for policies that encourage discrimination and hatred toward an entire segment of our student population.

2:02:28 With my style of teaching, the latter wouldn’t be possible. For 36 years, my classroom has been based on a community model centered on mutual respect. My students are encouraged to celebrate diversity, find their unique gifts, and support each other as we share those gifts with the world.

2:02:57 My classroom is a safe place for all, but with the enactment of recent legislation and policies that you’re about to discuss, that would no longer be possible. So I thank you for terminating me. I wonder how many other teachers will find it impossible to be effective without the autonomy to make real connections with their students, connections based on acceptance and trust that will be prohibited by these new policies.

2:03:04 And in the end, as always, it will be the children who suffer, and not just the LGBTQ students and their families. All students will suffer as they are taught that being different is wrong. We’re digressing, and we encourage divisiveness and superiority among our students.

2:03:35 Identifying an entire population is unfit to be acknowledged. That was the atmosphere that I grew up in five decades ago, the one that made me feel so wrong, so terrible, so unaccepted, that after seriously contemplating suicide, I found no other option but to squash and bury my true self. It would be 55 years before I finally acknowledged that I’m gay and another four to fully embrace and celebrate me.

2:03:44 Now I’m living loud, so let me loudly remind you that the policies that you will be discussing and voting on affect real people. Feeling, thinking, loving, brave students who deserve far better than to grow up in an atmosphere of ignorance and hatred that feeds violence. They shouldn’t have to fear being themselves because of the intolerance and ignorance of others, especially the ignorance of the governing body of their school system.

2:04:03 After all, this is an educational institution. Shouldn’t we be fighting against ignorance? Thank you. Thank you.

2:04:19 Miss Enright, Mister Paul Raub, Benny Jackson up next. Okay, hear me. There was a mention earlier about wishing for protection for the students, and that’s one of the things that y’all are charged with in here and I believe I’ll take seriously and at all times.

2:04:34 But pretty obvious, for very obvious, recent reasons. Look what happened in Colorado a few days ago. Let’s think about who needs protection.

2:04:39 The bullies don’t need protection and encouragement and new policies to back them up and say, yes, it’s terrible that other people are existing at you. Trans kids aren’t existing at you. Trans kids aren’t there to make your life harder.

2:04:42 They’re the ones having the hard time and we don’t need. They’re the ones needing our support. And Mister Susan, you said earlier, why aren’t we leading the nation in StEm? Well, we’re here talking about this instead.

2:04:48 We’re talking about bathrooms again. We’re wasting time. You know, people trying to, let’s ban books, let’s ban people, let’s ban topics, let’s, you know, we’re in a state where we’re trying to, at the state level, restrict science.

2:05:05 That’s uncomfortable. And history, that’s uncomfortable. You know, we want to be, we want to lead the nation, stem.

2:05:19 Me too. That’d be fantastic. Let’s go work on that.

2:05:48 Let’s work on lifting up all the kids. Let’s work on education. Let’s work on focusing on that.

2:06:00 How do we help everyone succeed and thrive and be safe? And it’s very easy and very popular with a certain segment of the population to punch down. Oh, those, those other people, those weirdos, those, this imaginary thing that’s never, ever happened. Don’t worry, we’re gonna protect you from it.

2:06:24 Well, bullying’s real and we can worry a little bit about that. We could worry a little bit about kids who are afraid to go to school for actual reasons because they’re afraid. Best case, words that are going to be thrown their way.

2:06:32 Worst case, maybe violence or apparently now subject to inspection of their genitals from school officials in case there’s a rumor that they might be using the wrong bathroom. If anyone would let me know how that helps further the cause of education or of excellence, or of supporting and protecting our students, please let me know. Thank you.

2:07:10 Thank you, Mister Raub. Benny Jackson. Then Laura Petruska, then Julie Bywater.

2:07:55 Good morning and thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Benny Jackson Junior, and I will be the next president of the South Brevard branch of the NAACP unit 5115. And so I am here just with an observation, and I’m going to start with a quote from our, from our governor.

2:08:15 We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies.

2:08:56 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently declared from the stage at a campaign event, we can never, ever surrender to woke ideology. And I’ll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die. The Stop woke act threatens not only the free speech and livelihood of teachers, especially black educators, who are more likely to teach subjects that involve the prohibited concept.

2:09:18 It will also undeniably damage the quality of education received by all students attending public institutions in Florida. That’s why the Legal defense Fund, along with co counsel the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Ballot SpAR, filed suit challenging the law and field and filed a motion for preliminary injunctions seeking to halt its implementation. The suit argues that the Stop woke act is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

2:09:30 The origin of woke to be woke is to be black. It’s how it was initially defined. The black american colloquialism now broadly used incorrectly when it was embarked on.

2:09:48 A writer for the New York Times, he embarked to find out the history of that if you’re woke, you dig it. And that was by the Harlem based writer William Mellon Kelly, who was highlighting the phenomenon of black american slang being appropriated by white people who often missed or altogether distorted the original meaning until the idioms were taken over, inevitably transformed and ultimately abandoned by their original black creators. I would leave you with this.

2:09:51 Ruby Bridges. Anyone recognize that name? Ruby Bridges was the first african american child to enter an all white public elementary school in America south in 1960. She was six years old.

2:10:07 I asked this board not to set us back six decades. Thank you, Mister Jackson. Next up is Laura Petruska.

2:10:29 On deck is Julie Bywater. I thank everybody for being here today. Thank you for the board and thank you for all the young people who have turned out.

2:10:44 It’s your education. It’s your future. I’m Laura Petruska.

2:11:02 I’m only a humble citizen and a very intelligent person. So, quote, faculty develop students ability to think, work in a group, and reflect upon and apply their learning to real world problems. End quote.

2:11:17 This is on the Brevard education website. How can we develop this ability to think unless there are controversial subjects that stir and challenge a student’s paradigms? To challenge and play Delta’s advocate and encourage critical thinking will develop a student’s ability to cope with the outside world. Hence world problems.

2:11:24 Banning books, restraining talk that might make a student uncomfortable thwarts that ability and limits the students ultimate success in real world problems. Please keep an open mind. Encourage diverse learning.

2:11:27 Applaud those students who might think differently than your paradigm allows. Embrace the agenda of intelligent speech, open mindedness and acceptance, and work toward that excellence as the standard. Have a very lovely day and have a good Thanksgiving and holiday.

2:11:35 And I would like to remind everybody here because I think the majority will not even remember 1963. November 22. Anybody who remembers that day is at least as old as I. I was in fifth grade.

2:11:41 It was the day Kennedy was shot. Keep that in mind and thank your families that we are safe. Thank you.

2:12:14 Thank you. Miss Petruska. Julie Bywater.

2:13:05 Then Phoenix. Miss Niesit. Connor Grinden.

2:13:24 Good morning. I’m Julie Bywater. I am a member of the local chapter of moms for Liberty.

2:13:47 I’m also a mom to two kids who have graduated from Rockledge High, and I have two kids at Rockledge High. So I’m very invested in this community. First of all, last meeting, I challenged you to put that sign that’s behind you, put a copy of it over there, and I’m going to challenge you every single meeting until we see it hanging up there so that you guys can see it, that we can see it, so that we’re reminded every time we’re talking together.

2:14:18 Second, really excited to see this new board. I actually am grateful for the diversity of opinion that sits up there. I think it is an excellent chance for Brevard to be the gold standard of working together, to remembering that our goal is to serve these students and that when we’re talking about issues we don’t agree on, we can set the example of compromise and working together and remembering our goals, which isn’t to isolate a student or to make them feel bad, but it’s to make every student feel safe, including the ones that haven’t been mentioned up here, because there’s a group of students that haven’t been mentioned up here that don’t always feel safe in those bathrooms for a multitude of reasons, some of which have to do with student behavior.

2:14:24 I just also wanted to mention that I’ve really enjoyed having a big audience here. So maybe next time we push some of these chairs together and bring more people in and maybe kind of make it a more welcoming environment. I’d love to see.

2:14:40 I love it when you guys do the recognitions. That’s wonderful. It’s probably my favorite part of the school board meeting, when you talk about being out in the community and recognizing what’s going on there, because there’s a lot of times where we don’t get to hear about the marching band or we don’t get to hear about this teacher that did this thing, or the bus driver who’s beloved by her bus riders.

2:15:03 And when we have kids here, do you think maybe we could go back to having a kid lead the pledge of Allegiance? We stopped doing that during COVID and it kind of made me sad that we do have kids here often, and I really encourage you to start bringing back some of those things that made this much more welcoming environment. I look forward to working with you I look forward to sharing discussions. I have been so encouraged by our audience today because, yes, there’s been clapping.

2:15:12 Yes, there’s been some, some little, you know. Whoo. And I actually appreciate that.

2:15:28 I like the openness that we can clap when something good happens, that we’re encouraged to celebrate or to just show support. It’s been very complimentary, and I appreciate that. Thank you.

2:15:30 Thank you, Miss Bywater. Thank you, Miss Bywater. I wanted to mention to everybody, just so that there’s some clarity, there was a motion earlier to rework all of our public speaking policy to go back to what it was originally, that is, without the limiting factors that we’ve had most recently, along with not only time, but then also products of the speech, probably the congressional hearing.

2:16:12 This barrier will be going away also, and we’ll get back to being normal. So just wanted to let you guys know that. And I truly appreciate it.

2:16:33 Next up is Phoenix Meeset, along with Connor Grinden and Anita Carson, following. Hello, everyone. I’d like.

2:16:51 I’m going to start by saying that I grew up in the previously mentioned a while ago, Sarasota county, which is referred to by the locals as the land of the old people. It’s not inaccurate because I grew up with people. I grew up surrounded by people three, four, sometimes as high as six times my age.

2:17:03 I grew up being forced to go to church every Sunday and then had an additional 4 hours of Sunday school after that, which, by the way, if you’re telling your kids only an hour a week, you’re lying, because it’s actually four or 5 hours. But that’s not the point. I’m now a Florida tech student, senior in aerospace.

2:17:29 And now that I’ve had time to be around people my age people, and be around more diverse ideas, I’m certain it’s a process, but I’m starting to learn more about myself. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. All that being known, it’s safe to say I know quite a bit about religion as a result.

2:17:47 And I’d like to refer to a specific thing. Mark 1231, you shall have your neighbor as yourself. Ask those who come up here later and ask those up here to follow those words.

2:18:00 This includes everyone, regardless of race, gender, orientation, or financial status. I’d also like to note that this, even that word should even that should be taken with grain. Assault.

2:18:13 Because religion should just stay out of politics in general, and especially because there are probably, there’s a lot of other religions in, in this state, in this county, and probably even in this room. I also have one more thing to refer to. I’d like to refer to a previous speech where the signs in this room were referred to as hate speech.

2:18:19 To this, I say our signs are support for those who do not feel supported in this politically charged climate. Our signs are for those like me, who may be watching this at home, unsure of themselves and unsure of those around them. Our signs are support for those who sometimes cannot stand up for themselves.

2:18:35 And if you, the people on this board, are in support of our right to exist, then they are in support of you. I ask you to consider this and act accordingly. Thank you.

2:18:52 Thank you, mister. Thank you, Mister Meeset. Mister Connor Grinden.

2:19:01 Hello. My name is Connor Grindahl, but I also go by another name on occasion. That name is Shannon.

2:19:22 I’m a gender fluid college student speaking on behalf of lgbt youth all across Brevard county. And some may even say this, the entire state of Florida. The hatred that we’ve experienced just for being ourselves is unbearable.

2:19:37 Children are dying just because they’re being put down by their peers, just because we’re not seen as normal. The stress an lgbt student faces is so much higher than the average student. Some may be hiding their true self in fear of backlash.

2:19:52 I know I did for a while. Nobody should have to do that. But because of this spiteful environment that we fostered in this community, we have to.

2:20:00 And for what? What is gained from putting anyone down just for being themselves and making them feel less than human? I’ll answer that right now. The answer is nothing. A statement that’s been echoed by many of the speakers today is to protect all children, no matter what.

2:20:03 No matter their race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The letters I wear, those of pileam, defy represent a creed that I follow. Which was? Which is to eliminate prejudice from this world.

2:20:10 It is incumbent upon me to fight for such freedom, even with my life, but I can’t do that alone. It is on this board to take those steps to protect our students from discrimination and harm. And I implore you to take those steps today.

2:20:18 Thank you. Thank you, Shannon. Miss Anita Carson.

2:20:24 Megan Holloran. Carol. I’m sorry.

2:20:30 That was Connor. Okay. Thank you, Connor.

2:21:00 Next up, Miss Anita Carson. Miss Megan Holloran, and Carol Miller. Miss Anita.

