Board of Education — May 13, 2025

I would like to call this meeting to order at, is it really 5.05? At 5.05. Thank you for coming. Let us start off with the Pledge of Allegiance. Jeanette, would you like to lead us? Sure. to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Jeanette. All right, we're going to do a roll call. Board Member Wilson?

Here.

Board Member Holohan?

Present.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Present. Board Member Olson? Here. And I am here. We're all present. Is there a motion to approve the agenda with flexibility?

So moved.

Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion? All right, I'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

In closed session, the board unanimously took action to accept the superintendent's recommendation to appoint Lisa Nakamura-Bruick to the position of Assistant Superintendent, Human Resources, effective May 14, 2025, at Step 1 of the Cabinet Salary Schedule. Lisa, do you have any family here with you today? Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yes, I do. I have my daughter, Kira, here with me. She's back there. I'm from college. I just wanted to thank you all for this opportunity. I'm very excited to continue to serve Redlands Unified. Thank you.

In closed session, the board unanimously took action to accept the superintendent's recommendation... I mean, yeah. Oh, wait. It says it twice. Sorry. To approve a suspension without pay, pending dismissal for classified employee 2024-25-18, CNS Assistant 1, effective May 15, 2025, with direction to accept a resignation, effective May 15, 2025, in lieu of dismissal if it is received in time to avoid any additional costs to the district. And we're going to move on to presentations. Mr. Cabral, will you recognize the 2024-2025 retirees? Thank you.

Okay, this is an exciting time. Always kind of bittersweet for me because when I talk with retirees, I talk to you with a lot of jealousy because I definitely hope to be there one day. And my favorite question to ask retirees is, what are you going to do next? And my favorite answer is, whatever I want. Because you can. That's why I'm jealous. Okay, we're going to call all of our retiree names. I know not everybody was able to make it. But if you are here, if you could come forward, we have a wonderful certificate. And then we have a little award that you can always remember us. When you're doing whatever you want, you can look at the apple and say, hey, my family from Redlands. With 34 years of dedicated service, our first honoree is Ms. Laura Diggs. Is Ms. Laura Diggs here? Thank you. Next, with 38 years of service, it's going to be a competition, huh? 38 years of service for us, Rosa Garza. Rosa's already doing whatever she wants. With 33 years of dedicated service, Lance Hughes. Next, with 19 years of service, 19 years, Lori Heston. 33 years of service, Paul Klossner. 20.5 years of service, the .5 counts. 20.5 years of service, Lucille Flores. 18 years of service, Joseph Peterson. 18 years of service. 30 years of dedicated service, Stephanie Paxman. 24 years of service, Miguel Ruiz. 32 years of dedicated service, Paula Segovia Perez. With 12 and a half years of dedicated service, Diane Solberg. With 12 years of dedicated service, Robert Stengel. 28 years of dedicated service, Judith Stotz. 25 years of service, Crystal Marcy Syme. 24.75 years of service. Almost 25 years, Taryn Trammell. 22 years of dedicated service, Renee Watson. 13 and a half years of service, Denise Sander. It goes without saying that we are going to be a weaker district without the veterans that you're seeing in front of you because the dedication that they've shown to our students is a large part of our success. We wish you the very best in your retirement. Don't forget about us. If you want to sub, see our new assistant superintendent of HR in six months when you qualify to sub because we'd love to have you back. Okay, everybody, these are our retirees for 2025. Thank you.

All right, friends. Look this way. There we go. And one, two, three.

One more.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We do invite you to stay. We have two other groups that we're going to recognize this evening. When we get finished with those two groups, we have our student trustees and then we have our student athletes. Once we finish that, we're going to take a small break and Nutrition Services has brought in some snacks and we're going to have some snacks and then we'll move on with our meeting shortly after that. So I invite you to stay. I am going to ask our board president, Michelle Rendler, to come forward so that she can present for our student trustees.

Hello, everybody. It's my pleasure to take a moment to recognize a truly special group of students, our 2024-2025 student trustees. These student leaders play an important role in bringing the voice of our schools directly to the board. Their insight, perspective, and advocacy help ensure that decisions are made at the district level that reflect the real experiences of our students. This year, we were fortunate to have a strong and thoughtful group representing a great mix of both juniors and seniors. They attended meetings, participated in discussion, and brought forward meaningful contributions that truly enrich our work. First, I'd like to recognize and celebrate our 11th grade representatives. Ella Ford from Redlands eAcademy. Bella Salazar from Redlands High School. Aubrey Shawn from Redlands East Valley High School. Now I'd like to recognize and celebrate our 12th grade representatives. Alina Jost from Citrus Valley High School. Ethan Morse from Redlands East Valley High School, who actually graduated. He graduated in December, so. Jenea Thompson from Orangewood High School. Well, to you... Oh. Oh. Okay. To all our student trustees, thank you for your leadership, your courage in sharing your perspectives, and your commitment to representing your peers with thoughtfulness and maturity. You've left a mark on this district and have inspired us with your dedication. And now I'm pleased to introduce our, are we going to do pictures first? Are we doing pictures first? Okay. After the picture, hold on, I'm going to go up there. But after the picture, I am pleased to introduce our district athletic director, Doug McKasey, who will recognize four outstanding spring student athletes. Please join me in welcoming him after we take our pictures.

Good evening, board members, cabinet, and superintendent Cabral. I am very honored to be here celebrating four amazing senior athletes in our district and highlighting some other major accomplishments that we've had in this spring sports season. So just to mention a few of our major accolades, we had seven CBL champions this past spring. That was a very high number. We also had eight teams advance to the playoffs, and a few of them will be competing later this week. The baseball and softball playoffs start on Thursday and Friday. Okay, so I'm going to highlight some of the champions we had for the CBL. The boys' tennis team at RHS, this has been an amazing group of seniors, and some of their coaches are here tonight. They went four years undefeated in league. Okay, so a golden accomplishment there. RHS badminton, they repeated as league champions, and they actually were co-champs this year with Redlands East Valley. So district took home both championships. The swim team for the boys at RHS, they have won, I believe it's 11 straight at this point, CBL championships. So amazing job by them. And the girls' swim team repeated as champions this year. It had been a while since Redlands East Valley had won for baseball, so this year they won on an amazing 13-game winning streak to end the season and win the CBL outright. And Citrus Valley Softball, they had won a league championship when they were a smaller school, but this was actually their first CBL championship there for softball, so amazing job by them as well. Okay, and now we're going to celebrate the outstanding spring sport athlete for each high school. This award is not chosen by me directly. They're actually selected by the athletic department and coaches at their school. So we have a very talented group of seniors tonight. Students, when you hear your name called, just come on up and you'll receive your certificate, and then we will have a group picture at the end. Okay, Orangewood High School has selected Regiana Areola as their outstanding spring sport athlete. Come on up, Regiana. She is a multi-sport athlete at Orangewood, playing volleyball, softball, flag football, and soccer. She led the Dragons to their first ever flag football tournament championship this year, and in that tournament scored five touchdowns, playing both wide receiver and running back. She currently is in soccer, and they finished second in league. And she actually, her last game on Friday, she scored three goals in that game. So outstanding job. Coach Perkins. Coach Perkins, who coaches everything at Orangewood, he said she's been an outstanding athlete with great versatility and work ethic and drive. And she completed all her credits early, and she's currently ranked 13th in her class. So amazing job in the classroom as well. Thank you. All right, next up, Citrus Valley High School has selected Matthew Blind as their Outstanding Spring Sport Athlete. Come on up, Matthew. Matthew received four varsity letters in the baseball program at CV, playing in the outfield and being a pitcher for them. He also played football at the varsity level, so six total varsity letters. And he's not a big stat guy. He's very humble. When we met, he didn't even know his stats, which says a lot about his character. But he does lead the team in runs with 35 and has 17 stolen bases, 312 batting average, and 500 assists. on base percentage. And for his career, he had 51 RBIs and five home runs. And last year, he helped lead the Blackhawks to a CBL championship. And this year, they finished in second place and they got a big playoff game Thursday night at CV. And he was this year's recipient for Citrus Valley for the Ken Hubbs Award for the Outstanding Male Athlete. And he was honored last night. at a very nice ceremony. And coaches and admin have praised Matthew for his dedication, hard work, and always displaying class on the field and outside of the field. And he will play at Oregon next year. He committed to them early on, and he has been, again, outstanding in the classroom, 3.8 GPA. And one just brief fun fact about Matthew, he and some of his current teammates are the reason that our middle school league now has a mercy rule in softball. When they played at Beatty, it was quite an ordeal. So congrats again. Congratulations again, Matthew. Thank you. Redlands High School has selected Prabhi Singh as their outstanding spring sport athlete. Come on up, Prabhi. Okay, probably received four varsity letters in tennis. And if I was to go through all his stats, I'd be here half the night. So he had a 59 record this year. First team all CBL every year. He was a two-time MVP of the CBL. And he led RHS to four CBL championships. Like I said earlier, that group has been undefeated, that group of seniors. He's also won individual championships and doubles championships as well. And he qualified for CIF and the prestigious Ojai tournament every year. And coaches Bailey and Comedina, they have just said amazing things about him, his great work on and off the court. And he will attend Duke next year. And his GPA, being 12th in his class, his GPA is a 4.71. So amazing job, probably. Thank you. Redlands East Valley has selected Isabella Bravo as their outstanding spring sport athlete. Come on up, Isabella. Isabella received four varsity letters in track and cross country throughout her high school career. She has really dominated the 800 meter race. And she won the CBL championship both her junior and senior year in that event. Qualified for CIF both years in that event as well. She broke the rev record for the 800 this year. And she also placed third in the 4x400 at the CBL finals, which did qualify her for CIF. She's also had a lot of accolades as a cross-country runner, advancing to the state cross-country meet previously, and this past year was part of a CBL championship team, which had been a while since Redhead won that. She was a huge part of that success. So she was honored by her coaches and teachers at REV for really displaying the REV way, and she will take her talents to Biola next year to run track there. So, outstanding job. Okay, and just give it up one more time for this amazing group of seniors. Thank you.

Smile in one, two, three.

We have our student trustees here that we didn't get to recognize, so we want to do that really quick, and then we'll have some... I was going to say cake, but I don't think I see cake. They're cake-like. Everything has dough and sugar, so... Okay, here we go. And...

Okay, hello again. We are going to recognize two of our trustees who are now here. 11th grade, Ella Ford.

Good job.

Come over here. And in 12th grade, Alina Jost. From Central Valley.

Okay, thank you again, sorry for the interruption again.

And one, two,

Okay, we're going to take about 10 minutes, and you're welcome to some dessert in the back, and we have lemonade, and if you want to take any other pictures, in 10 minutes we're going to resume our meeting. Thank you so much for coming. Congratulations again to everybody.

Okay, student trustee. Alina, do you have anything you want to report?

Yes. So I'll start off with E-Academy. E-Academy has their movie night this Thursday beginning at 4 p.m. Next week, on May 22nd, they have their spring choir and theater concert being held at Rev. Their senior graduation date has been set for June 2nd. And their senior picnic and graduation practice will take place on May 30th at 3 p.m. Their senior grad Disney day will be on June 5th. And finally, their school has finally been able to create e-academy t-shirts for their students and staff. And they are currently being handed out. Moving on to Redlands East Valley. Their boys baseball team took first place in CBL League and they will continue on to CIF playoffs this Friday against Oaks Christian at 315. Redlands East Valley. Yes. Yeah, so congratulations to them. They also had four CBL champions for track and swim had eight winners qualify for CIF. They are having their Film Fest this Friday in their theater, and their door is open at 6.30. Next week, they have their Spring Spirit Week, leading up to their Senior Rally on the 23rd. They also have Senior Awards Day on the 20th, and their Staff vs. Students basketball game is on the 23rd. And they're also kicking off practices for the junior and senior teams for their annual Powder Puff game, which is on May 30th. For RHS, RHS is currently doing Splash the Staff, which is an event that students can participate in by donating a dollar to buy a water droplet or a cup of water to be added to a bucket that will be dumped on a teacher of their choosing. Purchases will last through May 16th through 19th. They will also be hosting their Penny War event through May 19th through the 23rd. Each fourth period classroom will have a jar that they can fill with pennies to try and win a pizza party. Lastly, the RHS swim team recently went to CIF. Congrats to all the finalists. Lastly, at Citrus Valley, many of our band and orchestra students at REV, RHS, and CB, including me, participated in the all-district band and orchestra concerts, which took place on May 6th and 7th at the University of Redlands. The Memorial Chapel was packed both days, and their performances were incredible. CV also held a multicultural fair this past Saturday on May 10th. There were fabulous cultural performances, food vendors, and student showcases. CV Badminton is hosting a home CIF game today against Chino Hills High School. And our girls flag football tryouts have begun today. Lastly, our school's possibilities prom is this Saturday, May 17th. Citrus Valley staff and students are volunteering to give our special education students an incredible prom night. Thank you.

Thank you, Elena, and thank you for being here all these times. Appreciate it. Of course.

Thank you so much.

Best of luck to you at UCR.

Thank you.

Have a great one.

And I'm very sorry, but we need to take a five to ten, about a ten-minute break, and we will be right back.

We are going to convene into closed session for not more than ten minutes. It's not a break.

We're going to close session.

We're going to convene back into open session. We're back in open session, and we have nothing to report out from closed session. Thank you. We will continue now with association reports, and we'll start with Rapa. Rapa.

Good evening to our board. Superintendent Cabral, Deputy Superintendent Hill and Cabinet, thank you for the opportunity to update you on behalf of RAPA this evening. This is always a busy and exciting time of year as we close out in our last 16-ish days of school, but who's counting? Our principals are very busy wrapping up state assessments as well as AP exams and preparing for the end of the year awards assemblies, promotion celebrations, and of course the biggest celebration of our high schools with our graduations. These are the moments for our students to shine and to be celebrated for their incredible accomplishments and growth throughout their time in RUSD. RAPA is really proud to be presenting eight scholarships this year at the various awards night across our high schools. Being on the scholarship selection committee is always a really tough job as there's so many deserving students across our district. But we're super excited to honor the students that we're able to and to offer them the support as they embark on their future goals. Our RAPA team is also busy planning on our end-of-the-year social for our management team to celebrate the hard work and the accomplishments across our district. And we're also working on recruiting our RAPA board for the 25-26 school year. And then I just want to close out by thanking our superintendent, Cabral, for his unwavering leadership of our team and our district. We are very proud to work alongside our superintendent and to serve our Redlands communities. We are looking forward to finishing this year strong with the great celebrations for both our students and our staff, and we're excited to embrace the new as we begin planning the 25-26 school year. Thank you. Thank you.

Moving on to board committee reports. Does anyone have anything they'd like to report on tonight?

I just want to remind everyone that tomorrow is an evening in appreciation for CRYROP tomorrow. Excellence. Evening of excellence. And that is tomorrow at San Bernardino Valley College starting at 5 p.m.

Okay, I have a Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission to report on. This is from the April 10th meeting. They approved a tree dedication in Israel Beale Park for Herbert Israel Rona. I met Angela Wilkinson. She's the great-great-granddaughter to Israel, daughter of the late Herbert Beale. And her great-great-uncle Charles Beale was the first African-American to play football and graduate from Redlands High School in 1905. And he was the postmaster in Redlands. Also, the Redlands Skate Park is going to be having their BMX Skate Jam on May 31st from 12 to 6. So if you are interested in that, go and join the fun. And their next meeting will be on June 12th.

for REP. REP had the 37th evening of appreciation and they recognized teachers, classified employees, and young artists. And the young artists were very, very impressive. I was very, very impressed. All of the staff and the teachers were also very impressive. They had one classified staff and one teacher nominated from each elementary school, and then the final four were selected by the rep committee. And all of the stories and the testimonies and the videos of the teachers and the staff was really touching, and we've got some great people working in this district. So thank you so much.

Anybody else? All right. Superintendent's report. Next we'll have Superintendent Mr. Cabral.

Yes, thank you.

I spoke a little bit about it last meeting. We are finalizing our first year under DOJ mandates, OCR mandates. We had 96 different mandates that were given to us last summer. I'm happy to say that we're compliant, but you will see a report come out at the end of this month. It actually probably will be public in June, but the DOJ is finalizing that report, and so we look forward to the community reviewing that and holding us accountable to the work that we're doing. I also want to say that our compliance department led by Dr. Rudy Wilson has done a tremendous job this year not only ensuring that every single case is investigated, but that it's done thoroughly and that it's done with fidelity. I also want to commend our site administrators, our principals, our vice principals, who have led the work at the site level to ensure that students are safe, and we appreciate that. To our teachers and classified staff also, every single person has helped ensure that these 96 mandates were not only done correctly, but that everybody went through the training to ensure that we keep students safe. And so I very much appreciate that. Thank you. Not a report, but a comment that will be coming up is we are going to pull the, or we're going to recommend that the board pull the item for approving the ethnic studies curriculum. And I just want to speak to that a little bit because we have an approved ethnic studies class currently that students are taking, and that's not going to change. But what we need to do for the class of 2030 is have a condensed semester course and that is what we're working on and we have our committee a curriculum committee that's working on that we thought we were prepared to have that looked at this evening but we're recommending that we pull it because we want to make it more clear that we do have a semester course that we're condensing and we just want there to be more clarity and so that's the reason but we do have an ethnic studies course that's already been approved by the board that we've had for several years that kids are currently taking right now and will still have an opportunity to take next school year.

That's all I have.

All right, we're now moving on to public participation. Members of the public may address the board on matters within its jurisdiction by submitting a completed registration card to the clerk. or designated staff member prior to the start of public comments on the agenda items. This is not a forum for debate. Policy-related complaints will be referred to the superintendent. When called, speakers may proceed to the podium, state their name and trustee area, and speak for the allotted time. The amount of time will be announced by the board president before the first speaker begins and will not exceed three minutes. Tonight we will do one and a half minutes. Clerk Wilson, do you have any speaker cards for those who wish to speak on any agenda or consent items?

I do. Our first speaker is Pat Molnar, and so she has two cards. They're for one and a half minutes.

Good evening, board. Good evening, community. I'm here to speak on two topics, professionalism and morality. And the first issue I'm addressing is specifically the censure. I come to these meetings. You know my face. I'm here all the time. I see what's happening. I watch what's happening. I watch what's up here. Nothing happened of consequence other than a disagreement. And it is not moral to be a person who says, turn together cheek, accept other viewpoints, judge not lest he be judged, and then accuse somebody of something that didn't happen. That's called politely an untruth. So please... Please consider not voting as a group of you all to pursue an untruth because that's not moral. I believe also I have seen this board. I've seen the people on the board. I've been watching this a long time, and I've seen characters. And I will tell you I understand. I see what's going on here, and there are certain characters that are more reliable and those that are less. That's enough on that topic. Can I use my minutes for the other topic or no? No, right? No. The other topic I wish to address, again, is morality and professionalism. And when it comes to professionalism, I am a professional teacher of 30 years. I have professional librarians that I work closely in concert with as an English teacher. I value their expertise as they guide students to books that will both interest them and expand their worldview. We want critical thinkers for the world ahead of them. This is a confusing world. And we need to have not just a sanitized, simplified, whitewashed kind of view of history. That's called propaganda. That's not history. And if we decide that we are going to simplify books and take away – I heard the other day that you guys were thinking of, well, librarians can't be on the committee. That, for me, is outrageous. librarians are professionals. And I don't know in Candy and Jeanette, in your classrooms, in all your years of teaching, your professionalism, your guidance, how you are going to judge the students that are in my school now and say they cannot read books. I do not think that that is a good place for you to be in. I do not think that's appropriate. That's not professional. Also, in terms of morality, I know you have sincerely, I believe you have at least, sincerely held beliefs. But do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What I do for the least of my brothers, please do not take away somebody else's right to have that same judgment. Thank you, Pat.

Next up, we have Lindsay Schmitz, followed by Janann Elias. Welcome, Lindsay.

Good evening. My name is Lindsay Schmitz, and I'd like to tell you a personal story related to AR 1312.2. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being a writer. And when I found a book one day in my high school library that I'd heard used language really creatively, I checked it out and I brought it home, and I told my mom how excited I was to read A Clockwork Orange. Now, my mom knew a little bit about this book and what was in it, and she knew me. I was a sensitive kid. She told me she didn't think I should read it and why, and I returned it. What she did not do was march down to the school library and demand its removal for others. I revisited Clockwork Orange years later, and it was a hard read. It contains graphic violence, sexual assault. Its themes are valuable, but my mom was right. It would have devastated me at 16, me personally. My husband, on the other hand, read the same book as a teenager. He was able to handle its heavy topics, and in him it sparked a lifelong interest in ethics, justice, and the nature of free will. My mother didn't try to decide what was right for everyone else's children, and we shouldn't either. As for my own RUSD children, it's too early to tell what they will be able to handle. I'm certainly not worried about someone sneaking Clockwork Orange into their elementary school library. I'm more worried about someone sneaking it out of their future high school library, or rather, challenging it. Under the proposed system, this book would be immediately removed for its graphic content. Most chillingly, after it's reviewed, there's no provision to stop bad actors from immediately challenging it again, potentially keeping it off shelves in perpetuity and silencing the important message that a government who seeks to take free will and choice from its citizens strips them from their humanity. Thank you.

And Anne, welcome. Hi.

Welcome for you guys as well. Thank you for being here tonight. I'm here to talk about the AR 1312. I want to remind you that school librarians are not only credentialed teachers. We are educators who have completed a master's degree in addition to specialized credentialing to become a librarian. We are likely the only educators on a campus who have taken coursework in the ethical and developmentally appropriate selection of books for young minds. This is why the proposal to change the book challenge policy is so deeply hurtful. It undermines the expertise we've worked hard to develop and sends us the message that this district does not value us or its libraries. Most of the books being mentioned in previous meetings as obscene are not pornographic. They are stories that reflect the harsh realities of life, realities that, sadly, some of our students have experienced for themselves. These books provide representation, connection, and often healing. Stripping them from our shelves does more harm than good. It's important to remember that schools exist first and foremost to serve the families who send their children to us. And only families, not unaffiliated persons, should have a say in what their individual children are reading. If a parent is concerned about their own child's access to a book, we have procedures in place to handle that, and we have used them. But in our entire district, only one parent has made a request. That speaks volumes. It shows that our families do not need a new challenge policy. They need the option to guide their own child. The proposed changes cater to pressure from people of no ties to our schools, not students, staff, or parents. Not one person who supported the changes was a parent, a staff, a student, none of them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up we have Chris clot ease followed by sue he dee Welcome Chris good evening

My name is Chris Claudus. I am a resident of Redlands. I am a retired public school teacher, and I am grandfather to five RUSD students. Proposal 1312 claims to provide parental control over their children's reading selections, and yet it does nothing of the sort. Parental control is currently very well protected, and in any case, this proposal does nothing to extend that control. The true hidden agenda of this proposal is spelled out in Section 2.2, which states that any book will be removed from the school if anyone claims that it has sexual content. This backdoor workaround is a thinly disguised attack on the First Amendment. What if I were to complain that the U.S. Constitution has sexual content? Would you remove that document from the schools? The books you are attacking are in truth not sexual in nature, but they are profound statements on the danger of predatory behavior disguised as government. I want my grandchildren to read The Trial, Brave New World, and Why the Caged Bird Sings. I want my grandchildren to know the benefits they will accrue as members of an egalitarian society and the dangers they will face as members of a despotic society. Thank you, Chris.

Welcome, Sue. Hi, I'm a parent to two kids in our USD school district. I want to read from All Boys Aren't Blue. It's one of the most banned books. It would not be found in an elementary or middle school library. You might find it in high school. Here's what George Johnson says. This book, which you are currently reading, is the second most banned book in the United States as I write this. This book, which has never taken a life, never caused harm, a book that has helped build empathy, helped so many of you learn about the agency you have as young adults, the power you already have to change this world. Your right to know the truth about the topics you live through on a daily basis that folks think are too heavy to discuss with you. They won't ban assault weapons to protect you, but they will ban books. People don't want you to shine because one day your story will change the world. People will fight tooth and nail to suppress your story, ban your story, because they will see how many people are being healed by your triumphs through tragedy. They will see how many people your story is activating for good. Your story will become the sword against their hate and bigotry. Lastly, when will we receive the survey that we were promised in January at your meeting? Thank you, Sue.

Next up, we have Aster, followed by Eriko Grossman.

Welcome, Aster.

Hi, my name is Aster, as you know, and I go to Redlands High School, and I'm both queer and trans. I don't want to be here right now. I am a junior in high school during AP season. I should be studying for the exam I have tomorrow, not arguing against policies that would ban books at my libraries and flags in my classrooms. Every argument against trans kids in sports or teaching queer history in schools or showing pride flags in the windows of a classroom falls flat because trans kids literally just want to exist. Trans rights are human rights. People's rational fears of trans people speaks volumes about their character, not mine. The kids that are supposedly afraid to change in a locker room at school because of a trans kid should come share their experiences. And if you claim, well, they're scared. They're not going to be here. I'm terrified right now. I hate public speaking. There are people in this room that don't want people like me to exist. A lot of parents need to learn that children are not their possessions. They aren't something you created, and now you get to control them. Kids have their own dreams, their own ideas, their own hopes. They're people too. These bills that want to forcibly out kids to their parents will mean that parents that can't accept their children will tear them apart for something they weren't ready to tell them to begin with. The bill that wants to ban pride flags, foreign countries flags, cultural celebration months, and books will only serve to discourage kids that don't belong and tell them that there will never be a place where they belong. Instead of passing discriminatory bills, spend more money on arts and the music programs. Thank you, Astrid.

Welcome, Erica.

Erica Grossman from Area 2. In 2022, over 3,000 books addressing sexual violence, such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, were banned from schools. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I find these bans deeply painful. They don't protect children. They silence victims. You're banning LGBTQ plus books by labeling them pornography. By doing this, you're dehumanizing children and imply their very existence is wrong and inappropriate. The idea that books can turn somebody gay or transgender is a baseless myth, a falsehood long debunked by experts. But if you claim that, you're just exposing your own transphobia and homophobia. I wish schools had offered more books about LGBTQ+, so students could have known without fear or shame that there is nothing wrong with being themselves. It seems freedom of speech applies to you, but not to us. You impose your hate speech on our students while seeking to erase their flags and symbols. Where is freedom? That fairness, where is the compassion? Small pride flags and symbols can make such a big difference for LGBTQ plus students. Will you also demand that teachers remove their religious posters from schools? Or is the irrational meant only for us? If you burn the flags, I will make sure every student in every school I visit knows exactly who made that decision. Thank you, Erica. Thank you. Board Member Olson, oh, sorry. It was clear that Melissa Ayala Quintero was deeply upset by what happened at the meeting. Our students were being dehumanized by adults, and Melissa stepped in to defend them, following a basic principle, see something, say something. Yet President Randler seems more concerned with defending Candy Olson, who encouraged those agitators to harm our students. Our staff training video from Kenan Safe Schools makes one thing clear. Disrespecting someone's gender identity or sexual orientation is considered sexual harassment. It also states, make it clear to your students that negative comments, homophobic jokes, and stereotypical language are unacceptable. Step immediately when you witness harassment or other harmful behaviors towards a student. Melissa did exactly that. She upheld the very rules meant to protect students. You can easily picture Candy Olson laughing, just as Melissa described. I saw Candy grinning when Valerie Tabor was escorted out of the board meeting that night. It's on video. It's truly appalling that our genuine outrage in defense of students is being treated like a joke. Melissa El Quintero, thank you for standing up for our students. People like you make a real difference. Thank you. Thank you, Angela.

Next up we have AF, A-Y-A-F, followed by Jean Saglam.

