001The time is now 6:30. We will go ahead and begin with our open meeting. Um, starting off off the open meeting, we're going to start with public Oh, I'm sorry. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Let the record reflect. At 5:40, Mr. uh, Trusty Barti joined us. Now, we will move on to our public participation. Um, we will have the first one by Miss Kennedy Meeks, our senior uh representative for Memorial High School. >> Okay, you do have three minutes. So, if you get close and kind of going, I'll give you a little time warning. Okay. Um, good evening, members of the board. My name is Kennedy Meeks and I am honored to serve as the senior student body president for the 2025 2026 school year at Memorial High School. I stand before you today on behalf
002of my classmates, students who care deeply about our school and its future. First, I want to thank the board for allowing me to speak and I especially want to thank Dr. Murphy. Her leadership structure and even the new phone policy have made a real difference. students are more engaged and many who were once rec I'm sorry to participate are now motivated to make this year a success. We appreciate your communication to helping us grow into successful young adults. With that being said, we believe there are areas where more balance is needed. These include the bathroom policies, dress code, cafeteria line procedures, searching for personal belonging links, and mostly important the culture of trust between students and staff. Let me begin with the dress code. Students should be allowed to dress comfortably. A dress code does
003not affect our test scores. It affects our appearance. Many students struggle with body image and wearing oversized clothing to feel secure. If a student maintains a 4.1 GPO on a scale college scale, their attire should not overshadow their academic excellence. Next, bathroom access. Students should deserve privacy and trust when attending to personal needs. Female students in particular may require additional time in emergencies with only four minutes between classes and long lines at restrooms. Many students are forced to choose between being late or skipping basic needs. This is not a choice we should have to make. On the topic of searches, we understand the importance of safety, but when students are searched by one teacher and then again another in a classroom or hallway, it begins to feel excessive. We ask for consistency and fairness in
004how these policies are applied. We also want to acknowledge that many teachers share these concerns. Some may feel hesitant to speak out, especially when teaching is their only source of income. As students, we stand in solitary with our educators. These affects our entire school community and are here to be their voice too. Now, let's talk about poverty and equity. The reality is that 80 to 90% of students in our district live in poverty. This affects attendance, test preparation, and even the ability to the ability to meet dress codes requirements. According to Dr. Post report will truly improve schools is not stricter rules, but a stronger focus on social emotional learning, mental health support, and community partnerships. Let's not forget the financial impact. Each student represents approximately $6,000, and $500 in funding. If one if 100
005students leave or are unenrolled, that's a $650,000 loss. That loss doesn't just disappear. It means fewer books, fewer computers, fewer desks, and fewer resources that directly impact our education. So here's the bottom line. We are not asking to remove the rules. We are asking for fairness. We are asking for respect. We are asking for the chance to prove that when trusting students and Memorial High School will rise to the occasion and succeed. We want discipline to be just disciplined. We want students voices to be heard. And we want the focus to shift from control to guidance. With this balance, students will not only behave better, they will thrive. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your commitment to making Memorial High School a place where every student has the opportunity to succeed. Thank you.
006>> Thank you, Miss Mix. I just want to say uh on behalf of the board that we appreciate you for coming and sharing that information with us. Um it was very well spoken and and duly noted. So, we thank you for taking the time and coming represent your senior class in a very nice and professional way and um we definitely appreciate that. Now we'll go on to our staff report. Well, if there's nothing else from any other board members, but okay, we'll move on to the staff report by uh Dr. Mor Puerto Rico. >> President Johnson, board members, uh two things from me and then we'll go around the room for our assistants, superintendent and CFO and of course Miss Lot who will give all of the wonderful things that's happening in our district. I
007would like to address and and give a huge thanks to staff on yesterday. Of course, we were in a challenge uh with the water situation. There was a water main broken and it affected not only the district but the entire city of Port Author. So, I would like to thank everyone. I mean, everyone went into went into gear. And of course, we did not know it was happening. We did not know that the water mane had was broken until we all were at school, students and staff. So that meant we had to pivot quickly. And I will say our the the immediate thing we did was contacted parents to let them know that if they wished to pick up their children, they could. We put it out on social media and parents who chose to
008pick their kids up, they did. receiving went out and purchased pallets of water and it was delivered to every campus so we could have clean drinking water. Even before they said the water was not drinkable, we did that and the communication between administrators and staff administration building and the staff was very very clear and we talked all by text all day long. But what I want parents to understand is that when things happen um just quickly, I mean, when there's a serious issue that happens quickly and students 8,000 students are in the school system, we can't just shut down schools because there are parents who are working. There are parents who are not um where we can reach them. And we can't put students on a bus and say just go home. We must make
009sure that safety comes first. So with that said, none of our schools were closed down because we were going to stay until the last student went home. Yes, we had issues with buckets, uh, flushing commodes. We had water, we fed every every child, which we want to do, but it's not it's not that simple. Okay, you have a water mane breakage, everyone just go home. So, that's not going to ever happen, especially when something happens when all students are already in place. So, we did get some questions about why we just didn't shut down the schools. Well, some of our parents when we contacted them said that the student go is going to stay right there. They're not coming home and they're not they're not going home. I mean we and elementary we surely can't