2:21:20 So I just want to give a little bit of background about me. I was a teacher in Florida for ten years. I resigned at the end of last year.

2:21:44 I. I now work for equality Florida. I’m here speaking today on behalf of myself, not an organization. I have two things to talk about.

2:22:00 First is today on your discussion, and I believe item 48 is discussing rule six a from the board of education. If you paid attention to the Board of education meetings, around 100 people showed up to oppose that rule, and about 20 people showed up to pass that rule widely. It is accepted that people who are LGBTQ should be allowed to access facilities just like everyone else.

2:22:21 Trans students and non binary students do not pose a threat to any student. Here in Brevard, there are zero instances of harm coming to any student from a trans or non binary student using facilities that align with their gender identity. The sole case that has been brought up, was brought up by a politician and has been disproved by law enforcement over and over again.

2:22:34 It’s been disproved by this district, approved by district administrators, and I hope that here, we believe law enforcement way above and beyond what we would a politician. So that is part of what I would like this board to think about when we’re talking about this. Trans and non binary students have been able to use facilities aligned to their gender identity forever in this county.

2:22:54 You just recently, within the last few years, put in a policy, but it has always been the policy to work with parents of that child to find the safest place for them. Trans students do face harm if they are forced to go to the bathroom. That does not align with their gender identity.

2:23:25 And since we know they don’t cause harm in the opposite direction, why would we ever place students in harm’s way? Knowing that the policy doesn’t. Isn’t needed, isn’t necessary because we don’t have rampant trans kids violating non trans kids in bathrooms. It doesn’t exist.

2:23:33 I understand when parents have talked about their kids being in fear. I get it. There is a large narrative that is being pushed right now that is telling you that trans kids are out to get your kid.

2:23:40 It is a false narrative. And I hope that this board takes in actual data and actual information because the state of Florida does not have a single instance where trans children have harmed other children in the restroom. It is a created company.

2:24:06 I also hope that this board will be cooperating with law enforcement when they ask for anything to do with the one instance that was made up by politicians, because I know that that is something that is still in process of being looked at. Although we know that it’s been discredited, they’re still trying to figure out where that came from. So I appreciate your time, and thank you so much for supporting trans kids and every kid.

2:24:55 Thank Anita. Next up. Miss Megan Holloran.

2:25:02 Morning. Almost afternoon. Thank you for your time and your service to this community.

2:25:08 I come to you today as a citizen of Melbourne, a stepmom, and as a mental health counselor who has the privilege to work with teens. I ask all of you to do your best to support all children and families, including LGBTQ students and family. I simply want students who already have so many stressors to be able to thrive and learn in a safe environment.

2:25:28 I ask that the school board follow state and federal laws, particularly title IX protections, because I worry that if this is not done, it will place additional burdens onto teachers who are already working so hard, lead to possible expensive legal disputes, and, most importantly, cause pain to LGBTQ children and families. As a mental health counselor, I can’t help but give you a little statistic on the LGBTQ community and their mental health. So the Trevor projects 2022 survey reported that in the last year, 50% of LGBTQ teens considered suicide and 18% attempted, which is double the rate for non lgbtq teens.

2:25:29 We just had the transgender day of remembrance. 70 people. In the last year, transgender people died.

2:25:34 Many were murdered. All preventable deaths. It is right here.

2:25:37 And what you do that will help create places of diversity and compassion or places of intolerance and hate. What will you teach children? Please uplift all children. Thank you for your time.

2:25:40 Thank you. Miss Holland. Up now.

2:25:55 Carol Miller on deck. Laura Klopp. Carol Miller.

2:26:07 I’m up. Yep. Ready? Hi.

2:26:16 Yes. My name is Carol Miller. I’m a mom, a grandma.

2:26:31 I’ve been to a few of these board meetings. I did a lot of behind the scenes, taking care of my grandkids, feeding them, and watching them while my daughter went out there stomping the grounds for board member. My first thing New Yorker here.

2:26:35 My kids were taught from the day they were born to respect everybody until they do you wrong. Then you have every right to never speak to them again or try to right the wrong. Okay? But we respect everybody.

2:26:43 I don’t care if you’re black, white, gay, religious. Everybody has a right to be who they want. What we don’t have a right to do is bully people.

2:26:52 What I see down here is this is a board for education, yet we’re talking about things that. Where’s education? Where are we? What are we teaching the children? Where I see high school kids that can’t write a check. Okay.

2:26:58 You don’t need to anymore. They don’t know how to fill a form out. Education.

2:27:10 When I went was, you learned arithmetic, history. You can say well, the history books were wrong. Depends on what book you’re reading.

2:27:23 A gentleman come up here talking about banned books. Who? Okay. Is the banned books in the school? Take a book, read it, and then in your mind.

2:27:40 Someone told me this. In your mind, make it a movie. Now read it.

2:27:50 Do those books belong in your school? Would you let your kid go see an x rated movie? An r rated movie? I just wish education would get back to education. I also have a grandchild who’s special ed. Special ed.

2:27:58 I never hear it talked about anymore. Why? Because they threw him into inclusion. My grandchild cannot walk into a classroom and learn a bullying because it would only take a little while for you to figure out.

2:28:00 This child can’t learn like the rest of the class. My grandchild face bullying because that person doesn’t learn like the rest, not because of how he feels or just because he can’t learn like the rest. Where is education? Bring it back.

2:28:09 This board I look at you on. I’ve been to a few board meetings. The tension up here that comes out to play on everything that’s done in the school district.

2:28:13 You all need to work together, talk your differences. But when it comes down to it, put the kids first, not you all. Talk.

2:28:26 Oh, this one’s going to be political. This. This one’s doing it for the money.

2:28:43 This one. You know what? You’re all sitting here. You were voted in by the people, by the parents, the people of this community.

2:28:49 Work for the kids. That’s why we vote you here. The best for the kids.

2:29:09 Not the best for yourself, the best for the kids. I really hits home with me because I grew up in the seventies. I had, like I said, from all over, work together.

2:29:32 But I’d like to see special ed brought up at these meetings and things done for that, because my grandchild is homeschooled because of bullying, because that grandchild is special. Thank you, Miss Miller. Thank you very much.

2:29:50 Next up is Laura Klopp, then Michelle Beavers and Carrie Takas. Package. Hi.

2:29:57 Good morning. Yeah, so, I was a teacher for ten years, several of them here in Brevard. And actually, as a teacher, as so many do, I witness firsthand the anxiety, the fear, and the trauma that our LGBTQ students face every day.

2:30:06 It’s very difficult for them to find teachers that they know that they can confide in and places where they know that they can have a safe place, a safe person to talk to. And a lot of the legislation is making that more difficult for them to know who to trust. Teachers are in fear often of what it would mean for their job if they actually provide that supportive environment for their students.

2:30:26 I left teaching to earn my master of social work so that I can help the LGBTQ community with the very strong mental health needs that I see that it has. Children who are LGBTQ are more likely to miss school because of fear. Because of fear of going to school.

2:30:51 They’re more likely to be homeless. They’re more likely because their families will disown them. They’re more likely to drop out of school.

2:30:57 And as we’ve already heard, they’re more likely to attempt and to succeed in suicide. These children need our help. They need your help.

2:31:18 They don’t need to be told that they’re different and have their differences pointed out. They need the support of administrators, educators, and their school board in order to be able to safely grow up. Because if you want to serve every student and you talk about education, you cannot learn when you don’t feel safe.

2:31:21 You cannot learn when you are afraid of going to the place of learning or when you know that you’re going to be singled out and treated differently when you’re there. I created a website, creatingsafeschools.com dot. It’s for educators and administrators specifically, who want to know things that they can do to make their school environment safer and more affirming and more accepting of their LGBTQ kids.

2:31:29 These kids are not hurting anyone. They’re not bullying anyone. They’re not causing problems.

2:31:43 They are suffering on a daily basis. And if you listen to some of my podcast interviews on my site, I speak to children who have had bricks thrown at them, who have had administrators call them names in front of other students. These children need our help, and I beg of you, remember them.

2:32:00 They’re people. Talk to them. Talk to the students.

2:32:09 When you’re going out into the community, reach out to these students. Reach out to LGBTQ students. Find out their experiences.

2:32:14 Find out what kind of. Find out how life is like for them on a daily basis at school and in this community, and hopefully that will help guide your decision making. Thank you.

2:32:25 Thank you. Next up, Miss Beavers and then miss Carrie Takas. I do agree if someone has bricks thrown at them or administration making fun of them, we need to step in and do something about that.

2:32:49 That’s horrible. I’m here to talk about books. I didn’t actually have much of a planned speech other than to say, my kids read banned books.

2:32:57 Lord of the Rings, the Giver, mice and men, Harry Potter. Those are actually books that people have actually tried to get banned. What we’re talking about in our schools is not banning.

2:33:18 What we’re talking about in our schools is age appropriateness and following the law. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask. We follow the law for our kids.

2:33:26 And like another speaker was saying, if the book was a movie, are we okay with penetration in front of our children? Is that an okay thing? Because I’m pretty sure there’s no movies in our school that our kids have signed off on or we’ve signed off for our kids that would have that in it. That wouldn’t even be on the table. So I think we need to step back and look at this logically and from all angles and not just say, well, if it’s written in a book, the kids have to go through 500 pages to look at it.

2:33:33 So it’s not that important. Which is one of the arguments at the book committee that formed. They actually didn’t look necessarily at the law.

2:33:39 They had arguments like, kids can access Game of Thrones, kids can get on here and read all these pages. So if they’re reading, go kids, because they’re reading. These weren’t arguments that should have existed because we’re supposed to be looking at the law, what the law says and what’s appropriate for our kids and our community’s standards for what is appropriate for those kids.

2:33:47 And currently, our standard is not to allow movies that would have penetration in them. So we shouldn’t have books that allow this also. That’s it.

2:34:02 Thank you very much for being on the board. Thank you, Miss Beavers. Next up is Carrie Takis.

2:34:14 Katie Delaney. Delores Varney. Hi, Kerry Takis.

2:34:28 I want to congratulate the new board members who swore in this morning. I look forward to watching you serve BPS families to the best of your abilities. And I’m very excited for you.

2:34:43 Something I noticed listening today, education does not seem to be the top priority of most speaking points. And as we move forward, I hope that this new board can assist bringing common sense back to our classrooms. Our students aren’t reading on grade level, nor are they doing math on grade level.

2:34:51 And there are major discipline issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible. It’s time to return our school’s focus to teaching mathematics, language arts, science and history. I took one of my children out of BPS due to the issues within the school district.

2:35:17 That child has special needs and is thriving in flvs now. Their grades have improved massively. Their teachers can give one on one learning opportunities and they are taught unbiased curriculum in a diverse setting with classmates from all walks of life.

2:35:35 I would encourage you to model flVs’s learning style here in Brevard. We are raising our future generation, and it is our job to ensure they grow into well adjusted, educated adults instead of being molded into political social justice activists. I believe in all of you, and I have faith that you will do an amazing job.

2:36:01 Thank you. Thank you. Miss Takas, Mister Loris Varney, Marcus Hockman.

2:36:17 Katie, you’re up. Now, I want to start off by saying congratulations to the new board. I’ve been fighting for this for years now, and I’m just so happy to see Jean and Megan up there and for Matt to be the leader of this district.

2:36:33 That being said, we have a lot of work to do. We need to get our kids reading and doing math on grade level. We need to stop with all the social justice warrior crap that’s been going on in our district for far too long.

2:36:37 Somehow, generations have educated children without worrying what bathroom their child is going in. Because boys go in boys bathrooms and girls go in girls bathrooms, parts go with parts. That’s kind of been the gist for generations.

2:36:47 With that being said, we need to focus on educating our children. Let parents be the ones who are dealing with the children’s feelings. I, as a parent, am fully capable of dealing with my children’s feelings.

2:37:19 That is not the job of the government, nor is it the job of this district. And I am very excited to work with this new board on getting our kids education back on track the way that it should be. So, thank you and congratulations.

2:37:30 Thank you. Miss Delaney, Mister Loris. Barney.

2:37:31 Marcus Hockman. And then Miss Pam Castellano. Is Miss Barney here? No.

2:37:54 All right, Mr. Marcus, you’re up. Good morning, everyone. The first thing I would like to talk about is.

2:38:12 Oh, here it is. He stated my name. Good morning, everyone.

2:38:27 The first concern I would like to address is the need for more summer school. Summer programs for our elementary schools. The reason I ask this is because of the need to catch up our students who are not on grade level.

