001all right good evening i called this meeting of the bastrop independence school district to order that the records show that a quorum of board members is present and that this meeting has been newly called and that a notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings at texas government code chapter 551 i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united for which it states one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice will you pray with me dear heavenly father we thank you for this opportunity that we have to come together to do the business of our school district god and i thank you for our school board for our administrators for the teachers for the support staff that sacrifice and do so much for the opportunity to educate and
002to lift up and to support and help our young men and young women grow into the men and women that you created them to be and god we acknowledge these are tough times and there are many challenges ahead but we know that you're bigger than that and so god we ask for your wisdom we ask for your guidance and we ask for your courage to lead well we love you and praise you and thank you in all that we do in your name we pray amen all right this time we'll move into our student speaker mr edwards please introduce our speaker i certainly will and it's my pleasure to introduce our student speaker on character education trait for august which happens to be respect mabel zoo is a senior at the colorado river collegiate academy
003she is a leader in her class and has been the president the vice president and the treasurer of her student council in each of the past three years she is the historian for the national honor society and has recently completed an internship with our school district and the communication and community relations and she did an outstanding job if i do say so myself her service on the bastrop city council youth advisory council as well as uh the superintendent's advisory council thank you again mabel have provided maple an informative base for honing her already well developed leadership skills uh in collaboration and team building mabel's leadership potential is unlimited we look forward to seeing you progress mabel and on top of all this ladies and gentlemen mabel also works full time in the evenings at her
004parents restaurant so maple the floor is yours hello everyone i am very honored today to speak on this month's character trait respect i would like to thank everyone for giving me this wonderful opportunity this afternoon respect according to the oxford dictionary respect is defined as the polite behavior towards or care for somebody or something as children many of us are taught to respect our elders parents teachers traditions school rules peoples and differences and their opinions the act of respect creates a harmonious atmosphere that allows communication to flow through one of the most common phrases we hear about respect is to treat others the way you want to be treated which is also known as the golden rule the quality of respect is prime because it shows that one values another as an individual and that
005they are considerate of the person if you do not respect yourself it will be very challenging for someone else to respect you self-respect is when a person honors their worth takes pride in their potential and takes good care of themselves but self-respect also means accepting the mistakes you make acknowledging that your imperfections and moving forward you can envision self-respect as a type of discipline it takes a certain amount of responsibility to have to be mindful and to be true to yourself earlier last week i read an article by bunty rain and it quoted that we need to remember that respect for ourselves guides our morals and that we need to respect our own selves first there are endless potentialities in each of us hence we need to believe in our strengths once you learn how
006to respect yourself that's when you can show others respect there are many ways to express being respectful and representing the character trait respect such as providing affirmation to someone when you're talking to them and to listen completely and to value their thoughts sometimes some people can be very stubborn sometimes some people can be very negative but we need to be mindful and to have a respectful mindset and prepare ourselves and know that and we also sorry we also have to be mindful that we don't know what happened in other people's lives so we need to be respectful of everything that they do and um a famous quote by the founder of the school inspirational living this was chauvin once said if we can respect the divine within us it can treat us with dignity then
007we can respect others around us thank you [Applause] all right mr edwards that leads us into our spotlight speaker uh thank you very much each month we have the privilege and the honor to uh present programs at the chamber of commerce uh luncheon on and this month our spotlight speaker is dr stephen hen i'd like to introduce uh dr stephen hand he joined bastrop a little over a year ago and we are so happy that he did he serves as our coordinator for p-tech which stands for pathway to technology and work-based learning and is doing an outstanding job as you will see this evening for our students he is a tremendous he has tremendous experience as an educator a researcher and a former director of a career capstone project for high school students uh for
008almost a decade please welcome dr stephen hen as our spotlight speaker and our students of course but you'll introduce them i'm delighted and honored to be with you all this evening thank you so much for a moment to share with you some wonderful successes we experienced over this past summer um i wanted to announce or the the topic of this evening spotlight is our internship program that we ran over the course of the past june through august and what's remarkable about the program is that it was only 10 weeks prior to june so about april time that we learned it was a possibility that we could launch this program and we wrote a grant to the state of texas and in that grant we said how many people do we think we could get involved
009in under 10 weeks and we thought 12 might be a good number of students to get involved pretty you know specifically and rigorously into a quality program what i'm excited to announce this evening is that because of the incredible community support our chamber of commerce and our lead instructors resolve who can't be with us this evening we didn't just land 12 internships we were able to partner 37 students with 23 different businesses in the bastrop community i'm honored to bring in front of you two of those students who are going to share with you their experience briefly and then i'll come back and share a little bit more about the program good afternoon my name is brian gonzalez i'm currently a senior at colorado completely new to me something that offered me a challenge of
010learning my way around something i had never touched before and it gave me insight into problem solving and being able to take up something new over a course period of time hello as mentioned earlier my name is mabel zu and i am a senior this year at the colorado river collegiate academy this summer i also had another great opportunity to work as a student intern with the bastrop isd communications department [Music] i think the most one of the most valuable things i learned through the communications department is to communicate there are actually so many things that go on in this department that i was really surprised about and i'm coming in every single day i grasped and learned something new whether it's from graphic designing or learning about the social media to writing press releases
011and um attending like online meetings to learn more about the depart the department i think that the communications department is filled with such joyful and happy and um role models and i'm glad i had a wonderful opportunity this summer to look up to them and this this internship has strengthened what i want to do in my future so much and i'm just so thankful for it thank you and [Applause] examples of numerous experiences that students had throughout the summer time our our interns experienced authentic high quality working environments and industries including medical educational public safety financial services municipal departments real estate law food service retail entertainment industrial and construction what a remarkable display of our community's wealth of opportunities as well as the support they have for our students our student body that came to