010place elementary students on a bus and say go home and uh make sure you get home safely and parents don't know because if something happens that becomes our responsibility so for that those reasons we stayed open the entire day and we made it our I mean everyone cafeteria workers custodians transportation everyone it was all hands on deck and we did a magnificent job a magnificent job in get at getting through the day which was very very difficult and unannounced. So congratulations to staff. Thank you board members for uh being uh for helping us when I talked to you all. It was good. Y'all were okay. Let's just move forward. Get it done. And that's what we did. So it was it was a good thing. So, thank you again and to our staff. I am
011most proud of all staff members in the Port Arth Independent School District and to our and to our students because you know they when things happen and they get disrupted out of the out of these um the realm of what they're accustomed to, but they were for the most part they were calm, you know, so for kids. So, they did a great job. So, our kids are wonderful and most of our parents understood. So, they were great. Those parents that wanted to pick up their kids, they did. others kept them with us and we wanted them with us. So it was good. The next thing that I'm going to talk about is TAFY. Now that's exciting for me. Taffy is the acronym stands for Texas Association for Future Educators. If you can remember Future Teachers
012of America, FTA well there's a Taffy program that we're going to embark embark upon. Our first group will be the 42 students from Wilson Early College that are part of our student teacher program. They're into the elementary schools and possibly one middle school we may try out this year. And then we have students that will be coming from Memorial 9 through 12 that will be a part of it as well. So we are excited to bring that organization back. Um and it's going to be we had a meeting this morning with um Dr. Dr. Johnson. Yeah. Diane Johnson and it was a really good meeting with her and she's at Lamar University in Bumont. There's a collegiate uh chapter at Lamar and we're going and they said they're going to come in. They're going to
013help us. They're going to set up things and this really we're going to have two chapters. One at Woodro Wilson and one at Memorial High School 912. So, we are excited to bring that back because we want to grow our own. And we do have some of our students from Wilson that graduated that were part of our student teacher program and they're back with us in our district now teaching. They've graduated from college and they're back. So, that is a wonderful thing. So, we want to grow more. So, Future Teachers of America was a very popular organization in the day and we're just as excited about Taffy coming to us. It's been in existence since 1984, but it's going to come into Port Arthur. Um, and just excited for our kids and then kids are
014our students are asking for it. So, that's a good thing. So, we're happy about those two initiatives, Miss Jacobs. >> All right. Um, well, good evening everyone. Good evening, board. Um, so I'd like to start by echoing Dr. Porter's sentiments about um our staff's responsiveness. So, this is probably my first um emergency, if you will, since coming into my role in May. And I was just overly impressed by the diligence, the competency, the dedication of our staff. everyone, as he mentioned, was ready on their toes, ready to shift in the gear and stay late, do whatever it took to make sure that um our students were safe and our campuses were restored to their proper working order. So, I cannot echo those sentiments enough. Very, very proud to be uh part of the leadership team
015in operations, especially on a day like yesterday. Um so, to continue, um I just have a couple of quick points. Um this year I've declared it to be a year of cultivating a culture of excellence and continuous improvement in the operations department. Um this initiative, I'm calling it an umbrella initiative, was uh introduced at the very first ever general assembly of all operations personnel. So that's a little over 300 people. Um and we had our first assembly uh immediately following the convocation on August 4th. And so as a result of that umbrella initiative, a few others have fallen out. Um one being our uh work order management system FMX. So we are currently undertaking the mammoth effort of cleaning it up to make sure that our system works best for us and not just us
016as an operations but works well for the users. So for the uh individual campuses as well as all of our administrators. A huge undertaking. Uh FMX is generally managed by maintenance, technology, shipping and receiving and custodial services. And so um hopefully by the time we get to December, I can deliver a report saying it's 100% clean. All the statuses are updated and we are moving towards uh just being more efficient in our operations and using that work order management system to take care of the the types of work orders that we receive for a plethora of things. moving furniture, uh plumbing, painting, uh carpentry work, you name it. Um the next uh initiative that falls under that uh cultivating the culture of excellence and continuous improvement is a focus on greater collaboration with uh campus
017principles to foster better rapport, greater transparency, and the success of resolutions. And this kind of ties back to our work order management system and that um a great deal of our communication that we have with campus leaders are uh facilitated via work orders. And so in building or re reestablishing these relationships and building more confidence in our abilities to handle um work tasks in a timely manner, in an efficient manner, in a transparent manner. um we are again fixing that or cleaning up that work order system to um to facilitate that process. And then lastly, um this is a little more cushy if you will, but um as a Titan, class of 2009, um school spirit has always been very very important to me. And in that general assembly that took place after convocation, I
018expressed to again all 300 plus of operations personnel that we have a very unique ability to um as a group to touch every single campus in a way that maybe other groups that in the district can't. And so um I challenged them with wearing red on Fridays. So we call it tight and red Fridays. And so on any given Friday and it's it's really picked up steam. You'll see our custodial staff, you'll see our child nutrition, our cafeteria workers, you'll see the maintenance folks, they they wear uniforms, so it's sometimes kind of hard, but um they are committed to being those carriers of that torch and it is just so refreshing to see. Um, a lot of our campus administrators are taking notice. And so I just feel like that's one way we could sew
019a seed into the community and into the students to show them, hey, the people who work for you, because we work for the students, the people who work for you really do care about you. We support you academically. We support you athletically as well as our auxiliaries. And so, um, in addition to that, I'm proud to share that we will be participating in the homecoming parade this Saturday. Uh, so several of our, um, our groups, the maintenance group, transportation, as well as technology, um, will be riding in the homecoming parade. So, uh, that's something again kind of cushy, but something that I'm proud of because, um, you know, again, we touch every single campus and it starts with us. So, that's the conclusion of my report. Thank you, Dr. Portery. >> Dr. Gwood. >> Dr.