2:38:43 I would like to see these students be able to attend summer school, especially all our ESC students that have academic needs, because it should be about progression and not regression. There’s more to it than that, by the way. Fit it all in here.

2:38:55 And since summer school is only in June, I would like to see the district to consider a summer teens program go out. Which would be? Every student that attends a summer school program would be eligible for a computer including Internet access. And during the months of July and August, these students would work on computer programs such as Lexia, iredi, Pendean, etcetera.

2:39:02 But more importantly, the student would have an academic coach. The academic coach would be an employee, a BPS that wants to work with students once a week on academics, which could entail many details. We could also tie.

2:39:15 Tie in other projects, other programs like the hunger project. Now, at first, I would like to just pilot these programs at our schools that have a D grade and schools that have support for nine hour school days. Now, I ask we pay for this in house and not through the state.

2:39:32 We have several funding sources. I’m personally willing to contribute my 10% to 15% of my mailing support yearly to support this initiative as long as my CFO at my household approves it. With this? Yeah.

2:39:47 You think it’s loud? Yeah. With this. I asked the board if you will have your local legislative meeting with the state.

2:40:00 I ask that you bring this up with how more students need to be in summer school. Now, I’m not asking you to bring up my ideas at all, because what I bring up, there’s probably going to be a lot of buts and ifs. But at this point.

2:40:19 Point of this is to start the conversation now. Now, the next concern I have is how the district works and treats our LGBTQ students and families and staff really soon. I attended the pride event in Melbourne, and for the record, story time was just that.

2:40:34 It was just story time. Much ado about nothing. What I got from there is what I got from there, to me, that was extremely important was this veterans dog tag with the american flag and the lgbt flag, which I personally have.

2:40:44 And I bring this up because LGBT have and won’t become veterans. Some of them will. And protect your way, our way, life and the public for which we stand for is very, extremely important.

2:40:59 And veterans save lives, as one did at Club Q. Respectfully, on this dog tat, it states, we serve all. We serve all who have served, who served.

2:41:22 We need to remember this value when we serve our children and families. And the last thing I want to point out before my seconds remember, the World cup is going on right now, and we live in the United States of America, not Qatar. We need to remember that.

2:41:40 Thank you, Mister Hockman, Miss Pam Castellano, Adam Tripp, and Vicki Bates are on deck. Castellano, you have the floor. Thank you.

2:42:03 Good morning. Some of you are probably surprised to see me here because you judge winners and losers by the political party represented on the dais. I judge winners and losers by the people who put each and every brevard public school student and teacher first.

2:42:25 As the line in Hamilton says, winning is easy, governing is harder. Although I represent a party myself, some issues transcend partisan politics and free, not for profit public schools are one of these. The movement you believe put you in office is not some locally fed grassroots movement based on what’s best for brevard public schools.

2:42:48 It’s a carefully orchestrated movement to further partisan politics on the backs of our students and teachers. We know this because there has not been a single complaint and investigation locally of a trans student or teacher causing harm through their bathroom use. Not a single student led complaint.

2:43:07 Do you believe that we have transgender students in our schools? How are you ensuring that they are served with excellence? The repeated conversations we are hearing about are limiting their ability to ability to move freely and learn safely. All across the country. We are seeing rabid reflexive movements and actions being taken by newly elected school boards, citing the year of the parent and parental rights.

2:43:32 These actions are carefully orchestrated and is identical to the plus the pledge of allegiance. You have the chance to actually be legislators and make brevard public schools the winner. By refusing to jump to that reflexive action happening across the country, you have the opportunity to commit to serving every student with excellence as the standard and put your own partisan political ambitions aside.

2:43:37 For those wondering how these issues impact education. To educate all of our students, every student needs to feel safe. Several studies, including one by UCLA in 2018 and a media Matters survey of 17 school districts with non discrimination bathroom policies, found that allowing people to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity didn’t lead to any increase in reports of harassment, assault, or privacy violations.

2:43:48 Parental rights extend to all parents, including those who don’t agree with your definition of a family unit. The Florida state constitution grants the right of privacy to all citizens, regardless of their age. And indeed, since the board of 2016, of which Mister Susan and Miss Campbell are the only remaining members, they voted to approve the guidelines currently in place.

2:43:59 There have been, let me just check, zero credible complaints of harassment, assault, or privacy violations. As for public records, Mister Susan, the state attorney’s office recommended the lawyer that said your personal phone use about board business be turned over and redacted. When I once mentioned a series of texts I sent you regarding a forum sponsored by the Federation of Republican Women, you told me you don’t check your school board phone, leading me to the fact that you conduct business on your personal phone.

2:44:11 Thank you for your time. Have a happy thanksgiving. Thank you, Miss Castellano.

2:44:26 Mister Adam Tripp, Vicki Bates, and Lucy Bowman are up next. Good morning. Adam Tritt.

2:45:09 I have been a teacher with Brevara county schools since 2006. Every year I’ve taught with Bavara county schools. I’ve been a highly effective teacher.

2:45:20 So please believe me when I say I do know a few things about how to get students to learn. And one of the best ways to get students to learn is to accept who. Who they are.

2:45:28 Every single one of them. Meet them where they are academically, and meet them where they are as a human being. Now, if we want to talk about how to protect students, it’s the same thing.

2:45:40 Make sure every student is heard, make sure every student is seen, make sure every student is accepted. One of the best ways to make sure students are not protected is to single them out, treat them as an other, tacitly teach other students to not see them as human beings, to see them as an other, to dehumanize them and finally objectify them and not see harm to them as harm to another human being. We see this played out with people who have been students and grow up to be adults.

2:45:54 Start as bullies and end up as murderers. Thank you. Thank you, Mister Tritt.

2:46:16 Miss Vicki Bates, Lucy Bowman, Gabriel Lacroixi are up next. Good afternoon, I think. Right.

2:46:30 My name is Vicky Bates. I have raised two children here in this community that have gone to Brevard county schools. And I now have five granddaughters that are now in Brevard county schools.

2:46:39 Actually, one became a teacher teaching. Here’s what I want to share with you. I’ve always said more than once, and I’m Megan’s mama, that you cannot legislate with laws.

2:46:49 Something that should be handled through love. And that starts with you all, the five of you all working together. We need to see that it needs to trickle down so that the teachers see that on how they can compromise, cooperate, that the community sees that we don’t need to single out anybody anymore, ever.

2:47:09 We integrated because of color. We’ve done a number of things we need to teach our children at the very beginning. Hopefully, they get it at home, but how to respect each other, how to accept each other, and not single anybody out, ever.

2:47:17 Thank you so much for your willingness to serve. We are grateful that you’re there. Thank you, Miss Bates.

2:47:39 Next up is Lucy Bowman. Thank you. I don’t speak.

2:48:09 I never. I’ve never signed up to speak at any of these before, but I’m compelled to do so today out of my deep and abiding love for queer kid. I know.

2:48:20 I’m not going to change the minds. Those of you who hate people I love, I’m not even going to try. You’re beyond hope.

2:48:33 You’re beyond help. I’m here for them because I want them to know that they are not alone. And there are those of us who will fight for them until our last breath.

2:48:45 And for those of you on the board and in the audience who believe yourselves to be christian, just know that when you die and you go to meet what you believe is going to be your heavenly reward, your God will not recognize you. Thank you, Gabriel. Up, up next up is Indigo Blackburn.

2:49:06 Tim Hough, Tessa Ruffino. Is Gabriel Lacroix inside the audience. There you go.

2:49:31 Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I first wanted to stray from my speech and comment on something one of the speakers said. One of the previous speakers said that one of their beliefs are different regarding lgbt issues.

2:49:56 I don’t know how you can have a belief against someone’s existence. This is why we feel it is hateful. I’m here today to advocate for our lgbt youth within the Brevard school systems.

2:50:04 With this new elected board, we want to make it clear that we care about our lgbt youth and that we need to ensure a safe school for all students. This includes lgbt youth. Lgbt youth are at a higher risk of being bullied in school and falling victim to the impact of discrimination, discriminatory school policies.

2:50:10 We need to provide them a space where they feel safe, can exist as themselves, and have the same rights, protections, and freedoms as the other students. If you try to do things like takeaway protections and the lgbt support guide from Brevard schools and hush everyone about anything lgbt related, this sure would make a kid feel like their existence is not wanted or accepted. Accepted.

2:50:31 All students need to feel that they belong. If you put out policies or make anti lgbt changes that negatively impact lgbt youth, then you are setting students up to be bullied and them feeling like their existence is not wanted or supported. We will not tolerate inequality and hate, and we will continue to fight so that our lgbt youth feel safe and supported.

2:50:38 Thank you. Thank you, Gabriel. Miss Indigo Blackburn is up next.

2:51:12 Hi. I heard. My name is Indigo and I’ve been a resident here in Brevard county for a good few years now.

2:51:34 I went to Florida Institute of Technology and studied Biology. I would like to touch on something another speaker mentioned earlier about biological sex. He mentioned a variety of conditions which are much more common than people realize and something that might help put the statistics in disruption perspective for y’all is that having an intersex condition like the ones he described is about as common as having red hair genetically.

2:51:50 So these students are real. They exist. They’re in our county, and they deserve the support of their government and acknowledging that they exist.

2:52:23 I also want to mention that before I lived in Florida, I lived in North Carolina, and that was during the time of North Carolina’s house bill two, which was a transgender bathroom ban. And at the time, as a transgender high school student, that was incredibly damaging to me, to my friends, to my peers. It was extremely harmful because our school, previously under my support as the lgbt student organization leader, had been successfully for years allowing trans students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity with no issues whatsoever.

2:52:32 And then, unfortunately, the state did pass an Oklahoma house bill, too, which limited that which was extremely damaging. Trans students then became much more likely to have urinary tract issues. There are some real health concerns which can occur from being restricted to specific bathrooms in certain parts of school, like the nurse’s office, as I mentioned earlier, also, there was a significant financial burden to the state.

2:52:59 Due to this, they lost billions of dollars in business. Of course, statewide, it’s very different from if something were to be passed in Brevard county, but lost billions of dollars in business from companies who did not support the discriminatory policy. There was also extremely, extremely expensive litigation.

2:53:34 As you may know, title ix litigation is notoriously expensive. And I don’t want my tax dollars, as a Brevard county resident, wasted in this manner when they could be used to support students in getting Internet access at home so that they can more effectively learn, and in very real issues that have been brought up today. So I would just ask that you prioritize issues that are real, that are pressing, that are affecting our student population here, and not things that have been fear mongered, which, again, are not real issues like the existence of transgender people, such as myself.

2:53:52 Thank you for your time. Thank you, Indigo. Miss Kim Huff, you’re next.

2:54:14 And then Tessa Ruffino, Justin Devco are up on deck. So, yes, let’s get back to teaching. The facts are that people crying for getting back to learning are the same people who started these culture wars two years ago in this room started with mask wars every two weeks for years.

2:54:32 On March 9, 2021, when the only person on the board sheltered children from raving lunatics in the front of the building, she became the enemy. The person who swore in, Mister Trent, stood here, claimed a transgender student attacked another student in our district in a bathroom over the summer and said later, I quote, children are being raped in our bathroom. They are the reason we haven’t been getting back to the business.

2:54:53 42 teachers resigned recently. Do you think it’s because they think this new board is going to work hard to improve this situation? Next up, Miss Tessa Rufino, Justin Sevco. And then it’s Darrell Bryant.

2:55:07 Are up after that. Hello, I’m Tessa Ruffino, and I have lived in Brevard county for most of my life, and I’m a graduate of Rockledge High School. I grew up fearing that my friends and family in the queer community would be physically assaulted, and they were simply for being who they were.

2:55:41 I hope that today, in 2020, this would no longer be the fear, and I’m wrong. I’m here today to show that there are people in the Brevard camp in Brevard county who are. Who support all students, including our LGBTQIA community.

2:56:08 We need to make sure our children feel safe and supported when they are at school, because how can anyone learn when they’re afraid to go to school? Thank you. Thank you, Tessa. Justin Sepko.

2:57:28 I’m Justin Circone, president of Space Coast Pride. I truly wish that I didn’t have to be here. I wish five members of the LGBTQ community were not just shot to death in an establishment.

2:57:31 I wish there was no concern that this board that is elected to support all our children will fail to do so. I wish that we didn’t have to be concerned that decisions made here would impact children so strongly that they feel they need to take their own lives. No matter how much I wish all of this, the reality is that I am here and I am asking all you, all of you to do what will protect all our children and empower our teachers to teach truth.

2:57:38 I’m asking you all to make decisions that will allow children to feel to safe in their schools. I’m asking you to make decisions that won’t groom children to become filled with so much hate that they act as Anderson Lee Aldrich did and take five innocent lives. Please make decisions that protect all our children and allow our children to feel loved and accepted.