I'm sure we all know what this book and flag-ban policy entails, and I'm not here to let far-right benefactors control the conversation with all their fuzzy language. After all, the problems you people speak of don't actually exist. I know this firsthand as a trans student, since the people like me that you feel a need to persecute are already afraid to speak out, all because of the way society is structured and because of how people like you act. So why then do you feel the need to continue shutting down a group of kids that in a recent 2024 study, 56% of whom have experienced targeted discrimination, 20% of whom have been physically harmed because of said discrimination? 35% having seriously contemplated suicide, and 11% having attempted to do just that, by virtue of simply being LGBTQ. No matter the lies you engineer, the only thing you have are your fragile little egos, whose only source of contentment is stepping on other people. All the while, kids are out there on the verge of killing themselves because they have people like you for their parents. And the moment we are no longer vulnerable is the very same moment that you turn your attention to some other outgroup, as has been done to us. But no matter what number of dog whistles you employ, there will always be people, students, who will see through your deception, who will see through the facade, and will never be deceived. For the will to power follows its own laws, which it may mask, but kids never lie.

Welcome, Jean.

Good evening. That was so moving. I'm going to start with a quote. From H. Storm, Lightning Bolt, 1994. Everyone benefits when there are fewer conformist, fewer social slaves among us and more people who are self-responsible. This is brought about through choice. Banning books from our school libraries is an attempt to erase diversity in all forms, religious, political, racial, family identity, and personal identity. History shows banning books never works. Family members remember what happens and passes down the true history. Humanity rises again to show diversity is the foundation to life itself, to successful societies, and to our freedom.

Thank you, Jean.

Next, we have Tim Ormsby, followed by JB. Welcome, Tim.

Hello. Hi. My name is Tim Ormsby. I'm a resident of Trustee Area 2. And I want to speak against AR 1312.2 because I think it makes it far too easy to remove books from the library. All it takes is for somebody... It has to be a parent, a guardian, a family member. That's not defined exactly, a student or staff. But these people can get advice from other people. All it takes is for somebody to complain that a book contains pornographic or erotic content. What's pornographic? What's erotic? And the book is instantly removed. It doesn't come back. It waits until the school board meets, which may be 45 days later, and the school board votes on whether the book is appropriate or not. I don't think the school board was elected to be the morality police. I think we already have a community process for evaluating books. It's a complicated issue. It can be a complicated issue with values and opinions on both sides. And there is a process in place for dealing with it in Section 1, which already exists. That section is bypassed when somebody complains that a book contains books. pornographic, erotic, or sexual material. It's not a good system. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim.

I have two blue cards, but I have one speech. Can I get my time combined, or do I need to stop after a minute and a half?

If you could stop, and then I'll start the clock again.

Welcome, JB. Hello again, board members. Thank you for being here and listening to our concerns, the concerns of we the parents. This marks five years for me coming here, and your crowd has grown significantly since then. Thank you for standing tall last meeting and being on the right side of history by voting to keep boys out of girls' sports, gyms, bathrooms, and private spaces. You received national recognition and became the third district in California to do so. Congratulations. The article stated, California school board votes three to two to ban boys from girls sports. Here are just some of the first comments. That schools even have to vote on this is ridiculous. It should have been unanimous. Those two people need to be voted out, Patty and Melissa. You need a list of the no voters because they don't have what's right for the children in their heart. Common sense is starting to prevail. The other two need to be voted out.

JB, excuse me. That's not on an agenda item. That's for public comment later.

Okay, I'm getting to the agenda items. They're coming. Can I get my time stopped and get that time back, please?

Well, yeah, just this can't be something that... Can I reclaim my time?

I've had a debate with you about this. I'll move on.

We can... Yeah, if you're going to speak to an agenda item, we'll reset.

Thank you. She's right on. Flags that divide and single out groups with pornographic literature in school libraries do not follow common sense and serve only to divide. San Bernardino City has opt-out forms for parents who don't want their kids to learn sex ed or STDs from their teachers. If 1% of your student body and their parents want to read this filth to their kids, then let them. They can opt out of the school library readings in exchange for whatever unholy and perverted readings they want to trans-educate their children with at home. Keep these perverted and pornographic readings out of your schools. It should be the parents' choice what their own child is exposed to, so let's leave it up to the parents. In closing, as Idaho bans the pride flag in their school and states, it's clear that these radical implementations will not last. Like Sonia Shaw said last meeting, we are going to win this fight, and so I'm here on behalf of the little ones. Please get on the right side of history and common sense with your votes here again tonight. Amen.

Thank you, JP.

So you didn't want to speak to your second card?

That was it. I had one speech for two and a half, for three minutes, but apparently it was not on topic.

Next up, we have Tricia Keeling, followed by Val Zavis.

Okay, censure. There's a lot I could say about why this censure is a ridiculous waste of time and energy, but I'd like to address one main point. Board member Olsen is claiming to have been threatened by board member Ayala Quintero, despite there being zero evidence to support this. It seems as if board member Olsen is saying she's against violence, but her social media history tells an entirely different story. In March, she shared a post on social media of an image of a woman hanging outside of a vehicle with an AR-15. The text said, if you can't picture her like this, she's not the one. This was posted just days after Loma Linda Medical Center was evacuated for an active shooter threat. I'd be shocked, but I've seen the other things she's posted, and to be fair, the majority of these were made before she took public office. That post, however, was made months after she took an oath to be in this position. With the reality of gun violence and school shootings, making social media posts glorifying drive-by shootings is not funny. To me, glorifying drive-by shootings on social media is more of a reason to censure you than anything else. And to that point, I've personally witnessed you scoffing at me, laughing at other constituents when they say things you don't agree with. Even tonight, you've barely looked at the speakers, including students. Please be respectful to Redlands residents. Thank you. And on book bans and flag bans, this is my fourth time speaking on the flag ban, but I did have one new point I'd like to make. With the flag ban policy, there's a provision that reads, promotion or recognition is prohibited by district employees while acting in his or her capacity as a representative of the district. Volunteers while on school grounds or school-sponsored events and district social media platforms that center on advocacy of political or social agendas, activism, or ideological and highly controversial positions. My question is this, does this not apply to you board members, Jeanette Wilson and Candy Olson? Because the last two board meetings you wore very offensive shirts that originated in a bullying campaign of a minor. To me that is quite ideological and controversial. Brown Act violation? We're not sure yet. So will that policy only be enforced with people you don't agree with? Because if you followed your own policy, you'd be in violation. It just goes to show how you both intend to use this to further discriminate against marginalized groups. And as for the book banning policy, it wasn't even written by this board. It was written by a political activist in Tennessee that flies out here to California. Book bans are un-American, every child deserves a freedom to read, and our librarians deserve respect for their educated decisions on appropriateness. Thank you. Thank you, Trisha. Welcome, Val.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, we live in a divided country. Our children are surrounded by division. Schools should not be one of those places where everyone feels left out. Every child deserves to be respected, feel safe, and valued. I believe the power of unity starts in our classrooms where one flag is displayed. How can all of the children feel included with certain flags on display that only represent a particular group? Ensuring the American flag is the only flag displayed does just that. It represents all the kids in a classroom regardless of their gender, race, who they are attracted to, or which cause they are fighting for. What better way to unite than one flag, one symbol for all? Any other flag is a political or ideological symbol and intentionally creates division rather than unity. Schools should be a neutral place for learning, one where there is no pressure to conform to a particular worldview. Once the classroom stops being neutral, it becomes a place where students cannot think critically or be themselves. Symbols on the walls do not teach inclusion and kindness. We need teachers, parents, and even board members to be that model.

Thank you, y'all. Thank you.

Next up, we have John Berry followed by Joshua Hall.

Welcome, John. Welcome. Howdy. Item 18B, censure. It's bad enough that Melissa Ianna Quintero doesn't take responsibility for her actions, but she deflected them onto the rest of the school board. I would not let my teenage son get away with that if he pulled that kind of behavior. She needs to be censured. Item 22A, the flag policy, this is the shoulder patch I wore in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the American flag because it represents its all. You notice it's not the pride flag because that's a divisive flag that balkanizes people based on what? Pronouns? Proclivities? Preferences? I mean, it's not even clear what it's about. What is clear... is that it's insulting to veterans that the pride attempts to gain legitimacy by glomming onto the sacrifice of veterans. Thanks.

Thank you, Tom. Welcome, Joshua.

First of all, I'm getting sick and tired of the book ban debate. I've said it before and I'll say it again. But just because a book is not available in a public school library does not mean it's banned. Any book that is unavailable in a public school library is usually available in your local city or county library. You can purchase it on Amazon or eBay or go to Barnes and Noble. So I'm sick of that bullshit fiction saying, oh, a book's not available...

You guys used profanity a few weeks ago. Thank you. Joshua, no more. I'm sorry.

Anyway, I'm tired.

I'm sorry.

Next up, we have Dale Broom, followed by Rachel Ugly.

Just for clarification, I submitted an orange card. Are we doing those later?

Yes.

Okay, so I'll just talk about... Yeah, my name is Dale Broom, Area 1, and I'd like to address the policy AR-13. Yeah, you want to say it? Yeah, I'd like to... Dale Broom, Area 1. I'd like to discuss this policy AR-13-12.2, specifically regarding the school library books. You know, the school board... needs to keep focus on what is the primary purpose of this proposal. And that is to protect our children and our teens from protect their sexual innocence by keeping pornographic books out of the school libraries. Books, and I will tell you, I've reviewed all those books that were submitted. I read them all. I critiqued them. We went through nine books. We found three of them in the middle school libraries, even though they were not appropriately recommended for that age group. But in any event, they cover topics such as teen sexual intercourse, sexual fondling, fornication, rape, masturbation, oral sex, pedophilia acts, pornographic videos, and sex trafficking of minors. Now, I'm not just saying lightly referencing, but describing the acts. They are very graphic, and I think books like these need to be considered for review and removal from the libraries. I want to remind that in the state of California, teens are not able to give consent to sexual intercourse. So if they can't do that in the state of California, then why are we allowing them to read this material in the schools? So I want to urge them also to remove the section in Section 2 about the district residents being excluded from the review process. Everybody who's a citizen should be able to comment on these books. Thank you.

Thank you, Dale. Thank you. Thank you.

Dale, you had a second card. Did you want to use it? Yes. Not your orange card, but you had a second blue card. He did.

Okay. Thank you. Okay, Rachel.

If it's both policies, it should be one like we talked about.

No, it was two different policies.

Okay, just to make sure.

I'm Rachel Euclid, a resident of the city of Redlands for many, many years. There is a problem with training of the dogs, and it's consistent with having the wrong library books that I have read our schools also what has happened is that the repetition of reading the books is not a positive recommendation this will not encourage this will encourage them to act on different responses and When it comes to the flag, the same thing happens. We have no history, no civil classes that people can understand the meaning of the American flag. They fought for our country. When they wrote the Constitution, include the flag, and even the education, there was no need to have any divisive action that was needed at that time. We all were unified by the means of both the correct educational books and the American flag. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel.

Next up we have Lawrence Hebron, followed by Christy Reddick.

Welcome, Lawrence.

Good evening. My name is Lawrence Hebron. I live in Area 3 of the Redlands School District. They say an indicator of emotional maturity is when you stop thinking everything is about you. I'd like to recommend this to our friends on the LGBTQ side of the flag policy issue. The proposed new flag policy has nothing to do with trans flags, or really flags at all. It has to do with intimidation. Teachers often exert tremendous influence over their students. And when teachers display signs of their personal beliefs in the classroom, it can become emotionally coercive. I was a classroom teacher for close to a quarter century. I remember the morning I walked up to the door of my classroom to open it up and found two parents and their daughter waiting for me. One of the parents said, Mr. Hebron, will you please tell our daughter that such and such is true? She won't believe us, but she'll believe you. You are her teacher. There is no place for displays of personal ideology in the classroom, especially when that ideology may offend many of the parents of the children in the classroom. And if a teacher doesn't understand how unprofessional this is, then the school board needs to step up and enforce propriety through policy. So, no trans flags or Nazi flags or communist flags or Muslim or Jewish or Christian flags or MAGA flags. Keep it neutral. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Lawrence.

Welcome, Christy.

Hi. I'm going to talk about the... books in the flag. Redlands has not always been an equal rights community. The generations before me had to fight to gain respect and recognition as members of the community. With that being said, Redlands has made progress and has become a place enriched with many different cultures, races, religion, and sexual orientations. Books that include both the good and the bad parts of history help people learn from the past and better understand one another. Not all people are the same. and books reflect that. No individual should have the authority to ban books that are in our school libraries merely because a parent finds the content uncomfortable. I'm sure my parents felt uncomfortable when they banned black and brown people from swimming at the plunge in Redlands in the 50s and 60s. They were only allowed to swim on Mondays because after they swim, they drain the water to clean it so that the white people could swim in it with clean water. for the rest of the week. This ban finally ended when a teacher spoke up and asked why this was happening. My point is, you can't hide the past. You cannot prevent people from writing stories about how they feel or who they are. You cannot silence people just because you feel uncomfortable. And most of all, you cannot ban people for not being like you. To quote Heinrich Hein. Oh, this is great. Thank you, Christy. It's a really good quote.

Thank you.

Next up we have Michael Paisner followed by Christina Long. Welcome, Michael.

Thank you. Michael Paisner, parent here in Redlands. There is a glaring problem with this censure motion. Censure motions are supposed to call out unwanted behavior and censure the person who engaged in that unwanted behavior. I defy you. Read the third clause of this motion and point to the unwanted behavior. Really, the only unwanted behavior described is Ms. Olson disrespecting and laughing at speakers. You're censuring the wrong person. Let's break down the exact wording in this motion, shall we? There's two actions solely attributed to Ms. Aya Quintero, asking Ms. Olson if she laughed and turning her chair. Neither of those actions warrant a censure motion. Ms. Olson, on the other hand, is accused of disrespecting and laughing at speakers, which, by the way, is 100% consistent with Ms. Olson's pattern of bullying that she does online, and she absolutely deserves censure. Passing this motion only accomplishes one thing. It demonstrates the dysfunction of this board. Ms. Rendler, to be clear, you are centering Ms. Iacontaro for doing your job for you. Perhaps you can take on the task of curbing Ms. Olson's bullying. Good luck with that. You will have your hands full. Moving on to that favorite American pastime, banning books and flags. Discriminatory policies are illegal in California, and once the discriminatory intent of a proposed policy is established, tweaking the wording does not eliminate that intent. The policy will still be ruled illegal by the courts. Both the flag policy and the book review policy have already been established as discriminatory. The original version of the flag policy was explicit in its anti-LGBTQ discriminatory intent, and we've seen more of it here tonight. The book policy is motivated by a website created by a friend of Ms. Olson's that is explicit in its intent to ban LGBTQ books. illegal in California. In fact, Ms. Olsen doubled down on her LGBTQ discrimination this weekend by attending a rally hosted by a hate group and posting about it on social media. She attended a rally hosted by a group designated as an LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that group said they were thrilled to be labeled an LGBTQ hate group. Even if our bigot-in-chief embraces this hatred, our courts have not, which means you will lose the resulting legal battle on these policies and waste our school district's dollars in the process. Ms. Rendler, don't waste our school's precious resources on legal battles. You can't win. Thank you. Thank you, Michael.

Thank you.

Welcome, Christina.

Thank you. Thank you, trustees and superintendent, for your time. My name is Christina Long. I'm a homeowner in District 1. And I'm here to speak against the proposed ceremonies, observances, and flag display policy. As a former school counselor and college advisor, as well as a trained policy researcher, I've worked with students from kindergarten through college, and I bring a really strong passion to help students thrive. I have two concerns to bring to you. The first one is there's no empirical evidence that a flag ban policy would increase positive school climate and inclusive school climate. There's no research, there's no evidence that tells us this is the case. Second, based on the research, I'm actually concerned that such a policy would jeopardize student mental health significantly. In particular, the mandated removal of symbols of equality, such as the pride flag from classrooms, concerns me. While in grad school at Stanford, one of my core areas of study was education policy and its impact on youth mental health. We know that symbols such as the pride flag are critical to establishing welcoming spaces at school for LGBTQ youth. Some refer to this policy as neutral. The true measure of neutrality of a policy is not the intent, it is the impact. What will be the impact of this policy on students? I believe we have a responsibility as leaders, education leaders in Redlands and as community members to do evidence-based, data-driven policy. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Christina. Thank you.

Next up we have Peter Hall followed by Gina Porter.

Earlier some guy made a reference to the U.S. Constitution. and said that he could submit a complaint to get it banned because it had sexual content. Well, if he were to do that, he would be lying because there is no sexual content in the U.S. Constitution. So I have absolutely no idea why he made that reference. And secondly, everybody who is in support of not removing these books from school libraries and stuff, they were all for censorship of people during the COVID years. when people were getting banned from social media and even getting deplatformed and having their lives ruined because they questioned the experts. So we had to be experts just to talk about important public topics. And now they're saying that it supports free speech. Since when? They don't support freedom of speech. They support their freedom of speech and nobody else's. So that's what I have to say about that. Also, like my brother said, a lot of these books you can buy online, you can get at any bookstore. They are not being banned. They are just being removed from schools because they don't have any educational value. Thank you. Thank you, Peter.

Hi. Gina Porter, Citrus Valley High School teacher librarian. Welcome, Gina. Hi. I spoke at the last meeting, but I ran out of time. There were a few things that I wanted to point out. And I was speaking specifically regarding proposed changes to AR 1312.2, the library materials. What I had run out of time to say is that we do have the policies in place that we follow. Procedures, they are pretty much standard across numerous districts, not just in California, but across the country. For choosing books for the library, we follow procedures for weeding books or removing books. And we have a procedure in place for parents who do not want their children to get certain books. So if a parent or guardian does not want their child to check out a specific book or books, all they need to do is call the school library and request that a note be placed in Destiny. That's the online program that we use to keep track of our books and our materials. And we'll put a note in Destiny to that effect. If the student were to try to check out a book that is on the list of things they cannot have, a note would pop up and notify us, and then we would just discreetly tell them, like, sorry, can't check out this book. To date, no such requests have been made at any of the high schools. None of those requests have been made at the middle school level. And only one parent at the elementary level has requested that we not check out specific books to their child. So I think it's important to understand that there are policies that we follow. There are policies that we have. So thank you.

Thank you, Tina. Next up, we have Paige Mann, followed by Bruce Laycook. Welcome, Paige.

I live in Jeanette Wilson's district, and I noticed that faith has played a kind of prominent role in these discussions, so I'll speak as a librarian and as a Christian. One way you can think of libraries is like gardens of Eden in which there are trees of life and of knowing good and evil and they grow in the center. Genesis 2, 16, 17 says that the Lord God commanded Adam, you're free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you do, you will surely die. And yet, our all-powerful and all-knowing God chose to grow that tree right next to the tree of life and in the center of the garden. So when we perceive a threat to innocence, we must ask ourselves, why would God do that? And how can we follow God's example? Let us not follow Adam and Eve's example, which is fearing naked bodies, distrusting others like our educators, and hiding from God instead of drawing near to be more like God. Thanks. Thank you, Paige.

Welcome, Bruce.

On the first topic of the censure, In Luke 17, verses 3 and 4, Jesus says, forgive, not once, but seven times. Forgive, don't censure. If you are a person of faith, this is not an optional activity. That's it. Now for the second topic. prohibited activities listed, promotion or recognition, dot, dot, dot, by staff or volunteers, dot, dot, dot, of controversial topics. So if you're on a speech debate, coach, and you're talking about the back power movement or the Chicano power movement or the AIDS epidemic, those were all very controversial issues. Are you saying that they're not allowed to show the fist that was the black pride flag? That doesn't make sense. You can't erase history, and the flags are not just a representation of a viewpoint, but they tell a story of people who have been harmed by the larger majority. Don't do it. Thank you, Bruce.

Next up we have Jeff Pogge, followed by Mandy Parks.

Welcome, Jeff.

Thank the board.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, board. Thank you for your service. I have just one question for the board regarding the imposition of flag bans and book bans. You know without question that that will lead to the district forced to defend itself again and again and spend millions of dollars, as has been documented all over the country. The question I have is why the board would entertain any notion of this stuff. As our previous speakers have well-documented, California and this district already has in place the tools for deciding what is legal and representational. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. Welcome, Mandy.

Thank you very much. So I'm here tonight. My name's Mandy Parks. I'm in District 1. I'm here as a parent of two Redlands Unified School students. I'm also here because my 12-year-old daughter really wanted to be here, supporting her friends and her cousin, my Amazing trans nephew. I'm also here because of extreme concern about both items for discussion tonight. I fully reviewed the proposed revisions to the existing policy for the book ban. As others have pointed out, there already is a pathway for requesting review of student material. The revised approach being discussed is incredibly vague and open to interpretation. All it takes is for one member of the public to allege, not demonstrate, but allege that a book contains material that They personally feels explicit for it to be required to be pulled and placed in permanent ban. There is no definition provided for this material allowing anyone to define anything as pornographic or explicit and fast tracking it to permanent removal. This process is written, is giving a direct path for individual people to exert extreme control over a huge part of our children's foundational learning. To remove books on a whim with little more required than filling out a short form. an action that then makes them unavailable at school sites permanently. I choose to trust the dedicated professionals in Redlands Unified, the amazingly dedicated and qualified teachers, librarians, support staff to evaluate and curate material to help my children learn and grow. I choose to take responsibility to be involved.

Thank you, Mandy.

Hello.

Welcome, Summer. Hello. I'm an RUSD student who attends Coat Middle School. I'm here to talk about the flag ban. It should not be banned. Why? Middle school is hard enough as is. Banning the pride flag would just make it worse. Also, the pride flag doesn't do any harm. It doesn't suppress students or it doesn't force students to think a certain way. Furthermore, the pride flag shows who's an ally for the LGBTQ students who knows who to confide to. Personally, I know many students who would be affected by this ban. A club is also being affected, Pride Club. From this ban, this club is now being forced to be called Monday Lunch. Thank you. Thank you, Summer.

Next up, we have Kaya. Yeah. Followed by Catherine Appleby.

Welcome, Kaia.

I'm a person. I'm a human being. But most importantly, I'm a student. I'm one of the people you were given the power to represent and affect. You have the responsibility to speak up for us. Not a religious group. Not a personal agenda. You represent us. Most students didn't know that these policies were happening until I walked around with a petition. And I will keep coming back to these meetings, as I'm sure you've seen me here before, until these policies are off the table. We are not asking for special privileges or special representation. I'm supposed to be doing my stats homework, not arguing if I deserve a right of privacy, a right of self-expression, a right to life, liberty, and happiness as guaranteed to us by our founding fathers. I'm tired of fighting for my life during my graduation year. If this was about education, this policy would not be in play. Thank you for your time.

Welcome, Katherine. Good evening. Board Member Wilson, I want to confirm that I have seven blue cards.

Yep, looks like, yep.

Awesome, thank you. Starting first with Section 8, Part F, the approve agreement with Soliant Health. I am here because I do not trust this board to be thoughtful. You have gotten better, Member Wilson, and I appreciate it. But you do not ask the hard questions. You do not look in detail. And I feel like I have to keep coming back and going, hey, guys, did you see this? So let's look at page three of that agreement at the very bottom, part H. It talks about the things that the consultant has to check, including insurance, criminal records check. None of that is checked here. And I don't know if it's a mistake, because if you turn to page six, there is the certification by contractor consultant for a criminal records check. That feels like that should have been a box checked back on page three. So I would like this board to do their due diligence, look thoroughly at this stuff, and ask the hard questions of our district. You are here to make the district transparent to all of us. And you fail to do that. Moving on to Section 8, Part J. This is the ratifying the agreement with Contribute Learning LLC. If the reason for this $15,000 increase is the development of a custom Department of Justice compliance report, then why was that report not part of the original agreement? Since Superintendent Cabral said you were pulling for approval the semester-long ethnic studies course, I will pull my comment for that as well. I would like to talk about... Man, I don't even know which number this is. We are in... We are in educational services consent items, item G. This is the approved recommendation of the district curriculum committee for new elective course computer applications gaming concepts. So while I think that this course will have wide appeal for our USD students and as a parent and a member of area four, I am super excited that this is coming from Citrus Valley High School. I am concerned by the lack of course materials listed. Again, I don't know if anyone noticed that. There is a gameplay component to this course that will require technology, hardware, software, and access, as well as a physical space that is conducive to the course. Before the board approves this engaging course, and I hope you approve it, I would ask that the district provides assurances that there will not be technology or facility barriers that limit the success of this course. Moving on to resolution number 46, the board member censure of member Ayala Quintero. I oppose resolution number 46, the censure of board member Ayala Quintero. According to the language of the resolution, which we have already so eloquently heard described, Ayala Quintero, Olsen, and Cabral all participated in behavior that was disruptive. During the April 22nd board meeting, Superintendent Cabral was repeatedly asked if he saw Ayala-Quintero lunge at Olson, and he finally admitted that he did not see what Olson claims happened. If Ayala-Quintero is to be censored for a disruption that violates the principles and expectations in Board Bylaw 9005, then both Olson and Cabral should be censored. The resolution of this censure provides validation of Olson's fake outrage and affirms Cabral's implicit bias which favors white women while punishing a Latino woman. And finally, oh, no, sorry, not finally. Moving on, this is kind of a weird three-parter. Looking at the management, establish a position and approve job description for director of safety and disaster preparedness. Per resolution number 45 in 18A, something is happening to Eric Torres' management position of safety manager, and a new management position, the director of safety and disaster preparedness, is being created. While there are distinct differences between the two positions, I would like clarification for why this situation resulted in a brand new position instead of a revision of the title and job description like the new director of human resources in 17U. What is happening to the position of safety manager? And did any of you notice this? Additionally, I have highlighted all the changes in that new position from the old one. And finally, board policy 6 1 1 5 and AR 1 3 1 2.2. As a parent, I did not sign to co-parent with any of you on the board. And there are policies in place that let me dictate my child's education and let me make choices for her. I'm sorry if some of the parents on the board have felt like they didn't have those choices. But please do not take it out on the rest of us. We are not connected. I definitely do not want some of you co-parenting my child with me, but I really don't want any of you co-parenting my child with me. I would also like to ask, again, whose definition of pornography are we going with? Until you define it, this policy shouldn't go anywhere. And regarding Board Policy 6115, You decided to strike out several things, promotion of inclusivity and neutrality, stuff that references Ed Code and existing board policies. And I wonder, what is happening with board policy 6144 in the future? Thank you, Catherine.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we have Hannah Edmondson, followed by B. Harrington. Welcome, Hannah.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Hannah Edmondson, and I'm a proud product of this district. I'm here tonight to honor the legacy of my teachers and to speak up for my classmates, friends, and neighbors who teach in our schools now. The proposed changes to the policy for challenged library materials are deeply concerning. Let's be clear, removing books from school libraries is a form of censorship. It undermines our students' right to read, to think critically, and to explore diverse perspectives. Our current policy already allows parents to opt their own child out of checking out specific materials. That's respectful, reasonable balance between parental rights and intellectual freedom. It's called compromise. Changing this policy to allow the removal of materials district-wide based on the objections of a few is not protecting kids, it's limiting them. Books didn't harm students. Books don't harm students, ignorance does. Silencing voices, erasing identities, and narrowing access to literature does lasting damage. I learned in Redland schools how to think, not what to think. That's the tradition we should protect. Let's not backtrack on the values of education, equity, and open inquiry. Keep the current policy in place. Trust our teachers, trust our librarians, and most importantly, trust our students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome, Bea.

