001[Applause] good evening the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Board of Trustees is now convened in a board work session on Thursday November 7th 2024 at 6 p.m. in the boardroom the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Mar Henry administration building for the purpose of reviewing the portion of Monday November 11th 2024 regular board agenda designed as action items to hear designed reports recognitions posted in the meeting noce as required by Texas law I want to welcome the members of our audience and those viewing online to the Board of Trustees meeting we're here to set goals listening reports approve budgets contracts personal appointments and make policy for the district it's not the role of the board to make DayDay operations the management of the DayDay operations of the district the responsibility superintendent we have policies and procedures
002in place to resolve concerns and issues this mean the Board of Trustees being held in the public is not a meeting of the public and the audience members must participate in the meeting outside of designated agenda items are not allowed the meeting will be conducted in an Orly efficient manner in accordance with Texas law and the local policy to achiev this goal parti participants as well as those in the audience are expected to abide by the rules obtained in the school board policies private meeting board members received information related to items tonight's agenda agenda items may not represent those handled by an order of the notice during the meeting the board May determine that a Clos session is necessary in that event the board will meet in Clos session to consider matters duly posted of
003the meeting as per by sections 551.071 through 55108 of the Texas government code these proceedings are airing live on the district website they're also available on the district website following tonight's meeting for the video to adequately reflect the proceedings I respectfully ask you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and your cell phones are turned off or in silent mode thank you for your time and join us this evening in your interest in the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District the invocation Pledge of Allegiance vision and Mission remarks and announcements board comments and citizen presentation will be presented at the regular board meeting on Monday November 11 2024 at the at open meetings of the board patrons who have registered in accordance with procedur establish in bed regulation May address the board on the agenda
004comments prior to the board's consideration of the action item unless the agenda is otherwise rearranged for the board president during the meeting agenda item comments will be generally be taken before each agenda item however because Texas open means does not require government body to hear a complaint or charge against the public official or employee in a meeting agenda comments must address the complaints or concerns against individuals being heard in close session and be moved and taken out of order meeting participations are advised that speaking during the meeting does not I make a create immunity and statements made that may violate those for rights of others including defamation or invasion of privacy are not protected if a speaker is unsure of the legal effect of his or remarks the speaker should seek legal advice in advance
005for detail information regarding tonight's speaking assignments or comments sipation please go to website at cyer sd.net patrons who have registered to speak tonight will see their names on the order list on the screen behind me before your name is called please move forward and sit in one of the seats reserved on the front row when you approach the podium you'll see your monitor inside the podium when it's time to begin speaking this presentation time will be displayed on the monitor you'll see a 30 second and a 15sec wrapup for your comments the time will be set in accordance with the number of speakers for this evening we'll now proceed to reports portion of the agenda for a the administration will provide an update on health pace and K level courses class Rank and GPA report
006provided in August we do have 10 speakers if I could have um Stacy McDaniel and Mary Caroline estri come forward and Stacy you're up first please you don't have two minutes good evening thank you for allowing me to speak to you guys again tonight recently I attended one of the public meetings and while I was pleased I was not surprised to hear so much positive feedback from parents and community members in support of keeping Pace as a graduation requirement the message was clear people see the unique value that pace brings to our students Pace isn't just another class it's where students learn the real life skills they need to succeed in high school and Beyond the course empowers students with tools like understanding GPA developing strong study skills effective communication giving back to their community
007and exploring future College and Career paths these are essential life skills ones that truly enable students to take control of their Futures over time we've shared the importance of our curriculum in depth and by now I hope you've each taken time to ask questions explore the curriculum and see for yourselves why pace is so important to keep as a graduation requirement it's still unclear why we're considering removing this requir we've heard that it's to align with Texas graduation requirements and to offer students more Choice while I fully support the idea of choice pace is the class that give students the foundation to understand their choices and pay students learn about their options in high school industry certifications dual credit AP courses elective paths all of which contribute to their college career and Military Readiness points
008it's there where we teach students about meaningful Pathways available to them and Empower them with knowledge to make informed decisions when I shared the possibility of removing Pace with former students they said why would we get rid of of it who's going to teach us about colleges they were concerned that they would lose out on something important Pace was a breath of fresh air for them their freshman year a supportive place during a challenging transition they found stability guidance and purpose a class that truly meant met them where they were our district places a high value on data- driven decisions yet I have not seen data supporting the removal of pace as a graduation requirement just because other districts don't offer it doesn't mean it's not valuable for our students if anything the fact that
009we have pace is one of the things that sets us apart something that gives CF see students in Advantage pace is more than just a class it's a Launchpad for students to confidently go into the future with skills they can use for a lifetime thank you thank you Mary please followed by Shannon Thomas hi my name is MC East and I'm a ninth grade student at Cypress Ranch High School as a student I believe we should keep the requirements of pace and health I'm currently in Pace and I feel like it is important for our future success study skills teach us how to manage our time stay organized and study effectively making a big difference in our academic success it also helps us in the future with different tasks exploring College and Career options allows
