2023-12-12 - School Board Meeting

0:29 Good evening. The December 12, 2023 board meeting is now in order. I would like to welcome my fellow board members and the public. Let me just say, it is so encouraging to see so many people that are playing an active role in their local governments.

0:42 I’m going to politely ask the public to help our board meetings go more smoothly by following a few simple housekeeping rules. The public’s opportunity to address the board is during the public comment portion of the meeting. I will ask that the public refrain from speaking loud.

0:55 Disruptions, distractions, or other forms of communication that hinder the business of the board. Paul, roll call, please. Miss Wright.

1:02 Here. Mister Trent. Here.

1:04 Mister Susan. Here. Miss Jenkins.

1:06 Here. Miss Campbell. Here.

1:09 At this time, the board would like to hold a moment of silence. I invite the audience to participate. Thank you.

1:31 Please rise. I think we are going to have a student. Mister Walker Schmidt, are you here? All right, you’re there.

1:37 I can’t see you. Sorry. You’re going to help us lead the pledge of allegiance.

1:45 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all. Awesome. Thank you so much for helping Walker.

2:04 We appreciate you. So tonight, I’m gathering you’re noticing that we have some, some extra people in the audience. We have meadow Lane, intermediate chorus, who is going to perform for us.

2:16 If you guys don’t mind, we’re going to go ahead. Whenever you’re ready. Let’s hear it.

2:52 What do you know? It’s time for the show. Here we go. It’s time to raise the waves so we can be late how do they break? Oh, you know that’s what I try let me shine, shine, shine, shine, shine all the time right, let’s get it right shine all just rest alive every time of year we’re stressed just dress, I tell you we’re stressed stress can’t get any rest even though we’re trying our best we’re stressed, stress, stress all the days are supposed to be done spreading joy to everyone just rest maybe we should skip it this year do without this holiday this one thing perfectly clear we’re stressed just stress, stress I tell you we’re stress, stress can’t get any rest even though we’re trying our best Santa Claus behind can’t you see where they’re taking anymore? We would like to invite you to join with us for this next song.

6:34 All right? So students are going to bring you a star one. Can we? Thank you. Thank you.

6:50 Do you want us to come down there or do you want us up here? Okay. Do you want us to come? No, you don’t want to go down there, Miss Jacob. Come on.

7:08 Come on. It’s way more fun. Come on.

7:11 Come on. Are you out there? Are you shining somewhere in the sky for me? I know you are out there I’m looking for a star to shine looking for a star to go on one star you love me for the dark one star that I can wish upon. Okay.

11:41 That’s going to go down in the record books as a unique moment for the Brevard county school board. All right, so I believe there’s. Is there Miss Gwendolyn and Annabelle? Are you the spokespeople? You are? Okay.

11:54 Do you want to go over to the microphone so we can ask you a couple questions? All right. Miss Jenkins, would you like to start us off? Yes. First and foremost, you guys are so brave because I have to tell you, that was absolute torture for me to stand up there and do that.

12:16 And I’m a grown adult, so I’m really proud of you that you are brave enough to stand up there and do it. Also, I clearly don’t know how to follow directions, so I need to work on that. And thank you for congratulating us for completing the task afterwards.

12:30 Thank you so much. You guys are so cute. My question would be what is your favorite singer? That’s a hard question.

12:44 Oh, I don’t really have a favorite singer. They’re all really good, so. All right, all right, all right.

12:51 I can’t choose. She’s the one who told us we did a really good job. Yes, she did.

12:57 Mine would probably be Olivia Rodrigo. Nicely done. You’re getting a round of applause from your classmates on that one.

13:06 Miss Campbell, you have some questions? All right. Oh, you know what? I have a question for your director. So I have to tell you guys board.

13:17 Miss Eldeen Hagens has been at Meadowlane at least as long as I’ve been in Brevard. Were you there since it opened? 20 years since Meadowlane intermediate opened. And I have to tell you, she’s not just a round of.

13:29 Okay. She’s not just a leader in Brevard. She’s absolutely leader in Brevard.

13:36 Among the music teachers in Brevard. She’s a leader in the state and involves her kids and the state choirs and ORF and has led presentations. She is a fantastic benefit to our district.

13:46 But that was my question was how long you’ve been there? Because I knew it’s longer than I’ve lived here because Meadowlane opened right before we moved here. So great job. So my question to you girls is, how much do y’all love Miss Hagens? Very much.

13:59 A lot. Like seriously, a lot. Awesome.

14:05 Who’s next? I’ll probably say the same. All right, good. Really nice teacher.

14:15 Mister Susan, do you have some questions for the young ladies? No, I just wanted to say how much it meant to have the families here. When the children were singing. You guys all had to do cameras up, right? Oh, I’m so sorry.

14:35 I want to say thank you to the families for being here when the children are singing and the students are singing. How do you guys have those smiles? And that’s what we’re here for, is to represent you. And the gentleman in the back with the cowboys outfit on had a huge smile that I couldn’t miss.

14:50 Right there in there. And then this guy over here, you were actually doing head bombs while they were doing. So I really appreciate and the enthusiasm that you and your families have brought today coming here.

14:57 I really appreciate that. And for you guys, what can we do? I always ask this question. What can we do to do better as a school board for you? What would you like us to do at your school? You got the open floor.

15:19 You want to tell me, don’t you? There’s one mom over here saying that we need more money for music. Is that what mom’s saying? Think about it and then have your teacher send me an email. I’m sure that list will be very mister Trent.

15:45 It’s great seeing the smiles. Not only from the children, books of the crowd, parents in the audience. This is a great time of year where we get to hear you guys perform.

15:56 When seeing some of the choir performances around the county or in my district, it’s the same atmosphere, so it’s very festive. I do have a question. Whose idea was it to involve the school board in your song? Her.

16:16 Thank you. It was her. All her.

16:23 I want to comment on the diversity. You know, that young and old. I don’t know the age.

16:29 Good question. 4th, fifth and 6th grade. So very, very good.

16:34 How many fourth graders? Wow. All right, all right. 6th graders, way to lead.

16:45 Way to lead. Good job. 6th graders.

16:47 Didn’t want to go. Good job. Well, thank you guys so much.

16:54 That was so much fun. Honestly, we don’t ever get invited to come down there and participate with you. And that was a little nerve wracking.

16:59 I don’t think Miss Jenkins loved it the most, but it was fun. It was a great icebreaker. Yeah.

17:06 Wanted to ask you what is your, what is your favorite holiday tradition? Do you have any holiday traditions that your family does? Putting cookies, milk and carrots out for Santa. All right. That’s a great one.

17:22 That’s a great holiday tradition. I really like to decorate the trees. It’s really fun.

17:32 Aw, those are just decorating. Those are great. Well, thank you so, so much, doctor Rendell, did you have any questions? I didn’t ask you if you had any questions for them.

17:41 I just want to thank them for inviting us down there because it made Mister Susan today. Yes. Thank you so much.

17:58 The entire chorus department. We’re going to take a short break real fast so that we can come take a picture with you guys, if that’s okay. So we’ll have about a five minute recess and then we’ll come back.

25:37 Two. Thank you. I was real eager with that gavel and did it before you calmed me down.

25:42 Thank you. All right, so at this time we are going to go into the board recognition. So I would like to offer my fellow board members and doctor Rendell an opportunity to recognize students, staff, or other members of the community.

25:54 Would anybody like to go first? All right. I just want to recognize junior achievement and all of our school students and staff that participated in their first ever, which will be annual stock market challenge which was hosted at the Crown Plaza in Indian Atlantic. It was quite an experience.

26:15 Miss Campbell was there with me, left very stressed out. Realized I definitely never wanted to actually end up on Wall street like I thought I did when I was in high school. The kids were incredible.

26:28 Like, absolutely incredible. They had a great time. They were troopers.

26:31 Since this was the first one, there were some hiccups in the beginning, but it made me really excited to see what it’s going to look like next year because that’s what ja always does. You know, they take on this big challenge, they kind of work through all of the kinks and the next year it’s bigger and better than ever. I think we had, I think there was 300 students, something like that, or was it 100 students? And then at night all of the sponsors for that event came in and it was a really, really unique fundraiser for JA Good.

26:59 And the adults got to be participate in that stock market challenge. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be there at night, but I’ll check it out next year. And then last but not least, I just wanted to say I had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours at the strategic plan update the other day.

27:15 And I just want to say, shout out to our staff this was just another prime example of our staff members who go above and beyond of their jobs. Always our mission focused and then, on top of doing their daily jobs, have to come here with presentations, hard, concrete data, and strategic plan goals for the future going forward. So thank you for all that you do.

27:36 It is absolutely acknowledged, and I appreciate you so very much. Thanks. Thank you, Miss Jenkins, Miss Campbell.

27:45 So, by the way, the winning team for the stock market challenge came from heritage High school. Go big blue. The day after our last meeting, we celebrated our employee of the year.

27:58 All of our employees of the year. Our finalists were recognized, and the winner was chosen. So I just want to give one more congratulations to Terry Bagby, who is the brevard before and after school coordinator at Quest.

28:09 And just recognize her again. She will be representing us at the state level for employee of the year. So congratulations to all of our employees of the year year, but especially to miss Bagby as our brevard employee of the year.

28:21 We received notice. I don’t know if you guys got the same email from an organization called incubate debates and two of our students from West Shore. Did I steal one of yours, doctor? Nope, you’re good.

28:33 Okay, good, good. Because we always. We get to the end, and doctor Rendell doesn’t have any left.

28:37 So we had two students from West Shore who placed in that. Maggie Chen, 9th grader, placed fourth in the final round. And may you or Yao, I’m not sure.

28:47 It was one of the tribunal champions. That’s a 7th grader. So great job, ladies, in that incubate debate, which was a kind of a statewide event with districts coming from teams coming from all over the state.

28:59 The final thing I wanted to share was that I had one of our counselors, our school counselors, reach out to me last week, board about the drug diversion program. And she said, you know, when you guys were having that conversation last summer, I was really down on it, and I thought, ugh, don’t do that. She said, but I have to tell you what a transforming effect it’s having on so many students at my school.

29:20 And she said she’s writing the stipulation plan so that those students who enter the drug diversion program, they have to come and check in with her and share the things they’re learning from, you know, those sessions they’re required to attend. And she said, it’s just bringing about life change in so many students. And she thanked me for it and just, I wanted to share that with you because we a lot of times hear the negative about things.

29:42 I just wanted to share that. That’s been really impactful. That was just one school.

29:47 So I encourage you to reach out to your schools and to see if it’s having the same effect. You know, we. It’s not going to be the same for every student, but if we can get a few students really back on the right track when it comes to making those good choices, it’s worth it.

30:01 And so I just wanted to share that with you, that’s all. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Campbell, mister Susan, thank you so much.

30:08 I want to make sure all these are on so no one’s talking. First off, I want to say, how about those cocoa high tigers for winning their state title? So. Oh, I’m so sorry.

30:18 I won’t say another word. I won’t say another word. I won’t say another word.

30:22 I’ll be quiet. I had a whole lot on that, but I’ll let you go then. I also want to say, many people don’t know that we have a special individual that took over as the head of athletics for our entire district.

30:34 His name is Kevin Robinson, and he’s been doing some amazing things as far as upgrading many of the facilities, but in particular, we’ve been working on bringing athletics into the elementary school. So I wanted to take a second in the hard work that he’s going to be doing to bring some of those programs inside of the schools. Because we know that as the kids are competing in those sports, it gives them another outlet that they may not have, whereas they didn’t have it before.

30:59 The other thing I wanted to say is, I met with Bob scoringe today. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to you about it yet. Bob owns the mainstream engineering and his wife is Debbie Mayfield.

31:08 Senator Mayfield. And what Bob and I did was about eight years ago, before I was ever on the school board, we drove. A lot of the conversation wrapped around career and technical trades and stuff like that, which created the aircraft hangar at Ogalle, which created a lot of the different components that we have.

31:24 And right now, your school district is leading the state of Florida in career and technical education, and we are ready to drive for the workforce for tomorrow. And Bob’s going to become a huge component of that. And I wanted to say thank you to him for meeting today and talking about those things.

31:38 The other thing is, is tomorrow night I’ll be with Don Weaver and Mister Dwyer from the veterans groups. We’re meeting with all of the generals and command posts from all of the surrounding Patrick Air Force Base. 45th space Wing and others.

31:51 And we’re discussing on all of the great things this school district did many people don’t know. Tonight on the agenda we have a veteran’s preference for our procurement. We actually have a situation where we have that they’re going to be advertising for veterans to retire here and to come to work for BPS.

32:07 It’s a huge opportunity to fill some of our workforce needs, but it’s also an opportunity for us to lead the nation, nation in supporting our veterans in what they do and supporting them when they come home. A lot of other components to it that you guys will read about. But I wanted to say thank you to those two individuals for what we’re about to do.

32:22 I want to say thank you to Misses Wright for inviting us to come do some special messages. Many people know that the new middle school is going up and we had an opportunity to put on the walls before they got walled up. Some special messages that will always be a part of that school.

32:36 And it was a really, really cool idea. And I wanted to say, say thank you for inviting us to do that. And then I just wanted to say there’s a lot of stuff many people miss when we get and have conversations wrapped around some of the items, but we missed the others.

32:50 Sales surtax if you look on the agenda tonight, actually take a second. The amount of revenue and upgrades that are happening inside your school district based on what’s happening because of the sale csrs tax and the great things that are going. And Miss Suhan and our representatives from the sales tax review committee are here today to give a presentation.

33:10 But the other thing to look at is all of the agenda items that we’re approving so that you can have those great facilities so our kids can learn. The other thing I wanted to do is talk about the board policies that we have. You’re going to see tonight 20 board policies basically that we upgraded.

33:25 We went through every single board policy over the last six months to make sure that they were up to date date and they weren’t out of compliance. And we found many that were and we’re working towards that goal. So big hats off to this school board for the amount of work that you guys have done and that we’re doing.

33:41 And I wanted to say thank you to the sales tax team and everybody else. So that’s it. Thank you, Mister Susan.

33:47 Mister Trent. All right. So as Mister Susan started.

33:53 Yeah. Congratulations to the Coco Tigers back to back state champions football this past weekend. I don’t want to take up too much time on that because I’m sure we’re going to give them the time that they deserve here at a meeting so they can be present.

34:08 But I wanted to make sure I did not go a meeting without mentioning that. Also, I’ve had. Mister Trent, did you know that Brevard has won more state titles in football than any other school district all the way through central Florida region, more than Orlando, more than Hillsboro, and most of it’s because of the Cocoa Tigers.

34:10 I did not know that. That’s amazing. I don’t know.

34:29 Just so you guys know, we are championship football county across the county. So anyways, just wanted to. Actually, I did know that you said that last year, but.

34:41 But I also had the both the pleasure and the honor to visit some schools and listen to their choirs, their concerts for the holiday season. And again, just the amazing talent and being able to walk around the schools and see this time of year, you know, doors being decorated and rooms being decorated at the same time. Teachers, I know the pressure that you’re feeling to try to get everything in before break, but you’re doing a great job of juggling or hiding it because I didn’t see it written all over your faces, like how you’re going to get through this semester.

35:16 But we’re getting close and you deserve the time off real soon. Enjoy that. Spend time with your family and we’ll see you after the first of the year on that.

35:28 Let’s see, what else. Other than that, we got a lot to be happy about. We heard some informational grades on our schools in our workshop, so Brevard’s in a wonderful shape and the future’s looking bright.

35:44 Thank you, Mister Trent. All right, I’m going to wrap up a couple of mine, but a couple of them might end up on yours, Doctor Rendell. So I’m going to do my best to not take all of it, in case you have something you want to add.

35:54 So obviously, this past weekend, we’re in parade season. Every weekend there is a parade somewhere, sometimes multiple parades. So I’m going to give a shout out to Titusville’s parade.

36:02 That parade. I swear, the entire town and maybe even surrounding towns, comes and lines the street of us. One, it’s like a three hour long parade.

36:11 It’s at night with lights. Great, great fun. All the schools represented very well.

36:15 So shout out to Titusville for putting on a phenomenal community event where everybody comes and participates, that it really makes you feel like you are part of a community. Also want to give a shout out to our pie coordinators out there. Got the opportunity to go to the children’s hunger project and listen to some of the schools on what they need, some of the things that they’re doing.

36:34 Just really, really awesome individuals that are going out and advocating connecting our schools to the businesses that are local and around our town. So grateful for them. Thank you for all the hard work that you’re doing there.

36:45 I’m going to shout out three different schools and I’m going to do my best to be very fast. I’m going to say thank you to Viera Charter School. I had the opportunity to go tour their charter school, spent several hours there.

36:56 Absolutely inspiring what they’re doing there. So I’m very grateful for them. All the wonderful things that they’re doing.

37:01 It reflects in every, every aspect, every corner. They’re doing a door decorating contest, which is probably one of the most impressive things to see because every single door in the entire school is decorated. So very fun.

37:11 Also, want to give a shout out to Oak park. And specifically, I want to give a shout out to the custodial staff at Oak park. So, you know, when you go to a school site and you look at a school, you can see the sense of the pride and ownership and the custodial staff there go.

37:27 Goes above and beyond. They went so far as to paint the entire interior of the school. Hopefully miss hand’s going, oh, my gosh.

37:33 Over the summer, this was not when kids were around, but they did it in a way to identify the corners of the, of the school, select the quadrant so they’re different colors and it’s bright and it’s uplifting. And it takes a building that, that’s kind of old and brick and not maybe the most attractive for students, but it makes it so fresh and exciting for the kids. So shout out to the custodial staff there for doing an amazing job, for really showing progress in their school.

37:55 We also got the opportunity when we were there to visit a very fun class. Doctor Rendell, I’ll let you have that one if you want to. Oh, no, go right ahead.

38:02 Okay, so we got to visit a science class while we were there. And correct me if I’m wrong, is that Mister Rodriguez? Is that right? Sounds correct. Okay.

38:09 All right. And if I mess that name up, I apologize tremendously. But we got to visit a science class when we were there and they were working on explaining and teaching the digestive tract.

38:19 Sounds a little like, oh, my gosh, you know, most of the time you would walk into a class and you really wouldn’t see that be done in a way that was so tangible. But they had created this entire project with kids had glasses on and aprons, and they were working with pantyhose and showing things that were going through the digestive trial. It was just absolutely inspired.

38:37 I mean, it was. I know you’re going, oh, my gosh. But so misses Campbell, that’s the right reaction.

38:43 So we actually saw food being changed in. It’s like it would be in their stomach. So not fully understand how the digestive tract works after they go through that experiment.

38:58 So shout out to making that so tangible in my memory forever. Mine, too. Mine too.

39:04 Absolutely so. And then also want to thank the team up at Madison. I know this is.

39:09 What are you talking about, Miss Wright? Sorry. I want to thank the team up at Madison. Had the opportunity to tour that school as well.

39:14 And, you know, I had a teacher come up to me that has been an educator in Brevard county for 17 years, started his career at Madison and left, went to a couple other schools, came back to Madison and he said, this is the best year of teaching of my entire life. And I said, oh, my gosh, that’s so great to hear. Tell me why.

39:32 And he said, the principle. So site leadership just truly, truly makes a difference. So shout out to you, Travis Diesel.

39:38 You’re doing amazing things at Madison. You’re changing the culture up there. We appreciate you.

39:42 And that is all I have. Doctor Rendell. All right, so I have a couple groups that haven’t been highlighted yet, so I want to make sure we talk about them.

39:49 First is our schools engage in an academic team tournament throughout the fall, and they just wrapped up their academic team tournament season. So this is like Quiz bowl, and it’s all the kids who are really gifted academically. And we have teams from different high schools that compete.

40:06 They finish the tournament and they compete each week and they get points. And so the overall winner for the whole season was Edgewood junior senior high. Second place was West Shore, and in third place was holy trinity.

40:17 Yes, we let the private schools compete with us as well. But from that district competition, that intra district competition, we create a district academic team that is going to go compete at state. And we’ve won state before.

40:28 So I just want to highlight some of the kids that made the state. So they are Philip Baptiste from West Shore, Joel Freeland from Merritt Island, Andrew Matsukis from Edgewood, Vincent Stone from West Shore and Omkar Subramiem from Edgewood. And then there’s two alternates.

40:46 Also both from Edgewood, Whisper Reynolds and William Struble. So misses Campbell and I were both at one of the competitions, and I felt really good that I got one answer right in the whole night. And it was only because it was a social studies question and I was a history major and happened to.

41:05 But man, those kids are impressive. And good luck to. Congratulations on the great season and good luck at the state tournament.

41:11 And they actually prepare quite a bit as they go forward for this. So good luck at state. Speaking of state, Cocoa high school varsity football is not our only state champions.

41:21 Two weeks ago, we had the NJROTC or the JROTC Raider championships. The raider competition is a bunch of different events that the students, the cadets in ROTC compete in as teams. So like an obstacle course and stuff like that.

41:37 And we’re pretty gifted. Here in Brevard, we have some really good ROTC programs that put together really strong teams. So at that state tournament, state championship tournament, we had four high school, four teams qualify and go and compete.

41:52 Cocoa beach had two teams, a male team, a female team. Viera had a female team, and Merritt island had a mixed team. So there’s boys and girls on the team.

42:01 They all competed very well, all bringing home different kinds of trophies and everything. But the big news is the Cocoa beach male team and the Cocoa beach female team are state champions. So they had the highest point total and won the most events.

42:14 So it’s the first time there’s ever been one school have both the male champions and the female champions. So shout out to Cocoa beach and those students for that. It’s actually the third time in a row the Cocoa beach female team has won the state championships or the three time defending state champs.

42:28 So not just in football. We also have some state champions in some other events. So congratulations to them.

42:38 All right, that brings us to the adoption of the agenda. Doctor Rendell. So on this evening’s agenda, we have two administrative staff recommendations, 30 consent items, 17 public hearing items, four action items, and three information items.

42:52 Changes that have been made to the agenda since released to the public include the following addition to the following items. F 19, salary enhancements for non bargaining personnel. F 20, job descriptions, mechanical technician assistant shop foreman, food nutrition services cafeteria assistant, one, two, and three, and food nutrition Services School for School Food Service Intern revised items d nine sales Surtax Independent Citizens Oversight Committee Annual report presentation f 15 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, June 30, 2023.