I am a parent who lives in Candy Olson's district. I want to start with a literary quote from a book in our school's libraries. I want you, Hank. I want you in my bed, and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. I do not want your mind, your will, your being, or your soul, so long as it's to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say I have slept with Hank Reardon, and I had earned it. This is a passage from Atlas Shrugged by Anne Rand. It is in the high school libraries. It contains explicit sex scenes, but it is not on the list of books the board wants to ban because it contains conservative political philosophies with which they agree. Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. This is a passage from the Song of Solomon, a book of erotic poetry in the Bible. It contains explicit sexual content, including a king visiting a brothel. It is in the high school libraries, but it is not on the board's list because it is a holy text with which they agree. Just like the books on your list, I don't want these books banned. These books are literature. I have problems with their content, but I have read them because they challenge me to consider perspectives that are different from my own. And for that reason, I want my child to be able to read them in high school alongside the books you wish to ban because diverse perspectives and ways of being are valuable. Thank you.

Next up, we have Kevin O'Connor, followed by Erica Ruiz.

Welcome, Kevin.

Good evening. Hey, I want to address the narratives of the talking around the books that we're saying we're wanting to have banned. When you use banning books instead of the word pornography, you're trying to set a narrative in that realm. And I'm thankful that some have actually quoted our founding fathers because, you know, Thomas Jefferson said you could remove every book from the public school except for the Bible and our country would still go on. Hmm, we don't ban that book, though, do we? Just a rhetorical question to that. Here's what I believe that's happening. We've become an upside-down world, and since there has been Scripture, I haven't quoted Scripture before being up here, but I'm going to do it tonight. This is a warning from Isaiah chapter 5. Warning to those who call evil good and good evil. Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness. Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Warning to those who consider themselves wise. and judge themselves as clever. There's a lot of clever things that are going on. We're trying to get back to where school is about school, not about igniting the sexuality of kids, that they can go to school and get things their parents would never want them to have part of. Please bring us back to sanity, I pray. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kevin.

Welcome, Erica. Hello. I'm here representing the Inland Empire Prism Collective. We are a local LGBTQ organization. Tonight's proposed policies are legally questionable. You claim to aim for neutrality in school curriculum and culture while blatantly ignoring California state law. The Fair Education Act and the California Healthy Youth Act require schools to include LGBTQ people and topics in the curriculum that students receive. That is not optional, it is the law. These policies unlawfully restrict essential aids that may be necessary when teaching legally required LGBTQ content. How can educators properly follow the law when they don't have the tools they need at their disposal? How can they teach LGBTQ inclusive history when you censor it? How can LGBTQ students feel safe discussing sexual health topics, which is required when their identity is literally banned from display? Shame on you. If you cared about students, you'd be making the job of educators easier instead of censoring the tools they use in the classroom. Thank you. Thank you, Erica.

Next up we have Michael Grossman followed by Michael Cooper.

Welcome, Michael.

Thank you. Michael Grossman. I'm a resident of Trustee Area 2. Speaking on Draft Policy 6115, the flag ban, in my prior comments on this policy, I asked the Board to explain the rationale. The policy states no flag other than the United States of America and State of California flags may be displayed, followed by a long list of exceptions. Why is this in the policy? No explanation has been given why flags are included in this new policy. And no explanation seems forthcoming. We all know that the only problem this policy seeks to solve is that symbols like the pride flag may be seen in some classrooms. But you can't say that out loud. You can't write that in the policy because you know that's discriminatory. Are you really going to vote for this anyway? I hope you do not. In my remaining 20 seconds, regarding AR 1312, the book ban, librarians and students have spoken eloquently this evening and are unanimously against this policy. Listen to them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Welcome, Michael.

If you don't want a house built, hide the nails in wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him. Give him one. Better yet, give him none. Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs. The cigarette people are weeping. Burn it. These are all quotes from Fahrenheit 451. Thanks for leading us there. The reason the pride flag isn't worn as a symbol of war is because it's specifically not a symbol of division. It is a symbol of unity. It is also my understanding that none of you are educators, and with that in mind, how are you qualified to make decisions about what is available for a student's education? Every educator, Ms. Candy, Olsen, hello, no phones please. Every educator is required to take part in continued education as part of their employment. This continued education gives teachers the tools to help guide students through a changing world. Just because your education has stopped doesn't mean you should be allowed to edit the education available to our students. I find it interesting how the majority of the books this board has wanted to ban involve and center around sexual assault victims and their stories. Why would you want to deter students from accessing those stories and points of view? So they can't identify them for themselves? Lastly, there was an American flag in the room I was groomed in. There was no pride flag.

Thank you, Michael.

Next up we have Bea Hill, followed by Corrine Payton.

Welcome, Bee.

Hello, my name is Bee Hill. I want to talk about the flag ban and the book ban. First, I want to talk about the flag ban. I want to talk about this student named Jamal Miles. He was nine years old and he killed himself. He was bullied because he was gay. He does not feel included with this American flag. When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, there's a lot of people that do not stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance because they do not feel included with this flag. But with this flag, they do. This flag is not about... Just policies and politics, this is about inclusion. And if you're talking about politics and policies, that also includes the American flag. So if you're banning flags because they have a political stance, then you have to ban the American flag as well because it has political representation. Now, moving on to the book ban, there are some people that sits on this board that are not qualified to say what is age appropriate. They display things like this on their Facebook page. It has a child pointing to a sign that says, nothing in here is worth dying for. And the sign has a gun. Now, in their thing, the child's face is not covered. But this is a person that you want deciding what your child, what is age appropriate and what is not age appropriate. This is not age appropriate. We do not want to co-parent with you. You do not want to co-parent with the government, and we do not want to co-parent with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome, Corrine.

So in the next three weeks, hundreds of seniors are going to be graduating. And this year, we will graduate having never known that our rights are respected by the school board. We will graduate knowing only that you ignored our voices when you were supposed to represent us. We will graduate feeling ashamed, angered, and disappointed in you because you have disrespected our identities, our teachers, and our librarians. Throughout the course of this year, I've attended a whole lot of school board meetings. So here's my highlight reel. There have been approximately zero RUSD teachers or librarians who have spoken in support of banning books or flags. There's been countless students who have spoken out against banning books and flags, whether that be at school board meetings or via email before you stopped reading the emails, as opposed to one student who has spoken in support throughout the course of the entire year. There have been reported zero visits of school board members to RUSD school libraries after these bans were proposed. If individual parents want something banned for their student, they're able to arrange that. The people who are here speaking in support of banning books and flags haven't stepped foot on actual school campuses at all, let alone school libraries. This is ridiculous. Our schools have been hurting for funding all year and this is what you've been trying to pass when you know we're hurting for funding and it hurts kids. This year you have achieved nothing for students. You owe us an apology and a vow to make better decisions because the next year deserves to graduate knowing their school board has actually done something for them.

Next up we have Izzy, followed by Sebastian. Welcome, Izzy.

Hi, my name is Izzy and I'm a sophomore at Redlands High School, and I'm here to talk about the book ban. I'm standing here because I care about what we're allowed to read at school. And honestly, the idea of banning books, it makes me upset. Books have taught me things that go beyond facts or formulas. They've shown how people live, how they struggle, how they love. Some of the most meaningful books that I have read have made me uncomfortable, and that is good. Discomfort is where we learn and grow. If we only learn... If we only read things that make us feel safe, we're not actually learning anything. When you ban a book, you're not banning words, you're banning experiences. You're telling students that certain people or stories don't belong in the classroom. And that hurts, because some of those stories are real stories. We're not asking for anything dangerous. We're asking for honesty, for perspective, and for freedom to think and decide for ourselves. So please don't take that away. We deserve better than silence and censorship. Flags do not hurt students. Books do not hurt students. Please stop trying to find problems in places where there are none. Thank you. Thank you, Izzy. Thank you.

Welcome, Sebastian.

Hello, board members. I'm a sixth grader at RUSD. I came to talk about the unfair book policy. Books are a great thing for someone to relate to and not feel alone. This policy takes some of that from students. Taking away books from school libraries is horrible and will greatly affect students who feel safe reading books they can relate to. Parents can already ask librarians to not let their child check out certain books, so banning them isn't even necessary. Also, the policy says anyone can challenge books. Even a child-friendly book could be challenged because of a parent's thoughts or beliefs. This isn't fair. Your options for reading shouldn't get affected by a parent that isn't yours. All of the students that have come to speak tonight have been against this policy. Maybe listen to the people this affects.

Thank you, Sebastian.

Next up we have someone ready. I can't read the first name. Marley. Marley. Riddick. Riddick, followed by Joe.

Welcome, Marley. Hi, good evening. I'm going to be talking about the banned books and the flags as well. I used to think that Redlands was a leader in the United States of America, or in the Inland Empire. There have been countless experiences as an adult where intimidation has been impressed upon communities, onto administrations, onto teachers, and also onto our students. Ultimately, when we're representing ourselves as queer, as straight, as religious, we are sharing our points of views and we're making a stance for what and who we stand for. Anyone that's intimidating another person, you can feel it. The connotation behind their words. Students cuss. Students are pre-exposed. Students are treated terribly. The feeling behind the flag, the feeling behind the pride flag, ultimately, I feel you guys know in your hearts what the connotation really is. So hopefully, we can make some better decisions in the future.

Thank you, Barley. Welcome, Joel.

Thank you. Good evening, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My wife and I first moved to Redlands 40 years ago. My wife is an educator who has taught various grade levels and at the college level. We homeschooled our three children through seventh grade in order to ensure our family's values and academic standards were accomplished. Each of our children are accomplished in their chosen career paths, and our oldest daughter is an accomplished educator who has taught in charter schools and has developed national championships, teams in STEAM, robotics, and quiz bowls. I'm here to address a topic that deserves careful consideration, how we handle LGBTQ-themed literature in our schools. Let me be clear, I'm not advocating for banning books or silencing voices. Representation matters, and students benefit from seeing diverse experiences reflected in what they read. However, just like with any topic, be it violence, sexuality, or religion, content must be age-appropriate and presented thoughtfully. Our responsibility is not only to educate, but to do so in a way that respects the developmental stages of our students. What's appropriate for a high school senior is not necessarily suitable for a third grader. This standard should apply universally, including literature for LGBTQ themes. Furthermore, parents are key partners in a child's education. We must foster trust by ensuring they are informed and involved in what their children are reading. This means transparency, whether through a syllabi, opt-in policies, or parental-teacher communication. Again, this is not about censorship. It's about balance between academic freedom and parental rights. Thank you.

Thank you, Joel.

Next up, we have Peg Pogenson, followed by Jesse Mayle.

Meg, how are you? I'm well, thank you. Welcome. Thanks. Good evening. My name is Meg Hoganson. I reside in Trustee 2. I am the proud parent of two children, one just graduated from RHS, one is currently attending. I'm here today compelled to speak in opposition of Policies AR 1312.2 and BP 611.15. The policies are harmful to students and seek to exclude and make students feel less than and discourage critical thinking by limiting reading materials and symbols of inclusivity. Critical thinking is crucial to the success as a student and as in life and as a community member. We are stronger by being surrounded by persons that are different from ourselves, different in inalienable characteristics, perspectives, and how they see the world. Redlands School District rises by lifting students up. These policies are an attempt to marginalize and dismiss students. They do not make our communities and schools stronger It weakens them by failing to recognize the intrinsic value in all of us and celebrate what it means to be ourselves. I am very proud to have Patty and Melissa on this school board. The things they say and do make me proud to be a Redlands resident, and I thank them for their service.

Good evening. My name is Jesse Mayle. I'm a resident of Trustee District 2.

Welcome, Jesse.

Thank you. I rise today with sadness at these policies that are being proposed. I also rise today with concern with how they were put on the agenda. They are listed by policy number and they are grouped together as one. This appears to be a Brown Act violation, and this board should not move forward in any action on either of these policies tonight because this is not a sufficient description to let the public know what was being discussed tonight. Those numbers do not communicate the substance of what is being discussed, and as you can see from everyone being here tonight, these are topics that matter to the citizens, the parents, the families, the students, the teachers of this district. And they deserve to have advance notice of what is being discussed every time you have a meeting. That is the minimum requirement of the Brown Act. I also wish to discuss the flag policy in particular with my remaining time. It saddens me that so many people are trying to use the American flag as an excuse for a policy to not represent others. The United States flag code specifies how the United States flag is to be displayed with other flags. It is not diminished by the presence of other flags. It is contemplated as being flown with them, and it should be respected. Thank you.

Next up we have Vicki Hargrave followed by Subhadra.

No. Vicki Hargrave?

No. Okay. How about Subhadra? Okay, next up we have Douglas Hauser, followed by Greg Ritson.

Thank you for your time. I came with a speech. I was going to say something else, but listening, I have to say, listening to the appeals to how the removal of a pride flag will affect LGBTQ students, I am deeply moved to worry about black students and how they must be affected by not having a black pride flag in the classroom. How can we possibly teach kids about, I don't know, let's say sickle cell anemia or about the disgraceful history of slavery in this country without a black pride flag? It's a conundrum. Likewise, the Jewish students, there's no Jewish flag. Think of how that must affect them. We can't teach about the accomplishments of Albert Einstein. We can't teach about the horrors of the Holocaust because there is no Jewish pride flag present. This seems to be the argument that's being made. And of course, we can't teach about the history of Western civilization because there's no Greeks or Greek or Roman or Judeo-Christian flags flying. So we can't teach about that. So the point is you do not need a flag flown in the classroom to represent a particular political viewpoint to teach the complexities of history and the complexities of the human experience. So that's my main point, is that teachers should be teaching and not promoting a political viewpoint. There's a difference there, and I think everybody really recognizes that difference.

Thank you, Douglas. Welcome, Greg. Thank you.

First, back to the subject of discipline that I have discussed earlier. We again see a list of punishments, no description of really what was done other than assault or threats. And we have no idea, the public, the students, the staff have no idea whether fair and appropriate punishment is being given out. And being effective punishment, does it affect the student being punished, they don't do it again, and does it affect other students, so I don't want that to happen to me, so I'm going to behave myself and not push, punch, or whatever was done in any of these individual cases. I also note that every one of these is a suspension for the remainder of this year, early summer vacation, and then the first semester of next school year is suspended. So they'll be back in school come the fall term. If you've hit somebody, if you've injured somebody, is that effective and appropriate punishment? I don't think so. It's essential in school that you have discipline so students can learn, but also that the offending student learns misbehavior is not going to be tolerated at a very early age rather than waiting until ultimately they encounter the criminal justice system and they learn that that misbehavior is not going to be tolerated. Censor. Again, I didn't see what happened, but we do know that the superintendent saw what happened and felt the need to immediately jump in between the two board members. So he saw it and saw there was a problem there. We're talking about some really emotionally connected and charged issues here all the time, but more recently in these recent meetings. And it's incumbent upon you guys up there to really set a good example. You may extremely disagree. with the other board members about these issues, and that's fine. You debate them, and then you're going to have a vote, and that's going to be the decision until maybe there's a new board after the next election, and then maybe there'll be a different vote. But until then, and throughout, is you need to set a good example. And that was not done, and there's evidence not by what anyone said. It's evidenced by what the superintendent did. And what people do is always a much better indication of what they're thinking and what they're seeing than what people say. Human nature. So I think the censorship is appropriate, especially since Melissa did not. Just apologize. If you just apologized, sorry, fully overheated, you wouldn't be here. And this wouldn't be on the issue, but you couldn't do that. And you deserve the censor. Last is your flags and books. I'm also going to read from a book in the Redlands libraries that your crack-trained librarians have chosen. Unlike Shrugged or the Bible, I need to use some blanks. He wanted to blank her, tenderly, but tenderness would not hold, as the tightness of her blank was more than he could bear. The giant thrust he made into her more than provoked the only sound she made, a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat. Removing himself from her was so painful to him, he cut it short and snatched his blank out of her dry blank. We each elect you. to manage and oversee our schools, not just the students, not just the teachers, we the citizens and taxpayers. And ultimately, the buck stops with you. And if this is the kind of material that your crack-trained librarians are choosing, it is but one of many such examples Your trained craft librarians ain't doing their job. And it's going to fall. Buck is going to stop with you. Get this kind of material out of our schools. Flag. You're taking a side in a political and social dispute. Don't do it.

No.

Ten seconds. You're interrupting my last 15 seconds. Thank you very much. You're taking a side. Don't do it. Politically, socially, cultural classrooms, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Hi, I'm here to speak on agenda item 22A, which addresses flag and book bans. I find it absolutely pitiful that our district is focused on silencing students' voices rather than listening to them. When each of this board's students come up to speak, it is as though we are simply unheard. So today I ask you to actually listen to your students and your constituents. Can I get your name really quick? Oh, sorry. Supadra. Supadra Mandula. Oh, she walked in. Yeah, I think we skipped me. Sorry.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, we already started me at 1.20, so can we run it back? Thank you. We'll just skip the beginning part, I guess. So for this board to ban the pride flag is for them to push away every single one of their LGBTQ plus students when it is a school board's job to protect their students. It terrifies me to think that this board will go after every one of its students and its constituents until there is no one left but the people who conform to their societal standards. And the standards that you believe in might not be the ones that other people believe in. You cannot control who a person is and how they express themselves. All you can do is be there for them. It is so, so upsetting that our board cannot even do this much for its students. What exactly are all of you so afraid of? This board is trying to ban its students from reading a book that may validate and affirm their experiences. Just because you personally have not had that experience does not mean it is an invalid experience to have. When people say students can access books that speak to their experiences elsewhere, they neglect to acknowledge the duty of this board altogether. This board is meant to preserve the education and mental health of its students. All you are doing by allowing books that validate our experiences to be taken away is shirking your responsibilities. The reason that this board sits in the seats that they do today is because we, the constituents, the students, the teachers, the staff, the admin of the RUSD, have voted you into these positions. I encourage you to consider your attachment to these positions before you choose not to listen to us. Thank you.

Next up we have Matt Appleby.

Welcome, Matt.

So regarding the book banning, as many people have already said, It's super vague, right? Clearly, it is really just designed to give parents, community members, outside members the ability to push books off for three months at a time rather than actually having anything real. There's also a great vagueness to the language about what's pornographic and whatnot. This is going to be, and I guarantee, used against LGBTQ texts by saying two boys kissing is pornographic, when really, if it was a straight couple, it would be fine. Regarding the flag policy, I hear everybody talking about the American flag, and I'll be honest, I would love to say that it's inclusive. but the reality is it isn't always, right? We've seen it used in the past. We've seen this flag used to bully Native Americans. We've seen this flag used to bully Black Panthers, right? Plenty of people in the past, and we're still seeing the flag used today to bully people Now, right? Our immigrants, I'm sure, do not look at this flag and say, yes, this flag represents me in the schools that I'm at now. Our LGBTQ students don't feel that either. The pride flag hurts no one. It may affirm some people, but it doesn't hurt anyone. I wish I could say the same about this flag. Thanks. Thank you, Matt.

The blue. We're done.

Done with blue cards. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. We'll now continue with the superintendent's recommendations. First, we have consent items under business services. Mr. Hill, do you have any changes or additions?

Thank you, President Ren, that I do have one change. Item O. It's award bid 21 through 25 for roofing of various sites. There's been a typo on that one. The actual dollar amount should reach $16,466,980. It's missing a zero right after the 80.

Thank you. Do you have a motion to approve item 13A, consent items B through Q?

So moved.

Do we have a second?

So seconded. I'll second. Any discussion?

Does anyone care to comment about why we don't have a criminal records check on item F that the speaker pointed out?

What's happening?

I think that it should be checked, Mark.

Is there a reason it's not? Yeah, I noticed that.

I don't know the reason why it would not be, but the mandates that we are working under require everybody that works with our students follow a protocol that would ensure that there's been checks. We can definitely amend that right now at the dais and make sure that the check exists.

Just that one checkbox there at least.

Okay, any other discussion? For the vote.

Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson?

Aye.

President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

Moving on to action items. Under business services, Mr. Hill, do you have any changes or additions here?

I do not.

Adopt resolution number 44, 2024-2025, resolution to authorize temporary borrowing between funds of the school district. Authorize Jason Hill, Deputy Superintendent, Business Services, to sign related documents on behalf of the board. Do you have a motion? Move approval. Second. Second. Second. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Jeanette. Any discussion? We'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rundler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

All right, moving on to consent items under educational services. Mrs. Buckmiller, do you have any changes or additions?

Just please pull item D, as Superintendent Cabral spoke earlier, the approval of the ethnic studies course. We need to further differentiate between the existing year-long course and the semester course. And until we bring it back, the year-long course will continue to be in place.

Okay, do we have a... A motion is corrected. What? I'll move as corrected. Okay. Second. Melissa, thank you. Patty, any discussion?

Just good luck to our RHS boys and girls swim teams and our RHS boys and girls track as they move on to their finals.

I would like to say something about item G. I do not agree that more time should be spent gaming than instructional time in the classroom, and that's my only concern with that item. I understand it's important for their program to continue. Several students are relying on that course to continue, but I would hope that the minutes could be changed That's what I would shoot for is to have less gaming time than instruction time.

What is in the documents regarding this class are an example of what the class could look like, but it is not set that it needs to look like that. And so that certainly is something that we can discuss with the teacher. And we could actually meet with the teacher and make sure we understand the rigor that will exist in that class with regards to the gaming concepts and creation.

Also, I had some comments on G, and I did talk with Patty about some of these. The content of the course, well, I wasn't sure if it was a sample because it's taken from a company or if we're proposing to purchase that curriculum. So that was a little confusing. And as I read through it, the content is great as far as providing... career readiness skills. the lure of going and learning that information, I guess, is to be able to also game. I mean, a lot of the content is across jobs, across careers, across interests. So my thought is that the title is somewhat confusing for the intensity and the amount of good content that's within the curriculum. And also there was no indication of cost to the district, which should be part of the proposal for a course. It should include that.

Any other discussion? Okay, we'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye.

President Rendler? I'm sorry, but are we voting on keeping up with the changes we're requesting?

Yes. Okay.

Sorry.

President Rendler?

Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Right, moving on to educational services action items.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were... through with discussion, but I wanted to comment. I mean, it would be really great if these, the proposals are completely filled out.

Like the proposal for the photography class, photography two was perfect.

It included all the requirements for the proposal. And that would make, it makes it a lot easier to go through them when all of the information is there. And I talked to Patty about this, but I just wanted to say that one was done very well.

All right, so moving on to educational services action items. Mrs. Buckmiller, do you have any changes or additions?

Changes or additions, thank you.

All right, do we have a motion to take items 16A through F together?

I'll move.

I'll call for the vote.

Oh, any discussion? Sorry. I'll call. Call for the vote. Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Moving on to consent items under human resources. Mrs. Bruick, do you have any changes or additions?

No, I do not. Thank you.

I have a motion to approve item 17A, consent items B through Y.

So moved. Second.

Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion? For the vote.

Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Redler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Moving on to human resources action items. Mrs. Brooke, any corrections, changes, or additions?

I do not. Thank you.

Thank you. Classified. Adopt resolution number 45-2024-2025 pertaining to layoffs and or reduction in classified positions. Do we have a motion?

So moved.

I'll second. Melissa, thank you, Patty. Any discussion on this? Okay, we'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0. Okay.

Approve resolution number 46, 2024-2025, board member censure. Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion.

A second. Second.

Second.

Okay. Thank you. We have a first and second. Now we're on discussion.

Anybody want to start?

I'd like to edit this because it's not accurate.

This was placed on the agenda without obvious notes from the last meeting as to what actually transpired. There's no mention of the verbal threat. So if we can edit it and then proceed with that, where she told me, tell me one more time. So I'd like to add that in there.

I don't see why there needs to be a play-by-play because I mean, I honestly think it's from one perspective and it's the disagreement between two different perspectives. So I do have something to say, but I don't see why it should be edited.

That was one of the two problems. One was a verbal threat. The other one was a physical turning and leaning in towards me and posturing. So first, we're missing the first threat was a verbal threat.

Michelle, I would actually like this taken off because being that we're having such a disagreement about what happened, I would like a third party to go ahead and review everything that happened and to have discussions with us because honestly, being that we're such a contentious board, I don't know that this is fair.

I did have something to say, though. Yeah, do you want to say what you were going to say?

Yeah, OK. Point of order. Everybody get a chance to see what they want to say. There is a motion, and then there was a second. Then the next thing that was said is that they wanted a motion to edit it with suggested edits. And so we have to kind of handle everything one at a time. Either we are going to edit it or not. And if we're not, then we continue the discussion. If we are, then there has to be a motion with the edits and a second with the edits. Then we can discuss that. So I just want a point of order.

Okay, didn't know we had a second on that. You did the second, Jeanette? Was that you? Yeah, I did the first. Candy did the second.

Jeanette moved. Oh, you did the first?

Oh, I didn't even hear that. I'm sorry.

I totally missed that.

On the original. So now Candy has proposed edits. Somebody would need to second that, and then we can continue the discussion.

I'll second that.

Okay, so which one are we going to vote on first? The changes? The edits?

What is on the table now is the censor with the edits.

And comment?

Yes. And now we can comment.

Well, that was part of my comments anyway. It seems to me like the resolution should have been reviewed by the complainant as it doesn't accurately cap capture what we discussed at the last meeting or what happened. So I just feel like it's somewhat weakened down and doesn't, like I said, capture the severity of what occurred. So that's why I would like to consider edits.

Anybody else?

You weren't right there to make a decision to do that. I don't feel comfortable making an edit based on something that transpired that we couldn't hear what was going on. At least I couldn't hear. Did you hear?

No, I'm basing it on what people said at our last meeting, what Michelle said, what Juan said. That is not reflected in the resolution. So refresh my memory what you said, Michelle.

At the last meeting?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, that I did see her turn to her chair and then she did say, Tell me one more time. I heard that. But I didn't perceive that as a verbal threat.

But did anyone other than Board Member Olson see me posture? That's the thing. There's an allegation of a verbal and a physical threat. Yeah. I do admit that, yes, I did engage into it.

I did see you do this. And that's what I told you. I did see that. But I don't know what you were doing. Turning my chair. Yeah. So I don't know exactly. But it did... It did look like not proper board decorum to me. So that's all.

But I think that's the thing. We're being very vague here. And I would like clear and a clear understanding of what is being alleged here. Because, again, this is a disagreement between Board Member Olson and I. And, yes, I probably should not have had that disagreement. But to allege a verbal threat...

and a physical threat is a serious allegation I'm not asking to change the wording to say that you postured and you just said that you did No, I didn't. My edit is to include the verbal threat. You did posture at me and you were leaning in towards me when everything stopped because he got in front of you. However, I'm not requesting that edit of you posturing towards me. I am only requesting the edit of your verbal threat, which you admit you said, tell me one more time. That is a verbal threat. So that part needs to be reflected with accuracy.

I asked you to repeat what you said. That's a verbal threat?

That's not what you said. You said, tell me one more time. Yeah. That's not the same as saying, could you please repeat that?

We can put it like the entire conversation.

Okay, so Melissa, tell me to say what you wanted to say.

Well, I need to know if we're moving on with what it is as it is or if we're going to be upping the allegation here because, I mean, that's not fair. And I don't know that, like, I can understand where, I mean, people on both sides of this boardroom up here have admitted, I mean, the only one that really did see what happened was our superintendent, and he did indicate that I did not posture at anybody. I did hear from people in both camps saying that they did not see what happened. So at the bare minimum, I will admit this is something, and I honestly wish there was video, but this is a disagreement between two board members. Yes, I should not have done that. Yes, I should not have. I'll just read what I was going to say.

First, I'd like to say there has been a huge misrepresentation of the occurrence during our April 8th meeting. I was never angry at my fellow board member, and I was certainly never a threat to her. I did not posture, I did not lunge, or throw my phone at anyone. I have been very honest with the board in every capacity since I have taken this role and will continue to do so. However, I did start a verbal exchange by trying to hold her accountable for laughing at public speakers. I should not have done that, as it is not my job to hold other board members accountable for their behavior. From now on, I will ask the board president to maintain board member decorum and ask for a point of order. So, Michelle, I do apologize for that. Beyond that, I will not admit to something I don't feel like I did and I had never had an intention to do in my actions and this board, and even in the community have shown otherwise, that I am not a violent or aggressive or any sort of person as that's what's being alleged today.

