001All right, so let's begin the meeting. >> It is 6:00 p.m. to regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Lackawanna ISD. We do have a quorum established. Will everybody please stand for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. >> 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. >> Good morning, Mr. Parker. Next on the agenda will be welcoming the new board members, Mr. Walton and Ms. Martha. Next, we're going to be doing the reorganization of the school board officers. What we do is well, first we'll start off with 3A, which is any nominations for our president. >> I nominate Cassie. >> All right. I nominate All right,
002so there was a motion and a second. All right, all those in favor? Opposed? That's unanimous. We're moving on to vice president. Any nominations? All right, one nomination for Wade. Anyone else? All right, second. Valia? Anyone else? All right, no other discussion. All those in favor for Wade Blessingame being the vice president? All those opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Moving on to secretary. Any nominations? Anyone want to do it? Grayson nominated Valia. Any other nominations? Second? Nominations? You don't have to second yourself. You're right. Anyone else want to All right. I'll second All those in favor? All right, passes. Anybody opposed? No? Unanimously. >> I'm going to open comments to the board. We do have two. The Vanessa Nava 3-year-old program. >> It has to do with the 3-year-old program and the life skills. >> Okay.
003>> I wrote a letter. It is um My name is Vanessa Nava and I'm a parent of three students here in Bracket ISD. One of whom is a 14-year-old student in the life skills program. As a member of the border organization, I would like to reiterate our gratitude to the school district for implementing the PK 3-year-old program. This initiative will greatly benefit many families in our community and we sincerely thank the superintendent and school board for making this opportunity possible. However, we also want to ensure that this program does not come at the expense of our special needs department whether through budget reductions or staffing cuts. It is important that the special needs program not only maintain its current level of personnel, but also increase staffing if necessary to meet the state mandated student to
004paraprofessional ratio outlined in each student's individual art. I have recently been informed of a staffing cut in the life skills classroom, affecting my daughter's specifically. Reportedly, due to budget cuts and significant decline in student enrollment, which I do not understand. I don't understand how this justification applies when there's no current students leaving the classroom and we don't know who's coming in next year. I would also like transparency regarding how cuts to the life skills room or program compares in reductions made to other departments throughout the district. From my perspective, this situation feels deeply personal personal, sorry. Particularly because earlier this year we experienced a similar situation with my daughter's paraprofessional being removed and then returned to the class after some debate. I was given different explanations as to what one to one means when it
005comes to special needs classroom, but to me it doesn't mean five to assigned to one child, especially when a medical professional has proven provided written documentation regard regarding sorry or requesting that level of supervision. The school district has provided me Oh, I'm sorry. Has been provided medical documentation for my daughter's neurologist confirming that my daughter requires one to one supervision while at school due to her drop seizures. Given that emergency medical services were called no less than three times within a couple of months and took her to the hospital, I think that that would imply that she does need one to one treatment. And I would hope that the school took that seriously. I auto I also want to make my position very sorry position very clear. If my daughter's current paraprofessional is being removed
006due to the reasons provided to her, which is staffing and budget cuts, then another individual will not simply be placed into the role without careful consideration. My daughter's seizures are not always easily recognizable and can sometimes be mistaken for sleeping. I feel completely confident in the paraprofessional that she has right now assigned to her because she understands the warning signs and knows exactly what to look for when the seizure's going to Please understand that I am not asking for special treatment for my daughter. All I ask is for a safe and fair school environment. I'm not asking for more than what she needs, but I am asking for the person who knows her the best at the school right now to not be taken away from her. >> Next we have Elizabeth Daniel, also the
007pre-K program in DC. >> Good evening, board president, school board members, and Superintendent Diaz. My name is Elizabeth Daniel, a parent of three children, my youngest being three. I am also a leader with the board organization. As we all know, there used to be a three-year-old educational program in Bracket that closed about three years ago. The leaders of the board organization met with the school board members and with the superintendent concerning this issue. We expressed the hardship that parents and children were experiencing because of the lack of this program. We are very pleased and grateful to the board for providing a pre-K three-year-old program through the school district in the fall of 2026. On behalf of the parents working with the board organization, we thank you. >> All right, no further comments. Moving on to
008recognition >> Good evening, >> everybody. We have a full house today because as we get closer to the end of the year, we have more groups that have just done an outstanding job recognizing representing Brackenridge at different events. I'm going to go ahead and start with our One-Act Play recognition. Our One-Act Play this year made it all the way to Regionals, which hadn't been done in about 7 years. And they were one step close to state, but I can tell you I have had an opportunity to be really close to these kids, and I know that they can feel it, and I'm confident that we're going to get that state march next year. So, I'd like to start off by recognizing first their coaches and sponsors. So, if you will stand and be recognized, Mr.