020Porter. Good uh good evening to the board president uh Miss Johnson and members of the board of trustees. I have a few updates for you uh this evening and the first one is to let you know that uh we did have two intruder detection audits uh for campuses and both of those campuses passed the audits the flying colors. There were no corrective actions. That's a good thing. leadership team uh recently received information uh on how to deal with um medical emergencies as well as crisis management. I think that that was important because you cannot train them enough or give them enough information to be prepared for a crisis or a medical emergency situation. And the district is required to have at least three uh safety meetings and you have to have a safety and security
021team. It's mandated by the state of Texas. It's also the roles on that team mandated by the uh state of Texas. And we will have our first meeting uh in October. It'll be October 22nd. Um it'll be the safety and security meeting and we have all of those persons whom we are supposed to have on the uh committee on the committee. And lastly for me for from a post-secary education standpoint I think that it's uh important that we share with you that in the CTE department the lead under the leadership of Dr. Davis uh Drs Davis and Murphy that um uh students are enrolled in an HVAC program and upon completion of that HVAC program students will qualify for an entry- level position in the workforce. Thank you. >> Great. Congratulations. >> Thank you Dr.
022Puerto Rico. Good evening, board. Uh, just a couple of updates from the business office. Uh, since we last met, our budget was released to campuses and departments on September 2nd and spending began immediately. We've had a successful roll over to the new year to implement our new salaries and to ensure that everyone was paid correctly. Uh, we worked very closely with HR, but that task was done uh without much pain. Uh, as of today, we've received all of our grant awards from our federal and state grants, and they amount to about $10.4 million. Um, we have also secured uh the first half of our bond proceeds. So, we're ready to start with our bond projects. And lastly, uh, next month we will be presenting our school first report. >> Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Porter.
023Good evening, board. I would like to discuss just two areas. We'll discuss our school improvement efforts and then also our leadership development. And so with regard to school improvement, um we've remained focused of course on developing our turnaround plans as well as our school targeted improvement plans. You may hear them referred to as a TAP and a TIP. And so we are leveraging that data that we've had so far, our BOI data, which is beginning of the year diagnostic as well as our CBA data, our campus-based assessments, um to determine our steps forward uh looking at continuous growth across those campuses. Of course, we're also seeking feedback from our stakeholders. Our stakeholders would include our staff members, community members. when our campuses that have to complete a tap uh present their plans to the public.
024We're asking that they present a QR code so that they can solicit input and feedback on their plans. We will bring those plans to you all to um for approval um next board meeting in October because they must be submitted to Texas Education Agency in November. Um, a couple of our campuses have already received an um, effective schools framework ESS diagnostic visit. And when region five comes in to visit those campuses, they're looking at different levers of the campuses that uh, guide their school improvement which range from leadership and planning, teacher recruitment and retention. They're looking at the campus and culture and climate. Uh, they're looking at their high quality instructional materials as well as the effective instruction. They're visiting classrooms. they're visiting PLC's and providing feedback. And then also with regards to professional development,
025several of our campus leaders have participated in Texas instructional leadership which is called teal. And so um we're enhancing instructional coaching capacity within our leaders as well as in helping them improve classroom practices and driving that student achievement. Now with regards to our leadership development, we've had our monthly meeting and at our meeting we have of course our campus leaders as well as our directors and supervisors here in the district and this month we did um conducted a comprehensive review of our BOI data. Um Dr. Porter also presented the campus leaders again our district improvement plan. We are requesting a status report about their role within that plan and how are they um performing. We're getting a performance review for each and every campus. And then we talked about different topics such as safety protocols
026as Dr. Gutwood mentioned. We brought in a consultant to discuss ways in which our campuses can effectively document um different things that occur on campus. We're looking at we look at updates regarding special education, our section 504 and those expectations as well as we had a presentation from our multilingual and migrant department where we talked about how our students impact our accountability overall specifically in domain three. And then just emphasizing the importance of employee health and wellness in the workplace. We recognize that educators and uh staff perform at their best when they are supported both professionally and personally. So, we also had a conversation regarding an article that was written by our very own Dr. Getwood. And so, we're excited about that. And so, campuses are energized and we're just excited and committed to having
027a great few months ahead and a great year. >> Right. Dr. Se, all I had to do was push. Okay. So, keeping in mind, good evening everyone again. Um, 40 days. I'm going to throw a lot of numbers at you. Um, and when I'm talking about these numbers is in the framework of 40 days, August 1st until the date, it's about 40 business days. And so since our start of the new school year, August 1st, we've taken on 30 certified international teachers, they've come aboard, um, we're getting them processed. It's a process to have those teachers come in from another country, uh, Philippines last week. These are some that landed at the airport and they were from the Philippines headed to Port Arthur, Texas to teach in Port Arthur ISD and they took a snap