43:26 F 18. To approve the agreement between the Brevard Public schools and the local International Union of Painters and Allied Trades local 1010 for this school year. F 29, sales surge, tax.

43:37 Independent Citizens Oversight Committee. I 65. Social studies.

43:41 Textbook adoption. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve second. All right.

43:50 Miss Jenkins? Aye. Aye. Miss Wright? Aye.

43:58 Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye. All right.

44:02 We are now. I know. Sorry.

44:05 Just for clarification purposes, we’re gonna. We’re gonna do roll call votes individually, instead of as a group. That way it’s easy for everyone to understand who’s voting on what and how they voted.

44:13 Just to make things a little more clear for the public, we are now at the administrative staff recommendations. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Paul, roll call, please.

44:26 Mister Susan. Here. Mister Trent? No, not here.

44:35 Are you gonna go random. Miss Jenkins? Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trump? Mister Susan.

44:46 Yes. All right. Thank you, madam chair.

44:50 I’d like to recognize some individuals who are in attendance this evening. So it’s always a great day when someone gets to start another stage in their career. So the first one is a reclassification transfer of Arlene Velasquez from the position of teacher at Viera High School to the position of assistant principal at Saturn Elementary School.

45:09 Congratulations, Arlene. Come to the podium. Hello.

45:20 I would like to. To thank my family and my friends for their support and their guidance. And I would like to thank Superintendent Brendell, our chief of schools Ramer, and also the board.

45:25 And I would like to thank my Viera high school family for always being there and giving my guidance for the past 16 years of working there. And as well as welcoming Saturn elementary, to welcome me in as a leader there and giving me the opportunity to make a difference for our county and for their kids. Congratulations.

45:56 Congratulations. So next would be the transfer of Courtney Lundy from the position of principal at Stone Magnet Middle School to the position of principal at satellite high school. Congratulations, Courtney.

46:11 Come on up. Good evening. First, thank you to the board, doctor Rendell and Mister Reimer, for this opportunity to stone and the stone community for your support and the incredible journey that we’ve been on the past few years.

46:32 Got to give thanks to my go to principal mentors, Mister Pruitt, who’s here, Mister Kaminsky and Mister Alba. They give the best advice. Super supportive.

46:43 And they always answer my phone calls. So appreciative for that. Yeah, I got it.

46:49 And to my family, my husband, who’s here, Brian, who also graduated from satellite high school. My kids, Carson and Brayden. They actually did not have practice tonight.

47:00 So they got to come to my family who are not here. Our parents, our village. We have a huge village, and they’re just the best.

47:08 So thank you to them them, because I couldn’t do this without their support. And just excited for the opportunity to go back to work for the amazing staff, which a lot of them are here at satellite high school, the amazing students and the amazing community, and to go back home to the school that I graduated from. So thank you.

47:34 So it’s very unique sometimes, a special opportunity to bring someone back home, so to speak. So Mister Pruitt graduated from satellite high school, and so when we were announced that we were stealing him and bringing him up here, they were like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? Well, I think we did a hit, a home run, we got another alumni that’s rooted in the community there, and Courtney’s going to do a fantastic job. So congratulations again.

47:57 Yes, congratulations. We want to take a short recess to. To take a photo.

48:01 We typically take photos whenever we have this. So we’ll take a three minute recess, five minute recess, and take a quick photo. It.

55:53 Two, one. Welcome back. We are now at the presentation portion of tonight’s meeting.

55:59 Doctor Rendell. Thank you, madam chair. Tonight we have John Hoppingarten, the ICOC, which is the independent citizens oversight committee chair, with a presentation on the sales surtax, the annual report from the ICOC.

56:12 Mister Hoppin Garden. Thank you, sir. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board of the public schools.

56:19 I’m John Hoppingarten, as he said, chairman of the ICOC. This is the 9th presentation of the annual report. Can you hear me all right? I can hear you.

56:30 Okay. I don’t want to go with any higher with this thing, because then you won’t see me. It’s good that somebody wants to me see.

56:36 Okay. This is the 9th presentation of the annual report of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee and my second. The ICOC has been in existence since February 2015, shortly after the sales surtax program was approved by the voters.

56:54 Since that time, the sales surtax program has invested over $320 million in facility renewal, educational technology, and security at our schools. Data suggests that the quality of the learning environment can influence students student performances and teacher recruitment, both of which are essential to the school district’s mission. Building systems are more reliable, technical equipment is more modern, and schools are more secure.

57:25 The 2020 sales tax program was developed based on condition assessments of major building systems, technology and security. The district staff continues to broaden the scope of assessments and use this data to refine capital program planning, including the sales surtax program. Although supply chain issues and cost escalations have been challenges this year.

57:52 These issues have been managed and sales surtax projects are continuing to improve our schools. The annual report document covers the sales surplus program through September 20, 2023. That’s September 30, not 20th.

58:11 Sorry. However, the revenues and expenditures I will report to you tonight are updated through November. The written report has much more detail and the appendices include considerable reference material regarding the sales surtax program.

58:29 These are the names of the members of the independent Citizens oversight committee who who bring considerable experience to the process. The charter requires at least seven and no more than eleven members, and they’re all well paid. This is voluntary.

58:46 We’re not paid. What do you got? Special thanks to Miss Spellman, who has served on the ICOC since its inception in 2015. Miss Evander’s term will expire in February, and the ICOC has made a recommendation to fill that vacancy.

59:07 New members and member reappointments are first considered by the ICOC and then recommended to the school board for consideration and approval. The purpose of the ICOC is to provide general oversight of the sales surtax expenditures. The ICOC meets every other month and we review a detailed package of information that includes revenues, expenditures, and project status.

59:35 The ICOC receives regular briefings on related topics such as sales surplus audits, charter school reporting, legislative changes, and construction industry trends. As the sales as the certax program has evolved, the ICOC has provided guidance to the staff and recommendations to the school board on programming and policy questions. The ICOC regularly considers projects recommended by revenues remaining from the 2014 program and changes to the 2020 program.

1:00:10 This process provides regular opportunities to adapt both programs to changing needs and costs. The ICOC members visit schools with project managers to see how SurTaCs dollars are applied to the projects. The 2020 sales Surtax program was reviewed by the ICOC in August 2020 and presented to the voters in November 2020.

1:00:40 The ICOC recommended and the school board approve the allocation of BPS surtax revenue to the three major educational technology, security, and facility renewal. This allocation was incorporated into school board policy as of November 30, 2023, the sales surtax revenue from the 2020 referendum was $172.2 million, of which $18.

1:01:31 9 million was distributed to the district’s 13 charter schools. Since the inception of the 2020 program, revenue collections exceeded estimates by $50.1 million, which has allowed the district to continue to add projects as needs emerged.

1:01:46 Even with cost escalation and increasing revenue sharing with charter school schools. Through November, the sales surtax program revenue is $442.4 million.

1:02:14 The total 2014 sales surtax program revenue was $270.2 million. The 2020 sales surtax revenue through November is $172.

1:02:31 2 million, of which 153.3 million has been allocated to the Brevard public schools and $18.9 million have been allocated to the charter schools.

1:02:53 As I stated earlier, the 2014 revenue exceeded projections by $72 million through November. The 2020 program revenue has exceeded projections by $50.1 million dollars.

1:03:50 This slide shows the comparison of revenues for each month throughout the life of the program. The months with higher revenues reflect an additional payment that is made quarterly to the district. So far this calendar year, revenues are up an average of 5% over calendar year 2022.

1:04:15 Legislation enacted in 2020 requires the revenue from the Surtax renewal program to be shared with eligible charter schools based on their proportionate share of the total school district enrollment. Legislation enacted in 2023, however, changed the allocation method from proportionate share of total enrollment to proportionate share of total district capital outlay full time equivalent enrollment, which is a number provided to each school district by the state. This legislation, affected July 1, 2023, resulted in the charter school share increasing from 11.

1:04:38 6% to 13.3%. The ICOC does not have jurisdiction over the charter school’s use of the sales tax revenue.

1:05:21 This item I am happy to report we found that monies were being invested that were not allocated over the term of the 2014 and 2020 program periods. These monies earned a considerable amount of interest over that time. The district staff began reporting on interest earnings following the fiscal year 2023.

1:05:45 That was after our inquiry. Since the inception of the sales surtax program, approximately $5.4 million had been earned on the 2014 program and $2.

1:06:24 4 million has been earned on the 2020 program. That is a total, for the math, $7.8 million, which we can add to surtax revenue.

1:06:40 A nice bonus in October 2023, the ICOC recommended allocation of these funds to projects, including investment in Madison Middle School, roof program, electrical and fire alarm renewal projects, which are on the school board agenda this evening, sales surtax encumbrances and expenditures totaled $342 million through November. The financial reports cover both the 2014 sales Surtax program and the 2020 sales tax program. The 2014 program will continue until all funds are invested and projects completed.

1:06:58 The funds from each program are tracked separately. The district also keeps track of capital funds that are used to supplement or support Surtax projects. Since 2015, the district has invested $38.

1:07:33 8 million in capital, primarily in facility renewal and security. That’s about 11.3%.

1:07:45 This slide shows the breakdown of expenditures and encumbrances by type. This breakdown has remained consistent throughout the life of the program. The district has continued to use owner direct purchase program to save about $3.

1:07:52 5 million in sales taxes on equipment purchased for our projects. This slide shows the type of projects implemented or underway and includes both the 2014 program and the 2020 program. Investment in air conditioning was a significant aspect of the 2014 program.

1:08:09 The 2020 program focuses on electrical and roof renewal. Several classroom renewal and athletic facility renewal projects are also completed or are underway. Security projects are also either completed or underway at each school.

1:08:21 Educational technology projects have included district wide fiber as well as the modern classroom initiative. Major facility renewal initiatives completed or underway included. I’m going to do it.

1:08:27 34 intercom renewal projects 19 electrical renewal projects 13 new playgrounds twelve classroom flooring projects eleven roof renewal projects nine Jim Bleacher renewal projects eight painting projects six track renewal projects with rubberization three stadium bleacher renewal projects three fire alarm renewal projects three major classroom casework projects, two additional science lab upgrades and a partridge and a pear tree. Thank you. That’s what I was thinking.

1:08:43 Told you I was going to do that. District wide. We’re doing led lighting projects and also drinking water fountain upgrade projects.

1:09:03 Okay, the photograph on the left slide is the. No, you’re. Is that right? You’re right.

1:09:17 Okay. Thank you. On this slide is the new playground at Pinewood elementary with a new type of rubberized fall protection surface that the district is funding through capital to increase safety and decrease long term maintenance.

1:09:40 I’ll show you some examples of this year’s surtax projects on the next few slides. Okay, these are before and afters. This is Palm Bay elementary.

1:10:00 That’s a classroom renewal. Not so fast. This is really interesting.

1:10:21 This is the electrical closets to highlight. Moving on, you can go to the next one. These are before and after of the roof renewal project at South Lake Elementary School.

1:10:46 This is a photo of a stadium bleacher and track renewal projects at Space Coast Junior Senior High. The home site bleachers were taken out of service based on a structural condition report. The sales surtax made it possible to replace the stadium bleachers concurrently with the planned track renewal project.

1:11:06 This is an example of the modern classroom. This is a flooring renewal project at Fair Glen Elementary School. Big difference.

1:11:12 The district is using sales, CErT, tax and other revenue sources to remedy these types of conditions that are common in many of our schools. Audits the district internal auditors RSM perform semiannual audits of the program. The 16th audit was recently completed with no findings.

1:11:19 All audits have been positive and are available to the public for review. The district construction auditors, cars riggs and Ingram audit each project over $1 million and small projects on a spot check basis. Their purpose is to ensure compliance with the contract and validate the final pay requests.

1:11:35 Most sales surtax projects are subject to construction audits. The district is implementing the sales Surtax program in accordance with the ballot language and district policies and procedures. The program funds critical facility renewal, educational technology upgrades and school security enhancements.

1:11:39 The sales Surtax program includes the teams in procurement and funding finance. They provide exceptional assistance in the staff to the staff in facilities, educational technology and security in order to implement projects in our schools. Government and community relations also supports the program by spotlighting projects funded through the sales surtax.

1:11:59 The oversight role of the ICOC includes reviewing revenue and expenditures, audits, policies and procedures, and program changes proposed by district staff. The ICOC members provide a range of perspectives to help guide the sales surtax investment program. We are happy to serve.

1:12:14 This concludes my presentation. I will take any questions that you may have. Thank you so much.

1:12:35 John board. Do you have any questions? I don’t have any questions. I just want to.

1:12:47 I want to thank you and reiterate, I appreciate all of the work that all the members do for a free, voluntary job. And I appreciate your comedic relief in some of the not so exciting things like roof replacements and electrical. Sorry.

1:13:13 Sorry, sue. It’s super accelerating. No, but I appreciate you.

1:13:29 This is really, really important, not only just in general to be fiscally responsible, but in order for us to, to even go back to the voters and ask them for their support, to renew that again. We need people like you to be there and ensure to the community that we’re trustworthy and that we’re being responsible with their money. So thank you so much.

1:13:51 Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah. I did want to say you had mentioned Miss Spelman earlier, and when I was on the original selected ICO when it first was incepted, and she was a part of it.

1:14:07 So you’ve had some good people working with you. You guys are an amazing group of people, and you have a huge responsibility and those audit checks and everything else, great job. I mean, I feel very confident, and I was talking earlier about all of those construction projects, and our public should take the opportunity to go and take a look at some of those every once in a while because they are amazing at what we’re doing across the district.

1:14:19 So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mister Trent. I’ll just say, and we’ve talked about it before, but you know, the, since the public is getting a chance to see some of the snapshots of work that’s being done.

1:14:33 And I thank this ICOC for taking the opportunities to go out and see some of the projects for yourself. You know, it’s this, with this round of the salesforce, we were able to really tackle some of the indoor things, those cabinets that, you know, we talk about the generations of people who now that people are going back to be the principals of schools that they went to and some of those cabinets were there when they were there. And so now we’re finally able to not say that anymore.

1:14:36 You can’t go into your mom’s old science classroom and see her name carved into the cabinets because those are gone. So we’re able to celebrate all those. So I’m so excited that this round we’re really able to get in and tackle some of those aging building inside of the building problems.

1:14:43 And so thank you to you. Thank you to sue, to Russell Cheatham and his crew, to district security and their crew under the leadership of Mister Wilson and all of our staff who, because this really is a joint project that is district wide, our school leadership too, to cooperate with all that. So we’re just thankful to everybody for their efforts in this.

1:14:52 Yeah, I’d like to echo the same with our aging schools. I mean, we’re talking 60 years plus on these schools. And to see those pictures mainly from sue coming over on the email saying the before and after.

1:15:03 Just because we don’t respond to those emails doesn’t mean we don’t get the satisfaction coming from. That is very important. And John, thank you for your leadership on that committee.

1:15:09 I know it’s a whole group, but to have somebody of, with your expertise and your background there and your patience and I put in to double your salary for next year. Thank you. I appreciate that.

1:15:15 We’ll see how that goes. Spend it all in one place. Okay, great.

1:15:25 Again, thank you. And the community should realize how important job you guys are doing on that committee. Thank you.

1:16:04 So I want to thank you as well. It is fun to move into this next phase of the renovations that we’re going to do because although you can’t see AC, you know, when it’s not there. Right.

1:16:34 And so that’s a big deal. Or the roof, I mean, that’s not a really fun renovation. But some of the stuff that we’ll be able to do now will be more tangible or in their eye, where they’re able to really, really see it.

1:16:37 So I am excited for the next phase. Thank you for all the hard work that you do on that committee. We appreciate you guys, sue and your team.

1:16:49 You guys are wonderful. Thank you. I cringed a little bit at those before pictures, but the after pictures picture is, hey, we’re getting there.

1:16:54 So thank you so much. We appreciate you. Doctor Rendell, do you want to say anything? I’ll just echo a sentiment misses Jenkins.

1:17:00 Kind of brought up is the fact that by having a citizens oversight committee, we can report back to the voters that the citizens of our community, that someone is watching to make sure that we’re spending the money on the things we said we were going to spend it on, that we’re being good stewards of the taxpayers money. Every time you go out and ask the community to pay more of their own money for something, you want to be able to go back and show them that you did spend it on what you said you were going to spend it on, and that it was needed. So the before and after pictures are part of it, but also having volunteers to sit on a committee that check, you know, kind of check the receipts, so to speak, to make sure that we’re doing what we said we were going to do, so instills a lot of voter confidence if we were to go and ask for renewal later.

1:17:07 So, thank you. I actually have a request. I know GCR is really, really good about putting out there what we’re doing and the renovations and just trying to get it into the public’s eye, but because we’re coming up on the new year, maybe one of those year in review celebrations of all of the upgrades that we did with this sales surtax, I think it’s really important just to constantly keep it out there so people know that their taxpayer money is going directly back to their schools that they voted to support.

1:17:24 Sounds good. Sorry. Okay.

1:17:43 Sounds good. All right, we’re. Thank you, dawn.

1:17:54 All right. All right. We are now at the public comment portion of tonight’s meeting.

1:18:12 And Mister Gibbs, how many public comment cards do we have? 41. 41 cards. Okay.

1:18:29 Sweet. I’m really excited tonight. We’re gonna do things a little bit different tonight because of a few different reasons.

1:18:39 So I’m gonna kind of explain this process a bit to everyone so that they’re aware. One of the takeaways I got from FSBA and talking to school board chairs around the state of Florida was that they. A lot of them, not all of them have their parliamentarian, which is the board attorney, call up public speakers and.

1:18:48 And manage the clock. I still retain the ability to turn a speaker off, but in an effort to remain unbiased to anybody speaking time. That is a process that we’re going to try and see how it works with the amount of speakers that we have and an agenda that is heavy, heavy, heavy.

1:18:54 I would like to put forward the motion that we separate the comments tonight for agenda versus motion non agenda. 2nd second the motion. Okay.

1:18:57 And any discussions about this, do we have. How is he going to go through delineation you’ve already been able to separate? I got numbers, roughly. Some people put generic books and stuff.

1:19:01 So it’ll be whether they want to address sold or book in general, because the only book on the agenda tonight is sold. So if they’re to speak to sold, they would be agenda. If they were speaking to any other book or the process, it would be non agenda.

1:19:08 Gotcha. Any other comments in regards or discussion about this? Oh, my microphone keeps turning off every. No.

1:19:18 All right, so the motion is to split agenda versus non agenda. Non agenda will move to the end of the meeting. Agenda will remain before.

1:19:36 Right now at this point. So we have a motion in a second. Miss Jenkins? Nay.

1:19:55 Miss Kimball. Aye. Miss Wright.

1:20:03 Aye. Mister Trent. Aye.

1:20:18 And Mister Susan? Aye. Okay, so the motion passes. All right, I would verify something.

1:20:45 We also do have a slew of policies. And each one of those, because they’re public hearing, will have where people can speak directly to the policy if they want to during that time. That is correct.

1:20:57 All right. And I’m going to take this time to remind the public of the rules that are written out in our board policy. Zero one six, 9.

1:21:09 1. Which they will also be posted at the podium. All comments should be directed at the board or individual board members, staff members and other individuals shall not be addressed by name.

1:21:28 Abusive, obscene or irrelevant comments will not be permitted. Orderly conduct is expected from all public comment participants, and the presiding officer may interrupt, warn or terminate the participants public comment opportunity. So, Paul, if you will, please call up the first three speakers.

1:21:47 I’m going to call those who put books down. So if you are not addressing soldiers, just say you are not addressing Sol. Then I’ll move to the next person on the list.

1:21:53 Because some, they were not specific on all these and I don’t want to skip anybody. Genevieve, rug. You have books, you’re addressing books.

1:21:59 You only get one time and you can only address the agenda items at this portion. So do you want to go now or you want to wait to the end? So then what that will mean is that you will be able to address us in regards to that book because that is something that we’re voting on as far as board business, but you will not be able to address other topics whatsoever. It is going to be specific to the item that’s on the agenda we’ll be voting on.

1:22:17 What’s that? This is my first time, so you can guide me as I get up there. Okay? So come on. You’re the first speaker.

1:22:33 First, let me introduce myself. I am Miss Rugg. I have been a Brevard county resident since 1968.

1:22:46 I attended Indian Atlantic Elementary, Hoover Junior High School, and satellite high school. I began teaching for Brevard county schools in 1992 as an english teacher. This may or may not be relevant.

1:23:41 At the beginning of this year, during pre planning, I was told that I could not bring in anything that was not in the adopted text in all the years that I have then teach. Miss Rugg, is this. I’m going to hold you back just to.

1:24:12 Okay, let me pause you. Sorry. Give me 1 second.

1:24:16 Yeah, I’m just gonna hit all the buttons on the timer. I just wanted to give you my credentials. Okay.

1:24:19 All right. I’m just gonna ask you to go back to topic, please. So back to topic is that I was always trusted to choose for my students and have never in all these years had apparent phone call about anything I’ve chosen for my class.

1:24:32 I’m trying to narrow it down here. Sold is a valuable book. It may not be something I would choose for my students, but another professional with my credentials.

1:24:41 Sorry. Knowing that it would serve her students what? Or his students may make a different decision. So let me skip to the part that may be relevant again.

1:24:42 Excuse me for this. There we go. I implore you to make the intelligent and constitutional choice to return these decisions to highly qualified teachers and media specialists rather than perhaps pandering to extremists without the qualifications to make these decisions for brevard county students, especially when those special interest groups that have been deemed extremist in some ways may not have any children here in Brevard county, they do not have a dog in the fight.

1:24:48 So them coming here to muddy the waters is irrelevant and not at all useful to Brevard county students, of which I was one and of whom I have taught 6000. I know what I’m doing. Thank you.

1:25:00 Your time is over. Sorry. Yes.

1:25:03 Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

1:25:11 Barbara Hols. Lander has library books. I see.

1:25:16 Okay. It’s not going to start it over in general. Okay.

1:25:23 No, that’s later. All right. Thank you.

1:25:36 I’ll put you down as an onagenda. Yeah. Thank you.

1:25:54 All right, next up was Regina Lee. She had book bands. Are you talking about sold or.