It should be noted I was never laughing, okay? I was never laughing at a speaker. I was not laughing and I never did laugh at a speaker.

You're not part of our discussion. Thank you. Okay.

So first of all, we have to decide if we're going to add that language in, the edit that you want.

Okay. Accurate.

So we have a first and a second. So if this goes through, we need to figure out if we're adding that edit in. So let's take a vote on that part first.

Okay. Can you specify specifically where you wanted that edit? Okay.

And I would like the language explicitly played out. If this is going to be part of the permanent resolution, I would like that exact language.

What needs to be stated is the exact language that you want to add.

And where? Under what paragraph?

And Olson continuing to deny it. What paragraph? Whereas? Okay, so it's in the middle where it talks about the incident. One, two, three, four. The incident is described. Okay. Discussion became tense, comma, and Ms. Ayala-Contero told Ms. Olson, tell me one more time. End quote.

Before it turned to a chair?

Right before that. It was before that.

So this vote is to accept those changes only. So a yes vote means you accept the changes. A no vote means you do not accept the changes. And then there will be a vote on the actual resolution.

No, I think that board member Ayala Quintero wants to edit as well.

But there's still a motion. We have to do this motion first.

So we'll do this first. Yes. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

I just want to make clear that you're not voting on the censure right now. You're just voting on the edits. We're voting on the edits from board member Olson.

I get that 100%. All right. So let's call for the vote on this.

Member Ayala Quintero? No. No. Board Member Olsen? Yes. Senator Rendler? Yes. Vice President Hollihan? No. Clerk Wilson? Yes. Motion carried, 3-0. Well, non-motion, but the edit.

Edit 2.

3-2. 3-2, sorry.

Okay. Okay, so that's done. Now we're just going to take the whole thing.

Now we can discuss the resolution. Continue the discussion on the resolution as edited.

Okay. Melissa.

I'm just, I don't know why, like I want allegedly thrown in there because I don't, I don't see why we are taking one board member's side over another.

Where are you? What paragraph or same area?

But we have board members and one or a board member and one that have confirmed.

Confirmed what?

What they saw and heard.

I'm not denying an exchange happened. I'm denying that there was threats made. Having a disagreement is not the same as threatening.

Does it say here the threat?

You just said you wanted the verbal threat included.

And that's not what I said to say exactly what you said.

I'm sorry, but I don't know that there's clear language moving forward.

I understand that the resolution is exactly what Ms. Olson wanted, but I don't know that this is an accurate representation of the... of the exchange, and I don't think it's fair that I'm being judged on something when my perspective and my opinion aren't being considered. Only one board member's.

She added in the words you said, not listing that it was a threat, correct? I'm just saying the facts that you've also admitted to.

So because I was honest and admitted to something and you didn't, that's okay?

What didn't I admit to?

You just said that you didn't laugh. I didn't.

So do you see where the disagreement is?

Okay, so...

So I'm... Look, I'm just asking because I had no issue with what it read. I asked her if she laughed, but if I really wanted to, I could just say that Board Member Olson laughed.

See the difference? You asked her.

So I...

Are you proposing to add anything or to edit?

No, because this is just all silly to begin with.

Okay, but now's your time to edit.

Well, honestly, I would like to spend more time on it then. If that's the case, if we're going to be editing this, I would like to spend more time on it because I did not think that I had to edit and defend myself in the resolution.

Okay.

Do you want to spend more time on that whereas number three?

I mean, is that the spot that you're...

I don't know. I'd have to review it. I'm only trying to be fair here. And if she's allowed to edit on the dais, I imagine she was planning this.

I wasn't planning this. So I would like time to be able to edit this.

Well, I feel like if this was not accurate when you read it...

I was okay with this when I read it. Okay. But it's being edited, and I'm not okay with the changes. You're not okay with the edit? Yes.

Okay. But we just voted on the edit.

We did. So before we vote, I just want to say something. It says it at the top of this resolution. Okay. where the board members act with dignity and understand the implications of demeanor and behavior and govern in a dignified and professional manner, treating everyone with civility and respect. And what I heard on the dais that day was not civility and not respect. So I did not think your demeanor and your behavior was right, and you just apologized to me, but it wasn't towards me that you did it. And that bothers me. I mean.

I absolutely understand and respect that. But you would have me apologize for something I did not do. From my perspective.

I think what's missing, if I could say one thing. I have said this to both Candy and Melissa, that the behavior of both of you was not okay. And it was not okay because you both were having a discussion while we had somebody at the podium trying to do their civic duty. I can say that with confidence here because I have said that to both of you individually. I've also made it very clear to Melissa that starting the discussion was not okay to begin with because it is not your duty To hold anybody at this dais accountable, just like it was not okay for there to be any kind of exchange. I never said that there was a threat. I said that there was an exchange and that when I saw you turn your chair, I decided to get up to stop it. I did not see you lunge. I did not see you do anything other than turn your chair, just like you've described. I did hear exactly what is already being said. I just want to make sure.

I don't understand that one. Why would you intervene in something that wasn't there?

Because there was somebody at the podium speaking, and this needed to stop. It was not okay for anybody to be talking when somebody is trying to give a public comment. I've asked this board numerous times for us to come up with norms, for us to come up with ways that we want to see each other behave, and we have yet to do that. I am always going to intervene if I see an interruption on this dais that is not okay.

I could absolutely understand if this was a repeated behavior. I could understand that. And in researching censures of board members, there is some really severe behavior. Even looking up a censure, it's for severe behavior. But I will say that was a very emotional meeting, very emotional. And again, I did ask multiple times for the room to be cleared. Because it was, these meetings have gotten to be out of control. I mean, our district, our community is being torn apart. So yes, it was an emotional meeting.

And yes, I should not have engaged in conversation and I should not have interrupted the speaker. But I did not threaten anybody. I didn't do any harm. I didn't posture. I didn't lunge. And I did apologize to the speaker that I interrupted. But it... The board meeting did not get interrupted. It's not like I disrupted anything. Was it great behavior? Probably not, no. But I own that, and I have done nothing since to model anything otherwise.

It was not okay behavior, okay? I've said that. And it is not okay to have not owned it right away. Because what should have happened when this all happened is you should have just said, that was not okay, I should not have done that. Yeah, I agree. And that is why we're here right now.

Which I didn't say it was okay that I should not have done that.

To me.

You said that to me. Yes. Yeah. I just want to be clear. Okay. All right. Anybody else have anything else to say? Okay. So actually I do.

Okay. I'm appalled and embarrassed that we have come to this point. How pathetic that as a board with new board members coming in five months into this and this is where we are. It is an elected position. People look at the ballots. They see who they want to vote for. They put you in a position so that we can advocate and that we can do the better things we can for our students, for our parents, for our staff, and for our community. And this is what we show them? I'm embarrassed.

Okay, we're going to call for the vote on this. Unless you had to edit, you wanted to change. So, I mean, you have a time to say that if you want, if you want to change something.

I'm not sure that my changes would be accepted by this board right now.

But it's your prerogative to make an amendment?

No, I understand that, but I would like some time, and I don't know that I'll be afforded that time, so I'm going to say no.

Okay, so we're just going to call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? No. Board Member Olson? Yes. President Rendler? Yes. Vice President Hollihan? No. Clerk Wilson? Yes. I'd like to make a statement. Motion carried, 3-2.

I ask to make a statement. I ask to make a statement.

Okay, so I knew this was going to happen, so I accept the censure by this board, even though I find it to be defamatory and based on misrepresentation, but this is all politics. Board member Olson is demanding the censure so she can put it on social media to try to weaken me politically. It won't work. You cannot weaken what is righteous. Candy sits on this dais, championed by her followers as respectful and example for all. However, behind closed doors, she gets on social media and is anything but a good example. On Instagram and Facebook, she spews hate about LGBTQ students, staff, and allies, pokes fun at gun violence, and encourages her followers to belittle board members and community members. She even likes and laughs at comments that mention my weight. She has little if no regard for respect, and the biggest takeaway from this censure is that it is okay to be disrespectful and bully others as long as you do it in hiding. or behind people's backs. I will continue to be a fierce advocate for every single student, regardless of any factor that others may consider to be socially relevant. I will stand firmly by our staff when what they need right now is support, not judgment, and not people calling them crack librarians. I will keep showing up for every voice that feels unheard because public education is a privilege. It's not a privilege. It is a fundamental right. Every child deserves a safe, inclusive place to learn and grow, and that has always been my passion and will remain so, censured or not.

The management established position and approved job description for director of safety and disaster preparedness. Effective May 14th, 2025. Do we have a motion? I'll move. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All right, we'll call for the vote.

Sorry, who was the second? Candy. Candy. Thank you. Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

All right, next we'll have public participation. Public comments are permitted upon submission of a completed registration card prior to the start of public participation. This is not a forum for debate. Policy concerns will be referred to the superintendent. When called, speakers may proceed to the podium, state their name and trustee area, and speak for the allotted time. The amount of time will be announced by the board president before the first speaker begins and will not exceed three minutes. How many, Jeanette? Do we have public comment cards? Did you say how many? How many? Fifteen. Okay, so we're going to do just like the other one at a minute and a half.

Okay, first up we have Chris Clactis, followed by Erica Grossman.

Point of order, I did not finish my comments vis-a-vis 13.12. May I use my time to finish my comments on 13.12?

Is that on this card?

That was on my blue card.

Oh, whatever's on your orange card. That's what you're speaking to. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know what he has on his card. Sorry, I don't, I didn't.

It's fine.

I'm asking to use my time to finish the comments I could not finish on my blue card. May I do so? Instead of your orange card.

Instead of this topic. All right, go ahead.

All right, thank you. By permitting anyone with a pencil to strip our schools of these insightful, thought-provoking literature, you are engaging in censorship of an Orwellian 1984 magnitude. This reference, of course, is not known to all my grandchildren, and, unfortunately, if you have your way, it never will be. In Section 1.4, you are proposing the creation of a seven-member committee to evaluate complaints. And four of those members, a voting majority, will be individuals with no vested interest in RUSD and, in fact, no vested interest in Redlands at all. I strenuously object to professional book banners from outside my community telling me that my grandchildren cannot read material simply because they disagree with its political content. Let them stunt the intellectual development of their own grandchildren, but tell them to keep their hands off mine. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Welcome again, Erico.

Board Member Olson, oh she's not here. For at least two years you've been actively involved with the Ag Data Group that showed up to our last board meeting pushing harmful agendas across multiple school districts. There's ample information available online about this group and some of its members are outright dangerous. Alongside this group, you have been harassing and attacking a 16-year-old transgender student who plays sports in Jurupa Unified School District. Just this past Saturday, you attended a high school track meet with the sole purpose of harassing this student. You have also posted about her on social media and deliberately misgendered her. Let me be clear. Misgendering a trans person is an act of violence. It is sexual harassment. Even the hospital where she works recognizes the existence of trans people and trains its staff to respect pronouns. Her obsession, hatred, and discrimination against transgender are beyond disgusting. An adult who bullies and harasses a child has no business working in education. She shouldn't be around children. And those who enable and support Candy also must also be held accountable. Thank you, Erica.

Next we have, sorry, I'm just going to spell it, A-Y-A-F. Welcome back, Aya.

I have always found it weird how historically, oh, okay. I've always find it weird how historically it was white European colonial settlers who decided that they knew better how to structure the lives of the indigenous populations who had sustained themselves on their own land for generations. Contrary to egalitarian methods of cooperation, and conflict resolution, these settlers solved their disputes through domination, through empire, at the cost of the indigenous populations whose lands they had stolen from them. If you think that I'm merely abstracting from reality, think again. I am Filipino. Why do you think I'm here right now? So, I find it not too surprising, yet also incredibly disappointing, to see something similar happening here today. Despite being a straight, white, middle-aged, cisgender woman who I severely doubt understands the needs of LGBTQ children, You three seem to have no hesitation passing these ludicrous self-sabotaging arbitrary policies at the cost of people that I know. As a trans student at RUSD, I feel very, very, very vindicated. And this is not a question about mere ideas. It's about... a question of control, a structural power imbalance at the heart of this issue that neglects the needs of LGBTQ kids. It pains me to admit that this is a reality that people are complicit in and even revel in. And I'm sure everyone here knows who those people happen to be.

Next we have Trisha Keeling followed by Rachel Ugly.

Okay, just a quick little aside, just a moment on the censure. There's a really good Instagram account. Anyone listening should follow. That's not on your card. Yeah, it's a general comment. It's called Ryan4RUSD. He's running against you, Michelle Renler. Please look him up. Okay. This past weekend, there was a track meet in Yorba Linda, and a board member, Candy Olson, was in attendance. I know this because pictures were shared on social media of her in attendance. In fact, Ms. Olson took part in an organized harassment campaign that was put on by the California Family Council, which is a designated SPLC anti-LGBTQ hate group. Why would board member Candy Olson drive all the way from Redlands to Yorba Linda to participate in bullying a child? because that child was trans. And for board members like Jeanette Wilson and Olson, that means that bullying a minor is perfectly okay. We've seen the social media posts that Candy Olson has shared referring to the LGBTQ community as being part of a cult. We've seen the post that board member Jeanette Wilson shared of outside agitators who travel to Redlands to celebrate anti-LGBTQ policies. These things on social media matter, words matter, and the fact that these two board members are so focused on regurgitating hate policies from Chino They matter to the very people they were hurt the most. It's clear from past board meetings that Redlands has an issue with bullying. Let's truly address bullying by addressing why board member Olson thought it was okay to drive an hour away to bully a child. That is bullying. You can look at me when I'm speaking. Thank you.

I'll come back, Rachel.

Hi. I'd like to be able to address the fact that a lot of these things that are happening, occurring tonight, are not setting the proper precedent for our children. And it goes back to if you keep accusing people, then you think you're going to make the rest of the world believe you. Also, if you keep telling your child or yourself that you're not being accepted or you're not being taken care of. That's not correct, because that's not what's happening. We need to be logical, not reasonable. There are standards that are already accepted. And what's happening in this community is that it's trying to have people accept. other people's views, yet they won't accept those that they're attacking. So right now, whatever board members do is a reflection of the community, and there's logic behind it, not emotional cries and otherwise. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel.

Next up we have Dale Broom followed by Joshua Hall. Joshua Hall isn't here. Okay. Followed by Peter Hall.

Okay. Board members, Dale Broom, Area 1. Welcome back. Yes. I wanted to go ahead and revisit this and just encourage the school board to go ahead and proceed with passage of the parental notification policy. As you know, it requires that parents be notified within three days of any change in the student's official record initiated by the student. It doesn't go into specifics. in terms of did they want their name changed, did they want gender pronouns changed, that type of thing. It's not a forced outing policy. All it does is it requires that a change is initiated by the students and the parents are notified. That's all that's required. So it does not involve the teachers having to rat on the student. It's not a forced outing policy. It's a reasonable common sense policy that respects parental rights to know about their child student records as required by FERPA 20 USC 1232G and PPRA 20 USC 1232H. This specific policy is revised after the preliminary court ruling of the Chino Valley policy was deemed constitutional according to the Superior Court of California in September of 2024. And what that meant was Attorney General Rob Bonta has opted not to try to litigate these policies any further because he realizes that federal law trumps state laws on this matter. So why is this necessary? Because school districts have been sued for gender transitioning students without parental permission. Thank you.

Welcome, Peter. For my public comment, I'm going to talk about Jazz Jennings, a... For my comment, I'm going to talk about Jazz Jennings, one of the most famous mascots for the trans community. Jazz Jennings was known as Jaron Blashinsky, and he was socially transitioned when he was two years old by his mother because his mother wanted him to be trans. She did not want a boy, she wanted a girl. And so she convinced him that he was a girl in a boy's body. And as a result of that, he began medical transitioning at 11 years old. And he was surgically castrated at the age of 17 when he was still technically a minor. Because Jaron Blashinsky's mother wanted a girl and not a boy, Jazz Jennings, whose real name is Jaron Blashinsky, cannot have kids. and cannot even experience sexual pleasure or sensation in his genitals, and he will have to spend the rest of his life dilating his fake vagina because his mother wanted a girl and not a boy. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter. Next up, we have Michael Paisner, followed by Marlee Reddick. Pardon? Okay. Thank you. Followed by Christy Reddick. Welcome, Michael.

Thank you, Michael Paisner. As has been mentioned, Ms. Olson attended a rally hosted by a self-proclaimed hate group. The California Family Council has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Family Council's response is that they are thrilled with that designation. They are thrilled to be called a hate group. Ms. Olson not just attended the rally but bragged about it online. Ms. Rendler, how do you reconcile a mission statement promoting diversity with a board member participating in the rally of a self-proclaimed hate group? A group that said, yes, we are an LGBTQ hate group. And Ms. Olson was there. If you can look at me, please. Hello. I'm talking about you. Yes, thank you for your attention, my representative. Excuse me. You have 20,000 students in your charge and a couple of thousand teachers and staff. The people you have elected to serve come from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures, and faiths, and that includes the LGBTQ community. How do you reconcile promoting diversity with a board member who won't even pay attention while I'm speaking, and she's my freaking board member? I'm sorry. She deserves a censure, and if you don't see that, that is irresponsible." Ms. Olson, you're my representative. You can at least look at me when I'm speaking about you. Pathetic.

Thank you, Michael.

Is Christy here? Yes. Oh, okay. Welcome back, Christy.

Thanks.

Hi again. I wanted to address a few things from the last school board meeting. I was shocked to see two of the board members wearing a shirt. That was offensive to me, and I'm sure to others. But the difference is, unlike the two board members, I understand the freedom of expression. It baffles me that you are voting to suppress the students' rights while allowing yourselves to express those same rights in an official city government setting. When you're voting to take away the rights to freedom of speech and expression, I want you guys to remember how you allowed your colleagues... to do it, but you're not allowing the children of Redlands. Finally, I find it outrageous that you seem to be prioritizing the opinions of residents of Chino, Riverside, and Hollywood more than the voters of your districts. Come the next election, your voters of your districts will understand your guys' errors. I'm going to finish my quote from my other one. To quote Hannah Chine, that was only a prelude. Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too. Thank you, Christine.

Next up we have Catherine Appleby, followed by Bea Hamilton.

Good evening, board members. I'm Catherine Appleby. I am from Area 4, Jeanette's area. Do you have a copy of the Brown Act in front of you? Yes, no, but you've all been trained on it. Good, because the Brown Act clearly limits board members meeting together to decide their votes. And it speaks about a quorum, but we know from Jeanette's t-shirt, and we know from Candy's t-shirts, and we know from the visitors' t-shirts that obviously they all spoke about how they were going to vote. And now whether Michelle was in those conversations, I would like that investigated because if that happened, that is a Brown Act violation. And I have a copy of the Brown Act here for you with the relevant parts marked as well as In case this is intimidating, I have this from the League of California Cities, in which every city in California is a part of, that gives a guide to the Brown Act. And I have also marked the relevant sections in that. Thank you.

B?

Welcome back, B. Thank you.

As others have said here, I'm growing concerned about this board's repeated violations of the Brown Act. This law governs how you conduct meetings, and it makes it clear you cannot require the public to submit comment cards at the start of the meeting to speak. Your violation of this law prevents the public from commenting on agenda items and has potentially put my life at risk. I'm a member of the transgender community voicing opposition to anti-LGBT proposals. People could use my name and information to discover where I live, where I work, and what school my child attends. You have put my family at risk because of this violation. In addition, you have had armed police remove people without warning for using profanity, violating not only the Brown Act but their First Amendment rights. You have not removed people in accordance with the Brown Act who have made true threats of force, such as the man who wondered aloud in a previous meeting if acknowledging the existence of trans individuals meant he could punch women. You put my life in danger and made me feel intimidated when you allowed him to return to his seat in front of me without so much as a rebuke. I brought copies of a fact sheet the ACLU produced about the Brown Act. I have highlighted sections you have violated. Given your oath to conduct meetings in accordance with this law and the fact that your violations have made these meetings a hostile environment for people like me, I ask that you use this document as a starting place to educate yourselves on your legal responsibilities to the public. Thank you.

Next up, we have Michael Grossman, followed by Greg Britton.

Welcome back, Michael. Thank you. Michael Grossman, resident of Trustee Area 2. I'm disappointed that the Board chose to merge the book complaint and flag ban items on tonight's agenda. I assume this was done to limit discussion time on those items. Yes, the April 22nd meeting went until midnight. I was one of those who stayed until the end, and I was up for work early the next morning. If you're not committed to doing the same, no one's requiring you to serve on this board. If you don't want to sit through three hours of public comment, you're welcome not to push radical policies on us. It's as simple as that. Regarding the Brown Act violations, You have an obligation to follow the law and responsibility to us as your constituents to have our voices heard, to listen to us while we're speaking, and to follow the law. Please take that seriously. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Welcome back, Greg.

Children need good education to prosper. The public needs informed citizens to keep the republic. And any nation like any needs to pass on its culture, its history, its traditions in order to survive as a nation. The bad guys understand this too. Vladimir Lenin, give us a child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever. We see since the last election the concerted effort, probably well financed, well organized, to intimidate this board into letting them to continue their agenda of sexualizing and indoctrinating children while still maintaining low academic standards that we've talked about previously. And we see this. If you disagree with their agenda, you're a hater. You're a Nazi. You're a fascist. You're a racist. All these epitaphs are thrown at you to intimidate you. And I'm very pleased that thus far it does not seem to be working. Pastor Kevin probably could tell you in the Bible how many times it says, be not afraid or fear not. And I don't have that number, but it's a lot. So I'm just going to close by quoting Martin Luther King again. Cowardice is an expedient. Expedience comes along and asks, is it politic? Vanity asks, is it popular? Conscience asks, is it right? But there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but you must do it because conscience tells you it is right, and please keep doing so. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

And Matt Appleby.

Welcome back, Matt.

Hey, thanks. So oftentimes, I hear a lot of hate thrown, and perhaps rightfully so, at some of the board members because their policies, in fact, seem very hateful. But I'm actually going to use every public comment that I have from here until this board stops making those kind of policies, doing some kind of education because I feel like that's important. Maybe the positions are being just proposed out of ignorance. And so I'm going to try to help with that. So one thing that trans people often deal with is what's called gender dysphoria, which is defined as... Well, I'll just go ahead. So it's defined as the idea that you feel like your body is not matching what you identify as. So the nice thing is, this is something anybody can relate to. Sometimes women will look in the mirror and see those pesky chin hairs and spend plenty of time trying to get those out because it makes them feel like less than a woman, right? Sometimes men will get fat on places that is uncomfortable for them. That makes them feel less manly. Viagra makes men feel less manly, right? So we can understand the situations that trans people are in. In fact, maybe they're not that different from us, right? Maybe we all can experience gender dysphoria at some time. So I'll be back next time with more of your trans tidbit. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

We need to go to closed session. We can do it now or after the meeting.

Let's do it now.

Okay. We're going to go into closed session and we'll be back. Ten minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Board comments. Does anybody have anything that they want to comment on tonight?

Really quick. Just in the spirit of closed session transparency, I needed to update the board on a personnel matter, and that's why we went into closed session.

Anybody have board comments that they want to say tonight, right now?

I do, but I'd like to go last.

Okay.

Do you have something to add, Patty? On a positive note, it's Day of the Teacher coming up this week, so I just want to thank all our teachers out there and all the hard work and everything that they do. That's it.

Andy, do you have anything you would like to say tonight? All right. First of all, I'd like to congratulate all our retirees. So many years of service and dedication to our families, students, and our wonderful Redlands Unified School District. You are all amazing and true heroes for our students. And congratulations to Lisa Bruick on your new position as Assistant Super of HR. I also want to thank the 200-plus people who have sent emails, texts, messages, and made personal phone calls to me. I appreciate you all being so involved in the education of our youth. And I want to take this time to acknowledge and congratulate Redlands High School's Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. They earned an overall rating of exceed standards, and that is the highest rating available. Thank you to Ione Barnes-Joshua and Julio Sandoval for your dedication to cadets in your charge. I'm sure they have gained lifelong knowledge and learned valuable lessons through the program. I am very proud of all the cadets. The Harlem Wizards game was a few weeks ago, and once again, it was a huge success. I personally want to thank all the staff who showed up to play, and that includes our own superintendent. I want to thank Heather Rowe and Dr. Rudy Wilson for keeping everyone in line during the game. I'm so thankful for what REP has done for the students and staff in our district. The entire board, you know who you are. You are to be commended. A special thanks to Donna West and the others for their vision so many years ago. I'm so glad the foundation is still thriving. Thanks again to all those who participated in the Redlands Bicycle Classic. We had 736 participants this year. A special thanks to Brian Zander for all his hard work through the year, making this portion of the classic amazing. Thank you also to the teachers, staff, who showed up that morning to help run the school. dual public races. Our superintendent even showed up at 5.30 a.m. to help, so thank you very much. We will be awarding the annual trophy at a future meeting, and guess who won the elementary? I think you can guess it. I was invited along with Jeanette Wilson to Building a Generation's Dueling Pianos fundraiser last month. Building a Generation promotes nurturing environments for kids and their families to end child abuse and foster positive relationships, enabling them to become healthy and self-sufficient families. The access to the following resources are offered at the resource centers at Lagonia and Victoria. They get food, clothing, shelter resources, counseling programs through both our partners within our centers, tutoring and youth program resources through the BOOST program, adult and parent education, and our Family Resource Center integrates programs and services so that children are given the opportunity to succeed in life. Since 2002, the family resource centers have evolved to become a bridge that connects families more quickly and appropriately, improving family function and children's lives. Building in Generations provides comprehensive case management services to increase health and well-being of students and families. When I spoke with the board members, they expressed concern that programs were not being utilized by our schools, why the schools felt the services were not being offered to them. Long story short, I was able to connect the key players with the district, and I'm thankful to report that the partnership between RUSD and Building a Generation is back in full swing. Thank you to all those involved. Our students are so fortunate to have these services available.

And that's my report for tonight. Thank you.

Okay. Well, I'm going to talk about good stuff at first.