028picture and they sent it to us. I thought that was a good that was really nice of them. And to get these P teachers here, it's work. It's work for Dr. Portery, Miss Davis out of the business office because we um incur fees to bring them over uh the attorney, our HR coordinator. So, it's just a lot of hands to get them into our classrooms. Dr. Buon from the multi- lingual department. And so, I'm just very appreciative to everyone from for everyone's work in the district of getting them here. Um, our adjunct teachers, you know, our adjunct teachers are our degree teachers. And since August 1st, we have been able to ensure that 29 of our adjunct teachers are now fully certified in the classroom. So, we're actively working with our adjunct teachers to ensure
029their certification because they're highly qualified, but we want them certified. That's the goal. And we tonight, you all approved are approving 11 11 additional certified teachers. So, we have a total of about 70 certified teachers in 40 days. And we're going to continue to do the work to ensure that our students have the very best in front of them. And my last point, uh, our VOE students, we've gotten our VOE students on boarded and employed and they are actively working either at a school. We have them at the Queen, Sam, Houston, TJ Lincoln, Memorial High School, and curriculum instruction here at the admin, has a DOE student, and they're also working in the community. They're at Brown Insurance, GF Coast Health Center, and Mid America Contractors. That's all that I have. Thank you. Thank you.
030Thank you, >> Miss Lot. Oh, sorry. Sorry. >> No, this is a lot. >> Okay, this is our media and communications report since we last met. >> Um, our football team is currently undefeated. So, we want to show our football team some love. Uh, this is a picture of Thomas Jefferson's volleyball team. So, middle school volleyball and football is happening now and Thomas Jefferson's team is on a winning streak. Our pack uh campus is active on their social media. And here they are dressed up uh participating in college t-shirt day. Here are some photos of our mobile command center and the very nice bus wrap job that was done on it. And we have uh really kicked off this year's celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month with the bank. These are our September observations um including
031September is childhood cancer syll and suicide prevention awareness months. We have some uh small group instruction going on in the top right corner at Travis Elementary. We uh salute and say goodbye to Miss Natasha Jones from Wheatley School of Early Childhood who retired after 26 years of service. Sam Houston celebrated International Dot Day. At the bottom left, uh we're bringing place value to life. In the second picture, Lincoln celebrated AVID Day. They posted nice graphics and videos to celebrate Avid Day. And our pack campus um has uh shown us the character education trait for the month of September is courage. And they have also been um sharing graphics for suicide prevention and uh animated videos for that initiative as well. Every Wednesday in September, we have worn gold to uh support childhood cancer awareness. So,
032these are some of our flames, but some of our weekly kids and some of our elementary students have also posted pictures of them in their gold on Wednesdays. Across the top, our weekly students are learning um about shapes by creating them with their bodies. And so, we have our star, triangle, and square. Our juniors and seniors are preparing to take the PSAT, the ASVAB, and the SAT at the end of October. Memorial High School did publish an electronic newsletter for parents. And at Adams Elementary, they have uh posted an affirmation station where students can leave postits of notes that they would like to share with others, words of encouragement and inspiration. And on the other side, you can take what you need in return. A lot of our campuses have had their club rush uh
033days. And here is a list of all of the clubs offered at Wilson Early College. Uh Thomas Jefferson also has an extensive list of very creative um clubs and organizations for their students. And so um we want to always encourage students to participate in extracurricular activities. So not only Wilson and TJ, but all of our campuses across the board have active clubs and organizations. We have the media team has published um produced and published 16 individual virtual tours of all of our campuses and here are some of the screenshots. The the drone takes an aerial view of the campus and then we navigate the drone throughout the building to see the main office, computer lab, courtyard or outdoor garden if they have a band hall, the gym, the cafeteria, the library, some of the classrooms,
034uh the auditorium. So those have been wellreceived. We also have at the top left corner Sam Houston has an outdoor classroom. Um our CTE students are engaged in the welding class. Uh Memorial grades 9 through 12 have already started after school tutorials focusing on our core subjects and star and it's Monday through Thursday from 2:30 to 5. Uh Thomas Jefferson. Uh this is a photo from one of the dance classes there. The bottom left uh the Misters Social and Civic Club donated a Sunday which is football day to Thomas Jefferson Middle School. They assembled bicycles for the Ignite programs PE class. So, we appreciate the fact that they came out on a Sunday and dedicated their time to assemble those bicycles because that was a a in a tremendous help to Thomas Jefferson in that
035program. Also in the middle, AT&T, the YMCA, and Representative Christian Emanuel presented uh 75 students from Wilson with laptops and supplies and backpacks. So, we are appreciative of that blessing as well for that community partnership. Uh TJ and Lincoln have been celebrating their homecoming weeks. Uh this picture is where the student dresses up as the teacher and the teacher dresses up as a student. And this is a picture of the king and queen for TJ's homecoming. And uh Lucian Adams is the first elementary school to post that they are having a homecoming dance this particular school year so far. So I thought that was cute. our auxiliaries um have started highlighting individual uh members. We have twirlers on this particular graphic. The band is continuing with the section of the week. Every Friday we are