2:57:44 I ask for silence for the next minute to remember the lives that were needlessly taken at Club Q on Saturday evening. Please also think of those in that community who are hurting and in pain at this moment. Thank you.

2:58:05 Thank you, Justin. Next up, Daryl Bryant. On deck.

2:58:13 Miss Crystal Cayze. Deanna Darrigan. Mister Bryan.

2:58:38 Greetings. Greetings, everyone. First of all, thank you all for your service.

2:58:45 It’s not easy, and I know you have to do it because you have space in your heart for people. So God bless you for that. I am a husband, father, coach, mentor, educator, and I’ve been all of the above in this community for the past twelve years.

2:59:22 I had notes on my phone, but it just died. So it means I’m supposed to speak from my heart and not what I wrote. That’s what it means.

2:59:47 So what’s on my heart is in my roles in education. Over the past nine years, I’ve come to a thought that I want to put out there, and I would like for everyone in attendance, including the board, to consider this as relates to education. Education is the primary reason why we’re all here, right.

3:00:01 But there are so many things that affect how that education goes. The thing I like for everybody to consider is this. I think that purpose, principles, and precepts are more important than an inclination or appetite or emotion that someone has.

3:00:12 I think that purpose, precepts, and principles are more important than English and math and stem. Why do I say that? Because precepts and principles help govern conduct, shaped character. And people use what they learn in school, stem, English, math, to navigate their industries that they work in.

3:00:17 And the things that normally destruct or cause destruction or cause other things than what we desire is most times the character and the conduct. I heard a wise man say that, you know, gifting or intelligence will get you the job or get you to a place, but it’s the character that will keep you there. I think we should focus on more on the character.

3:00:33 Quick story. As an administrator at a school, there was a young lady who barged out of a class and she ran right into me at the back of the school and in tears. I asked her, what’s wrong? Why are you.

3:00:41 Because you are out of area right now and you are emotionally driven, but you’re about to get disciplined. What’s the matter? She says, oh, they’re messing with me. This, that, and the third, they’re talking about me because they found a note that I wrote.

3:01:03 On the note, it says that she likes something. Okay. That person was of the same sex.

3:01:26 What I asked this young lady is what I would ask for everybody in the room to consider. I asked her, how old are you? She said, twelve. I said, someone found a note where you expressed some feelings, is that right? Yes.

3:01:41 I said, you think you’re going to have many more feelings in your life. You’re twelve. You’re going to have many more feelings in life.

3:02:08 Could you give yourself time? Could you pause, give yourself room to have those feelings and then see how they shape you before you label yourself something? I have feelings all the time. I think we should focus on principles, precepts and purpose more than we focus on feelings, emotions and inclinations. Thank you, Mister Sontine.

3:02:18 Great speaker, Miss KZ. Then Deanna Derrigan and Sarah Mirsky. Good afternoon, school board doctor Mullins.

3:02:25 And a hearty congratulations to Jean Trent, Megan Bright and Matt. Susan. Brevard voters have not just spoken, they have screamed for Brevard school board change from the rooftops.

3:02:44 As you may imagine, your community is absolutely elated that we will be allowed free speech without the asinine limitations in censorship that we experience under Misty Belford’s regime. During those dark times, Brevard students were required to wear a face covering and suffer detentions for non compliance because Belford, Jenkins and McDougall had agendas. Without evidence, all of our kids suffered.

3:02:56 The nonsense stops today. This thanksgiving. I am most grateful for this school board.

3:03:02 Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you, Miss Casey.

3:03:21 Miss Deanna Derrigan, can you start my time over? Yes. So first of all, I’m not going to really congratulate you or say thank you for anything because frankly, I don’t think you’ve done anything yet. But hopefully this is the beginning of a good process.

3:03:46 I see that a lot of you have been listening. Some of you have been staring at computer screens or in Mister Trent’s case, when that transgender human being came up, refused to acknowledge that they existed. So that was really great to watch.

3:04:00 Quiet down. Quiet down. Anyway, so some things that definitely need to be handled.

3:04:12 My child goes to a magnet school, okay? First of all, I am a gay parent of two girls, okay? My children understand that everyone is equal. But I have noticed that in their magnet school, okay, it’s supposed to be held above the rest. Their magnet school preaches hate and division.

3:04:26 I would like to ask you guys, why was my child sent home with a Bible flyer? Just curious. Because it is a public school, you know, sponsored by taxpayer money and it’s supposed to be a separation of church and state. So although the Bible study wasn’t physically happening right then and there, my child was still semi indoctrinated by it.

3:04:43 I was raised as a Catholic, and I’ll tell you one thing. I was raped and molested in church by christians, not by transgendered people in bathrooms. That’s the problem.

3:04:59 If you’re afraid of someone accosting you in a bathroom, you’re not afraid of a transgendered human being. You’re afraid of a cishet man pretending to be a transgendered human being. And that is the problem.

3:05:11 The fact that you guys can’t differentiate that, and apparently some people in the audience cannot differentiate that. Another thing is bullying. Bullying is a huge thing that is happening at University Park Elementary.

3:05:17 A huge thing. My child has come home beaten, battered, and bruised, not by teachers, thankfully, but by a specific child. This child is so well known that even the local police department knows about them because I’ve had to make phone calls, but nothing’s been done.

3:05:24 No notes have even been sent home about bullying. My child has been to the doctor on multiple occasions for busted blood vessels in her eyes from the bullying that continues every day. That has been done about nothing.

3:05:45 Nothing’s been done about. Or how about the teacher who physically manhandled and bruised a child’s arm? The child was removed from her class. The teacher still stands at her position.

3:05:49 That’s the problem with this school board. Fix it. There’s a huge problem, and it stems right here from you.

3:06:02 Thank you. Miss Derrigan. Miss Derrigan, can you hang on just a second? Can you go back? I want to have that looked at.

3:06:19 Can you go back to Miss Sullivan in the back of the room and explain exactly what you just said so that she can look into it? Well, she’s all right, Miss Klein, then. But we want to make sure that we don’t have any of those instances inside of our schools. And if they’re going on, the need be rectified.

3:06:33 Miss Klein will be the person that can handle that. Thank you. Sorry.

3:06:44 Miss Mirsky, your turn. Good afternoon, chairman and board. I am Sarah Mirsky, wife, mother of two children, brevard public schools, college student, taxpayer, voter, and I live in district two for school board.

3:07:10 I want to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I want to extend my congratulations to the new members on the board. It was an honor helping you to get elected, and I look forward to working, continue to work with you. Also, congratulations to the new chair and vice chair of the board.

3:07:26 I have two issues to bring to the board. The first one is the school bus issue. As I mentioned to this board, actually, the previous board before, I was appalled at the way bus drivers were treated at a meeting in February.

3:07:35 The bus situation is beyond crisis level at this point. My son was missing his first period Cambridge class and was suffering because of that. His grade was suffering.

3:07:47 Thankfully, as a family, we were able to rearrange our schedule so I can drive our children to school in the mornings. But across the district this is creating an inequitable situation because my family has the means to rearrange our schedules and I worry about the children who are missing important class instruction especially. There was a lot of discussion about the learning gaps and there’s families that don’t or cannot drive their children to school.

3:08:10 So this is an issue that this board is going to have to tackle and deal with immediately. My son and for his bus, he’ll wait an hour and a half for his bus. That’s just unacceptable.

3:08:21 Kids are getting in trouble at the bus stop. There’s, you know, there’s a news story this past week about a bus situation. So just.

3:08:27 That is something that I will be holding you accountable to. The other issue I want to bring up is why there is a COVID-19 waiver in the sports packet. It includes a daily temperature check.

3:08:37 And I’m confused because who is taking my son’s temperature? Taking a temperature is considered a medical procedure and a medical professional would have to administer that to him. So I’m just who’s taking his temperature and where is that information going about my son? Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mirsky.

3:08:50 Next up is Michelle Fausche. Venus Brown. Monica Wright.

3:09:12 Hi, my name is Michelle Fouchy. I don’t have a speech prepared. I’m just here to talk about the busing.

3:09:23 I have a twelve year old daughter who, I don’t know, just a handful. Good kid, good kid. All advanced classes in school, they got assigned to her.

3:09:48 She goes to McNair. She’s not in trouble, but she waits on her bus stop after school starts. She’s constantly, consistently late to her first period class.

3:09:57 I’m consistently calling the school to get her tardies excused. What really bothers me is there is a registered child predator eight houses away from her school bus stop who not only was arrested in surf time, re offended in surf time for that. And he’s there while these children, these girls, and it was a twelve year old child that he raped.

3:10:16 These children stand out on that bus corner and we don’t know when they get picked up. She’s coming home later and later at night. I don’t know what the answer is.

3:10:32 I just really implore you guys to look at the busing problem that we’re having because it’s in order to have an excellent student, you have to get them to school, you know? And I can take my daughter to school but I’m also paying taxes to have her bus to school. And there’s a lot of talk about protecting children. Well, that starts on the bus stop, too.

3:10:42 Just the stuff that I see. Go on. I just really think that maybe that million dollars that we came under budget this year maybe appropriate some of that over that way.

3:10:49 Maybe look at instead of having the armor cars pick up the money from the schools, have the school resource officer drop it off, you know, there’s re appropriate so that it makes sense and re appropriate so we can protect our children and keep them safe and. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle.

3:11:36 Michelle, if you can go back to Officer Neal, I think we have already dealt with what you were talking about earlier, but we’re not going to have sex offenders close to us if that’s still within law, if you haven’t spoken to him about it. I think we were working on that. But if you can just make sure you follow up to make sure.

3:11:42 Thank you very much. Next speaker is Venus Brown and then Monica Wright. And then I think that that’s going to conclude our speakers, and then we’ll just take a real quick adjournment.

3:11:52 Everybody can kind of move around, and then we’ll get back to what is the business of the board. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.

3:12:09 I’m going to address mostly just the issue of facility use for students in the schools, especially this policy that has the words biological sex throughout it, which paints a target on all our LGBTQ students and on several other students as well. When I was in school, I didn’t fit in very well with most girls. I felt very uncomfortable in the locker rooms, and the bathrooms were actually my place of some security where I could at least go where there were some dividing walls and I didn’t have to undress and dress in front of people.

3:12:34 But that’s me. That’s my situation. That’s not really what I’m here about now.

3:13:08 About 20 years, 20 years after that, my oldest kid comes out to me. They’re transgender. They’re bisexual.

3:13:41 Okay. And we first have to start going through the process of just getting the teachers to recognize them by their identified name and pronouns. And this went on throughout their high school years and middle school years.

3:13:56 And by the end, some of the teachers were actually willing to call them by their chosen name and pronouns, but some of them still refuse. Not long after my oldest child came out to me, my youngest child comes out to me, first as transgender, then as non binary. And so we start going through this process again, and this time, the issue of bathrooms, locker room facilities, things like that.

3:14:02 How are you going to help accommodate my child so that they are not being harassed and bullied, which they were at the. And the solution was they will go to the teacher’s lounge, which sounds great on its face, but then you’re talking about sending this kid from one side of the school to the other side of the school every day that they need to go to use the facilities. And they started out by trying to just only go during lunchtime because that was only the time that they really felt they had time to do that.

3:14:34 And as time went by, they started to slow that down until they weren’t using the facilities in the school at all. I learned this about three years ago, that my child stopped using the school facilities altogether because they don’t feel comfortable going to the one that they’re asked to go to. They don’t feel comfortable going to the one that they were told that they’re supposed to go to.

3:15:19 And now we’re telling students that they need to have biological sex written throughout policy. They shouldn’t be on any policy in the school. Their biological sex isn’t anybody’s business but theirs.

3:28:36 Maybe their doctors and their parents. That’s it. It doesn’t belong to the school members.

3:28:46 And I would really like to know who is going to police this policing biological sex in the breast rooms and locker room facilities. How are you going to police it? And why? Why are you policing biological sex? Are you going to be checking what’s between their legs? Because what is between their legs is none of your business. Thank you, Miss Brown.

3:28:55 Miss Monica wrights up as our last speaker. Monica in the room. All right, we’re going to take a five minute recess.

3:29:07 Sa sa we get everybody to grab a seat. We’re going to get started here. One of the things I wanted to say is that concludes my public comments and agenda items.

3:29:11 We thank you for your willingness to address us in this public manner. And I want to say that as a school board member, that’s been through some pretty tough topics. That was a great public speech and comments.

3:29:20 I think everybody, for the most part, followed the rules, and I think that we did a good job. So I want to really say thank you to everybody inside the audience and say thank you for what you guys did. We can come together.