I attended our island grad for our Pacific Islander students about a little over a week ago, and it was the first time we participated in that, and it was a wonderful event. It was beautiful. We got to see performances. It was a very long event, but we got to see performances from multiple islands being represented, and it was... A very new experience to me, but a beautiful one nonetheless. And I wanted to show everybody the lay that they had given me. So we had dignitaries come along and it was held at Valley College. But I'm very excited that our students will be able to, more students will have access to this next year. And I want to thank Nishay Thompson and our FACE team for encouraging our students to go ahead and participate because it was a wonderful event. That is one. The very next day, I went to the IE Black graduation. It's probably one of the best events because it is just a huge party to see all these students joining together, dancing in the aisles, and at some point we all high-five them as they're coming down, congratulating them for the hard work that they've done. It's a very beautiful event, so congratulations. I encourage anybody else, there's videos of it online. You guys should really check that out. It's great. I also did attend at Cope Middle School. I was invited to a science showcase, and it's always great to get back into a classroom and see what our students are working on. So that was also a fun thing. I got to see my favorite project was actually watching or learning about how science taste and sight and smell affect your taste buds. And they were testing colored, I believe it was Gatorade. If you alter the color, it also affects the taste and how people perceive that to be. And same thing with yogurt. They altered the smell of it, not necessarily the taste of it. And it was pretty cool to see all our students in action. I did also make it to our multicultural fair. And if you guys, it was a hot day. Absolutely it was a hot day. But if you came out, thank you for that because there was still a lot of people there. So I did, I got a few things. So I have this necklace on. And this was made by one of our Nigerian families in the district. And The beautiful craftsmanship that went into all the necklaces that they had, it was wonderful. But this was also, this is a Nigerian bowl made from a gourd. And I got a nice little lesson about, you know, the different size of the gourds. They use them for their dishes. They use them for different things. They use them as musical instruments. But if you use smaller gourds, those are their cups. And it was just, it's fascinating to learn about different cultures. There was a lot of student booths, so there were students that were selling paper flowers that they had made, jewelry that they had made, and there was also a booth where you can get your name written in Arabic. So this actually says Quintero on it, and there's 28 letters in their alphabet, and you read it right to left. So it was just a wonderful event, and I loved being there. There's different food, different vendors, performances. Again, Ne'Shea Thompson and our FACE team, you are all incredible, and I thank you for the hard work. Again, it was a very hot day, but they provided water. I want to thank our SEPTA for providing a sensory space for our students as well. Because even though there was loud music going outside and there was so much chaos, you come into this sensory space and there was calm and there was quiet and it was a peaceful place for our students that can't handle too much noise and overstimulation. There was a great space for them to hang out. So I want to thank everybody for their hard work and dedication that went into that because it was a beautiful event. I would like to ask the board to please increase our accessibility for our community members with mobility issues. Because this has been multiple meetings now where we've had someone come in a wheelchair and we don't have a mic for them. So I don't know that that's necessarily something that we should be proud of. But I would really encourage us to please get a mobile mic for them. Because it really is important. Speaking of accessibility, I would like to request that we go back to three minutes for board comments through multiple times of contention and other issues that we've had on the board during COVID. We sat and we listened to three minutes per speaker. Didn't matter how long it was. And granted, we are having longer meetings. But that is not the community's fault. And if we are going to be true to what we're doing, I believe, in full transparency, we should be sitting here. And if we have midnight meetings, then that's what the case is. But limiting comments is not OK. Limiting meeting input is not OK. And this whole joining policies on one agenda item, I don't understand why we're doing that. That's not OK. It's censorship, which this board is not opposed to. I do want to speak to the racism and bullying that I've received from this board. I have spoken to President Redler multiple times about the harassment and bullying that I've received from board members via their social media. But because we do that behind the guise of a community group, it's okay. We are also just decorum only ends at the dais. So board member actions don't matter as long as you do it behind closed doors. And I have brought that to our board president and apparently that doesn't matter. I've had racial comments said to me by board members. I have had people saying, calling me ghetto in board member Olson's online comments. If anybody wasn't aware, being ghetto is a racist statement. It is inflicted upon people of color. And if you don't agree with that, it's probably because you're not a person of color. So I'm just saying right now that I think it's rather ironic that I was censured for my decorum here, but outside these doors we can say and do whatever we want, as well as violating the Brown Act. I'm glad members of the public did bring it up because we're violating the Brown Act by allowing board members to wear Save Girls Sports t-shirts. I did ask about it the first time they wore it. And I was told that since it was not an agendized item, it was not a Brown Act violation. And the very next meeting where it was an agendized item, that should immediately have it stricken from the agenda. Because they were, we knew how they were going to vote. And we proceeded with the vote knowing how two board members, that is a direct Brown Act violation. So if we're going to censure anybody, I move that we censure Board Member Wilson and Board Member Olson for violating the Brown Act in a very clear manner. It's something we have been lectured about. I would also like Board Member Olson to explain in an attempt of transparency, I would like her to announce her involvement with Awaken Redlands because It is a community group that does directly work within the district, and I know it was brought up before, and at least that's what I was told. It was brought up before, but every time I've brought it up, it's can we get back on topic. I think this is a topic because if I had a community group that I was CEO of, president of, founder of, I would think if it conflicted with board business, I would think that just like I was kicked off a PTA, I would think that that was another issue and a conflict. All right. I think that is it for me. I want to say I hope everybody had a really great Mother's Day. Mexican Mother's Day and then on Sunday Mother's Day. You are all warriors. You are all champions. And regardless of how you mother or who you mother to, you are all wonderful. Thank you.

I've never called you ghetto ever in my life, Melissa, and I've never made fun of your weight either, ever in my life.

I have shown proof of that. I can provide you that proof if you've forgotten.

There's a lot of things that have been said today from members of the audience and yourself that aren't true. Just because people say things does not mean that they're true about me. I've never harassed an athlete either. I was at a track meet to support the girls. That was not, I never once harassed the male player that was competing against the girls. So I am... Also, it's not a Brown Act violation when two board members are wearing. If we had had three wearing the T-shirt, that would have been. But because there was two, it was not.

That is a Brown Act violation because we know how you're voting. No board member is supposed to know. No two board members are supposed to know how another is voting. That is a Brown Act violation.

I would like to look into that and make sure about that ruling. I would like to look into that. Thank you.

I just have one more thing. I would like to publicly thank the Optimist Club from Redlands for hosting the Special Olympics this weekend. They did an amazing job. It was great. I appreciate all the help from everyone. So if we can send them a thank you note, I would appreciate that. Thank you letter to the Optimist Club. Thank you.

I would add to that the cheerleaders and the football team, and I don't know what other teams helped out.

I don't know what other teams helped out, but the football team is there every year, and it's really, really nice. Thank you.

Okay. Okay, so we're on to superintendent comments.

Favorite time of the year is coming up, graduation. I just want to say congratulations to all our graduates. Graduation for me starts as soon as a student enters our schools. That could be in TK. It could be if you transfer in. It's not something that starts when you're a freshman. And so congratulations to all of our staff and all of our community because everybody who walks across the stage is going to be set just a little bit better for their next step because we've prepared them. If you haven't had a chance to go to the Redlands Bowl, the first week of June, starting on Monday, every night, there will be a wonderful graduation Monday through Friday. You can come out and support. Those are all my comments. Oh, yeah, you need a ticket.

It's a Redlands Bowl.

You can see through the fence. It's pretty easy, actually.

Okay.

Any other board comments? Okay. All right. So as a board, we will now discuss two policies, AR 1312.2, Complaints Concerning Library or Media Center Materials, and BP 6115, Ceremonies, Observances, and Flag Displays. Through discussions and feedback I've received over the past several weeks, it's clear to me that there has been considerable miscommunication and misunderstanding about these policies. It's my hope that as a board, we can focus on the actual policies and align on language that is inclusive and supportive for all our stakeholders and students. I look forward to working through these policies and getting back to excellence in education for our students while also implementing our board's new goals, which are all students reading by third grade, math intervention for middle school, and dual immersion by 2027. At this point, Superintendent Cabral is going to read AR 1312.2. You'd like me to read the...

Yes. Did everybody read it? And everybody has a copy and everybody wrote their notes? So we don't need to read it? Are we okay? Okay.

Okay. All right. Then we'll go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'd like to begin our discussion with a few comments. I have listened to both sides of this issue and have recommended changes to the original policies brought before us in March that address concerns that have been expressed. I don't see the proposed revisions to AR 1312.2 as book banning or lack of appreciation for our librarians or a lack of support for our LGBTQ community. For me, it's about not having sexually explicit material in our libraries or media centers, regardless of sexuality, and to have age-appropriate material available to our students. As I have communicated, my concern here is to make sure we have a fair and independent process to evaluate books in question, books that may be considered sexually explicit and not age-appropriate, regardless of sexuality. We have a process in place currently. I believe it just needs to be updated. So I'm going to open it up now for additional discussion.

Anybody want to say anything?

I have a couple of things. One, it's inconsistent because in Section 2 we've crossed out pervasive, and for some reason it's still left in the above. I think if we're going to be calling something pornography, that needs to be laid out because pornography, erotica, those are all meant to incite sexual excitement, and I don't

don't know that reading about a rape is doing that. But being, you know, that we want to kind of nickel and dime this, I would like explicit language in here. And if we're not going to do that, it's very vague. And it's one, I would like to know where are the changes that you and I had discussed?

So thoughts I had on that were also taking that pervasive out of the, I didn't realize it was still in that first section. So make it match the other section. And then I also noticed that the title instructional was taken out. And if you look at the board policy, instructional is in there. And so I think they have to match. So that's why I said maybe we should leave that in there.

Okay, but that's not left in here.

I know. I have a note on here.

Okay, but you and I had discussed that this board wasn't qualified to make these decisions.

I haven't got there yet. That's down below.

Where? Because it's not in your proposed changes.

No, this is from before. These changes went in before we spoke. And so I said we're going to bring those forward to here. Okay.

Then I will wait until you're done with your changes.

So my other thing I really would like to see, everywhere it says problem, like the principal should contact the complaint within five business days to attempt to resolve the problem, I say the concern or the complaint.

It's not really a problem. It's somebody's concern or their complaint. It's not necessarily a problem. And it's written in there a lot as problem. It's just a little thing. So consider the other thing to do is consider streamlining, leaving it to the district review committee. Maybe we just do that instead of this other committee of seven people. Maybe it just goes to the district review committee and let them make the people who are in charge of everything figure it out and figure if it's good.

But if we want to still leave Section 1 in like that, leave one librarian and one teacher from a different school site.

And one of the emails suggested that we say RUSD school site so it doesn't leave it open to... another outside school saying, oh, we'll read that book. See.

I guess what concerns me is that we had someone speak this evening saying that there wasn't anyone who came and questioned what was already done in our procedure and our policy. So they said there was zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.

We've had person. In the past, we've had a person.

One person. There's been more. I mean, they're not coming to the board meeting, but there's been people.

The librarian did not say, said, that checked with everything from Citrus Valley, I believe, that there was only zero, zero, zero. Right, I understand that.

Nobody has done that yet, but what...

So why are we implementing a policy when there's fire, when there's not even smoke?

Why not put a policy in place and have it there so it's there?

Preventive. Because it suggests that there's distrust of this board in our district employees. No.

Yes, it does.

Because we pay them. We have hired them. We pay them to be professionals in their field, and that's what they've been doing. And this basically says, we don't trust you.

We're going to take it into our own hands.

Okay.

No, it says if a parent doesn't agree with material...

They have every right to remove that from their students, their own students' reading library.

That's a done deal. I mean, that's what I keep saying.

Tell me, yeah, I don't understand. Why is that not enough?

Our librarians are amazing.

Okay, you interrupted me. I literally didn't. Yeah, you did. But what I was saying, the reason why, to answer your second question, it's not enough because parents, how are they going to know every single book that's in a library that they would not agree with their child reading? How many books are in a library? Hundreds of thousands. Right. So how are they supposed to know? Okay, this is not with the audience. We're having a discussion among ourselves. Point of order.

I was just censured for trying to control the board meeting, and that was just done.

Yeah, this is our meeting. This is for us to discuss. We're discussing. So that's a valid point. I mean, parents don't know every book that's in the library. My stance has always been anything that's sexually explicit does not belong in our public school library at all. It doesn't belong here. Whether the kids see themselves in a book, whatever, that does not belong in our books.

How long have you been on the board, Michelle? How long have you been on this board? Six years. Six years? That's what I thought. And you never brought it up until recently? Oh, no, I tried.

When we talked about this before, I tried. And it was just me trying, so... It didn't go anywhere.

So it didn't go.

Yeah, it didn't go anywhere.

Yeah, and we have amazing librarians, and we have parent notes that they can opt out. It's already on there. We got statistics tonight that there wasn't zero, zero, zero. We even had someone who called him a crack librarian, which I think is – Crack trained, he said. Crack trained. That's terrible. Yeah, that was not good. No. So – Let's be grateful for the time that these... Professionals. Certificated librarians take the time to read. I do appreciate our librarians. It's telling them, we don't support what you do for us.

Because we want parents to have... They already have the option, Jeanette. All they have to do is opt out of it. Okay, do you have an idea of how they would know what books are in the child's library to then be able to complain about? How are they supposed to know? Did you have kids? Yes.

This isn't funny. How are they supposed to know? Don't you know what they were reading?

You're answering my question.

I'm asking you. You would know what they're reading. You should know what's going on.

A lot of parents don't know. The child doesn't even know what they're reading until they get to the middle or the end of the book.

I'm not saying get rid of All these books that have things that I don't agree with. I'm saying the sexually explicit stuff has no place in a public school up to age 18.

Even then in your comment, you said you're not saying get rid of all the books that you don't agree with, but you don't agree with the sexually explicit ones.

So you are saying to get rid of the ones you don't agree with.

Well, no, there's a lot I don't agree with, a lot of things that are written.

Okay, but that's the thing. We are not qualified to make that decision, and that's why it does not need to come to the board.

That's something I wanted to take out. Okay, and I understand that. We talked about that.

We're attacking the content, and we should probably be looking at the procedure. Because if someone does not want their children to check out any books, they have that right. What happened to this discussion we had last time when we were talking about there being levels to how much the parents allow their children to have access to? We had discussed that you can't check out any books. You can check out some books with parent approval because I had that conversation with Superintendent Paul. If that was something that we could do, it would probably take time and money. But if that was something where a student wants to check out a book, they do not go home with that book. Their parents are then sent an email for them to deny or approve that book. That will give the parents the opportunity to review the book and decide if that content is appropriate for them. There are plenty of websites out there to aid in that, where they review these books to see and they point out if there is content that you shouldn't agree with. But then there's also the warning where, yes, I allow my child to read anything that they want, with the second pop-up that we discussed that said... Yes, you understand that there may be drug use, sexual violence, and topics that some may view as controversial.

What happened to that? Because we're trying to fix something, again, that has become a contentious issue, and we're making national news for this. That's not okay.

So if I could just, a couple of things that we do currently and things that have happened. Kids in third grade check out a book. They go home. They read it. Parent sees the book, reads it, and says, oh my goodness, how did my child, how were they able to get this book?

I don't agree with this book. That has actually happened. And They go to the library and they say, why is this book in this library? And it becomes questioned.

At that point, that speaks to Jeanette's point. Like, how is the parent supposed to know that book was even in there?

They didn't find out until after the kid was reading it, until after the child was reading it.

I have said this since last school year. What exists currently to help with that is that, and it's a little bit what Melissa is saying, is a parent, a kid does not have to check out any books unless the parent approves it.

That currently exists right now.

If a parent were to contact their school and say, do not let my student check out a book unless I approve it, we can do that. It is not something that is common, but we're able to do it is what I'm saying. It speaks to Jeanette's point. How does a parent know the book is in there? I'm saying that they don't necessarily have to know. We would let them know before the child even checks it out.

is that you're counting on that parent to know that there may be a problem and most parents are oblivious that there may be a problem also that's completely ridiculous to have every single that's a very labor consuming time consuming process to be like every single time a child comes in you're going to have to call the parent and I understand I'm just trying to make very clear what I've said in the past that we currently can do that's all Michelle what were you talking about changing this other part

Well, then I thought that the eight, number eight in the first part, maybe it should just go to the district review committee like section two. Just have it all streamlined. Everything's the same.

It starts at this committee, but if it's sexually explicit or whatever, it goes straight to the review board. Right.

What exactly are you suggesting changing?

In that first part. Number eight. Okay. What about it? Take that out and make that be just the district review committee.

What out? That the board makes the final decision.

Should the complaint agree with the district? So you should say, should the complainant disagree? Okay. Okay.

So why are my suggestions not being considered, but we're going back to rewriting the policy when I'm literally saying we can get away without doing this policy, without upsetting our teachers, without upsetting our librarians or our unions, when we can just tighten up the checkout policy? Because it's not going to be more labor intensive for an automatic email to be sent. Yeah, your child is wishing to check out a book. Your child is wishing to check out a book. Approve, deny, click. That book will then get delivered to that child. I don't understand what's the labor intensive of that. And I guarantee you, and I don't know if there's any librarians left, but I guarantee you they would much rather go through that extra work of emailing a parent, even if it is automatic... than to have to remove books that have educational merit from our libraries.

This is a compromise. I'm not saying we're not supposed to remove any books from any child.

I'm saying this is a compromise.

None of this policy takes into account our community members that have come and spoken, the parents that have said, we don't want this. It only includes the ones that say they do. So where is the compromise?

In our board policy, we are supposed to ensure opportunities for the diverse range of views in the community to inform board deliberations. Nothing about any of this shows that we are giving equal weight to both sides.

I disagree on that.

I wanted to say something.

We're under no obligation to provide every single piece of material to the public. We have no obligation to provide sexually explicit material. And actually, I had brought some things because I'm really tired of people trying to argue that we need sexually explicit material. things for our children to read. It's proven time and time again that it's very harmful for children, so I pulled up some peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that examined the potential harm. of this material on children and adolescents. There are very large studies from very excellent journals. Number one was exposure to sexual content and problematic sexual behaviors in children and adolescents, a systematic review and meta-analysis, which is a very large analysis of multiple studies. It was published in JAMA Pediatrics, and the conclusion was that exposure to sexually explicit content, including both nonviolent and violent sexual content, is significantly associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in problematic sexual behaviors among children and adolescents. The next one was an article called Exposure to Sexually Explicit Media in Early Adolescence is Related to Risky Sexual Behavior in Emerging Adulthood. This was published in the Journal of Developmental Psychology. The author concludes that exposure to sexually explicit material is associated with various adverse outcomes in minors. These include earlier initiation of sexual activity, engagement in risky sexual behaviors, and Distorted gender roles, negative body image, increased aggressiveness, and symptoms of anxiety or depression. The authors emphasize the need for preventative strategies and education to mitigate these potential harms. So how about a prevention strategy being that our district not actively provide sexually explicit materials? The next one is called Longitudinal Associations Between the Use of Sexually Explicit Material in Adolescent's Attitudes and Behaviors. This was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. In this narrative review, the author analyzed 20 longitudinal studies from nine different research projects to examine the effects of sexually explicit material on adolescents' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The findings indicate that sexually explicit material exposure is associated with various negative aspects in adolescent development, including sexual behavior, sexual norms and attitudes, gender attitudes, self-esteem, sexual satisfaction, uncertainty, and preoccupancy. Additionally, the studies reported developmental effects on adolescents' behavioral, cognitive, and emotional well-being. I am shocked to hear people begging to place sexually explicit material in the hands of minors. It's disgusting to me, and while you may choose to do that in your own home, I will not stand for it here, not while I'm on this board. That's what I have to say about that.

Thank you. Back to my original thing about the sexually explicit material. I just don't think it belongs in our schools.

That's what I'm trying to say. That's if somebody finds one, if a parent finds one. and they wanted to bring it to us to look at.

I think we have this committee that can do that. And because I don't feel qualified to pick out every single book and figure out which ones are not appropriate.

So what's to keep different community members and different because you say you removed community members, but it's still in Section 1.

Yeah, I realized that...

Okay, but then why are we voting on policies and, like, why are we... Excuse me, I'm talking. We're just discussing. I understand that, but the changes aren't there. So... Original changes were there. Yes, I know, but you and I had talked about changes, too, that aren't reflected, so...

Which is what we were bringing to this meeting. That's what we need to do.

Well, I thought we weren't supposed to, like, two people that... talk on the side of what changes they want, and then you make the changes to bring it here. That's not how the board works.

No, I said if you have any changes, bring them to the meeting.

Okay. What do you mean? Well, so you can't have a conversation with Michelle and decide what changes you want and have it already be written in the documents?

That's how the flag policy started.

Two board members can have a discussion. Can you please ask my colleague to quit interrupting me?

Yeah. Can we just talk one at a time? So whoever's talking, let's talk, and then the next person. Let someone finish their sentence.

I find it ironic that I'm being accused of interrupting when she's doing the same.

We are both doing it. No, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay. So finish your statement.

No, I was just saying that she's alleging that two board members talking about a policy isn't allowed. I'm saying, isn't that how the flag policy started? Because you two started to work on it, and then Candy had said you stopped engaging. And two board members talking on something isn't a violation.

No, not a violation. Especially when it's the president. when you report to the president and just like to get on an agenda. I'm talking, remember, and it's an agendized item, and then we say, you always call the board president. I hope that that's the procedure and the way that you've been doing work. I always call Michelle and say, Michelle, blah, blah, blah, or a discussion item or agenda. I always go and I usually copy our superintendent as well.

Changes to a policy that we're already working on is what I'm talking about. That once we've already started working on a policy, it is my understanding that I wouldn't go and talk to Michelle and have her agree to a change in the document and that she would make that change and then put it back into the agenda. Okay.

So what you're suggesting is that a singular board member is only allowed to work on a policy?

If this is a board policy, multiple members of the board are allowed to suggest changes.

In our meetings, is my understanding.

I believe that's what this discussion should be doing.

So if, for example, Melissa says, Michelle, we talked about that, it would have to be decided here, though.

Right. But Melissa is saying, why didn't you make the changes? Why aren't they already in the document?

Yeah, my understanding is that Melissa's questioning a conversation they had and is not seeing it.

Then Michelle responded by saying, I wanted to talk about it here and make that decision here and finalize it here, is what I heard Michelle say.

Yes, because Michelle brought these drafts back. So I assumed that the changes would have been made. That's what I'm asking.

And this draft was done before we had our conversation, too. So this was done.

There's no changes yet.

I know there aren't, but Melissa is asking why there aren't.

Which I think is her asking Michelle. Michelle can respond to that. If Michelle were to respond, I don't want to make those changes. I know we had the discussion. She could say that. She could say, I'm thinking about it still. But I also think it's okay for Melissa to ask, why didn't you make those changes?

So I do want to take out that the board shall hold, or the decision shall be sent, and where is that?

Where are you? Number eight, and then number four. I'm on the next section. Number eight on the first section.

What do you propose to say?

I think she's just saying to remove them entirely.

Yeah, and make it the district review committee that we put in there, that they can do it, their committee.

It's what happened before. No. We need to not shunt everything out to committees because this is why nine very sexually explicit books are still in our schools because of the district review committees.

Do you think it was the district review committee or the regional committee? They all did.

They all approved those books. All of them. And they're still in our schools. That's why we can't do committees.

So what I'm hearing is that it doesn't matter what the committee says as long as the board decides that they're wrong. This is why I have an issue is because we're not going to agree. Again, we're not qualified. But the ultimate goal here isn't to protect kids. It's to remove books that certain board members disagree with.

I understand. Look, Michelle, I understand that you don't agree with some of the books. There are some books that I don't agree with, but I am not advocating to remove them from our schools. This is a public school. And you're not going to sit here and tell me that, oh, well, they can still go to the public library. The same thing is happening at our public library. The same thing is happening at our Library of Congress. The same thing is happening across the country.

Removing explicitly sexual books?

Yes. Sexualizing our children is not good for our children. It's not good for the children's minds. It's not good for their outcomes in life. And if the committee will not say no to these over-sexualized books, then we need to. You can do that in your home if you choose to. You're not limiting anyone's free speech, and we are under no legal obligation whatsoever to provide every sexually explicit book.

And we have no legal right to remove books from children.

We sure do.

From their access. No.

We sure do in our library. Okay.

This is a public school. That's why private schools exist. So that parents can control. Yes. That's why you have the right to homeschool. That's why you have the right to go to a charter school. You have the right to go to a private school. Public school is different.

But I still don't think public schools are supposed to be offering sexually explicit material to children. That is your personal perspective.

Well, and Juan made it clear a couple meetings ago that the public school district is not obligated to have every book in a library.

No one's talking about it.

I'm not asking for us to buy millions of dollars worth of books so we can have one of every book. That's not what I'm asking.

I just want to go back to number eight. I don't see where two standard board meetings that we have to, I don't feel that I'm, we hire, we pay people, librarians, that's in their job, and the committee. That should not be ours. I disagree with you on that.

Well, that's fine that you disagree, but we do have sexually explicit, very incestuous and pornographic pedophilic books in our libraries. So we do have that. They exist. And so I'm not okay with that personally.

I'm not okay with what we're talking about. So we can agree to disagree. That's okay. That's what I'm saying.

The bottom of number eight says this district review committee, the superintendent's district review committee, decision must be approved or denied by the governing board.

Which, I mean, we do that with hires, we do that with... Do you remember how much money it cost when we had someone reading the books and doing all that?

$20,000.

Do you remember that? Well, I'm still talking, Candy. And do you remember that? I mean, you probably know that. Who asked the question? I'm talking to everyone. But I'm saying it cost $20,000. And to have, you know, within two standard board meetings, well, you're going to have to multiply because it took them five months to do that. So now we're going to be paying double in order to do that. I disagree with that entire paragraph on number eight.

Okay, so playing devil's advocate here. So what happens when the committee makes a decision and then they bring it to the board and surprise, surprise, the board doesn't agree.

What happens then?

First of all, when we're talking about sexually explicit material, you're not paying attention to the policy because that is in a different section, okay? Sexually explicit material is under Section 2. So the committee is dealing with non-overly sexualized material, okay? So...

Okay, so the changes I proposed.

Can I ask a question, Michelle? Yes, what? Are we obligated to provide an appeal option once a committee decision is made?

Well, in this thing, it says the parent then can appeal it, and then it goes to the superintendent's district review committee. For anything that's not sexually explicit, you know, just something somebody doesn't think is appropriate or age-appropriate or whatever, and then it just follows those steps three down to eight. And then Section 2 is different, because if it's sexually explicit material, then... it looks like it's going to go straight to the district review committee.

It's going to the board.

Oh, no, directly to the board. So that's why I wrote, should this go straight to the district review committee. And then after it goes to the district review committee, then it comes to the board if the person still wants to challenge it. Because remember, the person has to keep challenging. They do it the first. That's the current way, yeah. They keep challenging it. They have to do it a third, and that's as far as they can get. The third would be the board. That's the end.

And then we wind up right back here.

Most of the books that people have major problem with will go to Section 2, and it will save a lot of time and money. We won't need to pay a committee for anything. We can just make a decision. We're all mothers here. I think we have sound mind and sound judgment. We're all professionals, and we can make a decision whether something is sexually obscene or pornographic or contains erotica.

I think that's very subjective, though, because what you consider to be obscene, I'm sure, is different than what I would consider to be obscene.

Well, when I...

When I wrote the first changes, the first time when nobody was agreeing on anything, I took out in the first section, I mean right above the first section, took out the word pervasive, because that's very, what does pervasive mean to people? Inappropriate vulgarity or profanity, I took that out, or other obscene material, I took those out. And then after sexual, descriptions of sexual acts and or sexual violence. I put that in there. So then I thought it needs to be reflected in here the exact same way. Because it has to match.

I find it shocking that you're equating someone's testimony of a sexual assault or abuse to pornography. That's just shocking to me because last I checked, we don't have, I mean, they don't even make them anymore, but we don't have Playboy or Hustler or anything. We don't have those in our library, and this suggests that we do.

There are some books that we have that are sexually explicit, very graphic.

And what is the context of that?

And they go into detail about the sexual...

I understand that. And are they depicting a sexual assault?

I don't know. Maybe. Some of them.

Shouldn't we know?

Some of them, but not all of them.

Not all of them. But yet Candy wants us to make that decision when you just said you don't know, so... That once again, I'm talking now, now it says it goes back to us on are we qualified to make that decision. I think what Board Member Olson is saying is just because we're mothers, not just because we are mothers, that that qualifies us to make a decision. But I think that's a personal decision for someone. not make a broad statement that because we're mothers we should do that. Well, of course we're mama bears. We take care of our kids. We do everything to prevent any harm from them. Any person would do that. But it's going to be different from what you think or I think or what Michelle thinks or what Melissa thinks.

was not the only reason we all are of sound mind and we can make rational decisions and we're professionals those were the other reasons I gave in addition it's better to err on the side of caution and safety when you're dealing with material that may harm a minor there is absolute reason to err on the conservative side because maybe we don't agree on if it's erotica or it's pervasive pornography but if we err on the conservative side no child will be harmed you can read it at home

Don't you think that if we remove a book, don't you think that someone with nefarious intentions could then use that book and be like, this is exactly what your school board doesn't want you to read and show it to them?