036streaming our Titan football games for free on our YouTube channel. Um, here's a photo from one of the Thomas Jefferson football games. And our O line coach and some of the other football coaches are offering free free free free um O line training on Sunday evenings for seventh through 9th graders under the um the new cover practice field at the high school. Uh our volleyball team has started posting players of the game for when they have away games. We uh reimagined and updated upgraded our um Memorial Titan stadium rules and regulations post and it also has QR codes to ticket information and then literally more detail about every single stadium rule. We have been having a really good turnout with the game day themes for our football games. This Friday at Bowmont United is a
037blackout. baseball and softball have been having workouts under the um the covered field because their uh fields are being redone with turf. So, they are having workouts nonetheless for fall workouts. Our cross country team, as you can see in the middle on the right, has grown tremendously. And uh the top right corner, Jada Gillery, uh came in sixth place at one of our recent cross country meets. Our football team has started submitting weekly players of the game as well for offense, defense, special teams, and the pancake chain. We posted our cross country schedule for the fall. And here's some more auxiliary highlights. And here's a picture of I don't know if that's the baseball or the softball field, but they're replacing the grass with turf on both fields. Once again, our multilingual department is offering
038basic English classes for interested parents uh twice a week at the public library. Something uh new on uh September, looks like September 14th, uh some of our cheerleaders attended St. Paul Church for Team Spirit Sunday and they actually performed some cheers at the church during the service and it was very well received by the members of the church. The picture across the bottom is our staff across the street at the uh support services center. And there was also a local business uh Kimmy's Cafe that had a promotion that they ran where they were giving free mugs in your school colors with the purchase of a meal to uh employees. Our GT referral window has been open since September 3rd and it will close on next Friday. So, uh, anybody can nominate a student for gifted
039and talented testing. The LifeShare, um, blood center had to bring three mobile blood donation stations to Wilson because 75 students and staff members signed up to donate blood. And I thought that was remarkable because that's a huge number. They had to bring out three trucks. Um, we have posted the fact that Putart the LNG released applications to apply for teacher grants. So, we posted that information in the links on our socials if any of our teachers was interested in applying for those grants. The health department is having a drive-thru clinic next Wednesday, October 1st, from 7:30 to 1 at that new 9inth Avenue station. We had our our annual campuses and business partners meeting uh in collaboration with the education foundation and the chamber of commerce. All 16 of our campuses have at least one
040business partner. Some have two, some have even more, three, four or five business partners. And so they met with their business partners and they will continue to meet to see how the business partners can help support those campuses. Our Wilson students in less than 48 hours helped us to produce a video that we posted to encourage parents to complete the Texas Senate Bill 12 consent form. We have we have not had the response that we would like. So we we went the route of getting the students to explain to the parents how important this is. Parents have to give consent for services from the school nurse, the school counselor and for their students to participate in clubs and organizations. If they do not give consent, then it's interpreted as not giving consent. So if we
041don't have forms from the parents, they're basically saying that no, they don't want their children to receive those services. And it's not a problem until it becomes a problem. So we urge parents to um go to our website or any of the campus websites. There are QR codes posted. There's links posted to get to the form. If they need the paper version, they can get it from any campus. uh bottom right corner um community support of the game day themes. On tomorrow morning, our auxiliaries will be featured on uh 12 News at Daybreak between 5:45 in the morning and 7:00 a.m. with those live interviews um over at the campus. And our homecoming parade is this Saturday at 10:00 down Proctor. The the pep rally will be under the pavilion and we will have vendors
042for food, for games, for fun. There will be a live DJ. So, it's going to be a fun time for the whole community. Our alumni and staff, we have one of our recent graduates highlighted as one of Lamar University's new dancers. Uh, and she's studying nursing, Miss Jayla Clay. uh at the bottom underneath Jayla, one of our alumni, Kaden Bowie, was on the UFH Cougars football team when they um they won against Dion Sanders uh Colorado team. Uh and we acknowledge our assistant superintendent, Dr. Gwood, for his accomplishment in becoming a published author in an educational journal. And we are also uh soliciting Memorial alumni to tailgate at the homecoming game uh prior to the homecoming game next Friday. So that information has been put out to the public. Um they must get approval from
043athletics and not from me. Um Kim Sanders, audio and video teacher at the CTE campus, is the first teacher to receive the Golden Apple Award of this particular school year. So, she was surprised in her in her classroom by Channel 12 News with that honor. And this is our uh summary for the month. Memorial High School did release a demographic uh visual uh to break down their campus uh makeup. And then we have grown our Facebook following over 8,000 in the last four years. So, we're up to 17,000. Yeah, I have a few questions. Um, I'm going to go back go back around to Miss Jacobs. We were talking about um the uh maintenance department and the work orders. When we talk about the work orders, are we talking uh do we have a time