010us to discover our interests and passions helping us make informed decisions about our future we spend two weeks exploring different electives to help us make the best choice for our classes later on in high school this class isn't just about getting good grades it's about equipping us with the tools we need to thrive in school and Beyond It prepares us for the challenges ahead and inspires us to chase our dreams with confidence as for health learning about physical emotional and mental health is crucial for us as students understanding physical health helps us recognize the importance of exercise nutrition and sleep which are vital for our energy and focus in school emotional health teaches us how to manage our feelings build resilience and develop healthy relationships with others mental health awareness helps us identify Stress and
011Anxiety equipping us with tools to cope and and seek help when needed by learning about all three aspects we become more well-rounded this knowledge helps handle the pressure of school and life which can lead to improved self- performance and happiness it also empowers us to prioritize our well-being please choose to keep pace and health as a requirement for all students thank you thank you Shan Thomas followed by Amanda mahim good evening I'm happy to be here again in support of keeping the pace curriculum as a required course in our district this is just one course and one way that we set ourselves apart from other districts thank you to the board members and to Dr Killian who read and responded to my email regarding the importance of keeping Pace in our district after attending several
012of the public forum meetings it is refreshing to see the parents support that this course has received this course is the first step in setting our students up for success and creating a great creating a path to Greatness postsecondary this course is also where our College Academy students get their start to earning their associates degree while also earning their high school diploma our College Academy students have already applied to lonar College created a professional email where they can receive all of their college correspondents completed their four-year plans over a two-e period with our counseling staff and myself learned how to calculate their GPA and semester average and the possible implications of exempting one class over another together my students and I work with each other to help them obtain the goals while making informed decisions
013that are up to them these students are learning how to get involved in the school and get back through our community service programs help us to continue to advocate for our students by showing them the ways to open doors to New Opportunities other courses like English one and our couns plates are already full and do not have room to add the content that would be lost by removing this course I ask for your support I ask for you to look into this course I ask for you to meet with us talk with us and we ask for your vote to keep Pace as a graduation requirement in our district thank you Amanda man and Then followed by Corbin mck it's Mayon Mayhan I'm apologize good evening everyone and thank you so much thank you for
014the opportunity to speak before you today I'm here to advocate for the continued support of pace and how it supports all campuses and the collective whole district and the Cypress Community to meet its college career and Military Readiness pace is a program that is not just an elective but an essential part of preparing our students for Life Beyond High School in today's fast-paced world the expectations placed on young adults are higher than ever our students must be ready to thrive in college enter an increasingly competitive Workforce and serve our country with dignity and the skills in the military the pace course is a Cornerstone Cornerstone in ensuring that they have the knowledge tools confidence to step into any of these roles with purpose and Readiness this course isn't justly isn't simply just about academic skills
015or chicken a box or a checklist it's about student development and all of the intellectual emotional and personal aspects every student's journey is different some will pursue higher education others will head straight into careers and some will take the noble task of serving our country Pace course ensures that every student receives tailored support to ensure that their personal interest and strength are included it encourages them to think critically about their future plan strategically and understand the different routes to success by keeping this course we're saying to our students your future is worth investing in whether students dreams of attending a top tier College becoming an entrepreneur or join the armed forces the course offers guidance practical steps towards those goals I come to you as a teacher of 20 years of service an instructional specialist
016an English teacher and I will tell you that pace is a great place for students to thrive and it's in its unique place let it be there thank you so much Corbin mock followed by uh Tammy Bryce Corbin tamy Bryce followed by Lori Lewis good afternoon I am Tama Bryce the C Park team lead for Pace um I'm very privileged to be here today and be able to speak in front of you all um I am a sciare graduate I graduated from SII Springs in 2012 and I just want to say that um as a teacher who's taught Pace I just have seen the impact that it's had for my students today we talked about college requirements and what colleges look for in a student and I I asked my students if they knew what
017a fast f was and no one raised their hand no one had talked to them about what that was and so Pace allows for our students to have conversations about what it looks like outside of high school we go over job requirements we actually do mock interviews and I've had several students from the previous years come up to me and say they got their first job and that the question that we asked in a pace class was the same questions that employers asked them it's a direct impact that our students are having by getting this class we I would like for us to look at sfair as being setting the standard the state doesn't set the standard we set the standard and I have benefited from the standard that sciare has set we create students
018that are engaged that are empathetic that are career focused and driven and that they are educated on the opportunities that sciare offers them there's no other class that's doing that for our kids and our freshmen desperately need these soft skills they also need to know that they have teachers that they're main focus is to make sure that they are prepared for their class they're studying that they are checking their grades and learning how to calculate a GPA I ask you what other class offers that right now I'm very grateful to be able to teach this class and I really hope that you really listen to the students and the parents and the community because everyone that I've talked to has said this is a great class why would we get rid of it this is