012this experience was strongly diverse as well 62 percent of participants were girls which leaves 38 percent of boys 51 percent of our students that participated were deemed economically disadvantaged 46 percent of them were at risk students ethnically we had 59 of our students who were hispanics 24 were white 8 percent black 3 asian and 5 percent identifying as multiple ethnicities and the representation we had in this program was from all three campuses we're so grateful that we could reach out to such a broad swath of our student body that we could really impact so much of the community throughout our the summer time we had multiple reports of positive experiences and incredible gratitude from the participants and the placements who hosted this year's interns and when we presented at the bastrop chamber of commerce this
013august we received 13 businesses who would like to host future bisd interns what a testament to the quality of our students and the quality of the programming we develop here in bisd this is just the beginning of our efforts to build lasting and meaningful relationships with local businesses for the benefit of all the isd students thank you all so much [Applause] and we really appreciate your efforts of getting those students out there and getting them in those internships we appreciate it thank you all right this time this moves us into our open forum uh what encourages comments from citizens of the district or from district employees anyone that has signed up and wishes to speak either as an individual or as a representative of a group may do so at this time the board asks
014that comments pertain to public education remember that the board may not discuss or act upon any issue that are not posted on our agenda if an issue mentioned is listed on tonight's agenda the board will refer discussion of that issue until the appropriate time during the meeting at no time will the board entertain questions from the audience or ask that all audience be respectful of others speaking and presenting the board has adopted a complaint policy that are designed to secure the lowest administrative level a prompt inequal resolution of complaints and concerns complaints brought by students or by their parents may be heard in accordance with policies fng legal and fnb local we've been taking speakers in the order that the requests were received we allow 30 minutes for open forum and we have 16 speakers
015signed up for this evening therefore i will still grant each speaker two minutes uh to speak and just a friendly reminder uh out there there's a lot of verbage on these forums that you can't mention a a student a faculty or staff or a board member's named presentation all right at this time we'll take our first speaker here good evening my name is philip lohan and i'm a lifetime resident here in bastrop county and i sat on the construction advisory task force for the may bond and i want to talk to you guys today about item c an action item that has to do with the may 2021 bond this item is addressing prevailing wage rates for the constructions projects of those bonds yes yourself what is prevailing wage rates these are the stipulated wages
016that the subcontractors have to pay the construction workers doing work on those projects underneath the bond this before you have given you a copy of the texas government code state statute 2258 that addresses the prevailing wage rates for the public entities using taxpayers monies to build these facilities if you notice on section 2258 section zero two two a one and two it's the determinate determination of the prevailing wage rates there's only two options one is you're going to conduct your own survey as a public entity within the locality of the work that's going to be done or you adopt the department of labor davis baker wages that the government code has request has authorized us to do as well tonight i'm understanding that somebody's going to present you a survey from the texas workforce commission
017has to do with some round rock work and things of that nature has nothing to do with bastrop county it's not even accepted underneath the state statute if you read there's only two options so i want to make sure that i'm asking you here today to table this item so you can make a legal informative decision ask a legal firm for their interpretation we need to make informative decisions to uphold the integrity of this bond as we all know the results of bad business and misinformation out there so i will be here for action item c if you'd like to discuss this but in more depth how you doing i wanted to address the issue with face masks in school and my game plan got changed a little bit but um i wanted to just
018bring out that a lot of 400 children have died of kovid 19 and right now almost 2 000 children are in icu units as we speak the delta variant is surging in bastrop county and travis counties and texas and we need to take better care of our kids but before i had some prepared thoughts i found out today i have two grandsons in bastrop county and my uh one child who went to second grade today for the first time wearing a mask as his parents wished when he got into school the teachers told him masks were not necessary and that you can remove them they're second graders they they respond to people of authority and guess what they did they took their masks off in in spite of what their parents wishes were um all
019the kids removed their mess and are we a no mask school district where you can't wear a mask if that's what you feel like you need to keep your kids safe and what kind of environment are we trying to build in our schools where one group is we're kind of pitting each other you know one side against the other instead of trying to combine them and work together and respect other people's wishes about mass and how to keep our children safe and that's all i have right now thank you thank all right you us to our next speaker uh hi my name is dr maria montoya staten and good evening um i have had children at school here in bastrop by st and they are no longer here one of them is a teacher and
020one of them is doing something else but i'm here because i want to talk to you about mass mandates for children um i was a teacher a principal an associate superintendent in a nearby district where i supervise 40 schools i know a little bit about school districts and how they function and schools and classrooms and how they function during that time there were two things that i learned in regards to this epidemic and what we should be thinking about the first is this idea of in locus parentis right the idea that we take the responsibility as if we were parents of children that end up in our school district and in our classrooms it's that serious it's that big of a deal right so when the kids are not at home they're with us we
021take the parents responsibility as if they were our children now it's difficult when we have some people wanting one thing and some people wanting another however that is not your responsibility yours is to find out what the best interest of the children health and safety what is in their best interest regardless because you will not be able to please everyone who comes to you the second thing that i learned in my over 30 years is this idea of two phrases that keep coming up first as a parent i would receive letters and there were two things in those letters from school districts the first one was in an abundance of caution we always say that when we send a letter home and the second one is for the health and safety health and safety is
022our number one priority that always comes in the letter please think about those things as you decide on what to do about mass mandates thank you all right um today was the first day of my children going back to school as it was for many bisd kids this first day back was very different for me as a parent from previous school years the first day of school is normally filled with nerves and excitement for me as a parent today however i was filled with utter fear and distrust because of our district leaders and its teachers my trust in our district leaders and teachers was shattered last year as i saw things happen in our district that shook me to my core i saw district leaders strip me as a parent of parental rights when it
023came to making health and safety decisions for my children i was forced to mask my children in order for them to receive an in-person education which all three of my special education children needed i saw a teacher try to humiliate my child for standing up and having the courage to speak in front of the school board about how masks made her feel i saw firsthand critical race theory being taught to my children so when i say i'm fearful to trust you as a district and teachers with my children that's an understatement i send my children to you for an education not for health care or healthcare advice so here's my promise to you today my promise to my children i will be watching i will be involved i will call you out when you step