009Gonzales, Mrs. Carey, and Mrs. Swafford. THANK YOU SO MUCH. THE NEXT GROUP THAT I WILL BRING UP IS the crew that helped put the stage together for this amazing show. And we'll start with stage manager Annelise Castillo. VICTORIA MARTINEZ. CADENCE SMITH. JUSTIN LUNA. DANIEL PACHECO. ISAAC GONZALEZ CONGRATULATIONS. SEBASTIAN GALLO JACOB SANCHEZ AND ETHAN LUNA ALL RIGHT, LET'S SEE IF WE CAN PUT SOME OF THE MINIS GO ON that side. And then some of y'all might need to kind of squat down here in the middle. Okay, try to get in way down over here next to me. That way you can All right, can you see the song? Also, I want to make it a fantastic job. SO, THANK YOU. I WILL NOW RECOGNIZE THE outstanding cast of the House of Bernarda Alba. Um we have
010Whitney Sullivan. I DO HAVE TO POINT OUT THAT WHITNEY, out of three of the four competitions, was named best actress. THAT EXPLAINS ALL THE CLAIMING THEY HAVE going on there. Um on there. UM ACTUALLY ISABELLA CONGRATULATIONS YOU GUYS. UM MIRANDA GUZMAN CONGRATULATIONS YOU GUYS. HANNAH SANCHEZ CONGRATULATIONS. ALEXA SEXTON CONGRATULATIONS. ANNALINDA ANDERSON CONGRATULATIONS. ASHLYN SMITH Good job, mama. Kayla Schwatner Congratulations you guys. And last but definitely not least, Shannon Doer Tesmer. Congratulations. This was a phenomenal all girls cast and so they did a fantastic job. Very, very proud of the young women of this town. >> So you guys you have some of y'all are going to have to squat down a little bit. We'll squeeze in. Okay. All right, congratulations. Congratulations. All right, moving on. Um and when I feel y'all are done, y'all are
011welcome to stay. Well, we'll switch out. Moving on to golf athletes who advance to regionals, I'd like to first recognize their coach. I see her back there, Andrea Gonzalez. GOOD JOB. CONGRATULATIONS. AND OUR STUDENTS ADVANCING to regionals from the girls, we have ANNABELLE MONCADA. AND IT'S OKAY UP HERE. WE'LL TAKE A GROUP PHOTO AND shake your hands. And from the boys, WE HAVE FABIAN RIVAS. GARRETT NEWMAN. DANIEL MARTINEZ. And Carlos Rodriguez. Okay. Awesome. You finished a couple of times, Carlos? Okay, you're good. All respect that. All right, we'll take a group photo. >> The graduation coffee on the table. Now, this group could have actually been a whole lot larger cuz we wanted to recognize our UIL academic, but we cut it down to just first place or we would have had to have gone
012to Tiger Stadium cuz we had so many kids that did so so very well at UIL. We'll start with our first place number 16. Um and that was Matthew Swatner. >> I don't think he knew he was supposed to be here. Nobody told me this. We were not told. I was not told. >> Well, that's different. >> I'm asking if he's at home already. Sorry. >> Um Charles Kirby and Riley Green. RILEY GREEN. OUR SOCIAL STUDIES TEAM, WE HAVE MATTHEW SWATNER, HECTOR WILLIS, RILEY GREEN, CALLIE HARRIS, VICTORIA MARTINEZ, AND TAYLOR SWATNER. >> I THINK SHE JUST walked out. >> And then we have first place individuals Matthew Swatner in number six, Matthew Swatner in social studies, and first place in chemistry, Mr. Charles Kersey. AWESOME JOB, GUYS. GOOD JOB TO Y'ALL FOR BEING HERE. All
013right, I think now we move on to our elements for this All right, so we'd like to recognize a few students who Can I have advanced from the local level to area competition? And so Oh, okay. So, the soil and water conservation contest. So, we had Adrian Salazar Oh, sorry. Adalyn. Miss Adalyn Salazar, who earned second place at the local level and advanced to THE AREA COMPETITION. AND THEN WE'D ALSO like to recognize Also, moving on, we have Jackson Villa who earned first place at the local level and continued his success where he also got first place. Jackson, can I get a handshake? There you go. All these other people want to their hands, too. And then we're going to do a group a group picture. >> And right they were honored in San Angelo
014at a at a banquet for for what they were doing. >> Awesome job. Let's get a group picture together, okay? Come here, Mr. Miller. Jump in, Miller. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Good job, KIDDO. >> GREAT JOB. >> AND THEN THIS IS OUR MONTHLY SIGNING INFORMATION report to the board. And that is our million words readers. These students have read over a million words um this year. And so we'd like to begin by recognizing Adeline Cohen as a million WORDS READER. >> THERE YOU GO. GREAT JOB. >> GOOD JOB. >> AND then also joining the group of million words readers, we have Hudson Titus. >> He's He's not a million word >> I want to see if y'all can get to be in that one. We have one more. See if you can get