019something that our students could really benefit from it so why why change that y'all have the power power to say yes or no so I hope that the P the answer is yes and I look forward to teaching Pace next year thank you thank you Lori Lewis followed by Holly scholar Lori nope Holly followed by Rachel moris board members audience and those online I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight on behalf of keeping both pace and Health as required classes for graduation um my name is Holly Schooler and I teach Pace at Cyprus Ranch High School this is my seventh year and I'm passionate about my class and this is why what's so special about this life 101 class well I did not get this class in high school nor College I did
020not have parents who were guiding me checking my classes or having important conversations about the next steps in life I was simply told I was going to college and where I did however get to choose what major of studied to complete but without any guidance or input I made far too many mistakes poor grades had poor study habits and time management decisions my dive into credit card debt and the subsequent climb out of debt and little to know skills regarding how to get a job upon graduation from college and it left me foundering I had hard lessons in Money Management relationships and watched Friends drop out and succumb to poor decisions these semester classes inform and prepare our students to succeed in high school that's what we want is success for them and later on
021by giving them critical information a safe place to ask questions and have difficult sensitive questions answered to decompress and learn about themselves these vital skills time for self-discovery and thoughtful educated decision making are types of proactive behaviors that make for successful citizens of the future CF isd's vision and mission statement reads learn Empower achieve and dream we will maximize every student's potential through rigorous and relevant learning experiences preparing students to be 21st century global leaders let's keep pace and health okay let's leave them in the tool box your time is expired thank you thank you Rachel followed by Melissa Turnquist good evening thank you for taking the time to listen to the feedback provided by not only Pace teachers but also parents community members and students I believe this course is invaluable in preparing students
022for the life beyond High School in just one semester students learn to set purposeful goals which helps them stay motivated and focused they devel V communication skills that are essential not only in academics but also in future careers and personal relationships this course introduces them to proven strategies for managing time reducing stress and building strong study habits which can improve their academic performance and ease the transition to college or the workforce most importantly through College and Career research students are empowered to make well-informed decisions about their Futures discovering paths that align with their strengths and aspirations this course provides students with the confidence Clarity and practical skills needed to thrive in whatever path they pursue after graduation please continue to support us and vote Yes to keep paace Melissa good evening I want to reiterate
023thank you to y'all for hearing me speak but I want to say thank you to the teachers who I know took days off to attend some of those informational meetings because it was just shocked all of us that it was even on the agenda I just want you to know a little bit about about me I have a ninth grader at Jersey Village High School and a seventh grader at Cook Middle School and when she was when Carolyn was picking out her classes for her freshman year I was like what is this pace I mean I get health but what is this pace I thought what what could this possibly offer to my child she is a high- performing College Academy student athlete what could it bring into her life and I was pleasantly shocked
024and surprised she has explicitly stated to me on more than one occasion that it is the single most relevant class she is taking and it is a useful guide as she evaluates next steps to maximize her GPA make decisions it's opened her mind to different professional opportunities because she's not one of these kids who grew up knowing she wanted to be an engineer they are opening ideas and giving her choice every single day hell should remain as a standalone class as a partner to pace for balance and to fulfill the next necessary Texas state requirements trying to shoehorn in these requirements into English or science or any other class when those teachers are barely able to cover the topics necessary to teach our kids the basic Reading Writing and arithmetic we want them to learn
025is simply not a VI viable solution for the GPA requirements on transcripts it's a slightly separate topic but I'm equally passionate about please don't remove the opportunity for these Scholarships in college entry to those who are below that 10% if someone has worked diligently and manages to fall within to the 11 to 25% range this is still an accomplishment and it should be on their transcripts and scholarship opportunities exist for these kids don't take steps without thinking about the UN unintended consequences so please don't remove pace and health from our freshman curriculum it would be a disservice to the students and an added burden to our teachers who we adore thank you for your time Linda the floor is now yours thank you oh we have a speaker that did you miss your slot I'm
026sorry that's okay my works really hard on this so I want to show it off go ahead and say your name first please my name is Lori Lewis I am a pace teacher at Cypress Park High School and um I don't have anything written down or planned to say uh I just want to let my students feedback speak for itself and I just asked them to put down what have they learned that they didn't know before they came to Pace or how have they applied these life lessons that learn to their actual life to their social life to their schooling and I'm just going to read you a couple of the responses that really almost made me break down crying in my classroom um so the first one says that uh Pace has helped them
027to focus on their future and learn how to handle their responsibilities to Pace has helped them learn about the hippo the hippo campus in their brain um one person said that they have learned how to lay out and apply their smart goals without this they never would have gone through their goal and achieved it without about the vision board project one student said that they've learned how to volunteer and be a productive member of society one person said that they learned in Pace that would help them in real life later on is their communication skills that they've learned um and the most important one comes from a student who has um intellectual limitations in the classroom who I could not even get to say two words to me uh for the first month of class