024outside of your educational boundaries you want parent involvement you want parent input well you have it for me there are three seats on this board that are up for re-election next year i am going to promise you that i will seek out members of this community that will have our children's best interest at heart and will get back to the foundation of education and to the second gentleman that spoke just a little while ago he said it best it's the parents wish parents choice the parents choice is all i have ever wanted masks should always be an option not a forced all right our next picture here is stephen uh chamberlain good evening for the record my name is steve chamberlain and i am the county chair for the bastrop county democrat party governor abbott
025has declared open season on our children all the children of texas i am here representing the children of bastrop independence school district i ask you to stand up for them and protect the health and safety of the children of this community i have never before seen where anybody much less our government is trying to tell you to harm our children the cdc and all qualified medical professions professionals have told us that masks save lives if you're trying to make it easy by ignoring safety protocols believe me it will not be easier the power and the responsibility to keep our children safe falls on your backs do you want to look at yourself in the mirror every day for the rest of your life knowing that you're responsible for suffering of covet illness from one child
026from the hospitalization of one child or even the death of a child that was a result of your decision not to mandate mask in his address counseling school for a three-week period a school superintendent said this quote in the end it will be impossible to know if we overreacted or did too much but it will be quite apparent if we under-reacted or did too little end quote again i request the board to mandate mass for all students faculty and staff in the 2021-22 school year thank you [Applause] my next speaker here is uh it's much easier than it looks it's simply rick that they stuck it in there to confuse everything i was born a smith designed so i was grateful to get something a little more interesting when i'm married um i'm here this
027evening to talk to you all and i want to thank you for the opportunity to do so on this first day of school i know you've probably had a very long day um but i'm here to talk to you and ask you implore you to require mass on all bisd campuses and facilities at least until such time that our younger students and younger community members under the age of 12 can receive a vaccine right now they're sitting ducks right now they're forced into situations that put them at grave risk we've seen the numbers have proven that those who are vaccinated are having much less severe cases with this delta round so i'm asking you to protect those those younger ones and to get our community out of a bind that it's in our rates are
028very high and they're increasing i'm also asking you tonight to be a responsible member of our trauma service area because right now our hospitals are slammed we know that we depend on austin all of the rural communities around here are dependent upon austin for health care those the medical professionals are begging for mercy up there right now i've seen numerous districts in trauma service area 0 that we reside in who have mandated the mass policy and i feel like those districts are being responsible to the other members of the district those icu beds up there don't just serve covet patients they serve car accident victims and cardiac patients and all sorts of sorts of very very serious situations and when those beds run out they're out so i'm asking you to take on a responsible
029position as a member of trauma service area zero or o and to implement this mass policy until we can get our numbers under better control i sent this to each of your emails today because i knew i'd be limited on time and i'm not that fast of a reader but i thank you for listening tonight i do appreciate it and i wish you would consider what i had to say thank you thank you [Applause] my name is dina eden and i'm here to request that the school board implement a mask mandate at bastrop isd schools elgin and maynor isds have just implemented mass mandates as have many other school school districts in texas we have two boys that attend bastrop isd schools both are vaccinated and both were wearing masks at school today to protect
030themselves from potential covet infection but also to protect the unvaccinated teachers and students and their families our actions affect others health and safety we should all be responsible my kids were wearing masks in school today because covet cases have surpassed the count per day that we had in july 2020 when the governor initially enforced the mass mandate statewide i don't understand why in a similar situation a mass mandate can't at least be implemented in schools where there's large congregations of people the number of cases are on the rise because despite our governor stating that vaccinations are the surest way to end the pandemic and everyone knows what to do only 43 percent of bastrop county has been vaccinated my kids are wearing masks because my 13 year old son has a friend that lost his
031mother to covet three months ago and we don't want any more lives lost we are wearing masks because hospitals are full and i would hate for someone to be for someone requiring emergency care to be turned away we have to be proactive and take preventative actions washington jr uh i'm gonna pull my mask off i've been vaccinated so i'm good uh my name is charles washington jr i was born and raised in bastrop i'm a proud bastropian proud texan i don't like the word mandate uh because like most texans we don't like people telling us what to do but i think we're in a situation now where we're gonna have to make some changes i have an eight-year-old granddaughter that i delivered this morning to school in meena and she was asking me questions i
032couldn't ask she was saying why don't everybody have a mask grandpa so those are the questions we have to really wrestle with now i understand that we all got thoughts about how this thing should go and i know you all got tough decisions to make but i would ask you to take a look at the fact that kids 12 year old and less cannot get a vaccination so they don't have a choice they either have to come in and and hope that they don't catch anything in a virus disease or if they well mask which has been proven by scientists and the doctors that they got a better chance so if we don't want to mandate or even i don't like the word mandate but require people to our mask at least the kids 12
033years and less let's try to maybe time wise ask them or require them to wow mask until they can be vaccinated those that don't want to be vaccinated my fault there is if you haven't been vaccinated then you need to wear a mask if you've been vaccinated then maybe we don't need demands now this herd immunity thing that we talk about i think once we get to her community maybe we can make some other decisions but right now the last time i checked bastrop canada was at 47 48 where everybody's had the second shot so my plea to you is let's give it a try now for the for the sake of the kids uh because they're innocent they don't know i heard a lady said that you know her son was required to take
034his mask off and so on so i would ask you to consider that thank you very much thank you [Music] [Applause] next speaker thank you all for your service my name is tommy hazelton i have two boys in the school district my oldest son started his day at circa by throwing up in the bathroom because of his anxiety first day nerves how might his anxiety compare to his friend in his class who lost her father about a month ago from cobin how might her anxiety compare to that of a young lady who doesn't want to wear a mask they're pretty much incomparable as you all know texas school board elections are nonpartisan in fact according to the tasb that is because school governance is too important not to be our schools and our educational systems
035must not be influenced by the partisan politics that mar virtually every other arm of government to ensure that we have non-partisan elections with that in mind it is clear that governor greg abbott has grossly overstepped his jurisdiction with his executive order prohibiting school districts from keeping their students teachers and staff as safe as possible this during another massive wave of coba transmission that has left the entire 11 county austin texas area now with one single icu bed we did not vote for governor greg abbott to oversee our school districts no we voted for you so i hereby encourage and challenge you to take your power back from the man who threatens to take away your ability to best serve our district while trying to prohibit you from doing the job that you are elected to
