Weslaco ISD Board Workshop & Regular Board Meeting (May 12, 2025)

001Hello. So, we good to go. Thank you. I'm Armando Quer, Jr., vice president of the West SD board of trustees. This board workshop is being conducted in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Notice of this workshop has been posted online for at least 72 hours. The time now is [Music] 5:02 p.m. and I will call this workshop to order. I'll begin with the roll call. Miss Jaclyn Suspita, Dr. Haime Rodriguez, Armando Qua Jr. present. Mr. Eidorto, Mr. Benjamin Castillo, present. Mr. Jua I believe is here but he stepped out and Mr. Marcos de los Santos. A quorum is not necessary for workshop. So we will now begin our workshop public comments. There are none. We now go to number three insurance workshop. Dr. Lea. Yes. may present um Dr. Canu and Mr. Roto make

002their presentations. Dr. Nevada, members of the board, good afternoon. We're going to be presenting some information on the insurance renewal. Uh several insurance uh products are up for renewal. Some RFPs, some renewals, and we're going to be covering those. The first item uh is Miracle Medical. They are they are our chronic disease management diabetes testing supplies provider. A request for proposal was sent out this year. We uh resulted in two bids and our incumbent medical uh Miracle Medical provided the best option. The initial bid raised the price on some of the supplies and it also included a provision that allowed a pass through expense uh related to pending import tariffs. Federal government's been talking about those uh tariffs and they included that we engaged in negotiations and asked for a best and final. They lowered

003the price for testing strips to the original $35 and $10 for the Lancets and they removed that pass through uh for tariff allowance agreement so we don't have to worry about those tariffs. So they they'll actually eat that if if they end up with a a higher uh tariff. So staff and consultant recommend renewing the medical miracle with Miracle Medical as found on tonight's consent agenda. Tristar is our workers compensation administrator for our self-funded workers uh comp and a request for proposal went out this year as well. We received three bids. The best bid, lowest bid was uh through Tristar. They came in at 85,000, but we did ask for them to uh submit a a best and final, a baffold. They responded by reducing $10,000 to 75,000. We were not happy with that. So,

004we went back and negotiated further. So, they were able to get us a three-year fixed rate of uh for three years. So, they actually went down a little bit more. and staff and consultant recommend renewing Tristar as found on tonight's consent agenda. Next is a package for our fleet, our liability and physical damage, our general liability crime law enforcement package. This bid we did request an RFP. This came back with two options. We remain in option one with Liberty Mutual. This would add $73,000 over our current premiums for the exact same coverage. That would add up to $440,000. This includes a rider for sexual misconduct liability. Option two is to move to a new carrier, Texas Political Subdivision, for an additional 19,000. So that's about a $50,000 savings over current premiums. And that would be

005a total of 361. But we would need to secure sexual misconduct liability separately and we are working on that. We based on the savings we were recommending option two and moving to Texas political subdivision as found on tonight's consent agenda. Next, this is a renewal. This is uh for our dental plan. This is the third and final year of this agreement. We will be going out for RFPs or requests for proposals at the end of the 2526 school year. The premiums have not changed for two years, but this year we received an initial uh renewal of 7% increase, but we worked them down through a best and final and a lot of negotiating. We worked them down to only a 4%. The employeeon base plan is actually only going to increase about 33 cents uh

006per month per employee for the base plan and the district will absorb most of this increase for the 2526 school year. We expect an increase of less than $10,000 compared to this year's budget and the staff and consultant recommend renewing with MetLife as found on tonight's consent agenda. And finally, we have Blue Cross Blue Shield. This is our healthc care and pharmacy. This is a third and final year of this agreement. I met with the employee benefits committee. We went over the plan performance. We are on track this year. The committee voted 100% in favor to renew. That's 26 employees that sit on that voted for the employee benefit committee was u 26 27 with me because I'm also an employee but I didn't submit my vote but I am recommending uh to renew. So

007technically while the administrator fee increased by $111 the prescription drug rebate credit increased by $4.20. So that's a wash. In fact, it's $39 in favor of the district. And one of the reasons that we wanted to go with Blue Cross Blue Shield was because of that rebate credit directly applied to the administrative costs. So even with a favorable renewal, we did ask for a best and final. Uh we weren't able to u negotiate something a little bit uh further there, but the district is anticipating a $1 million increase to the budget to offset claim costs, not administrative fees. So, I'll remind the board that when we're self-funded, we have two really types of expenditures. Some are claims. The claims is what's expensive. We pay the doctors directly except that we pay administrator costs to run

008the program for us. They adjudicate and those are the administrative fees. So, we have those two different ones. This um increase is based on the trend that we're seeing that doctor visits are getting more expensive, hospital uh visits are getting more expensive and and those are fees that we would have to pay as a district. So to stay on top of that inflation, we're looking at about a million dollar increase for next year to our budget. One of the things on this slide right here too I wanted to just just for a refresher and also we have a a new trustee is that with the rebates with some of the pharmacy plans some of the rebates are guaranteed rebates based on the number of enroles and per person right which is you saw with Blue

009Cross Blue Shield meaning that you know already we're going to get 1.4 we're going to get 1.5 million we're going to get 1.8 million back in rebates that go to administrative costs which lower our overall costs. Other plans that we've had in the past, they come with assumed or possible rebates where you we were thinking 1.5 1.8 million, but then you see 798 or you see 800 or 900,000. So moving back into this situation where you had a guaranteed rebate, it was very beneficial. And I know you talk about the numbers on your own, but it's been very beneficial for us in the last two years. So just so that everybody kind of knows what what that was in that breakdown with a guaranteed rebate versus possible Yes, sir. Mr. Doz, I'll piggy back off

010what you what you were saying right now. U 36 $36.97 was was the previous administrative fee that we are guaranteed to get back times 2150 employees times 12 months was $953,000 almost a million dollars that we were guaranteed and that we have received or we will receive you know as part of this agreement. We also received a true up. In other words, we received that. That's what was guaranteed, but we also received a true up of $890,000 in February. Right. So, we also are receiving that. So, it's it's quite beneficial. And the true up is the additional on top of the guarantee. Correct. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, I mean, if you add it up, we're we're at about a million 1.8 that we've received in in service fee uh waiver and um claim rebates,

011right? So, we don't get an extra check. What they do is that they deduct it straight from what we need to pay the doctors. Um, back to that anticipated million-doll re um increase. That's because we want to stay in front of inflation. Um, the employeeonly base plan will cost the employee an additional $248 per month. Of course, um that's what we've been discussing, but it's not set yet. We are looking at making u some adjustments. What do they currently play pay, sir? $31. So, it go from $31 to 33. 33 maybe 34 depending on the cents. And the staff, employee, benefit committee, and consultant recommend Bluec Cross Blue Shield is found on tonight's agenda. I did add one more slide because I wanted to point out that we are right now on target. uh through

012April, you'll see that we've had about $140,000 less in claims. For prescription, we have about a million dollar less in claims than last year. And for a total of 1.5 uh compared to last year, we're ahead of the game, $ 1.5 million. So, so we're doing we're going to hit our marks. Uh, I'm also predicting that we have about um $8.1 million estimated balance because we're also having to pay stop-loss insurance. That puts us May through August probably about $8.2 million. And like I tell the employee committee, my office is a zero net. My that's my goal. I don't want I I I want to hit zero. We can't have excess because that means I was charging too much for insurance and I I can't be short because that means I wasn't uh charging enough.

013So the name of the game is zero net, right? We're not in the insurance business. We want to zero out. So we have uh just about going to hit zero at the end of this year. And we are looking at that million dollar increase just to cover the trend because doctors are charging more, hospitals are charging more. So fully funded insurance is also more costly. Now the charges uh this might be a little controversial but I know I saw in other districts and I saw some other be just other individuals where what they do is they have with their local their local u doctors family practice doctors things like that that they offer since a lot of districts are self-funded some of them offer discounts you're coming in for just a normal evaluation etc like

014they have their set fees and like well w employees we're going to give you this discount because you're coming solely to us is that kind of something that's set up already in place or has been discussed in it is in place in that Blue Cross Blue Shield network has builtin um local lower worked out negotiated prices, but I'm going to refer to our consultant Sean Ko with One Digital is here today. So, if you want to speak to that. Sure. Good evening everybody. Uh as far as the what we call DPC, direct primary contracting. Uh it is not set up through the district currently where we're negotiating with specific doctors at specific costs. Instead, it's going through Blue Cross Blue Shield's network. um discounts that they provide, right? Does that answer your question? Yeah. So,

015Dr. Ku said something a little bit earlier that we pay the doctors directly. We don't. We pay Blue Cross Blue Shield and Blue Cross Blue Shield manages the claim for us. You are actually paying the doctors directly, but Bluec Cross Blue Shield has the charges negotiated ahead of time. So, it's coming through Blue Cross Blue Shield administration group, but it's your dollars that it's directly paying. No, I know it's our money, but who does the money go to? It flows through Blue Cross Blue Shield to the doctor. So, we pay Blue Cross Blue Shield and Blue Cross Blue Shield pays the doctors, right? Yes. Okay. That's what I'm trying to get clarification on. Okay. Otherwise, then what do we need Blue Cross Blue Shield for? Well, they do the discounts and the networking, they answer

016the phone calls, that kind of stuff as well. So, yeah. And they they do the rebates. Yeah. I just wanted to talk about that because what last about two years ago, we had that presentation that was given where we're using their network, but also based on their doctors and their arrangements. So, I guess yeah, I know there's a lot of well, not a lot, but there's some districts that do what Mark's talking about and have been pretty pretty successful at one getting good care for their employees, but also saving money on their self-unded plan. It's a little bit of extra work, but it's possible. Uh, reference base pricing, right? Uh, I have a couple questions, sir. On the MetLife fully insured dental plan, we pay it or the employees pay it? We pay the we

017pay the base. So, uh, we pay 100% of the base plan. If the employer wants to add family or a higher plan instead of the base plan, then they would pay the difference. So, a 4% increase, you you don't think that necess necessitates us going out for RFPs to try to get a better deal. You want to speak to that? Sure. Uh, I think it's a roll of the dice, if you will. Your loss ratio, and that's one of the things that we look for, and anybody that doesn't know what loss ratio is, is truly the measurement of claims being paid versus premium coming in. So when you look at the high plan for MetLife, you were at a loss ratio of 104%. On the low plan, it was 72%. Uh when you look at

018that, I don't know what you're going to get based on the market, but I can tell you what the market likes to see is about a 75% loss ratio. So since we're at 104 on the high plan, that would lead me to believe you're probably going to see increase in cost, but that's speculation on my part without going out to bid. But that would be my concern. Does that answer your question? Kind of. Okay. And um if I may um I was made aware of that MD Anderson does not accept Blue Cross Blue Shield. So my question to that is do we have other institutions that do take care of uh cancer through Blue Cross and Blue Shield? Tito's a rep with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Good afternoon members of the board and superintendent. My

019name is TA and I work directly with Blue Cross and Bluefield of Texas. We do have MD Anderson in our network. It's only the Medicare, okay, that is not in the network. It's only Medicare. But for everything else, we do have MD Anderson. Can I clarify that? Well, would that affect any of our employees? And will they affect who? Would that affect any of our employees on our plan? No, sir. Okay. Anybody that is under Medicare by under Waco ISD will not be affected because Waco ISD is first because they're actively at work. Medicare will pay secondary. So, it will not affect I know you presented multiple times. What's your full name? Taas. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Um, and can I touch on the on the uh network discounts here for West LCO ISD? We're

020averaging 75% discount. So that means you're paying 25 cents to the dollar for those claims, right? I just wanted to say that. See, for what? For your medical claims. On your medical claims, inatient, outpatient, professional. What about our pharmacy claims? That's the one that concerns me the most. This is the first green slide that we get on RX claims for the year. Uh we've been down all year. So, Dr. Ku, does this number include rebates or is it just uh is it just claims? No, sir. This includes those rebates as applied. What's the rebate that's included in here? We had um $890,000 true up back in February. So that's almost $900,000. And then we have had that pass through on the expenses for administrative services. So like I said, that that's going to add up

021to $950,000 at 2150 employees times 36.98 * 12. Do we pay do we pay a service fee to anybody on the PBM like per script? No. Uh meaning paying an agent, a consultant or anybody. No, sir. There's no load in there. Nice. Well, that saves us money. Yes, sir. It sure does because you get more discounts, right? So, without the rebates, we'd be pretty close to even. That is correct. A true number. Mhm. And and I just want to point something out in here. the first year 23 that's when you all came on board effective September 1st of 2023 keep in mind that when we took over there was the board decision that we were to take over anybody that was on those medications on the DL1s for the diabetics mjaro or sepic we were

022to take their prior authorization keep in mind when the year came over we have reduced that because now we're doing the pre-authorization um prior authorization for those medications and the safe therapy and now it has lowered that because we're asking prime is asking for the medical information and clinical information in order to approve that. So just to break it down right so everybody understands that when you switch insurance providers over like pharmacy so the far the pharmacy based managers the yes that PBM that contract over overlaps so last year yes you're looking at figures but they weren't true performance figures because you were still dealing with the old group and those costs which were much higher than they were because we lost money and versus now the new group that came in. So there's a

023mix from that last year. This year it's the true performance. That is correct. That's that's what kind of want to highlight. So now you're looking at green because now you're seeing a full run of this contract running from the start to finish versus last year where they're overlapping. We're still dealing with the previous uh high cost now overlapping with this company. So that's kind of what's being discussed. So uh you just mentioned something that I'd like a little bit more clarification for the employees too because we're going to get the calls. Uh so this year what are we doing with Mangaro and Olympic? those that they really needed, they had already pre we already pre-approved. So, you're not going to get the cost for them. Like I said, it was approved 91 of 2024. Okay,

024that has that's already So, those employees that didn't get better, um, they're still getting it. And those that already got better, they're not getting they're not going to get it. No, they're not. They don't need it. There's no need to continue on a medication that it's not medically necessary. And how would they what if they do have diabetes and they're prescribed it? There they won't get it. Yes, that's the the when they send the doctor sends the medical and clinical information, the lab reports to prime and they go ahead and review it. And if it's a diabetic that has been another medication and this is the medication that it's needed, it is approved and we do have those employees members also dependents that need it. They're on that on those medications. Okay. So, it's it's

025not a full-on ban. It's just you need medical authorization step therapy, right? They're going to they're going to try different medication first. If that's having an effect, then then that's what they use. If it's not having an effect, then they look at the next level of medication. And if that doesn't work, then they go to the next level of medication. But they do need to go through that for new patients that are developing diabetes and they're discovering that they're diabet. Has that been in place this year already? Yes. Okay. I had a question. I know that um you're talking about Oscar and those those drugs, but out of 3,000 employees, what is the percentage of the percentage of employees are actually utilizing those drugs? Cuz I guess as we're moving forward, I want to make