3:29:37 Jefferson called it a bloodless revolution when we transition in power, and that’s what we just did. And truly, the election of 1800 was known as the first transition of power without blood inside of our country. And that’s what it is.

3:29:58 We just had that. We just had a great speech. We had opposing sides and now we can get to business.

3:30:16 So I want to say thank you to everybody that’s here. One of the things that I did want to say, yeah, give everybody yourselves rounds of applause. We’re all here for the kids and that’s the most important thing.

3:30:28 And I want to say that whether you believe in one thing or the other, we need to come together. And I love that individuals for forgot his name where he talked about precepts and principles defining character because that’s what we’re going to do as a community. We’re going to come together and we’re going to as a community help these children.

3:30:46 But the one thing that I wanted to talk about is, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do it, but I’m going to do it anyway. The issue that we have here that is the most paramount that I’ve been with all of these teachers is the discipline policy that’s been going on in our schools. The 40 plus people that quit of those, I’ve had contact with at least seven of them.

3:30:55 That said, the issue that is at hand is the discipline issue that we have. We have teachers that are getting bit, kicked, bruised, everything else. And you know what they feel like for the first time, some of them that they’re sitting there in a room and they’re just managing behavior rather than being on education.

3:31:14 And this has to stop not from the right, but from the left, but together. Not right, not left, not Republican, not Democrat, but together. Fix the discipline policy.

3:31:31 Because on the one side, I’m about to tell you I’m really upset with the kids that are taking advantage of the systems that we have. But on the other side, we need to have our community come together to be there for those kids to be the mentors that they need. Because we all know that many of these kids that are sitting here that are having issues at home, they take that out inside the schools.

3:31:56 And for the most part, some of them, that’s not their fault. But I will tell everybody inside of here that the discipline is an issue that we need to have. First and foremost, we have bus drivers.

3:32:06 Let me tell you something. We have bus drivers that have water bottles chucked at their heads. We have parents that as within a week we’ve had parents try to get on one of our buses to pull their kids off because the bus driver in the proper procedure comes and stops the bus to try to get the bus to calm down and we’ve got all of chaos going.

3:32:15 We have to as a community tell those kids that if you’re going to disrespect our educational institution, then you no longer are allowed to have the rights that you have. Being on a bus is a privilege. It’s not a right.

3:32:29 So if you’re going to disrespect our bus drivers, if you’re going to sit there and pile trash on the back of a bus so that my bus drivers have to sit there and clean it up, if you’re going to throw something at our bus drivers, if you’re going to disrespect that bus, you’re no longer going to ride on that bus. And this board that sits here before is promising you that that will happen. Because what’s going on is that we have kids that are sitting inside of these buses, my daughter included.

3:32:43 They get a ride in the mornings and they sit back. And what do they do? They sit there and they watch as students try to take advantage of that bus driver. And that has to end today.

3:33:11 That has to end today. We as a community need to have a conversation with our kids. If you know, if your kid’s been acting up on that bus because you’ve been getting calls, you have that conversation.

3:33:30 Because what’s going to end up happening is that once that person gives that referral that you’ve done that, they’re gone. We’re not having this anymore. We’re going to have a meeting between now and December 13 where this board defines the new discipline policy.

3:33:41 And I promise you that kind of behavior will no longer be tolerated. I am going to protect teachers, protect bus drivers. We are going to take sros and have them do the jobs that they have rather than chasing around the discipline policies that we’ve had to deal with.

3:33:48 I’m also going to ask in the event that we have the influx of more people into our secondary, our alcs that we have, where the students go, we’ll ask the sheriff to open up some of his facilities so that we can have kids go there that actually might do something of harm to our teachers. I also want to take and rework the cell phone policy because these kids find it fun to videotape the disrespect of our teachers and our bus drivers. And that’s not going to happen anymore.

3:34:01 That needs to end now, not tomorrow. And I call everybody here today not to sit here and say we this, that together, together, our precepts and principles will overcome the discipline policy. For that, our teachers can get back to education.

3:34:08 There’s a host of other things that are going on inside this community. There’s a host of other things that we need to focus on. But there is one thing we can come together on, and that’s protecting our teachers and our staff, custodians, everybody.

3:34:26 So I just wanted to take a second. I got a little bit fired up there when I was going off. And I ran into two people inside the bathroom that were talking about, specifically about that.

3:34:37 And I just couldn’t hold it back anymore. So I wanted to say thank you, those individuals, for making me do what I promised I wouldn’t do. All right? Now, I don’t know if I said it already, but I’m all juiced up.

3:34:52 That concludes our public comments, this agenda. We thank you for your willingness to address this public matter. That moves us onto the consent agenda.

3:35:08 Doctor Mullins, there are 24 agenda items under this category. Thank you, doctor Mullings. Does any board member wish to pull any of the items that are currently on the agenda? I have one item I want to pull item number 31 for discussion.

3:35:22 Okay. Am I good to go and discuss now? Hang on just a second. Are there any other items being pulled? All right, minus the item 31.

3:35:39 I will entertain a motion to accept the consent items with the exception of item 31 that Miss Wright has pulled. All those in favor, please by signify by saying aye. Aye.

3:35:47 All opposed? Okay, Miss Wright, you now have the floor for number 31. Item number 31. So this is in regards to the Space coast junior senior high track.

3:36:05 I had the opportunity to go out there and tour that with the principal. And what he told me is that their track was slated to be repaved, resurfaced. And what they have come to know is that the track is not the standard size.

3:36:24 It doesn’t have the proper amount of lanes in order for them to host track meet. And he informed me that the district has asked him to come up with 130 plus thousand to get that additional track lane put in there. It’s a unique opportunity because we’ll call it a blessing in disguise.

3:36:39 Space coast currently does not have bleachers. So typically when we’re looking at widening a track, we have to move bleachers. It’s going to cost a lot more money.

3:36:52 In this case, we don’t have the bleachers there right now. And it seems like it would be fiscally responsible to go ahead and widen that track so that school has the opportunity to be able to host track meets rather than wait until we, you know, repave it, refurbish it and then put bleachers in. And then now we got to take those down and and try to widen that track.

3:37:02 So I would just like you guys to be aware of it, because in December, hopefully, maybe we can come to you, work with facilities and just kind of come to a place where we’re able to get this done for them. Unfortunately, I don’t think school is going to have the means to come up with that 130 plus thousand. So I’m hoping that sue can hopefully work the magic for us and get that done for them.

3:37:09 Anybody? I have some comments that I’d like to say here because we had a similar situation. We found a resolution at O’Galley, but if anybody else has anything to say before I do, I’m supposed to go last. Miss Campbell? Well, we do.

3:37:26 We probably need to have a motion in a second before we had the discussion, but we’ll get that in there whenever you’re ready. Matt. Mister chair, I just was curious because we do have more than one school that doesn’t have the full size track.

3:37:38 I know. I don’t know how many we have that don’t have the full size track. What would be the process? But if.

3:37:56 Doctor Mullins, if you. Miss Campbell, I had a conversation after Miss Wright’s conversation with Miss Hand. With Miss Hand.

3:38:35 She’s agreed to. We do have some additional schools that do not, cannot, or currently do not accommodate eight lanes. We did make an adjustment to Ogalley narrowing the lanes to make it eight lane capable, which it is today.

3:38:47 But Miss Hannah proposed that we take a pause. She does an evaluation from an equitable standpoint. We need to consider all schools and what their.

3:38:54 What their capacity is to accommodate eight lanes, and bring back that information, along with potential funding sources, should the board choose to approve, to move in that direction. Did I capture that correctly, Miss Hand? Yes, sir. The way that I’ve structured the agenda item that is before you today, is without the eight lanes.

3:39:05 And if you would consider that contract today, and then I will bring back information to the board as to other schools that have the situation, what we’ve been able to do or not do, and how those things have been or have not been funded, and the physical limitations that Miss Wright mentioned. So I’ll bring that information back to you probably late next week sometime. So, Miss Han, what you’re saying is that you need board direction to let you know that we would like to go in that direction, approve what we have here, and then you’re going to bring back within a week at one of our scheduled workshops or whatever in between with an idea of how we can do it all.

3:39:12 I would bring back information to you in the interim and then potentially propose a change order to this contract for the December 13 board meeting. But you need us to keep moving forward so that everything can happen. I would like to, yes.

3:39:13 So that the track resurfacing and all of that can stay on track. On track. Haha.

3:39:26 Thank you, Miss Anne, for all the work. Many people know, but sue took this on as one of her big things and said, we’re going to resurface. And I know that every single track is uniquely different, and you’ve been dealing with that.

3:39:30 So thank you for having an open mind and working with Miss Wright on this. Yes, thank you. It was a big deal in Ogalley, and I know it’s going to be at Space coast.

3:39:40 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

3:40:03 So we have a motion. I’d like to have a motion to approve agenda item number 31 so we can go back and miss hand is going to eventually come back with change order. Second the motion.

3:40:09 I did. I made the motion. Second I second the motion.

3:40:17 And then if I can anybody, anybody have any more discussion on the item? All right, all in favor say aye. All opposed? Beautiful. All right.

3:40:34 There is one other thing that I wanted to do before we got started. I was going to ask to move item number l 51, which is the superintendent’s report, along with k 49 up ahead of k 48, making the last policy that we discuss in here, the board of education rule. So I’ve made a motion to move those up so that we can have the last discussion.

3:40:41 Do I have a second? A second. Okay. Open for discussion on the floor.

3:40:51 That’s just basically a formality. Doesn’t mean we’re doing anything different. It’s just that due to the circumstances of everything, I just like to have that as our last discussion items.

3:40:54 So with no further. So we’re moving forward with 49 now, correct? Is that right? Yeah, we’re moving L 51 and k 49 ahead of k 48, which puts the LGBTQ item on the agenda for the last. So we can discuss that and all of our other board stuff done before that.

3:41:03 So I have another discussion item that I want to bring up. So would it come before that? Yeah, you would. You would.

3:41:09 When we say that we’re up for board discussion items, you would bring those up. And I would appreciate if we had some sort of discussion ahead of time rather than surprising people at the last minute. Oh, don’t even go there, mister.

3:41:15 We do. I have a. The motion’s on the floor.

3:41:40 We’ve had the discussion. All in favor please, by saying aye. Did Megan Wright second it? Yes, sir.

3:41:45 Oh, sorry. Thank you. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:42:06 Aye. All opposed? Okay. All right, so we’ll move those up.

3:42:23 Doctor Mullins, will you please let us know about items on the action portion of today’s agenda? The first item is g 40, to authorize the board to hold a public hearing on December 13 regarding the elementary and secondary emergency Relief fund under the American Rescue Plan act. Updated instructional continuity plans. Do I hear a motion? Second.

3:42:44 Any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye.

3:42:57 All opposed? Doctor Mullins, you’re up. Next is section 1001.39, subsection one of the Florida statutes, which requires any travel outside the district exceeding $500 received prior approval to confirm the travel is for official business and complies with the rules of the state Board of Education.

3:42:57 An opportunity for the public to speak to these items must be provided prior to action by the board. On tonight’s agenda, there are three travel requests on the agenda for approval. First is item G 41 for Mister Jean Trent to attend FSBA FAd’s annual joint conference.

3:43:44 Is there anyone present who wishes to publicly address the item G 41, Mister Trump’s travel request to attend the FSBA Fads conference hearing? None. Do I hear a motion to approve? Second. Any discussion? Call to vote.

3:43:47 All in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Doctor Mullins, next item is g 42 for Misses Katie Campbell to attend the FSBA Fads annual joint conference.

3:44:02 Is there anyone present who wishes to publicly address item g 42 on Miss Campbell’s travel request to attend the FSBA Fads conference hearing? None. Do I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve? Any discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. All opposed? Doctor Mullins? Next is item G 43 for Misses Macon Wright to attend the FSBA Fads annual joint conference.

3:44:09 Is there anyone present who wishes to publicly address item G 43 on Miss Wright’s travel request to attend the FSBA fads conference? Seeing none. Do I hear a motion? Second. You can.

3:44:13 Okay, you can. I was just getting ready to do it for you. Second.

3:44:34 Any discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Just so everybody knows, we normally have a system where we can vote inside of it, but the system’s been down, so that’s why we’re voice voting the heck out of this.

3:44:49 A little bit of time there, so. All right, next item is g 44. Super department school initiated agreements.

3:44:55 Do I hear a motion? Oh, wait. Doctor Mullins, you gotta read it. All good.

3:45:04 You got it? All right. Do I hear a motion? Are there any discussions on the item G 44? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion passes.