036do i urge you to follow the lead of aisd mainer isd del valley isd elgin isd and on and on in mandate masks in accordance with that of the guidance of the american academy of pediatrics the cdc and now the u.s department of education among others for when and if one of our students or teachers or staff or even one of their family members back home ever needs that lone icu bed in the coming days you will know that you did everything you could to prevent that by following the science instead of the politics of a man who wishes to grossly abuse his power at the expense of the health and safety of our students and against the possibility of the only chance we may have for a successful school year thank you [Applause] all
037right our next speaker is uh good evening uh thank you members of the board for your your service to our children and our communities um i've worked with several of you over the last year to help vaccinate thousands and thousands of people here in this county uh you know through a partnership with bisd i am not going to i am in favor of a mass mandate i have two sons attending bastrop middle school bastrop high school i what i don't have right now is enough of a sense of urgency that i can convey to you that you should really act on this lugerville isd austin isd hayes isd elgin isd all of these school districts have basically implemented a mass mandate there's a reason for it the delta variant is not something to screw around
038with i urge you in the past y'all listened to the guidance of desmara walks look to travis county where she's at right now look to what she is recommending and please act on that right now like many people have said we have zero or you know very few icu beds i think the number might actually be three today it was one yesterday the test positivity rate in bastrop county right now is almost double what it is in travis county our active case count per you know person that lives in this county is is significantly higher than travis county our the people of bastrop county are over represented overrepresented in the hospitals in the austin metro area right now the breakthrough rates for uh for covid and the delta variant are extremely high especially with the
039visor vaccine herd immunity in bastrop county we are going to need to vaccinate about another 20 000 people before we reach that the pre-pre-symptomatic transmission rate of the delta variant is four days which is significantly longer than it was for pre for the previous variants the uh thank you [Applause] our next speaker is i'm amy ferris i have a daughter who is 11 years old and eligible to be vaccinated at this point and i hate wearing this mask i want these masks to be temporary but i wear this mask every day because i don't want to be part of the problem of the spread of covet my daughter had a really really tough year last year she was she was hospitalized three times in a mental health institution she couldn't go to school but she
040is not in school today because we won't expose her or me if if i have an immune disease so i am vaccinated but i have an autoimmune disease and if something happens to me my child ends up in foster care that's the truth so you guys need to look at the bigger long-term consequences of kobet she needs her special education she needs to be there every day and be and feel safe she went to a camp a couple weeks ago got her first exposure so we had to quarantine we did that because we also have a nana at home that we need to take care of and make sure she can survive because she wouldn't survive a flu let alone covet at her age and weakness this is everybody's issue i'm asking to protect you
041you mask to protect me you don't mask you're part of the problem and i encourage you to think very seriously about the long-term consequences for kids when they're not in school and they're not protected thank you our next speaker is cheryl lee good evening my name is cheryl lee and i'm here to ask that the bisd require mass for all students and staff worldwide deaths right now are over four million united destiny united states six six hundred thousand texas deaths fifty four thousand bastrop county deaths 113 with only 49 of our county vaccinated online sources report that august 2021 was reported to be the worst month for cases in bastrop county as of august 15th we are averaging 64 cases per day a 48 increase since august 1st since august 1st there have been a
042reported 817 cases and five deaths in bastrop county your own website shows the number of cases among your own staff and students has increased tremendously since august 9th our county is extremely high risk right now of unvaccinated people and among those 25 percent are our children yes children tend to have less severe symptoms but they can still contract the disease and spread the virus so i'm asking you to override the mandate and require mass be worn in school not just for their safety but for everyone in their household and in their community i ask you all what is worth for our worst for our kids and our families mask or intubation as a school district's policy making body you have a duty to uphold the system of public education and ensure the health and safety
043of our kids so whatever decision you make do so do so knowing it will without a doubt have a negative impact on our entire community if you do not do something to protect our kids have the courage to do the right thing and protect this community and require masks for all students and staff everyone under the umbrella of bisd is not about freedom and rights it's about the public health and health and safety of our community thank you for your time [Applause] all right our next speaker is my name is annie mars resident of bastrop county this evening you are listening to concerned citizens who are giving their reasons why they want you to mandate the wearing of masks i would like to take a different approach for you to consider in favor of mandating
044masks i have listened to the doctors of the cdc and of sid rap i am 100 convinced that the wearing of a mask by students by staff by vaccinated and unvaccinated it is the right thing to do by doing the right things for students and staff both vaccinated and unvaccidated you are also therefore doing the right thing for the entire general population of bastrop county i am confident that if you will listen to that interior voice if you listen with both your head and heart to that interior voice you will know that the mandating of wearing masks is the right thing to do please i implore you listen to that interior voice do the right thing mandate the wearing of [Applause] all masks next figures can you hear me thank you so um good evening
045my name is isabel ford i have a sixth grader at the bastrop intermediate um she spent the last year at home doing virtual she did great she got all a's she mastered every single section of the star test and this year we were told that ritual is no longer going to be an option she's going to have to go to school and she was going to have to well she there would be no more mass mandates so we went to meet the teacher and it was pretty much business as usual with a couple of hand sanitizer stations and um them being told that they have to take water bottles instead of using the water film all i could really think about at that point was that we recently had a bond that you know i
046voted on we approved everybody wanted this it was for the betterment of the you know the community the you know we listened to the isd they said that this was going to be improvements and expansions and of our facilities and it was for the future of our kids and so of course we all said yes we needed it but it frustrates me that our district doesn't seem to be thinking about that future anymore you know we have other districts that have shown grit and said you know no we are going to do what's best for our kids we're going to make that decision regardless of what you tell us and we have other districts that have been innovative and said we're going to include the masks in the dress code or we're going to allow
047the kids that don't want to wear masks to be in separate classrooms so that way they still have that choice if they don't want to wear them and our district has done nothing um our kids can't get vaccinated if they're you know under the age of 12. and our district has basically just sent out the email for you know putting out feelers if we wanted to do virtual yesterday the day before school started so my kid went to school today she wore a mask and she said most everybody did not i'm asking if we can please consider mandating masks for the future um i don't want us to lose any of our kids to covet i don't want to have to see another gofundme for one of our kids on facebook i'm asking for us