026a decision based on everything, you know, like high blood pressure, all these other different uh ailments and uh difficulties that you know, health difficulties that people are facing. So, what would be a good can we get a breakdown? I I don't know depending on privacy our population as to what most people are using heart medications blood pressure medications ompic etc. As long as there's no names you're fine right yes without ph PH or your private health information just standard with 3,000 employees 10% because I guess my decisions like like right now and I'm not saying anybody nobody's doing it but like I go all 9010 right I'm going to go what's best for 90% versus just 10. So, we want to make sure that we see the bulk of medications that are being used by

027employees so that when we get to this stage and you're deciding on contractors that you make the best decision possible based on the vendors and what they're offering and accessibility and price of course being the last because we care more about health than anything else. But if we can get that in the future. Yes, sir. At least on my part, I know I would like it and hopefully the board can see it too. Along with that, Mr. We we did have a staff that formed the committee that had a chance to look at all the uh um at your product and and they understand what they need and they're favorable with your decision on on new cause and and blue shield because they're the ones that are that are being I'll frame it differently. I'm

028comfortable with their decision to continue with blue cross. Yes, sir. And and the only thing is that and I know like the trusty CI was talking about those drugs have have you know they call them miracle drugs and they're impacting people on many different levels and I know I had heard too that some people didn't have accessibility and stuff. So that was that's kind of like why everybody's asking these questions because we want to make sure that there's accessibility for all our population right but but yeah I think that would really help us as far as seeing what's the amount or what are some of the the percentage of drugs in the areas they're being used at like you said. Yes sir. So, one thing just kind of follow up on that kind of train

029of thought. If there was ever an employee who does reach out to you asking about health insurance or health or dental or any of these insurance items, we ask that you would then forward them to Dr. Kandu's office. Um, that way they could really get the full explanation. Um, because there is always that like we were talking the step or what's included, what's excluded and and things of that nature. But if you if there was an employee who needed help, all they had to do was reach out to risk management. And in the times that I've gotten involved, 90% of the time it was that the doctor hadn't filled out the forms in time or wasn't doing what the doctor's office needed to get done to get that authorization taken care of. So, we just

030follow up with the doctor's office at that point. I think in the past, you also have a FAQs on your on your page or No, I think in the past one time they had like FAQs, like quick questions and answers like you said for people that were missing documentation and things like that. I don't know if it's still there or not. We have a lot of information the risk management web page. Um I'm pretty sure that there's something there, but if not, we'll add that. No, thank you. What is our agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield to be our TPA? What is our agreement? Like how much do we pay them? Uh right now we have it on we we are essentially our administrative fees are being reduced to zero because of the rebates that

031we're getting back. But how much do we pay them for administrative fees right now? Zero. In fact, we should be getting paid about $3 in this next renewal. They should be paying us $3. It's in favor of the district. Well, then why are we increasing our budget by a million bucks to stay in front of the claims. Remember that there's there's two parts to this cost. One is the administrative costs, right? That's what's predictable. We know what that's going to cost us. And right now, we're getting that taken care of with the rebates. The other part of this are the the expenses that the doctor is charging. So doctors are charging for a certain procedure a certain amount. Those things are going up. The equipment that a hospital is going to charge in their network

032going up with what they're charging, right? And our prices are based on their network. No, it's based on their their pricing and then they work out the uh uh discounts but within their network. We're limited to Blue Cross Blue Shields network is what I'm asking. So you go out of network they're limited. They're not limited. So I guess my question is what are we doing to address this million dollars? What is Blue Cross Blue Shield doing to address this million dollar increase to help the district? So like what claim trends, right? That's it. It's claims. That's it. I'm guessing next year we're going to spend more or more people going to be sick. This million dollars is actually a decision that the district is making to increase to be able to cover the claims. Possible.

033So, possibly. Yes. Based on whose recommendation or you just pulled the number out of the sky? No, no, no, no, no, no. Glucose gives a a proposed. There it is. That's what it is. Okay. What are we doing? What we have been doing is, you know, try to get your employees to go to preventive care. We do inform the employees, you know, what needs to be done, how what what how they can help maintain the insurance fund healthy for them, attending, doctors, taking their medication, being proactive, you know, that those are things that that we continue to do. So Blue Cross is projecting that you know because of the trend and the trend also you know impacts as we get older we're not um retiring retiring we continue to work the older the population the

034more so that's what we call you know other factors that also impact and can provide you that estimate and we're proposing we're not saying this is what you have to do but we're proposing and that's that's actually on the low side too because It's between between 8 and 15% as a trend, right? So then we're saying, okay, we're we're going to make a small adjustment because we are on track. 8% got us to this zero net that I'm predicting and I'm go I'm stepping out on a limb right now because anything can happen between now and August, right? The end of August. But the name of the game is zero net. How about on the pharmacy side? Are you doing anything creative or we're just No, we're implementing like other programs that can save the

035employees, you know, like when they go to the pharmacy if that medication has and it's still available that the pharmaceuticals, they still have those coupons, they can use the coupon so your employees are aware of those information. But as far as our costs are concerned, the district's cost, are we looking at international or we're not looking at any of that stuff at this time? We're not looking at the international for safety first because I would imagine that your million dollars a big chunk of that is per pharmacy. Not necessarily. So what is what is the it's inatient more than anything because that's where we see the increase on the inpatient side and in in pharmacy we're actually a million dollars below what we were spending at this time last year. But you included the rebate

036in there. Yes. Right. Yeah. Have to. Does that six million include the rebate? the six million from last year on for claims. Yeah. Yes, sir. All right. So, it's apples to apples. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, cool. I just want to make sure that we're I mean, it's eye statement, right? I just want to make sure that we're we're this is our second biggest expense after employees, after personnel, after payroll. And I just want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep our cost down because I've seen school districts get close to going broke on self-funded plans. Uh seems that our our fund balance is pretty healthy. Is that our fund balance? $8 million. Uh it's not a fund balance. That's the estimated balance at the end of the year or or up

037to right now is what what we're predicting we have. But we also have expenses of about 8.2 coming up. So that's going to zero out. We have an estimated balance that that is at 8, but we have expenses that is about at 8. Three months to go already. And we have in here it's only April. So it's May, June, July, and August. So we don't have a savings in our medical account. We zero it out. We zero it out every year. We shouldn't do Yes. Because if we have a savings, that means that we were charging the employees extra to build a savings, right? So the name of the game is zero net. I'm walking a re real fine line. I can't I I I don't want to charge so much that we have it

038left over, right? I also don't want to charge not enough to where we don't make budget. So it's really zero net is the name of the game for me. You are playing a real fine line. Yes, sir. That's a real risky proposition you're doing because risk management succ act actuarials. Uh all of that is figured. We we do calculate into u what would be the max that we would be out of pocket for example and then we work off of that. All right. So you're telling us we're okay? I'm telling you we're in great shape. We're okay and that the employees really want to stay with Blue Cross Blue Shield. They voted 100% to renew versus going out for RFP. Yeah. No, no, I understand that. But we also got to be financially responsible because

039at the end of the day, if we're not, then the employees are really going to want to keep their job. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Uh so again, I've I've seen the these nightmare situations where a school district is on the verge of going broke because of it. So I just want to make sure we avoid that. Yes, sir. Uh and I'm really concerned about pharmacy, but if you tell us we're okay, we're okay. Current Currently. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Currently we have approximately 370 members that they are taking on Simparo. Okay. Any any more questions? Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Item four, adjournment. Okay, the time now is 5:33. And for the record, let the record reflect that Mr. Marco de Santos joined our workshop at 509. We now have

040a uh the budget workshop. The budget workshop. Okay. I am Armando Quer Jr. vice president of the WSUSD board of trustees. This board workshop is being conducted in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Notice of this workshop has been posted online for at least 72 hours. The time now is 5:34 p.m. and I'll call this workshop to order. We'll now begin the roll call. Mr. Jacqueline Susita, Dr. Haime Rodriguez, myself Jr., Mr. Acoronto, Mr. Benjamin Castillo, present, Mr. Eduardo Cerna, present, Mr. Marco de los Santo. Okay, Mr. Jacqueline Sustita has arrived. She is on time. Now for public comments. Item three, Wester School District 2025 2026 budget workshop number two. Dr. Deta. Yes, Mr. D. Good evening board and Dr. Veta and the public. So you will get a deep dive of budget workshop

041number two. Um some of the items that we'll be discussing today is what is happening in Austin with that information with what we are um projecting out what are our potential new revenues new expenditures. One of the comments that was brought up at the LSG training we had was about instructional programs and resources. So, we're going to give some information about that. We're going to always be looking back to our timeline and as I kind of share some of the news articles, we do have some of those um as links so anyone could always follow up and see what's happening. So, House Bill Two. So, in case if you hear those words on the television, House Bill 2 is the bill that is currently at Austin that is talking about how much new dollars for

042school districts. And so, um, just to kind of give you a very crash course on uh how bills become law, you either have the House or the Senate starting the process. In this scenario, House bill, so it's in the House of Representatives at the state level. They prepare their draft of the bill. Then it goes to the Senate. If they match, perfect. They go straight to the governor. If there is some differences, they need to match. So they will have a committee to kind of reconcile those. And then it's given to the governor. And if he doesn't veto it, then it becomes law. And so some of the highlights of House Bill 2 is what we would get for the basic aotment for teaching a child here in Texas. So right now the basic piece

043is 6,160. It's proposed to move up to 6,555. And so when we do that math to see well what does that come out to the district I actually have the numbers in a little bit but they are adding some provisions to that increase where 40% has to be paid as an increase to the teacher the librarian the nurses the the counselors group and so um again a portion of that funding the new dollars will be tied to payraises. There is talk about changing special ed funding, prek funding, and also at the end of the day when we see, well, what does this all uh come out to? House Bill Two, we are seeing that there's a potential of about $9.4 million to the district. Now, if you had heard Senate Bill Two, totally different than

044funding. Senate Bill Two is the one that deals with school choice. Another term is vouchers. And so, if you had seen the news back on May the 3, it became law. And so year one is really going to be a planning year. How to implement and how to handle all the different aspects of that uh $1 billion program. The second year of that uh bianium. So it's not the 2526, it's the following year, the 26 27 school year. That is when it will go into action. And so just like Hi said uh the state had set aside $1 billion for this uh program. Again it's a very high uh political divided type of item. Um one of the comments that's popping up again we will remember this day May 3rd. And so um some will

045see it as a positive thing others are going to see it as something negative. So when we start looking at all the potential new revenues for the district, again the biggest one deals with House Bill 2. Again, it is still a bill, not yet law. We are seeing a possible projected 9.4 million. Again, I'm just going to repeat myself. 40% is tied to pay increases. It is still needed to be approved by the Senate. And just kind of give you some history, the Senate is always lower. It's not as favorable as compared to the House. And so, and even at the governor's part, uh there there could be changes at each level. One of the positive things about how our district is running um because of the hard work of every single employee especially there

046at the campuses um our attendance rates are very favorable. our enrollments uh like how we presented last time, even though we do see small decreases, they're coming to school. And so, uh we will always budget conservatively on the revenue side, but we are going to be increasing our budget numbers uh 200 more students uh for our ADA. So, for this year, 14,700. We are anticipating about $2 million more to next year's budget for that. Now I we are saying this is current law. Now when House Bill 2 becomes law, those numbers will be adjusted at that time. Senate Bill 260, you will be hearing about that one. That's the one that deals with safety aotment. So, at the last time um this item was talked about at the state level, we were receiving $10 per

047student to hire armed guards for every campus. We were receiving 15,000. So, if we were to kind of see what that number is, 400,000. And I'm just going to kind of use a roundabout number. So what was required was that we had at least one armed guard at every campus. This is a partially funded mandate. So what does that partially means? It costs way more, but they're only giving us a portion of it to help. So Senate Bill 260 is doubling those funds for next year. Again, it has not been passed, but we are very confident that that will. And so, we are projecting about 800 I mean $84,000 for that. And you can kind of see my math u below that. So as we review this year's activities, especially how well the ADA is

048happening at the campuses, those dollars are going to be kind of like set aside. Um because again, we budgeted 14,500 kids. Uh every month we see the updates from the superintendent. It is way higher than that. Now, we're not going to try to budget for that to add those uh dollars and spend it somewhere. The idea is to hold on to that money. It will become fund balance, use it next year to pay for the incentive stipen. And so, um again, we're always going to be crossing our fingers and we will be checking on this on a monthly basis, but that is the plan. So earlier I had talked about House Bill Two. Now I'm going through a deep dive. Where does that money is actually going to go? And so with the help of

049Mo Casey, uh, one of our consultants through region one, um, they were able to run our numbers using current year uh, data to see if everything stayed the same more or less, what would that number come out to? And so we have the various uh allocations. Um and we do see that there's uh a little bit of money for each of the new um I guess the the state funding whether it's state comp uh special ed, career and technology, early childhood. And so within that big House bill 2, there is individual pieces that talk about what are those increases are for. Um but again, we're not going to um say that this is written in stone until the Senate and until the governor approves them. So just a few days ago, we actually received our

050numbers, our preliminary numbers of our property values. And so on our website, we do share this information. Uh really it's the bar graph on the uh right hand side. Some people like to see it in color. Some people like to just see the numbers the way they are. I do want to kind of emphasize what that percentage change is and all that is doing it looks at the difference and compares it to the year before. And so what has been seen or what has been happening here in Waco ISD and within all the properties of the city and also of the rural area that you are seeing those close to 10% increases this year. They're saying that we grew by half a billion dollars worth of property values. That's the h the largest we have

051ever seen in the past 10 years, which is great things. And so, not really. Well, for the school district and the state, yes, not so much for the taxpayer, but I think we have to be also cautious because you're going to have a lot of people finding claims and protesting. That's correct. So, so to so to to predict estimates based off the current valuation, I'd probably like hold off on that and be cautious because I know that there everybody out there signing those letters and sending them back in and it's going to protest those increases. So, I if I remember right, but because they don't even match market value this month, you have to sign that form if you're going to protest and do it online and all that good stuff. So, right now it's

052saying 15 almost 16% increase from last year to this year. But again going back to what has been happening for the past three years probably will go down that five six% to be in the normal 3003 $350 million more of values into the um property values. So you kind of got forward thinking. When we uh adopt a budget next month, we will not be adopting the tax rate. We will be saving that for August because in July I should get my final values and then there's another um house bill that talks about increasing the homestead exemption. So right now the latest that we've heard right now is 100,000 140,000. And so what we always hope to hear that it should be a holdarmless um process for us meaning we're reducing property taxes. We're hoping that