015to be in that one. Good job. Congratulations. >> Great job. All right, our recognition is over. We'll take a few minutes. We still have five minutes. >> Yeah, yeah. Yes. >> Stretch. All right. We're now on item number six. The consent agenda is going to be the minutes of the previous meetings, April 13th and the special meeting and there are no donations. >> So So the chair, we have a lot of donations. Um so we're we're kind of bringing in at the next meeting cuz there was just so many we didn't have a chance to put them all together in the report. Um and then we know that there are some and we didn't want to leave anybody out. So we wanted to make sure that we had a good report to present to the
016board so that we could bring the donation list into you. But the donations are wonderfully and beautifully coming in. It's been very exciting. Very exciting for >> What are they? >> Um there's a lot of them coming in for Project Graduation. Um and then there's stuff that has come in like for end of year um prizes and stuff for for kids. >> All right. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? >> I so >> I'll make a motion and I'll second. >> I'll second. >> Any seconds? Any discussion? All those in favor? >> Yes. >> We're now on item number seven, informational items. 7A, Mr. >> So, 7A is our district improvement planning committee, which we are required to have. And so, what I normally do for this process is
017we send it out to all staff. So, teachers, custodians, paraprofessionals, everybody gets an invitation to be part of the committee. We also put it on Facebook, and then send it out for possible parent and community representation. And so, based on letters of intent that we receive, we don't turn people away. So, if they submit a letter, we accept them. And so, this is what our 2026-2027 um committee looks like for this year. It does include teachers, it does include community members, and it does include parents. So, um we have a good a good combination of Our first meeting is set for Wednesday. It's just information. >> Do we have any questions? >> This looks like a good group. Is that a lot of people? Is that bigger than usual? >> So, it always starts off
018that big, which is nice, um because then there's always conflict and people can't attend. So, I would say on an average from that group, we usually will have about half show up to meetings. So, even though you've got about 40 in the group itself, um you'll have between 20 and 25 show up to meetings. >> 7B, who's this? >> So, 7B is our vacancy report, which I normally bring to the board at this time just to kind of see where we're at. So, what I did this time was I went back to the um the slideshow that I presented to you all uh in the district uh state of the district, and I updated it. So, for 2025-2026, the superintendent's goal, of course, was to monitor the DOI program, and then we wanted it to
019be uh less than 10% by the end of the year. And so, I updated that very last line, um which says 25-26 end of year. So, in December we had uh 48 teachers and seven of those were non-certified, so we were at about 14%. Um we have had many more get their certification. So, now at the end of the year it's 48, um and we have four that are still non-certified, and so that puts us at the 8%. Um for next year 26-27, we're looking at going from 48 teachers to 46 teachers. And of course, the goal is zero, you know, we want to have all all certified teachers. Um but it looks like that for current from right now until the end of this year, we could possibly be have about five vacancies that
020need to be filled. So, we're looking at right now um five vacancies, and I say current until 5/29 because we're still pending um some certifications that could possibly post, um which means those wouldn't be vacancies, or there might be vacancies. So, it just depends on where we're at at that time, but um right now going in, we're looking at five five vacancies. Then the other thing I added was, "Okay, why do we have some of those vacancies, and where did those vacancies come from?" So, um I I just added, so you may not have seen it. Um I uploaded it about maybe 5:30 today, um and so we have for teachers um two positions have been deleted. That's that's where we're at. So, for 25-26, we have 48 teachers. For 26-27, we're going to go
021down to 46 teachers. So, two teachers have been deleted for the incoming year. Um we've had enrollment decrease by about 30 kids um from 24-25 having got 520 to right now having about 490. Um there were class sizes at the secondary that may have been anywhere from 60 to 70 kids. So, really what I'm asking the principals to do is look at their master schedule and see what how we can review and plan effectively to have that decrease of two teachers that for it not to impact class size. And I think it can be done with scheduling because like I said, there were classes at the secondary where the enrollment was really low. So, it's just a matter of balancing the classes a little better. Um for our paraprofessionals, we have deleted four positions. Um