1:25:59 We did. Thank you. Okay.

1:26:15 Your time to speak will be at the end. Thank you. Deborah Chris of books.

1:26:22 Okay. All right. Lee Guthrie.

1:26:55 Julie Bywater. We’re gonna get ourselves in trouble. James Maribel Campos.

1:27:06 Abigail Aguilar. Sold. All right.

1:27:24 I do want to make it clear to the board, though, that again, due to the lack of communication of the rule change that the. I mentioned Sol towards the end of my speech. So I do want to make sure that I can do all of it.

1:27:37 Just to be clear. No, you’ll have to speak right now. What we’re doing is agenda items only.

1:33:11 So you really just speak to the agenda item, which is just if you’re sitting sold. So it’s not like a situation where you can package in a whole bunch of comments and then just say at the end, I advocate to keep sold in here. That would be a non agenda, if that makes sense.

1:33:15 It does not make sense. I’ll be very honest with you, Mister Gibbs. Audience, can you please, please remain silent? Thank you.

1:33:20 I want to ask a clarifying question of Mister Gibbs. Is it in violation of our policy? Like, get that we just made a motion, but we are now restricting what people specifically can speak about by not giving them an opportunity to sign up for both. And are we putting ourselves in a situation now where we’re telling people they can’t make public comment about general things or speak about something we’re about to vote on tonight and speak before we vote on it? There’s.

1:33:38 There’s no right to speak about non agenda items. Under statute, you have to allow public comment on agenda items, which is what the motion was. I completely understand that.

1:33:43 But when we spent months revising a public comment policy 50,000 times. And we claim that we want everyone to have a right to speak all the time, and we make this last minute decision, it’s just. It doesn’t look good to the public to do that.

1:33:47 It’s making it confusing for people to not give them the opportunity to be able to speak. Audience, I’m gonna call a recess for five minutes to clear the room and. Or at least not clear the room.

1:34:08 Sorry, I did the back knocker room. I’m calling a recess for five minutes and we will come back. Yeah, it.

1:34:29 Thank you. We’re back from a short recess. Okay.

1:34:46 So, madam chair. Yes, ma’am. Can I make a motion, please? Yes, ma’am.

1:35:04 Because we have made this last minute change, I’m going to make a recommendation or motion that so people. People come and we recognize they have their three minutes written out, a lot of them. And they have planned it all out, which could include more than an agenda item.

1:35:16 Because we’re making this last minute change. I’m going to make the suggestion that if someone. We can’t have any new signups.

1:35:24 We started public comment time the cutoff. We have been cut off from sign. New signups.

1:35:27 But if someone signed up and they also had something off the agenda they wanted to speak to, I’m going to move that we allow them to speak at the non agenda time also, so they can speak at this time just on something we’re voting on tonight. And that if they have something else that they go, that they can. They can do that.

1:35:38 So we can continue on with the way that we were doing it, but that way they’re not having to give up the other things they were going to say. So that is my motion that we allow people who had more than just an agenda item to also speak at the non agenda time. Second, any discussion? Yeah, so I just.

1:35:40 I want to restate what you said so everyone can follow. Again, for speakers who are specifically speaking about the agenda items sold, this would be the time to do that. There will be no new signups.

1:35:50 If you were technically, generally speaking about both, I think we probably, when they come to the podium, probably should indicate that. That. So that way Mister Gibbs can put them back down as the non agenda item.

1:35:55 And it just. Since we’re in the discussion time, Mister Susan, can you say that into the microphone so everyone can hear you? Because you, Miss Jenkins, you don’t have the floor fighting on top of everything speaking. Thank you, Mister Gibbs.

1:36:02 Board members is out of order. Mister Susan. Mister Gibbs, can you reiterate what you were saying before Miss Wright has the floor.

1:36:05 Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we have a motion.

1:36:08 We have a second. You have had the opportunity to discuss it. Would anybody else like to open up the discussion? Would anybody else have anything else to add to this conversation? No, Mister Trent? No.

1:36:15 Okay. All right. So.

1:36:25 So as point of discussion, I would just ask as we move through the night, it’s gonna be a long night. Yep. Asking everybody to be respectful, to be succinct and.

1:36:43 And to the point. And that would be helpful for all of us. So we can speak into your microphone.

1:36:48 Miss Jenkins, you don’t have the floor. For the third time, Mister Susan, you don’t have the floor. All right, so we have a motion in a second.

1:36:53 Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins. Aye.

1:36:56 Miss Campbell. Aye. Miss Wright.

1:36:59 Aye. Jean Chern or mister train’s turn, mister Susan. No.

1:37:07 Motion passes. So, with that being said, moving on to the. To the public comment portion of it, we are now just focusing on agenda items.

1:37:14 You will have the opportunity to come back and speak at the end to non agenda items. But in order to stay on track and have our business meeting conduct the business that we need to conduct, we are asking the public comment portion of this to be just focused on agenda items right now. So coming back to Miss Abigail, I think, was the last one.

1:37:17 I was gonna. I was gonna go back over and see if somebody wanted to address sold that signed up for books. Okay.

1:37:32 If they put books, fair enough. They just put books. So they had to choose before.

1:37:45 Till the end. Right. So they could potentially want to speak to.

1:38:09 Right. So I was going to go back if they put books down. Okay.

1:38:31 Miss Holslander, did you want to address sold? No. Okay. All right.

1:38:57 So are you Miss Hols lander? Yeah. Miss Holstlander. It said she didn’t want to address all.

1:39:13 The next one was Regina Lee. Did you want to address sold at all? Let’s see. Miss Chris of Fooley.

1:39:27 Did you want to address old at all? No. Miss Guthrie, I know you said earlier you did not, but. No.

1:39:44 Miss Bywater. Miss Campos. All right, word to Miss Aguilar.

1:39:56 Yeah, I know. Thank you. All right, so I recognize that the reconsideration committee here in Brevard already evaluated the book sold and deemed that it was appropriate for bps.

1:40:09 I know that every single one of you appointed somebody for that committee. So I feel very strongly that we should trust the committee members that you guys appointed on a book that they approved. It is very rare for them to approve a book as it is.

1:40:30 So quite honestly, it was a surprise to us all. In the fact that there are non resident members that were bussed in to try to get the book taken off is inappropriate. So I implore the board to trust the committee members and not allow these gals against liberty to intimidate you into banning the book.

1:40:48 And that goes for any book, really. But specifically speaking on sold, I cannot stress enough that we have a committee for a reason. We need to trust that committee.

1:41:17 And like I said before, unfortunately, I don’t agree with all the decisions. They do take off a lot of books, unfortunately, but they did not do that for this one. So please, again, trust the committee.

1:41:23 And I know there was a lot of people that were upset about the last minute change. So if I can, I do just want to say that that was pretty inappropriate to stay on agenda topic right now. Please.

1:41:26 It was appropriate to change at last minute. Thank you. Okay, audience, I’m going to ask that you hold your applause, please, so that you can hear the name being called out.

1:42:00 Jean Ray Lewis. Karen Fulton. Kathy Granger.

1:42:36 Julie Monteon. I’m short, but I can see. Hi, my name is Julie Montion.

1:43:09 I live in Cocoa beach and my daughter is at Cocoa Beach Junior senior High. I am here as a champion of education and a champion of expertise. I am very proud to live in Brevard county, home of NASA Patrick Space Force.

1:43:32 And also, I just want to give a shout out to the best string orchestra program in the state of Florida. All of that is possible because we rely on experts and we rely on and celebrate education and expertise. I would like to champion the board to celebrate and rely on expertise as we decide what constitutes age appropriate.

1:43:40 Is this on sold? Tonight? The board is going to vote on the book sold. Ma’am, can I pause for just. Okay.

1:44:10 All right. I was just trying to get you back on track. Thank you.

1:44:21 We are going to vote on expertise on sold, and it deals with human trafficking as such, I reached out to Christy Masters, who is the co founder of the organization Freedom Fighters, which is fighting human trafficking here in Brevard county, which, unfortunately, is much more prevalent than any of us would remotely want to think about. Like I said, she’s been to national trainings. This is her life work along with raising her children, which is why she’s not able to be here tonight.

1:44:55 However, she did implore me to do two quotes from her as the founder of an organization to fight human trafficking, on why this book needs to stay in our libraries, as recommended by the media specialist experts who have already said it belongs in high school. So she said, silence is our enemy. Statistics and experts align, hear and agree that it is only through awareness that we can protect our kids.

1:45:30 It begs the question, if tough subject matter is under such scrutiny and being silenced in our schools, how do we give our kids the words to protect them? So the expert on human trafficking has said that she thinks it’s important for this book to be in our high school libraries. She also said that prepubescent girls and boys are the number one targets. She went to a training where the trainer said, imagine every kid you know, this is very, very hard, but it’s harder to think about this.

1:45:51 But it’s harder knowing that this is happening and we’re not doing what we could do, such as leaving a book in the library that could actually prevent this. Every kid you know under 14 has a sign above their head in neon that says $250,000 because that’s what traffickers see. And just like in this book, I don’t know how many of you read it.

1:46:41 It is people who are poor, poor and desperate. Your time is up. Shift listing thank you audience.

1:46:55 I’m going to ask you again to please hold the applause. Chris Byrd Christine Stanek My name is Christine Staniak. I am a parent of three kids in Brevard public schools, and I’m also a media specialist.

1:47:21 I’m speaking today regarding the book committee’s recommendation for keeping the books sold in high school media centers. I wholeheartedly agree with this decision. Sold is an award winning book.

1:47:53 Sold has received 13 reviews and awards, including seven text reviews from Booklist, Hornbook Guide, Hornbook magazine, Kirkus Library, Media Connection, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal. The state media specialist training gives criteria when selecting books. Some points I want to highlight include consultation of reputable, professionally recognized periodicals, which the above are, and the collections are based on reader interest, supportive state standards and curriculum, and the academic needs of student and faculty.

1:48:17 This will bring me to the next point in a DoE press release dated September 30, 2019, titled Florida’s First State and Nation to teach k twelve child Trafficking Prevention. The first line reads, the state Board of Education unanimously approved a new rule requiring instruction in child trafficking prevention for students in grades k through twelve. It goes on to talk about how Florida is the third in the nation for numbers of reported cases of human trafficking, with the average age of trafficked youth being eleven to 13 years of age.

1:48:37 Yet we are worried about this book not being okay for high school students. DeSantis is quoted in the same press release as saying, tragically, human trafficking is an epidemic in our country. Children of all all ages need to know and understand the hazards of human trafficking and how to protect themselves from dangerous predators.

1:49:03 Could this be accomplished through a book that a student self selects? I think it can. The state media specialist training also states media specialists should consider factors such as the degree to which the material will be supplemented or explained by classroom instruction, the educational purpose of the material with priority given to materials to state standards, as well as the accurate portrayal of the state’s broad racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity without bias or indoctrination this book supports the training the media specialists receive, along with supporting the governor initiative on educating students on human trafficking. One quote taken from the Kirk’s review states, McCormick provides readers who live in safety and under protection of the law with a vivid window into the harsh and cruel world one most would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist.

1:49:25 Sold should be kept in high school media centers because it meets the state criteria for book selections. It supports our curriculum, and the state sees the value in educating students in difficult issues such as human trafficking. Thank you.

1:49:37 Thank you. Rebecca McAllingen Rebecca Mcallingen Good evening. You might recognize me.

1:50:00 I’ve spoken many times generally about books, and those have always been my words as a native of of Brevard county with children that are brevard public school graduates, as well as my husband and just about everyone in my family. Tonight, I’m here to speak the words of Patricia McCormick, the author of this book. Someone reached out to me today and asked me if I would be willing to read her letter to you, and I agreed to the Brevard County School Board.

1:50:06 Thank you for this opportunity to offer my input on the value of my book, soldiers for inclusion in Brevard county school libraries. Sold, based on the very real experiences of young women who were sold into the sex trade, is sadly very relevant to the lives of high school readers. I know this because so often when I’ve been in a classroom discussing the book, students have come forward about their own experiences of sexual exploitation.

1:50:18 There’s something about a conversation about a fictional character that allows students to speak more freely than they might in health class or guidance counseling setting. The book also fits squarely within the state mandate that those students learn about the risk of trafficking. Cutting off access to the book is, in my view, a mistake that could cost a child her future as a parent.

1:50:33 I understand the desire to protect our children’s innocence, but ignorance of difficult realities will not protect their innocence. Denying access to books like mine also denies students the opportunity to learn about the world as it is, not as we wish it was. A book that deals with real threats to real young adults like themselves empowers them to inhabit the world armed with information that they need and the incentive to change that world.

1:50:51 If you deny access to the book, you also deny opportunity for altruism. I can’t tell you how many classrooms, after reading sold, have voted to raise awareness or raise funds for their peers who have been caught up in the net of trafficking. I urge you to give students access to stories that will empower them to speak up for themselves when they are in jeopardy and to speak up for others who may not have the same freedom they have.

1:51:06 Yours is a weighty responsibility. I urge you to think of ensuring access to difficult human stories as part of that responsibility. Respectfully, Patricia McCormick, author of Soldier.

1:51:31 Thank you. All right, Richard Weber. Yeah.

1:51:42 We’re going to go back through the list at the end for the general comments. All right. Well, I just want to.

1:51:52 I think the group here is doing a good job of explaining the book and its merits. I just wanted to say we know what we have from the review board. You had one that wants it kept.

1:52:06 The others said they want other meaning they wanted it retained at the high school level. And I think that’s good enough, and I hope you go with that, because it’s not going to look good if you don’t. But thank you.

1:52:11 Thank you. Richard Jones. He has a comment about other items on the agenda.

1:52:23 Good evening. My name is Richard Jones. I am the business manager, secretary treasurer for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades that represents local union 1010, representing the support staff here at Brevard County Public Schools.

1:52:35 I rise before you today to encourage you to vote yes on agenda items f 18 and f 20. I’d just like to take a moment to say thank you to the negotiating staff for the school district. They were cordial, they were helpful and very respectful to myself and my team.

1:53:10 And we believe it was a very, very successful negotiating session. Good. And again, I would appreciate your support and approval of agenda items f 18 and f 20.

1:53:43 Thank you. Thank you. Leonard Artola.

1:53:55 Thomas Kinney. Okay, you can address Sol now. Kenny.

1:54:05 Kenny. Like the first name. So I want to address sold.

1:54:18 And it’s just a quick comment, really, because there’s a lot of talk about the book. It’s age appropriate. We’re not talking about age appropriateness when we’re talking about a book.

1:54:39 You know, 10, zero, 6.28. Florida statute, education statute specifically says books must be free of pornography.

1:54:47 Sexual acts are pornographic in nature. There are other books on human trafficking films, documentaries on human trafficking that really delve into the importance of this subject matter, but do not use the exploitation of sexual acts to make their point. Case in point was in the movie theater, one of the most successful films of 2023, Sound of freedom, and the follow up documentaries that you can find on prime Video, Netflix, etcetera.

1:54:56 So it’s how you present the issue that is of importance here. It’s not necessarily that the issue is being presented. Does that make sense? Because kids will get the message without having the exploitation of their bodies of the evil explicitly written for them.

1:55:01 That’s disgusting. And you can make a point without being disgusting. You know, you don’t have to go shoot someone to tell someone murder is wrong.

1:55:28 Okay, so I rest my case. Sold should not be approved. Vance Aaron.

1:55:34 Vance Aarons. My name is Vance Ahrens. I’m a longtime Brevard county resident of district three.

1:55:45 I’ll be brief on sold, and I do have stuff other later. I do urge that the board follow the recommendations of your workbook review committee and of multiple media specialists in regarding the title sold. It was never intended for younger children to read, and it’s highly appropriate for high school age.

1:55:53 So I urge that you do approve this book. Thank you very much. Joseph Murphy.

1:56:05 Audience, I am going to ask again, please, we cannot hear him call a name up and it’s delaying the meeting. So please stop. Hold the applause till the end.

1:56:19 You guys can give one great big hoot raw at the end. That would be great. Thank you.

1:56:34 Joseph Murphy. Kelly Kervin. Oh, they were listed as general, not books.

1:56:57 One of them has what have been books got recorded as general. That’s why I didn’t call them. Okay.

1:57:07 Gotcha. For a clarifying statement, we can talk about the book. Are we allowed to talk about the committee process in terms of the book? The item that we’re.

1:57:47 Excuse me, the item that we’re voting on tonight is the book. So you can talk about the book process. I mean the book.

1:58:26 Yes. Okay. So I was one of those who had it all planned out, and I’m going to parse through it.

1:58:53 The ALA recommends the book sold by Patricia McCormick. For anybody who’s over 9th grade and above, Florida ranks third in cases of human trafficking. And this isn’t just an issue for young girls and women.

1:59:09 In Florida, nearly 15% of our cases are boys and men. The average age of human trafficking victims are between the ages of twelve and 14. Victims can be as young as toddlers.

1:59:30 In 2019, Florida became the first state to teach human trafficking awareness from grades kindergarten through 12th grade. A vote to ban sold, which is more about the survival of a young trafficked girl than. Than the actual act of trafficking, is a slap in the face of every survivor and activist working to spread awareness on this issue.

2:00:09 I’m really disheartened at this process. We have a book review committee. They make a recommendation.

2:00:25 And in listening to the policy get put together around it, the assumption by, I think, a lot of the public was that that was going to be followed. You put your person there, you gave them your expectations, and that’s what it was going to be. And what I was most disheartened by is that people, specifically one person who voted in favor of keeping this book on your book review committee is now trying to not only circumvent the process, but discredit your policy by taking to social media and the public and saying, actually, I don’t agree with the vote that I cast.

2:00:54 So please follow the four of five sane members of your book review policy and keep high school books in high school bookshelves. Thank you. And again, Beverly Marker, the book sold is told through the eyes of a 13 year old.

2:01:20 I believe that that’s going to have more of an impact on kids reading it as far as getting the message across than a documentary or a textbook would. Some years ago, I attended a legal seminar where there were attorneys there who had handled sex trafficking cases, and they also brought some victims along. I found two of the victims very interesting.

2:01:35 They were still living at home and still going to school. They were afraid to ask for help. They were afraid to tell anybody what was going on because their trafficker had threatened them and had threatened their family.

2:01:39 We have to make sure that we’re not silent about this issue. As someone said before, Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of sex trafficking cases. The average age given has a broad age, and I’ve heard several of them.

2:01:45 I’ve read eleven to 15. I’ve heard people say other ages, boys are hit on earlier than what girls are, according to national statistics, to have this book available so kids can relate to this, understand warning signs, and also hopefully discuss it either in class or with their parents or someone they trust. So if they do get in a situation where they’re at risk, they’re going to know what to do.

2:01:52 Silence and banning books is just the wrong thing to do. This book, I wonder how many here have actually read it. This book is not pornographic.

2:01:56 Just the mere act of talking about sex is not pornography. Thank you, Donna Herring. A lot of what I would have liked to have said has already been said much more eloquently.

2:02:09 What I would like to say about sold is that we had a few school board meetings back. A member of the audience read a rather graphic, disturbing passage from the book, and a prior speaker this evening said the book was disgusting. Well, rape is disgusting.

2:02:09 Pornography is intended to arouse and give sexual pleasure to those who read. There’s nothing about that book that is arousing or giving pleasure. It’s informative.

2:02:16 It’s necessary. It’s educational. That’s all.

2:02:19 Thank you. Call next speaker, please. Amy rec.

2:02:27 I’m not sure if you’re addressing sold or in general. Amy reck. General.

2:02:31 General. Okay. Ruth Coughhold.

2:02:37 Are you General and Robert Klemkugs. Okay, Clem. All right.

2:02:41 Yeah. No, it’s. You.

2:02:50 Yep. That’s. That’s the last one, right? Yeah.

2:03:11 It’s just on the agenda. Yep. So any.

2:03:21 Any agenda? Any agenda? Yes, you’re good. I’ll speak on sold. No, no, you’re good to speak on any agenda item.

2:03:34 So you’re fine with ICO? See? Yeah. Thanks for coming. Yep.

2:03:55 You got three minutes. You can talk about any agenda item you want. I’ll start off with, I’ve never read the book sold.

2:04:04 Oh. Robert Komkowski, Brevard County, Florida. I have an eight year old son.

2:04:08 He goes to Seminole county schools and still nervous of public speaking. I’ve done this many times, but every time, still nervous. So sorry about that.

2:04:18 I wanted to speak to you guys after hearing about this. I haven’t actually read the book sold, but I have worked at Devereaux and the human trafficking Unit, have the DCF certification of human trafficking, have volunteered with life recaptured, and am continuing to do that to build sexual safe houses, shelters for sexual trafficking victims. And the numbers are.

2:04:28 They’re out there. How many people are being trafficked and how many women, how many men and children are being trafficked. And I think that if you look at current legislation, the last legislative session, there’s a trend.

2:04:34 And it says that we want to keep the idea of what is important to our kids, and that’s the ability to read, the ability to have that and internalize that at a certain age. I’m not sure. That’s not my topic.

2:04:47 I’ll speak in the last 130 minutes on my topic, but it seems equitable and fair to have that decision. You know, you look at history and first 1500 years of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate was Latin, and then you get into the Greek. And that kind of shows when you have enlightenment, you have this trend.

2:05:08 And now I just want to be as forward thinking as possible. In high school, I was not reading sold. I was watching the show jackass.

2:05:28 Sorry for my language. That’s it. And if that’s to equate to this, I’m not sure.

2:05:38 I haven’t read it. But what I did want to speak about is I wanted to thank the ICOC for their selection. Thank you.

2:05:55 And I don’t know if you guys got the score sheets, did you guys get the individual ones? I didn’t see them on the agenda. Yeah. Did everybody get them? I can address the members of the board.

2:06:03 You can bring it up here if that’s fine. Thank you so much. You guys did a wonderful job and your members did a wonderful job of scoring.

2:06:19 I applied on November 16 of this year and I’m just so glad that you guys were able to get that, get it processed. There was one of two applicants that won. And thank you for your selection.

2:06:33 I look forward to applying again in the future. It was a close call, but if you look at the scores, you get a wonderful job on making sure they were tallied up and all completely done with the proficiency of that quarter of a billion dollars that you guys get in that half cent sales tax. So like I said, again, thank you guys so much.