048to i'm asking for you to do what we did we voted for the future and i'm asking for you to consider doing this thing thank you [Applause] our next speaker is my name is emily etheridge and i'm a junior at circa i would like bastrop isd to follow austin del valle san marcos manor pluckerville and other central texas isds in requiring masks for all students and staff the cdc strongly recommends masking for all members of communities with high transmission rates of code with 19 and bastrop county is currently classified in the extremely high transmission category i understand that to mandate masks would be to violate governor abbott's decisions but this is a necessary step to protect the health of our community with governor abbott's recent positive cova test result i think we should follow the
049clear science the health authorities are providing and wear masks i have started a petition in support of requiring masks which has already been signed by students teachers parents and other community members representing every campus in the district here are a few quotes from the comments left on the petition masking is a simple step that will protect the county as a whole as a teacher i'm so excited to have all my students return in person but we can only have a successful start if everyone wears a mask follow the cdc when it comes to our public health and safety instead of making this a political or freedom issue with other districts defying the governor's order bisd does not have their hands tied the health of all students is in the hands of the school board alone
050to sign the petition track the results and view the rest of the comments visit mask bisd.com every day without a mass requirement is a needless risk [Applause] all right our next speaker is um it it's michelle sappho sure uh so i am a bashful county resident i have been an esl teacher for 13 years and my husband is currently studying to become a nurse so i would like to take a more personal approach as to why we need maths in school we all know that kids are gross they carry and swap germs like it's the wild west i remember when the flu ripped through my pre-k class a few years ago within a week over half the class of 26 students and myself got sick even if children tend not to get as seriously sick
051as adults they can be silent super spreaders passing the virus between home and school i also lived in taiwan for two years as an esl teacher to elementary school students i was surprised initially how many children and adults wore masks during the winter or whenever they were sick i especially thought it would affect my ability to teach and their ability to learn if communication might be stifled by a math in fact i found myself getting physically closer to the students because i was no longer afraid one would cough directly into my face further i saw that neither students nor i got as sick as in my previous experience i can't prove that face masks directly caused this but i know that wearing a mask won't hurt me and might certainly prevent a serious consequence we
052require children to sit in car seats and to use seat belts to prevent serious injury in case of an accident we have designated non-smoking areas to reduce the risk of second-hand smoke we even require vaccines for students to attend public school at this historic time i urge you to require the use of math in school thank you for your our time i want to thank the school board i know you have to make a lot of tough decisions and from what i hear the pay is not so great so thank you for volunteering your time i really do appreciate it the cdc has recommended universal indoor masking in schools those are the smart people our governor in disagreement with those smart people those scientists has stated we cannot act on this recommendation some districts as
053you know some nearby districts have defied this order and the courts for now seem to back them up i would ask uh or i would recommend if it's not already been discussed that uh the board consider a certain minimum number of covet cases or exposures that would trigger a mandatory mask wearing indoors throughout the district classrooms in most of our schools if you talk about elementary 23 kids max mostly it's 23 kids 24 ad in the teacher that's 24 people in a closed in classroom breathing the same air if the covet numbers reach a certain number the option for school districts to change the mass policy us to change the mass policy would be a comfort and would be appreciated thank you [Applause] all right that will conclude our opening this time we'll move into
054our superintendent report and uh the next item will be a financial report financial update josh i'll do it this way we'll do it old-fashioned there you go all right good evening it's a pleasure to see you again it's been a couple of months uh since i visited with you about the finance plan for your uh may bond election i'm coming to you tonight to give you the results from the bond election so so last week on monday we were able to go out in the national capital markets and sell your bonds in an all in true interest cost of 2.26 percent let's say that again we sold 30-year debt at 2.26 uh which we are very pleased by in terms of what that means to taxpayers at the time of the election we had assumed
055an interest rate of three and a half when we visited with the board back in june we were thinking 287 based upon the structure offered up to investors we came back at 226 what that truly means to you is your bond payments your anticipated bond payments are roughly 47.6 million dollars than less thought based upon the results of the sale you will actually receive your bond proceeds next thursday on august 26th the second part to the bond program or this particular finance plan was to refinance a portion of your existing bonds at a lower interest rate we were able to take bonds that had a four percent interest rate and lower that all the way to a 0.6 that saved taxpayers an additional million dollars so based upon the results of that particular refunding program
056since 2011 uh the district has now completed 10 different refunding programs and pre-paid over 11.7 million dollars a bond saving taxpayers just less than 41.5 million dollars of reduction of interest cost savings if you look at this this is a bond buyer index it gives you a general indication of what municipal interest rates are doing you'll see the historical low is 2.02 when we sold the bonds last week it was 2.04 so we didn't hit the lowest level but we came very close and that is why you got to see the results that you did in terms of investor interest we had a lot of investor interest over 341 million dollars of orders from investors came in on the transaction that allowed us to lower yields on each of the bonds anywhere from one to
057three basis points so a very good bond sale and in terms of the number of investors we had several committing capital of more than five million you'll see the ones listed here but simmons bank put in orders for over 42 million dollars in and of itself first republic 38 million full-time advisors 25 and you'll see the very large bond investors there so good participation your bonds went to several different places investment managers trust bond portfolios insurance companies so every different segment of the market was represented on your bond sale one of the things we do every time we go sell bonds is we go get an independent review from the rating agencies in this case we went to moody's in snp where they provided a rating on your bonds of double a3 and double a
058minus respectively those are excellent ratings but you also sold your bonds with the permit school fund guarantee you got the automatic triple a ratings but through their independent review they talked about why the district is so highly rated they talk about the location of the district obviously the strong economy that you go through but more importantly in the speaks to the management of the district they talk about your healthy reserves they talk about your management practices that give you financial stability those things led these investors to buy your bonds where you got such a low rate so those are the results of your sale congratulations i finally got the confetti to work on the screen i'll be happy to answer any questions you have [Applause] mr mclaughlin we really appreciate your firm and your hard
059work and efforts it's really exciting news fantastic this weekend and so we're really excited doesn't have any questions that's two things to be excited about past the taxpayers some money so thank you for your help we appreciate your services it's our pleasure all right thank you for the opportunity i would like to take a few moments to introduce your police department to you here they are i will tell you the pictures that uh nick took they added about 10 pounds to a couple of so i'm just going to say that up front yeah they are they are current that happened the other day uh your police department currently has 13 sworn positions um out of those 13 sworn positions we also have one administrative services person uh we have an i.t person we have two