3:45:15 Doctor Mullins, the next item is g 45, procurement solicitations. Do I hear a motion? Second. Do I hear any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

3:45:24 Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Doctor Mullins, the last item is g 46.

3:45:36 Renewal charter contract. Odyssey Preparatory Charter Academy. Do I hear a motion? Second.

3:45:39 Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion passes.

3:45:47 Now we’re onto the information board. We move to. We move on to the information agenda, which includes items for board review that may not be brought or may be brought back for action at subsequent meeting.

3:46:33 No action will be taken on these items today. There is one item under this category. Does anybody member wish to discuss this item? All right, moving on.

3:46:51 Paul had something that he wanted to mention to us. Go ahead, Paul. Yes.

3:47:15 Good afternoon, board members. I am notifying you that advice is needed regarding the case. Moms for liberty, et al.

3:47:38 Versus the school Board of Brevard County, Florida, et al. Federal case number 621 cv 01849. Pursuant to section 286.

3:47:41 011 of Florida statute known as the government in the Sunshine Act, I am requesting an attorney client session with the board for the purpose of discussing the case and or settlement of said case. I will ask the board’s clerk to cause reasonable public notice of the time and date of this attorney client session and the names of the persons attending to be published. If the board approves, I will work with the board clerk to coordinate dates for the executive session, working with our council’s availability, and provide notice of the meeting, inclusive of the scheduling of a court reporter, as required by the statute, only the following individuals will be present.

3:47:47 School board members, Katie Campbell, Jennifer Jenkins, Matt Susan Jean Trent, Megan Wright, superintendent doctor Mark Mullins. Paul Gibbs, general counsel Howard Marks, Esquire, and Jennifer Bridges, Esquire of Burr, foreman. I will ask a court reporter to record the session as required by statute.

3:48:05 Their notes will be fully transcribed and filed with the clerk of the school board. Upon the conclusion of any litigation and or settlement of all claims arising out of this case, the transcript will be made public record. All right, Paul, so now that you read it legally, why don’t you just kind of mention it to explain to them what exactly you said? We have a settlement proposal from opposing counsel or discussion that’s been requested.

3:48:17 So when we have litigation ongoing, we’re allowed to call an executive session for that purpose. So if the board agrees, I will work to schedule that and I’ll get it advertised and the court reporter scheduled so that I can bring our council in to brief the board outside of the public as we’re allowed. Do I have approval of the board to do that? I guess you need approval, sir.

3:48:56 Yeah, I just need a consensus from the board. Thumbs up. All right, thank you.

3:49:00 All right, thank you. All right, there are two topics on the agenda. Item.

3:49:13 I’m hearing from Miss Jenkins that she has one extra, and I’m hearing from Miss Wright that there might be another one. So with that, let’s move to the first item that’s on the board policy, which is 25 21. And then we’re going to hear the other two from the school board members, and then we’ll hear the final one, which is the state board education rule.

3:49:32 Mister Trent, you are up. All right, so, board policy 25 21. As the school material review committee, I’m looking for consensus from the board to do two things.

3:49:50 One is I would like the board to direct the superintendent to remove all the books that are on the review list from our current BPS libraries and until we can review them, to put them back into our libraries. And two, to suspend that review committee until we can have a workshop and look at possibly reconfiguring that committee. Doctor Mullins, do you know when the next time that book review committee meets? Yes, there’s currently December 20 is the next date that the book review committee is convening to discuss.

3:49:57 I don’t remember the title of the book. Was it sold? Sold, yes. So they are.

3:50:08 The committee is currently reviewing reading that book and coming together for discussion on December 20. And is the procedures in the committee written into policy, or is it a procedure? It is policy. School board policy.

3:50:20 Okay, so in order to change that policy, would you care to explain what that policy looks like? How does a policy change? I know we all gone through that, but explain it so that we can go through that. Change it. The superintendent would work with staff to propose changes based on the guidance from the board.

3:50:27 And then we have to do advertising. We have to advertise at least 14 days before the first public hearing, which is usually at a workshop, and 28 days before final public hearing, which is usually board meeting. The board’s procedures also include an extra workshop before that first public hearing for the board to consider those amendments.

3:50:45 So it’s roughly a 60 to 90 day process for board amendments. So if we. Let me just get this right.

3:51:09 If the intention of the board was to move forward with moving and adopting a separate policy on this. We would have many workshop to set direction on what that is. Because right now it’s kind of out there.

3:51:21 Right. You could have, you could have a workshop, you could. The board could place an item on the agenda for December 13 to suspend the policy until the board directs otherwise.

3:51:30 But it would need to be a vote of the board and it wasn’t advertised for today’s meeting. So there’s insufficient time for today. Absolutely.

3:51:33 And. But at that time, if there was a suspension of the committee, then what would happen is it would not be able to meet until the new guidelines have come through besides the December 20 meeting. Doctor Mullins, do you know the schedule? I know this is kind of on the cusp here, but is it every two months beyond December, there are no more dates.

3:51:52 They were waiting until the new board is my understanding. And is it under the assumption that until that policy is changed, the current policy and the way it works until it’s suspended would be enforced. So if Mister Trent wanted to change this policy, he would be between 45 and 90 days, depending if everything fell certain ways.

3:52:00 And then you could suspend the meeting, but the books would still stay on until the policy is rewritten? He could. There could be a separate motion as well if he wants to pull books in the interim. If that.

3:52:16 It would be a separate motion of, hey, we want to pull all this and direct the district to remove all these books. And that could be on December as well. On the December 13.

3:52:29 But we have to put that on the vote. It would have to be on the agenda for board vote. And on top of that, how long out previous to the 13th would we need to notice that? The 13th already noticed.

3:52:34 It would have to be on the agenda at least. And we can add that to the agenda up to a couple days before the superintendent. Well, no, it would.

3:53:04 A couple days before it advertises. You could. But the item needs to be on the agenda and it’s usually released seven days before the meeting.

3:53:23 Okay, so seven days before December 6, I believe. And what I was hearing is that we were talking and I’m sorry to dance through this, but I’m just trying to get the line up here. What I was hearing is that I was going to call a meeting for December 5 to talk about some other things.

3:53:34 And I’m hearing that we may not be able to call a workshop because of advertising. Because the Florida Today cannot get an advertisement out quick enough for the Florida. Do we have to advertise before today.

3:53:45 Are we not able to use it? Florida. Florida today is the fastest. All right.

3:54:14 So the others are like, they publish once a week and you have to get it earlier. So Florida today needs three days lead time to run an ad and they don’t work weekends. So is my understanding, are Internet ads sufficient or do they have to be actual ads? They have to be actual ads until the county sets up their Internet, their, their advertising policy on the Internet that the legislature did allow for online advertising, but it’s through the counties website and they have to establish that.

3:54:48 If they don’t establish that, then we can’t use it. So is there a way, so we all understand what is going on is that the online policy that has been passed by the Florida legislature has one caveat, that the county has to readjust their system so that we can utilize that through there. That has not occurred yet.

3:55:00 So we are not able to utilize online agenda according to our council. So that is not an option. So we still have to use the paper option, which means we file it with the Florida today.

3:55:11 But because of their lead times and stuff like that, we’re not able to get it out in time. We can still meet on the 8th. We can still meet on the 8th, which is, I’m going to ask you all to meet on the 8th and the 9th.

3:55:29 But what we are going to have an issue with is trying to put it on the 13th for that agenda. Has there any way that you can put what, Mister Trent, just before we have discussion on it actually happening on the agenda on the 13th? Is there any way, can we amend the agenda five days out? Fraction the superintendent adds things on occasion when it’s needed. So that would be an issue between the board and the superintendent.

3:55:43 So if there’s direction from the board on the 8th or 9th to create an extra agenda item to the 13th based on the will of the board, that there might be an opportunity to put it on on the 13th, right? Yeah, you’re giving less notice. You could do a placeholder and put something on there before it releases seven days in advance before the discussion. And then you just amend with any changes to that when it comes up after the one of the things, just to clarify, because you guys are probably wondering why are we going through this right now? But the way the policy is currently written is that every board member is able to appoint someone to this committee.

3:55:51 Well, we have a unique situation right now because we have a person appointed to the committee that wasn’t necessarily appointed by the current sitting board. Member. So we have to change that to align correctly.

3:55:59 The policy should read that it should go with the board member. If that’s my understanding from Doctor Sullivan when we met last week, I think. Is that correct? Did I get that right? And that’s the intent of what we’re doing.

3:56:09 But we need to meet as a workshop to sit down and talk about each one of those things. And that means that we can get together on the 8th or the 9th and the 9th, send direction to Doctor Mullins and staff to put it on the agenda for the 13th and move forward with the policy. So we’re right there in compliance, I believe Mister Trent.

3:56:13 And I don’t want to speak for you Mister Trent, but your request is in addition to the new board members appointment to the committee. It is in reference to taking books out of circulation until. Until such time they’re reviewed by the committee.

3:56:18 And I think that that’s great. And I think each one of us may have something to add or subtract. But I think just putting it down there for discussion.

3:56:22 Coming out of that workshop with direction, putting it on the 13th and start the process. If that’s the will of the board. I just wanted to make sure that we could follow that process.

3:56:22 So now with that said, we can go to discussion. Do you care to say anything more? I think you said everything for everyone, Mister Susan. No.

3:56:30 I was trying to get through the process. It’s my turn to talk now, sir. Thank you.

3:56:34 Miss Jenkins. I want to remind you that the. The chair has control of the meeting.

3:56:46 So you have to be recognized prior to. Yes, you do. You’re out of order.

3:56:53 You’re out of order. Miss Jenkins. Miss Jenkins.

3:56:55 You’re out of order, Miss Jenkins. You’re out of order. I will call on you to speak.

3:57:07 You don’t come in. You’re out of order. You’re out of order.

3:57:14 Board members. In a situation where we have public as well, in a situation like this, there’s board members that speak out of turn. You can ask the will of the board to censor the board member, go for it.

3:57:18 And then have that person silenced for the time. But I have no problem recognizing her. You just can’t start going ahead of time, that’s all.

3:57:30 So. So, mister. Yeah, it’s quorum.

3:57:37 So Mister Trent, are you completed with what your discussion was or do you have anything else to say? No. I had talked to Mister Gibbs and what he said made complete sense. We’ll get this on a workshop.

3:57:39 We can put a placeholder on the agenda ends and we’ll get it on the December 13 agenda. Okay, Miss Jenkins, now, you had something to say. Go ahead.

3:57:41 Yeah. I’m embarrassed to sit on this board with you. It’s an absolute disgrace.

3:57:46 You are literally a mockery of this profession, this organization. It is absolutely embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing.

3:57:54 Are you speaking to what the discussion item is? I am speaking to you. We’re just. Okay, so you weren’t speaking to the discussion.

3:58:10 Yes, I am. I’m speaking to you. And your handling of it.

3:58:42 Absolutely. Oh, okay. So.

3:58:59 All right, next up, Miss Campbell. Yep. Sure.

3:59:11 Speak to the issue at hand. Sure. I had the same or similar conversation with Doctor Mullins about the book challenge committee representatives.

3:59:41 Just looking at the policy right now, what it says in section. And I’m just looking at this one part I haven’t gone back to, to look at all the details, because I think at some point, it said the committee’s committee members will serve for a year. But the way the verbiage is, it says a designee from each board member.

3:59:53 It’s my thought that we could go ahead without having to have a policy change. We could go ahead and allow the two new board members to choose their designee and allow those designees to be seated on the book challenge review committee and go ahead and at least make that change. Of course, at any time, we can pause the process, because the process is not locked in stone in policy, how fast or how slow it goes.

4:00:01 I agree that we could go ahead and do that until we make the changes, but it also sounds like we could go ahead just looking at the policy, the way it’s written, a destiny from each board member. We have two new board members. They could go seat those two new people if we wanted to continue the process as it goes.

4:00:04 I know that the policies written that we’re giving each, for the sake of their valuing their time. I think it’s a week for every hundred pages. Yes, right there and right below that.

4:00:12 So, you know, whether we could do it before Christmas if we have new. I would hate to ask your representatives to do it on a shorter timeframe, because the fastest we could get the books to them would be next week. But, Paul, any thoughts on that, making that change, if the board wanted to go ahead and do that, or would you want to take a look at it first? I’d probably want to read it, but, I mean, if you want the meeting to go on, I’ll review that immediately and see about what my thoughts are on it.

4:00:35 And I don’t know if they’re even ready to give that recommendation and it might change based on how the policy is rewritten? I don’t know. I think we were asked for names already. I know I was.