022one is in the special education department. Um and what we do is we review the special education programs and the needs after their IEP. So, if their IEP says that they have to have a one-on-one, they absolutely will have a one-on-one. Absolutely, without a doubt, that is the law and we will not go against the law. Um so, some students have one-on-one, some have small group. Um but what we want to do is maximize the paraprofessionals that are currently being used to meet the needs of the students. Maybe restructuring our special ed students um to ensure that we're following um the IEP, but we will not cut the students' service. So, I wanted to make sure that we were really clear there. It might not be the specifically assigned person, but we um we are
023reducing because there are some students that just come half a day, there are some students that come for 2 hours in the day. So, we just want to make sure that we're maximizing the amount of people that we have there. Um we also did delete one um paraprofessional that was basically focused in the early childhood area and that's where we have seen um a drop in enrollment. >> Okay. >> Um we did delete the art and music aide. And so, we were restructuring it and that actually came from the district advisory um district improvement committee. There was a teacher, couple of teachers actually, who suggested and one of the solutions was that could we go back and take the teach on ourselves and teach some of that art and music in our classroom. So, again,
024we're just looking at what we can do a little bit differently with parents that we currently have. Um that is a position that was scheduled to actually be deleted um and the person did not receive a letter of assurance. However, they did receive a new job opportunity somewhere else, so it's just being deleted now by attrition. That person was not going to be coming back. And then we had a computer lab manager who also um were deleted by attrition, and we'll have somebody else running that computer lab. Um non-exempt, we have cut by one and a half, okay? Um and that has been by attrition. And then exempt, we have which um is one time one person um had a part-time salary reduction by about 20%. Um one person, the grade is going to be
025grant-funded by lift about 33% of that salary. And then we have two positions in exempt that are now going to be grant-funded by approximately $24,000. We have two other grant positions uh two other positions that are going to be not new positions, current positions. Um they're going to be grant-funded by approximately 27,000. Um the superintendent, myself, um I am going to be bringing to the board a voluntary reduction by 4%, which is about $5,000. Um the reason it had already been included in the budget packet that we shared with y'all, so if you would have looked um it was under functional 11. So, that's why functional 11 only showed an increase of like 0.2. Um and so, I did not actually verbally state it because I was pending legal guidance because it is a voluntary
026reduction because the board approved my contract and the rates prior to knowing the situation that we were going to be in. You know, I think had we already known at that time that we were going to have that huge funding gap, I think we would had different conversations even then. But because we didn't have that information, we didn't know that, I am going to bring my contract for y'all to review on a volunteer basis and see if y'all would like to make any changes to that. The other thing is that because of the number of grants that we have received as a district, we now can apply for indirect costs, okay? Which does bring some money back and so we'll have approximately $27,000 of that will decrease the the the deficit based on payroll and
027just different things that we can do for federal revenue. So I know that there were some questions that were out in the community regarding who was cut, how were they cut, what departments were being affected. So since I was presenting vacancies, I thought, well, let me just go ahead and share the the different personnel reductions that were done possibly. >> I just have a question for the two grant-funded by crossing the $27,000 safety security. >> Uh-huh. >> Is that Is that that's a continuous grant that we have been receiving or is it a new grant? >> It's um it's cycle four, so it's the same one. So we have it We have the money and we can spend it over We have until 2027-2028 to spend it. >> And do we have it for one
028FTE? Have we funded just for one FTE and now we're making it two FTEs? >> So yes. And so now we've also looked at putting some more money into So looking at the grant itself, so you can also look at whoever helps you with the monitoring cameras. So there's been some things that we kind of gone back to look at. So even though that's not one person's full-time job, we could take a little bit of that money out and fund somebody else's job because they helped us with cameras a little bit of money because they they do this. >> Are we able to draw down more funding to at least offset the the FTEs >> Um >> salaries or are we just saying this is the amount that's going to be allotted to you and