028and his response for today was you have taught me to overcome my fear of presenting in front of an audience and I don't see where that fits into any other subject where a teacher can teach them so much content and then also teach them how to be social how to be pleasant how to manage conflict how to manage trauma and that's something that Co took away from us to teach our kids and so now they're behind socially and we kind of have to help them catch back up um I've been an English teacher for 10 years I know the workload that comes with that and I'm telling you there is no possible way for them to get those skills in an English class like they get in our class being able to work with them
029oneon-one so I thank you for your time and I really hope that your decision is aligned with what's best for the children thank you good evening president Henry Dr Killian and board members this oops there we go this evening we are going to provide you an update to a presentation that we provided in August and so you may remember that in August we came to you and we shared four different topics that we were exploring as an administrative team so the first topic was streamlining graduation requirements to State requirements by discontinuing pace and health as cfis graduation requirements as I shared back then uh pace and health are ours we we we as a you as a board at some point approved that they would be locally required graduation uh requirements the second one was
030to create a class Rank and top 10% the third one the third topic was to remove the K level option where there's an advanced course dual credit AP course and then the fourth one was to create a a rank GB uh a a rank GPA used only for class ranking and so I want to so today what I'm going to do tonight is just simply walk you through the input that we received and what the data is that we receive for each of these points I will share that the F that the only point of these uh four topics is n uh is number one that will at some point require board action if the board decides to do anything different than what we are already doing with pace and health the others are uh
031positions that the Administration has looked at and we will share what what our findings are and what our plan is to move forward so first I want to share with you the communication that we provided uh regarding these topics and meetings that we are that we were going to have so first of all I want to thank the Communications Department for helping us with getting the word out every possible way that they could so the first thing that they did is they helped us with sending out a school messenger to all parents of students in grade 6 through 11th these are the ones that are either being impacted or will be impacted in a very short short time they also provided a social media blitz for us so that the whole world could could know
032about what we were consider considering and also the meetings that we had and and the the uh information we had online and the opportunity to provide feedback online even without attending a meeting uh as at on the district homepage if anybody went to it right away uh you saw a popup of uh of information regarding uh the these topics and so it was in the scrolling piece of it and you clicked on it and it took you to the information and so and then there was a dedicated web page with slide and links for parents parents committee members anyone could provide input on these four topics additionally we presented to the community connect committee we also scheduled two public meetings a morning one and an evening one and then based on input that we received
033we added a third meeting and it was an evening meeting the meetings were were the the evening meetings were very well attended uh we also provided the information to the deic and also provided the information and sought input from the superintendent student leadership committee and as I've shared with people that student group is very upfront with you they they have there's no shinas that they have so first let's look at the graduation requirement uh removing Pace as a local graduation requirement so you can see from from the data that 79% of those that participated in in uh providing input uh disagree with removing uh Pace as a graduation requirement and then you can see with the the bar graphs how that all kind of lays out what parents said what community members said what teachers
034said uh and what students said and then there were six that didn't identify themselves as in any of these different uh categories I want you to pay attention to the to the bar graph because you're going to see in a little bit another uh another set of of uh of data and it looks very similar if you just look at the P graph but what changes is a bar graph how different groups responded so this one is pace and board you you received from me uh the the complete input along with every single comment that was provided by the by that community so this is just a sampling of what we saw occurring over and over again in uh in the input and so you can see that one of the comments that that was
035a a common theme uh had to do with with placing some of these um uh responsibilities in the English class uh the Also regarding the opportunities for career paths research uh just the different uh things that we do in Pace and then uh the last one that kept coming over and over again have was having to do with the four-year plan the college academy and that that is an area where they get their start and and and and get their lead uh and then also the concern with burdening counselors so those are the topics that kept just appearing over and over again and then you may recall that I shared in in uh in August about some of these areas that we have to provide and the thought about where they may be moved to
036where they might where they might uh end up falling so refining the four-year plan would probably end up with uh counselors working uh with our English one teachers the career exploration we do some of that in CTE but it would fall heavily on H the CTE electives speech although it's not required as a separate course the texts are required or the te are required so those would probably have to be added to the English one 2 and three curriculum and then the support for the college academy we would probably have to cohort the college academy into in in the in the English one class and then the gpap we will work with uh Miss Cole's uh Team to figure out where that might fall uh during the school day for our students we're still trying
037to figure that one out so here's the data on on health and notice that the pie chart is the same 79% disagree with removing it and 21% uh uh agree with it but when you see the chart the the graph you can see how that changes with with who responded to the different areas but as a whole you can see that whether it's a parent Community member teacher or student they support keeping this as as a uh required course for graduation so again the common themes that we found through throughout the the data that just kind of kept sticking out was regarding health providing relevant information that was important to to uh to our students uh also the the piece about the the opportunity to provide Wellness nutrition mental health long long life uh healthy