We don't live in a hypothetical world where this could happen or that could happen.

Hold on. We don't live in a hypothetical world, but you are writing policies on hypothetical problems.

There are nine problems in this district that have to be resolved. There are nine and there are more. Actually, we found a lot more, and teachers have come to us and staff who have come to us regarding very poor choices of books that are in our libraries.

And we've had just as many come and stand in defense of it. But I want to talk about this hypothetical problem. We're passing policies on hypothetical problems, and Board Member Olson just said they were very real problems.

Didn't we just pass a policy on saving girls' sports for athletes that we don't even have?

We did not pass any policy, no.

Oh, I'm sorry, it was a resolution. Excuse me, you're right. Yes, we passed a resolution for athletes that we don't even have. So why is that not a hypothetical?

That was to say we support fairness in girls' sports. If the law comes down, whatever, we are in support of fairness in girls' sports. That's what that resolution said.

And on top of that, are you saying, I mean, basically with that line of thinking, every single policy we have, which we have many, many, many, that they all came about because of a problem. None of them came about being proactive, seeing ahead what could happen that we need a policy to set the parameters of that.

I would say our racism policy did that, but we still have racism.

That's a resolution. I mean, we have hundreds of policies that were not.

I just don't remember a lot of people coming and complaining about books. It wasn't until a certain group a few years ago started bringing them up, actually.

Maybe that's when some of these books started getting published and put into school libraries.

It was maybe because individuals... found somewhere to go after and believe certain things, which is fine. You can believe what you want to believe and do what you want to do. But we didn't have any problems. And I've been here a little bit of a time. And I can't remember. We have solid librarians. They do their job. They do a great, we have a policy. God bless. And so it's not until a few people came in and started this Then it's all been brought up and then now as people are stuck.

I do want to say that just because it didn't happen while you were on the board and it hasn't been an issue doesn't mean it wasn't really there. The books were there. One of the books I looked at hadn't been checked out since 1987.

Nobody was checking it out, but it still doesn't belong there.

It's your opinion that it doesn't belong there.

So if nobody's checking it out, then what harm is it causing?

I mean, take it out.

We don't need it.

You don't need it. That's the difference. You don't need it.

It's your personal opinion. We're all going to have our own personal opinions on this. All of us are.

Because we're all going to disagree with a range of topics. I mean, I know the books on pride parades have come up, and I know it just sent everybody up in arms. But just because certain board members, regardless of your political views, just because you don't find value in it does not mean it does not have value at all.

What I want to know is how do sexually explicit books in the hands of children, because these are children, help with their education? That doesn't do anything for their education.

Okay, so we keep making it seem like we are offering these books to our elementary students. We are not. I'm saying children. Under 18, you are a child.

Under the law, yes, you are a child. Yes, but are our children not making decisions for their future right now? Are they not enlisting in the military right now? Are they not enlisting their intent to join the military right now?

Kids have intent to do a lot of things. I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to be a lawyer.

And they are making decisions right now to steer themselves in that direction, correct?

That's what we raise them up to do.

So if they want to serve on our board to, in the future, join politics, we allow that, but we... Again... There are books that exist not only to entertain, to have people seeing differing viewpoints, but again, I don't know why I keep having to say this. If there's a student that is being abused that doesn't know they are being abused because they have never been told, they have never read it, they have never seen that what is happening to them is wrong, if they find it in a book... where they aren't being exposed by the public, no one's laughing at them, but they can read it for themselves and find out this is wrong, that's what's happening to me, or it teaches them empathy when someone they know has experienced this. And we know that this happens.

And we've talked about that. We've talked about that. A book can be about that. It doesn't have to have sexually explicit graphics

So you want to tone down the experience that somebody has gone through. The book is okay to stay as long as they dial back.

The sexual acts don't need to be depicted in the book for somebody to keep reading over and over. I don't think that's good for anybody.

It's not good for anybody. And on top of it, my contention on that is that those books that could help educate a child should have resources and guidance about what to do and not just read about someone. I'm sure many of them do.

We maybe do this, Superintendent. Um, talk to our librarians. Let's some of the books, um, better there. For instance, what, um, board member Ayala Quintero had said, there's a student going through an abusive situation and see what kind of pictures, if there are on any, whatever Mrs. Olson says and let us know so we can ourselves, so we can go and look. I mean, I don't think that would be that difficult to have.

Never said there was pictures.

Well, there are pictures of sexual. Just books. Just books that you have concerns about.

Well, there's nine that went through the committee.

And those decisions were made. You can't go back and change it just because you disagree with them.

Someone can challenge the book after we pass the book policy, and we can go through the process.

all over again, even though these decisions have already been made. What does that say to the public?

You know what? The people in my area are horrified at the books that are in the libraries. So a lot of them thought, you don't have to have an ID to show to check that out. This is disgusting. They wanted to vomit. So just because you may believe differently, there is a whole lot of people that feel the way I do.

And there's a whole lot of people that feel the way I do.

So let's just err on the side of safety. It does harm children. Sexually explicit material does harm children.

Maybe just because you found studies to support your claim doesn't mean that are...

There is nothing to the contrary. Can I finish what I was saying?

There is no evidence showing that sexually... Again, can I finish what I was saying? I was speaking.

Just because you have found studies to support your claims doesn't mean that there are not plenty of studies that show the negative effects of banning books.

But we're talking about the sexually explicit. You have to find studies that show that it's good for kids to read about sexually explicit acts, see pictures of the body. You just said there were no pictures. No.

I don't know of pictures. Maybe there are pictures. There are pictures. I'm not aware of them.

And I was clarifying. There are pictures of how to have anal sex, how to have oral sex. There's pictures and diagrams. Where? I don't have the page numbers right with me, but yeah, I can get it for you.

Okay, I would like to see a book that we have that shows how to perform anal sex. Okay.

That's what I asked. Not anyone here? That's exactly what I had asked for a superintendent to do. Can we do... Can you...

I say yes. Thank you. We can.

Okay, so... A field trip. Looks like we're just here. We've gone as far as we're going to go. What do you mean? Do we have consensus to move this forward?

Yes. No, I'm not comfortable because I just asked our superintendent.

can still move forward.

We can also get the books in the meantime.

I don't understand why we're steamrolling this through. If we're really trying to be transparent and honest with our constituents and our students and our staff, there needs to be care taken into this. And the magnitude of this entire thing needs to be taken seriously. And I don't see what rushing through it and passing it anyways and moving forward with the vote. How is that helpful?

It's not rushing. This has been talked about since January. This is not rushing. This is not steamrolling. This has been very thoughtful and drawn out.

For you. But, I mean, I've been on for a year that it's taken a process. You need things right away. You came in with an agenda to do things right away, immediately, to get them done. I'm talking still. And I think that Mrs. Rennler, President Rennler, just said we're not taking a vote today. Let's wait for the information that we get and make a decision then.

I thought the purpose of today was to take a vote whether we want to move forward to have the union negotiations.

to have it written correctly.

I would think that we should have a hammered out policy, clear, especially with the language. You guys have vulgarity and stuff. I want it all written out with specific words, with specific acts and terms, because this is so vague. It's not fair. So I want, until we have an actual policy with everything written out, which we don't right now, I don't see what the point of moving forward and asking the unions to negotiate on something that we're going to change anyways. So can we at least get the books? We can review them ourselves, even though we're not qualified to. But can we at least see what we're talking about? And I'm not talking about one or two. I want to see everything that we're supposedly challenging here.

All the ones that no one has come up to say that they had a problem with.

And those decisions have already been made.

So we don't want to go through the language of this right now and get something that we can actually... No, I don't.

I don't.

No? No. You want to wait?

Yeah, I just made a request to our superintendent.

This is not moving forward to vote. I understand that, but no, I don't want to do this.

I want the information from our superintendent, please. Thank you.

And can you update it with the correct language that you and I had talked about or the changes that you want?

So we can at least see what we're talking about here.

The language can be edited still. We're still not voting on this. So we need to make a decision to move forward so these policies can be discussed in union negotiations. We have a meeting coming up at the end of this month, and this needs to be included in it because we all have a majority in agreement that we need to move forward with this policy.

We can still make minor edits to it, and then we will vote on it later. Do you see what's happening?

She wants to move it forward and you don't.

No, I understand that, but she keeps doing it where she wants us to just move forward with it and then we'll make changes later. There's no obligation to make changes later.

Well, we don't have to make changes. We can just have it as it is.

Exactly, and we don't agree on this.

I don't think it's the right time right now, and there is no rush, Candy.

There is because there's harmful material in our libraries. That's your opinion. They can utilize our current policies.

That's your personal opinion. That's right. Yeah, so when you speak, say it's my personal opinion. I mean, I've learned to do that because I can't speak for all five of us. I don't know why you're laughing again, smiling. It's my personal opinion, your personal opinion, your personal opinion, etc.,

One thing I know that I think really needs to be changed is the second paragraph that starts with the complaints regarding appropriateness of library or reading material. The second paragraph, the language has to agree with what's in Section 2. That all has to be the same. It has to be fixed. Yeah, that has to be fixed.

I'll agree to that.

I'll see that. And I'm questioning this title of instructional, taking instructional out, because if you look at the board policy, it says concerning instructional material.

I would think then that's what needs to be changed.

So we don't want to deal with instructional material at all?

We already did, right? Yeah, we did already. Yes. Yeah. So I'm fine with getting rid of instructional material.

Was 6,000 a new one that you did, or was that a rewrite? It's a new one. Okay. All right. So I have that one. And then so nobody wanted my idea of considered streamlining, leaving it to the district review committee. So you didn't like that idea. So, okay. And then I thought possibly we didn't even need a section one.

Actually, I agree with you on that.

Leaving it to the district committee.

Yeah, we should have any part of that, the board, making a decision like that.

I mean, someone can always come to the board with a complaint, and then we have to follow up.

But I don't feel comfortable making a decision on that when we have qualified librarians that this is their job.

Well, the district review committee is listed as the superintendent, assistant, superintendent of ed. I mean, those aren't qualified librarians either.

So depending on the level, it would be the elementary director or the... Our superintendent was a teacher.

I'm pretty sure he's qualified.

Well, you keep bringing up qualified librarians, so those people aren't.

So you're not. But he's part of the committee.

But in Section 2, do we want to leave that in, that after the review committee, it can go to the board?

No.

In Section 2, there's no review committee.

There's no review committee. It's straight to the board. Right. Should that go to the review committee too?

Yes.

No, we don't need to spend money on a review committee when it wastes a lot of resources, a lot of time, and we've seen what the review committee has already done regarding sexually explicit material.

Why are you not willing to make some compromises on your policy? You're trying to get this pushed through as you've written it. Where is the compromise?

You've heard from our constituents. I'm speaking. We have heard from your constituents, from my constituents, from Jeanette's, from Patty's, from Michelle's. And there have been plenty on both sides that have asked us to consider this.

Why are we not considering it? Where is the compromise?

I have considered it, and I disagree with you because we do have a district review committee who has reviewed all of the nine books that have been challenged, and they agreed to leave them in there. They are extremely graphic, hyper-sexualized content that shouldn't be, in my opinion, in our libraries for our children's minds to consume. So your opinion rules this board? No, but we need to err on the side of safety.

You can do it under the guise of safety. Being cautious doesn't make it any less wrong.

We didn't have... Did we have a district review committee before? That's new, isn't it?

I think we did, yeah.

We had the school evaluation committee.

Or the appeals committee. It was... It wasn't a district review committee. It was somebody that Wagner was in charge of his committee. It was a district committee.

Do you look at the language? Sorry, I have a candy in my mouth. Number six. That's crossed out, says the district committee shall be appointed by the superintendent and designee. So yeah, we've had one before.

I have one.

Language is crossed out, that's the current policy. On number six.

On the crossed out part. Yeah, there was a committee.

I just think the board should be neutral and objective and remove themselves from all of these decisions.

We promised the community that we were going to have a committee. And we were going to send out a survey. And we've yet to do that because apparently transparency isn't a thing.

That was on the other policy. That was on the other policy. We said books too.

We said books too.

No, it was the flag policy.

We said books too. We can go back.

But we got stopped on it, so.

And yet we're still talking about this.

Yes, I know. Okay, so with those few changes and changing resolve the problem, every word says the problem, I would like to change that word. Concern or complaint. Concern or complaint. don't know which sounds better but and then number six on review there's ing yeah and are we all okay with the the language about sexually i i wish it said sexually explicit i guess i

really want that in there because I want it to see if perceived what perceived where are you looking section two I know where specifically if complaint alleges that material includes perceived pornography because just because you state state it doesn't mean make it so

It says alleges. It already is saying that the complainant is alleging this, so it doesn't say that it's fact. Yeah, perceived. You can still include perceived in there. Well, that's a duplicate. No, it's not.

Taking pervasive out, though, correct? Just like the other section?

It's fine. And then if you want, let's just add sexually explicit. You wanted to add that, so that's fine. Let's add it. Right? You wanted to add sexually explicit, you were just saying. So let's just add it.

Yes, but I'm going back to Melissa's perceived pornography because the person who alleges it, it's perceived. It's their perception.

It's automatically perceived.

I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's already perceived because they're alleging it.

Yeah. And maybe we need to put that word in there. Maybe you could say if complaint perceives. If complaintant? No, that doesn't sound right either. It was fine the way it was.

If complaint alleges that material includes perceived pornography.

Okay. And I took out the inappropriate vulgarity, right? We took out that. And then I wanted to make Matt.

It was not removed from the second paragraph of the beginning.

Yes. So that one, we took out pervasive, inappropriate vulgarity or profanity or other obscene material because that's very subjective, right? Is that not subjective?

It all is, but yes. Yes.

Which is compromising right there. There has been compromise.

There has been quite a bit of compromise, actually.

And originally I had said take out district residents, number one, under Section 2.

but I think we owe it to our stakeholders to keep them in there because they're the ones who voted for us. I agree. So we need to leave that in there.

Well, and they paid the taxes for the schools, for the materials.

Yeah, district residents, I guess, leave that in there.

So I'd like to see a limit of how many challenges a district member or community member can put in. Because, again, like it was pointed out, the same community member can put in, what, 30, 40, 50 book challenges? Yes.

And then they can do it after we've made a decision, which likely this board would not agree that it stays. But even if we did decide that it stayed, they could do it again over and over and over indefinitely.

Well, I do think we need something in here for once a decision is made. I mean, we don't want then additional people submitting the same complaint.

See, but okay, under that, I agree that once a decision is made, it should stay. However, this entire policy is because eight or nine books, a decision was made, and they were deemed, they had merit to stay, and now we're doing this. So I think it's just a little hypocritical that we're saying once a decision is made, they get to stay, and you can't challenge it again, but that's exactly what we're doing here.

It would be a new policy, so that process wasn't in place before.

I mean, I guess that's true, though. If a different parent wants to file a complaint and go through the process, do we deny them?

Didn't have the problem before. It wasn't until...

Until people started paying attention.

No, until new board members came on. So where did you put it?

It's actually an explicit, Candy. Where did you put that? Oh.

Just like where you crossed out inappropriate vulgarity. I just put it right there. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, I don't think legally we could not allow community members.

Yeah, there should be any. Yeah, so I think I just put the bug in.

So how many more synonyms for porn, erotica, graphic description? How many more synonyms are we going to throw in there?

Well, I think we talked about that when you told me that all those, you pretty much have to have those in there. The erotica, the sexual violence, all that. Graphic.

The more specific you can be, the better it is so that there's no question. The other thing we talked about is we don't have definitions for these and being as specific as possible is helpful, meaning defining what we mean by sexually explicit, for example.

Mm-hmm.

If the complainant feels that it's sexually explicit to them in their definition of sexually explicit, then they're able to allege that it's sexually explicit and then can trigger the process. We may disagree, but...

Sorry. I think submitting a complaint, anybody can allege anything.

I think the definition is important, figuring out whether or not... it's going to be allowed or not.

For the committees.

Yeah, it's got to be. Whoever's making the decision, that group needs to be consistent on what the definition of sexual explicit is.

Right. And it will be theoretic. I mean, it could be different people. So there needs to be some...

Which I think is what's being pointed out, yes. Yeah. Okay.

Last thing we just have to figure out is this number eight and number four in these. So... Number eight, if we take that out and leave it to the district review committee, that's Patty, you're with that one. What about in section two, that it goes straight to the board? Nope.

Once again, they're asking us, and I don't feel qualified to do that.

This isn't going well. So how is the book challenging?

You want that to go to the district review committee also? I would like a lot of this removed from us. Now, I know that at any time somebody can come to the board and say, I don't agree with this, whatever, and then we can task him with... reviewing or something.

What's the point of that? If I may speak for a moment. Do you see the issue, what we're going to be doing with these particular books? For example, the nine. What's going to happen is now we're going to pay the committee... to review them instead of coming straight to the board. What's going to happen is the person filing that complaint about that book is not going to be satisfied with the district review committee's decision to allow the book to stay in there as was done before. And now it's going to come to the board. So all we've added is a step there and a lot of money spent.

So section two, you want to go straight to the board. Yes. Section one can go to the district review committee. I'm fine with that. You okay with that? Mm-hmm. Because that's not sexually explicit stuff. That's just content. Right, exactly. It's just content.

I don't think that that's fair.

It's not fair?

There needs to be consistency.

Because then who's to say something is erotic and it's not just content? It all should go to the board.

What makes the board more qualified to review content the content of the book than if it's just regular content and if it's pornography or foul language. I don't understand why all of a sudden because of the content of the book makes the board more qualified to make that decision.

For some reason, it's necessary because it went through the channels before and it's left in our libraries.

Just because you didn't agree doesn't mean it doesn't have merit.

Well, you're right. I disagree. It's very explicit, very pedophilic content.

That's a wild allegation.

There's a lot of pedophilic content in a lot of the books that's in our libraries. You didn't know that? It's a lot of it. It's mostly that from the nine books that's challenged. Those are the main reasons. It's incest and pedophilia.

There's incest in the Bible.

So my view still is on sexually explicit graphic and out there talking, just saying the whole thing out there does not belong in our libraries. That's all I'm saying.

Okay, but I don't think it should come to the board. That's all I'm asking, Michelle, that it stays at a review committee.

And a review committee that's been practicing this and this is what they follow and they do.

And I think that a person who is Like they don't agree. Okay, so it goes to the review committee and they don't agree and they're like, nope, I'm taking this to the board. They have every right to do that anyway.

Anybody has.

They have any right to do that. We don't have to have that in writing. They can do that anytime. Anytime. And the board can say, yeah, get that out of there or no, it's fine.

So then what's the point of the committee? Exactly. We're just wasting our money with the committee.

But again, we agreed that the board is not qualified. I didn't agree to that. I wasn't talking to you.

You said we agreed.

I was looking at Michelle when I said it. Okay.

Yeah, I don't know how qualified I am to...

Then you know what? Let's all become qualified. But you know what?

I'm qualified to know what I believe is actually explicit. No, no, no.

But no, if we're going to really do this, we should all get certified. We should all become qualified.

In factually explicit material?

No, in reviewing books. Like, no, if we're going to make these decisions, we need to have certificates behind it.

That's why we have a committee.

No, I understand that, but we're taking this into our own hands, so I want to be a professional on it, and I want to be experienced in it.

I want to be a professional book reviewer. We make a lot of decisions in areas that we are not... We haven't gone to school. No, we don't. Oh, yes, we do.

That's a very good point.

Give me something that we make decisions on that we're not experts in. Contracts, budgets.

We don't make those decisions.

Recommendations.

We're approving budgetary items every meeting. We don't make those decisions. Our superintendent, our... Our CBO, like other people make those decisions. We pay people to make those decisions.

We approve those contracts as they have been recommended. We don't have any experience in that.

We are not expected to approve them as recommended. We're expected to.

Yes, we are. Wait. excuse me no that is why the superintendent has recommendations Mr. Hill has recommendations Mrs. Bruick has recommendations and they are only recommendations we then question them we then push back we review them that's why we get these big packets and then we approve or don't approve them but we are not making the decision ourselves You just said we approve or don't approve. We are. The recommendation. Is that not being clear? I didn't go out and seek these contracts. I didn't go out and determine what work needs to be done on our roof. Other people did that.

So then when the business services brings it to us and says this is what needs to be done, we trust because we pay them to do that.

If you don't trust them, you ask questions.

You look at the backup that's been provided. Yeah. All this. And I'm sure you do, because you've done that.

And I'm making a decision still.

But what they're saying is we don't do the legwork.

But we won't be doing the legwork on the books that come to us. Yes, we will. The parents will be filing a complaint, and then we'll be looking at the information.

We'll be doing the legwork.

We'd be doing all the work. We would be doing the work.

In here in the Section 2, I just want to clarify that when a parent puts a complaint in, that book is only removed for their child, not for everybody. So people are saying it's going to be gone. That is not clear.

Are you talking about Section 2? No, Section 1. Section 1. The book is not gone to every single kid. It's still there. It's just for that child.

So why do they have to, if it's only removed for their child, why do they have to go through a whole complaint process when they can just call the librarian and say, I don't want my kid reading that?

Because there are some parents that have never seen that book yet.

So they'll go through all the process of filing a complaint, but they won't just call the librarian or call the district and say, hey, I don't want my child to read this book. It seems like we're making them go through an extra step.

The complaint is, I don't want my kid to read this book, and nobody should be reading this book. That's their complaint.

But you just said it only gets removed from their own child, not everybody.

Yes, while it's going through the review.

If it's deemed inappropriate, then it will get pulled if it's deemed sexually with sexual content for their child, but temporarily while it's being reviewed.

Except if it's sexual content, it gets removed within three days from that library.

And it could be that the book is acceptable for, say, middle school and not elementary, and it gets removed only from an area where it's developmentally and age inappropriate.

See, but that's also very subjective because...

Excuse me, I'm speaking. You can't allege that I'm interrupting you when you're doing it to me. Excuse me. Thank you. You can't say that a book is developmentally appropriate for a certain age child because there are sixth graders who are not as developmentally advanced as eighth graders or high schoolers, and then there's high schoolers who are not developmentally as far as maybe a seventh grader. That is so subjective, and it's such a gray area. Yeah. So we try our best to have age-appropriate books, but yes, if something isn't appropriate for your child, your own child, yes, we have a process to remove it from your own child.

So my point was going to be that the actual books that did get removed were deemed by the, I can't remember if it was the author or the editor, to not be appropriate for that age. Then we would move the book. But it only happened because someone took the time to go through this complaint process.

Yeah, and it shows the process works.

And it shows that there are sometimes books that need to get pulled or moved.

And that was under the prior policy that we are trying to get rid of. So you just proved that the prior policy did work.

For those two books.

Sometimes policies need to be updated. Exactly. This one, the last time that I don't even have the date on it. 1984? Oh, anyway, I don't have it with me right at the moment. But anyway, okay. So we're here to figure out if we want to move this forward and then look at the books and see what we need to do, or do we not want to move it forward and wait until we can read all these books that they pull for us?

I would like it all to happen.

I would like us to actually do the thing where I asked, where in ARIES we are making it clear to parents, to every single parent, not just the ones that aren't informed, apparently, but I want it made clear to every parent that this is what we are having a discussion over.

This is what's wild to me.

I'm trying to come to an agreement that makes everybody happy, and that doesn't seem to be the interest of the board. because what I deem appropriate or you deem appropriate is irrelevant. What I'm saying is if we want parents to be informed about what their children are reading, there are ways to do it. If we want to restrict certain children from reading certain books, there are ways to do it. Why are we trying to circumvent this?

We're back in the circle again.

So with the changes that have been put in here now, having Section 1, it's at the district committee. The second committee is the district committee, Section 1. Section 4. go straight to the district committee, but knowing that a parent can always come to the board.

But why are my contributions not being considered here? As soon as she says that she wants to move forward, you go on to talking about how let's move on with these changes. What I'm suggesting is actually something that is going to solve a problem here, and I'm being ignored. Multiple times, Michelle.

I don't know how to move this policy.

And I'm saying let's figure out... Can we not rush this, though? That's all I'm asking. Can we take time and consideration? Because the magnitude of this is very serious. I don't want to be on the news. I don't want news articles being written about us as they've already been happening. What I want to do is to protect everyone. Those who agree and those who don't agree. That doesn't seem to matter. Because as soon as she says, let's just move on, we're moving on.

issue is that we're not going to come to an agreement. And so at some point in this evening, we have to move forward either by deciding not to go forward with this policy or to go forward with it. When I say we need to move forward, what I mean is let's make a decision. We're going in circular logic here. You and I are never going to agree. Some of us will never agree on certain things. And I think we need to move this meeting forward. We're getting late again in the night and I don't feel like being here. I don't, It's a very important topic that needs to get addressed. It is long overdue, and it's a reason people like Jeanette and I won our seats is because of this type of issue. This is one of the issues that people are very upset about in our communities. It needs to get taken care of. We need to protect the children, and we need to move forward instead of having multiple five, six, seven-hour board meetings when we're going in circles here.

We've never had five, six, seven. Our board meeting.

But excuse me, again, I waited till you were done speaking. But you can say that you and Jeanette, yes, that you won your elections. And yes, you did. But so did I. That does not discount my constituents, the people in my area, and also the people in your areas that don't agree with you.

That's right. But elections have consequences. And the fact is we have a majority on the board now. Excuse me. That this is inappropriate content for. Did you hear that? What I'm just saying. She just said that she has a majority on the board. No, she was saying she doesn't agree with sexually explicit material. You just said you have a majority on the board. I don't know how she's going to vote. I haven't talked to her about that. Then why did you just say that you had a majority on the board? Because Michelle has been saying all night she doesn't agree with sexually explicit material. And we are disagreeing with how to proceed. She's saying it publicly. And I'm saying we see how Michelle feels. We see how Jeanette feels. I know how I feel. We hold the majority in this thought. It is said publicly here in open session. This is what I'm preferring.

If that's the case, move forward.

That's what we should do. That's what I recommend because we're going in circles.

And I appreciate you showing to not only this board but the constituents that don't agree with you that their opinions have no value and no merit. So thank you for that.

They do have value and they can read the material to their kids at home. It's not against the rules.

Okay. They need to go. Oh, thank you. They don't need to go. People cannot be yelling at us.

So where I want to try and get this, if we're going to move forward, is to make sure this number eight, are we leaving it in, taking it out? Number four, are we leaving it in, taking it out?

Because if we move this forward, will we be able to change this?

Number eight, I would leave in, because as you said, they can do that anyway, but the person reading this, the parent or community member, may not know that. So why not leave it in? I agree with that.

The inconsistency with this board is really atrocious.

So number four in section two?

President Randler, I really don't see why we have to rush through this. I really don't. You know, this is a very critical, important issue. The rush, the rush, rush. Got to come in. We got to vote for this. We got to vote for that. We got to do this. No.

So we're not moving forward with a vote. It's a discussion to move it forward to the next step, which would be.

Get that. Same thing. And we have discussed it many times. Yeah.

Just goes around in circles.

Because our input is not valued. No, because... No, go ahead, finish. Because we're not agreeing.

So because we're not agreeing, we should come up with a way that we aren't involved. Because I just suggested, and Michelle agreed, that we should remove Section 8.

And you just agreed that it needs to be put back in. I only suggested that for the benefit of the community, the parents, to know that that's an option. You can take it out if you don't want them to have a clarity of where they can go next.

Just trying to come to some consensus on if we want the three levels of review in the first part and two in the second, or two in the first and one in the second. I'm just trying to figure out if we can come to some consensus.

I go back to consensus as we didn't have this problem before. new elected board members come in and now it seems to be the priority, it seems to be that we're working on instead of celebrating our kids are graduating, that should be what we should be honoring today.

No, it's just an assault on public education is all.

What's the consensus? Leave eight in, leave four in?

Leave four in, leave eight in.