044frame set into that with as we go in and clean up the system? Do we have a time frame in that they're having the work or artist done in that time a certain time frame >> yet? Well, so the completion of the work order done or the cleanup activity? >> Well, the completion of the work order once once it's received and the completion of it. >> So, it varies and that's part of the process that um we are refining currently um because sometimes we get work orders that um the successful completion of it would require months dedicated to a single campus when we all know that we have 15 facilities here in the school district. And so part of the cleanup exercise is now we are using our judgment to determine the reasonleness um of
045of the request as well as any resource constraints. And so the transparency piece comes in where once we identify um the reasonleness and any any resource constraints meaning uh people time or materials. At that point, we are meeting with campus principles and we're also doing a walkthrough of the desired work order um physically. So, if it's a classroom or a set of classrooms that need to be painted, we may do a walkthrough of several of those so that we can see on the ground what is it that we need to do. And from that point, we can have those conversations to maybe come to a compromise and say, well, you know, maybe not 15 classrooms this time, but maybe five. and we can dedicate maybe two weeks to getting this taken care of versus saying
046yes, we can do this and it's it takes two months which pulls whatever craft that is completely away from being able to service other campuses. So it is a bit um it's a bit subjective and on a case- by case basis but um I am trying to uh empower the directors to take a more um thoughtful approach and to just use a bit more of our professional judgment, our understanding of um you know how long it takes to get tasks done. So, and that's that's one of the feeds to why the cleanup process will take a few months. That's because we won't stop receiving work orders as they're still being completed as we're still trying to clean this up. So, um I've asked everyone for their patience, but um sometimes it takes a little while
047to turn a big ship, but I have a lot of confidence in the in the operations directors. >> Thank you. Thank you. Well, I have a few more questions. Dr. Gilwood, also we talked about the safety of it. Are we all is all our campuses still doing um fire drills? Are we still practicing that uh having that practice in all campuses? >> Yes, sir. We uh the state has mandated that you have at least four fire drills per year, but our insurance uh requires us to have a fire drill every month. So, we're having monthly fire drills and we have other drills that uh are in line with safety and security mandates. >> Okay. >> Such as lock down the whole drill, secure, those kind of drills. >> Okay. Thank you. And and doc, I'd
048like to commend you and the rest of your staff. This is the first time I've been on the board since 2015. And it's the first time that we've had every department make a presentation and we've been wasn't here for 30 minutes. Thank you. I don't know if you you must have threatened him or something, huh? >> Yes. I am I have a comment. Uh I want to associate myself with what Trustee Bart just said. First of all, I I'm impressed with and proud of what I just heard. Uh I want to hear a little bit more about Senate Bill 12, the impact of Sen 12. I I applaud the superintendent and staff for putting a a front page uh flyer, so to speak, on the front page of the website. You can't miss it, right,
049if you if you go on our website. So, thank you for that. But I was disappointed to hear what you said earlier about the difficulty of getting people to sign up. So, is there any other comment you want to make about that? I mean, how are we doing overall? Well, that's clear. >> We have put it on the website, the link, the QR code. Every campus has posted the link, the QR code. We have posted multiple times the link, the QR code, but we've also sent it directly to phones and emails as well. So, we've done the all calls emails and the text. It's just like with the registration for school, >> and it's not a problem until it becomes a problem. somebody's child is denied service by a nurse or a counselor, then it'll
050be on the news that we denied because the parent didn't provide permission for us to do those things. >> Wow. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Oh, I'm sure you will. Thank you. >> Okay. I guess it's my turn. >> Um first, well, let me before I even go any further since we're on that topic, let me hint on that. And this is just as a little tidbit maybe to get over to the principles because I was just telling Doc about the Senate B bill 12. Now, you know, as soon as I got it in Courtland's folder, I filled it out, sent it back. And so then a week later, I got it again in a folder and I filled it out and sent it back. So then I got a text. They said, "You have
051to fill out." So I called the school. I'm like, "I filled it out. Oh, it's not on file." So I did the the text that I got and I just got a text like in a day and I filled it out again cuz I mean, hey, it won't hurt. But I said that to say with the two that I physically filled out and sent back some kind of way, they never made it to the nurse. And it may have been that it got mixed up and all kind of other homework papers. And I'm not making a justification cuz that's still probably what maybe only a hundred that's missing. But just to I guess maybe make sure that they're going through that and getting them cuz I know that's what happened in my case. But I
052mean every time y'all seen it takes like two minutes. So who cares? I just filled it out again. But it may be something where they're getting those texts and thinking that they've already sent it on the first week of school and just ignoring it cuz that's almost what I did until I called and found out it wasn't there. So that's just like a little tidbit information. Maybe just have the principles have the teacher search and make sure it's not anything they're overlooking for any of the kids cuz you know if a parent did send it the first thing if you don't service them is I sent it the first week of school. I don't know what y'all did with it. So that that's just an option or maybe just telling them to have the kids