029of that we're going to split it into two FTEs? >> So, it's basically based on their percentage. So, I have to do and I can't think of what it's called right now, but where their duties have to what their duties look like and it's based on the percentage of their duties. So, tell me what that form is called. >> I don't remember it. It's time and effort. >> Okay. >> So, it's basically for the amount is based on your time and effort. >> Is that the maximum you get from the grant? >> Um no. So, we get a we get 400 and we got 400 and something dollars dollars for the grant. Um that's where we've done some fencing, that's where we've done some other things. So, it's what we put in the in the
0306100 in the >> Okay. For the grant. >> 7C? >> Okay. So, 7C, I had briefly mentioned at our budget workshop that we're going to really try to see what we can do to boost enrollment. And so, what you're going to see kind of coming out um we're probably putting it in the neighboring uh newspapers, whether it be the Valley, Rio, Eagle Pass, just to see what can we do to increase enrollment. So, we're going to start with an enrollment postcard um that we hope to publish in different places, um possibly do some mail out um and then even maybe send some stuff out to our home school students to see if I can get them to come and talk to me and see a little bit about what Rocket ISEE is all about. We're
031going to do a video, just really marketing um our school district. So, you'll start hearing a little bit more about um our enrollment campaign for 2016-2017. >> Awesome. >> So, I I want to make a comment there. I was watching the news today talking about how enrollment is down all over all over the state of Texas. So, all the questions are asked of why. We have to look around everywhere. It's not just Round Rock. >> Correct. So, to be able to go out and try and get new more students in, I feel like that says a lot to try and boost our attendance. So, I feel like that's a good step. I don't know what other schools are doing, but they're all in the same boat. >> Yes. >> And that was That idea actually
032came from the commissioner. So, we had a meeting with the commissioner of education probably about 2 weeks ago. And so, he mentioned how some of the districts have been doing enrollment campaigns. Now, we were all superintendents and we were all there with like you're you're going to take mine and I'm going to, you know, take yours. So, uh but everybody is doing something to try to increase enrollment. Um we've been very fortunate that we don't plan on being very hit hard or hit at all by TEA, you know, because we don't have a local private school that, you know, kids with with those two fit. You know, a lot of the larger districts are going to lose kids because now there's that monetary support to send your kids to private school. Yeah, everybody is in
033the same boat. >> I was excited when um the co-worker is sending the child here sometime. >> Yes. Yes. So, already I think I could wouldn't be hiring so I think we're going to be getting more students. >> All right. 7D is pre-K >> So, 7D um is just an update on our pre-K 3 and pre-K 4 um and the kindergarten. So, um if y'all recall the legislative session from last summer was huge, right? And there were so many updates and so many things going on. Well, one of the things that they did is they did gain they did include 3-year-olds to be able to generate funding. So, 3-year-olds can generate some funding if they're eligible 3-year-olds. So, we did open up our roundup um to include eligible three-year-olds. Uh we had it on Friday.
034Um we had a fairly good turnout. I want to say we had 15 three-year-olds and like seven four-year-olds. I think she told me we were like in the 20s, you know, maybe total 22 um 25. So, um so we are doing our roundup to see who who we can register. Again, they do have to qualify. They have to be from low income. They uh homeless or in foster care. There's just different ways that they'll qualify. And I can't remember if the other one was or being unable to speak English well. The other um criteria that was approved by the legislation is if they are an employee's child. So, um that that went out to our staff letting them know um that that is another criteria. If you look at the second document, um which is
035just kind of the informational sheet that I wanted to make sure that you all have the information. So, although three-year-olds can be included, okay, um the school district receives funding only for half day, okay? We do full day, okay? Um so, the primary source of the funding does come from the Foundation School Program. Um they use the same formulas to generate how much money we're going to get, but they only give us funding for half day, meaning about 4 hours of the day for pre-K. Um however, the legislator mandated that we must provide full day.