038habits and then the four the the third topic that kept reappearing was the opportunity opportunity to work with with our students regarding risky behaviors uh the use of drugs and alcohol so again as I shared in August although although uh health is not a requirement for graduation there are there are certain uh topics that we have included in health that have to still be addressed um and really whether whether the board decides to remove health or or recommends that be offered as an elective these topics still need to be covered whether it's health or whether whether it's in the in Pace we still would have to do it because even if it's offered as as a uh as an elective you're not going to get all all students going through it so you still have
039to figure out a way to be able to provide this so CPR is a is a is a requirement that we WR right now we um handle through through health so this would probably move into the P classes there's also a requirement that that uh regarding mental health topics and suicide prevention and this would probably move in with uh the counselors and and their guidance lessons and then just want to make sure I'm I'm I'm clear that we're talking about the course health because we have two things that happen in in in the high school health class right now we have the health and you all adopted a textbook two years ago and then we have the human sexuality instruction two separate pieces we just have to cover it in health so this specific uh
040uh topic here is the actual course Health not human sexuality instruction so if the board chose to continue with human sexuality and instruction we would have to find a place to to deliver that instruction and it would probably be uh in in biology so let's move on to the next topic which is remove class rank from student transcript and ranked the top 10% we heard loud and clear from the community on uh on this one and although you kind of see that that the data says 53% uh agree uh that information doesn't really represent what the what the face-to-face people shared uh they were confused about how this was going to happen we also had some uh professionals that that work in the admissions departments for for a couple of a areas and they came
041out and they shared that that while maybe a UT or or an A&M I know they're much higher now we look at the top 10% that there are other universities like Maybee Texas State who are looking at the 25% and and being able to provide that for them or scholarships that may that may be offered that they felt uh might be a disadvantage to their to their students so I will I will share with you that this topic we are we are not going to pursue because there are still a lot of questions and and possible uh harm to some of our students so we're not going to pursue this one but just so that you know again this is some of the the things that kept appearing over and over again pretty much what
042I uh what I just uh shared concerned with negative impact the next topic is remove klev courses when there is an advanced placement or dual credit off option this one was also loud and clear both from the community and from from students uh they do not want to remove K level as an option however through through the face-to-face meeetings and even in visiting with the with the superintendent students they acknowledge that that uh K level does not carry the same rigor that that dual credit or AP carry so they acknowledge that and then along the way to suggestions started coming along with keep it keep K level uh but go ahead and change the weight of K level so make K level a 6.5 and then dual nap a seven and so that is what
043the administration will will uh will look to do so you can see some of the comments that uh that were uh reappear reappearing over and over again uh some kids being being more advanced than the L level but still still needing a little time in in an advanced course like K before they actually moved into dual credit uh and AP there was also some concern from some committee members about uh the the cost of an AP course or an AP uh test or dual credit we we know that that we have uh great support uh from different sources for to pay for do for some of these uh fees for our economics Advantage students but there was concern about about students who were not economics Advantage but kind of right there on the cusp and
044and not having those funds to pay uh to pay for that so the administration plans to continue with K level but reduce the weight of the K level class the next one which was our probably an interesting one too is create a rank GPA uh from a standard of set courses for all students you may recall that when we talked to you about about this this this topic we talked about the opportunity to provide students choices in taking uh courses that are interest to them without having to worry about the GPA game or the impact of GPA and we've been talking to different District about how they do this and how they provide this and so you can see that that that that for this one 60% of the community they input disagreed um and
04540% agreed however when you see what oh hold on let me go back one there we go so they they don't laugh at me they disagreed however as we talked to them the reason they were disagreeing was because they felt that they didn't have enough information to make to to either support to support this they wanted to see the list they wanted to see the list of courses that that were going to be part of this rank GPA and how it was going to play out they really want to see the comprehensive plan in place so what what uh what the administration plans to do is put this aside for just a little bit spend the rest of the year uh working with focused groups of teachers and looking at what are the courses that
046would be part of the rank GPA we also want to make sure that no one thinks that we're trying to remove other advanced level courses because that's not it either we know everyone has different different options they would like to choose so we plan to spend the the the spring th's the fall and spring meeting with teacher groups solidifying a list and then coming back to you in August with a more fleshed out plan with all the courses that that that would be a part of this and then again doing some presentations for parents getting some input and then making a decision based on that certain real estate C courses because they were lower level and lower weighted than what would be calculated my G which would rank me lower than where I wanted to
047be for certaines that I'm looking back and knowing that they might be doing going away with the cumulative GPA and just working on four course GPA I would have definitely taken these business courses because they would help me uh and prepare me for my career path and provide me with a real estate license out of high school and this is why is this is this is one topic that we want to investigate uh a little further this is a student that's in the super superintendent uh leadership group and as we talked about he popped up and said I'm going to be a realtor and I could have I could have be I could be leaving high school with my realtor's license but I didn't pursue that because it would impact my GPA and getting into