And I disagree.

Would you like to do just two committees on the first one?

I would just like for a challenge, any challenge, regardless of what it is, because I don't care what it's for, I want a challenge to come to a committee, and then once that committee makes a decision, regardless of, I don't know who it is, we're not supposed to know who it is, that committee makes a decision, that's the final decision.

I don't think we need to have the board make the final decision. There's a committee for a reason.

committee has made the decision previously and all of the material that I believe is harmful to children is still in our libraries then they can re-challenge it then and I believe the opposite so the committee you want those books re-challenged somebody can re-submit it and the committee it goes to the committee and if a committee again decides that it has merit and it should stay then it stays and that's it and that's where it ends Yes, a different committee. Thank you.

So first committee, second committee is the district review committee, and then it ends there. That's it.

No board decision.

Unless somebody actually comes to the board. They come and speak, yeah.

Come speak, but we have no ownership in that one for us.

If we do that, do we have consensus?

I would like to see the writing first before we decided, but yes. Yes.

taking this out so there's two committees here and if it's sexually explicit I don't know why there needs to be a distinction between the two it's just a book challenge I don't know that's the way it was written well the distinction still would be that that could be in the complaint

the distinction would still be that the book gets pulled from the library if it's a complaint about sexually explicit.

Okay, allowing for that, then what's to keep someone from continuing to challenge the book to keep it out of libraries?

Well, I think a person can challenge it one time. That's not in here. That's your answer.

No, but that's not in here. So we can add that. We can add that. Yeah. That that person can only challenge it once. Yes.

You know, what's going to happen is everyone's going to start challenging books.

No, that's why I don't think a singular person can challenge each book. I think only a singular book can only be challenged once. It doesn't matter who it comes from.

Well, we just talked about that a few minutes ago, and it seemed like I thought Juan was nodding and Michelle that legally... We can't tell someone they can't challenge a book, even though a decision had been made from another person who complained.

Double check, but it sounds like we would need to let somebody challenge it.

You could say this is the finding.

It's already been challenged.

So then if that's the case, it shouldn't be removed that second time because it's already been deemed.

It would be removed for that child. Unless it's sexually explicit, then it would be... Again, so that's what I'm trying to say.

So then a committee decides that it can stay. Someone else, a completely separate person, decides that they want to challenge the same book. It gets removed again. There is no end to how many times a book can be challenged and how long it can be kept out of our libraries.

Theoretically, 15 people could do it for the whole school year.

Although that didn't happen historically. None of this happened historically.

There's no reason to think that somebody will continue to expect a different outcome with the same board and the same committees in place. So it would have to be somebody who's completely out of touch with reality to keep submitting a book complaint with the same people up here. I don't think a chance of that happening is very great.

It could be a group of people saying, I'm going to challenge it, and then next week you do it, and then you do it, and you do it. Why would they expect a different result?

Because it's already happened.

Okay, so moving to Section 2, the number 4 part, you want to leave that in, right, number 4?

And I don't.

And you don't, yeah? Okay. All right, so...

You want to leave that part in? Number four? Two.

Yes, I want to leave it in.

Okay. So we don't have consensus, really, because we're not all in agreement. Yeah, but that's still really not consensus. It's just the majority.

It's not going to be a consensus. All right. We need to have a majority.

Okay. Yes, I would leave it in for the sexually explicit stuff, not just a regular book. I don't think we need to be with all the books.

Okay. You're saying you want to keep four in? Four in Section 2. You do? Yeah.

Take eight out of Section 8.

But then you just said that we weren't qualified.

Now you're saying all the most of the majority of the books that are like literary, you know, I'm not qualified to. So what makes us qualified? If there's sexually explicit stuff in there, I think anybody is qualified to say that doesn't belong in a library in public school. So that that's my opinion.

Yeah, you make that. I love how everyone's opinion is just deemed to be law.

I just know that's my opinion.

No, but because it's your opinion, your opinion, your opinion, it moves forward. It doesn't matter if I'm suggesting that you're wrong. It doesn't matter. It moves forward.

We're not voting. It's just moving forward to the next step, which is negotiations, and then we can look at it again, rewrite, make sure everything's what we want before we vote. We just don't need to be having to discuss. do full-on discussions with it again.

I'm sorry that I thought a board policy should have contributions by the entire board.

Oh, it should.

It should, and my contributions were just taken out and not even considered.

Well, we can look into how to make that work to see if it would work and bring that back. We're not voting on this today.

I understand that, but my contributions were just removed.

Mine as well. I've said the board has no business.

And I've suggested alternatives to this, and they are not being considered.

I'm telling you, your alternatives that you were suggesting about the op, the people, you know, levels, doing all that, let's see, find out how that can work. Before we say, yes, we're going to do that, let's find out how it can work first. And then since we're not voting on this yet, bring it back. We can add it in, do whatever we need to do. be another one of these because we don't have to start from square one it's just adding a part so we have three to two to move this forward to the next move it on with the changes yes okay all right moving on to

All right, now we're going to discuss Board Policy 6115. A new Board Policy 6115, Ceremonies, Observances, and Flag Days, has been discussed before, and we're discussing it again because there have been some recommended changes that should clear up some of the misunderstandings.

So does anybody want to start this discussion?

All right, I have something I can say. I've listened to both sides of this issue also and have recommended some changes to the original policies brought before us that are more balanced and objective, addressing concerns that have been expressed and clarify some misunderstandings. From my perspective... Again, this is not about lack of support for the LGBTQ students. This is about remaining focused on academic curriculum and education for all students. Displaying our national and state flags at all times, but allowing for the display of various other flags and symbols within the curriculum is a balanced and objective solution for this policy. A couple of the thoughts I had on this one is... The beginning, let me find it. At the beginning, Candy, you put in there to ensure the goal.

Oh, that's out. Okay. I took that. The reason I wanted that out is because if it's policy, it's policy. We're not going to propose to adopt it. We're going to vote eventually whether it's a policy. Okay. And the holidays there, it leaves room to add more should the district need it in the future. You know, we could always add more. Schools may hold exercises for special days.

There are provisions in the policy for displaying flags for educational reasons and for all our clubs. And that's already in there. I asked to take out promotion of inclusivity and neutrality because I thought that...

I thought it was kind of something that didn't need to be in this kind of policy. But I'm open to keeping it if you can explain it to me a little bit. Second page, third page. And I propose a compromise that we don't have any flags or stuff all over the walls, but a teacher has their personal space, and maybe we can vote on the size, maybe something on their personal space that they want. Their bobblehead Dodger guy or their little pride flag or their, I don't know, their, I don't know. I don't know if you can do a pro-choice one or I don't even know. But in their personal space, they can have a picture of their family. Sports. Well, they're sport. Yeah, like the bobblehead. Yeah. And that's in there. College and university flags. That's in there. And the student clubs may display materials like the flags and their flyers and banners that represent their club during their club meetings and their different events. So that's not out. That's in there.

So they can't even advertise for those clubs during the regular school day?

They can send a flyer out for their events.

So there are certain situations and certain events where all our clubs come and there's like a fair where all our clubs... So this doesn't even include allowing them to hang that flag during that event.

That's during an event. Representing their club during club meetings and events. So if they have an event or they're at an event...

It can be there.

So one of our students today, and I'm sure they're probably gone because it's late, was mentioning about they can't call their club something at lunch. I don't know where that came from.

Does anyone? Yeah, she said it could only be called Monday something.

Monday lunch.

It's at Cope Middle School. I do have information on that.

Okay. Can I share that right now? Yes.

They were meeting as a club. I don't know if it was called Pride Club, but I'm going to call it Pride Club. But they did not have it as an approved club. It just needs to go through pretty much paperwork. And so the teacher decided not to have it meet as an official club because it wasn't approved as a club. and was going to take the steps towards that. But in the meantime, the kids were being allowed to come in at lunchtime and still. Monday lunch.

That's how it came out, to Monday lunch.

But it was no longer called the Pride Club meeting because it was not an approved. Approved. Okay. But it's not to say it can't be approved. And it just wasn't approved because it wasn't submitted for approval.

So according to this, it looks like they can't. when it says events.

They can't have a club. She was thinking, the girl was saying they can't have their club.

Yeah. And under the part that says focus on academics under miscellaneous events, I had taken out that to ensure all students feel just because I felt that was, I don't know. It just felt.

On what section?

Under five miscellaneous events and celebrations. Focus on academics. Yeah. Under focus on academics. I took that out. I just felt harsh to me. Like, I don't know. It didn't feel, I don't know if there's a different way to word it or a, And it doesn't mean I don't believe in us following policy 6144. We already have that policy and we do it. So I just, the part with respect to celebrating or commemorating any event that may be perceived as divisive, controversial, or exclusive. It seemed very, I don't know.

I'm sorry, can we go back to the prior one, display of flag? So nothing in here says that they can advertise their club ahead of time. So does that mean a student or the Pride Club can't put out in the flyer about an upcoming meeting?

Maybe we ought to put that in there about Yeah, maybe we should put that in there about upcoming meetings, like they can advertise that the meeting's happening Tuesday or whatever.

I don't think that's necessary. All of the clubs can advertise their meetings, right? So why would they be discriminated against? It's just not necessary, right?

They advertise on their flyer, and they have graphics on their flyer. And if we're saying we can't have this stuff, then they wouldn't be able to have it on the flyer. So...

I don't see where you say that they have the little space in there where they can put what they want to.

That's in a different policy. That's right. Did you say that would be in the AR or something through negotiations? Yes.

It needs to be stated, though, that it does not include their personal spaces.

Okay, I couldn't hear what one was saying.

Okay, where do we put that? I asked because this fellow said that they could have their own special place, the teachers, to display whatever it was that they wanted.

Their personal space, either their desk or like the wall behind them? They're bulletin board areas.

And if they wanted to put a pride flag, they could. And I don't see that anywhere in here that says they're private space where they are allowed to.

And there's like a certain size of stuff that they put in those spaces.

Disagree with that. Yeah, I think that's, again, it's a slippery slope because then they're, first of all, they, my understanding is they don't have private space. It's public space. And, I mean, if they have a locker or something, but...

Historically, we've given them a space, right?

Their classroom is their space. It's not called private space. Nobody has private space. It's personal space is what I think I heard Michelle saying. And historically, staff members have a section, usually it's their desk, that would be considered personal space where they can put pictures of their family. Sometimes right behind their desk, they will put things that are their personality. Um, examples are your diploma, your best school that you like, that kind of thing. Um, pictures of your family. We see that a lot of that. And I think what I heard Michelle saying is that would still be honored if you in your personal space want to put a pride flag. And she's talked about the size possibly to make sure that it stays within, um, I don't know, whatever, that Michelle is suggesting that that could be honored.

Because I don't want our teachers to lose their personalities in their classroom because kids, I mean, if you think about when you were growing up, I mean, I thought my teachers lived at school, but whatever. As I got older, I learned different things about them. You know, like somebody was in the military, somebody... So I learned things by their personal spaces. I saw pictures and things. So I thought that would be just a compromise.

Well, if I learned that my teacher, for example, because then, see, it's not – it needs to be a policy about any type of – ideological flags and displays. So if I learned that my teacher was, I don't know, let's say pro abortion, that would have really upset me. I don't want to know that about my teacher. So I wouldn't be in favor of that.

I think that politically divisive things shouldn't be there on the personal space.

Family and sports and all of those things are all generally accepted as non-divisive and they're non-offensive. But I've had the personal experience with a small pride flag that was very offensive to people. and everybody testifies how when they see that flag, no matter how great or small, it is so meaningful, it means a lot. And just because you might want to shrink it doesn't mean it's not there, if you're going to be talking about that. Now, what happens when it's the next flag that's super offensive to somebody? Or just like the abortion topic, I don't think that should be in, if you had a pro-life or a pro-abortion topic, on a teacher's desk, that's considered super controversial. I wouldn't... Many families would be offended. I think as a general rule of thumb, a teacher can ask himself, would families in my classroom potentially feel offended if I put such and such on my personal space? And if the answer is... Yes, don't put it. If the answer is I'm not sure, then ask the superintendent if you can't figure it out. Most people can understand that this might offend some of the families in my classroom and they might not appreciate my child seeing that that is part of this person because teachers are very, very well respected and looked up to and they're very influential.

What about, so in that case, what about if somebody has a picture their wedding picture, same-sex couple, a wedding picture, does that have the same... wait as that pride flag thing? Does it have the same...

I think a general rule of thumb should be if you feel that it's going to be whatever it is, is offensive to some of your students, families, then maybe it shouldn't be there, regardless of what it is. But if it's not, they can make an educated determination whether or not they think that that will be offensive to some families. And And maybe it won't be, and maybe it will, but then the parent could have a conversation with the teacher if they went forward with it. I think that that's something that can be pretty easily navigated.

You're saying no flags except what we wrote in here, right? What's written in here.

I would really like that there is an exception to a teacher's personal space. I'm not trying to navigate to police our staff's personal space. That is their personal space to do with what they will. If they want to have a family photo, whether they are a same-sex couple or not. I mean, that doesn't matter to me. I don't care. I don't think our students are going to care. Like, this is so silly. Because then what's going to happen when somebody says a same-sex couple's photo is offensive to them? So then we're just going to take out photos of everybody. Like this is just, again, Pandora's box, slippery slope, very vague. Just preserve our staff's personal space and let's just be done with it. Is policy still going through? I mean, as long as, you know, like we're protecting our students' right to advertise their clubs unless we just, I mean, let's be real. They don't want them advertising that anyways.

But I want to make sure that our teachers are taken care of. They should choose what they want to do.

They do get to wear what they want.

Yes, they do.

Until the board decides to regulate that.

And right now, that's their space. That's their area. They come to school. That's where they are all day. That's their place. They get to choose. We don't get to dictate what they can or cannot put. It's not up to us.

Especially when they're spending their own money decorating their classrooms, spend thousands of dollars making their classrooms a fun, warm, welcoming environment.

Well, we did get to tell them that they couldn't put in their classrooms. No rugs, no pillows, no... That's right. It's from the DOJ.

But we do, to speak to what you're saying, Michelle, we invite currently, we invite all our staff to share pictures of their family, whatever their family looks like. We feel it's important for them to share who their family are. I mean, that's the people that love them and who they love. And kids need to be able to have that, you know, relate. So, I mean, if we have a same-sex married couple, they should have every right to put their pictures up, just like every other family.

So, is that what makes it a safe space for kids, and we don't need the flag at all? Because they see the picture?

Not everybody has the same picture.

Right. So...

The safe space for children is the atmosphere that the teacher brings. And the teacher, I didn't need any type of symbols or flags or any type of divisive things to know which teachers were safe for me. And in every other profession, you don't need a symbol to show that you're a safe social worker, you're a safe counselor, you're a safe superintendent, I'm a safe nurse. I don't need a symbol to show that. It's my personality and my ability.

Which I said in the beginning, every classroom needs to be a safe school.

If we're relying on a flag to make someone feel safe, we have really big problems.

Can we go back to the second page? Yes. under number three, we talk about the patriotic exercises. I think that both of these need to say the same. It needs to be together. They're saying the exact same thing, so let's just put them together. At all our schools, such exercises shall be conducted at the beginning of the school day. And then that part where it says individuals may choose not to participate in the flag salute needs to go after EDCO because We looked, right, and it wasn't in Ed Code. So we need to put that below it right before students not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance shall maintain a respectful attitude. So put individuals may choose not to participate in the flag salute right before that. So under the number five, miscellaneous, that part that I took out, what is your feeling on that? That it needs to stay out. To ensure that all students, staff, and families feel welcome in our schools, that whole sentence.

I'm fine with you taking that out.

And then I took out the promotion of inclusivity and neutrality, and I don't know, maybe it needs to stay in there. I don't know.

I liked it, but I'm willing to compromise if you want it out. It's fine, but I liked it because broadly recognized cultural holidays. It's been a misconception frequently over and over that somehow I want to ban multicultural days or broadly recognize. I don't think anybody wants to do that.

I'm just reading, I'm sorry, I'm just reading that this holidays, that's the days we take off. I was thinking it was redundant because it was saying the same thing, but that's not true. So I guess maybe leave it in.

You said she was fine with taking it out.

It should be known that broadly recognized holidays that aren't maybe perhaps part of Ed Code, it's not against policy to celebrate that.

Where are you? I'm sorry.

I'm okay with leaving it all in.

Where are you? The last page. Oh, miscellaneous.

Did you add the part in there about the personal space? You didn't add that yet? Okay, where are we going to put that?

I just want to know why we're leaving it in. But remember, Olson said she was fine removing it. I'm fine removing it. I'm sure Patty's fine removing it. Why is it still staying in?

Well, I like it, and I would like it in, but I said I'm willing to compromise. But if Michelle likes it and Jeanette likes it, then I will go with leaving it in. I want it in.

I was thinking it was redundant.

But I realized that the first page was about... Well, it's just maintaining a neutral and inclusive approach. Those are contradicting terms because we're saying we're trying to remain neutral by removing the pride flag, but then we're saying we're trying to be inclusive. I mean, being neutral means that you don't do anything.

There is no effect on anything. Removing something is an effect, so that is not neutral.

about if we change that um title of that to promote um promoted activities or um instead of maybe since you don't like the language of inclusivity and neutrality maybe um promoted activities and then versus prohibited activities would that be better for you would you would you prefer that because you didn't like the title right

I don't like any of it because I see what we're trying to do there.

All right.

Well, I'm just trying to offer a suggestion that... That would go in line with the promoted activities and prohibited. Right. It would go in line.

Mm-hmm. Yes, I like that.

Under prohibited activities, the second line, representation, I think it's representative.

Should it be representative or...

representative, yeah.

Then we check out highly. Because who's to say what's highly controversial or just controversial?

So what if a staff member wants, you know, Oh, my gosh. What if a student brings up an issue? I don't even know what. But if a student wants to bring up an issue that they want us to consider and a teacher backs them on that, would that be considered activism? Even if it's something, I don't know, I don't know, us doing away with grading, testing, it doesn't matter what it is because they're advocating on behalf of the student and they're engaging in activism because it goes against our current practice. What is going to be defined as activism?

Well, maybe we take that word out. Where are you? The last paragraph. Oh.

So that's what I don't understand. So, like, our staff members that come and speak on behalf of our pride clubs, is that considered activism? And a prohibited activity?

What?

That come to speak about in support of our pride clubs and our LGBTQ students that come up and tell us, I'm a teacher in the district. Is that considered a political or social agenda and activism?

Teachers coming to speak at a pride club? Is that what you're saying?

Coming to speak in support of a pride club or of our LGBTQ students.

Speak, you mean at the board meeting?

Yeah. Because they're on school grounds. No, that's not, that's like freedom of speech, basically.

You're saying if they come to like a, it doesn't matter what they're doing, but it doesn't matter where they're doing it.

It says as a representative. What if they're on campus?

If they're representing the district, then this is what that's referring to. When you come here to speak, you're representing yourself and your opinion. I have no problem removing the word activism from there. I can see how that could be vague, and if you want to be active promoting some cause that's not deemed controversial or divisive, then... And who deems that controversial or divisive? I think that that's usually pretty easy to, you know.

Things that are controversial, everybody knows what those are. Testing is controversial. Rating is controversial. It's not divisive. It is. It can be.

Well, I am willing to get rid of that word, if you would like it, out. I don't know about anybody else.

What word?

Activism. Okay. I wouldn't put any of that whole paragraph. I disagree with the whole paragraph. I don't think we need that.

Yeah, I'm okay with it taken out.

Yay, we have a vote. Take the whole paragraph out? No, the outward activism. I'm like, take the whole paragraph out.

I'd like to see ideological or controversial positions because, again, it's so vague and it's subjective. It could mean anything.

That's the whole point of this policy is ideological, controversial, divisive positions. Then I would like definitions. Definitions.

Divisive? Ideological? We've mentioned several here. There's many topics in our today's society that may be different today than they were five years ago, may be different from five years from now. Anything that divides people significantly, political issues, stuff like that?

What word do you want out, Melissa? Ideological?

Ideological and controversial positions.

Political. The whole point of that paragraph.

If that's the whole point, then it wouldn't matter if we strike a word, right?

Does political or social agenda speak to ideological and controversial positions? Or are they standalone separate? Yes, already district employees can't speak politically and all that as they're representing the district. They're not allowed. So.

I don't think it hurts to have those in there because then it covers all the bases.

I don't see what basis it covers. Because if we're talking about political or social agendas, I mean, I think that pretty much covers everything.

I think just as a practice, we should stay away from anything that says political. That's a broad.

We already have something in there, too, that does talk about that.

Focus on academics on top.

Can you? Can you say that again? Sorry, Mr. Hill.

I just had a question on the prohibited activities. Does this refer to instructional content, like a speech and debate teacher, or so that's an exclusion?

Yeah, we have a policy already on controversial topics where if you're debating an issue, you would debate both sides. You would present both sides of it, of the topic that's controversial.

It just doesn't conflict, right?

Yeah, they do conflict.

Is this all in another policy, this part?

Well, it's a little different because the other one is an educational piece. And so if you're talking about one issue, you need to present both sides of it.

Or if you bring in a speaker. Which is already done. Okay.

I was just wondering if this whole thing is written somewhere else and we don't need to have it here.

What exists right now is that any topic that is discussed in class by one of our staff must be balanced. You know, you say both sides. What I see this prohibited activity being more about is a staff member basically saying you can't participate Like if I'm a teacher and I'm on campus and it's an election year, I can't be at lunch promoting one candidate over another. Isn't that covered somewhere else? Well, this is what this is saying right now. That's not necessarily covered anywhere. It also means that if I teach math and it's an election year, that I'm not... I didn't write on my wall or on my whiteboard, I'm voting for so-and-so, you should too. That would be promoting a political, and we're saying with this policy, we're saying you can't do that.

And we're also saying volunteers can't do that on just social media or school-sponsored events. or on school grounds when they're there.

Just trying to clarify what this is saying. What about a television? They put on and they either do the news and they do either CNN or Fox.

If they're doing a lesson, the lesson can be balanced and you can present both sides of... which is, you know, what many of our staff do, our teachers do all the time. They have discussions with their students, and they provide a balanced approach to that discussion and allow the students to discuss it.

Would this not violate PERB because this is activity by our staff?

I'm sure that this language as written would be challenged by, but that's why we would take this straight to negotiations.

Aren't we supposed to not be talking about this right now? We're not supposed to be. I thought we had a cease and desist.

No, the cease and desist letter that RTA provided over this policy was not to enact it, not to put it into any kind of action until it's been negotiated.

I thought it was to halt further negotiations or language about this.

No.

It's what I thought originally.

I just want to be clear about that because I'm not trying to know. I don't think this prohibited activity needs to be in our flag policy. If this is something we want to talk about in our boundaries, then that's probably a separate issue. But I don't see what this has to do with our flag policy.

I think it's speaking to ceremonies and observances, right?

Yeah.

Like if you have a – your kids are – you're doing a ceremony or something or observance of Black History Month at your school or whatever, and the teacher puts their – only their position into the –

And what position would that be? In that hypothetical, what position would that be?

I don't know. Maybe if they put their, like, one side of the history of it.

So are you telling me you want slave owners' perspective on that?

No, no, no. I'm saying one, you have to teach all of it, right? In the educational setting, you have to teach the whole thing.

I believe that is very clear already.

So whatever it's on, I mean, I don't know, maybe it's... science fair i don't know and maybe the one teacher believes a certain thing and that's the only thing they want to put out at the science fair and they that this is saying you can't do that in a celebration of observance of anything that you're doing so that's all but that this is saying that's more reason not to include that portion because if our teachers don't already know that

I mean, I would imagine that, yeah, it's not part of the curriculum, so why are they teaching? So why does it need to be included?

No, I'm just saying it's here because of that observance and ceremony, not to do with the flag. It's in there for that reason.

So why can't it just end after the focus on academics? That's it.

That's what I asked in the beginning, to delete that bottom paragraph.

And leave in the promotion of activities that we celebrate broadly recognized national and cultural holidays.

No, why are you going to... No, just... No, it just... It ends after school-sponsored events and activities must align with the district's educational goals, promoting academic excellence, skill development, and civic understanding without emphasizing or endorsing political... Particular political, social, or religious beliefs.

Period. There's plenty of events and... and months or days or, um, or I could name rattle off plenty of them that, uh, would be deemed as very controversial and divisive, but they don't fall in line with any of these holidays here. Okay.

And so this addresses example of them. Can I get that list?

You're going to say I'm targeting people and I'm not targeting anyone.

How am I supposed to make a decision when she's not even being clear about what those things are?

Well, um, We shouldn't be promoting activities that are very offensive to people, to parents.

Like? Like? Wait, wait.

President Renlo, I asked. Like, give me an example.

I would like a list.

I'm not going to give you a list because then you're going to say that I'm targeting every single person involved.

I could give you 20 things and you would say, oh, you're targeting that group, that person.

No, what I'm trying to protect is the respect of the parents in this district that do not want a left-leaning agenda pushed on their children.

Excuse me, but this is a nonpartisan seat. You saying that is an issue.

I want a neutral environment for our kids.

Your definition of neutral is different than my definition of neutral. Just because you say you're neutral does not mean you are. So I want a list. If she's trying to say that there's a list of things that she doesn't want to include, I have the right to see that list.

So I have a question. So under focus on academics, school-sponsored events and activities must align with the district's educational goals promoting academic excellence, skill development, and civic understanding without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social, or religious beliefs.

Does that take care of the whole rest of it?

Yes. Talking about school-sponsored, there are things that aren't school-sponsored events.

So if we celebrate national and cultural holidays, that's not a school-sponsored event. I think it is. Events related to core educational themes, like if we have a literacy drive, a science fair, a history month, that is a school-sponsored event, right?

So maybe we can take that out, and we don't need it. Because we do say it must align with districts' educational goals.

Maybe it could say school and district-sponsored.

School or district-sponsored events and activities?

Does that help? School or district?

But it already says school-sponsored events and activities must align with the district's educational goals.

Yeah, but school and district. That's the same thing. Districts should align with their own goals, too.

The district can't just have a celebration of...

But the school is the district, so I don't understand where the distinction is. I don't understand where the confusion is.

It's redundant. Schools can have different sponsored events than a district as a whole.

There's still the district's educational goals. But they're still done with district approval. It still goes under. It doesn't, right? Okay. Okay.

I can't hear you.

It doesn't lessen it to put district and school sponsored events. It just broadens it so that it includes more, which I think is okay.

Okay, so then take out promotion of activities and prohibited activities? Yes. Because we already have in another policy somewhere that employees, while acting in their capacity, as a representative of the district, cannot do blah, blah, blah, blah. Do we have that somewhere? It's in a policy somewhere, but I don't... I'd like to see that.

6114.

It says that? 6114 or 6144?

Talking about the district employees, what they can and cannot do.

6114 speaks to being balanced when presenting...

So you're talking about the one I was referencing earlier. Which one are you asking about now? I'm talking about... A staff, while they're being a representative of the district, for example, on a social media page, they're presenting themselves as our employee as this title and then advocating for certain things.

So on their personal social media?

No, as a district.

Currently on district, if an employee presents themselves as our employee on social media, there are limitations to what they can do. say currently. That's protected, I guess, ed code. I'd have to find it. But on your personal page, you can pretty much say whatever you want.

So can I get an example of a staff member on a district page promoting a certain thing?

I'm not going to call out anybody by name. Sorry. Okay.

I didn't ask for a person. I asked for a situation.

We have that happening currently.

How am I supposed to make decisions when I can't even get clear answers?

It's not a school-sponsored event. It's not a school-sponsored activity.

But it's being used, it's done on district social media?

They're representing themselves as a district employee of a certain title, advocating for things that are very divisive.

On district social media?