060night watchmen out of those 13 sworn we have 213 years of combined law enforcement experience between us i possess probably half of that they pointed that out this summer alone we had over 1800 hours of training that we also attended this summer alone we're already planning on additional training during professional development days and also next summer part of those training days we're going to we collaborated with the bastrop county sheriff's department police department and the bastrop fire department we met again today and we're already planning to do additional training as a collaborative group together and so that's the way we're going to make sure we keep this community safe and our kids the same as we can is by working with our law enforcement our first responder partners we have monica langley she runs the
061show her quietness doesn't say enough about all the stuff that she does for us colin shadow was promoted to lieutenant this year colin is now enlisted in what's called the lcc it's leadership command college it's put on by what we call lehman law enforcement management institute of texas it's a highly sought after school it takes oftentimes a couple of years to even get in there clinton aggie with the bastrop police department is also trying to get in at this time it's a very sought after program we also promoted this year jesse diehl's sergeant jesse just got through attending what's called the fbi leader training it's a trilogy class leda stands for law enforcement executive development association and so he was just finally able to complete that the other officers that we have on the list
062is caleb smith caleb was at bastrop high school caleb was also on the list right now waiting for a canine we have been risk ben is also assigned to bastrop high school we have uh officer chelsea deal she is also has canine blanca and is attached to cedar creek high school we have matt camarillo he's also at cedar creek high school we have officer lance barner at bastrop middle school we have officer jason hetrick he's at cedar creek middle school we have officer christina moyet she is at bastrop intermediate school she is brand new to our police department we have officer brian adams he's also brand new to the police department he's at cedar creek intermediate school we have caleb barnes she is our administrative services kind of our lead investigator we have freddie nunes
063who is also attached as an investigator but she was assigned to red rock elementary paul coy he called me on as i was coming here he wasn't able to make it tonight it was disappointing for him but he had some personal stuff he had to take care of paul as you all well know has almost 30 years in this district and he knows this place inside and out and i cannot express how much he brings to this district same thing with weyland dwylen has stepped up to the plate of the night watch when they know everything and anything and people are supposed to be in and out about we talked about monica and then we have kyle simpson who's over our technology all of our officers are mental health officer certified we have one officer
064that's emt certified and we have two that are becoming emt certified currently we have one that's an lvn and so we have a vast amount of experience currently this week they all are assigned to an elementary school in the morning as we know the first couple days of school all the parents want to be involved and actively there and so it causes some traffic pattern problems so we're there to help in the morning they're also back at 2 30 in afternoon to help with those elementary sex and so as they leave their school and myself and colin and jessie deal will step in their absence until they can get back so we don't leave school uncovered today was very busy for all of us and it continues to be busy i'm continuing getting test messages
065about things that are going on and so we answered a lot of calls i i want to tell you as i go around and do different things and visit with other chiefs of other areas whether they're isd or whether municipalities or sheriffs and you hear different things that go on in different areas i'm ever so grateful for y'all and two young we have an unbelievably supportive board a legal support superintendent and a community just the other day i was getting out of my car and a lady had pulled up next to me and if you can't see on this little pink note it says thank you and so she was going to leave it on my car but she tried to really catch me real quick to make sure that she understood how i was
066appreciated and attended the corvette invasion and if i heard it once i heard it 500 times thank you for your service that's the community in which we live in and so we're so grateful to be a part we're so grateful to serve this community and we're grateful each one of you and so we really really want to say thank you thank you for the opportunity we have to serve this district and to serve each [Applause] the way you handle uh students in our district and situations and uh this board is is a hundred percent behind you there's several on this board that voted to start uh the police department and so we always have a goal of growing each year and it's really great to see the numbers that we're seeing tonight and that are
067presented to you and so we're here for you and we really appreciate what you do thank you [Applause] all right moving along on our agenda the operations department report is for information only which leads us into communications and community relations report we have the 2020 2021 ace grant update uh thank you once again for the opportunity to share the good things that are happening in our ace program as you might recall our ace program program is a structured after-school program designed to provide academic support including tutorials and enrichment activities for our kids in grades k through 8 at 10 campuses the elementary intermediate and middle school campuses as we all know last year was quite a challenging year with covet but i'm very proud of our ace team and that we were able to take
068those challenges and turn them into opportunities in the past we had always had to um think about ace in terms of serving kids in person at the beginning of last year we discovered we weren't able to do that that we had limitations on the number of kids that we were able to serve staffing limitations and so it forced us to think outside the box one of the ways that we did that was by implementing virtual tutorials we created a schedule recruited some teachers and shared that schedule with principals teachers and parents through social media and other other means and invited all of our students in k-8 to be part of our virtual tutorial program and so it wasn't just ace students but it was any students that could that could log on and be part
069of those virtual tutorials and it was it was wonderful to see that we were able to impact not just the kids who were traditionally part of the ace program but other kids as well one of our teachers who worked with kindergarten students bilingual and english speaking students ms shotwell she noticed that the two the students who had been in tutoring with her virtually um had made significant progress and in fact had made considerable considerable gains in at least two of the four language domains that she was working on and so she actually has asked us this year she has volunteered to be a tutor for every day that we want her so we're definitely going to take her up on that another area where we expanded our program was by partnering with campus teachers at
070the elementary level to provide something we call breakfast bunch as you know students have the opportunity to eat breakfast in the classroom but we found that sometimes teachers didn't have a clear idea of what what else those students could be doing and so we offered to share videos of storybooks for younger students and chapter books for older elementary students we provided them with the the read aloud videos our older students had quizzes that the kids could take as part of the classroom and by being part of the breakfast bunch the students were automatically considered part of east programming and so we invited them to take part in our family events and also in our summer program one of our elementary teachers i'm sorry one of our elementary coordinators miss ferris at cedar creek elementary she
071took it a step further and she actually would spend part of her day in the classroom with her breakfast bunch students bringing them activities to go along with the the readings that they had for breakfast bunch and so looking ahead to this upcoming school year we're energized and excited about the opportunities to continue some of those things that that we've we started last year um we want to continue breakfast bunch and expand that in class presence of our ace coordinators we also want to make sure that we are enhancing enhancing targeted interventions for both in-person tutorials but also our online tutorials and continue to offer that as an option for students we plan on introducing ace in the am for our intermediate and middle school campuses we are going to as i mentioned can continue