053the state doesn't uh hurt us by not giving us that uh that difference. Did they do it last time? They did do that last time. So whatever was collected less due to that change of exemption, the state just filled in the the the difference and so we see it through our state uh summary of finances. So we are anticipating that same thing again. That is why we're going to hold off and not approve the tax rate until we get those numbers. And also the house the the home is going to pass. It's almost like a 99% for sure it will do. So um so this this one yes we will be showing this again once we get the new numbers. So we talked about the revenues. What are some uh anticipated costs that we will

054be seeing for next school year? And so, but just to give you a little history, when we sent out the worksheets to all the different departments and to the campuses, pretty much it was a flat increase, meaning none. Whatever was allocated last year is allocated again the same this year. Um, and you'll see why we went ahead and went that route. So, one topic that we knew of was this health uh health care the claims that we do pay uh on behalf of the employees of the district. Again, just being ready for inflation. Um knowing that costs are going to go up, we're setting aside an extra million dollars for that. Uh we are also sending aside another half a million for utility costs. Primary um is for electricity again. Um we are again just

055being conservative and just having those extra funds for that. Um but we do expect the rate to go up a little for us. So again, that's half a million set aside for that. And well, the main reason why we're doing this is so that any remaining funds as we kind of finish up the budget process would be saved for salaries, benefits, and stipens. and so to make sure that that is fully funded and ready to go for this uh upcoming school year. So what has happened over the past two three years? So I know the superintendent does share this um slide in a different format. So I'm going to kind of put it in more in just in words. Beginning of the school year for this uh July one date are unassigned. In other words,

056not reserved for something else totaled 65 million and change. After setting aside the three months reserve that is recommended by TEA, we would in a sense set aside 43.4 million and just have that for the worst case scenarios for the district. As we have gone through the school year, the superintendent has brought up all the different uh construction projects that have been approved. Um, and then you you have seen those updates, the buses, the vans, uh, the baseball and softball fields at the two high schools. And just a that's just a few of those um projects. About $12 million have been set aside and and used for those items. The great thing about it, we still have $10 million just from that particular U bucket. And again, those monies will be used for next year

057for the foreseeable projects that will pop up. Again, just a reminder, I know some of these items you you've been seeing on the news and on uh newspapers. Um because of the management of again uh the superintendent and with your guidance working with all the staff to try to minimize cost and uh try to get our kids to come every single day that employees have not lost their jobs because of um like a reduction in force which is the ugly word riff. Um if you see um different area different school districts uh closing of campuses that is not happening here. The interest that we earn on our fund balance because we have so many million mill millions set aside and the millions that we have in our bonds those generate interest and those interests are

058will be used to again help with the projects that we see that the school district needs. We as a as a district has one of the lowest tax rates in the valley and that is already including the $160 million bond. And so again, I kind of repeating myself earlier. When we see that ADA is a certain dollar amount, we budget for that field 14,500. And then as we progress through the year and the principles come through and and get us uh all the great ADA, we are seeing about possibility of about a $4 million increase in revenue just in that. And so all the monies that are left over for last school year, which is in my head this school year, uh would become new fund balance dollars which will be brought up to you

059for approval for any of the future needs of the school district. But the idea of those 300 400 new kids for the ADA is going to be for letter G to help pay for that incentive stipen for all staff or at least the staff that qualify. And so because we're seeing those huge increases in ADA, again, we don't want to max out and be not conservative, but the district does feel um that it could hit at least 14,700 in the next budget school year. And so as we belong with go with that, that's a potential about $2 million more of new revenues that the district would be able to then utilize to um ensure all the programs are fully funded. So one of the topics that popped up at the last training we had for

060LSG was what are the instructional programs that the district has oops for this school year. So some of these should sound familiar. Again, all of these are funded through our external funds department whether it's through title one funds which are federal or state comp which is uh state right uh funded and so you have extended day Saturday school mentors summer school our CCMR mentors and our ACE program. Again, just to kind of give you some numbers and where these dollars are being allocated towards to. And so most of these are salary if you look at it, having the teachers work extra with our students to get those better grades. We just have different ways of doing it, but that's the whole idea. Now, I know this one's a little bit tinier. Um, we do have

061it on on Excel to help it uh uh I guess we could read it better next time, but these are the resources that federal programs or our external uh funds provides. So these are the softwares. That's how I kind of see it. And so on top of all those dollars that are spent on extra duty pay for our teachers, these are all the different U programs that we have. So again, the next budget workshop 62325. There we would talk about hopefully House Bill 2 and with the new payraises. Again, save the date, June 23. If you wanted to see those news articles, that's the link. There we go. Questions. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Rosto. Do you have any questions? Yes, I do. I just have a very few because I know everybody's been here for

062a while. On the graphs, the on the graphs you just showed on the instructional resources and the expenses. Yes. On those, um, what I was kind of asking for was the entire budget. Our entire budget's over, you know, 270 or 260, 268, whatever the total is going into the next year, million. And that's kind of the graphs that I wanted to show the public and also for the board so that we can see which components, transportation, maintenance, nutrition, etc. where our money is going. Okay. Also extracurricular. I know it's one of those words that nobody likes to say, but it's true. I want to see how much are we spending athletics, how many how much are we spending fine arts, etc. Perfect. Also additional from the instructional resources because like I know that instructional resource

063for instance I don't have the total number off the top of my head but I know it's like close to 2 million. It's hovering around that that that number right out of our budget. That's right. So where's the rest? And it's just kind of to show us not saying where is it that it's being hidden but just so we can evaluate because I know we're talking about since 2021 we've talked money here. Right. That's been our our our main thing here is how do we get back to where people don't lose their jobs, our neighbors, our family and our friends which they're not. the district and the board and the superintendent, everybody was very conservative and all and everybody working in the school and nobody lost their jobs this year. A lot of people are

064and they're going into a market that doesn't have work for them. So that's that that's frightening and luckily people in our community don't have to face that and that's because we have the hard talks, the hard decisions. So I I like the state of that and and see graphs like that so we can like because the board approves the budget and works and the superintendent, his staff created and we can all just kind of observe and make sure that everybody's being taken care of. One of the things that you you touched on was energy. Real quick, do we do energy audits in the district and the and what I'm saying is that when we're at home, I know I told my kids, I tell everybody, turn off the lights, turn everything off, we're leaving, we're

065take off, the only thing that stays on is the AC, but you turn everything off. Not many people just walk out the home and leave everything running. So, energy audits are something that those school districts do where they look at campuses and they do walkthroughs. And I know this might not sit happy with some staff, but it's all at the end so that everyone's taken care of and you have stipens and you have raises. That's the only purpose is not to go and take away fridges or anything like that. But those things do use a lot of energy. If you're talking about 3,000 employees and then departments and classrooms and all the devices, computers, printers, etc., fridges that are if they're all running, that's that's energy consumption that you're using for a large part of

066the day. We're only open eight hours. So 16 hours you're you're you're you're spending money in including weekends. So do you all do energy audits where you've gone to campuses and seen okay what is needed and what really kind of doesn't and what would consume energy and then cost taxpayers and then eventually you know cost our budget you know affect our budget. Has that been done? So luckily we have an energy department. I'm okay. Um but I know uh in my previous districts we would reach out to SECO and so we we can do it and we are doing it we'll continue doing it. Okay. Good good observation. Thank you. All right then. So one thing that I didn't want to kind of hope for yet is as we kind of go through all the

067different U projects the AC work. So we hope that that would also save funding for that. Thank you sir. Okay. No, Castillo. Yes, sir. I have a couple uh on uh the news from Austin on S Senate Bill 2. How many private schools do we have in Lesld? I am only aware of two. So, which is the Mid Valley Christian and the Samatin? That's the only two I'm aware of as well. That's only two. No, it shouldn't. I don't think it'll have that big of an impact on our our budget, at least initially because even after once it you have to be in operation for two years until you qualify. So So I think in the bigger cities, Houston, Dallas, Austin, that's probably where it's you're going to see it more often. Yeah, I think

068so too. On on page six, sir, on this uh House Bill two projections in detail by major funding source, is that minus the raises or no? No. Okay. This is just revenues. Okay. So, if this version passes is the final bill, which I don't think it is going to be, uh, but say it is, 40% of this number has to go to salaries. That's right. I had another one on on uh page eight on our increase to health insurance premiums. I was just I should have asked it during the the insurance workshop, but it just hit my mind. Trump. President Trump just signed an executive order on pharmacy. Do we anticipate? I don't know if you had a chance to study it because I think it just happened like yesterday. It's not until utilization happens,

069but if the price ofies goes down, we will see that impact um through. So, let's keep an eye on it because Blue Cross Blue Shield's here to make money. We need to say, but we should see that. Yes. All right. Cool. Yeah. Let's just make sure that that that we keep an eye on that. Uh what was the other one? Yeah, and I agree with Mr. De Los Santos. We could get a kind of more detailed because if we go by this, it seems like the most amount of money that we spend on instructional programs is summer school. And I know that's not true. Uh so, so yeah, and I think good job to all of y'all for for working on this and and kind of giving us this information. Have you did you sit

070through that Mo Casey webinar? Yes, I did. So, so you heard that they anticipate the Senate's going to cut a couple billion out. Yes, that's what the ideal is. If if our portion was 9 million, 9.4, just knock off another 10 20% from there. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz the original bill was like 5 billion, I think. Or the original budget was 5 billion. Yeah. All right. Thank you. And so when then the first numbers happened, we were thinking six. Thank you, Dr. Coach. Thank you. Thank you. Just one quick observation. And I what caught my attention was the same house bill too, the news from Austin. And in number five, it says funding prek program from 50% to 100%. And as an early childhood advocate and educator, I think this is awesome because early childhood is

071so important. It's the base of it's the foundation for our students when they're little and they get to go to school all day, which is what we offer now at WISD. um we're really building on that social, emotional, academic, you know, their their brains and their emotional growth and their cognitive growth. So to see that the this is going hopefully from 50% to 100% funding. Uh when would this if it passes, when would we be seeing those funds like next year, this coming year? Right away. Right away. Oh, awesome. Okay. So then that means that we would have more funds into not only our Well, the teachers already get paid as a whole day, right? even though they're only being funded 50% with those kids. But what kind of increase would we see with this

072early childhood um funds if it goes from 50 to 100%. We haven't thought about that, right? We will be working with um external funds because that's the area that would have it and um and CNI to see what are the goals for the early childhood program. See, the district pays half of it. Yes. and the kids are here the whole day, but we only get half day funded. So hopefully this will pass to bring us the additional money to the district to fund it the whole way and hopefully additional kids also we can get those kids in school early. We we're building a stronger foundation. So that's exciting news. Thank you. There we go. That way they stay 14 years with us. Right now we're saying no to no ones. We enroll all the ones

073at one. So we're not saying we're not saying we're full, we we managed to get them somewhere in our campus. Oh, that's good. And by the way, online right now, because I'm a parent who has kids in the district. So online, if the parents are listening, you haven't registered your child, you go to WISD and that's the first thing that pops up, online registration. So if you haven't done it, register, especially with those little ones, the prek ones, register them because it's a good program. And hopefully we'll get funded the full day. You know, right now there's issues in the Senate and we may not be funded for. Yeah. All right. But it won't affect us because we're children. So, call your senators, call your house reps and funding um meals. Are we doing dinners?

074Are we providing dinners yet in the campuses? I know that we get additional funding for that. We can serve meals after after a certain hour when the bell rings. do that for our our secondary and that's off and on. So I know during um really when sports kick in, right? Um and that's when I see it at at the high schools um after practice or right before practice they're able to get their their dinner. Yeah. Because I know some some do even for elementaryaries and whatnot so that before they leave a window so they can have like a meal before they get on the buses or for dismissal. So, not only are you providing meals for some kids that are maybe going home, like those latch key kids that maybe nobody's home yet, but they're

075also getting a meal before they leave. And then on top of that, it's also a it's also a funding increaser for it's an increase in funding for the school district because of course the the federal government compensates you more than what you're actually spending on the meal. So, it's a win-win. Kids get a meal, you're making sure that they have something to eat before they leave. And then two, the district gets those additional resources as well. But so just have there been a study on that maybe about going districtwide or it be I haven't seen it too much only because we do have the ACE program. So the ACE program it doesn't pay for the snack. It's through the food service program. Okay. So they work together to ensure that the kids who attend uh

076after school ACE that they do get a snack. How many kids do we have more like how many kids do we have participating sir? I'd have to get that information for you. Yeah. So, it's at all elementaryaries. I do know that I think two elementaryaries team up together. So, you're having anywhere from 150 to 200 kids at each one. And so, about 2,000 22. Piggybacking off of Trusty Deos Santos, I think that's a great idea and something for us to explore cuz I think what they're getting is a snack, not necessarily dinner. It is a snack. Yeah. Uh, and I think it'd be great if we could maybe go out for an RFP or explore, study it, uh, for somebody who could provide that service to us. We do it in-house, but you do a

077snack. I'm talking about dinner if um, so what happens there is that participation is not as high, but again, we could always look into that. Yeah. But the ones that do participate probably really need it. So, thank you, sir. We do, but we'll have that report and we'll look into the food service. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mayor, your staff. Uh, thank you for that very diligent report and uh we're very very thankful for your for your work in uh overseeing the uh YSD budget and reassuring us that we're in good shape. So, thank you again very much. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. Um, let the record reflect that Dr. Dr. Hame has joined our workshop at 5:52 p.m. And now to item four, adjournment. The time now is 6:07 and this workshop is

078adjourned. Before we get into the regular meeting, can we proceed or do we need a quick break? Good to go. Okay. Good evening. I am Arando Qua Jr. vice president of the WestD board of trustees. This regular board meeting is being conducted in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Notice of this meeting has been posted online for at least 72 hours. The time now is 6:07 p.m. And I'll call this meeting to order. Excuse me. We now begin the roll call. Mr. Jaclyn Susita, present. Dr. Hame Rodriguez, present. Armando, vice president. Present. Mr. Mr. Benjamin Castillo present. Mr. Eduardo Ta hopes present and Mr. Maros de los Santos present. Let the record reflect that we have a quorum present and we now go to item three invocation. Dr. Rivera, would you be so kind

079to bow your heads? Gentlemen, if you're wearing a hat, if you would just remove it in reverence to the Lord. Lord of all creation, our Lord Jesus Christ, how great and mighty you are. You are awesome in all of your ways. You are good and merciful towards us. Thank you for the gift of life, health, family, strength, and ability to work to provide for our families. We thank you for the many blessings you have bestowed upon WISD and those to come. Father, we will never tire nor waver to ask you to continue to bless and grant greater wisdom to our superintendent, Dr. Richard Ria, and our amazing board. Thank you for their leadership and humility. May your will be done in our board meetings. Help us always to maintain integrity in what you have left