4:00:50 I put forth a name. In the event that you can do that, can you give them those names and we can make that change immediately? I guess, yeah. Okay.

4:00:57 But we still need to make it on the policy. All right. Yeah, I’ll review it.

4:01:07 And then with the names, I’m assuming you’ve turned it over to Doctor Sullivan for the names, or. Who did you give it to? Doctor Mullen’s author. Okay.

4:01:41 I haven’t given my name yet, but I will. All right, mister chair, if I may just to clarify, is the board requesting to suspend the committee until December 20? Committee. So just out of courtesy to the current members, those particularly, who will be returning and continuing, I want to make sure that we’re clear.

4:01:56 We give them as much notice that that meeting would be postponed. Is that the direction I’m hearing from the board? Yes. And the fact that it’s Christmas and the fact that people need to make travel plans and stuff like that, I would suspend that meeting because we are going to rework the policy.

4:02:12 Apparently that will be on the December 13 agenda. And them, you know, working their schedules will need to happen. So thank you for clarifying.

4:02:41 Okay. Are we all good on that one? All right, Miss Jenkins, you had an item that you wanted to bring up. Yes, I do.

4:03:16 So it has been brought to my attention, and I believe all of the board members received this email, that there was a request for any public records, requests that go from one board member to another to be sent to outside counsel for review. And so essentially what that means is if I make a request of a board member, instead of it going through the regular records request process through our district, we will be charging the district for it to be reviewed by a lawyer. And why that concerns me is twofold.

4:03:38 There’s no purpose to it. I can ask for something and it gets charged through a lawyer. I can knock on my neighbor’s door and have them ask for the exact same public record, and it goes through our records department.

4:04:16 Does that make any sense to anybody? Doesn’t make any sense to me. What we did ask the district to do was when I did make a public records request and someone refused to turn it over, our general counsel said he needed an outside opinion. We did get that one, actually.

4:04:55 We reached out to the attorney general’s office, who then recommended a lawyer, who then gave us said opinion, and that opinion was clear. That any phone calls on your personal cell phone that regard board business should be turned over and produced as a public record. And if you have difficulty discerning what may be board business or private, as you’ve publicly stated, then it should not be redacted.

4:05:04 So I don’t really understand why we’re implementing a new procedure. If a board member requests something from a board member as if I am not a private citizen myself, as if, again, I couldn’t ask anyone in this audience to request the same information I’m requesting, it makes absolutely no sense. And with that, I’m going to remind you of something you said earlier today when you asked us to move our meetings.

4:05:23 You said you had spoken to mayors and city council members and everyone about doing it already and using their facilities. And that is fantastic. And so I’m going to make a public records request and ask to see those phone calls be really odd to the public if for some reason we can’t have those because you said it publicly.

4:05:48 I also want to make another thing clear to my two new board members who are sitting here who don’t know everything that’s going on with this public records request because it does put the district at stake for liability and suit. The phone records of the district cell phone of this board member for three months indicated no incoming and outgoing phone calls. So that tells me board business wasn’t being done on the business cell phone that they’re issued, that should be a concern to every member of this public.

4:06:07 Everyone finished? All right. So the reason that, and I have to take a look at this, that a lawyer got involved was there was an obsessive amount of public records requests that came in, and on top of that, district staff was put in between two board members. And the reason for that is, is that when we have one board member who is consistently sending emails, demanding when the emails are going to come in and when the call logs are going to come in, it made it very difficult for our local public records team to mitigate all of what was happening.

4:06:14 So in order not to have staff put in the middle between two board members, that’s the reason that I think it went that way. But we can ask Doctor Mullins in a second. As far as the.

4:06:29 Regarding call logs, this is a court case that is actually in front of DeSantis currently has. DeSantis has requests for his personal teams call logs that is in court right now. And I asked, doctor, because there is, you can get one opinion from one source and another opinion from another source.

4:06:43 For instance, the county attorney across the street had given you and others laws that had stated that the public call logs for individuals were not public record. There’s also the man that runs all of the ethics training for the league of Cities has also publicly stated that. So there seems to be, depending on who you ask for an opinion, those individuals give one or the other.

4:07:06 So what I said was, is that there’s two options that we can do. We can wait until the courts actually define this for the first time in Florida law, which would be the DeSantis case, or we can ask the attorney general for a public opinion. I have no problem turning over, as I’ve turned over my texts, as I have turned over everything else.

4:07:20 So there’s that. The next thing is that there seems to be a, you know, this whole conspiracy theory. My district cell phone, the times and the count, the months that was in question was over the summer.

4:07:22 My district cell phone was broken. I had to bring it back in to have district cell phone worked on our own. It person that’s inside of here fixed it and everything’s fine.

4:07:26 So, yes, until I had my district phone used, then I used my personal cell, and I’ve provided all of those texts and all of that information off of there. There is no hiding conversations. So I just wanted to address it.

4:07:38 This is a good time. I would actually like to get around this and go straight to the attorney general and ask for an opinion. And that is, per the conversation that I had of the number one leading person inside of the attorney general’s office, who actually sits on top of all of these kind of questions, had made that recommendation as part of it.

4:07:48 So with that said, we can make a request to the attorney general to give us an opinion over whether we should or shouldn’t have to give the call logs. And the reason, if I’m. If I’m correct, if I’m understanding this, there’s conflicting information coming from different attorneys.

4:07:59 No, there is not. There is. There is.

4:08:06 I spoke to that same individual. Okay, well, there’s definitely conflicting information somewhere. That’s.

4:08:22 There’s no doubt about that. So would a decision from the attorney general suffice everyone to say, hey, that’s. That’s the attorney general? If they say that, are you guys comfortable with the more than willing to do everything there? Yes.

4:08:26 Honestly, in order for this board to move forward, we have to work together. We are not. We are not displaying anything that is making our public proud right now on how we’re going to serve Brevard county.

4:08:29 And so if we don’t work together. We’re working against each other and we become part of the problem here. So how do we mend this? How do we fix it so that we’re both on the same page? That this is the final say, we’re okay with it.

4:08:39 Would the attorney general suffice? I’ll make a motion to send this item and I’ll work with Paul on sending it out. I wouldn’t need a motion. I just.

4:08:42 I do want to point out the attorney general is able, has discretion on what she issues opinions on. And there’s no guarantee they accept any, any requests that we do make up there. I think it’s worth a try at this point, right? I mean, I don’t know how else we fix this.

4:08:48 I don’t need a motion. If you. If the majority of the board says hey, make the request, I’m happy to make.

4:08:57 Make the request. I think it’s interesting. Certain people have to be.

4:09:06 I think we can move on from this topic, right? We don’t need to move on from it. Because I think it’s clear that when you’re not willing to turn something over, it’s probably because you’re hiding. There’s nothing being hidden.

4:09:12 And the person you spoke to was Pat goes. And I called her as well. Mister.

4:09:14 Misses Jenkins, we have direction of the board. We have. We have direction of the board.

4:09:29 We’re going to ask the attorney general’s. Miss Jenkins, I am going to ask you. You to please come in order to turn over his phone calls with Representative Randy board members.

4:09:42 I’m going to. False allergies in our Johnson middle school. Miss Jenkins, you are making some really, really.

4:09:46 Mister Susan. Miss Jenkins. Threaten me with, I will hold you accountable.

4:09:51 You will. The last day. Mister Gibbs.

4:09:54 Mister Gibbs. Now there was something that happened. We had a couple of emails that I asked you to mention to said board member that they may be breaking sunshine because these may be coming before the board.

4:10:05 And you went ahead and told that individual that these are some issues that we may not want to be sending inside of emails. So I would like you to take a look at those emails to see if what just happened actually broke sunshine. And actually that.

4:10:14 Okay, now moving on. Miss Wright, you have. Nope.

4:10:27 That’s it. Miss Wright, you have. Mister Gibbs, do you have a comment for that? Please? I wouldn’t need to look at.

4:10:45 No. Let’s go. Miss Wright, you’re up.

4:11:04 Yes. Okay. One of the things that’s become very apparent and that I’m seeing is that we have a lot of issues in our district, do we not? I mean, we’re having them with leaders, we’re having them with our schools.

4:11:24 We’re having them with our teachers, with our students. We have lost our way to some degree. We have lost our focus on what we are supposed to be doing.

4:11:42 And I believe that we are only as strong as our leaders are. I believe our community has expressed multiple different ways and different times that they are calling for a change in leadership. And that is not a comfortable thing.

4:11:51 That is not a fun thing, but it is a necessary thing in order to move our district into where we need to be going. So with that being said, I take no joy in even bringing this up, because I will tell you, I have respect for our superintendent. But the public’s perception, Mister Rollins, is that you are the leader.

4:12:06 And what they are calling for is a strong leader. And so what I am asking is that, would this board, what are their stances? How do they feel about looking at reviewing the superintendent’s contract? Or are we comfortable staying the direction that we are with the leadership we have in place? And I will leave it there and open it to discussion from there. Thank you.

4:12:17 Opening that up for discussion. Does anybody, other board members wish to comment on this? Thank you, Mister Chairman. Miss Rye, I hear you.

4:12:28 And leadership is important. What I would suggest is the real problem that the community has most been upset with is who is directing the superintendent. And we have new direction with a new board and the superintendent.

4:12:34 Any appointed superintendent serves at the will of the board. And I would suggest that over the last couple of years, Doctor Mullins has served at the will of the board. I will give you an example.

4:12:50 One of the things that most upset our community would be, would have been the mask mandate of the last couple of years. Just to be crystal clear, the only recommendation that was ever brought by Doctor Mullins or any of his staff was strongly recommend. It was the board who changed it to expected.

4:13:28 It was the board who changed it to a mandate. It was the board who created the policy to do it. It was the board, the majority of the board at the time.

4:13:46 When I say the board, it was our, you know who we had in place. It was the board who decided to do a mask mandate in 2021. In spite of what the governor and the Department of Health had issued.

4:14:03 The board did that every single time. And the superintendent followed the direction of the board. We have a new board.

4:14:09 And I believe with all my heart, after working with Doctor Mullins for the last four years, that he will follow the direction of the board until. Unless we lead him to do something illegal, unethical, or moral. And so my suggestion would be that we do have an evaluation process that happens every year.

4:14:13 It starts in May, goes through June, July, usually around July time, the board gathers together for our annual evaluation of the superintendent. I would suggest that as we have our two new board members and as we have this new leadership that we have in place here, that that is a more appropriate time for us to do the evaluation. When you guys have the time to see, you get a big fat binder about that thick, so you can really delve into every department, every area, every school, every initiative, and that that would be the better time to look at the body of work and see, you know, what with the new leadership.

4:14:16 Is the superintendent following the leadership of this new board? I think that would especially allow us to maintain some stability in our organization. When there is change, there’s the risk of instability. I think the stability is very important.

4:14:25 And so I very. I feel very strongly about this, that now is not the time, but that we do have our regular time. We look at Doctor Mullen’s contract every summer as we do the evaluation and have the opportunity to make changes.

4:14:29 The board sets really his agenda for the year we set. Here are your goals. We want you to meet.

4:14:34 Here are the things we want you to work on. Here are the weaknesses. Here are the strengths.

4:14:50 That’s our job. And we do that. We do that.

4:15:06 We prepare for that all through the year, and then we have that formal evaluation process in the summer. So that would be my recommendation, is that we continue through. We make clear direction as a board.

4:15:28 We are making lots of changes. We’ve already made lots of changes tonight. I haven’t heard any resistance.

4:15:48 Those changes so far. I’ve heard, yes, we can make it happen. Here’s how we can make it happen.

4:16:22 So I believe we’re already moving in the right direction, and I hope that the rest of the board would agree with that part of it with me. Thank you, Miss Jenkins. Coming to you next.

4:16:42 This district makes decisions based on data. Here’s some. There’s a positive perception of brevard public schools in our community as identified in the alliance for Public Schools community conversation data.

4:17:08 Approximately 70% of respondents had a positive or somewhat positive opinion of Brevard public school schools. One of the quotes, Doctor Mullins is worthy of a community’s respect. He’s had a steady hand during this crisis, and with all that has been stirred up politically around education, he has focused on students, and that is what is most important.

4:17:42 There’s been an increased parental satisfaction. 75% of parents indicated they’re either satisfied or very satisfied with Brevard public school schools. In a parent survey with over 25,000 respondents, 77% of people indicated they would recommend BPS as a good place to work in an exit survey.

4:18:15 Feedback that was up from 33% in 2018. Utilization of federal stimulus funds for maximum positive student impact received perfect audit Doctor Mullins is recognized throughout the state as an exemplary leader, as evidenced by appointment to the board of directors of Florida association of District School superintendents. He’s supported by our community as evidenced by the favorable passage of our sales tax and our millage.