2:06:43 And equality and fairness, right? So I’m so glad to see Equality Florida on that book committee over there because I’m sure you guys have some members of Equality Florida. They showed up tonight on that book committee to make sure that that is equitable and fair. So we have decisions that are made by all sides and all political aisles.

2:06:47 So thank you guys and have a great night. I respect all of you. Thank you.

2:07:01 There is a public commenter on CRT. I don’t know if it is curriculum that’s on the agenda or not. Is Alberta Clink scales? Are you on? Are you talking about agenda item and topic and specific or.

2:07:24 No. Okay. That’s everybody that’s on the agenda.

2:07:27 You were down as PFAS. You’re down here as PFAS. So I didn’t call people that were non agenda.

2:11:06 I don’t know how you guys want to handle. Well, I mean, we have to go with what they felt out in the comment card. So if they checked off, I need to go back and look and they signed in.

2:17:17 Yeah, let them go both. I mean. Okay, so Miss Sullivan is saying she’s got to.

2:17:23 She’s. Yeah, she didn’t check a box and she’s down as PFA. So I didn’t call her.

2:17:34 And now it opens it up honestly for literally for everyone that because we haven’t. All that we did right now is you just called ones that wrote books or agenda items because we are reviewing a book. So you’ll have the opportunity to address the board.

2:17:41 At the end of the meeting, we’re going to go through with the rest of the board business and then we will continue from there. So what’s your name? Paul. Do you want me to call a short recess to go through these one more time and just look at them and make sure we didn’t miss anybody else? If you want, you can.

2:17:56 I’ll double check them. Will it help you? Yeah, that’s fine. Okay.

2:18:02 All right, we’ll call. We’ll call a ten minute recess to go through these papers and double check to make sure. Thank you.

2:18:20 Sa it. Okay, we are back. We just went through every single sheet and read them all, and we have identified three that have wrote down something very vague that I think we need to clarify on.

2:18:27 Those three, are they speaking to the book sold or not? So, Mister Gibbs, if you’ll call those ones out. Miss Pippen. Sorry.

2:18:39 I did miss you. Okay. All right.

2:18:44 Good evening. I am reading from sold by Patricia McCormick. It is page 120 for your reference.

2:18:57 A man with lips like a fish comes into my room and says, you’re lucky to be with Habib. He is squeezing my breast with his hand like someone shopping for a melon. I try to push him away, but my arm, stone heavy from the lassie, doesn’t move.

2:19:02 You’re lucky, he says, that Habib is your first one. I closed my eyes. The room pitches this way and that.

2:19:35 You can tell the others that it was Habib, he said. I open my eyes, watch him squeeze my other breast, and wonder, who is this khabib he keeps talking about? If this is really your first time? He says, oh, Mumtaz is a tricky one. He unbuckles his belt once before he sold Habib as goods.

2:19:46 The fish lipped man removes my dress. I wait for myself to protest, but nothing happens. Habib, he says.

2:20:21 Habib is good with the ladies. Then he’s on top of me and something hot and insistent in between my legs. He grunts and struggles, trying to fit himself inside me with a sudden thrust.

2:20:35 I’m torn in two. Oh, yes, he says, panting. Habib is good in bed.

2:20:41 I hear, coming from a distance, a steady thud, thud, thud. And register that this is the the sound of the headboard hitting a wall. After a while, I don’t know how long, another sound interrupts the rhythmic thud of the headboard.

2:20:54 I know this noise from somewhere. I worked very hard to make it out. I finally identify it.

2:20:59 It’s the muffled sound of sobbing. This book is in violation of state statute 847, and for your reference, it is specifically state statute 849. Masochism means sexual gratification achieved by a person through or the association of sexual activity with the submission of subjection to physical pain, which is rape, suffering, which is rape, humiliation, torture or death.

2:21:12 And also, if you would like to know, 847 as well. 21. Sexually oriented material means any book, article, magazine, publication or written matter of any kind.

2:21:18 Drawing, etching, painting, photograph, motion picture, film, sound recording, library book that depicts sexual activity, rape, actual simulated involving human beings or human beings and animals that exhibits uncovered human genitals or the pubic region in a lewd or lavacious manner that exhibits human male genitals in a discriminatively torrid state. Completely or not completely covered. If that statute doesn’t do it for you, you can do also 847, which is number 20.

2:21:28 Sexual excitement means the condition of the human male or female genitals in which a state of sexual simulation or arousal. That’s the rapist. In this case, this book is in clear violation of 847.

2:21:36 Thank you. Next. Speaker Aiden McBadden.

2:21:44 We’re clarifying. Did you have an agenda or non agenda? Okay, and I’m going to clarify. Leonard Artola.

2:21:51 Non agenda. Okay. All right.

2:21:53 So that conducts the public comment portion towards the agenda items. Give me 1 second to get back in order here. All right, we are now on to the consent agenda.

2:21:56 Doctor Rendell. Thank you, madam chair. There are 30 agenda items in this category.

2:21:59 Thank you, Doctor Rendell. Does any board member wish to pull any of the items? No. Okay.

2:22:06 All right. Here. Where is the approval of the book in action item? I thought.

2:22:09 All right, so hearing none. I’ll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda on tonight’s agenda. Move to approve second.

2:22:27 All right, any discussion? No. Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins? Aye.

2:22:34 Miss Campbell. Aye. Miss Wright.

2:22:47 Aye. Mister Trent. Mister Susan.

2:23:00 Aye. Thank you. All right.

2:23:09 All right. We’re now going to hold a public hearing to address several policies that we are rewriting. So you’re going to have to bear with me.

2:23:24 I am going to. And we’re going to go through a bunch of them. So.

2:23:28 All right, the first policy up is board policy 21 20, school improvement. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Okay, come on. Yeah.

2:23:35 You’re the only one who wants to address this item. So. So Sandra Sullivan sells Patrick shores.

2:23:37 So I’m going to address school facility improvements. When you are contracting with a contractor directly, you’re saving money. When you go through a third party, you’re adding to that cost.

2:23:39 And so what? I put in a card and you changed the rules. And I wanted to speak on three items on. On consent we approved and not allowed me to speak on.

2:23:46 So that has to do with. Hang on for 1 second, Sandra. Yep, I know.

2:23:50 So, generally speaking, I won’t make it to the agenda items that you’ve already approved and didn’t allow me to speak on. But when you add another contractor and you work through a little. Can you hold on for 1 second and listen just for a second? This has to do with academics, the school improvement plan.

2:24:06 It has nothing to do with the site facilities. So. Yeah, I’m just trying to pull it up as you were going.

2:24:15 So I apologize for that. All right. All right.

2:24:34 On to the next one. Now. Asked twice.

2:24:45 Okay, sorry. Yeah. Paul, roll call, please.

2:24:47 Motion in a second. We already second. Miss Jenkins? Aye.

2:25:00 Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:25:06 Mister Susan? Aye. All right, next one is board policy 21 31, educational goals. Is there anyone present who wishes to speak on this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to speak on this item? We have one, yep.

2:25:17 If you wish to speak on the item, on education, on. You have to stay on topic of educational goals. So thank you guys so much.

2:25:22 I’d like to see more rhetoric and more human trafficking awareness in the schools with the national opioid litigation abatement, with different fundings from subsidized funding for federal and state. I think that we should have more awareness for human trafficking so that we can educate our children on what that looks like. What the.

2:25:25 It’s not policy related. Do you have a comment on that? Sorry, what was. The policy is a 21 three one, educational outcomes.

2:25:42 Oh, it’s a board policy. I miss it. I’m sorry.

2:25:57 Yep. Nope, no problem. So, just to be clear, when we have the public speakers that are coming up to speak about them, if you need a copy of the policy or you want to review it, it’s available online.

2:26:09 If you look at our agenda so you can see what the specific policy is about that we’re. We’re talking about. So.

2:26:13 All right. Is there anyone else present who wishes to address this item? All right, seeing none. Do I have a motion? Second.

2:26:19 Any discussion? All roll call, please. Miss Jenkins. Miss Campbell? Aye.

2:26:22 Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:26:23 All right, on to the next one. We’re on board policy 22 ten, curriculum development. Is there anyone present who wishes to speak on this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to speak on this item? See? Yes.

2:26:26 Okay, we got a hand. No, it’s a revision of. So what we’re doing is we’re going through a bunch of policies that we’ve revised.

2:26:41 Contract language, statutory language. So even though you hear a topic curriculum development or educational goals. These are policies in how we do business.

2:26:54 Yes. Right. Yes.

2:27:05 All right. Thank you, doctor. Just general topics that we all want to talk about.

2:27:11 All right. Do we have a motion to approve? Second. Any discussion hearing? None.

2:27:31 Follow roll call, please. Miss Jenkins. Miss Campbell.

2:27:44 Aye. Miss Wright. Aye.

2:28:11 Mister Trent. Mister Susan. Aye.

2:28:27 All right, we’re on to board policy 20 216, gifted education. Is there anyone present who wishes to speak on this policy as a parent? Sandra Sullivan. As a parent of gifted kids, Brevard county is in the dark ages.

2:28:48 It’s about time you come into the modern era. I moved up here from Broward county, had my kids when they were in elementary in full time gifted programs. You would not believe what a difference that is.

2:28:57 You make a mockery of gifted education here in Brevard county. Our kids come in here, they get, oh, an enrichment class. All your EPs are the same.

2:29:03 They’re canned. Ep’s. This violates statute.

2:29:10 Your gifted person who’s in charge? I used to be on the gifted board until you abolished it because you didn’t like the parents comments. The comment was made by that. That director of gifted and a teacher that gifted education is elite ism.

2:29:13 Now let me tell you something. When you have a professional, only disappear when you have a disabled person and they have an iq, say, two standard deviations above a person who’s gifted. Highly gifted.

2:29:14 Two standard deviations above their needs are just as profound as somebody who is disabled intellectually. My son with an iq of about 160 came into the school board and he has about room ruined him. It’s not so the once you get to high school and you have options for dual enrollment and all these other things, it’s fine.

2:29:17 It’s elementary. Look to Broward county and look to their gifted program if you want to come into the modern era. They have things like IMAX, which is gifted math for the elementary level that will take us student by the time they get through middle school.

2:29:32 And they’ve completed everything right up to what you would do going into calculus in university. But seriously, this school district is in the dark ages when it comes to gifted education. If any of you want to meet with me, I have put an extensive amount of research.

2:29:37 My son was a Davidson institute. I could assist you in bringing you into the modern era. Bye.

2:29:41 Thank you. All right. Is there anyone else who wishes to address this item hearing? None.

2:29:46 Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Is there a second? Second. I need discussion.

2:29:59 Miss Jenkins. Miss Campbell. Aye.

2:30:06 Miss Wright. Aye. Mister Trent.

2:30:07 Aye. Mister Susan. Aye.

2:30:11 All right. Moving on to the next one, which is board policy 5114, foreign students. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Do I hear a motion? Move to approve second.

2:30:19 Okay. Is there any discussion? Just make it up. Any discussion? Hearing? None.

2:30:33 Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins. Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye.

2:30:36 Mister Trent? Mister Susan? Aye. All right. Moving on.

2:30:40 All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5410, student progression. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None.

2:30:52 Do I hear a motion? Move to approve second. Is there any discussion? None. All right.

2:31:05 Paul. Roll call, please. Miss Jenkins.

2:31:26 Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:31:30 Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5420, reporting student progress.

2:31:33 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Any discussion? All right.

2:31:36 Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins? Aye. Miss Campbell? Aye.

2:31:43 Miss Wrent? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:32:02 All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5421, grading. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Seeing none.

2:32:06 Do I have a motion? Move to approve any discussion? Paul? Mister Jen? Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:32:13 Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5421.

2:32:26 01, grade forgiveness. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Motor proof second.

2:32:30 All right. Any discussion? None. All right.

2:32:34 Call. Roll call. Miss Jenkins? Aye.

2:32:40 Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:32:56 Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5430, class rank.

2:33:03 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Any discussion? Hearing? None.

2:33:06 Miss Jenkins? Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:33:16 Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5451, student recognition.

2:33:33 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Any discussion? No.

2:33:40 Paul, roll call. Miss Jenkins? Aye. Miss Campbell? Aye.

2:33:45 Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:33:53 All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5460.01.

2:34:12 Graduation requirements for transfer students. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I hear a motion? Second.

2:34:37 Any discussion? You guys are talkative. All right, Paul, roll call. Miss Jenkins? Aye.

2:34:47 Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:34:53 Mister Susan? Aye. All right, that one was the graduation requirements for transfer students, right? Yes. Okay, I’m like, just reading some of them.

2:35:06 I’m going for a side. All right, we’ll now hold a public hearing to address board policy 5464, accelerated graduation options. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None.

2:35:11 Do I hear a motion? Vote to approve second. Any discussion? None. Okay.

2:35:15 Miss Jenkins? Aye. Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:35:20 Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 22 60, non discrimination and access to equal educational opportunity.

2:35:35 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this policy? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this policy hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Any discussion? Miss Jenkins? Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye.

2:35:43 Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye. All right, we are now holding a public hearing to address board policy 2260.

2:35:46 01, which is changing to policy number 2260.00, anti harassment and non discrimination appeal process. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None.

2:35:51 Do I have a motion? Move to approve any discussion? None. All right, Paul, roll call. Miss Jenkins? Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye.

2:35:53 Mister Trent? Mister Susan? Aye. All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 24 10.

2:36:03 School health services. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item hearing? None. Do I have a motion? Move to approve second.

2:36:12 All right. Any discussion? No. Paul.

2:36:16 Miss Jenkins? Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:36:19 Mister Susan? Aye. All right, guys, good news. We’re on the last one.

2:36:21 All right. We will now hold a public hearing to address board policy 6320, procurement and contracting. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Seeing none.

2:36:34 Do I have a motion? Move to approve second. Any discussion? None. All right, call.

2:36:41 Roll call. Miss Jenkins? Aye. Miss Gamble? Aye.

2:36:48 Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:37:02 Whoo. We did it, guys. We did it.

2:37:05 All right, so we are. Seems like a weird transition. I know.

2:37:12 Sorry. Give me 1 second. I don’t know that the script is correct, so I know we’re onto the action.

2:37:21 Part of the agenda. But my script is a little messed up. Page 15 of the script.

2:37:28 Yeah, I’m missing. Sorry. Okay, I apologize.

2:37:39 I overlooked it. All right. All right.

2:37:41 Doctor Rendell, will you please let us know about the action items on today’s agenda? Thank you, madam chair. The first item is H 59, procurement solicitations. Do I hear a motion? Second.

2:37:51 Do we have any discussion? Hearing none. Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins.

2:37:54 Miss Campbell? Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:38:00 All right, next item is H 60. Department school initiated agreements to have a motion move to approve second. Any discussion? All right.

2:38:07 Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins. Miss Campbell? Aye.

2:38:14 Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye. Mister Susan? Aye.

2:38:22 The next item is H 61. Proposed naming of mid county school. Do you have a motion? Go to approve second.

2:38:29 All right, any discussion? I think everyone’s probably really excited about this one. Yep. Miss McNutt, thank you very much for all your work.

2:38:51 We’re getting another step into the right direction and look forward. Forward to seeing that school grow and become a big part of bps. Oh, my goodness.

2:39:04 Okay. Yeah. All right.

2:39:19 Any other discussion on this one? She unofficially gave them a mascot. All right, Paul, roll call, please. Miss Jenkins.

2:39:25 Miss Campbell? Aye. Miss Wright? Aye. Mister Trent? Aye.

2:39:30 Mister Susan? Aye. Viera middle school. We now have a name.

2:39:38 Yay. All right, so the last action item is. Let her stay.

2:39:59 The last action item is if she wanted. Does she want to? Does she want to? Okay. Yeah, she wants to.

2:40:08 Would you like to speak? Since you are the fearless leader of this new school that now has a name. Miss Mcnutt, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you wanted to speak.

2:40:16 I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She wants to know when she can order t shirts.

2:40:29 Thank you, board members, for finalizing this exciting step for the new middle school. This community has a great sense of pride around at schools, and I am thrilled for my future students to be the first of many successful transitions through this Viera feeder chain. I want to quickly give special thanks to the students and the parents and to my secretary who’s here tonight, misses McCormick, who served on the naming committee.

2:40:42 They thoughtfully discussed many strong options for the name of the school, and we had a tall task. Thank you to the community for offering input. And my feeder chain principals and teachers who helped with several steps of this naming process.

2:40:58 And again, thanks to Gina Clark and ET, who helped me communicate when I didn’t have people tagged to me, we were able to figure it out. I appreciate the support of Doctor Randell, Mister Amer. Misses Weibel through the process, and this step is monumental for the community.

2:41:05 So thank you for helping us set the foundation for our school. Let’s go be our middle school. All right.

2:41:13 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

2:41:21 All right, so, madam chair, the last action agenda item is H 62, book challenge and review. Sold. All right.

2:41:29 Do I have a motion? Any discussion? Yeah. Okay. So, as we heard, lots of discussion or speakers that often go off on the topic of the book rather than the objections of the book.

2:41:39 I would echo that. Obviously, sex slave topic is very important. Obviously.

2:42:03 That’s why it’s taught in our schools. There’s a number of books that are out there. This book was actually written in 2006.

2:42:17 So this isn’t anything new and groundbreaking that’s going to make the difference. I think we can pick, obviously, same topic, but not as graphic. I believe it’s in clear violation of state statute.

2:42:37 And I just wanted to make that clear, what I tried to do last month, and now we’re seeing what’s happening. So I just had to. I could not say this without a clear conscience.

2:42:52 Is not. Do not take my words lightly that the sex slave industries were lighted or these students are not going to be aware of the dangers of this. There’s many, many ways to get the point across without actually having to go.

2:43:17 And you shake your heads as if this is making a difference. No. The five or six pages.

2:43:31 The book might be brilliant. There’s no reason to go after the innocence of our children, plain and simple. This will not be the last time I will be saying it.

2:43:35 And hopefully, this won’t be the last time that our parents will be speaking up. It’s disgusting, and you need to do better. All right.

2:43:50 Any other board members wish to address this? Okay. Thank you, Miss Campbell. I know, board.

2:44:17 You are very familiar with my stance on books, and through the multi revisions of this policy before some of you are on the board, and then since. So. But I want to be clear.

2:44:32 I’ve tried to be clear from the very beginning that there is a difference between teenage erotica, which some of the books, quite honestly, they’re on our list. I would qualify them as that. Some of the ones that have already been removed and books that have content in it that is meant to make you really to be repulsed by the things that are happening because.

2:44:53 But I have to tell you, I listened. I want to thank our committee for doing such a thorough job, because there’s people out in the public, and I’ve even questioned at times myself what, you know, did everybody on the committee read the same book. Book.

2:45:06 But the conversation was thoughtful, it was thorough. You can tell they really took their time. And I want to just quote one of the members representatives on the committee that said, if I had read this book in high school, it would have made me want to go out and do something about this problem.

2:45:27 I can’t. While I can agree with the sentiments of some of the people, people who have spoken about it, I understand what you’re saying, Mister Trent. And I agree that because I wouldn’t certain.

2:45:30 Just because a book is about human trafficking doesn’t mean it belongs on our shelves. I think this book was listening to the committee and their comments around it was as obscure as they could be. And sure, the committee’s members made the comments of, you know, they really did a good job focusing, and not focusing, highlighting that part.

2:45:36 And so, like I said, I did. I think they did a really good job and were unanimous in their recommendation to keep it at that specific level. And so I can support our committee’s recommendation for that reason.

2:45:40 Doesn’t mean that any book on human trafficking belongs there. I don’t. I don’t think it does.

2:45:47 If it glorifies that act, if it is something people have talked about, it violates statute. Just to be clear, everybody likes to look. I’ve seen it, heard it from both sides.

2:46:05 Like to focus on the one that they think will help prove their point. But I do want to point out the part. This is some of the new material that was in there that says if the district finds that any other material contains prohibited content under sub sub paragraphs two through four, which includes sexual content, the school district shall discontinue use of the material for any grade level or age group for which use is inappropriate and are unsuitable.

2:46:19 And the committee recommended that this book was unsuitable for anything below high school. And so I think we’ve got a policy, and we’ve followed the policy on this. And I will be voting to approve the recommendation of the committee.

2:46:26 Thank you, Miss Campbell. Anybody else wish to have discussion about this? Just ask a quick clarifying question to Mister Gibbs. Since we don’t need to be defining statutory law, I’m sure you looked at this book and said, does this or does this not violate statutory law? What was your opinion on that? I don’t formulate an opinion on this book.

2:46:41 If you want me to provide you in a legal analysis, I would have to draft a legal analysis. I can’t say yes or no. I’m not an education expert, so I would have to take into account what education experts say.

2:46:59 And part of the law is what Miss Campbell said. And I have advised on that piece that, you know, under the law, if it is deemed to have curricular relevance for certain age groups, then that would be in line with the law. The law is new, so we don’t have any court guidance on it.

2:47:10 Any other discussion? Yeah, yeah. So wait a minute. Hold on.

2:47:26 Let’s go through everybody first, and then we’ll come back. We’ll circle back because I would like to get to. So it happens at some point.

2:47:33 I know it gets to it. Mister Susan, are you done with your. I just had that quick question.

2:47:47 Okay, Miss Jenkins, do you have any discussions on this? Okay. All right, I’m gonna go ahead. And here we go with this one.

2:48:00 I have chosen to read all the books alongside the book review committee because I don’t want to sit up here and make a vote on something that I’m not educated on. I haven’t read it, and I don’t know what it says. So, with that being said, this book, I find very interesting to be the first one to come across our desk, because it is such a challenging topic.

2:48:38 And that really is the heart of why this is so difficult to decide. Is this appropriate or is it inappropriate? And so, when I was looking at this book and I read it in its entirety, it’s an extremely easy read. I felt righteous anger that this is wrong.

2:48:47 Something has to be done. It was not to sexually entice anyone. That book wasn’t written to sexually entice a single person.

2:48:54 And I don’t think a single person would be sexually enticed by reading that book. And so where I became conflicted was my morals of, would I give this book to my child? And. And I’m gonna be honest with you, I wouldn’t.