080in our care. Help us always to be focused on the betterment of boys and girls in Wesley ISD. As a 2425 school year comes to a close, there is much gratitude in our hearts for all that you have done, are doing, and will do in the days to come. Thank you for the strength, wisdom, and love you poured upon our teachers and staff. Thank you for keeping our students and staff safe. We pray your hand of blessing and protection be upon all our students and staff during the summer so that all may return safely in August. We ask you all this in your precious, glorious, and mighty name of Jesus. And everyone says, "Amen." Amen. Item four, pledge of allegiance. Good evening, everyone. And at this time, we'd ask everyone to please stand, place their

081right hand over their heart, and face the United States flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'd ask everyone to please remain standing, right hand over their heart, and face the Texas flag. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. Item five, awards and recognitions. Dr. Carlo, Vice President Mando, Dr. IT, members of the board, we have a lot to celebrate here at this May board meeting. And let's have a round of applause as these young ladies and men enter the room. Tonight, we are proud to announce that several high school students were recently selected to the prestigious Boy State and

082Blue Bonnet Girls State Conferences. These leadership conferences serve to empower our young men and women to become community and civic leaders. And we congratulate these students for representing West Loco ISD at the state level. As delegates, these young men and ladies will represent our school district as they learn how to organize government entities, form political parties, and run for office. These young ladies will travel to Texas Lutheran University in Sigin June 15th through the 21st this summer. And our young men will attend the conference at UT Austin June 8th through the 13th. We'd like to say congratulations to them. Let's give them a round of applause. And if their parents are here, can parents please stand to be recognized? [Applause] Parents. All right, let's give him another round of applause. How about we give our

083next group of students a round of applause as they enter the room. So tonight we honor the West Lau High School Wildcat Regiment Drum Line, also known as the Catalyst. They recently took part in the Texas Educational Color Guard Association state contest and we are very proud to say that the Catalyst brought home a state championship title. This is their first year competing and winning. All eight judges awarded the drum line with first place in visual, visual effects, music, and music effects. The Wildcats competed in the Scholastic Marching 2A division. Congratulations. And parents, if you're here, can you please stand if you recognize parents? We also like to recognize the Wesley Kois High School Wildcat Regent band director Armando Cuer. Instructors are Renee Pinado and Sebastian Mata. Congratulations. How about a big hand for these

084young ladies as they enter the room? [Applause] Tonight, we want to congratulate the West Local High School Dreams who recently competed at Showtime International. These young ladies went on to win the Grand National Championship title at this international contest. How about a round of applause? This is the second year in a row these young ladies win this prestigious title, making them backto back [Applause] champions. Congratulations also to director Terara Sanchez and sponsor Delma Solleather. Parents, if you're Parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Parents, [Applause] Congratulations. All right, how about a nice round of applause for our next set of individuals who are coming in to be recognized. We have athletes who are here from West Loise High School and West Lico High School. We want to congratulate our high school

085athletes who have excelled off the field of competition. These athletes were recently named to the academic allstate list for their academic excellence in GPA, class rank, and ACT, SAT scores. They have been named to Texas High School Coaches Association academic all-state team. These these athletes represent several of our spring sports including track, baseball, softball, and girls track. How about we give them a round of applause? And parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Parents. Parents, congratulations to the parents. All right. How about a round of applause for some of our GA golf athletes who are here now. All right. So, tonight we want to extend our congratulations to members of the Westico High School Golf Program. The boys and the girls team both won the district 316A championship titles. How about

086we give them a round of applause? Boys head coach Mike Given and Jesse Baron. Girls head coach is Carlos Rico. Smile. [Applause] We also want to recognize their parents. Parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized or wave? Congratulations All right, how about a round of applause for our next group of athletes coming in. [Applause] All right, so our next group of students are members of the Westico High School boys track and field team. We want to congratulate them on a winning season. The Panthers brought home the district 316A title. So we'd like to say congratulations to them and a round of applause. would also like to congratulate their head coach, Gus Getta. Coach, congratulations. And parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Parents. All right. Congratulations And

087now a round of applause for our next group of athletes. We're not done yet. Yes, there's [Applause] more. Tonight, we also want to congratulate the West Lau High School boys track and field team for their outstanding season. The Wildcat The Wildcats clinched the 325A championship for the third consecutive year. Congratulations to our athletes and their head coach, Tom Owens. Parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Parents, Congratulations. Three repeat back to back to back. How about another round of applause for the next group of athletes? [Applause] The next group of students are members of the West Local East High School baseball team. The boys team won the district 325A championship title now three of the last four years. How about we give them a round of applause? Congratulations on a tremendous

088season. also like to recognize head coach Mike [Applause] Brown. And parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Parents, take some photos. Everybody smile. Once again, congratulations, Whistle Whiz Wildcats. [Applause] We'd also like to recognize one more group of athletes. How about a round of applause for these young ladies? careful with that. Tonight, we want to congratulate the 2025 West High School girls softball team. The girls clinched the 316A district championship and by district title and were area qualifiers. Let's give them a round of applause. We'd also like to recognize our coaches who are here. Head coach Mario Rodriguez with Daniel Inos. Congratulations. And parents, if you're here, can you please stand and be recognized? Our parents. [Applause] Once again, congratulations. And that concludes our awards of recognition. Thank you, Carlos. those.

089We'll put them on the billboard. Let's get all the ones that were here. Let's get them on the billboard. Thank you very much. And that's a great example of what WestD is all about. Yes. Congratulations to each and every one of sponsors, parents, everyone that supports all our programs and um we're very very proud of them. Now we go to item six, public comments. We have one. Oh, okay. Okay. Uh, will Yaza please come to the podium? Are you able to see it come out? Unless there's something that's weird. Okay, there's nothing. Just light. Sorry, I was congratulating everybody will uh Dr. H Rodriguez go through the uh presentation of what the U information before we speak or Mrs. GarcA please go ahead and identify yourself and your address please. Danna Garcam, 1011 East 10th

090Street, Mercedes. Pursuant to the Texas Open Meeting Act, the board of trustees may not deliberate on any comment made by a member of the public on a subject that is not included on the agenda posted with notice of this meeting. As per the Texas Attorney General, the scope of board discussion for a subject not part of the meeting agenda is limited to only proposal by a board member to place the subject on a future board agenda. Specific factual information or recitation of existing policy may be furnished in response to inquiries, but the board shall not deliberate or decide regarding any subject that is not included on the agenda posted with notice of the of the meeting. Audience participation at a board meeting is limited to the portion of the meeting designated for that purpose. At

091all other times during a board meeting, the audience shall not enter into discussion or debate on matters being considered by the board unless recognized by the presiding officer. No public comment presentation shall exceed 3 minutes. Any disruptive behavior by any speaker may result in the speaker's removal from participation in the meeting. Please be mindful of using names or personal personally identifiable information as there is no immunity from defamatory comments while participating in public comments. I'll I'll let you It's three minutes, ma'am. I'll I'll let you know when you have one minute left and you can I'll start the clock whenever you start your presentation. Thank you. Good evening, schoolboard trustees, Dr. Ria, students, staff, and parents. I would like to shed light on the bullying of WestD employees by other adult educators and their friends

092and family, all using a fake profile account on a school Facebook page. School Facebooks should be used to promote the great things happening, highlighting our beautiful students on campus instead of using it to spread hate as a result of one's misery due to poor choices and using others as scapegoats. We know who you are that's hiding behind a fake profile. You need to cease the bullying. Agenda item 10A1, discussion and possible action for the board of trustees to consider approval to renew and extend the contract for legal services as requested by Mr. De Los Santos and Mr. Quua. Let's be transparent with the taxpayers. If I understand invoices correctly, we have the current legal council that you want to extend the contract for charging incredible amounts of money and then charging taxpayers for other firms

093to do the job. Why are you allowing this? Why are you wasting taxpayers monies? Wesquistd deserves much better as you promised when you ran for office. Taxpayers money should be spent as if it was your own personal hard-earned money. On July 31st, 2024, there was an invoice submitted that included some investigation totaling $19,600. 14,800 went to your current legal counsel. 4,800 went to some other firm. Why such wasteful spending? On September 4th, there was another invoice that also included an investigation on the invoice submitted totaling $28,81 for the month of August. This one had two other firms in the pie. One for $900, the second one for $9,16. Don't know what investigations these were, but to this day, my public information request on the findings on the alleged one school board member misconduct investigation has

094not been fulfilled. You have not been transparent with a taxpayers. What were the findings on the board member misconduct? These two invoices contained investigations totaling $47,681. This is very sad that you have legal counsel that is charging for his services and an additional charge for some other firm to execute his job and all at the taxpayers's expense. Vote no to extending contract and search for legal counsel that is reasonable and is wellversed in school law. Do the right thing. You owe it to the taxpayers that placed you on those borrowed seats. In closing, congratulations to the West ISD graduating class of 2025. God bless you as you embark in a new and exciting chapter in your life. Thank you and God bless AquaD. And to all the students that came up for awards, congratulations as

095well. Wish you nothing but the best. Thank you. Oh, and I received a tip. Uh I didn't get lost this time. I numbered my pages and uh had huge fun. So, thank you, Florial. I really appreciate the tip. Okay. U item seven lonear governance Dr. Yes. Yes sir. Good evening uh board members community uh Dr. Betta. So you received the LSG presentation uh for your review ahead of time this month. We will be uh reviewing benchmark results for GPM's goal three and goal four GPMs 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 and discipline reports. So, I'll first go over our data for 3.1 or goal three. In goal three, you'll see that our goal is to measure the percent of sixth grader students, sixth grade students meeting the meets plus on the star math, it will increase from

09624% to 56%. This is the overall goal. Um even though you see that at the beginning benchmark 1 35 were we were close to the target end of the year target 37 because we had a slight decline in benchmark 2 with a decline um I I I will safely put not on track right so um benchmark 2 was 31 goal is to 37 I do want to make a note that the state target is 47 by 2027 by the end of 2027 so In support of this goal of goal three, we then monitor GPMs 3.1 and 3.2, which is fourth and fifth grade data to support the sixth grade overall student results. When we look at the fourth grade students achieving the meets grade level on star math benchmarks this year, we said that we

097will have an increase from 53% to 54% by the end of the year. Um we started benchmark one we scored a 50 benchmark 2 we dropped to 41% of our student population at the meet plus therefore because of a decline I put not on track right and we'll explain some of the things that we have done um to hopefully get back on track by the time the end of the year target what we call this not benchmark three but it's our star results our actual star results right and you have the table uh with the data for sub populations. So when you look at the next slide for 3.1 at the fourth grade um um okay got it. So [Music] um so we are now looking at 3.1 fourth grade math results for campuses. Okay.

098So when we're looking at the campuses and I know that those uh get them pretty soon right by campus we did see in math that all campuses regress from benchmark one to benchmark two and I I'll talk a little bit more about uh possible factors that we looked at. Um I know that in some of the questions my response was that even the state when we looked at benchmark one that was the 2023 release and benchmark 2 was the 2024 release. Right? So two star tests. Um the state overall last year saw also a decline statewide in the math performance at um at all levels. So this is one thing to consider. However, just because it says not on track, some campuses have surpassed the end of the year target by benchmark 2. So I

099do want to make a note of that and commend those campuses that are either at the end of the year target or surpass. So this is the fourth grade math data. Looking at GPM 3.2 again to support the goal three which is sixth grade. Now we are looking or studying closely our fifth grade math data. Our fifth grade goal this year was to increase from 53% last year at the meet to 54%. If you look at the beginning of the year or fall I should say benchmark one we scored uh 62% of our students were already at the meets plus which is tremendous right a tremendous success. However for benchmark 2 we declined in fifth grade to a 44% at the meets plus um again our end of the year target is 54 which is

100a onepoint increase. Um for this reason I'm saying we are not on track. Um however I'll discuss again some of the factors that we've identified as a district. If you look at the next slide then you have that uh data by campus. Here you will see the same um pattern. You will see a regression for all campuses even if they surpass the end of the year target. Um but you will see a regression from benchmark one to benchmark two. I do want to make sure that we consider that benchmark one when they take it in November late November or such they're only assessed stats up until that point in the year. Benchmark 2 is a full cumulative star test right still so still with not all the timeline the instructional timeline tested or taught I'm

101sorry before tested. So it I something to factor in as you're seeing this data right track regress. So now we move on to goal four which is TPM's 4.14.2 two. Again, goal four is to support our sixth grade star reading um results, which is uh when we started the GPMs or the goal progress monitoring, we started at a 38% in August of 2023. We would improve it in 5 years up to a 53% uh for our district. So, we're talking about 53% of our students in sixth grade reading at the meets performance level. If you look at our chart, we started at a 51 for benchmark one. We scored a 51 for benchmark 2 and our end of the year target is a 44. So this is why we're saying we are on track. So

102looking at 4.1 the next slide, 4.1 measures fourth grade students at the meets plus and our fourth grade student. You see a very different um pattern here, right? With reading. So our benchmark one was a 30% at the meets plus. We had a significant increase of 15 points. So 45% of our student population in fourth grade um met the meets performance level or beyond. Right? Our end of the year target is a 52%. So if we keep um if we keep up with this pattern then or trend we will uh meet the end of the year target. So we had significant increases in fourth grade and we'll talk about those in in a bit as I answer your questions. So in 4.1 at the campus data if you look at all campuses again the opposite

103right in performance all campuses had uh progression or all uh performed better in benchmark 2 which caused a significant increase as um as a district. If you look at some of the campuses, they have way exceeded the end of the year targets, right? And probably the five-year targets, right? Uh that the district set. Then we look at 4.2. 4.2 looks at fifth grade. How does it support the sixth grade reading results? So fifth fifth grade is looking at increasing from 58% to a 59% by the end of this year. benchmark one for fifth grade students. 56% of our students were already at the meets plus. I want you to make a note that the state is looking at by 2038 60% of students. We're already talking that in 2025 we're at 56%. So kudos to

104everyone. We had a signific not a significant but a slight drop of minus one which is a 55 for benchmark 2. Again this was last year's star uh star test. Um, and our goal is a 59%. Because of the decline, I'm saying not on track, but we feel confident that with the acceleration and review camps that happened right after the benchmark, we would get back on track. So, if you look at 4.2 by campus, we have six campuses close to meeting the end of the year target, if not meeting, right? Three of them are meeting, three of them are very close to that end of the year target and four that still have some uh percentage points to get to the end of the year target. But again, we feel confident that with their review