048the College of choice so we'll come back to you with more information on this specific topic and again here are some of the the information that kept coming up and up again you can see they want to see a broader course selection they want to see this this uh a plan for this fleshed out before they will give some some good uh input and data on this topic so that's uh I that concludes the the presentation the report I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have to my right any questions Dr msas so of the four topics you're looking for board Direction on really only the pace and health topic because it seems on the GPA items that you're not going to recommend any action on one of the GPA items the the
049one the last GPA item you're going to do some more evaluation come back to us in August and you're not act and you're not acting asking for any uh K level Direction tonight because the plan is to go Ahad and continue K level but there's going to be a decision to change the weight is so I guess you guys are just looking for some direction on the pace and um health component um that is the only one that requires board action the others were information provided for you that Administration is working sure I would just uh interject there and just say that we are looking at so Christina pointed out to us um that any decision around Health needs to be kicked back to the uh um sha committee or school health advisory committee um
050because they do have oversight so um that's what I'll be doing um before you guys get anything coming forward with health so one of the questions I have is um I think the board and the community could benefit from a little historical perspective so how how long have pace and health been requirements for graduation in our district it was yeah Advanced academic strategy it was Advanced academic strategies before but but we're talking about 152 years it's been many many years since uh the state changed the requirement so from our perspective you know what was the thinking behind us making it those classes a requirement and what has changed now for us to possibly be looking at making them not a requirement well um I think the the point for health has always been an opportunity
051to set kids up students up for success in high school it is similar to a course that students that uh freshman in in college have to take now every freshman has to take a semester course that uh that provides opportunities to set them up for high school I'm sorry you meant Pace I said Pace I'm sorry yes thank you thank you I'm talking I'm talking uh about pace and so that hasn't changed uh how do we provide opportunities to set our students up for in this case for high school and how do we provide them with the knowledge of a GPA or courses or uh Miss Hinman talked today about being able to see firsthand the CT courses um also today we have ccmr that we are responsible for and that we have to make
052sure that each kid is College and Career military ready so as some of the speakers share that is an opportunity to expose uh the students in that in that Arena um as far as as um as health goes as I said that was a decision that was made uh many years ago and and I think the community even back then and even when when we adopted a couple years ago felt that it was still uh an area that that needed to be um U taught or continued uh because it talks about I said just different type of health healthy risky Behavior such as drug use and uh and alcohol use and we just went through we two years ago two years ago I think there's what one two four members four members on the board
053that were part of the discussions and the adoption of the uh Health textbook and the and and the human sexuality instruction uh information as well so as I'm looking at it so there were a number of reasons why we made this requirement years ago from my perspective I'm not seeing any reason why we wouldn't want them to be a requirement I don't think there's any I don't think many things have changed since then to necessitate US changing them and making them not a requirement um I feel like from a lot of the community comments tonight as well as a lot of the comments that we've seen from the survey that there's a lot of value and advantage to having them maintain as a requirement um especially when we're talking about the health class and we're
054all very much aware of the increasing needs for mental health and mental health awareness and how students are continuing to struggle with that there's a lot of advantage to that and so um you know this is something that we'll talk about Monday night but from my perspective um I see there's a lot of value in maintaining them as a requirement we're not talking Monday night this is not action this is report it's not an action on no action on it no there's no action on it no action on it this is just a report on the data and the and the input that was provided so uh I was under the impression we would have this as an action item on Monday when would we foresee this as a possible uh action item well as
055Dr Killian shared it would if if the board's direction is to is to consider removing Health then it would go back to pace which which Miss uh Cole Shaq keep say pace uh back to sha which Miss Cole overseas uh presented them the information and then get their their recommendation and that would come back to you okay thank you I do have a comment um Dr msas can you describe so you're showing us the survey and you're showing us the feedback from the community so was that a survey was was the feedback based on a survey was it based on attendees at the listening sessions how was that data collected so it really isn't a survey it was input okay it was input that was that was collected from people uh commune members that attended
056the face-to-face Focus uh face to-face meetings but also uh they were able to look at the information through social media through the district website and there was a specific link there that they could click on and also provide the input okay thank you and Linda can you just uh for point of clarification remind us of how many responses you got do we so we looked at the responses two ways the the uh all responses and then those that were duplicated so the information that I shared with you are the D duplicated uh information and they that that that were on each of the different slides so for example for the topic uh of Pace there were five six about 700 about 700 uh people that provided input and uh and that was with a d
057duplicated effort thank you thank you that's where I was also going so thank you for answering that I'm I I agree with the kicking kick to the curve the top 10% I I based on the feedback that I had when I attended one of those committee meetings um you know guaranteeing an equitable outcomes for the the other 90% I don't I don't think I felt comfortable with that so I I do agree with that decision tell me a little bit more about why I you've got some people 20 what is it 21% that uh you know dis disagreed as having Health as a graduation requirement what were the reasonings that that you were getting from some of your parent feedback what were the reasonings why they disagree yes one of the re one of the