2:49:14 But on the flip side of that coin, if my high school student came home with this book and I read it, I wouldn’t be mad either. I would have a conversation. So, for me, personally, I would have that conversation with my child, which is why I would choose in my own household to not give this book to my child.

2:49:21 But that doesn’t mean that I’m responsible for making decisions for everybody else and how they’re going to run their households and what they’re going to do there. So it’s a moral conflict. I understand it.

2:49:24 I do. I understand both sides of this. And honestly, I’ve spent more time, more hours circling around this book than I would like to admit, because it’s been very frustrating to me and trying to figure out that struggle, I, too, sat through the committee, and I was very, very, you know, blown away on, hey, this.

2:49:38 This went surprisingly well in comparison to. To the previous committee. So they finished in a reasonable time.

2:49:49 Everyone’s voices were heard, they were respectful to each other, shared all different opinions. Everyone doesn’t agree on many things, but they all came to the same consensus that this book is appropriate for high school students. With that being said, I still feel.

2:50:02 I feel the same way this book is appropriate for high school students. There’s nothing in it that I feel, in my personal opinion, violates the law. Is it a tough topic? Yeah, you bet it is.

2:50:09 But in the same sense, if we’re gonna say, hey, we want organizations like life recaptured to come and talk to our students about the reality of what human trafficking looks like and how they can look for signs and how they can protect our children on this, we can’t say that in one breath and then say, oh, nope, this book that talks about it, that’s written very tactfully, is a no no. So, for me personally, I know this is gonna make a lot of people upset, but where I say on this is, I read the book in its entirety, cover to cover, and nothing in it would make me mad if my child in high school got their hands on it. And so based on that, I can’t go back and say, okay, I think this book should come out because certain sides are pressuring one way or the other.

2:50:21 So for that reason, I will be respecting the work the committee did and honoring their recommendation. And that is all that I have. And if anybody else would like to discuss further, you guys can go ahead.

2:50:25 May I say a piece just real quick? Yes. I just. Miss Wright, I just want to.

2:50:42 I feel like it would be rude of me not to do this publicly. I just want to. I want to say I respect your thoughtfulness and your integrity here, because I know that you’ve been attacked at all angles in these conversations, and I know how that feels.

2:51:02 And I just want to say thank you. Even if we don’t always agree, I respect your genuine integrity in that response. And thank you.

2:51:19 I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you.

2:51:34 Go ahead, Mister Trent, you look like you’re ready with your. On your buzzer. So, just so I hope we continue to have or show the confidence in this committee as this committee moves forward.

2:52:01 Something tells me that’s not going to be the case. So you’ll be the judge of that clarification that I need. It said it was high school approved.

2:52:20 We have several junior senior high schools. So now my concern is the 7th and 8th grade students. Is this going to be on the shelf? Is it going to be behind? It was addressed, actually, by.

2:52:52 Sorry, my microphone just keeps on turning on and off. Actually, this was addressed. There’s a system in place already that, that differentiates the library.

2:53:23 The media center has specific books that are, these are middle school, these are high school. So they are already separated. There’s a process in place for that.

2:53:44 No. All right. Any other further discussion on this? I would like to.

2:53:55 There’s a call to question, though, but what I’d like to do. Thank you. Is we have a situation here where we’re getting ready to vote on something that is on the edge of being against or for statute, and we’re all defining that as what we believe it is.

2:54:08 And I used to do, that’s what I used to do for a law firm for four years, was do legislative intent, research and everything else. I’m very, you know, my composure is that I would like some sort of a legal review on some of these before they come, because I think you’re right. This thing does fall right on that edge of is this, isn’t this, is this.

2:54:21 This is the path. And when I asked Paul, I was hoping to hear, yeah, we reviewed this thing. It comes through and everything else, but when we haven’t had a legal review of if it or is does not violate the law, and then we turn around and we go forward with passing it or not passing it, I think it’s just kind of a piece.

2:54:55 So what I would like to do is entertain an opportunity to do a legal review on it to find out if it does violate statute or not and pass it or not pass it. But on legal review, if it comes back that it was violation, then we pull it. And if it doesn’t, then it continues.

2:55:05 What are you guys thoughts on that? Miss Gamble, go ahead. Thank you. Having already sat through a few different presentations on this topic, I will tell you that I think we’re going to get about as many opinions on that subject as there are people presenting, because I’ve already sat in a session at FSBA conference where two of attorney, them stood up and said one thing and then came back and talked to Paul and we and other attorneys and Doctor Rendell was in a session that they said something different.

2:55:17 And so the legislature and I believe the state Board of Education have been intentionally vague. I’m going to take it as they want to allow us to retain some home rule. And so I don’t know that we’re going to get a satisfaction.

2:55:26 It would be nice for, for someone to say this is, this isn’t, you know, even when they did the media specialist training, they said, you know, err on the side of caution, but there was still so much vagueness because the media specialists have, you know, they have their position of authority to choose the books for the, but we have our position of authority to make. We are responsible for what’s in here. So I do believe that as preparation for this vote, we knew it was coming as preparation for this vote that was up to us to figure out the legality and to dig back into the statute and to do those things.

2:55:41 So I’m comfortable going ahead and moving today. And like I said, I really don’t think you’re going to get to the answer that you want because I don’t think there’s one person who’s going to be willing to do it and just, and if they are, there’s going to be someone else who disagrees with them that has just as much credentials as another. I would also say, you know, there’s the, the piece in here now that has to do, do with, if someone doesn’t with agree with the decision that we make, they can file an appeal for a magistrate and the district is required to pay for the magistrate.

2:55:47 But here’s what the magistrate looks for. Number one, did we have a policy and number two, did we follow it? And in this case, if we follow through with what we’re going to do tonight, we have a policy which is in aligned with state statute and we’re following it. And so really, the magistrate’s not going to be able to find something that hasn’t been tested yet.

2:55:55 But let’s find something if we follow through with our policy that is going to put us out in line with that. So I just don’t know that we’re going to get the answer that you’re looking for. May I? Yes.

2:56:12 Yum kay. And go ahead, Miss Jenkins. I mean, ultimately, it is the role and responsibility of school board members to determine state statute in every single thing that we do.

2:56:31 It’s how we govern, it’s how we create, create policies. It’s almost every single decision that we make up here. Respectfully, this not this board.

2:56:36 Well, sort of both boards prior and this one has sought outside legal opinions about issues that we didn’t agree upon. And we still didn’t agree upon those opinions because they weren’t the opinions of the person who asked for those opinions, and now we’re in the middle of a lawsuit dealing with that. So just drafting an opinion from a legal counsel isn’t going to solve the problem, because if it comes out to be a decision you’re not comfortable with, or you don’t necessarily agree with, that’s not going to solve the issue anyway.

2:56:41 I’m with Miss Campbell on this, too. The only legal recourse here is to find out whether or not we followed the policy in place. So I think it’s clear as day that we obviously did here.

2:56:43 And with, with a 50 vote of the own committee of five appointed board members, it’s going to be really difficult to make an argument against that. Like to have a little bit of follow up there. Hang on for 1 second.

2:56:46 Mister Trent, go ahead. Does he have anything you would like to add to this? And then it’s policy if when a book is removed, it’s offered a period of time. Right.

2:56:59 Was that five years? Five years. If a book is approved to or continues to stand on the shelves, there’s no time limit of when that can be rechallenged. Correct.

2:57:16 The decision of the. Under the policy, the decision of the committee is supposed to be final for five years. It applies both ways either way.

2:57:40 So if we get a new parent that moves into the neighborhood and says, I challenge this book, we can’t. They would respond that it was challenged. It was.

2:57:47 And it was approved by the board? Yes, as the policy is written today. Okay, so I just wanted to point out that Florida statutes are determined by the state legislature for us to follow. We cannot determine or came up with our own thought process on what they mean.

2:57:52 We are to literally follow the state statutes. And you can’t deter from them, you can’t say no to them, and we can’t say, well, that one says this and that one says that there’s a law. So if we went to have a review by legal opinion, it would be better than three or four board members trying to determine what it says.

2:58:05 That’s all. So let’s call this thing. All right, let’s call the vote here on this one.

2:58:15 Do I have a motion? It’s already. Motion’s already there, so let’s go ahead and call the vote. Miss Jenkins.

2:58:27 Miss Campbell. Aye. Miss Wright.

2:58:53 Aye. Mister Trent. Mister Susan.

2:59:22 Aye. All right, so now we are moving on to the information agenda, which includes three items for board review and may be brought back for action at a subsequent meeting. No action will be taken on these items today.

2:59:36 Does any board member wish to discuss any of the items. None? No. Okay, so now we are going to circle back to the next non agenda public comment portion of the meeting.

2:59:47 So, for those of you that spoke and you had wrote agenda, we will also obviously ask, do you have non agenda items to make it fair? But again, just reminding everyone of the rules of public comment, I’m going to go ahead and read them one more time. So, each public speaker will be given three minutes in an effort to remain unbiased. The speakers at the podium, our parliamentarian, will be calling up the speakers.

3:00:02 They will announce the speakers. I’ll manage the clock. For right now, I would like to take the opportunity to remind the public of the written rules and board policy.

3:00:26 Zero one six 9.1. All comments should be directed at the board or individual members.

3:00:55 Staff members or other individuals shall not be addressed by name. Abusive, obscene, or irrelevant comments will not be permitted. Orderly conduct is expected from the public comment participants, and the presiding officer may interrupt, warn, or terminate the participants.

3:01:15 Public comment opportunity. Mister Gibbs, will you please call up the first three speakers? Genevieve Rugg. Gina Durang.

3:01:20 Bernard Bryan. All right, Genevieve is gone. Okay, Gina Durango.

3:01:33 I think we should have a moment of silence for all the teachers and staff in Brevard county schools that are heading into the holiday time. As a retired teacher, I can tell you that it is a challenging time of the year and we just wish them power and the best. And also mindful that holidays are not entirely happy for all of our students.

3:01:39 Some of them are going home to pretty bad situations with lack of food, so keep them in your thoughts. I just want to state that I was involved with the social studies adoption committee that took place starting in September. I had reviewed textbooks for the state a year prior, and I want to say that it was a very positive and hopeful process that we went through.

3:01:57 We walked into this room and it was filled with citizens of Brevard county that were concerned about the textbooks for social studies. And being a retired history teacher, it warmed my heart. It was like old home week.

3:02:11 I saw so many people that I wrote curriculum with and went to AP training with. We took our tasks very serious. We met at Ugali High School.

3:02:42 There were teachers from Cocoa High, from Merritt island, from satellite, an administrator from Ugali and myself and two other members of the community. And we did our homework. We read the textbooks.

3:03:06 Luckily, two of the textbooks I had already reviewed for the state and gave inputs, very, very precise inputs. We asked the question, is this accessible to kids at our home? What about the kids who don’t have Internet access. Can they use this textbook alone? We were also concerned about language barriers.

3:03:17 And for us, history, the committee that I was on, we elected to go with a textbook that had translations in many, many different languages. Mindful of the group that we have of educators, that we came from different parts of the county, as heritage has a large hispanic population in cocoa, it was a great collaboration. The parent that was on the group asked the question, you know, well, they didn’t change a standard.

3:03:32 This hasn’t changed. And those of us in education went, no, they didn’t change it. They just had tweaked a couple of the comments of clarification points and we came out with, we pretty much decided on the book that we all agreed on, and I can’t make the disclosure to that because we’re not supposed to.

3:03:45 Correct. Okay. But we were happy with our selection.

3:03:58 A couple questions for you. When I saw the index of textbooks, of history textbooks, and guys, it made me like giddy when I looked at it. Isn’t that so dorky of me, looking at these folks? And your time is up.

3:04:15 Thank you, ma’am. Your time is up. Bernard, Brian.

3:04:33 And then Pamela Castellana and Barbara Hulslander. Thank you, doctor Rendell. My name is Bernard Bryan, and I’m representing a lot of marginalized community, a lot of marginalized students.

3:04:48 And I just want to share again, an experience I just recently had. I’m mentoring many boys, african american boys, hispanic boys. And they said, Mister Bryant, I need your help.

3:04:57 I said, what kind of help do you need? I need to learn how to do math, and I want to be a better reader. And I said, oh, my God, what a wonderful mission that brevard public school has to serve every student with excellence as a standard. So what Mister Bryan did is I went and looked at three years worth of data, VPK data, and what the data showed me, how important early learning is.

3:05:00 Bavad VPK program. I looked at data over three years, and what it showed me was that, that Bavad Public schools has a tremendous opportunity to really focus on children being able to read and being able to do math. But when I look at the numbers, the numbers reveal that only.

3:05:03 Only 18% of hispanic kids are involved in VPK. What a low number. It’s shocking.

3:05:19 And then when I look at the african american numbers, only 13% over three years that are involved in VPK. And one of the things we know about VPK, I’m not an educator, but we know that it helps kids how to do math. It set that standard at the beginning.

3:05:47 It set that discipline at the beginning. It helped kids to even improve their discipline. It helped kids to even improve their attendance.

3:06:04 So I’m asking this board, I’m begging you, to really put a good plan around this. The early childhood coalition have some wonderful opportunities. But I like to see.

3:06:25 I like to see more VPK programs in marginalized communities. And what I’ve noticed, I did a zip code analysis. A lot of those marginalized communities don’t have vpks in those areas.

3:06:53 I believe every child in marginalized community ought to have access to vpks. And I guarantee you, if you pay upfront, you’re going to save a ton of money in preventive costs later on. So I like to see a committee establishment banning books.

3:07:02 I like to see a committee establish on how we going to get more kids enrolled in VPK. God bless you. Our prayers are with you.

3:07:13 Thank you. Pamela Castellana, Barbara Hulslander, and Anthony Yance. So I think you said my name.

3:07:21 I can’t hear. Yes. Pamela Castellana.

3:07:33 Books open a window to the world outside of our narrow one. I remember reading Charlotte’s web and not thinking pigs could talk. But I thought that I imagined farms with vast communities.

3:07:54 I remember reading greek mythology and admiring the creativity of humans and explaining our existence and purpose. I don’t defend books because I want to indoctrinate our children. I defend books because I want our children to have the same ability to imagine and admire worlds outside of their own.

3:08:06 I defend books because they teach our children to see patterns in history and avoid them when necessary. For example, learning the history of the autocrat and wealthy Batista in Cuba teaches our children how a beautiful country like Cuba and her people could welcome what would become a repressive communist dictator. Lesson to avoid the support for a dictator like Castro.

3:08:14 Avoid the extreme far right of Batista. In books like Khaled Hosseini’s a Thousand Splendid sons, you might see a book needing to be banned because it contains violence to against women. I see a book showing the deceptive ways the Taliban came to power by limiting education and limiting women’s rights.

3:08:28 Those lessons are critical if our children are to avoid our own version of the Taliban coming here to the USA. The Taliban is a far right, authoritarian, muslim nationalist movement, and we can all agree, a danger to democracy everywhere. You can replace the name of any God for Allah and then have our own version of the Taliban here, quietly and insidiously making its way into our communities.

3:08:36 Our children should learn how to spot those patterns a vast majority of the books opposed by the book banners are personal memoirs. People lived these experiences without access to books describing them, which leads a rational person to know that books are not the problem. There was no language for me to use to explain what happened when my mother’s cousin took me to his mother’s house, had me remove all of my clothes, and touched my body while he pleasured himself.

3:08:49 I was ten. I didn’t tell anyone that story until three years ago. Maybe if I’d been exposed to a book with that story, I would have known how to handle it.

3:09:05 I would have known it was wrong. I would have known my entire life might have had a different trajectory. You cannot view a book by a phrase.

3:09:12 If you did, we would eliminate virtually all of Shakespeare’s works. That’s well as the Bible. That’s why our state statute for pornography uses the Miller test.

3:09:23 I’m all for pornography being removed from schools. Use the Miller test, not your personal preference, to determine what is and what is not pornography. I’m sure you’re all as tired of this continued fight as I am.

3:09:43 Why do we keep showing up? We saw at the November 14 school board meeting. If we don’t, people like Jean Trent, who has famously stated that non conservative parents should take their kids elsewhere for an education, completely blindsided the rest of this board with a list of almost 300 books that he wanted to preemptively ban from Brevard because other counties had done that. I think we should follow some other counties.

3:10:05 Orange County, Hillsboro, Pinellas, Miami Dade or Palm beach, who haven’t banned any of this. Thank you. Barbara Holsclander.

3:10:23 Anthony Yance. And Valerie Farrell. So, Barbara Hulslander.

3:10:35 Barbara Hulslander, Anthony Yance is next. And then Valerie Farrell and Samantha Kirby. Good evening, board.

3:10:52 Anthony Yance. I live here in, well, Palm Bay. I’ve come here quite a bit, and you all know that.

3:11:16 I’ve come to wow you with a poem that I’ve created. And I’ll go ahead and start. In a town where shelves were lined, a group stood, their vision confined.

3:11:31 They perused each book with a critical eye, deciding which stories they deny. Ah, this one’s too bold, one declared with a frown it speaks truths too loud. We must tone it down.

3:11:47 Love in its raw form. Oh, heavens, no. Such tales might cause young minds to grow.

3:12:08 With a self assured stride, they roamed the stacks, judging each title based on their own acts. Life’s harsh realities. Please, not in our space.

3:12:18 We’d prefer our narratives dull and commonplace. Banners high, they stood proud and tall, echoing a mission that seemed to appall. To guard our youth, they loudly professed, while creatively and insight, creativity and insight were silently suppressed.

3:12:38 Love’s complexities exclude them at once, and stories of struggle don’t give them a chance. Let’s fill our shelves with tales, light and brief, steering clear of any discomfort or grief. Yet in the young hearts, a spark did ignite a craving for stories that felt just right.

3:12:55 They whispered of love, of trials, of light, in defiance of those who would censor their plight. The lesson, dear friends, is clear and profound. The more you suppress, the more thoughts abound.

3:13:29 Each banned book, each stifled story’s hand, gives birth to new tales, more vivid and grand. So let the pages flutter. Let the narratives flow.

3:13:50 Cherish each story high and low. For in the realm of books lies a unique power in the freedom to read, to ponder, and to empower. Thank you.

3:14:03 Valerie Farrell Samantha Kervin Allison Kervin good evening. Last month, approximately 30 members of our community sacrificed an evening with their families and braved their public speaking fears to implore you not to allow school staff to be armed on campus. In response, members of this board made an attempt to discredit their concerns and claimed that they were misinformed.

3:14:16 When faced with information that challenged your views and agenda, you simply declared it untrue, rather than thoughtfully considering what they had said. I can speak for many, though not all, of last month’s speakers. We were already aware that no one would be forced to carry at school.

3:14:38 We already knew that not just anyone who wants to would be allowed to carry. And we already knew that our current teacher contract does not allow teachers to carry a weapon. We also already knew that guardians would be required to undergo 176 training hours, 32 more than the state’s requirement.

3:14:48 I don’t know why that extra 32 hours would fill anyone with confidence. What we want you to know is that a civilian with 176 hours of training is not equivalent to a law enforcement officer, and it is unacceptable to have volunteers do a professional’s job because you don’t want to spend the money. The reason we already know this is because we have paid close attention since the board brought this up in 2018.

3:15:35 We are not simply mistaken. Arming school staff is a dangerous proposition. Back in 2018, Connie Rook stood here and presented a binder of peer reviewed research studies.

3:15:46 I have emailed them to you and added more recent studies. In the 21 years between 2021, 108 children died from mass shootings in us schools. However, in the year 2021 alone, 168 children died from unintentional shootings and that number is up 50% since the two years prior.

3:15:56 Unintentional deaths are so much more probable than school shooter scenarios. If you are truly interested in preventing mass violence, then informed by the research, we suggest that you get serious about anti bullying campaigns. Help families to connect with mental health care, because school shooters nearly always exhibit at warning signs.

3:16:14 Teach our community about the red flag law, which allows a firearm to be taken from someone who is a risk to themselves or others. Encourage our school families to keep their weapons properly locked and stored because 76% of school shooters under 18 acquired the guns from their own home or that of a close relative. And 4.

3:16:20 6 million american kids live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked. Last month, Miss Wright said, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and I won’t back down from that. This oversimplification and self declared closed mindedness might score her political points, but it puts our kids in danger.

3:16:34 Has it not occurred to you to help our students and families before they become the bad guys? Or to prevent them from having a gun in the first place? Go tell Tallahassee that we need funding for sros. Do not put kids at risk with armed civilians. Choose and implement at just one of these low cost and research backed responses.

3:16:59 Samantha Kirvin, Allison Kervin, and Regina Lee. So. Okay.

3:17:15 Good evening. In the wise words of Lin mil Miranda, I can read. I swear.

3:17:28 Death does not discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes, and in its wake, your legacy is all that’s left behind. What is a legacy? Well, according to the Hamilton musical, a legacy is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.

3:17:38 Now, what seeds are you planting in brevard public schools? What is your legacy? Hate. Fear. Division.

3:17:43 Policies over students, unprofessionalism, bullying, squashing the first amendment, abuse of power, mass exhibition, lack of teacher support, indifference, bigotry, censorship, chaos. When history writes your story, is this what you want the future to see? Or will you see the destruction you have repelled on my school district and changed course? Time is ticking away, and the pins of history are already writing. Tick tock.

3:18:06 Your time is running out. I suggest you use it wisely. Thank you.

3:18:21 Allison Kervin. Regina Lee. Bethany Kulig.

3:18:39 Okay, so, Megan, Megan, Megan. You’ve really done it now. Have you ever wondered why I bother coming up here at all and warn you my time is valuable, so let me not be so nice this time.

3:18:52 Do you enjoy being a puppet. You are being played by all the people. Take a look in this room.

3:19:30 These are the faces of the people who want to burn our schools down one book at a time. They’re also your supporters. No matter what choices you make tonight, your well fill in the blank.

3:20:10 You can ignore your supporters and they will come for your head again. Or you can ban all the books, ignore the policies, and pretend to care about. While you may have the support of all these people, you’ve lost everyone else.

3:21:04 And let me be clear, as someone who sees patterns, there are way more people like me than there are people like you. I’ve learned a lot about policies in the last year. First, policies don’t belong in schools.

3:21:24 Second, being a Republican and being an extremist are two different things. You’re an extremist also. Your supporters seem to think we live in a democracy, not a republic.