105sessions and camps and blitz, they would get there. So, as a district, the next slide, we identified several things that we believe are working, right? And when we say we've identified is working for those campuses that you see the performance levels highs we meet discuss and we came up with we have instructional pacing guides or maps that um tell teachers what to teach what time of the year right if with fidelity then we would uh see that high performance and teachers collaborating through PC's or such uh what needs more in uh attention we talked about tier one which is why we're bringing blue bonnet for math right to ensure that high quality instruction for all sub populations and strengthening the balance between understanding the con concept not memorizing not learning so many strategies right which

106again HQIM resources will allow for that in reading we understand that the teacher knowledge knowledge and experience you know you pointed out in one of the questions why does fourth grade perform so well fourth grades were your reading and writing teachers before when it was before star right um when start was testing those two content areas separately or separate assessment, right? Um we did uh purchase no red ink, one of our resources that we embed to enrich the SAS tier one curriculum as well. So what needs more attention is more monitoring and reporting of just tier one solid good instruction. How are we reporting back and how are we providing feedback for the uh language arts in the superintendent constraints? We monitored this month uh discipline reports and our goal is to make sure that

107the superintendent shall not allow WIS schools to be unsafe. So what what do we do to monitor that? CPM 1.1 says discipline reports will reflect a decrease of 3% in fights from last school year to this school year. Uh as Dr. IA has presented in his superintendence report. We are at 44% decrease from one year to the to to up to this year. Right? So a big congratulations to everyone. Kudos to everyone because they have done a phenomenal job. Right? How do we do this? Um there is a weekly review of fights with Dr. Reetta and he sends out a fight report every Friday to make sure that everyone is aware of you know what needs to be done. constant uh monitoring, being vigilant and being proactive. So, Mr. Pettis uh Dr. Canu, they hold

108their monthly meetings too with behavior coordinators. So, that has helped to de decrease this number significantly and having a lot of the resources available to students too. Uh when needs more attention, we're having non-administrative staff assist with stopping fight. So, the behavior coordinators will be addressing that so that all members or all employees are involved, right? and not just administration and professionals. Review school duty schedule especially during lunch and after school when we know that this are more prone to happening and then continue to work with staff to build more rapport with students. So that is my report for the uh LSG this month. Uh with your permission I can review the questions that were submitted. Yes, please. Okay. So you'll see them in the next slides. So they've already been responded. Those are the

109responses you received. So uh I'm going to start with goal three and move on just as presented in that same order. Which TEISS and sixth grade math are showing the largest gap or regression across the campuses? We identified three of them. Three of the most common TEICs which are 6.8, 6.9 and 614A. I will say there was only three that were common. All the rest were not. It varied by campuses which then we know that it's it's not something uh a commonality uh amongst the district but by campus. So um also for goal three have teachers receive sufficient training and support for sixth grade math instruction especially for the most miss. So what they do after data or benchmark is reviewed, instructional coaches come to CNI, they'll review the data analysis, campus principles do the

110same thing. Region one usually will have six weeks training on uh TICSS or curriculum mapping and teachers will be sent out to these trainings as well. Then instructional coaches go back to the campuses and turn it around. The next uh questions for 3.1 which is fourth grade math. the percentage of students there was a decline in benchmark 2 right which is where we saw the negative 9 which is score of 41%. What support can we provide to teachers to prevent a further decline for the next benchmark which was the start. So this will be addressed the decline will be addressed for next school year um as the blue bonnet will take care of making sure that the scoping sequence is followed. However, again, after the benchmark, campuses still had about uh four to six weeks

111period to put in to finalize the scope and sequence and teach all tiques and uh provide camps. So, our LSG data shows a performance dip for the offtrack campuses from benchmark 1 to two. Which root causes do we believe drove that decline? and what specific measurable interventions are we rolling out with clear timelines to recover and hit our targets by benchmark three which is our star right so um again all campuses showed a regression in math from benchmark one to two which I've explained the reason why we believe it's that regression um up to that point benchmark one just the data taught up to that point then cumulative star for benchmark two which we still have not taught the entire year I was going to ask you that question. So the first benchmark we're testing

112for TICS TICS taught up to that point but benchmark 2 they're still missing some lesson they're still missing some right and they have not had any time to review as we need to gather some data before the star test window opens up. Can can we maybe reschedule the benchmark or align the test a little bit better like we do with benchmark one? Our in uh our assessment calendar is going out so yes sir we're doing that. Okay. Mhm. Yes. So those are the main reasons why we feel that the data looks differently, right? So um the next slide, the qualitative feedback from each campus offered great insight into what is working or what needs more attention for both subjects in both grade levels which is fourth and fifth. What is the common theme that is

113needed among all campuses that are not on track in fifth grade math? How can we as a borderline inputs to help these campuses? Um so for this one one common theme that we felt was very strong was that the three performing the low performing campuses they face administrative challenges throughout the year right and those have already been addressed. So we we have moved past that and we're moving forward and again we've strongly feel that the blue bonnet curriculum will help some of these low performing campuses of course all but to get them back into that alignment and scaffolding. So given the decrease in math scores for benchmark 2, what strategies didn't work and what is the plan to get back on track, um it isn't necessarily a strategy, it's the difference in assessment, right? When

114we look at it. So again, being faithful to tier one instruction is what's going to get us to improve those scores, right? Understanding the concept. Next slide. How targeted and effective are tier 2 and tier three math interventions currently in place and our intervention programs align with their root causes. So um our benchmark 2 indicates that some of our tier 2 and tier three interventions may not have been as effective as we are still still not seeing the full scope and sequence of that product. Right? And yes, all of our interventions uh in place and funded need to be very focused on those problem or challenging areas. Um what areas require more attention? Do administrators conduct walkthroughs and provide effective feedback to all teachers and do administrators model lessons to provide feedback and coach? Most

115definitely. We monitored um our walkthrough data. However, our platform does not monitor the feedback given to teachers. However, our board approved test calendar does require that at least three walkthroughs are provided uh with feedback to teachers. So, they have three opportunities to coach and improve instruction. And they model lessons as needed as well. Next slides, looking at page five on goal three, fourth grade level math. I noticed that we went from a 44 to a benchmark uh from benchmark one to um 33 on benchmark 2 with the emerging bilingual. Does our budget uh or our budget strategies to support our teachers for this coming school year? So yes um blue bonnet we strongly feel HQIM's highquality instructional materials are made or produced with all subpopulations in mind. Right. So in addition uh Dr. Dr. Lopez

116has secured additional funding for bilingual students to implement additional strategies to support small group instruction. Are teachers currently receiving sufficient assistant training or resources or are high class sizes limiting their ability to effectively effectively meet the diverse needs of our special population students. All departments provide adequate training through the year to meet the district-wide needs. In addition, campuses scheduled their own professional development session to address these unique needs. This year we had a total of 12 district-wide professional development and planning opportunities for teachers and campus administrators. Right? In addition, I want to make a note that the secondary campuses have an additional planning period every day embedded into their master schedule. So class sizes when we address this usually uh as um one of us will meet with principles to individually assess especially in the

117early childhood you know uh how many students are we over and what support can we provide to that teacher or to that grade. Moving on goal four the percentage of fourth grade students achieving meets grade on current benchmark of reading increase from benchmark one to two. What are the resource resources or teaching methods contributed to this score? They I will say reading has uh put in place tier one instruction fidelity to SAVAS to their adopted curriculum this year with an embedded resource no red inc. So that has been in place for this school year and we have seen u an increase in scores for benchmark 2. So we're seeing positive results on that which is what we hope to see next school year with math. Right. in regards to GPM 4.1 and 4.2 to which

118is reading what strategies work and how can we replicate that success to our lower performing schools right I will say uh the biggest strategy that we see here is collaborative internalization PLC's PLC's based on data taking it back internalizing what we're going to teach and then following through with a walkthrough in the classroom to make sure that that is happening that is the most effective uh strategy or or tool that we have as a district, right? And again, language arts teachers have that reading and writing knowledge that improved our scores. Then as we move forward, what interventions or instructional practices are being used for students performing below grade level in sixth grade reading and are they evident based? How frequently is reading progress monitored? And how is the data used to adjust instruction continuously? So

119middle schools have designed a master schedule that revolves around House Bill 1416 which was House Bill 4545 before that helps students who are at risk right of not performing to have some intervention and acceleration during the week right this school day. So they have surpassed their 30hour minimum to 60 hours by building this but every week they have to assess what intervention is needed or adjust the intervention for the next week. So that is being done by core content teachers every week. Goal four are sixth grade ELA teachers re receiving sufficient and ongoing professional development in reading instruction and intervention and what is the number of trainings they have been provided? Again, the RLA coordinator, Miss Elida Ramirez, uh has um online virtual PLC's uh does in-person PLC's at the campuses, data walks, uh instructional

120feedback with the instructional coaches, which they turn around, and again, I'll uh reiterate, they've had 12 different opportunities, whether it's district or campus this year to receive additional course support. Uh the next slide it's how are instructional coaches or specialists supporting the literacy improvements in the sixth grade classroom. So again instructional coaches uh support PLC's whether it's district or campus and provide um additional presentations or professional development so that they can turn it back around at the campus level as well and then they they conduct walkthroughs as well. How are we identifying and supporting students intentionally who are not making sufficient reading progress with uh within the campus uh and again through various data sources, instruments and resources that they have and this is uh often shared with the administrative team to include the instructional

121coaches so that they can share out weekly or by um every twice a week right during the planning periods of the teachers. Do we share the map results just automatically with the parents? uh the map results. I don't know that parents Well, we do as a print. Yes, they should. Every time they assess, they should have a print. Yes, that has to be an automatic. Every time we test, parents should have an automatic turnaround with a print report. But I but I had to ask for mine. Okay. So, I don't know if it's because they're barely testing, sir. So, then we have a twoe window to turn it around. Okay. Yeah. Let's just make sure that they automatically get it. I think it's really interesting information. Most definitely we will. Then what systems or processes

122on the next slide are in place to ensure special education uh teachers are receiving training in a timely manner of the new developments in special education usually through quarterly collaborative meetings either with a department or at the campus level PLC's or principles at the district uh uh principal meetings as well and then they also have a platform by the department that provides them with the newest updates. So, what strategies are we implementing to improve collaboration and planning between general ed teachers and inclusion teachers to maximize student success in an inclusive classroom? So, again, um our biggest goal and focus these last two years has been collaboration between general ed teachers and inclusion resource teachers to make sure that we're meeting the same goals for the students as the goals for both are should be the

123same or common. And then um one of the last ones that we have, the last one that we have is on the constraint which is the discipline report. We've exceeded our 3% bite reduction target with a 40% drop district-wide to ensure we also tackle unreported bullying and support positive staff student relationships. What specific strategies will you deploy to surface and reduce unreported incidents to ensure that reports do get addressed and not ignored? Please define the metrics. Right. um that you will use and set clear timebound milestones such as rolling out your first initiative by the new school year and reporting interim results by October 31st so we can measure progress to meaningful reduction by the year's end. So um our counseling department to include Mr. Roger Pettis, Dr. Canu have done uh a phenomenal job

124in making sure that the behavior coordinator meetings that all members of the teams whether it's safety team with Mr. uh Danny Raina or anyone administrators are trained through the bullying process and and make sure that we implement the TA minimum standards for bullying uh and use those tools. Aside we have QR codes, we have anonymous reporting tools. You know, I I think anyone here knows that there is multiple uh platforms or various ways to report bullying so that they can feel safe and protected. But it's something that we'll keep monitoring through surveys, through uh the reports that come in, through emails that come in and phone calls that come in and PE's reporting that comes in and those are reported uh I know uh twice in the school year. However, uh every time we have

125data is in August, October, November and the end of the year with PES. And that concludes the LSG report. Thank you. So, you had a a few questions in there. Did everything get addressed? How many was able to submit? So I my apologies. But was everything addressed at uh but they did focus on reading. I mean that's some that's an area that I think that um you know we've talked about in our workshops. We meet for LSG together. Okay. Sometimes in the evenings and we discussed it and we said we've done a lot of great things in this district over you know uh over the years as far as finances and stuff and you saw it tonight with on on field and off the field right. Um, but the next thing too is it's a

126huge uh issue that everyone's having AC all across the nation, not only just in Texas or in our area, but it's reading. So I said, how great would it be if your district were to come up with the solution or find or identify what what the best practice is to have kids on level or above level. And that's something that like and you know of course we all we talked about starting at the found foundational level from um preK4 going into kinder and on. But in this case we're just looking at junior high now because I know elementary we've been asking them a lot of questions and in uh in the early childhood area. So we said okay now it's sixth grade etc. So I I submitted a few but I think it was only

127supposed to be two but it was great information and great data. It's all right good question. Yeah there you know. So thank you um Ma. Yes, that was a lot of information. I'm trying to uh read through it all. My question was on just looking at what needs attention at the campuses and they gave us a lot of qualitative feedback from the schools. you guys got together and what's working, what's not working. And I was reading through that and I caught on to some themes um between all the schools whether on track or not on track and the the ones I know that you mentioned you know the the leadership and there's some schools that have new leadership and that that's something that we observed but looking at the actual information that they gave us

128and what's needed they didn't put leadership that was that wasn't on there but what I caught on their uh responses what stuck out to me was a lot of schools put tier one instruction, right? So, uh they they said we need we need a more uh a framework, an instructional framework for math. My my question was on math on the fifth grade math and and I saw that a lot of these the math what needs more attention. A lot of the schools listed manipulatives and like what Fleckler put and they're on track. They they put a hand to mind um learning because little ones need that conceptual that procedural. They need a balance of both the conceptual and the procedural. But they're they're telling us we need more tier one instruction. We need more manipulatives.