058the or one of the comments that I saw several times really was about having another elective to be able to use that was really the only other thing that I saw um in there okay nothing considering like the weight of the classes so they could get a higher GPA no I didn't see any of that all right thank you question uh I just want to say thank you for the information I think it's really um powerful that we gave opportunities to parents students and community members as well as um teachers to provide input um it's very clear that our community has spoken and that they see value in Pace and health both as um graduation requirements in cciir ISD um it's consistent with the emails that the board has also received from community members and
059teachers um as well as conversations that I've had um uh um in the community so I think that it's it's very clear he um what uh our community our teachers our our uh parents and our students want so um I think it's important that we listen to them thank you I also want to thank uh Linda your team uh the whole team for um giving the extra time the sessions adding um time and space for to for us to hear from the community because ultimately as we can see really valuable uh insight and feedback came back especially at the top 25% the opportunities for scholarship and um and places that we may have had some inadvertent um you know made inadvertently made uh limited students in some which way so thank you very much for
060the listening and the um getting the data and um I I support the conclusions that were drawn on the issues um the two three and four um and I'm excited to see what as you dig deeper into those topics to see what can come out I think there's a lot of value in the idea of students not limiting their electives because of the GPA rank that's very real and I think for students to have hope and to really dream about their future to explore courses that can uh let them have a track towards that without it um hurting their ability to uh be ranked in the class um and a fair system in a fair way uh I'm excited to see how that conversation will continue um I would uh on the topic of health
061and Pace um I would say when we set our goals last meeting we started to create our ccmr college career military Readiness goals I made a comment that I I would like to see him be actually more robust to truly look at the whole student who are they developing into how do we track that they have a plan towards enrollment enlistment or employment you know how are we going to know that each kid is being supported purposefully and so frankly freshman year um is great but there's a sophomore a junior and a senior year we also want to see that students are supported in so I would hope that this conversation can continue to see what are we doing not just in freshman year but as they go up the Pike and make sure that
062there's purposeful plans um and so uh we'll continue conversations with our um we have a whole Pace Community that's shown up at these meetings to say hey we are so passionate about what these kids are what we're doing we don't want to see it so maybe that Community is part of a solution into 10th 11th and 12th grade how do we uh be holistic in our model U maybe an advisory model is what they've been called in the research but how do we continue to make sure that that's not just um front loaded um but that's something that continues and um allows us to know for sure that kids have a better are better the day after they graduate than the day before they graduated um so I I'm excited about the conversations and as
063far as health um my I uh frequently speak about it's parents and parent choice so I know they're coupled these courses became coupled because they're semester courses I did hear one person um in the in the parents session I think she was actually a teacher talking about some prerequisite classes as an option where St where kids could take prerequisites that would help them to catch up because some kids who weren't born here in scair or got here as soon as they could as I always say um they didn't have a chance to take some courses in middle school so they're actually already behind in the in the game and also for them to be able to accelerate or catch up or do a math class or whatever so I was excited also by that comment
064because I would like to decouple the pace in the health conversation but then also to the topic of Health um you know these are the the topics in our the book we did have 96 changes and so I'll curriculum is based on some curriculum a book that was approved a couple years ago with lots of changes so not the book but the topics um you know health and wellness fundamentals interpersonal skills you know promoting mental and emotional health shifting to positive thinking managing stress your life understanding mental illness following a healthy diet body image physical activity vaping and tobacco alcohol medication and drugs personal safety environmental health communicable diseases non-communicable diseases Health across the lifespan maintaining healthy relationships these are not bad topics and so I would say that's something that if a parent wants
065your child to take that that should be a choice they have I would want that to be there be access to that information in a whole way um even my own self as a mother I did Girl Scouts why because you're always wondering like what am I forgetting to cover for my kid right like what am I forgetting to offer them what topics are there to make sure that they're well rounded and they understand things and so this may be a place where people say hey I don't know enough about those things I'd like my kid to get that information um and so I would I would hope we could decouple the conversations and i would support Health always as a parent choice so thank you so much for bringing this thought-provoking work and to
066me this is the very work we should be doing right saying hey how's this serving our kids we've had things have been around a long time does a model still work ask the critical questions get the feedback from the community the full community meaning our teaching Community our students and our parents and you did that and um we learned a lot and onward so thank you um I feel like we make ourselves better by these conversations I have a comment uh some people asked why were even doing this and so part of that question is that we are always assessing ourselves we're always measuring things we're always trying to improve things and so uh some of this was research and Discovery and and getting the feedback that we wanted from the community and it has