3:21:52 There is a difference. Your supporters seem to think that. They think that you have to do everything they say because they said so.

3:22:07 And you don’t seem to realize that because you’re doing so. You’re not a person. You’re a puppet.

3:22:15 Cut the strings already and do what’s best for our students, not whatever you’ve been doing for the last years. And remember, our students will be voting soon. Regina Lee, Bethany Kulig, Deborah Crisifoli, Regina Lee.

3:22:22 All right. Bethany Kulig, Deborah Crisifulli, and Lee Guthrie. Good evening.

3:22:27 My name is Bethany Kulig, and I’m going to start with a quote that says, once you learn to read, you will forever be free. Last time I attended it was in October during dyslexia Awareness Month. After Miss Campbell read the dyslexia Awareness Month proclamation, I didn’t get to finish my speech, but would like to do that now.

3:22:32 I had mentioned the statistics in Florida. Florida. As of 2022, 75% of Florida’s third graders cannot read on grade level, with 19% meeting proficiency and only 6% meeting mastery.

3:22:39 I see these mom groups here oh so concerned about banning all of these books that, frankly, the majority of our student body cannot read and comprehend. Anyway, why is the concern more about the content of the books rather than the fact that so many of our students cannot read them? Thanks to a local parent led foundation who has raised over $2.5 million in the last four years, I have completed 30 hours of classroom educator training and 30 hours of associate level training myself through the Orton Gillingham Academy, which is the gold standard for literacy acquisition for all students, but is imperative for the one in five kids who have dyslexia in 2020.

3:22:51 I sat on the ELA curriculum selection committee to bring up the concern, but left after two meetings because it was clear that most of the committee were interested in moving away from whole language imbalanced literacy approaches to a structured literacy approach, as those were the first to be dismissed from the docket. We also weren’t given enough time to thoroughly vet the curriculum on the docket, and many of the teachers in those committees often proclaim they weren’t interested in voting for structured literacy programs that helps all students and harms no and is imperative for our one in five students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities because it would be too hard for them, not the students, to learn. Due to this experience.

3:22:56 I have reluctantly taken on this mission for the past several years since our schools will not and I now make more money than teachers who have worked in this district for 15 to 20 years just by providing multi sensory structured literacy practices to local struggling students students and had to hire another tutor to help me because my caseload is busting at the seams of students being denied a free and appropriate public education right here in Brevard County. I get weekly calls from parents of children who cannot read or even write the Alphabet fluently in 4th, fifth, and 6th grade, or decode basic CVC or CVCE words, but whom ultimately made three to five years gains in a matter of a year’s time working with me and my staff. However, I did not come here tonight to ask you to address the needs of these students because it’s been made clear to me over the past 13 years of advocating for these students at Brevard county that you simply aren’t capable of addressing their needs.

3:22:59 So instead, this time I came here to thank you, because due to your inability and unwillingness to address the needs of these students, I now have a thriving tutoring business. I have also connected many teachers in the brevard with specialized training and unfortunately, thank you many of our local professionals. That’s your time.

3:23:04 Thank you. All right, Deborah Christopher, Lee Guthrie Jennifer Pippen hi. Titles of books I’ll be reading from have been confirmed to be found in the Brevard schools.

3:23:10 I’ll give you a list at the end of the night. Materials I’ll be reading is not appropriate for minors, so if anyone feels the urge to leave, this would probably be the time to do so. The book is titled Infantu.

3:23:16 Eugene’s penis was way bigger than a teen sized tampon. He bought a bottle of wine and even though I might be able to pass for 19. I’m pretty sure I don’t look 21.

3:23:19 But the waitress brought two glasses anyway. My hands go up and down the sides of her body. My leg finds its way between her thighs.

3:23:26 I press up against her in an emotion that doesn’t feel intentional. She pushes back, grinding into my leg. Fuck it.

3:23:33 I drink the vodka and I pour us each another drink. Maybe. Miss Cristofoli.

3:23:37 Miss Cristofoli, I’m going to ask that you hold on, please. Just a moment. I’m just gonna ask that you.

3:23:45 I paused the time, so you’ll have the remainder of your time. But I’m gonna ask that you please refrain from cursing and reading horrible books. Profanity that needs.

3:24:01 Because we. We expect decorum in the boardroom. So that’s why.

3:24:09 That is why. But. Excuse me.

3:24:12 I bet that’s not correct. You’re good to go ahead and continue on. Well, I will just continue reading.

3:24:25 You’ll keep stopping me. The book is titled tricks the Arthur is Ellen Hopkins cost. You want me to pay for it? He pushes me aside.

3:24:43 I don’t pay for sex. Even if I did, I wouldn’t pay for you, you junky bitch. He is all predator now and on me, screaming.

3:24:47 But his hands are already over my mouth. I shake my head. I look into his eyes.

3:24:59 This wolf has many. Miss Cristofoli, that’s the second warning. At this point, you’re not going to be able to continue reading.

3:25:10 So thank you for coming up here and reading those books. I appreciate it. But you cannot continue reading and cursing and standing at the.

3:25:15 No, I’ve warned you once. That’s. Yep.

3:25:31 No, once. I’ve warned you, and then I warned you again. And at this point, no, you’ve lost your right to continue speaking.

3:25:51 Thank you, Mister Gibbs. Just for clarification purposes, you warn them once and if you have to stop them again, they no longer remain with the ability to speak. Is that correct? There’s no set rules.

3:26:04 You are in charge of the meeting. So running the meeting, I would like to get some clarification. Right, I know.

3:26:17 So here, let’s. Where we’re headed right now. Yay.

3:26:22 Which is where we were headed earlier, is that people are going to get up and read books that are already removed from our shelves. So this process really does irritate me because the books have been taken off. If they’re in a formal challenge, they are not on our shelves.

3:26:37 If they haven’t been formally challenged, then they are in the library. But that would be the perfect time at that point to submit a formal challenge and have them removed from every single school, if that is what you are trying to do. But to come here and do this when our policy is a good policy that we set up.

3:26:57 It is. It’s a solid policy. We followed it and now, at this point, it’s not a good policy.

3:27:02 And we’re going to circumvent it and go around it. So to me, this is extremely frustrating to me. It really is, because we’ve removed the books that have been formally challenged.

3:27:15 Mister Gibbs, can I ask Mister Gibbs? Yes, you may go right ahead, Mister Gibbs. The statute states that it has to be apparent. Yeah, it does, but I believe so.

3:27:26 Just to be clear. Apparently, say a parent of a school or a child in a school of. Right.

3:27:36 But it is a broad statute that has yet to be determined by case law. So I also have a question which I know you’re going to need to follow up on. But I didn’t say it into the microphone, so I want to say it into the microphone so it’s on record.

3:27:43 Does that apply or supersede when someone is breaking the decorum statement that is made at the beginning of the meeting? Yeah, I’d have to look and see if there’s anything on that one. I don’t know off the top of my head. Okay.

3:27:47 I’m just asking because specifically for certain words that Miss Wright had pointed out that I have a. Thank you, Miss clarification, too, because this does involve our statute and our policy that we just revised to add this piece. And I’m just.

3:27:51 And I’m just. I’ve got. I had 106.

3:27:57 28 pulled up right in front of me just so I, you know, would be ready for my own mind. It does say parents shall have the right. It does say parents, but doesn’t clarify.

3:28:03 Parents shall have the right to read passages. And I. We might have state board rule that clarifies, but I think. Miss Harris.

3:28:07 I don’t know if there’s any more clarification, Doctor Rendell, besides just parents from the state board rule, and she’s saying no. Parents shall have the right to read passages from any material that is subject to an objection. If the school board denies a parent the right to read passages due to content that meets the requirements under sub.

3:28:20 Sub paragraph b, one which specifically is about pornographic or prohibited under 847.012, the school district shall discontinue, continue the use of the material. So my question is, if the chair stops someone because they said the f word, she didn’t stop them because of.

3:28:43 That’s what she pornographic. Okay. Just making sure.

3:28:51 And so I’m, that’s where I’m trying to get to. So I’m just. I want to make sure because the chair, it right now in our process, is the only one who can stop public comment.

3:29:09 You know, I mean, we can ask for her too, but, you know, she is the one. So. So the decision she’s making over the next, however many people are going to come up and do this and not follow our good policy.

3:29:26 And I agree with you, Miss Wright. And the books have been removed from the shelves. And if a book hasn’t been removed from the shelves that you want removed from the shelves, submit a formal challenge.

3:29:45 That is the way to get it off. So I just wanted to make sure that we’re clear on that. Right.

3:29:56 That’s what she’s asking. Ok. So is your opinion that you’re giving us is if.

3:30:07 If she stops someone for. I said I would have to double check. I don’t know, off the top of my head.

3:30:19 Okay, well, I’m just reading the statute, like every law, it’s subject to interpretation. Right, exactly. I’ll have to double check.

3:30:42 Let me ask a clarifying question because you just read that out loud. Okay. I think we should continue on with the public comments and get through these.

3:30:48 So can I just ask one thing about the statue? I won’t go off. Go right ahead. Go ahead.

3:31:00 One more just for Mister Gibbs to further, to further infer about and clarify. The end of that statute says shall be discontinued from use. But technically, these books have already been discontinued from use.

3:31:31 They don’t say banned forever off of the shelves. So can you inquire about your interpretation of what that means now? We want to thank you. Okay, who’s our next speaker? Lee Guthrie, Jennifer Pippen and Julie Bywater.

3:31:37 Hi. Okay, go ahead. All right.

3:31:51 So I do have a list of three books. I could read them. But you know what I’ve taken away from the last few meetings in the past year is that some of these parents in here and the school board are choosing to stand on a hill on protecting pornography in school.

3:32:03 And it’s really, really sad. So we don’t take the side of being a little bit more cautious and taking the language out and taking the books out of the schools. And that includes the videos and the online stuff that’s available to these students.

3:32:18 And I could sit here and read that to you. But reading about sex, rape does not prevent sex or rape or all that tracking it doesn’t prevent it, but it is a desensitizing of our children. And it’s sad that they see those movies outside of here, but we as taxpayers should not be paying for those books.

3:32:32 I’ve read some of these excerpts. They’re actually horrible. And I remember a time when this would have been banned and locked behind a cabinet at a store and having an adult buy it for you.

3:32:39 And that’s what it is. It’s hard to tell if this is what listening to a playboy or a penthouse magazine and something that’s in our schools. And I think Brevard public schools can do better than that.

3:32:45 I think we should set a standard a little bit higher than the rest of the counties. I don’t want to be Orange County, Brevard, Broward county or Dade County. I want to be Brevard county and have a great quality of schools.

3:32:56 Do our students excel so much in school that they need to fill time with pornographic books? Do we need to step up the education system? I think we’ve heard some comments here about how kids aren’t learning to the level that they should. Maybe there’s some gifted children that actually need to have a little bit more challenging, challenge our students with history and the constitution and math and maybe even a higher reading level than what some of these books are. These are pretty sad.

3:33:03 If this is what our high school students are reading and that’s the level that they’re reading to. Wow. Wow.

3:33:08 There’s a lot of other books that are out there that they could be reading. And they can get these at the public library, and they can get them online and they can buy them on Amazon. I’m not trying to ban a book, but my tax dollars shouldn’t be paying for it.

3:33:20 Perhaps our schools should spend a little bit more time reading about the constitution. While freedom is a speech guaranteed by the constitution, the public school system is not. And the purchase of these books and where our money as citizens of this county is being spent, maybe it’s time to start defunding our schools and moving on past the public school system, if that’s where we’re going.

3:33:31 I’m sorry. Jennifer Pippen. Julie Bywater.

3:33:39 Julie Antonio. Good evening, parents. If there are any minor children in the room or watching on YouTube, it’s your parental right to allow them to hear pornographic or sexually explicit content, library books or not.

3:33:50 If you would like to remove them, now would be the time. Thank you, board, for the opportunity to speak. I am too concerned with the library books made available to unaccompanied minor children in your schools.

3:33:56 Pornographic and sexually explicit content does doesn’t disappear. If you read the whole book. Here are some challenge materials that are currently in Brevard public schools that I’m challenging pursuant to house bill 1069, line 313.

3:41:28 And also a point of contact that there are ebooks available. There are audio books available. So the physical book may have been pulled from BPS schools, but children still have access to the audio and the ebooks as well.

3:41:33 Jesus Land, a memoir by Julia Shears. It’s in multiple high schools. I can provide that list if you would like.

3:41:39 It would take me three minutes to read that. Page 112. I see his penis jutting from his shorts.

3:41:49 He grabs it by the root. Lick it, he says in his thick voice, pressing my head. I’m going to ask you to please stop reading this book.

3:41:59 Beautiful, by Amy Reed. Page 143, again, available in many high schools. In Brevard.

3:42:03 He lies on the bed, he says, come here, and I do. He fucks me. And I lay there looking.

3:42:07 Jennifer, I’m going to ask you to please stop reading this book and cursing. And that will be the second warning that I’ve given you. So at this point, you will lose the remainder of the time to speak.

3:42:23 Thank you. I know that your microphone’s turned off, though. And at this point, we’re going to ask you to please go ahead and sit down.

3:42:52 Thank you. So, just to clarify, you’ve just made the call. We’re removing those two books if we have them.

3:43:44 Julie Bywater. Julie Anton and Maribel Campos. Can you restart the clock? Yes, ma’am.

3:44:16 Sorry. I’m Julie Bywater. I am.

3:44:59 People calling a book banner, guys. Okay. And we’ll come back in ten minutes.

3:45:07 Welcome back from our short recess. We will continue on public comments. I believe we.

3:45:20 Call me at Miss Julie Bywater. Okay. Okay.

3:45:28 I’m Julie Bywater. I am a member of the Brevard county moms for Liberty chapter. I want to mention a couple things before I read what I’m going to read.

3:45:44 It is not a book. First of all, the. The books that are being read are on the shelf.

3:46:10 That’s the point. That’s why they’re being read. People are saying they’re not there.

3:46:37 They’re there. The words are there. The books are there.

3:47:00 Second, I highly encourage all of you to take a look at this statute, to take a look at this guidance. And if you need to seek guidance beyond just the council sitting up there, that might be a really good idea. Because I don’t know.

3:47:09 Should not be an acceptable answer from your legal counsel. I highly encourage that you seek wiser counsel. The language in the statute 1006.

3:47:25 28 reads, parents shall have the right to read passages from any material that is subject to an objection if the school board denies a parent the right to read passages due to content that meets the requirements under subsoquential sub subparagraph b. The school district shall discontinue the use of the material if the district school board finds that any material meets the requirements under sub sub paragraph a or that any other material contains prohibited content under sub sub paragraph b is pornographic or prohibited under section 847.012, which includes things like masochism and things that are not related to pornography, including some of the language that’s been mentioned tonight.

3:47:36 The school district shall discontinue the use of the material if the district school board finds that any other materials contain prohibited content under sub sub paragraphs b two through four. Two depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in section 847.0012 or identified by the state Board of Education.

3:47:50 Rule three is not suited to students needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or four is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used. The school district shall discontinue the use of material for any grade level or age group for which such use is inappropriate or unsuitable. This does give you the option to remove that material, at least subject to a review.

3:48:00 FYI, any material used in classroom, made available in a school or classroom library or included on reading list contain content which is pornographic or prohibited under 847012, depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in section 847001 or identified by the state board of education is not suited to the students needs and their ability to comprehend materials presented. All right, we’re on to the next speaker. That’s Julie Anton Maribel Campos and Abigail Aguilar.

3:48:08 First, I’m going to say I am a Brevard county residential. I have actual legitimate business being here. This is my county.

3:48:17 This is my school board. I’m not bust in from outside. I belong here.

3:48:33 So those of you who know me know that I’m going to start with giving you a test. So get out your pencil and your paper. We got some questions for you.

3:48:42 Question number one. Are you a pervert? Question number two, are you a groomer? Question number three, are you a pedophile? Look left, look right. School board.

3:48:49 Are the other school board members those things? Now these are real questions, and I’m expecting real answers from you. And I’m asking you for a reason I’m asking you, because these folks who pretend that they’re for liberty keep trying to say that if you read a book that has sex in it, you become a groomer, you become a pervert, you become a sexo. It’s automatic.

3:49:02 Well, what I want to know, had you ever read a sex scene in a book before you were 18 or maybe seen a picture of a nude person or a sex part before you were 18? I’m pretty sure that you have. And I’m pretty sure that almost everybody, you know also had. Did that make you a groomer? Did that make you a pedophile? Did that make you a pervert? No.

3:49:08 And these people coming up here trying to pretend that it does do not deserve your attention. And yet we’re giving them attention and airtime to their political theater, to their traveling show with their dramatics, particularly pretending that what didn’t mess you up is automatically going to mess up every youth in Brevard county. What a bunch of horse hockey.

3:49:13 And disrespect to our youth as well. Now I’m throwing away my script. Talking off the cuff, y’all.

3:49:21 This is the United States of America. And in the United States of America, we have a constitution. And the Constitution ranks above any little thing that DeSantis makes that is against the Constitution.

3:49:24 The Constitution has been tested to determine what is obscene and what is not. You know the phrase the Miller test. And you know that there’s a juvenile version of the Miller test.

3:49:24 And all this stuff that these people coming up here reading about what DeSantis wrote into a law has nothing to do with the United States of America. We have a constitution. And he’s, like, trying to override it.

3:49:34 And they’re telling you to let him override it. And you don’t get to do that. It’s not in your power.

3:49:48 Maribel Campos. Abigail Aguilar. Jan Ray Lewis.

3:50:02 I’m actually a parent of brevard public schools. I have two students. And I disagree with what’s been going on right now lately.

3:50:15 You are undermining my parental rights to raise my child with what I believe is pornographic or appropriate for him or not. I have high schooler that I will never allow him to read this trash just because you think it’s okay for your children to read it. That’s perfectly fine.

3:50:21 But it’s not okay for my child, and it’s not okay for it to be in the school libraries. If you guys choose that you want your kids to read those books, go ahead. They’re at the public school libraries.

3:50:32 You could go and buy them for them. But there’s parents like myself that will never approve of this. Now, I am going to read some books here.

3:50:52 And these are what we like the parents to know that the following is inappropriate for minors, including high schoolers. And my first amendment allows me to read these books. And the only.

3:51:13 The parents are the only ones that. Who can allow their own kids to read these adult pornographic books. Not the school board.

3:51:23 What girls are made of by Elena K. Arnold. I have sex and I’m on my period.

3:51:37 I’m the one to suggest that I give him head. It’s the way his fingers look glazed like donut. After they have been inside of me.

3:51:44 It’s no big deal. Wait. It’s hard for some girls to come without Campos.

3:52:02 I paused your time. My microphone’s off. Sorry, Miss Campus.

3:52:05 I paused your time. I’m going to ask for you to please refrain from reading that book. Sorry.

3:52:15 People kill people by Ellen Hopkins. The idea of doing a brown skinned bitch sickens you. God forbid the two of them ever make half babies.

3:52:19 Miss Campos, I’m gonna ask. Miss Campos, I paused your time and muted your microphone. And then I asked for you to please, please stop reading that book.

3:52:23 That’s the second warning that I gave you. And that’s kind of what I’ve consistently been doing, is telling you, hey, I’ve stopped you once, I’ve stopped you twice. And so at this point, to stay consistent, Mister Gibbs, I should follow with what I have currently done.

3:52:29 Okay. All right, so we’re going to ask for you to go ahead and just step down from the podium. Thank you.

3:52:36 All right, who’s our next one? Abigail Aguilar, Jan Ray Lewis. Karen Fulton. Who do we have? I think Abigail let.

3:52:45 So it’d be Jan Ray Lewis. I’m Jan Ray, and I have a 17 year old senior finally at Satellite beach. Yeah, it’s right here.

3:52:51 My book is Red Hood by Elena Arnold, and it is in the libraries here in Brevard county. Do you shiver from anticipation for the moment when at last, at last his mouth finds his way to the center of you? At last, at last, he’s found his way there. A hand on each of your thighs, his head buried between them.

3:53:00 And he’s not teasing you, not now, not anymore. He’s buried between them and he’s earnest. He’s earnest in his desire to bring you desire.

3:53:06 And yes, you think as his tongue and lips press into you and his fingers pull you apart as you come undone beneath his. Miss Lewis, I’m going to ask for you to please stop reading this book. There’s too many buttons to push up here.

3:53:12 I apologize. My microphone keeps on turning off. So I’m going to ask for you to please stop reading this book.

3:53:23 The nowhere girls by Amy Reed. I’m 15 and I’m about to make out with one of the most popular seniors in school. I’m not even sure he knows my name, even though his body is so heavy on top of mine and I can’t move.

3:53:41 I can’t breathe. I don’t want this. I don’t want this anymore.

3:53:41 I want to push, but my wrists are pinned down and my pants are off and it’s too late. It’s too late to say no. Her last solid memory is pain.

3:54:06 Then black. Then nothing. Then brief gasp for air.

3:54:30 Tiny moments. Bright flashes in the darkness. Hands.

3:54:50 Bed pain. Fear. A searing inevitability.

3:55:16 A lifetime taken and redefined stillness. A heavy blanket of flash flesh. Unmoving.

3:55:41 She lets herself hope it’s over. Then movement. His voice did you block the door? Another voice yeah, no one’s coming.

3:56:05 His voice you ready, Enos? Or are you going to be a pussy? Another voice she knows. His voice. Everybody knows.

3:56:32 Eric Jordan’s voice fuck. Ennis, it’s my. Alright, Miss Lewis, I’m going to ask for you to stop reading this book.

3:56:45 And that’s the second time I’ve stopped you. So we’re going to go ahead and ask you to please sit down. My microphone keeps turning off.

3:56:54 I apologize. I don’t know why this thing keeps automatically turning off. Well, I. I actually.

3:57:07 She had something to do with that. Mine keeps turning off for some reason and I don’t know why. No, it was intentional that time.

3:57:34 So thank you, Karen Fulton, Kathy Granger and Julie Manteon. Okay. All right, so everybody can pause on their buttons and their microphones.

3:57:34 First of all, I have a teacher’s voice and I can be loud. And second of all, I don’t think I’m gonna say anything. It’s gonna be too offensive to you.