4:18:59 And let me be clear about our millage. From the day I was elected to this school board, I made it very clear to Doctor Mullins that was one of the reasons I ran in the first place. And the first thing out of Doctor Mullins mouth was, I hear you, I agree with you.

4:19:37 I never had full board consensus or support. He’s supported by the majority of Brevard’s legislatures, as evidenced by allocations for our CTE programs throughout our district. He has widespread community support through his ambassadors group, who many of them are sitting here in the audience today.

4:20:25 Not only is there a positive perception of the work Doctor Mullins has done, but he happens to have a positive impact on our students directly through his leadership. Our graduation rate increased from 2016 at 87.5 through 2020, one’s 90.

4:20:37 6. There has been an increase in student achievement for all student subgroups in the 21 22 school year. He increased student participation and achievement in our advanced courses, including AP, IB, dual enrollment, and our CTE programs.

4:20:40 Our progress monitoring data shows our students are rebounding at a greater rate than the rest of the state and outperforming the state average, as we saw in our October 25 academic update. And in addition to academics, he has positively impacted our workforce, increased community partnerships, and maintained fiscal responsibility and transparency. He developed a career advanced advancement opportunities within our organization to encourage continuous growth throughout our organization.

4:21:01 He developed the thrive by five programs, working with the support of our community, our healthcare facilities and organizations throughout the community to support our youngest babies before they enter Brevard public schools. He launched a mentoring framework to support our students in crisis and after this pandemic, he created a referral resources list to support our families who are going through mental health crises. He cut $58 million from the budget with the most minimal impact to our students and our classrooms as humanly possible.

4:21:37 He established a finance team who manages a nearly billion dollar budget, who is award winning and again, with perfect audits. And last but not least, Doctor Mullins is an educator for Brevard Public Schools. For the past 29 years, he was a teacher, a coach, an area superintendent, a district superintendent, our chief operating officer, and now serves as our superintendent.

4:21:41 You will never find another man with the experience and the heart of the children of Brevard public schools more than Doctor Mullen. And I’m not going to sit here, and I’m not gonna sit here and be quiet about the conversation that’s about to take place, that’s going to place some imaginary blame on a man who literally takes direction from the board you sat on for six years. Miss Jenkins, if you have any.

4:21:51 Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. If you have a problem, she has time to do it. Then you have a problem with the decisions that you made.

4:22:09 Miss Jenkins. Hang on. Let her finish.

4:22:15 Miss Jenkins, when you finish, can you just say, I’m finished? Oh, I will. Okay. This conversation is not only about the man that I respect, but it’s about brevard public schools and our community.

4:22:35 Because if you remove this man from this position, it will trickle down into our experienced cabinet, every member who has served brevard public schools for at least a minimum of 20 plus years, and slowly down to our community schools. And I want everyone to hear me loud and clear. If that is the decision and the will of this board, I take no blame in that terrible decision.

4:22:49 I’m assuming you’re finished. Hang on, hang on. Let Jean respond.

4:22:56 Yeah, I’m finished. Thank you. Go ahead, Jean.

4:23:25 All right. What I’d like to say is that does show potential we have in BPS and brevard schools here. I won’t speak quite as long, but that being said, I would be in support of a change in leadership.

4:23:51 If you want to speak, I have to let them speak. Okay. All right.

4:24:25 We’re good. Everybody’s done. So, basically, I’ve had conversations with Doctor Mullins on this issue, and we’ve had, you know, direction and said if this is the will of the board, that we’re going to move in that direction, and I’ll support Miss Wright’s motion, and that should give the majority of what we need.

4:24:39 And I think at this point. Doctor Mullins, did you have something to say? Thank you, mister chair. Please quiet down.

4:24:48 First, I have respect for all the board members. This is a challenging discussion. It’s a challenging topic.

4:25:06 I would be remiss if I didn’t say it’s near and dear to my heart, not personally and professionally, but because this is my community. This community has not only given me the opportunity to serve as an educator, to serve as a leader, but it’s also contributed to raising my own children. And I have said very publicly that this community I consider partly responsible for the success my own children have today.

4:25:30 And very proud of them and proud of what Brevard Public schools has provided my own children. But the foundation of an educational system is on being able to come together, work together, and move forward. And that’s my number one priority for this board, for brevard public schools, for our community.

4:25:43 In consideration of the conversation this morning, I would move, or I would request the board consider me meeting with the board chair, begin discussions of a mutually agreeable separation agreement that would come back to the board at a time, at a future meeting. So, Doctor Mullins, you know Doctor Mullins asked to move forward with that. Do we have the same people that were for that? Is that okay? If I negotiate with Doctor Mullins, a separation agreement, will that be brought before us? Before? It absolutely will.

4:25:46 In a special meeting that we can call that doesn’t require us to go through the. Please, ma’am, I will be here for anybody that wants to talk afterwards, I will answer any questions. So listen, with that said, I truly appreciate your.

4:25:56 Guys, we’re good to go. What’s that? Yep, we’re good. I want to talk to my community.

4:26:08 Folks, I appreciate your words of affirmation. I appreciate your compliment. I ask that we all come together in complete cooperation and respect and move forward.

4:26:22 Give the board chair your respect and your attention to move forward and handle the board business in the most conducive, cohesive way possible. Mister Susan on this. Right? Mister Trent, Miss Campbell, Misses Jenkins, you have my commitment to be cooperative through this process.

4:26:31 And every anticipation that we’ll have a amicable resolution to the future conversations. Absolutely. Doctor Mullins, you are an amazing human being.

4:27:03 And I don’t care. I’m going to say this. You have been a father.

4:27:46 You have been a father of many kids that have gone through here. You’ve been a teacher, a principal. And I appreciate your time.

4:28:12 Next item up. Next item up. Moving on has nothing to do with this.

4:28:23 Next up. Item number for discussion. State Board of Education rule six a dash 10.

4:28:56 086. Miss Campbell, you wanted to lead this discussion? Please. Floor is yours.

4:29:10 All right, board. So if you have not already taken a look at it, the state board of education passed a rule and it has gone. It’s finished.

4:29:30 The rulemaking process back in October that mainly the part that we need to deal with is the middle part. I believe most of our guidelines and policies we’re bringing in line consistent with the parents Bill of rights. That part has been taken care of, but there’s a particular section under that’s state rule six a 10.

4:29:55 086. Number two has to do with parental notification. And I’ll just read it so we’re all clear exactly what we’re talking about.

4:30:32 If a school board or charter school governing board has a policy or procedure that allows for separation of bathrooms or locker rooms according to some criteria other than biological sex at birth, the policy or procedure must be posted on the district’s website or charter school’s website and must be sent by mail to student residences to fully informed parents. And then it goes, if you’re going to do that, then it has you know what, at a minimum, must be required in that information. In addition, under letter B, two B, it says school board and charter school governing board policies or procedures must include accommodations or modifications in order to ensure that all students have an opportunity to use a bathroom or locker room separated by logical sex at birth.

4:30:44 In other words, if you decide to use something besides biological sex at birth, you have to provide a space for the students who are not okay with that. Katie’s summary of that statement. I believe that we have that now would be a good time to clarify with the superintendent and staff that we, this board wants to move in the direction of allowing.

4:30:57 Of lining up with this so we don’t have to send out a letter. We don’t, you know, we can just use biological sex at birth as a determiner. And just because this is, you know, so many people brought up their concerns, I just want.

4:36:29 Would like to clarify first my intention, and I think, I hope we can get the board to agree with this, that we move with all compassion and respect and kindness for our students who will be affected. Yeah, because this, you know, has been brought up several times that it’s about fear or harm, and this isn’t about fear or harm. I realize that people have said that and the rhetoric goes around and it makes me frustrated in the same way, but it is about privacy.

4:37:25 And someone suggested earlier that students, our transgender students, want access just like everybody else, but everyone else. But the truth is they’re not getting access just like everyone else. It’s a different access.

4:37:44 It is not only causing problems for them, it also causes problems for other students who feel like having to change clothes in a locker room in front of students who are of the opposite. Biological sex is a problem. It also creates problems for our coaches and I have and PE teachers who are having to supervise those locker rooms.

4:38:12 And so I would suggest board that we go ahead and give that direction to the superintendent and staff to go ahead and make those changes. I know that our particular LGBTQ guidelines have been taken down. We were waiting for some clarification from the 11th circuit case, which is still, I just checked a few minutes ago, still hasn’t been released or from the state Doe and, excuse me, the state board of education.

4:39:08 And I think it’s time for this board to go ahead and make that decision. And again, you know, I just, you know, when I had this conversation with Doctor Mullins ahead of time, I said, you know, there’s not the expectation that on Monday morning we don’t have school this week, right? We don’t expect on Monday morning we have armed guards posted at the restroom or anything ridiculous like that, but that we would work with the students. I believe we have a small number of students that this would affect, that we would allow the schools to work with the students to provide like we did when I first got on the board, as many places, single user restrooms to protect their privacy and to make this something that is workable for all students.

4:39:26 And so I hope that you would go along with me to provide that direction. So there’s a motion on the floor. I think it’s pretty clear what asking for.

4:39:47 And now I’m going to ask each one of the board members to give discussion. Miss Jenkins, I would like to give you the first opportunity to speak so you have the floor, Miss Jenkins. Absolutely.

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4:40:36 That is 72 people who lost their lives to trans violence in the United States of America this year alone. And imagine if they lived in a community more affirming, more accepting, more loving, if they’d still be here today. You know, I saw someone made a statement, and, man, it’s resounding, the politicians who use fear and hate against a community of people, not because that community of people have done anything to you, but because it benefits you politically or selfishly.

4:41:22 Don’t be surprised when things like Colorado Springs happen. Don’t you dare be surprised. And right here in Brevard, we had our own students attacking our LGBTQ youth.

4:41:43 We had them removing pride flags from classrooms and burning them on social media for attention. We had them sending death threats to their peers, defacing the walls of our hallways, telling them they’re going to hell. This isn’t about bathrooms.

4:41:51 This isn’t just about bathrooms. It was never about bathrooms back in the fifties, just like it wasn’t about the water fountains. And what disturbs me the most is we have a group of students who were falsely accused of causing harm on their peers, not only at one school where not even an accusation actually took place and putting those students at risk, but then we had board members pushing out an unfounded, a law enforcement concluded unfounded accusation in a different school.

4:42:04 And I will tell you this. I spoke to the administration at that school. And do you know how many phone calls they got about the concern from the parents in the community when that was put out? Zero.

4:42:13 Because it’s a non issue. Because they trust their law enforcement and the decision that they made. And do you know what the students in that school said? They were pissed off because they don’t treat their peers that way.

4:42:21 And they don’t believe that their peers treat each other that way. You know, you put on a show to have an invocation at the beginning of this meeting, and I wrote down exactly what they said. So as we cloak ourselves in this fake, sheer cloak of religion, I’m going to put it all over myself right now.

4:42:31 We’re here to empower, to strengthen and protect our students, all of our students. Student. And we are here to do good and not evil as we serve the children of Brevard county.

4:42:52 The amount of time we have spent discussing what comes out of a child’s bowels and where they put it is embarrassing. I ask this board and this community to think about the student because my husband’s an educator and he doesn’t have any students complaining to him about it. Think about the students.

4:43:06 Think about the messages you are sending. Okay? Mister Tran, do you have any discussion on the. On the item? Well, there’s one thing that we can all agree in, that mental illness is alive and well.

4:43:10 And I pray we can all do something about it here on this board. Other than that, I agree with Miss Campbell. Good.

4:43:13 Okay, Miss Wright. Okay. This situation, this scenario is something that is very, very tender to a lot of people. And I understand that. I think what we are going to see is that we are going to move towards, as a country, privacy. Because let’s face it, the locker rooms are horrible. They’ve been horrible forever. So the. The state law says that we have to follow it as well. So in this case, I’m going to stand with you, Katie. I agree that we need to comply. I don’t think we should stay in a state of uncompliance right now and have that bring down whatever that is. So I would like to see this district be prepared and move towards privacy for all instead of an open locker room policy that’s going to potentially harm someone. Okay, thank you very much, and I’ll support Miss Campbell’s motion. Doctor Mullins, do you have enough guidance for Miss Campbell’s conversation? I think it was pretty clear and cut down. I just want to confirm that the board’s direction is to change our LGBTQ guidelines for specifically locker rooms and restrooms to restrict to biological sex only. Can you confirm that? Yep. That’s it. Good. We will move in that direction immediately. Thank you. Join the mooding. Let’s go. We’re done. Yeah. So, Mister Trent.