129We need more time to plan to use those manipulatives and to use those things that we need to use. So that was my question. You know, there's a theme amongst all these schools whether they're on track or not on track and and they're all saying kind of the same thing that we need more manipulatives. We need more time to plan. So my question was what can we as a board do to help them other than let's the funding you know let's get them the resources they need other than that what what else can we do so about two to three weeks ago we met with blue bonnet in region one for for the blue bonnet right implementation every grade level up to eighth grade received a list of manipulatives or supplies they'll need already so

130that we can start the purchasing of that so that they can have everything uh hands-on and ready to go. So blue bonnet already comes with all of that. So tier one will be our blue bonnet adoption manipulatives. It already comes, right? We purchase the entire basically kit and then we'll just uh purchase the additional small items. Oh, that's great to know that it comes with all the whatever you need. Oh, that's great news for a teacher. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, thank you. Okay, Dr. Just a comment, you know, and thank you for all that information. You know, I know with math you explain and I think you know I have faith that we can get back on track with math and you know uh in regards to the reading, you know, with being

131on track like like Mr. Deosanto said, you know, the foundation is the foundation. I think with the reading scores um increasing, I think we'll see everything else increase across the board also. Yes. But thank you. Thank you for the info. Thank you, sir. Uh Coer. Uh yes, I'm going to piggy back a little bit on what Jackie said. I think uh listening to the people in the trenches at the schools what needs more more attention and I agree with Jackie there's some there's some uh things that that many of the schools are using the same terminology the same suggestions collaboration I I mean uh meeting and professional uh learning communities or conferences those are important and and listening to you know maybe the seasoned teacher that right collaborate with the younger teachers. I think that's

132important. And I guess the main thing is I mean who's monitoring all of that, right? So the reason I say leadership u Mr. Sedna is because leadership will make that happen. We'll carve out that time and we'll lead it right leadership as your instructional coach, your AP, your uh principal plate. There's a lot on their plate. So, I think uh there's need there needs to be more and I think we're we're moving in that direction tonight, I believe. So, uh just monitoring that. I know I've heard this before. What gets monitored gets done. Yes. And uh and that's that's important. Inspect what you expect. You know, thank you. That's one issue. But, uh the other thing was um well, I'll save I'll save it for but I wanted to just piggyback on that and listen

133to the people in the trenches. Yes, sir. Um, Mr. Castile. Uh, yes, sir. Just a couple of comments on uh on your slides where you have what's working, what's not working. Do do you come up with a plan for the specific campuses or is it just a general overall plan? No, it's specific to the campus. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because the way it's presented to us, it's just kind of overall. So, I was just wondering if we're if we're kind of customizing that for each campus. And then the next one is just a a comment. You know, at the administration level, if we could just have a sense of urgency to give the campuses that are not on track the resources that they need. Um, you know, kind of talking to some folks, they say, "Oh,

134population there or population over here or whatnot." But we have one campus that was on track on every metric that was given today. And it could be said that, you know, that they're on the north side of town. They're not on the south side of town. and Gonzalez Elementary is doing a great job. Every presentation they're always green. Uh so what can we do? What can we copy from there to the other campuses that are literally right next door to increase very intentional PLC's and uh time for internalization of lessons? Well, because I I want to be at a point where they're all on track. Most definitely. So all right, that's all I have. Okay. And um my question had to do with uh budgetary strategies to close the gap with uh with math at

135the uh fourth grade level. Um we've invested a lot into the blue bonnet. My question is are we going to need any special training to make sure that when we implement this program, everybody's well prepared to present it like it's supposed to be so we're all on the same alignment? Yes, sir. We've started the training since late November, early December. So basically a half year early. Yes. And administrators may have been discussed, but I'll re re emphasize again because uh um for anything to work, you need to know how to how to use it correctly. So most definitely that's going to be key for for things to close that gap that we're looking at. Yes, we agree. Well, I appreciate that very much. Outstanding presentation from from you and everybody that's involved with it. Thank

136you, coach. I I have something else to say. I was reading through all the other board members uh questions and uh Mr. Castile mentioned one about the constraints and about uh the fights and the reduction and one of the things that you guys said we're going to um focus on is the TEA's minimum bullying standards, right? So, can you explain to everybody what does that mean? What what what standards or what are the what are TA's minimum bullying standards? Okay. I'm not the expert in the bullying standards, but I do know that anytime bullying is reported, principles go we uh abide by the Texas School Safety Center bullying checklist just to first screen to see if the report does constitute bullying or not. There's additional training that our safety teams or our behavior teams attend

137through the Texas school safety center, right? Which are in line are aligned to the TA minimum standards, right, for bullying which uh leadership with to include in instructional coaches, APS, uh directors and principles will receive additional training on June 5th on all of this as a refresher. But usually the team members that are already part of those committees um already um have that knowledge. Okay. I know that we've dealt with you know some situations uh with bullying that are not very good to hear of course. So I was just wondering so who who would be the one like to educate us would okay this this has come up quite a bit in our conversations uh with with the board and and you know public comments about bullying. So I I would want to know what

138what is this? Thank you for your question. Uh Mrs. Staida, good evening. Um vice president um Dr. Rivera and members of the board. Uh and the TEA's minimum standards for bullying actually um that that mandate was pushed out by TEA on January 31st, 2023. And basically it has many indicators. Majority of them were already doing. So the first one is um so researchbased strategies or content or research based content needs to be integrated into the curriculum. So, so what we did like a couple of years ago is that we hired counselors to write the curriculum in the summer. And so this is the first year school year 2425 for those um the one that we wrote the curriculum has been integrated into the classroom once a month. So that's one um that's indicated on the

139TA standards of bullying by TEA. So the second one is there has to be a survey that is pushed out to the students. And so since we're already doing the panorama, so what I did or what we did is integrate or customize um bullying questions that provide quantitative uh responses as well as qualitative responses. And then with that uh we actually analyze the data and we are required according to the standards of bullying to come up with an action plan based on the responses on the survey. Do we have an action plan? Yes. Okay. So so that's actually something that so every month so we at the campus so that's another so the third indicator on the standards of bullying is that each campus must have a committee uh on bullying prevention. So basically they

140can come up with a new committee or they can integrate an existing committee already. So since they already have an SEAL committee at the campus so we're just calling it SEAL bullying prevention committee and so they meet everyone at the campus level and at the district level like what somebody said what monitoreds get done and Miss Holano said you inspect what you expect. I've never heard of that. That's amazing. I'm going to start using that. So, basically every month I meet with um the campus seal committee representatives um via Google Meets just to make sure that they are on track that they're meeting and then we have a documentation where the campuses are actually dropping their agendas. So, we have documentation. We're trying to be in compliance with the standards of uh the minimum standards

141of bullying. So another one is uh we need to have a policy. So I'm I'm kind of enumerating the minimum standards of bullying indicators. So another one is that we need to have a policy and in the policy it's a two-prong. So the first one is we need to have a an automatic system who are the um a system sorry about that a system where the stakeholders students parents can actually report bullying. So, let me see. I think I put a link, Mr. Let me show Let me show you where that link is. I mean, where where that is on the website? On the website. Is that okay if I show it? Yeah. Yes. So, if you go to the parents and students on the at the very top actually. So, there are two places

142where you can find it. So you can s you can actually find it in the on the landing page for student support services. But the easiest way is go to the parent students um student discipline and then online student reporting system right there. And this is for students and parents to report something. It's available to everyone. Um, and then at the very bottom where it says click here to bottom right. Click here. Maybe Mr. Martinez, we can do like a one click. We can figure something out because we have three clicks in user friendly. It's not coming on. It's not well talking about we're getting it ready. Dr. I was going to say just so I don't forget because I know we have a big superintendent portal. So, it's I've I've talked about it before

143and I know Castile's brought it up as well too is is improving the infrastructure we have at campuses when we're talking about bullying camera systems because I know incre increasing camera systems and with audio so that that way when you have an outcry and you have and then also increasing the amount of time like this talking about technology that that we store actual footage so that when they finally do because they don't sometimes report it automatically to principal. So when you get it a week later or days later, you can go back hopefully go to the area and be able to see video footage of either the physical verbal uh bullying that's going on in those situations because I know that's really big and I've seen that in some districts that they're increasing that not

144only for safety from somebody coming into the campuses but also for like I said incidences of bullying as well too. I don't know where we are with that and maybe we can add that in the future report. We're adding cameras. I think that's important. up upgrade the cameras. Yes, we're doing that. Yeah. And I know you it's part of my review on the cameras. We can see the form now. Yes. So, um so this is the page. Uh so this is one and of course we have the hotline also that's being managed by Mr. Raina. And we also have the QR codes that we have the QR codes all over. And of course our kiddos have it uh under single sign on and clever. Um I know because my child wants to use it all

145the time. So um that's that's we so we have different places. And then going back to the minimum standards for bullying, I I said it was like a twoprong. Uh so the second one is aside from the um anonymous reporter reporting system, we need to have a tracking mechanism of uh bullying incidents. So, I know that um at the very beginning of the school year, I always have the Friday before the kids come in, I do a presentation to the administrators, counselors, everybody that needs to be involved. And uh I know we have a checklist there like kind of like a rubric cuz that's also a mandated at the TA standards of bullying. So, everything is also online. I know because there some parents also call because they look at the presentation. So I finish

146the presentation I converted into a PDF and post it online and some links forms that our administrators and counselors you use everything is online. So in a nutshell that is the TEA standards of bullying. So the there must be a curriculum that's integrated into the classroom. So that's one. Um we are in the process of writing the second part of the bullying curricul bullying prevention curriculum and number two there has to be a survey there has to be an action plan and then of course the policies with the anonymous reporting and the tracking. So that's the TA standards for bullying in a nutshell. So, like if a student or a parent does this form, how do they know that you received it or someone read what they do they get like a confirmation or response

147or something or how do they know that? Um, looking into it. So, Mr. Martinez, it's tied to the tech department, correct? I believe the principles receive this like if you fill it out, they receive it. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Any other questions? Very good. All right. I just have one clarifying question. I'll be super quick. When you say minimum TEA standards, that's just what the document's called, right? Yes, that is absolutely correct. So, yes, the document is called minimum standards for bullying prevention. And we're not just doing the minimum, we're going above and beyond. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because when I read the answer and I don't want to do minimum, I want to go above. But then I read it more carefully. But yes, that is what the document is called. Okay. And

148I was kind of like, um, well, I'm going to jump here, get back off of Trusty Castile. I know the audience is like, no, don't do it. No, but um it's a it's been a long meeting, but but no, bullying is very important on a serious note and I was thinking about calling that to see if maybe we could schedule time June, July before the school year starts. So, and I'm going to talk about it more in the superintendent report where we can look at the the student and employee code of conduct on bullying and go over that as a board because there is um there is I think uh trust Castile talked about this at the last uh training we had where you can put already consequences and number them and bullet them so

149that it's universal for every single campus employees and students. First infraction, this is the action that's taken, second, third, fourth, etc. And then that way we streamline it and it's same across every single campus K through 12. So that's something I'm going to throw out here at this time because I know you all are discussing it. We can document for later. Yes, I'm I'm heavily involved with the student code of conduct. So but um the policy FFI is of course on the student code of conduct, but I hear what you're saying. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That helped a lot. I'm just just thinking about that. Is that any any any more discussion on Okay. Well, thank you very much again for for your diligence. Uh now

150we go to item 7 A2 discussion and possible action for the board of trustees to consider approval of the Lonear Governance Board Monitoring Report for April 2025. Dr. recommend approval. Move to approve. The motion was made by Dr. Rodriguez. Okay, I'll second it. And a second by Mr. Castillo. Do we have any discussion? Let's uh move for approval. All those that approve say I. I. I. Those that don't say nay. Okay. Motion carries. And now we move to item 7B, superintendent report. Dr. Yes, thank you. On on page one, I have I have the usual here that that everything we do has to improve student outcomes as part of Lonear. We have HR, extracurricular, safety, and security, the leadership, everything that we do. The goal is student outcomes through the Lonear. On page two, I

151want to go over the curriculum and instruction. On A, we received a grant, a lasso grant for $200,000, kinder through 8th grade, uh, to order materials. On B, the the testing ended. We expect the results in May and we'll share with the board the rankings. Again, the goal is for every school to be A or B and U. Even even though they we're told we can't release them, I'll still share with the board our scores like I did last year. So again, the testing is over, the hard work is done. I want to commend our our staff, our principles, our teachers. Very hard work done during the year with our students. uh summer school. Now we start we're going to start summer school and we're going to have professional development curriculum writing and uh we

152we're going to start the programs in in Gonzalez Elementary Sam Houston Mary Hog West Ohio High West and the programs available on DB will be extended day a bilingual migrant special ed TSI summerbridge SDC UTRGV tech prep UTRGV rail railways and the summer recreational also in the fine arts. Again, we're fortunate that we're having summer school. There are many many districts that have canled summer school because of monies, but again, we want to make sure that we have summer programs available for our students to be able to to become better for the following school year. On page three, this is the enrollment comparing last last May to this May. And uh on the bottom you can see that we're about 90 students less we're losing students every district and region one is losing kids but

153uh compared to other ones other districts some are losing 500 a thousand so we are losing students and uh I I just want to say that uh there's going to be the vouchers that will that will be addressed then the virtual schools uh we're doing some resoning for this coming school here. And uh I want to go over these one by one so you can see the enrollment. Who has a plus and who has a minus? Sam Houston, there's a there's a plus 752 to 761. Silva, there's a plus 652 685. Gonzalez 622 uh at a minus 562. Marggo 1,087 to,090. Three more airport 791 to 797. Memorial 1100 to 1129. North Bridge 750 A+ 775. Rico 805 to almost 800. Clickler Held 957 to 94 A minus. Iara 513 uh to 501 a minus.

154Mary Hog 910 to 833 a minus. Quer 630 a minus to 619. Central a slight plus from 1065 to 1076. B Garza 9 a minus 937 to 917. The college and career is something new. Uh in fact we're going to have a graduation here next week about 30 students. I want to commend uh our staff uh our principal for for this program Mrs. Mrs. Wales and uh M Mrs. MJU. Not MJO now, right? It's standard. Sorry. And then we have South Palm Gardens 51 to a plus 71. West Loco East lost a little bit. 2043 to 1977. West Loco High 2628 A+ to 20663. I just want to add that the more students we have, the more staff, more counselors, more assistants, uh, more teachers, and more just more assistance. We're again, we're monitoring this.

155We're doing some resoning, and the goal here is that for for next year, we don't lose students that we gain students. But to be continued on page four on the agenda tonight, uh these are items, I'm sorry, these are items for August on non-bond construction projects in August, the canopy, the aquatic center, the fire alarm, the demolition of the the West High School swimming pool, and then we're going to complete at Panther Wildcat Stadium the turf, and they'll start this in July. So for the first football game, we should have a new turf at our stadium. On page five, this is the status on on bond construction projects for June and for August. Uh demolition of the old gym at Central, the Mary Hog running track, tennis courts, and then restrooms improvements at Marggo and

156be Garsa. Again, these are agenda items for June or for August. uh the tracks on central page six. I want to say that we're this is the one that's ahead of everybody else. We it's already complete. We're doing the punch list and we'll bring to the board substantial completion hopefully final completion for the June board meeting. On page seven, B Garza, the schedule for completion is May 29th this this month. And on page nine, Armando Quer scheduled for completion on June 2nd. The one a little behind is is Mary Hog and the reason is the soil too much clay was there. So, we're coming to the board with a with the rankings at the June meeting and the completion date will be January writing writing time for the new track season. On page 10, safety,

157safety and security, uh I mentioned we mentioned earlier about cameras. We're really going with more cameras as part in our budget. I want to go ahead and brag about the the TA visit that we had. It was a very good visit by TA and we're one of the according to the to TA one of the the highest they were more prepared than anyone else and we're working on whatever whatever areas they found for us to improve. Uh fights have been reduced by 44% from the previous year and uh for the semester 57%. Uh the goal here is reduce the fights and again we mentioned the cameras that's going to help and what helps also is the discipline. There's consequences for fighting and uh the third slide here third bullet is four new trucks that we

158got from fund balance and some of these are for the K9 units or patrols on page 11. This is a topic that that all of us are concerned And uh uh I just want to say that our goal is zero tolerance with staff and student bullying. So it's not just students. Sometimes we have staff members that have been reported that they are doing some of the bullying. So we have to correct this. Again, the goal is zero tolerance. It is up to the principal and to the staff to work on this that there be consequences and any parent that uh they feel that is not no one is listening to they're free to call me to come visit visit with me but again it's a it's a zero tolerance. I mentioned this during my convocation.