3:58:16 First of all, I just want to thank everybody that has these strong feelings one way or the other about what’s right for our students. I think everybody has proved tonight there’s a lot of people that this really means a lot to them. This really affects them.

3:58:43 And they’re worried about their children or the children of their community. And so I think that that is a good thing, that we all have these feelings. I just want to lend my support to the removing of questionable material in the classroom or in the libraries that we’ve talked about tonight.

3:59:02 You’ve heard excerpts from these books and concern about things that are in our libraries or on our shelves right now. And that’s what’s been read tonight. We hear a lot in these meetings about book bans.

3:59:22 And I just want to pause for a second, and this has been said many times, but I’m going to say it again, that I just want to remind people that if you wanted to ban books, you would take them off of the shelves of the public libraries or off of the shelves of stores. And we’re not, that’s not our agenda. Our concern is the school system.

3:59:34 We’re concerned about these books being in the schools. That’s what our mission is. I want to take a second just to advocate for children that they have the, that they’re at a stage in their life where there’s an innocence.

3:59:57 And I think that our job should be to preserve that innocence as long as we can. I feel like we, I want my grandchildren to be, to be innocent as long as possible. I look into their eyes and I think how wonderful it is that they haven’t seen some of the things that we’ve talked about tonight.

4:00:00 And that I think, you know, we deserve, the kids deserve for us to make that possible for as long as we can so that they can have that time to develop themselves and prepare themselves for some of the things that they see in the world. Let’s see, see also just a quick. Oh, I’m running out of time.

4:00:05 Just that we spend all this time talking about here, standing here talking about libraries and everything, when really, I think we should talk about academic excellence. That’s it. Thank you.

4:00:26 Kathy Granger. Julie Manteon, can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay.

4:00:43 This is my first time, so just wanted to make sure. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I’m a mom of two students that actually attended bps, and they attended from grades VPK all the way through the 12th grade.

4:00:45 In a world that celebrates diversity of thought, the act of suppressing literature poses a threat to the principles upon our society, the principles upon which our society is built. Books are a powerful catalyst for change, repositories for knowledge, and gateways to understanding perspectives that differ from our own. Today, book banning looms over us, casting a shadow on the intellectual freedom we hold dear.

4:00:51 When we ban books, we stifle the diversity of ideas, critical thinking, and undermine the foundation of a free and democratic society. Book banning is an affront to freedom of expression. The ability to express one’s thoughts and ideas is a cornerstone of any democratic society.

4:01:07 When we ban books, we send a message to our youth that certain ideas, perspectives or narratives are deemed unacceptable, effectively stopping the open discourse that is essential for progress. Book banning denies us the opportunity to engage with challenging and uncomfortable ideas. It is through the exploration of different viewpoints that we grow intellectually and emotionally.

4:01:14 By shielding ourselves from ideas that may be controversial or unsettling, we risk living in intellectual echo chambers, sheltered from the realities and complexities of the world. Book banning often stems from a desire to protect individuals from perceived harm, particularly when it comes to sensitive topics. While the intent may be to shield readers, the unintended consequence is the erosion of personal growth.

4:01:32 Parents should have the right to make their own choices about what their children read and how they engage with ideas, rather than having those choices dictated by others. The danger of book banning is not confined to the suppression of individual voices. It extends to the continuance of ignorance.

4:01:44 When certain books are removed from the public sphere, opportunities for learning and understanding are lost. Our students can’t take on the challenges of our world if they are made ignorant to its complexities and tribulations. Lastly, book banning is not only a threat to individual freedom, it is an assault on the very fabric of our society.

4:01:50 We must stand united in defense of intellectual freedom. Championing the light the right. Excuse me, championing the right of every individual to explore diverse ideas and perspectives.

4:01:56 We should be the guardians of knowledge, ensuring that the light of understanding continues to shine bright, undiminished by the shadows of censorship. Together, we can build a community that embraces the richness of human thought and fosters a culture of open dialogue and intellectual curiosity. Also, Mister Trent, you’re my rep and you wouldn’t have been up here.

4:02:09 Sorry. Ran on the button. Pushing on my buttons.

4:02:17 Okay, sorry, Miss Granger. Sorry, we’re out of time. Julie Manteon.

4:02:25 Chris Byrd did. Julie Lee. Chris Byrd.

4:02:40 Before I start, I just like some clarification. I have a question for you, Megan, you said that the rule is if the books are not on the shelves, we cannot read from them, but if they are on the shelves, we can read from them. Is that the standard? No.

4:02:46 Hang on 1 second. Sorry, let me. Again.

4:02:56 Having to push buttons. This microphone keeps turning on and off and I don’t know why, but. No, that’s not the standard.

4:03:12 No, what I had said was the books that are removed already. It’s frustrating when you guys are coming and you’re reading potential books that either aren’t on the shelves, which I don’t know if these ones are or not, because I haven’t looked into them or if they’re in the formal challenge process. They’ve already been removed from the shelves.

4:03:19 That’s our process. So once it goes to a formal challenge, it is removed from. And then it has to go through the committee to get back into the school.

4:03:34 So I can read from books that are currently on the shelves at Astronaut, Bayside, Cocoa Beach, Ogalley, Melbourne, Merritt Island, Rockledge, Titusville and Vera High School? Yes, ma’am. Okay. This is called allegedly, a novel by Tiffany Jackson.

4:03:48 And it is on the shelves at all the schools I just mentioned. That nigga’s not your boyfriend, Meryl. Saul says he’s just using you for pussy.

4:04:05 Hold on, miss. I’m gonna ask you to please stop reading that book. Thank you.

4:04:35 Well, until it breaks the standards or the. I mean, the rules that we laid out as far as what we expect. So we’ve been asked.

4:05:14 I’ve asked you now to please stop reading that book. So we have rules that are written in our policy when it comes to public speaking. And whenever those rules are violated, we have the ability to stop you from speaking and continuing on when you’re doing that.

4:05:30 Where does my first amendment come in? You have first amendment rights? 100%. You absolutely do. So what’s.

4:05:41 What’s the policy against the first? Are you. Are you done with your public? No, I’m not. I’m wondering why you’re silencing me.

4:05:58 Can you go ahead and sit down, please, Miss Byrd? No, I have another book to read, Mister Gibbs. I didn’t get my once from reading. Okay, I’ve stopped you once, so I’m gonna go ahead and let you continue.

4:06:02 And then if I stop you twice, we’re gonna ask you to sit down, which is consistent with everybody else. So go ahead. I understand.

4:06:07 Okay. This is a court of silver flames by Sarah Moss. This one’s already challenged.

4:06:11 She had to feel his skin, had to feel the hardness pushing into her with her hands, her mouth, her body. Nesta wedged her hand between their bodies, seeking him out. Cassian groaned again, long and low as her hand cupped him through the leather of his pants.

4:06:15 The breath stole out of her, the sheer size of him. Her mouth watered. She was aching to wet that.

4:06:26 Every stitch of the seam down the center of her pants was torture. He bucked as she rubbed the heel of her palm down the length of his, marveling at every inch he tore his mouth from hers. If you keep doing that.

4:06:38 I’ll. Nesta did it again, dragging her heel of her palm upward toward the tip as she knew, pressed against his lower abdomen. His hips arched toward her and he tilted back his head, exposing the strong column of his throat.

4:07:02 Throat. She learned the shape of him through his pants and pressed her hand harder, working him. He grifted his teeth, chest heaving like a bellows and the sight of him coming undone and her leaning forward had her clamping her teeth onto his neck.

4:07:53 Just as she rubbed him harder and rougher, his hips thrust into her hand with a strength that made her core throbbing to the point of pain, imagining that force, that size and heat buried deep in her. Another punishing rub of her palm. A scrape of teeth at his neck and Cassian erupted, his wings tucked in its tight as they came and each spurt of his cock shuddered through his pants, echoing along her.

4:07:59 All right, I’m gonna ask you to please stop reading that book. Thank you. Next speaker, Richard Jones, I believe, left Christine Stanyk, she’s left Paul Raub and then Rebecca McAllenan and Aiden McFadden.

4:08:09 A lot of things written and then crossed out, and then more things and more things rewritten. It’s hard to keep up when the circus is in town. I don’t know, maybe I’ll have my own personal definition of pornography, which is whatever makes me right right now.

4:08:22 But I’ll try and stick to reality. Mister Trent, earlier you talked about that. Our parents are going to keep speaking up.

4:09:02 I’m going to remind you that our parents brevard school, the parents you theoretically represent, mostly over here. And there’s a lot of us who are not at all in agreement with grownups are talking. You’ll get a juice box when we’re done.

4:09:51 All right. The innocence of children. I mean, you’re parroting their language.

4:10:01 We’re pretend, you know, that’s part of the schtick. The children. We’re talking about kindergarteners and pornography.

4:10:21 Words mean things. We’re talking about high school books. We’re not talking about pornography.

4:10:30 Pornography is not allowed in our schools. Nobody wants it. Good news, it’s not there.

4:10:38 You know this again, grown ups are talking. You asked about the junior senior high school problem. Wouldn’t necessarily expect you to know that.

4:10:47 That had been discussed in one of the previous meetings last year, back when we had experts on the board cleared that up for us. Your representative asked about it in this meeting. So glad to see we got the same sort of attention to detail that we’ve come to expect.

4:10:58 Like when you dropped an unvetted list of 300 books, which turns out to be pretty comically inaccurate, of theoretical books that were removed from schools all around the state, which in some number of cases turns out to have been removed from an elementary school and moved to a junior high school. But let’s, without examining the list or necessarily knowing what’s on it, just remove them all. Mister Susan, I noticed you didn’t ask for a legal review of that before voting yes on it.

4:11:19 Nor did the previous book review committee, back when we were the final say, get a legal review or nor did we ask for one. But I will say you’re not infringing on anyone’s rights if you leave a book on the shelves. You’re not infringing on anyone’s parental rights by leaving a book available for a parent to say yes or no to the concept that’s been repeated here a number of times this evening, that somehow someone’s rights are infringed by a book existing and potentially being available to others, while somehow it’s a parental right to remove a book from other people’s children when you may or may not have kids in the schools at the moment or ever have in the, in some cases.

4:11:39 I mean, it’s insane. Words mean things. Laws mean things.

4:12:02 You all know better. And most of you showed tonight that you care and misses Wright. I really, you expressed so much so well earlier and thank you very, very much for that.

4:12:50 Sil you want. Thanks. Rebecca McAllenon, Aidan McFadden and Richard Weber.

4:12:59 Rebecca, I just want to say that I appreciate, Miss Wright, I appreciate your very thoughtful words. And Miss Campbell and Miss Jenkins, that truly showed that you actually read the book and did not rely on excerpts which are taken out of context. And so for that, I know I speak for many parents here in this room, that we appreciate that you thoughtfully read the book and understand that it does have value, even though it’s difficult.

4:13:10 So as I really, truly do appreciate that, I think that it’s unfortunate that, and even though I’m, I know it’s ironic because I come up here to talk about supporting books, I think it’s a disservice that people would come and waste time trying to circumvent your policies when you’re just trying to do the right thing. And I appreciate that you’re trying to make policies for a very, very impossible situation and for people to come and just, you know, like they’ve won something by reading nasty words to the world in the service of children is a mockery of parenting. And that’s not liberty or anything.

4:13:21 Nobody should even remotely believe that that’s normal. And so for the fact that you have to sit up there every meeting. Thank you.

4:13:57 The fact that you have to sit there every meeting and be put through this constant attack on policies that you’re trying to do instead of being able to do the real work that we need in this great school district, it saddens me. And that’s why a lot of us are here. Because we know that deep down we all want the same thing for our kids.

4:14:30 We want our kids to learn. We want a school of excellence. Brevard county has always been a very high performing school and we’re just mired in cultural whatevers.

4:15:03 So I appreciate your efforts tonight. Megan, I appreciate that you’re holding the line and trying to move things forward. So thank you for your courage tonight.

4:15:34 I appreciate that. Aiden McFadden. Richard Bieber.

4:16:00 Alberta Clink scales. Hello. I just wanted, just like wow.

4:16:16 I mean watching some of these people come up and read that stuff repeatedly and repeatedly over again, it didn’t get old. Honestly, I was pretty happy with watching them do it over and over again and just repeatedly fail. Everybody knows it’s a sham.

4:16:31 It’s. Hello. The point of a book.

4:16:57 I don’t know what I’m saying. Mister McFadden, can you please address us? The board, not the audience? Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome.

4:17:28 Well I want to say something but it was just so appalling that I’m literally in shock that I mean something that was said not too long ago by some specific person in the audience that came to the board meeting. It like, it’s so appalling. What do you say? Like that you would come up here, here and read that without any hesitation and knowing that you’re going to be told to leave? I just can’t even express anything right now.

4:18:15 Thank you. That was just insanity. Richard Weber.

4:18:48 Alberta Klinkscales. Leonard Artola. Hi.

4:19:11 Richard Bieber. I’m going to read two. I don’t know if the libraries carry Florida today, but anyways, Florida Today editorials.

4:19:30 This one is said titled hypocrisy in book bands. A member of the Brevard School board book review committee appointed by Jean Trent, the board’s leading book banner was reported to favor removal of the book sold. She was reported to admit that the book ultimately approved for high schoolers only, didn’t break state statute, but said what kind of content do we want in our schools? Apparently she wants to approve all books used in the schools.

4:19:43 Delaney oops, I can’t say the name. This lady was in the audience when Trent launched a stealth non agenda proposal to remove 298 books from Brevard schools. Brevard school board shoots down Trent’s motion to use state list as guide to ban books Florida today, December 6, she said she worked with the legislature to pass book ban bill HB 1069.

4:20:20 This lady and Trent would probably both want Florida today banned from their schools because it reported that moms for Liberty co founder, you know her name, started it and her husband had group sex with a female friend, a subject which appears to meet the band she promotes. Trent was endorsed in the last election by moms for Liberty. Perhaps he should disassociate himself from the group given the behavior of its co founder.

4:21:04 At least he could demand her removal from the group, as many Republicans have demanded removal of her husband from the chairmanship of the Republican Party. Now, this man was in Melbourne Village, wrote that one. Okay, next one is who’s in charge here? If there must be a book review committee deciding what’s in brevard public school classrooms and libraries, why does the committee have to submit their recommendations to the school board for approval? The five school board members each appointed a committee member to act as a proxy.

4:21:44 It seems to me that the board should take the committee’s decision as final. Mister Trent, why did the why add the extra step? These moms aren’t about liberty. I found the condret to moms for Liberty letter in the December 3 opinion section, accompanied with a photo of Governor DeSantis receiving the sword of Liberty from the originators of that organization.

4:21:58 Extremely alarming and republican party affirmed. Moms for Liberty is an oxymoron. This self appointed group of women, with their puritanical, fascist leaning do not represent liberty.

4:22:16 Thank you, Mister hero. Alberta Clinksdale, Leonard Artola and Thomas Kinney good evening. My name is Alberta Klingscales.

4:22:33 I am president and CEO of Space Coast Cultural arts and business organization. I have been an advocate for youth in creating and implementing youth development programs in Brevard county for 28 years. I’ve worked in Brevard Public Schools as a public school teacher and I can tell you firsthand the pain that white children cover with with the hatred that they have learned to have for their black peers.

4:23:09 They hide their pain behind white supremacist beliefs that they truly don’t understand because it opens the door for them to get love they seek from their parents. The agenda that many of you here today are pushing to erase or rewrite history is not going to destroy us as black people in America, but it will destroy the very children that you profess to be protecting. You already see their disrespect for the educational system here in Brevard County.

4:23:30 I watched them smash milk cartons on the floors, in the hallways, pull down light fixtures from the light, get angry when they went to their principal to ask for an auditorium event to discuss race at their school and was turned down by that principal. The truth of american history as it relates to black Americans enslavement, their accomplishments and contributions, which has never honestly been taught in Brevard county schools, would help to heal the feelings of hypocrisy felt by its white students. It would enrich the curriculum by offering a more comprehensive understanding of the United States complex history, moving beyond a eurocentric narrative.

4:23:43 If you really love white children, you would not give them a distorted and incomplete picture of the nation’s past. Teaching african american history and contributions equip students with the knowledge to critically analyze and engage with current social issues and work to create a just society for all we presented our superintendent at a meeting with Mister Bernard Bryant curriculum that’s used in St. Lucie county public schools. It’s an african american curriculum.

4:24:00 We asked him to review it here in Brevard county, and that’s something we will follow up with because it’s important. Taxation without representation is not only cruel, but it’s also oppressive. I also wanted to make one statement as it relates to to grouping or coupling african american history with the conversation on LGBTQ issues.

4:24:12 Those are totally two separate issues, so please, let’s stop doing that as well. Thank you. Leonard Artola Thomas Kenny Vance Arons hello.

4:24:22 I am a parent of two children that attend Burgard public schools. After watching almost all the school board meetings on YouTube over the last year, I can no longer stay silent. I, like many in the community, am outraged.

4:24:40 It’s incomprehensible to think that in 2023, we have a board member that proposes just banning 300 books without any input from the local community, the same board member that is currently barred from teaching in Brevard public schools. In my hand, I have a folder with the resume, copies of the resume that a recently appointed book review committee member had submitted for a job as a substitute teacher. Resume, which is a document designed to highlight your achievements, experience, qualifications, and education, is full of grammatical and punctuation errors that, honestly, my third grader doesn’t even make.

4:24:52 No one in their right mind should think that this person is in any way qualified excuse me, to make decisions that will affect the quality of education our children are entitled to, we must trust our professionally trained and educated media specialists and not unqualified, unlettered people who barely made it through high school to make decisions, excuse me, that could negatively, negatively affect a child’s education and future. Our kids deserve better. The test of reading allowed excerpts from books without any context is not a test of whether books should be allowed in a library because not all library books are intended for classroom instruction.

4:24:57 At a previous meeting, a gentleman read definitions from Webster’s dictionary and was requested to stop are we to ban dictionaries? Banning books you are uncomfortable with doesn’t solve the real problems of discipline and teacher retention. It exasperates them. When a child that may have two moms or two dads is made to feel shame and embarrassment, or worse, bullied because of your policies, how is that solving any problem? Our republican attorney general, Ashley Moody recently wrote in a legal brief, public school school libraries are a forum for government speech and not a forum for free expression.

4:25:06 Public school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message. This is essentially saying that children can only see the ideas that the government has approved. This is absolutely frightening and completely un american.

4:25:12 Organizations like mom for liberties, which say they are fighting for parental rights, yet want libraries to convey the government’s message. That is not parental rights, that is authoritarianism. And just like the woman said at the last meeting, the real silent majority is no longer going to tolerate this nonsense.

4:25:21 Those of you who choose to align yourself with extremist groups like moms for liberties should be in for a surprise next election. 70% of the candidates endorsed lost their races this past November. Hopefully a few of you will too.

4:25:25 Thomas Kenney Vance Aaron Joseph Murphy My name is Thomas Kenny. I’m a us citizen of this constitutional republic. I’m not from this county, but I’m here in service to it to give you, lawyer, and yourselves direct evidence that you have pornography in your schools.

4:25:29 It’s free of pornography or what’s not in accord with a 47.012. For those of you who don’t know that statute in Florida, that’s pornography distributed to minors and it shows you everything that’s not allowed to be distributed to minors.

4:25:41 I will try to read this without dropping the f bomb, I may say, for unlawful carnal knowledge. After all, that’s what we’re talking about. Here we go.

4:25:43 This is from Sarah J. Moss, House of sky and breath. I got 25 pages of references here, also available in Cocoa Beach High School home of the state champions.

4:25:55 I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. It’s pretty ruthless. Good thing she had the same idea, had told him precisely what she wanted in that whisper soft voice.

4:26:17 Ruhn flicked his tongue across the top butt of her clit, savoring the meadow’s soft breathing moans. Mister Kennedy, I’m going to ask you to please stop reading this book. Okay.

4:26:44 At least I didn’t curse. I’m going to read her second book, House of Earth and Blood, also available in all those aforementioned high schools we heard earlier. And once again, I’ll try and stay clear of the bad words.

4:27:08 So bossy hunt purred against her neck. Then he claimed her mouth again. And as his lips settled hot over hers, nipping and taunting, he slid that finger deep into her.

4:27:51 Both of them groaned. F. Price, Mister Kenney.

4:28:11 Fraud’s awful. Mister Kennedy, I’m going to ask you to please stop reading this book and to stay consistent with what we’ve done for the remainder of the night. Since I’ve stopped you two times, I’m gonna ask you two times.

4:28:31 Excuse me? To please go ahead and sit down. Oh, you didn’t curse. You did it without cursing.

4:28:40 So props to that. So thank you. Thank you.

4:28:48 Vance. Aaron. Joseph Murphy.

4:29:03 Kelly Kervin. Are you saying Vance? Sorry. I can.

4:29:22 Well, how many more do we have? We are on 33 of 41. I don’t know how many are still in the room. Okay.

4:29:37 Good evening. Thank you. Board.

4:30:03 I’m Vance Aarons. As was mentioned, I’m a resident of Burrard county in district three and former navy corpsman. Throughout history, it has never been the good guys banning books.

4:30:13 The nazi takeover of Germany began with attacks on the lgbt community and banning books the same way the so called moms for liberty does. Fast forward 90 some years. Florida is now known around the world as being the forefront of the next fascist uprising, and Brevard county deceived where that hatred sprouted.

4:30:29 Now we see the true hypocrisy of this dark money funded extremist group pushing this agenda to discriminate and attack against an attack when one of the founding members is LGBTQ and whose husband has been an accused rapist. But do as I say, not as I do. Right? And you all love to rewrite history so that it doesn’t hurt your feelings.

4:30:39 A group that we see has had to bring members from outside the district to push their ideology of removing the rights of parents who they don’t agree with or follow their narrow, dogmatic theology. While my children are adults and no longer school age. I object to members of other districts pushing their agenda when my grandkids will soon be in school.

4:30:39 If you don’t want your child to read a book, you can and have always been able to deny their access to that or to the library in general. If you feel the mention of a gay or transgender person will sexualize a student any more than a straight or cisgender person, the onus lies with you. If you are offended by how a white slave owner beat another human, or later in history, how others that look like that slave were burned, hung or beaten for trying to expand their freedom to speak or to vote, perhaps the story is even more valuable so that you or others don’t repeat it.