053tell their parent to fill a link out regardless even if you did send it in case it was misplaced. So but I do think y'all went through many avenues to get that done. So I guess that's just something we face with our parents. But um next I want to hit on what Dr. Por said on yesterday. I definitely was very pleased with the way that everything was handled with the situation. Of course it was not our fault even though they make everything the district's fault, but every school handled it really well. You know, I even made some calls cuz I called Dr. Puerto like 24/7. And I know he get tired, probably want to put me on the block list, but I, you know, made a few calls myself just to see if those schools
054were okay for parents that were reaching out to me. And it was just to help out. And everybody was really nice. You know, they were like, I'm not having an issue right now or yeah, you know, the air, you know, is not to full capacity or the the bathrooms are having some issues, but we're working through it and there's nothing that's out of line at this time. So, everyone was really professional about it. Everyone was really helpful. And to hint on what he said about letting the kids go home, I myself had to watch two of the little kids from my church and the lady down the street, little baby, until I got ready to go to overtime work last night because Bob Hope, you know, abruptly closed due to the issue, but they were
055not able to have anyone to get some of the kids or even people to watch them. So in that case, you know, we would understand that it's a water issue, but those parents in which I had to interfere with probably would have rather their kids stay there as long as it was suitable. Of course, we're not going to put them in a dangerous situation. So I commend our district, our superintendent, and all of the administration for working through that in the manner that you did. And um I'm very pleased with that. So that was awesome. Um for Miss Jacobs, not really anything. Uh and and like uh Trusty Barti said too, I mean I've only this is just my second time so I hadn't been on it as long as they have, but this is
056one of the better really brief but very informative uh synopsis from our different administration and I appreciate giving those updates. It does feel like it kind of keeps us in the know with what you guys are doing with Dr. Quarter on a daily basis. Uh with Miss Jacobs, I don't have any uh complaints on it. I know y'all are working. Look, I reached out to her before about grass being a parent and citizen, and I know she probably wanted to say, "Now, Kim, you know, we working hard, but she didn't." And she was very professional, and it did get taken care of, and they've been on top of it. So, I know that there's growing pains we're working through. It's hot outside. It's a tedious job. So, I definitely want to commend you and all
057of the staff that work so diligently to do that cuz they have been keeping up with it thus far. and also for your um um spirit challenge. I mean, I know that that Miss Jacobs is one of the most, you know, spirited Titan uh administrative we have. So, I do appreciate you for getting them involved and showing that, you know, everybody is moving into that Titan spirit. So, I definitely like that idea. U Mr. G with everything that you said uh please about the intruder alerts. Of course, you know, um like Dr. Pery said with things happening still left and right like once a week is like something going on. So, it's good to know that we're following and keeping up with those safety protocols. Also, the quick question that I did have, I did
058see the HVAC program with CTE and that was like amazing to me. Like, we continue to add things. Is that the only um additional program we've added this year to CTE, the HVAC? I know there were others we were kind of looking at working towards. >> We're still working toward other programs, but that's one that we can say is up and running. We have students involved in it at the current time. We have 10th graders, 11th graders, and 12th graders. And we're dealing with u the Lamont State College Port offer uh in conjunction with them and dealing with our HVAC program. And we have a certified um I say HVAC man teaching the class. >> Okay. That's that's great. And um not only like you said that they're coming out with um the ability to
059have a job already, but even if not to work for someone, they can work for themselves in a position like that. Like you know, you're making money. AC, look, I just told them my AC in my car just started tweaking a little bit and I was about to die today. So you know, air conditioning is something that everybody needs. if not only going work for employee or just having a certification to make their own money and be their own boss. That's a step up with CT because we're not just talking about getting them ready for careers for companies, but getting them ready to start their own businesses. So, that's definitely amazing. President Johnson, if I may, um I just wanted to add that in addition to um the Lamar State College uh instructor, we do
060have our very own HVAC foreman from PIS operations who will be assisting with the instruction of that course um in the second semester of the year. So, we're really excited for this partnership um with with our CTE program. >> Oh, yes. Yes. That's great. That's a great add-on. I like that idea as well. Um, Miss Davis, you already she always do what she's supposed to do. So, I don't know. Uh, Dr. Papion, very, very great overview. I mean, I know you have a really big task, you know, ahead of you in your position, and I thank you for being dedicated to that. Um, you did make a comment that we kind of hit a little bit on in the back, and I just kind of wanted to ask about that. I think you said either