No, but on their personal. On their personal social media? Representing themselves as a specific title in our district. Would you care to educate people?

My understanding, so if you have a... Juan Cabral, I have an Instagram. It's very much part of Redlands Unified. It has Redlands Unified in the subject. I don't know what it's called, my title.

Your handle.

But if I were to put Juan Cabral and then I'm just Juan Cabral with nothing, and then I go on there and I say, as an educator, I don't agree with this, I can say that on my personal one and not. But if I say that on my Redlands Unified one, that would be different.

Shouldn't that apply to board members as well?

I have a question. I was just going to bring up that question. So, okay. So when we're talking about that, I know this doesn't have anything to do with this, but while we're thinking about it, the social media, I don't know what it's on Instagram or Facebook. I don't know because I don't have Instagram. I don't know what that looks like. But you have a picture of yourself, but it's your board, like your campaign, something, your picture. It's my public Instagram. Yeah. So... That's what you're referring to. So if people do that and then they put something on, they post something on there.

It's not the district logo.

It doesn't matter. You represent yourself as a board member.

It's a 2024 campaign.

No.

So you're representing yourself as a... As myself. No. As a board member. As a...

I think as a board member.

No, I have proof that she has spoken on board policies, on votes upcoming. She has spoken, used that campaign email, has transitioned into a board profile. So, yes, it has.

I haven't spoken on anything that hasn't been discussed or voted on.

That is not true.

Well, that is true because I wouldn't put something on my public Instagram that we hadn't talked about or voted on.

Do you advocate for people to come out and come to these meetings?

I probably have once or twice, but not generally.

I'm sorry, but that's engaging.

Not generally, I haven't, no. I mean, I'm not sure if I have said maybe once or twice.

Sorry, I brought that up. That's something that we need to talk about when we talk about our norms. But that's what I'm saying.

This would apply to us as well, because... I don't know because it's not being shared with me and I would like to render an opinion on it on what employees are getting on district social media and promoting something that they probably shouldn't be. What I'm trying to get clarity on is if it is district social media like the allegation is gone forth or if it's their personal social media. That's all I'm asking.

I already answered you. It wasn't the district social media. It was theirs as representative in their position here.

So if they are on their personal social media, then we're not policing that.

This is district social media.

Yeah, and they weren't doing it on their district social media. It's all about district things and in their position.

So we could just say that this really is included up here.

Everything must align with the district's educational goals. That's fine. Without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social, or religious beliefs, maybe that takes care of it. It does.

Well, it doesn't, but I, you know, it doesn't because it's not a school-sponsored event or activity because all of that goes along with under the title of school-sponsored events and activities. But, you know, whatever. I don't want to belabor it either, so.

I think it's good to leave in volunteers, though. Mm-hmm. That could be moved up.

Yeah, that's true. Put that up there with, up there. Mm-hmm.

Maybe district and school-sponsored events and activities must align with district educational goals. Promoting.

Say employees and or volunteers engaging in school-sponsored events.

What volunteers are violating this?

This is preventative. Okay.

Just to point out, like volunteers, we have a whole separate policy for volunteers, and we could actually include limitations, what volunteers could and could not do, and that would be very clear for all volunteers.

Because that's when we have to finish. Yes. Finalize the volunteer policy.

It wouldn't hurt to add it here, too, because then we have to wait. I mean, we might as well throw it in. It doesn't hurt.

What it says here does not reference, like, people. This is saying that our events and activities will align with district educational goals, which means any participation in that would be the same. If we want to say specifically volunteers, we don't want you to be political. We can put that in the volunteer section.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's just understood. If there's district employees at these events, they have to follow this. Yeah. Okay. With that, so then we could just get rid of that section.

Are we adding in that students have the right to advertise for their clubs?

Yeah, so I put it... Representing their club during advertising and club meetings.

Students may display materials when advertising, representing, or representing their club during. See that? It says only during club meetings and events.

When advertising. When advertising or representing their club.

Or in advertising.

Or representing. When advertising or representing. Yeah. Okay. And then the promotion activities, we're taking that out? Because it's kind of up there already.

put the spot about the teachers or the personal space.

I thought you wanted promoted activities. We were leaving that in as the last time we discussed it.

We said we would change the title because Melissa didn't like the title, and so I thought we could do promoted activities, and then we were leaving that in.

Oh, we're leaving in the promoted activities? Yeah. Yeah, I think we should. That's good.

what's stricken you said we were taking the whole bottom out we agreed that it was going to end after religious beliefs she said we were doing everything and it ends and that's it and everything else is deleted everything after religious belief is gone it's deleted

That section is lined out, the next sentence is lined out, but then we discussed this next paragraph, the promotion of inclusivity and neutrality. We changed the title to say promoted activities, and then we decided to leave this paragraph. No, we didn't. Yeah, Michelle and I and Jeanette agreed that we wanted to leave that paragraph. We went around the table.

We just agreed that it would end at religious beliefs.

You agreed with that, Michelle. Yeah, I did. You did? Yeah. You said after that it was period and that was everything else was deleted.

Did you mean to agree with that?

Well, I don't know because I think that celebration and events, we need to...

The reason why I thought we wanted it in is because it's been a point of confusion that the community keeps bringing up.

Yeah, what are we celebrating?

That we don't want broadly recognized things that may not fit into a certain holiday.

What holidays? I don't recall a bunch of people coming to talk about that at all.

We have the holidays here, and when I looked at it again, I said, oh, these are all the ones that were closed. Schools are closed.

It doesn't speak to celebrations. So that's why I said, oh, maybe we should leave it.

Right, we should leave it. This doesn't hurt anything.

You just said we were finished with that, Michelle.

I know, but then I went back here and I said, oh, because I thought it was redundant. I thought it was redundant, but this is holidays were not in school. That's what that means. I thought all this was just redundant, but it's not. We don't mention it anywhere yet. All right, so I'm with keeping that part in, but getting rid of the second paragraph.

I want a full list of holidays.

You mean there is the one on the first page?

No, that's not a full list of holidays.

Oh.

Well, we let, I mean, some schools, the kids celebrate Thanksgiving at school. They have a turkey, they have the whole thing. Black History Month is always celebrated. Hispanic Month, you celebrate that. There's quite a few. So that align with the district's mission of fostering historical and civic understanding.

So would you not include, do you not agree that Pride Month has a historical and civic understanding?

It's rooted in history. I don't see Hispanic month in here.

Those are just a couple examples instead of listing every single thing. I would like them listed out.

Because somebody could come and say, well, that's not listed, so you can't celebrate it.

It's not listed.

Because if we celebrate months, we run the risk of discriminating against any protected group if we celebrate some months and not other months. And the one thing that I would urge the board to do is not to discriminate against any group.

Well, the point is to be non-discriminatory. So if you think it would be better to just get rid of this parentheses and not state any and just say celebrations are broadly recognized national and cultural holidays that align with the district's mission of fostering historical and civic understanding.

Yeah.

And we don't have to have those three were just given as examples. We could get rid of that.

But again, that is a matter of opinion on which have historical... in civic significance. See, we all know what we're trying to not celebrate here, and I'm the only one that's willing to say it, so just say it out loud. We're trying to erase Pride Month.

Well, that seems to be a divisive, non-inclusive issue. That is your opinion.

Maybe we take this out and leave it to focusing on academic school-sponsored events and activities must align with district's educational goals and leave it there.

Which is what I suggested, but apparently maybe... To get very specific, if you look at what it references, it references Ed Code 37220. 37220 lists specific holidays. There are holidays that are included on Section 1 of this policy. This broadens it by including Black History Month. What we're trying to say is we're OK with Black History Month, we're OK with cultural celebrations, which actually is not reflected in Ed Code 37220. But we're saying cultural significance. What I am urging the board to do, though, is to consider that if we are going to celebrate certain months for protected groups and not other months, then we are going to be accused of discriminating. And we might lose a challenge of discrimination if we are celebrating Black History Month in February, but we're not celebrating Pride Month in June. And so if we are going to say one is okay, what I'm saying is all are okay. If we are going to say none are okay, then that means we have to say none are okay so that we are not singling out one group over another. If we decide that we do not want to celebrate any, then we will hear from our community when we are not celebrating cultural months like we've done in the past. So it is a very, I'm just urging the board to consider that that is going to be very concerning for us.

Do we have this comprehensive list?

do. I just Googled it. 37220 has a very comprehensive list. We do not celebrate every holiday on there because we're not in session for every holiday. We do as a district, but I'm saying school-wise. It does not list the holiday months. It doesn't say Black History Month, for example. It doesn't say Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Month, Asian Pacific Highlander Month, Yeah, and we have many months that are not cultural that we celebrate at sites. Women's Month, Women's Week. I guess that could be cultural. I'm trying to. We just have many that we celebrate. And if we're going to celebrate them, we have to celebrate them all is what I'm saying. Well, that's probably a little bit different. Especially if we're talking about a protected group. And it's very clear that the months that I'm talking about right now, we are talking about protected groups.

I recommend that we put all then, all groups.

I would like, which we should be, but if we're celebrating everything, there needs to be, we can throw a historical fact in there about why we celebrate the month. I don't understand why we have to act like this is promoting an ideology or one person's belief over another. They are historical fact, and therefore we should, as a school district, an educational agency, we should be promoting why we celebrate these things.

We do that when we publicize on our social media. We include links for folks to read about why this month is being celebrated. So I don't understand what the problem is, though. I think we do a job of that.

So are we back to winning it out and stop at religious beliefs? Again? Or where are we at?

You added that back in.

I'd just like to stop at religious beliefs.

I'm stopped. Yeah, I was from the beginning.

What do you think? Stop at religious beliefs?

Hmm. Why hasn't our lawyer said that this would be a problem when they've reviewed these policies?

Because this policy, the way that it's written, doesn't say that we're not going to celebrate Pride Month. One of the original drafts referenced specific groups, but that was taken out after legal advice because we don't want to single out any group.

We took it out based on the meeting that we had. not with legal advice. We took the input. Yeah. And so it should, everything should be legal the way it is then.

The way that it's written it is because it's not singling anybody out.

It just says celebration of broadly recognized national and cultural holidays according to the comprehensive list of that code, right? And they're all on there, right?

adding Black History Month in there we already do that we don't have to have it in here to do it let's just take out the Veterans Day Thanksgiving Black History Month people can figure out what broadly recognized national cultural holidays are I think that's a good idea because we're just giving three examples and that's not a complete list because you won't give me a complete list There's no way I could come up with all of the... I mean, there's hundreds of different things.

I'm not asking to celebrate National Friday. I'm asking to be honest. No, but that's what I'm saying. But these are the ones that aren't in Ed Code.

The only one that's not in Ed Code 37200 is Black History Month. Because there's just days in that Ed Code.

It's just holidays.

But is Asian Pacific Islander, Native American?

No, it's just holidays. The only thing listed in 37220 are holidays.

Exactly.

But I also think that is already talked about right there.

Yes.

Right? It says Ed Code 37220. It's already talked about. So we really don't need it at all. It's on the first page under holidays.

That's saying about when schools are closed, though, so it's not necessarily when things can be celebrated, you know, things that can be celebrated.

So why can't we just add a list? Either that or stop under beliefs. That's my input. We want to sit here all night. I say under my vote is stop under beliefs. And then we're covered, right, Mr. Cabral?

Policy as written like this would be covered. It would not be our practice would be something that we'd have to do.

If we're going to do that, then we need to take out ceremonies and... Wait, no we don't, because it's under focus on academic activities. Okay, are you okay with that, to stop it at religious beliefs?

And then we were going to cross out what you have crossed out, right? You keep that crossed out, and then we're going to go promoted activities, and then we're going to put that paragraph with the exception of those three examples, right? Because you wanted that paragraph back in, even though it's crossed out. Right?

We said stop.

I know what Patty's saying, and I know what Melissa's. I hear you. I'm talking to Michelle right now. She asked me, so I'm trying to clarify what she's saying, because we changed that to promoted activities, and then we left that paragraph there, but we took out those three examples.

Right? Am I understanding it correctly? Yeah.

What I'm thinking is, is this all somewhere else in here? I mean, do we need this part? Because we have school-sponsored events and activities. So celebrations are in that.

Okay.

Right? Celebrations could be in that. They focus on the academics, like why we have that month or why we celebrate that day or whatever it is. So maybe that's already in there. And events related to core educational theme, I think that is already set up here. School-sponsored events. Like if they do a literacy drive, they do a science fair, do their history months?

We need somewhere in this policy saying that politically divisive holidays or... Say up here, without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social, or religious beliefs.

So all these different events and activities. So does that take care of that?

That first sentence really should cover it. I'll give you an example. If we're saying that school sponsored event activities... promote academic excellence, skill development, and civic understanding without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social, religious beliefs, period. And we say, I want to celebrate Black History Month. If somebody were to challenge that and say, you know what, I don't think we should do that because it's political or because it endorses a belief that I don't agree with, somebody could challenge that. And they would lose the challenge, but we would be able to celebrate it because it doesn't do that. Where if somebody were to say, I want to celebrate whatever month, we would have to use this as the guide. I would still say, and I'm going to say it again just to be clear, if we're going to celebrate months in general, then it needs to be the same for all protected groups.

So just leave the ending at religious beliefs, period. And that's the end of the policy. Are we okay with that?

Well, no, because I still want to add the personal space for the teachers on here that's not anywhere on here, that they can put what they want in their personal space.

I think, well, I'm not in favor of that. I think Michelle is not in favor of that either.

I don't know.

You don't want to let the teachers have their personal space? That's not what I said.

I want them to be able to have their... You just said that Michelle was not in favor of it, but she is in favor of preserving their personal space. Well, I asked her for clarification.

So I think this is a hard thing because teachers can wear what they want to school and have whatever they want on their person. The personal space, I also believe that belongs to the school, right? It's our school. But if we take anything away from personal space, we've got to take it all away. And that is also not good for our kids. Like, you don't get to know your teacher anymore. at all. So I see that.

That's not necessarily true. Things that are not divisive or highly controversial. You can have your family, you can have your sports. That's fine.

It's just not highly controversial political social agendas.

So was the shirt you wore the other day at the last two board meetings, was that not highly controversial? They can wear their shirts.

No, until this board decides to enact a dress code and restrict what our teachers are. Don't look at me like I'm crazy, like that's not coming down the pipe, because I'm sure you guys have a long list of policies. We already have a dress code. I'm sure there is a laundry list of policies that are still coming down the pike. I mean, I'm sure you guys are talking about sex education already. However, what I'm trying to say is if we're going to be doing this, there is no respect for our staff in this. And I would like to preserve our staff's personal space before we start coming for them. Like, I'm trying to protect our staff here. And we're trying to make it seem like our staff are, like, these horrible people that are trying to indoctrinate your students. Like, that is not the case.

No one's trying to hurt the staff. They can put their personal things, items there, as long as it's not divisive or, you know, politically charged.

Again, your shirt was... It's politically divisive.

You're off point.

So we're talking about... See, that's what I'm saying. Every time I bring up a topic, she tries to deflect. No, I'm not deflecting. We're talking about this right now. We are employees of the district.

That's what we're talking about.

And that's what I'm talking about. We are employees of the district. If you want to be technical about it, we are. So wearing a politically divisive shirt... Let's put a dress code. Excuse me. I am talking.

Sorry, excuse me.

Wearing a politically divisive shirt during a board meeting, I mean, that would be not the wisest idea.

I think you have a good idea with the dress code policy. And there it is. You brought it up. Let's do it.

I think you misunderstood my intent.

Although, to me, you're comparing apples to oranges because we're not talking about... Pardon me? It's still fruit. Because we're not even talking about what teachers can wear. Yet. That's my... Oh, well, we can't talk about all the...

hypothetical things okay but that's the thing like you're telling me I can't talk about hypotheticals however I thought we were being proactive right with these policies hypothetical anyway so I want all I'm asking is that our teachers personal spaces are preserved that's it That this does not apply to whatever designated, the wall behind them, their desk, it does not apply to that. That's it. That's all I'm asking for. I don't know why this is such a hard concept.

Period.

What do you mean it doesn't apply? So what are you saying about their desk and the wall behind them?

I'm not going to re-explain it. It's quite literally been explained multiple times during this discussion. They have a wall behind them. They have a personal space on their desk where they can. Oh, no.

A wall behind them. Where does the wall stop? I mean, that's silly. Oh, my gosh.

Some schools, they have, like, a bulletin board, like, behind their desk. Some have it over on the side.

Some don't even seem to have, like, a big desk. They just have a little... Yeah.

Every classroom is different. Every classroom is different.

That's why I think it's better to have something clean, clear-cut.

That's district property, so...

So we could go along the same lines as what we say about the flags on the school grounds or in classrooms. Right. So, and that could, so that means they could have a sports flag because we said we could put that in there, right? Right.

Where is that? We don't have that in there. I thought it was in there.

Display of school championship flags, flags associated with academic achievement, college university flags, various national flags within classrooms, recreational rooms, or gyms. We don't have it in there.

Just make it easy. Say everything but the pride flag. We don't have it in there. No, just make it easy. You guys are adding flags all the time. Just make it easy. Say everything but the pride flag.

No, we don't have sports flags unless they relate to the school.

Gold championship flags, that's it.

We don't have other sport ones, you know, like people have Dodgers and Angels.

But that's what I'm saying. We keep adding flags. Let's just scrap it all, say everything but the pride flag is allowed.

No, we just say. No, but that's the intention. No, that's not the intention. Let's just say these and no, you can't even have your sports flag, your sports pennant. I don't agree with that.

Most of the teachers will probably have to put down their flags. I think that they should be able to have their family, their sports. I think that they should be able to have part of their life. I just don't think it should be politically divisive. I don't see why that's so difficult. Family is generally accepted as neutral and welcoming to all. And other things like if you're a Rams fan or whatever kind of fan you are, If it's going to make one student in your classroom super angry and they're super upset that you're a Rams fan, maybe you set it aside while that kid is in there. I mean, that's like the hypothetical situation. Sports aren't the same thing as things that are very highly charged in our society these days. We shouldn't have kids going home complaining to their parents about the politically divisive flags that are in the classrooms.

So by that argument, if a teacher is willing to take down their Rams flag because it upsets a student, couldn't they do the same thing for a Pride flag?

And so this is my issue with not preserving our staff space.

What if the photo is of a heterosexual couple at a Pride parade? I mean, there's flags, there's rainbows everywhere. I know how we're going to... What if in their family photo, their picture with a drag queen? Are we going to start policing? little things because they promote an ideology. I don't understand why we're having this conversation when it can be just as simple as preserving our staff's space.

You can still have their space.

They just can't have politically divisive things.

Again, what if the photo of their family is them at a pride parade?

it makes a connection to the student. Oh, guess what? We saw that game or I'm that or I'm on the opposite side. We're going to have to take everything out of our superintendent's office. He's got Padres up everywhere. We're going to start with you. You're done. Get it out by tomorrow morning.

I think we should have him take that down because that can be divisive.

I think it symbolizes your personality and what you are and who you believe. For me, I do the pink ribbon for being a breast cancer survivor today. And so I put that somewhere. It'll be in my emails or anywhere. My license plates so people will acknowledge. I think it's a connection. I think we're losing a lot by not letting people have their own space and what they want to do to put in it.

they also don't think that that example is something that would make somebody go, that makes me feel uncomfortable.

I don't know. I don't really like Raiders fans. I don't know.

What did you think?

I said, well, I mean, one of the issues with the pride flag is it has a sexual connotation to it. To you. It's sexually related. To you. To most people.

To you. To most people. To most people that think like you. You think that. I know that ought to be true. But thank you for admitting that it was the pride flag. I appreciate that.

There are other flags I don't want. They don't happen to have a sexual connotation to them. Neither does the pride flag, but thank you.

We can disagree on that because I disagree with you on that. We just agree to disagree on that point.

But we're making board policies based on your opinion and your opinion and your opinion.

I'm just telling you we can agree to disagree on that point.

And I would be happy if that's where it ended. But it's not because you're passing policies based on your opinion. That's why I have a problem with this.

So the idea to keep our schools and our classrooms more neutral and inclusive of everybody That was the desire for this, to remove the flags from the walls, from the classrooms.

Can you at least admit to me that that is your opinion?

Yeah, it is my opinion. I wouldn't be saying it if it wasn't.

Okay, so we are passing a policy based on three board members' opinions.

I think that's what we do a lot of time. We say what our opinions are.

I mean, my opinion on it is based on a lot of various information.

You agree on.

Yeah. Of course. How else are you going to vote? With facts. Pardon? With facts.

What you believe is facts. No, I'm pretty sure facts are just facts. No. Okay. Facts are just facts. Well, okay. Facts, you want to say, I believe that the Holocaust was a real event. Some people will consider that not to be true. That's an opinion. I don't pass more policies on that. So I would say a fact is a fact, not a matter of opinion. So while your opinion is that the pride flag has sexual connotation, I'm saying the fact is that it does not. We are passing a policy on your opinion.

I also think it's your opinion when you say it's not.

That's your opinion.

And multiple people, and I have explained to you why it's not.

And people can explain the other way why it is. So it's opinions, right?

So then why are we passing policy on opinions?

Because we're trying to... make our schools neutral and that's not neutral for educational purposes and academic purposes we need to get back to our academics um and so i'm trying to figure out how to make this go so that we can get back to doing what we need to do for academics.

So discriminatory. This entire conversation is so discriminatory. Then, you know what, change it. Write your little, just say what it is, the pride flag, and be done with it because I am absolutely disgusted with the fact that you guys are absolutely up here talking about our staff, talking about our students that way. I mean, it's awful.

Talking about who in what way? What are you talking about?

You don't want them to be here. You don't want them to identify themselves.

You can't put words in my mouth. Please don't do that. Oh, I'm just being honest. I'm just being honest. No, you're putting words in my mouth.

But you wanted them to hide their identity because it's sexual to you. True.

No, I did not say that. I did not say that. Nope.

I still think our teachers deserve a personal space.

She agreed until...

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to let them have that but not have all that... We are having a meeting here. Thank you.

You may be quiet while we're having our meeting. Thank you. I was trying to figure out if there's a way or if we could come to some agreement on size or something. I don't know.

You know, like the size, like one feet, two feet.

Oh, like a little one that goes on their desk or a little one. If they want to put their flag up, their little flag or a pendant of their team or whatever.

And I just asked you to include it in the policy. That's it. I'm sure the size can be negotiated with RTA. And when this moves forward.

It's still the government property. It's still our desk. And they have all of the pins, buttons, lanyards, whatever they want to drape on their bodies. Most places, if you work for a serious organization, you cannot have any of that on your body. That is ridiculous. So the fact that you can portray your social agendas on your body, I don't know how we got to this place. well, let's make a dress code policy where we shouldn't have any of our opinions on our body. I am all in favor of a dress code policy. Here's the thing is that when someone does something else, wears a religious shirt or has a pro-Christian thing, now everyone's upset about it. It's offensive, right? It's offensive. So I think that we should be neutral. I would not advocate for wearing anything like that. We need to be at neutral grounds at this school. It's a public school system. And I don't think that we should be wearing things for our teachers in front of our students. that are divisive and that many parents find extremely offensive, especially when the teacher is in a point of great influence for their child and they've got draped all these lanyards everywhere and these pins and buttons, I would be really upset them influencing my child to think a certain way if I'm teaching them a different way at home. So we already have that. I don't think an additional... especially trying to navigate the size and dimensions and what's okay and what's not. I just think it's our property. They can personalize it with non-controversial items such as families, sports team, benign issues that are about them. I don't think a little flag that's politically charged should need to be there. It doesn't need to be there. Kids shouldn't know where their teachers stand on very hot topics like that that are very divisive in our community.

So we are stuck on this part.

Our teachers deserve. They get to choose. We don't get to choose for them. If we do that, they're going to leave. Our teachers are going to leave. Without giving them, I wouldn't stay if I couldn't do what I wanted to do here. And if you went and looked at classrooms, I don't know if you have or not, but if you looked at, you're not going to find a lot of different flags. They're going to have their families, they're going to have what their sports are, and And that's what makes them comfortable and that's what the kids know. They're not there to change anyone's mind. I think that's offensive that you would say that. But that's my personal opinion.

Teachers are very influential. So what they believe is very influential, whether they're saying anything about it or not. That's just a fact. Teachers are extremely influential in a kid's life. If a parent is teaching the child a different value at home than they come to the classroom, You are totally erasing the voices of the people who have told me this, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are so upset with this district, what we've allowed. So what you're doing is erasing those voices. You're saying they don't count. They don't matter. They sure do matter. All of the voices matter. We should be welcoming to all faiths, religion, sexual orientation, whatever background, the child should come in and feel welcome and not know where that teacher stands on any issue like that, politically or socially.

That's your personal opinion.

So you're suggesting that a student who's with us for less than 180 days, because that's assuming that they come to school every day, less than 180 days engaging with one teacher somehow erases a lifetime of parents' influence?

I didn't say that either. They're very influential, and it doesn't mean... Would you want a teacher... one teacher in one child's lifetime constantly uh... giving visual representations of pro-life the pro-life movement okay and abortion is bad and this and that well it's just one teacher and it's just one class what if you're teaching your child to be pro-choice at home well you certainly wouldn't like that your child respects this teacher tremendously you wouldn't appreciate that

I don't know that you should assume what I would appreciate or not.

Okay, vice versa. However you feel on that issue, vice versa then. My point is just my point that people have an opinion on a hot topic like that, for example, and some parents are going to be very upset that their child will be influenced by the teacher. And I've heard it from hundreds and hundreds of people.

And I've heard the opposite from hundreds and hundreds of people, staff, students, community members.

Okay.

So I think this policy here in regards to teachers and their personal space, maybe that needs to be put in the other thing with negotiations in that area and not in this policy because this just talks about

It should at least say it does not include a teacher's personal space. That's it. And that can be negotiated later on, but it does need to include that it does not include a teacher's personal space. I disagree.

But I think if we're saying not on school ground or in classrooms, we have to say not in classrooms.

Correct. So we're eliminating teachers' personal spaces.

But we can't say they can't wear it because they can wear it. But that's in the classroom. I know. I get that. That's why this is hard. It's not...

The government, the district doesn't own your body or your clothing.

To answer your question, can it be added later?

Yes.

Thank you. Can it be added later? Can it be included in the administrative regulation where it's the actual practice of how we carry it out? The simple answer is yes.

It doesn't resolve anything, Michelle. You're excluding staff or teachers.

I don't think so because I think they have the ability to put other things in their personal space that are not divisive.

There isn't anything in here that says anything about personal space. That's what I wanted to add. So they can just let them do what they want to do then. I'm okay with that. This is ceremonies and observances. I'm okay. Whatever you have on there, let them have it. What you have, the more the merrier.

We'd have to look at that. That other one, the AR, we don't have it yet, right? We don't even have one yet. We'd have to look at how to do that. So do we need to put something in here so that they match?

Well, it says in classrooms.

Yeah, it says in classrooms already.

No, to answer your question.

Just keep what they have.

Correct?

I don't know what that means.

No, we're going to keep. It's going to say no flag other than the United States of America or state of California may be displayed on school grounds or in classrooms unless it is a country, state, or United States military flag used solely for educational purposes. So, okay. All right. Do we have consensus to move this forward with the changes? Oh, three people have to agree. Okay. Melissa, do you agree to move this forward?

No, I do not, because my opinions and my contributions are not valued or taken into account. So, no, I do not.

Candy, do you agree with moving this forward? I agree. Janet, do you agree with moving this forward? Yes, I do agree. Patty, do you agree with moving this forward? Disagree. like to move this forward why aren't you gaveling why because i didn't hear that um oh selective got it okay so we're done with the discussion items and we don't need to go into closed session so i'm going to adjourn this meeting at are you serious it's 12 15 at 12 15