4:30:51 The past most of us have condemned other countries who use extremist extreme religious ideologies such as sharia law to suppress the rights of citizens. Changing the name of the deity makes your ideology no more righteous. In the US, the fight against extremism begins here.

4:31:05 I urge the board to stand up for those underrepresentative minorities. Reading stories of history related of relatable characters inspire the best in us. Following the hollers of a group known to support views of Hitler will only result in their goal of creating mindless soldiers to undermine our democracy and destroy the America that I served.

4:31:14 Thank you. I guarantee you will see more of me in the future. Joseph Murphy.

4:31:24 Kelly Kervin. Beverly Marker. Good evening.

4:31:34 My name is Joe Murphy and I have two young children here, aged three and five. I’m here tonight because it’s been brought to my attention that we happen to be one of those backwards school districts that has pornography in the school libraries. At first I did not believe it.

4:31:41 I mean, come on. Porn in middle schools and high schools? I haven’t been out of school too long myself, and there sure wasn’t porn in libraries back then, so I don’t know what’s changed. I also assumed that even if this stuff was going on, it definitely wouldn’t be here in Ron DeSantis, Florida.

4:31:48 I had heard he passed a law that removed porn and other sexual and gender identity content from our schools. Well, it turns out I would be wrong to assume our district would adhere to those laws. You know, I really hate that I have to be here tonight during the holiday season when I can be home with my kids waiting three, 4 hours, whatever it is, to speak.

4:31:55 I really hate this. No one wants to have to read porn in a school board meeting, but here we are. Somehow we have a bizarre situation where these books are, on one hand, not suitable for this setting.

4:31:59 Like, I’m sure you’re going to cut me off in a minute. But on the other hand, they can be in school libraries. I think most people find that just not.

4:32:07 It just doesn’t make sense. And lastly, before I read this illegal and immoral sexual material, I want to be absolutely clear about one thing. I do not want any books to be banned.

4:32:14 Nobody’s advocating for banning of books. In fact, there have been no books banned in Florida. Not one.

4:32:19 We want them out of taxpayer funded, public. Not public. I’m sorry, school libraries.

4:32:24 We want them out of the school libraries. That’s it. And yet, I see a whole lot of bumper stickers in that parking lot about banned books.

4:32:36 I see a lot of t shirts about banned books. I don’t know what this is about. There’s no books that have been banned, and it’s intellectually dishonest to continuously claim that these books are banned.

4:32:58 The first book I will read from is the infinite moment of us by Lauren Miracle on page 130. Mm. She said.

4:33:24 And she arched her back. In some ways, they’d moved fast physically, which Charlie was 100% fine with, although he was certain things hadn’t done that they wished they should. But she hadn’t yet to touch his dick.

4:33:39 For example. Mister Merck. Joseph, I’m going to ask you to please stop reading this book.

4:34:21 One of the books that is not suitable for this setting. I’m gonna ask you to please stop reading that book. So it’s not suitable.

4:34:30 Okay. But it’s suitable for the kids in the school libraries. Okay, you can continue.

4:34:47 Excuse me. Yeah, yeah. What’s with this language? I mean, what is this audience? We.

4:35:03 We. Look, listen, you guys have got to hold decorum while we’re in here. I know this is awkward.

4:35:20 It’s uncomfortable, everybody’s tired. We’ve been here for a long day. But the banter back and forth is not helping anything progress any further.

4:35:29 So all it’s doing is causing this meeting to go on longer and longer and longer. So I’m just asking you guys, please stop. Stop doing what you’re doing.

4:35:36 Act respectful. Let the speaker speak, and that’s it. Okay, let’s continue on with the night.

4:35:38 We have, I think, 35 more speakers to go. Just kidding. Not 35, but thank you.

4:35:47 And all I want to end with do this. Somebody just recently mentioned there’s grown ups speaking, right? Well, I see a lot of grown ups. People are of age, but I don’t see a lot of grownups acting like grown ups.

4:35:51 What? This stuff didn’t exist 20 years ago. What happened? What happened to the grownups? Kelly Kervin. Kelly Kervin, Beverly marker and Donna Herring.

4:36:19 The word of the day is chaos. Once again, BPS has devolved into chaos because of extremists who hate our public schools and want to see them burned and defunded. Are you having fun, Megan? Do you think you’re going to look back on this meeting and feel good about your leadership skills? I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this board could have had installed a competent board chair in Katie Campbell and instead chose an experience in chaos and weakness.

4:36:23 Tonight, a mockery has been made of this meeting, your policies, and brevard public schools. Jean Trent, who, by the way, refuses to remain in the room anytime I speak now, basically admits that human trafficking victims is sexually exciting. Or how about Matt Susan trying to stall the vote for a legal analysis? How about the book reconsideration committee? Matt, I don’t recall you asking for a legal review before their meetings.

4:36:33 Or how about Jean Trent fighting against a book he hasn’t read and didn’t even bother watching the meeting for? Or Megan, who sadly lacked the courage and strength to defend BPS’s policy and chose to be steamrolled like the puppet you are. My 13 year old has stood up here time and time again warning you because she saw what was going to happen. Do you think she enjoys being here? And to the people who say you’re reading pornography and that’s illegal, congratulations.

4:36:45 They’ve been read to 13 and 15 year olds who have sat here the entire time. Congratulations. Megan Wright is now the lead book banner of Brevard county.

4:37:00 And you were set up by Matt Susan, who knew this was coming and didn’t want to be the chair so he couldn’t be blamed. Please learn self preservation. If not for yourself, for the sake of our school district that these extremists wanted to fund and eliminate the irony that you said year round school may be a good recruitment tool earlier today.

4:37:16 Megan, you think anyone who has watched this meeting will want to continue to work here, let alone move here to work? That’s rich. Ironically, a year ago, I wrote this board an email about my dissatisfaction with the firing of Doctor Mullins. Megan, you actually wrote me a response.

4:37:38 Do you remember what you said? I do. And I’ll quote, thank you for reaching out and expressing your concerns. As uncomfortable as things are at the current moment, I believe in twelve months we will look at our district and agree that we are in a better place.

4:37:42 You are a liar. All right, here’s our next one. Donna Herring.

4:37:45 Amy Rec. Sandra Sullivan. Oh, I’m sorry.

4:38:00 Yes. Beverly Marker. Oh, is she here? Yep.

4:38:18 She’s right. Are you Beverly? No, I’m Donna. Okay, do we have Beverly? Okay, so we’re on Donna Herring.

4:38:58 Okay. All right. Yeah, I’m Donna Herring.

4:39:08 I’ll make it brief. I think we’re really struggling as a group in the audience to comply with the school board’s policies and even understand them. Jean Trent said, well, what? You know, once a book has been through the review process and is back on the shelf, what if a new parent comes in? A new parent has the right of every other parent to keep their child from reading a book.

4:39:26 Book. They can take it up with a school. It’s been the policy.

4:40:02 It continues to be your policy. You know, we struggle about word definitions. What’s pornography, what’s a ban? You know, we’ve.

4:40:19 We’ve defined those words. Maybe they need to be defined a little bit better, but we’re. We’re really wasting an awful lot of time going back and forth over the same old stuff.

4:40:34 I think you’ve got some decent policies in place, and it would be really nice if we could all follow them. Amy Reck. Sandra Sullivan.

4:40:54 And Ruth Coughhold. Amy. Sandra Sullivan.

4:41:02 Sandra Sullivan. Earlier this week, I met with doctor Randall and staff pertaining to two issues that are important to me. One had to do with what was on the agenda, which was the satellite beach contracts, and the other one to do with PFAS and coming in here.

4:41:17 You have one public speaking time. I would urge you to take a look at what. Oh, I’m sorry.

4:41:38 I didn’t start your time. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.

4:42:14 I apologize. I’m sitting here staring off. I would urge you to take a look at Brevard County’s, the way they manage their meetings to where they have public comment on agenda items, and at the end of the meeting, they have regular public comment.

4:42:55 I filled out one comment because you have only one public, and I was denied my opportunity to talk under an agenda item, and you took a vote, and I’m profoundly disappointed on that this evening. So, on the issue, primarily my core interests. Yeah.

4:43:37 Smirky there, Matt? Susan. My primary interest is that of fiscal accountability. My concern with half cent sales tax, both for the lagoon tax and for the school board, is what I’m alleging, is that monies are being spent and contracts are being made, and the difference between the actual cost and what is paid that the contractors keeping that amount or the entity keeping that amount? I have a concern about that.

4:43:52 When you get a. When you put a roof on your house, you don’t pay that full amount. You pay them a deposit and you pay when it’s completed.

4:44:16 I don’t understand. On these contracts I’m looking at, like the lift station at satellite high school, you’re paying a bulk amount in full and then it says, oh, if it costs less, you return the money to us. Who in the world does business like that? I don’t know.

4:44:40 You know, coming from the business world, you pay in milestones. So I would say school board hasn’t been able to balance the budget in what, how many decade or more? I would say your primary responsibility is fiscally, because you have the biggest budget, the county, and what you owe to the taxpayers here, they keep forking out more and more money and you’re going to come back to them, you’re going to want more because you always do. It’s time to pull in those expenses.

4:44:50 And this policy of giving contractors bulk amount of the amount upfront and go, well, if it’s less, pay us back. I doubt that happens. And the auditor that you have is the same auditor that they have for the lagoon tax.

4:45:13 And I’ve looked into that contract and they are not doing an audit. So now, after tonight’s clown show here, you can be sure I’m going to be digging into those contracts. I’m going to be doing a lot more records, requests to you guys because I’m pissed off.

4:45:37 Tonight, I’ve written all of you about the PFAS contamination, the safety of our kids, and not one of you has stepped up on that issue. Thank you, Ruth Caulfield and Robert Klinkowski. Sorry.

4:45:46 Good evening. My name is Ruth Caulfield and thank you, board, for letting us speak tonight. Appreciate it.

4:45:57 I am the executive director of citizens defending freedom. I was going to read you some passages from a couple of books, but I think it’s not going to do any good. So, however, I believe that we need to look at us.

4:46:10 Supreme Court establish the test that judges and juries use to determine whether matter is obscene in three major cases. Miller versus California, Smith v. United States, Pope versus Illinois, commonly known as the Miller test.

4:46:26 Federal statutes specifically prohibit obscenity involving minors, and convicted offenders generally face harsher statuary penalties than if the offense involved only adults. Section 14 or 1470 of title 18. Us states code prohibits any individual from knowingly transferring or attempting to transfer obscene matter using the US mail or any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce to a minor, 16 years of age or under.

4:46:51 Convicted offenders face fines and imprisonment for up to ten years. In addition, section 1466 a of title 18 us state codes makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer, distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene. My time is limited, but I. I just couldn’t not say these things because this is the current law, US statute.

4:47:11 These are things that you should be looking at because it is the law. And part of the Miller test states that whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter depicts or describes is sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals or cytomasochist sexual abuse. I don’t think that there is any gray area right there.

4:47:22 These things are in the US code. And it’s obsessed to have these books in our public schools because I happen to be the taxpayer that had funded those books. And had I known that, I would have been up there sooner.

4:47:29 Thank you, Robert Klinkowski. Yes, we need some more. Thank you, guys.

4:47:49 To the esteemed chair and to the board. First question, rhetorical would be, would you be able to draft an a or ask for an ago opinion or an attorney general opinion? Would that be something that the board would be able to direct the general counsel to do? Would that be warrant it? Next thing would be ICOC. I hope you guys do review those scores.

4:47:58 And like I said, I applied on November 16. So that’s something where I think that you look at those before the next minutes and before you approve those. If they weren’t.

4:48:08 Has anybody looked at those scores or has anybody been able to look at the selection process there? I was just wondering, getting rhetorical next would be. I think what we’re facing here is two ideologies, right? You have the frontiersman ideology, the right. And you have the environmentalist ideology with other factors of that.

4:48:27 On the left, you have what Nietzsche said, you know, God’s dead and the rivers of blood murdering the quote. But the rivers of blood that will flow will clean them, and you’ll either totalitarianism or nihilism, Huxley’s brave new world on the left, George Orwell’s 1984 on the right. In dialogue, discourse, discussion, or what we’re doing right now at the Aiatribe that’s amazing that we still have that right.

4:48:36 And I hope that we maintain that right as a constitutional democracy. A constitutional republic. However you want to word it, they do have meanings.

4:48:40 They do have a meaning. Yet I say that we have to look at where we’re going and it where we’re at. So what can we do today? Oh, look at the scores.

4:48:46 Look at what miss, I’m sorry, I don’t want to dress anybody on the crowd. Look at what other people have said about tallying up all of the half cent sales tax. That’s $700 million, 100, $500 million.

4:48:50 Is it a quarter of a billion, 500 million or 750 million? I’m not sure, since it’s been in ten, almost ten years now. Yep. That is something that we look at and we’re talking about this whole entire current situation.

4:49:01 And I’m a substitute teacher, Garnett Litem. I’ve worked with special needs kids, like I said, at Devereaux, and then before that at Riverdale Country Day School, which was contracted out through Brevard county. And goodness gracious, I wish when I was 17, 1819, the kids I hung out with, they would read any one of those books because what they were doing when I went to a galley and what a lot of people were doing weren’t reading books.

4:49:10 And that was the trend. And it was something that I love to have the option for that book to be read yet I also think that we have to take morality and see where that moral point is. Because if we don’t have that moral point, no paper, no constitution, that’s not going to matter.

4:49:31 It takes each and every one of us to be we the people. Thank you, Mister Gibbs. Is there any other.

4:49:32 That’s it. That’s it. We are now at the board member reports.

4:49:47 Does any board member have any further information to report or discuss? Miss Campbell, the first one. I just wanted to make the board aware and the public aware that on Saturday, January 13, the children’s hunger Project and other organizations will be hosting their five k. I want to encourage people on the board and from the district.

4:50:01 I know some of our schools do teams to go enter because the funds go to support. I think it’s brevard sharing center. There’s another organization that deals with hunger.

4:50:04 And along with this children’s hunger project, I also need, because I’ll be in Tampa that weekend at the FMEA conference in all state. I need a board member, at least one board member. All right.

4:50:22 It’s gonna be you to show up that morning to the five k and or you can all do it. You don’t have to walk or run the five k, but you need. They would like a board member to show up and say a few words of appreciation to everybody who came up.

4:50:34 It’s at Viera High school hosting. You did it for me last year. So you’re volunteering to do it again? All right.

4:50:52 Yeah, I can. But I would encourage the rest of the board. I’ll send you the information tomorrow.

4:51:07 And Doctor Rendell, but any. It’s a great five k and it supports a great cause. And so I encourage you to get involved.

4:51:28 He said he may not be in town. I had already said I was going. Okay, sounds good.

4:51:37 I do. Madam chair, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like it to. To address, because tonight was frustrating to a lot of us out there up here.

4:51:51 I just want to address a couple of things. I am. I’m just going to speak plainly because the board, you know, that’s what I do.

4:52:19 I am frustrated that people came from outside the county because we can handle things fine in Brevard. I am frustrated that people talked about First Amendment rights, as if you have a right to walk into any forum and say anything. And I’m going to tell you, you can go out on the sidewalk, the public sidewalk, and read whatever you want to, but this is not an open public forum.

4:52:32 We’ve had this conversation before. This is a limited public forum. And what you can say, and that has been tried in the supreme court, those decisions have been made.

4:52:54 This is a limited public forum. You can’t stand at that podium and drop f bombs. You can’t.

4:53:16 It’s not your turn. And I’m so also frustrated at across the room, the chitter chatter and the disrespect for this board, for the process, for each other. We’re better than that.

4:53:26 At least, brevard. We’re better than that. I’m also.

4:53:37 I want to talk about the book process because I think there was a lot of misunderstanding what happened. If we follow the statute the way it was listed, if you were a parent and you read from a book and our chair stopped you, that book is now going to be removed. If it was stopped for sexual content.

4:53:41 That’s what the statute says. So that happened tonight. And I’m not saying I for against, but that’s just so because there was a misunderstanding of what happened when people stopped, that happened.

4:53:44 But I have to emphasize again, because I tracked the titles that were given, and out of all the titles, there’s actually only three of the titles that are not already in our formal challenge. I looked at the informal, didn’t see them on there. That means nobody has submitted them for a formal challenge.

4:53:48 So I’m going to audience, we’re going to ask you please not to respond. Let her go ahead and speak. If you want to talk to me, you can talk to me afterwards or send me an email.

4:53:55 Our community has spoken in their votes and they voted for this board, these board members to come and this board member has done, board has done their job to create a policy. And we’ve, and we already had before the new statute said you have to pull the books once they’re challenged. We already had that written in our policy.

4:53:57 And so if there is, because like I said, most of these books were already in our formal challenge process. They’re not on our shelves. They have been removed.

4:54:12 It was addressed the ebook and the audiobook issue was dealt with. And the only ebooks that are left is my understanding from what Miss Harris has said is checked out to the media specialist who’s in charge of the committee so that she can use that in the challenge process. So it has been addressed.

4:54:22 I’ve already sent that email to at least one member of one of the groups that spoke tonight and I guess she didn’t communicate it to everyone else, but those are polled waiting for the committee process except for the ones that will be removed after tonight, these other three that aren’t in the process. And I would say I felt the same frustration last time when we had people stand up after Mister Trent was trying to get the big way. If you have a problem with any book, you think it’s challenge contact.

4:54:29 We have a process, submit, review, submit a challenge and it will be pulled. We’re following statute, we’re following our policy, we’re going to keep following the policy. And I don’t like this.

4:54:45 Do an end run around the people that you elected to do this job, who have done the job and created the good policy and are following the process and did it tonight. It’s very, very frustrating to me. So board for us, sorry for the sermon, but just, I just get so frustrated about this because I don’t like that.

4:55:01 And I know the legislature put it in there, but I don’t like that end run around because we were doing a good job. So I’m going to reiterate again, it’s been said several times by board members, we have a good policy, we need to follow it. And I am not naive enough to think that some of the people who thanked us tonight because we voted keep sold.

4:55:13 Will be very disappointed when we have other books that the committee says no to and we vote no. I don’t think they’re going to be singing our praises then. So I’m not naive enough to think that.

4:55:27 But we’re. We as a board, I think we need to stick with what process that we have in place and keep pushing through. And we’ve got the book committee’s meeting on Friday.

4:55:40 Correct to do the next. Yes, the 15th. Which is.

4:55:52 What’s the title? The kite runner. Kite runner. Okay.

4:56:09 So that’s the next one. And then they’re going to work on. I very much appreciate.

4:56:18 I just have to say again how much I appreciate the committee for the work they did. It’s not an easy task to read those books. I apologize to my representative all the time.

4:56:31 Sorry. You have to read these books. Right.

4:56:34 Because so many of them are just filled with really not good content as we heard tonight. And I don’t disagree that that’s a bad content. What? I’m very frustrated as someone would actually stand there and say that this board is protecting that content when we’ve already written the policy to remove it while it weights the challenge.

4:56:45 That is very frustrating to me. And if you want to talk it out more later, actually, I’m going to withdraw the offer to stand around and talk to you tonight because I already missed my son’s band concert. It’s 1030.

4:56:58 You can send me an email and I’ll talk to you later this week. All right. Any other board members have any other reports or discussions they would like to.

4:57:10 Yeah, I. You know, I think someone had mentioned tonight that it’s glaringly apparent. Duh. We all knew what was happening tonight because they foolishly put it out on the Internet.

4:57:20 When a minority of opinions is not winning, they feel the need to circumvent rules or abuse rules. And that’s what we witness here tonight. It’s not going to play well.

4:57:38 It’s not going to look great. It’s a mockery, quite frankly, of the organization they are so proud to represent. It’s embarrassing that they had to drive here from another county.

4:57:48 I mean, nothing says more that the majority of residents in this own county don’t feel that way when you have to call another county to drive here. So that’s clear as day. And I’m glad the media was here to witness that.

4:57:54 I have a different concern. I think we need to. And now that we had a conversation today about Mister Gibbs, like, really taking on the parliamentary role.

4:58:01 We need to be careful about board members who are sitting on this dais having conversations right before we’re taking a vote. Not into microphones. People can see it, and it’s ridiculous.

4:58:13 You’re sitting on a dais with a microphone in front of you. If you have something to say, say it into the microphone, into the public. That is the point of sunshine.

4:58:21 Okay, Miss Jenkins, are you done or no, I’ll just. I’ll. But someone else report it.

4:58:30 All right. Anybody else have anything further they would like to discuss or reports for the board? Mister Trent, you’re pressing your mic. No, no. Is that. None? Okay. All right. Again, I’m going to follow back up. And since I’m the last one to speak, here’s the reality. There’s two sides to everything, right? We’re never going to make everybody 100% happy. That is the truth of the position that we’ve been elected to be in right now. The way that it sits, the policy is a good policy when it comes to our book review. It honestly, it honors both sides. But it protects our children in the process of it by removing the book. So if the policy is followed to a t, then we’ve done what’s right for students. And here’s where it could get a little hairy. Because right now, the board maybe is made up of a composition that some people like, and it’s made up of a composition that some people don’t like. And we know that. We’re very aware of this. If we don’t honor both sides of this in everything that we do, and make sure that we are guiding our district along the right way, then we’re not doing anybody a service. We have to do what’s right for our county. And so it’s been frustrating to sit up here and listen and hear people say things, and you’re just like, what in the world? Like, we. We have revised the policy. All you have to do is file a formal complaint. The book is pulled immediately, and it has to fight to get back in there. That’s a good policy. It’s a great policy. It’s one that the state should probably look at doing for every district. But instead, we’re going around it. And so, yeah, this has been a frustrating night. I’m not very happy with how it’s gone. I’m hoping we’ll do better. I mean, we have to do better as society, because this, all this attention, all this media, all this whatever, makes Brevard county look horrible, and that’s the citizens. And then in this case. Some people that aren’t citizens coming in to make Brevard county look horrible. That’s what you’re doing. So it’s not our best foot forward. I think we have to do better. And we’ll just keep on working out, doing better. Doctor Rendell, do you have anything further that you would like to report? I do not, madam chair. All right. Being no further business, this meeting is adjourned.