159I discussed and emphasized with staff that that this needs to be uh the consequences needs to be enforced. Again, the the key here is the principal and the staff of every campus. We need to work with the with the staff on the curriculum and again it starts starts with the principal and again we have zero tolerance because this we know that this bullying can lead to something more serious like suicide. So we take I take and I want my staff to take every single bullying incident very serious on E. We do have staff development on bullying. Uh let me see. Let me think. I skipped one. No, I'm good. Okay. Social media. Okay. Yes. Say social media. Okay. And and then the last one is that D. Yeah. D. I skip D. We're not going

160to condone this. Either that or social media and E, staff development sessions for the administrators on bullying will take place this summer and for staff at the beginning of the year. And it's bullying has always been there during my time, but it's worse now than ever been before. So, our job is to contain this. We want our kids to feel safe in school and the bullies need to be taken care of with consequences. And if we have done this on if we have reported this to CPS and to law enforcement. So we take bullying as is very serious. But again I want to emphasize it's not just student bullying. Sometimes we have staff in the classrooms that cross a line with our students and that would we're going to correct that too. On page 12,

161this is consent agenda on tonight. This is the bank depository for the next two years. We have an allowance more for fencing projects. And then we have the approval of the backpacks and the wrap supplies, approval of textbooks for dual enrollment. Then the extension of cafeteria equipment repairs. So this is on the consent agenda tonight under business. On page 13, this is the insurance. We had we had a workshop. Uh we discussed the five agenda items that are on on consent for tonight. We had a good discussion on A, B, C, D, and E. And uh again, the recommendation is for the board to go ahead and approve these. And we'll answer any questions either right now on the insurance or during the consent item on the agenda. On on page 14, this is for

162tonight's consent agenda on construction. And we have A through I. A is method of construction for the Westico High School sports field lighting. B is the engineer for the East High School sports field lighting. C is amendment of contract with Robert Kishner for West High School, West Lico East baseball softball field scoreboard structure. And then to add the construction administrative services, D administration ranking recommendations proposals for West Lico High School, Weso East baseball, and softball field scoreboards. And we should have these ready for for the new season next year. And then method of construction for the central office administration roofing improvement. F. Architect for the central office complex roofing improvement. G amendment with contract with half associates for the Westico High School Westico East baseball and softball field turf. The project with additional flatwork. H.

163ratification of allowance expenditures for the softball field and batting cage canopy and baseball field baseball the sidewalk and the last one is that for the for the westico east running track resurfacing I will add um on updates we're concerned with the HVAC that we're doing right now our schools and I will get an update tomorrow to the board as to where we are and what needs to be done with the HVAC but that'll be on tomorrow's update is not on the agenda for Tonight on page 15, HR, I want to say on a you know, we told our staff members they need to get those on a permit and I'm I'm happy to say that many of them have already passed their test. So So for the most part, we're going to be okay with

164these that had permits. They'll be they'll be allowed to continue where they're at uh for for the new year. We're monitoring the staff on the on the budget planning for the Paris and auxiliary. They're going to be approved tonight with the U letters of assurance for our parents. Again, no one I'm happy to say again that no one's going to lose their job. We work very hard together with the board staff to make sure that we have a a balanced budget and they were working again as as the update stated, we have the additional monies, the ADA. So, I'm right now I'm optimistic that we're going to have a good budget for the new year and then we anticipate because we pay a lot more than everyone else. We anticipate filling the vacancies by the

165end of June. I had two more slides that I'm going to wait until next month to present and those I'll do next month on the accomplishments. This is my this is my report. Are there any questions from the board on any of these items? I'm good. Thank you, Dr. No, I'm good. Thank you. Y Ben, uh, yeah, just a couple couple I'm not going to take too long. So, doc, you mentioned on our 2023 on page two about our scores. Yes. Um, so as we know our 2023 scores are already published. Yes. Can we publish our 2024 scores just so because 2023 was two years ago, right? So, we published our 2024. We can do that. In fact, I showed this to the board last month. Okay. So, we can do that. Yeah. Just let's

166show let's brag. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. We'll get our scores. Yeah. We're We're a B, but we want to be an A. Yes, sir. And all our schools, we want them to be A or B's. Yes, sir. Yeah, we can do that. Um, and then on uh on slide seven on B Garza Middle School running track. I've noticed that. What page? I'm sorry. What page? Seven, sir. On on that that running track. Oh, yes. It's kind of right next to Cleer. Yes. Are we gonna That's kind of a an interesting situation. Are we going to allow our elementary kiddos to use it? All right. Awesome. And what happened here is remember the big hole the drainage. Yeah. That kind of threw us off. So So anyway, that's the reason it's more is more towards clicker

167held, but they're going to be using and they're very happy. Yeah, that's privy. Yeah. Great. Uh on page 12, sir, on the on B, allowance expenditure for the districtwide fencing project for modification of large size rolling gates. What what's that? Okay. Uh number B. Yes, sir. 112. 12. Yeah, you got it. Okay. On B. Okay. We just need to work on the I think before Mr. Dandy, the gates, we need to modify the the size of the gates. Yes. And that's the reason to have the gates match the fencing. Oh man, I thought we were going to get the the electric gates. We're working on that one. Okay. We're working on the on the entrance gates. That's part of the fund balance. All right. Awesome, sir. Thank you. We haven't forgotten that project. It's a

168very it's a very good project. I think that passed on uh on the security deal. Mr. Dana, thank you. Thank you. doing a good job uh for for keeping us where we're at and keeping all our kiddos safe and thank you to the principles and teachers as well. Uh but thank you for your leadership, sir. Um on 14 on ratification of allowance expenditure for Westico High School softball field catting c batting cage canopy and baseball field sidewalk. Are we going to uh do something similar for Westico East as well? Yes. Okay. You're you're on C, right? In C. On H, sir. On H. Coach Rodriguez. We have it also for East or just for West for West Loco High. Right now, just for West Ohio. Okay. For the canopy. Canopy. Is there a timeline to

169add include east and of course the baseball field? Yeah. both still hasn't been in discussion. But do we have a timeline? Yes, we have a timeline right now. Okay. We'll show you next month the fund balance that we have and the projects that are so this one this was on the on the list. Yes. Of the additional projects that we have from the from the fund balance. Again, we have 10 million as Mr. David mentioned. We've got three months that we're not touching. What is it? 48 40 48 million. And most districts only have one month or two months. We have our three months that we don't touch. What? I'm sorry. 43. 43. And so besides that, we've got 10 million still right now. And for the new for the new year, whatever is left

170over, as he mentioned, from this year's budget, we'll go back to fund balance with the interest. So we'll have a bigger amount to look at these projects. So in June, we'll discuss what projects we have not done yet. and that includes the one you mentioned for West Lico East and uh and the gates that and several others. So, we'll discuss this as we look at the new fund balance for next year. Appreciate you very much, sir. Thank you. Uh and my last question on the same slide, method of construction for Westl High School sports field lighting upgrades. What kind of lighting upgrades are we getting them? American lights that we have at the stadium, of course, not the the color lights and the dancing lights and all that. Come on, why not? LEDs. They're LEDs.

171LEDs. How much more would it be to do that the the color lights? We can explore that. Yeah, we'll take a look at it. Yeah, you guys can just see if it's not a significant increase. I mean, I know sometimes we do rent out that stadium to other schools cuz that practice stadium is nicer than a lot of districts actual stadiums. Yes. Uh so we'll take a look at it. Well, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Da. You're doing a great job and to your whole team as well. It's a team effort, the board and the staff. Thank you. Ula. Yeah. I have a few things. I know Ben touched up on uh the uh well be guards on track. The middle school Mary that's on track. I think Dr. Did it say January? Yes. That

172looks That looks for sure. Yes. Okay. And then there was a Let's see if I can find it here. The I know Ben talked about the canopies, but the flat work that was highlighted on the on the attachment that was on the uh agenda. The highlighted areas, the flat work. Is that what we're discussing or we're going to do? That's what we're proposing. And again, we considered various factors. Uh we have a lot of utilities. We have some spaces where teams are still using practices and uh and also the drainage. So the more covered ground that we have, the more we have to find drainage for for the water because I know there was a big problem when when we had the range at West Co East uh with that slope in right field and

173you know just so happened that I was there and I you know noticed that. Is it something that just caught us off guard or just uh or we're doing that now to fix that? Right. That's that's the area that's going to get fixed. I guess working on that. Yes, sir. Uh, of course the rain was unprecedented. I know. It's it's just way that's the what I'm saying is that's the flat flat work that you're working on. So, we're just going to the flat work is either concrete, asphalt, depending. We're going to explore that. Uh, whatever. But that area was highlighted. It's I guess what I'm trying to say is is that going to get fixed for West over at Westco East baseball field. The right field area. Yes. We're looking at improving the drainage there.

174Yes. talking about behind the the ballp. No, I'm talking about behind the right field fence pit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're But that was highlighted. So, I'm assuming that's going to get Yes. done. Yes. Okay. And then there was something about the scoreboard structures that was an additional uh there was an amendment to the contract. Is that something that also caught us off guard or or what happened there? It was an unknown at the time uh because we did an assessment first of the existing structures hoping that we would be able to uh reutilize the structures. Uh unfortunately they came back uh with a report that said that those structures are not good sound. By that time we had already purchased scoreboards in anticipation hoping that we could move faster. Is that the firm that's going

175to be this the same engineer and they didn't catch it before? just didn't added the construction administration because they didn't know the scope of work the full have they done work first you know and then I noticed also the west go east track there was and I I don't want to correct stop me if I go beyond what I need to say but there was two companies and uh one slightly higher than the other one that's from I think they were from Maryland if I'm not mistaken Yes, sir. Are we are they have they done work for us? Yes, both companies have done work for us. Uh we're asking you just to approve the rankings and then we will start negotiations. Uh we're not necessarily asking you to approve one company or the other yet,

176just the rankings. So, we'll start negotiations with the top ranked bidder and then if if nothing works out, we'll go to the next next rank bidder because Yeah. I just wanted to make sure I mean to find out if they've done work with us. Yes, sir. Well, you still got to bring the contract back to us, right? the contract we're asking you to allow us to approve the contract negotiated. Okay, that's part of the agenda because it wasn't a big difference and I know I mean I I you know both companies one I know the other one I don't really know and I know they have a pretty good track record. So one of the companies has done the track at the stadium and the other company is doing the tracks at the middle schools

177right now. So both have done Yeah, coach. Both companies have done a lot of work for us. Okay. I wasn't familiar with one of them. No, it's okay. I think that was it. That took care of the your questions code. Yes. Mr. Uh, yes. I'm just going to touch on the construction. I know Dr. You talked about looking at next year's budget and projects. I know that when we discussed the the egg farm and that was going to that was going to be refurbished, right? They were going to fix the peers, fix the roof and it was going to come at a cost of four to five, right? Then we presented at one board saying, "Hey, well that's kind of the cost of using new construction. So now it's changed and moved to that and

178now you're moving forward with that because that is, you know, you found out that, you know, you looked at a better option. Yes, that's a better option. the old facility if it's not going to be torn down. If the old facility is not going to be torn down, could we consider refurbishing that for like show to use it for shows because I was just saying right now we have to go to other facilities or districts do do as well. And if it's not going to be, like I said, leveled, then it wouldn't cost much to just refurbish that and use it for shows. And you'd be able to you one, you drive districts to come into Wesicod, okay, for their shows and competitions. And two, it's also a booster for our local economy and and

179our businesses and residents as well too as they're as they're coming in. So, just food for thought. They just came to me. It's a good idea because you you already have the arena, right, for the shows. So, just we'll take a look at it. Some food for thought maybe. Okay. The other one too was talking going back to the staff and student bullying. So I really like the the the district to consider that the staff and student bullying and the the uh code of uh the student code of conduct, right? And also the for the employees as well. Um only be and then looking at the cameras. The reason I'm saying cameras is because there are districts that have cameras with audio. I know it's kind of sometimes cautious, right? Um because there's employees that

180have conversations in the hallway, sometimes that are private. I get it. But at the end of the day, not only has it helped students identify that there is truly bullying going on, but you also have saved some employees from false accusations as well. I know I've seen it uh and it's happened where you go back, you look at that footage, and it's like, okay, we really saw the audio, we really saw the distancing between employees and what was said. So, just kind of consideration. It's a win-win for staff, for students, and for parents as well. And so just and and I and and I know sometimes some people think about that and I know about the hallways and you know during breaks and and staff is talking about just personal items and things but at

181the end of the day I think it'll be a win for everyone and I know you're already doing it. Um but just I I think we should really invest heavily in our in our campuses right now so we can cover all areas internal and external. Um same thing kind of goes like for our staff. Well this is really our staff and what I'm going to say next is for my for the staff and students. Um Dr. was did a great presentation on what um what kind of applications and links and resources we have. But when do we really tell students or their parents, okay, you're going through bullying, but this is what I need when the investigation comes through. I need the text messages. I need the recordings. I need the phone calls. What kind

182of evidence do you have? Like, you know, those type of things. Any any video? Um because that kind of comes after the fact. I know cuz we've received reports and it's like, well, there was an outcry. it was investigation, but it wasn't there. Same thing with staff. The state of Texas allows you to record any conversation that you're a party in. Downloading an app could easily solve your problems if you're dealing with a staff member that's bullying you consistently or creating a hostile work environment. You know, by doing those things, those are accessible so that when you go to your supervisor and say, "This is what I'm dealing with and this is what I'm going through," you can easily just push play and download a file. And it's not a he said, she said, or

