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Ms. Lema, Mr. Mather, Ms. Schott, our student representative, Brooke and Gabriel.
Thank you and if you could please call the calendar.
Tuesday, October 26th will be our next school committee business meeting and Thursday, November
11th is Veterans Day, no school.
Thank you. So we do have a presentation. Before we begin, I just want to mention
we do have a sign up for citizens comments. You do need to put your name and address down
there. There were a couple of people who hadn't done that. So if there's not a name and address,
I'll skip over your name. So if you didn't fill in your name and address and fold down
there, you need to do that for the record. Before we do that, I will turn things over
to Dr. Jane Mrs. King for a presentation. Thank you. So this year we have just received
word that the North Kingston School of Department for the seventh year in a row has received
the Association of School Business Officers Meritorious Budget Award. It's the most prestigious
award that a school department can receive for their budgeting practices. I want to congratulate
Mrs. King and Steve Janell, our controller for all of his hard work in making sure this
happens. This is really kind of taking the long way about doing our budgeting and making
sure that it's transparent and making sure that it's fully connected to our teaching and
learning goals. So we've done this now seven years in a row, so it seems kind of common
place, but trust me it is not. We're one of the only school districts. I'm not sure
if there are any other in the state of Rhode Island that are receiving this award, and
we just happen to have a tremendous team here to make sure that we're doing this
work to the highest standard in the country. So congratulations.
So I would really like to thank Steve Janell. So Steve Janell has been a controller in this
district for about 12 years or so, and he's going to be retiring at the end of this
calendar year. And, you know, we have some great people taken over for him, but Steve
Janell was the architect of this. Seven years ago he said to me, you know, I really want
to try to do this, and the requirements of what you need to present in this Meritorious
Budget Award package are voluminous from the ASBO International Group, and ASBO is
the Association of School Business Officials, and it's an international group. All states
have a chapter. We have one as well. And I said, you know what Steve, if you want
to do that, I think that's great. And he ran with it, and all of the documents up through
FY22 budget, so we have our regular budget, if we will, that we present to the school
committee that's a mere 80 or 90 pages. The Meritorious Budget Award package is
nearly 500 pages. It's very searchable, and it can give people information that
they're particularly interested in. There's always 10 years of data that's in the
package, and there's a lot of other information also about the town, about all
of the awards that the district earned. So it's not strictly a numbers document,
although that's primarily what it is, but I think it's a real good testament to
how far we've come in the district and our transparency and how important
financial reporting is to us. So I really appreciate Steve's time on that. We
all put in, you know, some pieces of it, but Steve Janell definitely deserves the
credit for this, I thank him very much. Thank you, Ms. King. And congratulations
to you and all of your staff for all the hard work that you do. It's a, you
know, unique recognition to have an outside group come in and take a look at
what you do and give you that pat on the back, and seven years in a row
is certainly nothing to sneeze at. So thanks again. So next we have citizens
comments. If someone could just bring up the list, I'd put it back down just so
that we could get it completed. Thank you, Mrs. Schott. If you could leave the
second one down just in case you have things. And so just a reminder, we do
ask if you could please limit your comments to three minutes. This will blink
red and then go off at the end of your three minutes so that you know. And we
ask if you could just again for the record, please state your name and
address when you come to the microphone. And I apologize if there are any
names that I pronounce incorrectly. First I have, I think it's Kay Rampino
senior. And then after that will be Brian O'Dell if you want to sort of be on
deck.
Members of the school committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak this
evening.
Once informed as to what critical... Could you just say your name and address for
the record, sorry? I'm sorry. Kay, Kenneth Rampino senior. Seven Morningside
Drive, North Kingston. Thank you, sir. Once informed as to what critical race
theory really is, any fair-minded person knows intuitively that CRT or any
other euphemism as proponents employed is destructive to children by
propagandizing them to judge their schoolmates purely on the basis of
race or ethnicity, which is the very essence of racism. At its core it is
government-sponsored racism under the guise of anti-racism. Here are just two
of the countless examples of the heartbreaking impact of CRT and kids.
In Williamson County, Tennessee, where educators were teaching children to
be ashamed of their whiteness, a seven-year-old was placed in therapy
because of severe depression after coming home from school saying,
Mommy, I am ashamed that I am white. Is there something wrong with me?
Why am I hated so much? A seven-year-old child told by her teachers that she is
evil solely on the basis of her skin color. In Nevada, an African American
parent sued a charter school for teaching her biracial child CRT, violating
her parental prerogative to bring up her child in the belief that all persons
are created equal. Go on the internet and you will find hundreds of
examples of children being damaged by CRT. As a retired attorney who
practiced law for five decades and someone who has ought the numerous
treatises on constitutional law published in American law reports, I would like to
focus on the legal issues raised by CRT. The legal rights of parents do not end
at the portal of a school. Recently a school administrator in another
Rhode Island community expressed rage that parents would have what she
considered the audacity to have a say in what has taught their children.
She obviously is unaware of the case of Espinosa versus Montana,
a case not involving CRT per se, but wherein the U.S. Supreme Court
recognized the rights of parents to direct the education of their children
in the classroom when constitutional rights of their children are being
violated. In the case I mentioned involving the
African American mother with the biracial son, he was given in a
failing grade in sociology of change courts because he refused to open
the acknowledges, quote, white privilege. The mother on behalf of her
child sued the school for depriving the child of freedom of
speech from the First Amendment, equal protection under the 14th
amendment, and are violating his civil rights under Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act. The complaint in the suit relies on
Lodgepot on the U.S. Supreme Court case of West Virginia versus Barnett,
wherein upholding students constitutional rights in the Supreme
Court of this nation said, quote, no official high or petty can
prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion,
or other matters of opinion of forced citizens to confess
by word or act their faith they're in. I submit that CRT in its varied forms
is becoming a new orthodoxy that dictates allegiance to its
false beliefs with severe recriminations for failure to do so.
Parents and students have constitutional rights that are trampled upon
when these toxic ideologies are forced on children in our schools,
and we need to stand up to it wherever and whenever it occurs
through peaceful assembly and protest, electing school committee members with
traditional values, and through injunctive relief
mandated by the judicial system.
Thank you.
Now, folks, I apologize that I have to
I apologize I have to remind people again, but
we've asked a couple people to leave who wouldn't wear a mask, and at this point
we do have two people in the room who are not wearing masks.
So again, as we mentioned before, we won't be able to continue the meeting
until people are complying with the mandate issued by the governor
regarding the wearing of masks in school.
I'm not the governor.
I'm not in the hall they should be wearing a mask.
So we have a choice, folks. It's a simple choice.
We can wear our masks or we're all going home.
Okay, I have two medical doctor's notes and a prescription for no mask, no shield.
I have every right to speak out against these things
as anybody here. The CDC does not know shit about this virus.
I know more than the CDC to just carry on.
So on the advice of our attorney, I'm going to adjourn this meeting if the
masks don't go on. So it's your up to you, folks.
Make a motion to adjourn.
What is the name of your attorney so that we can prosecute?
You are discriminating against me. I have autism.