Polk County School Board debates proclamations and addresses A/C concerns at latest meeting
POLK COUNTY, Fla. - A Polk County School Board meeting drew a packed house Tuesday night.
The board heard hours of public comment about whether to discontinue the practice of issuing proclamations.
After a heated discussion and a 5-2 vote, board members voted to end the practice of issuing proclamations.
Board members said the issue became a rising topic of discussion over the last several months, but particularly in June, over a LGBTQ pride proclamation.
The issue sparked debate over whether the school board should discontinue the practice of issuing any type of proclamation, from those recognizing specific days or months, to groups of the community, to social causes.
"Education is about preparing kids for the world, but gay people, Black people, Latino, Hispanic and Asian, etcetera, are all people who exist, so they will have to deal with these people in the real world, and it’s up to the parents to instill their own values and beliefs in their children," a community member said during public comment. "Not the jobs of the school board or the teachers to instill specific values in children. Instead, to educate them, so they respect others when those beliefs are different."
Dozens of people on both sides of the issues spoke at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
"You should not take sides," a community member said during public comment. "Doing so is playing identity politics, which do not unite people, but rather, significantly divide them. Proclamations often promote the beliefs of some groups, which are not shared by the beliefs of other groups, and this causes dissension."
Board members were also divided on the issue, discussing it at length before taking a vote.
School board members and parents debated the practice of issuing proclamations.
"I don’t really want to do away with proclamations, but we have to now, I feel, because it’s so divisive. It’s like in the old west," Polk County School Board member Rick Nolte said. "It’s like a mob mentality. You get everybody together, and they do their thing, and we need to be Americans first. Polk Countians."
Nolte argued proclamations don’t promote inclusivity and are instead, divisive over topics people may not all agree with.
However, some board members said the majority of proclamations aren’t divisive, and that they’ve been a practice for years.
"To try to get rid of all of them, so you don’t have to look political, and you don’t have to make decisions people don’t like, I think is not sound leadership," Polk County School Board member Lisa Miller said. "We have to have hard conversations, so I think it’s about time we have them."
Superintendent Frederick Heid said the entire discussion highlights a bigger issue, of the fact that there is no written policy or protocol on declaring proclamations. He said that could still be a topic of discussion down the road.
Some argued that proclamations are not inclusive and create more division.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Polk Education Association also spoke during a separate public comment period about ongoing air conditioning issues at schools throughout the district.
The teachers’ union met with the school district Friday over a class action grievance it filed against the district.
RELATED: Polk Education Association holds class action grievance hearing over broken A/C units at schools
As of Friday, the district said it had around 1,400 pending work orders for broken or malfunctioning A/C units.
On Tuesday, President Stephanie Yocum said she was told by the district there were around 700 pending work orders.
"So, I do believe our district is working as fast as it can to repair these, because they’re not wanting teachers and students to be sitting in hot conditions," Yocum said. "But part of this grievance is not just the immediate relief. It’s, our district has to change policies and procedures about how we deal with air conditioning moving forward, so this does not continue to keep happening."
Board members also addressed A/C issues in schools.
Yocum said they want the school district to make some long-term changes to protocols with air conditioning units, in order to prevent an issue of this magnitude from happening in the future.
READ: Air conditioning issues at Hillsborough County schools keep HVAC technicians busy
"The district can centrally control A/C units, so take the timers off the wall," Yocum said. "Set the A/C in the summer at 80, so the air is on. Because we know summers gets 95, 100, plus now. So if the air is on, and then administrators or custodial staff are walking these classrooms regularly, we can catch when something breaks, before students and staff come back, and it can be addressed before we’re dealing with something like we’re dealing with now."
Yocum said they also want the district to find an alternative to placing air conditioning units on a universal setting.
"Not every classroom is the same, as far as their environmental issues," Yocum said. "So there has to be ways for that to not be this hard number, because I’ve walked in 72-degree classrooms, and it’s still hot. When you have 30, 35, 40 kids in a classroom, that’s a lot of bodies in a small space."
The district is working to make repairs and replacements to units as quickly as possible. It previously said staff and contracted vendors are working overtime to fulfill all the pending work orders.