061y'all were getting ready for it or y'all already discussed how the migrants affect the status and the ratings. Is there anything um that y'all are doing different? I know that that's a big a big thing for um for our district and for the you know the testing and everything. So yes. Yes ma'am. President Johnson. So with regard to our migrant students, our EV students, emerging bilingual, with regard to our accountability system, there are three different domains and our domain three has a component where we look at how much are we growing our students, how um are they crossing performance levels. When our students come to the country and we assess them using what we call TEPASS, um we are seeing are we growing our students from their language proficiency from beginning to intermediate, intermediate to
062advanced, advanced to advanced high. And the state looks at how well we are growing our students, our students remaining. At one point we had many of our students that had been here for six plus years still taking the TE pass every year and they're not growing. So there's no reason our students should come to us and then they take our um the TEP pass exam which is a statemandated exam and they're not growing. And so that impacts our campuses domain three score. And I mean it's a big component. And so what we're doing we're ensuring that on our campuses specifically Lincoln and several others as well as TJ Thomas Jefferson they have what's called a newcomer cohort. And so our newcomers have been um specifically and strategically placed in classes so that the support can
063be um easier provided I guess you could say. Um so we're um doing newcomer um newcomer cohorts. We're also of course identifying them to see where they fail with regards to our domain to our students that have been here. They've taken a star exam third, fourth or fifth grade, sixth, seventh and eighth. And if they are not showing growth, they are being strategically identified to participate in after school tutorials and provide in any other sheltered instruction strategies that we can use. So trying to target those students. They're creating monitoring groups for those students so they can track their performance of of those specific students. And so our multilingual and migrant department is very keen on participating when we go and visit campuses. They took plate they took part in our campus visits. We did we
064did a roundabout with all of our campuses to identify students that went backwards. Maybe they mastered STAR the pre this past year or they mastered this past year and they um or I'm sorry maybe they did not meet this year but the previous year maybe they met the standard and so we specifically identified those students so we can target them and so our multilingual and migrant department as well as our sped department visited. that we went as a group as well as our CNI department. And so just trying to come as a group very collaborative and uh helping campuses identify those students that'll give them their biggest bang that count multiple times. You have a student that's emerging bilingual, maybe they're special education, maybe they're African-American, they're counting in several groups for us with regard
065to accountability. >> Okay. Yes, that okay. That's exactly what I was asking and and that's amazing and I think that we're going to get some really good results and everything for that. We definitely have to, you know, hone in on those. And we were talking about that, like I said, in the back with the the language barrier. And a lot of times a lot of things that we're up against that actually count, you know, with us with the star. And that was something that Dr. Porter was explaining to me cuz I'm like, well, how does that count if they don't? He was like, it counts. So, I'm glad that we are we're hitting on that and recognizing that. And I think we're going to see great things for that. So, I definitely um like that.
066And with Miss Cunk, which was my last, I just think it's amazing. Um, our recruitment has went through the roof. I know your job hasn't been easy. Like, I know they keep you busy, but you do it with a smile always and you're bringing certified teachers in on us in a really timely fashion. It's not anything that's taken forever, even, you know, getting people from internationally. So, continue to do the great job you're doing. >> And that's all I have. >> Well, that concludes our staff reports and we are most proud of our staff members. They did a great job and they as they always do. Thank you. Okay, moving on to our minutes. Um, considering if appropriate to approve minutes of the August 28, 2025 board of trustees meeting. Can I get a motion?
067>> Some move for approval. >> Second. >> Okay. It's been moved by trustee vice president Norse and second by secretary Diane Brown. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Moving on to consent agenda. The following items which are of a routine and are recurring nature have been designated consent agenda items by the board president per policy be local. All of the items in the consent agenda will be acted upon by one vote without being discussed separately unless requested by a trustee in which event the item or items will be withdrawn immediately for individual consideration in it normal sequence after the items not requiring separate discussion have been acted upon. I will give the board members a moment to look over numbers 1 through 17 for the consent agenda. Madam President, I'd like to make a motion
068that we accept the consent agenda as follows. >> So move. >> Okay. has been uh moved by trustee Barti and second by trustee Loftton. All in favor? I. >> Any opposed? Okay, that concludes the consent agenda. We'll move on to personnel. Um Dr. Porter, >> President Johnson, board members, I have given you the list of teachers that we are asking for approval. >> Second. >> Okay. It's been moved by Dr. Brown and second by Trusty Barti. Oh, I'm sorry. Trustee Vice President Northeast. I apologize. All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Next, I am asking for your approval for special education compliance supervisor, Mr. Nicholas Johnson. >> So, move for approval. >> Okay. It's been moved by Trustee Northeast and second by Dr. Brownie. All All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Information.
069>> Average daily enrollment 70 7,650. average daily attendance um 95.2. >> Can I get a motion for adjournment?