183she said, she said. It's it's something that you can change your environment because when you come to work, you're spending most educators 10 hours a day. There's 24 hours in a workday. And to have someone whether it's the staff or student member creating a hostile, horrible work environment for their own pleasure or narcissism through through the false veil of altruism, it's unacceptable. And you need and you need to say something. Especially parents, I'd like them to get a flyer saying if there is an account of bullying, this is what we need from you. Right? these this is what your child needs to get and receive so that so that then at the end of the day you could stop it. The other thing I'd like the board to consider also is the fact that we

184need to look at our our policies for punishment because when I saw videos online years ago, we don't I haven't seen that lately, but where you clearly see that a child's being assaulted. Okay, if you're if you're in the mall and you get assaulted by someone, you defend yourself. They don't put you in handcuffs. They don't arrest you. But sometimes in school systems when a child defends themselves, they also are at fear that I'm going to be also, you know, held under the code of conduct. You have individuals that are part of student groups that have zero tolerance and have no cannot have any infractions whatsoever. So if they're caught into a situation where it's debatable where was I the victim or was I the assaultee, they're taking a risk that they're going to be

185removed from something they love and they're passionate which makes them automatically instant victims for these predators, right? because that's what they are. And so my question is also, can we have like a presentation? If we do look at the the student and staff code of conduct, can we also have a presentation? What do you what do we do in a situation where a child's assaulted? Are they just given are they given some kind of counseling and do we get their their uh report or do we actually also send them to DAP or ISS and things like that? because that's going to just a bully is just going to keep doing it because they're never confronted, right? No one ever calls him out, never stands up to them, right? They're feeding this this darkness that they

186have and they won't stop because nobody stopped them before. But once you actually put something into the code of conduct and you have steps there and you address it, it'll stop it. So like what I'm saying is if you're assaulted and you defend yourself, do you deserve to go to ISS? I mean, you were you did not interact. You did not look for the if it's a victim, he's not punished. Okay, we have that already. Okay, good. But I know I had some emails where it was the opposite. But then, like I said, I'm just a board member. I'm not working. I don't know if it's in the handbook, but that's common practice with the principles. They know that if it's the victim, he's out there defending himself. He's not going to he's not going

187to be this if they defend themselves. Oh, okay. All right. Mitigating factor. Yeah. And that's where I think the cameras come into play. So, the investment into the cameras, I think, will be huge. So in fact we had one earlier one of the middle schools last week in which the u was an assault and then the student tried to defend himself and he was not but the other one was the other one was now we do severe consequences again this is why we have the fights being reduced almost in half right they did a great job the students know that they're going to fight there's there's consequences and then and the reason I'm talking about those is because I I I'd sent an email requesting like a what type of policy and structure do we

188have in place when we have a child make an outcry, not just a bullying, but that's tried to harm themselves and what do we do in that situation? So, that's kind of where all that's coming coming from. And like I said, um I know we've had it in the past where where it's it's it's been missed and that's something like we have, you know, and I know you're passionate about this, but we can't make any mistakes there, you know. I I agree. Yeah. Thank you, sir, for your time. Thank you. and u looking over the uh the uh schematics of the tracks. Um, coach Rodriguez, have you already designated an area for the shot and discus so that uh so that so that that's never a safety issue because the last thing we need is

189for to have those uh you know slabs where there's going to be a lot of uh student movement and we don't want anybody hitten by a shot putter or or or a discus flying around. although there are nets to protect stuff, you know, things do get, you know, thrown over those nets sometimes. So, we want to ensure that safety and and uh Dr. uh has everything already been budgeted for your jump pits and your hurdles and your starting blocks and all that stuff. So, hurdles we have planned. We just got some for the stage. We'll be passing down some hurdles. As far as the landing pits for the high jump, that's one thing we're working on right now. We want to we want to give our students every fair advantage uh you know to get

190out there and get after it and all the events that are offered. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, if there are no further questions, thank you Dr. and all your staff for um your diligence and taking care of. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. That takes us to uh item eight, consent items. Um, we've had this information, I hope, for long enough time to already kind of have an idea of what you may want to pull. So, I'll go uh trusty by trustee and see if there's something that you would like to pull before we uh consider anything. Uh, Mrs. Saita, no, I have nothing. Dr. Rodriguez, no coach. I have nothing. Mr. Castillo, none, sir. Coa, no sir. Mr. Ross Santos, no sir. And I have none. Do I have a motion to approve?

191I'll move to approve the consent agenda. Okay. We have Dr. Rodriguez that uh motions to approve the consent agenda. Second. And a second by by Mr. Los Santos. Any discussion? If not, let's take it to a vote. All those that approve say I. I. I. Those that do do not approve say nay. Okay. Motion carries. Consent agenda is approved. That takes us to item nine discussion items. Update on trainings, conferences, events, and consider future agenda item request by the board of trustees. Dr. Yes. event will keep you posted. But the one the next one is May 27th. That's Lonear. And on that date, we're also having a grievance on May 27th. Next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, there's four graduations uh next week. And I will keep you posted on the time and

192the place on the 20th. That's the one at that's the one that dropouts from at Roosevelt. So that's going to be the first from these 30ome students. So, we're very proud of again everyone and of course our students. So, these are the dates, May 27th and then next week for graduations May 20, 21, 22 and 23. Where was that fourth one going to be? Cuz we have information for three, but I don't have anything for four. For which May 20th? Yes, that's going to be at uh at Sam Houston, right? At Sam Houston at Sam at Sam Houston. on Tuesday. On Tuesday. Okay. If if if we could get that added to our uh calendar, that way we don't miss that. Yes. Okay. Okay. We good. Good. Okay. Thank you. Uh item 10, discussion and

193possible action. 10 A one. discussion and possible action for the board of trustees to consider approval to renew and extend the contract for legal counsel services as requested by Trustees Mor Santos and myself or discussing and possible action for the board of trustees to consider approval to renew and extend the contract for legal counsel services or approval to release a request for qualifications for legal counsel services as requested by trustees Maita and Mr. Castillo. Make a motion to approve an extension for legal counsel services for renewing extension. Okay. Mr. Los Santos has made a motion to approve the to renew and extend the contract for legal services. Yes. Uh do I have a second? I'll second that. One year. One year. One, two, whatever you want. What's your motion? Oh, well, what is a general

194extension? One or two years? He's asking me, but I don't know. What do we do? A year. Two years. Two years. I think last two years. A two-year extension. Okay. Can it be terminated anytime we need to a 30 with a 30-day notice? Okay. The uh the motion is to u renew the contract for legal service. And we're talking about Mr. Yo. Yes. And uh give him a two-year extension. Yes, sir. Okay. That was a motion. Motion by Mr. Ross Santos and second by Dr. Rodriguez. Okay, take it to discussion. Might uh yes. The reason why I brought this to the agenda was um and I've tal talked to the board, you know, we've had plenty of discussions about this before, so I'm not going to go into details. Um but I wrote some notes

195down for myself so I don't forget what to say. I I put here avoiding open communication can create a culture of silence and prevent the team from benefiting from different perspectives. Right? Because good teams don't have to always agree. We can agree to disagree sometimes and it's okay. That's what good teams do. We agree to disagree. We don't take the boxing gloves out because we don't agree. So my my perspective on this through my studies um and I'm no school lawyer at all but through my studies and what I've what I've been reading and what I've been researching what I've presented to my class on I've come to have expectations uh of a legal council for a board and my expectations are that a lawyer should represent the board as a whole versus an individual

196trustee and a a lawyer should have they should be a legal expert for the school board. They should have that knowledge about school law. That's an expectation that I have for my for for for our legal counsel for that legal counsel to collaborate with with the staff and to be financially responsible. Of course, that those are some of the expectations that I would have as a legal counsel. And I know we all have different values. You know, each one of us, as you can tell by the questions that we ask all the time, you can tell who like who's who's into what, who's interested in what because we have different values. And not only that, but as a woman and men, we have different values. So, we always bring different perspectives to to the the

197issues that we deal with. And so, my values might be differing maybe on this agenda item with my fellow board members. And it's okay if if I agree, if I say no and they say yes, hey, it is what it is. it's okay. But I believe in advocating for what I believe in and the things that I've come to learn about. And so that's my perspective on this and why I chose to say, "Hey, you know what? That doesn't mean we're getting rid of Eloy. That doesn't mean we're getting rid of him. It just means let's go for RFQS to see if there's anybody out there that can offer us great expectations that I would have for a legal counsel." And um there's one quote that I I I just actually wrote about. It's Socrates

198and it's he says question everything. A life unexamined is worthless. And I've been doing a lot of critical thinking and self-reflection about everything about life about what we deal with here. And so I just said, you know what, maybe it's time we do that. But if the board feels differently, it's okay. We'll agree to disagree. But that's what I that's what I wanted to say. So thank you. Dr. Good. No comments. No comment. Mr. Rosto, yes, I have a comment. Um, I agree. I uh would pick it back off of trustee uh susta that you're right, the board has to to work as one as one unit, but at the same time also I have to look and make decisions based on an individual and what they've done for the school district. A lot of

199people sitt in this room have done a lot of uh for the school district, the ones that clock in and clock out every day and sacrifice as well. I can't let somebody's character and work be assassinated at public comments or whatever the case may be or through doubt because especially when they've sacrificed so much. We get presented the cost every single month I believe. Yes. As far as attorney costs. Um we have expertise also on the board as well too in that area as well. And Mr. Seulva kind of was with us here during the darkest times that we've seen in our school district going through a forensic audit findings etc and whatnot. um being to navigate through that as we did as a as a group, as a team. And yet our taxpayers were

200taken care of. We didn't see massive payouts. We didn't see employees, you know, uh making massive lawsuits and and winning this uh and you saw change in structure and positive change as well too within our school system and how we operate. And for an individual that's charging less than the market value, for an individual that's charging .225, 25 which is 15 minutes. It's it's uh it just goes to show the dedication not only of of of the SUV law firm but also somebody from the community right because we always look at that and look at at the people that support us. All his reports I would say some people call them investigations have always been voted on seven on seven since every single one that he's turned in. You heard about it here at public

201comments today talking about the collusion report. If you go back it's a 707 vote. It was accepted unanimously. All right. And there's even and you can't get it through through public information request, but it was even sent off to TA. Okay. Both uh supposed reports that are out there, one for the law firm and one for someone else. And at the end of the day, the findings were there, right, with supporting documentation, emails, etc., and whatnot. It's a packet that was almost 4 in thick and sent to TA. So, at the end of the day, the individual has done his job. The results are here in black and white. and and I just can't stand by and let someone say that they haven't done a great job. They have they have done a great job

202taking care of the district and taking care of the board. Uh all other issues that are being held by some people are kind of confused with the school board attorney. They think that they handle all issues and we that's not the case. They're strictly the the school board's uh attorney. All the other issues are are designated by attorney firms that we've about four or five Dr. Reetta that we've approved that Dr. Vetta uses at his choice. And so I just think that the reason that I made the motion to approve is because he has done his work and has done his job and is also doing it at a very high level and has also taken care of his community right through his service by not overcharging and by not charging the rate that they

203should be charging and that says a lot about an individual and where he comes from and what they stand for. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. And being that I was one of those that u asked for this agenda item, I I totally agree with Mr. Los Santos and um I am perfectly pleased with the um overall because there's an overall there's there's always a bigger picture and and that picture is that we have been taken care of for the last several years and and I'm perfectly fine with that. So just for the record. Well, with that being said, let's take it to a vote and I'll take it one by one. If you agree, say I. If you don't, nay. Might Dr. Mr. Rodriguez. Hi. Mr. H is absent. Mr. Castillo.

204Hi. Hi. And Mr. Los Santos. I motion carries. Any any words uh from legal? No, I'll just keep on doing my job. I think I've done a good job for the district. I don't charge. Thank you. And again, and for the record, I also vote I. Well, that takes us to item 11, close meeting, pursuant to the Texas Government Code section 551.071 and 551.074. 11 A, Personnel Matters, Texas Government Code 551.071. 11 A1 discussion regarding superintendent's recommendation of contracts for certified professional and non-certified professional and non-contractual personnel. 11 A2 discussion regarding resignations retirements of certified professional non-certified professional and non-contractual personnel. 11 A3 discussion regarding superintendent's recommendation for renewal of letter of assurance for per professional and auxiliary personnel for the 2025 2026 school year. 11 A4 discussion regarding superintendent's recommendation for the position of

205elementary academic officer. 11 A5 discussion regarding superintendent's recommendation for the position of secondary academic officer. and 11B consultation with attorney regarding 11B1 pending or contemplated litigation. 11B2 settlement offer or 11B3 matter in which the duty of the attorney of the West Independent School District under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct of the State Bar of Texas clearly conflicts with chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, Texas Government Code 551.071. The time now is 8:02 and we will go into a closed session. The time now is 8:57 and we have reconvened in Our regular board meeting item 11 A. I made a motion to approve. Second. Okay, it it was the 11th. Let me let's let's let's correct that. Is 12A possible action necessary on items discussed in close session. And we have 12B discussing

206a possible action regarding superintendent's recommendation of contracts for certified personnel, non-certified professional and non-contractual personnel. Mr. uh Castillo, are you wanting to put everything into one? Uh yeah, I'll do a 12B, 12 C and D. Condense the everything into that. So yeah, I'll make a motion to approve uh based on the superintendent's recommendation in close session. I'll second. Okay, got it. Any discussion? They take it to a vote. Miss Castillo, I mean, Mrs. I, Dr. Rodriguez, I. Mr. Castillo, I Mr. Los Santos, I. Motion carries. Item 13, a German. No, no, no. ENF. Two more. The academic officer. I jumped the gun. Okay. The um Okay, I see 12 on 12 on the uh letter on the on the on the renewal letter. No, E 12 E 12. Okay. 12 right below it. Yes. Okay.

207I I I stand corrected. On 12E, discussion of possible action regarding superintendent's recommendation for the for the position of elementary academic officer. I'm recommending John Garnick. Motion to approve. Second. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Los Santos and a second by Mr. Castillo. Any discussion? Second to a vote. All those that approve say I. I. Any any opposition? Motion carries. Mr. Garner, do you want He's going to get involved in our LSG and all that good stuff. Oh, yeah. All right. There you go. Yeah. Welcome to the club. And 12F discussion of possible action regarding superintendent's recommendation for the position of secondary academic officer. Recommending event. Motion to approve. Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Castillo and a second by I'll resend my motion, sir. Mr. Sen. Motion to approve. Mr. S makes

208a motion to approve and Mr. Los Santos second. I'll second this motion. Approve. Any discussion? Take it to a vote. Those that approve say I. I. Motion carries. Same question. LG. Now we go to item 13. A German move. Yeah. Okay. The time now and then is that