072to offer our online tutorials we'll be offering more community-based family events expanding our partnerships with community organizations and encouraging community voice through our ace community advisory council are there any questions any questions well thank you thank all right this you us into our consent agenda would any board member like to pull any consent agenda item or discussion if not i will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented i'll move all right this moves us into our action items here we consider approval of resolution to bisd student code of conduct miss baker good evening board members and mr edwards i am here tonight to present to you the proposed student code of conduct for the 2021-20-2022 school year due to this being a legislative year we do have a few changes so
073i wanted to highlight some of those for you the definition of an e-cigarette was expanded to include additional language that aligns to state law or the texas health and safety code basically what that means is they addressed some of the components that make up e-cigarettes so if students are found in possession of those we can respond accordingly senate bill 530 expands the offensive harassment under the texas penal code to include publishing on a website including a social media platform repeated electronic communications that are reasonably likely to cause emotional distress abuse or torment to another person therefore the offense of cyber bullying has been delineated separately from the offensive bullying and this is in recognition of the additional attention school districts are expected to pay to claims of bullying or similar offenses with that being said
074i do want to take this opportunity to talk about some of the things that bastrop isd has already had in play so we're kind of one step ahead of that so for example last year we reconfigured or restructured our bullying procedures and we align them to the texas safe texas school safety model and then we already offer mediation to our students if they're willing to participate when some sort of harm is done or when it's related to a bullying type circumstance so for example this last school year we had five students involved in an allegation of bullying traditional consequences were applied to those that were found to be participating in bullying types of behavior but what was different about last year is we were able to bring all five of those students together and talk
075about what harm was done it allowed the victim to be able to share how they felt as being a victim of bullying and then it also allowed the opportunity for the bully to take accountability and ownership of his or her actions and so those students were all within the same classroom and by doing that they were able to go back into the classroom without any further incidents for the remainder of the school year another thing that the district did proactively is we purchase bullying prevention kits for elementary campuses so during the month of october we have already implemented um utilizing these kits because october is bullying prevention month and we've been working in collaboration with our newly named coordinator of counseling and so our counselors will help implement these lessons on our campuses for the
076elementary levels and then the student services department in collaboration with cni and specifically our digital learning team um we got together and the digital learning team did a phenomenal job in developing lesson plans that teachers can use during the first nine days of school to address being a good digital citizen being responsible when using electronics and then also reviewing our expectations so the next thing i'm going to talk about is um another change is they included definitions for invasive visual recording and basically what that is is recording that is promoting intimate visual material in the list of student code of conduct definitions so if any of these types of incidents were to happen it will allow us to define it more clearly and then be able to address it as needed and then we also
077adjusted a list of mandatory daep offenses to only include those offenses mandated by statute or what we refer to as chapter 37 or appendix e and we move those offenses previously included in that section for mandatory placements at dap to the general types of prohibited conduct and one of those offenses was harassment so prior to this change harassment may have been addressed by maybe a day of iss or out of school suspension but now the new legislation has said that is a mandatory daep placement and then finally we further defined offenses and consequences related to misconduct that might happen during remote instruction as we know right now we we are not a remote district but if for some reason a student had to transition to remote learning our student code of conduct would be applied
078to that setting because it is a school-related um activity are there any questions from the board or from mr edwards mr thanks for updating us on this just out of curiosity reading through that uh i know the things that the state mandates and i know that would change fighting years ago to uh principal to their discretion is there anything else in here that's to the principal's discretion as long as the discipline is one of our goals right so some things are laid out for us that are that are mandatory and they tell us either you can be placed in dap or possibly jj aep which is our boot camp there are several things that we do have discretion over um we have a process for our administrators that allows them to look at the offense
079and then they also take into the considerations that chapter 37 requires us to do to look at the intent of the individual whether or not they were acting in self-defense and then also do they understand the wrongfulness of his or her actions and then they're able to look at that and then also ask themselves some additional questions like did the behavior pose an imminent danger or um was it a safety concern to others and as they go through that process then absolutely they can make a proposal to place out of a classroom or off campus is as needed and so those proposals come to your department correct yes and we do a lot of collaborating and discussing and walking through those and i will say i think it's benefited our district i think it ensures
080that we're being consistent across our district as well and then you mentioned fighting uh fighting is a discretionary placement at a dap but we do have um if there are extenuating circumstances involved within fighting maybe it was premeditated where they said meet me in the restroom or after school during this time maybe they planned to record it and post it on social media and so if it meets some of those circumstances then we can definitely review that discuss it and um propose a placement at dap great and i asked that question just for the board's knowledge of the process and that's in place and i would just continue to encourage to get the we are and i appreciate the question as well and i do want to um let you know that our administrators i
081think we have a great partnership um it's always an open line of communication if they reach out to my department i try to get back to them in a timely manner or as much as pos you know as soon as possible because we also don't want to delay the process because there are certain timelines that we have to meet but um i think it's been a very positive partnership so i appreciate it thank you very much okay so i recommend that the board approve the 2021 2022 student code of conduct that's a move to be held in september uh anger busy lady tonight on our journey absolutely good evening mr president superintendent edwards and board of trustees so this evening i'm providing a very short brief presentation on our proposed tax rate for 2122. let
082me get this roman okay this is all information you have seen previously but due to the budget adoption in september we have a budget i'm sorry a tax rate hearing we're presenting this to you this evening for just a reminder so this first slide illustrates our tax rate over the past 10 years we did see a four penny decrease in 2013 on the debt service side and then we've referred to the debt service as the interest and sinking or ins tax rate um we were then very consistent for the next 10 years that followed i'm sorry next six years that followed and then beginning in 2019 for the following three years we will be decreasing the tax rate on the maintenance and operation side by an average of 5.6 pennies per year which is attributable
083to house bill 3 which coming out of the 86 in 2019. so looking at this information a little differently in table three you can easily see that we decreased seven cents in 1920 we decreased them another five pennies in 2021 and again we're making a recommendation to decrease the mno by 4.8 pens for the upcoming tax year so this will result in a total tax rate decrease of nearly 17 cents over the past three years and again that's attributable to house bill 3. so um breaking down all the components of the tax rate we've calculated a compressed tax rate of 82.2 cents plus five enrichment pennies for a total mno tax rate of 87.2 cents and that's compared to 92 cents in a prior year and then our interest and sinking rate maintained at 40.1
084cents and that's an overall tax rate of 1.273 again nearly five pennies down from prior year so therefore it is our recommendation that the board approved the proposed tax rate as presented for publication and consideration of adoption at the september 21st meeting at this time i recommend the board approved the above tax rate to be published and adopted the september board meeting second sentence prevailing wage laws require all on-site employees to be paid fair wages benefits and overtime weekly while working on government-funded construction projects at a minimum dollar threshold of two thousand dollars the texas statute government code 2258.021 only requires payment of the prevailing wage for similar work in the same locality this section does not specify how to conduct a wage survey to make that determination so the district has worked with our
085legal counsel and with american constructors to provide a prevailing weight schedule published by the texas workforce commission for our area and that's included in your board packet this evening because the texas workforce commission collects that data and is in the business of collecting that data for use by businesses individuals and entities it's very reasonable for us to use that information as the underlying basis for the district's prevailing wage determination as due diligence we did compare the schedule with those of surrounding districts and were consistent with best practices so it is our recommendation the board approved the adoption of the prevailing weight schedule as determined by the texas workforce commission i'd just like to note that i visited mr edwards on this the school did get two independent attorneys this time i'll entertain a motion i
086move i recommend the board approve the adoption of the prevailing wage schedule as determined by the texas workforce commission for austin ralrock msa and rural capital area wdave all right we'll now consider approval of extending paid sick leave a resolution for the fall semester family's first coronavirus response act expired on december 31 2020 which provided up to 80 hours of emergency paid sick leave related to cover 19 for qualifying reasons on january 19 21 the board adopted a resolution to extend a similar provision to employees to assist during the continuation of the pandemic this has assisted the district tremendously with retention and employee morale throughout this challenging one and a half years that provision recently expired on june 30th and now with the rising surge of the delta variants we're bringing forward an extension of
087that resolution throughout the first semester and then we'll reevaluate things at that time so it's therefore recommended that the board approve the extended paid sick leave resolution for the fall semester as presented i'll make a motion to extend basically resolution legislative change to tasby d.e.c yes dec local addresses compensation and benefits and leaves and absences recent statutory changes require peace officers to be provided mental health leave and quarantine leave these laws require policy change for any school district with commissioned peace officers so i recommend the board approve the policy change in tesbi policy dec local as presented will entertain a motion at this time i recommend the board approve the policy change and tasby policy pec local x as presented we have a motion second second all right thank you thank you all right now
088we'll consider approval staff development good evening mr meeting mr edwards and board members um happy tuesday i come to you tonight to have the board consider the approval of a staff development minutes waiver so first a little bit of background house bill 2442 dictates our operational instructional minutes in the state of texas we are required and they are set by the state at 75 600 instructional minutes for an academic school year starting with the 2018-2019 school year the agency um actually allowed for a staff development minutes weight uh waiver that allows us to use 2 100 minutes and no more than that for professional development purposes without extending the academic school year so in essence these minutes count as part of your 75 600 instructional minutes each district has a discretion of how to apply
089those for example last year you approved this waiver and our teachers were able to do additional preparation and what we call plc or professional learning development days where they work on their lesson plans so the main requirement of this waiver is that we not exceed 2 100 minutes so just like last school year we are recommending that we utilize uh just one day so 450 instructional minutes for professional development of those 2100 minutes that are allowed in order to make this happen we need your permission so i'm happy to answer entertain any questions that you might have about the staff development professional waiver or i can ask that you approve it are there any questions is this already built into the schedule it is yes it's it's uh very similar we structured our calendar very
090similar to what we did last year and we had um stakeholder input from parents to teachers to our committee being made up of 75 percent of teachers um and it's a it's a structure that works for us and the state allows this uh for us to use since 2018 it's also just good to have uh thinking through weather situations other things that that might come but this does deal primarily with professional development in mind without having to extend this school year so i think teachers feel really good about it our parents do as well i recommend the board approve the staff development minutes waiver is presented second thank you thank you all right move along here we'll consider approval of a minimum of understanding including between bastrop isd communities and schools of social dr lee
091good evening uh so you know we've had a relationship with communities in schools the last couple of years that place is a social worker on every elementary intermediate middle school campus and and gateway excuse me not middle school elementary intermediate and gateway and so this is just an extension of that relationship for the 21 22 school year um to recommend we continue that partnership so i come before you seeking your approval for us to do that dr lee i had a question is this is this coming from funds or is this something that is in our regular budget it is not coming from extra funds well it's a partnership so they provide some funds and we provide sometimes i recommend the board approve the memorandum of understanding including addendum between bastrop isd and communities and
092schools of central texas as presented all right we have a motion a second second say yes so this is the first time actually that we have had this mou request arrangement friends of the children is a mentoring organization and these mentors start with a child in kindergarten and the same mentor follows that student through their entire education career through graduation and so we do have a couple of our of students who are now in bastrop isd that haven't always been and their mentors want to continue that relationship they don't always do their mentoring inside the school system but that is one of the places that they do mentoring including in the home and in the community so we would like to have this mou in place with friends of the children to benefit those students
093who are in bisd who have had long-standing mentors is this outsourcing these are existing mentors from other wherever they wherever they started out with that child in kindergarten oh okay so they were in another district we might try to steal them i'm not going to say that we won't but if they were in the district the mentor follows them wherever they go yes any other questions i recommend the board approve the memorandum of understanding include an addendum between bastrop isd and and the friends of and friends of the children austin has presented thank you so much for your support okay i moved to endorse the candidacy of terence owens to the capacity board of directors second any discussion okay um thank you