067been very clear pace is important uh it it is it sounds like it's a great class my students took it um they benefited from it I appreciate it um so I I just Echo agree that there's some uh ability if there's a way to make it where we can even help students in their sophomore junior senior year with something like this I I would love to see that as well thank you Linda go ahead um just real quick um for historical reference so you know at one point speech and health were coupled together um but this course has existed not pace itself but an iteration of this course before so was it a a year and a half worth of requirements and then we had to to find another half oh was it a year
068course it's always been a one semester course uh prior to um making the change to Pace um it was um offered in eth grade and students in e8th grade could take it for high school credit so there was a little bit of flexibility I think and and you may remember she said 38 years I've been here for 32 years so it's been here the whole time that I've been in the district um but I think around the time that we made the switch is when the graduation requirements did change and then they revamped the curriculum to align with obviously the four-year planning and and course selection it used to be more focused on Advanced academic strategies kind of learning styles and and that kind of which I think is still embedded into uh the curriculum
069but not uh as focused on the the fouryear planning process as it is currently cool thank you I do have one more comment uh just quickly I think given that we're evaluating the recognition of waiting that we're going to be doing it's going to be important for our students to have sort of a a standard um way that does not impact their GPA to be able to understand the impact of that as they're doing their planning right we don't want to roll out a change uh without equipping them to understand the effects of that change so I think it's actually going to be good that we're actually bundling all this at the same time so Mr scalan if there was to be any change it I would recommend that you wait and start with a
070cohort of students for example um for health we we did we have not offered Health as a summer option for two years so it would it would it could start with a ninth grade class so that because if you start anywhere in the middle then you're creating some disadvantage is in in GPA I think my point that I'm trying to make here is that we we discussed with adjusting the waiting whenever that does occur that we've got we're equipping the kids in class to understand the effects of that change so that that would not uh kick in with any current high school students it would probably start with either a sixth grade class because they start making decisions about high school credits in seventh grade yeah okay so yeah it wouldn't start right away either
071okay I just want to make um this is about in 2014 or 2015 um I learned about a mentoring program and so uh it was with community volunteers trying to remember ambassadors of compassion or something where and I think we've had that conversation I think Julie supported that with mentoring but it was a mentoring program and it was and I went to go see it in action and it was held in the pace class but there was even a second semester of pace for students who had come in not prepared from uh middle school so we had identified oh these students will need the extra support and so I just thought that was very caring and I was intrigued to see I'm not sure if that was just a SC Springs thing or if that's
072something was actually at different schools but to me our our intervention and support model to understand and recognize kids and and give them that um that little something extra I thought that was really promising and so I don't know that I think Julie may be able to tell us more she's pushing her button about how that exists now and just um making sure that we continue to have I think when um the teachers were speaking tonight it hit me the idea about Pace Pace it's it's all about them like no other class it's always about the content the subject where we're going to be tested in and this is just about them hey I'm thinking about me what is my focus what's my plan what are my goals that I'm setting and so um you
073know that's that has its role as far as what we're asking kids to do so much there so much uh demand and stress and with high stakes accountability and you know this pressure on a GP and all these things I think it's very uh interesting that for once for the last time right now was a nth grade I don't think it should be that way I think it should be 9th through 12th grade that the focus can be on them and their goal setting and becoming portrait of a graduate just to answer the question uh regarding ambassadors of compassion it is a program offered through a local um organization called SI hope in Partnership um with many of our high schools as well as one of our elementary schools and this is during the pace
074time um there is once a week a group of mentors that come in and meet with students um weekly and we also talk about setting goals and making good choices so very much complements um the pace curriculum as well as the health curriculum in terms of talking about making healthy choices um uh healthy relationships uh who you choose to influence you and how you influence others um it it's a great partnership and uh Pace allows us that time and it provides opportunities for mentors Mentor coaches to build positive relationships with students that continue um continue all four years and Beyond so I do have a couple questions Linda um you mentioned in the graduation requirements that removing these options would have you know tis requirements how does Katie Tomball Klein HD Fort Bend how they
075do this today as compared to us what where are they put in these classes have you looked at that have you compared that because they've been doing it for 10 20 years what are we doing differently it's not so for health it's not so much the ti requirements the tis are required if you teach the course but it's some of the other uh topics that we that we have to cover and we've been covering them in uh in health so we have we visited with some of them and and and what I shared is basically where they have moved them to okay so this is from other schools okay great I did find it was interesting you mentioned one of the surveys and you said that that did not represent the community which kind of
076goes to my point Point um data is a big thing and it's important to look at the data construct um and I thank you for sharing your thoughts on the survey but surveys are very important for Gathering tools um but they have to be they have to be represented the entire Community um especially when they're trying to make us informed decisions I saw three problems in the survey one the sample size is too small um they don't they do not represent the uh the large size of our district we have 119,000 students we have very small numbers of that it also doesn't it lacks verification of residency we did not even ask that question what school do you go to what feeder pattern so I don't know if these are coming from all one school
077or two schools so that is a problem with that survey and three um spoofing and IP things I mean I did the survey twice just for fun one from the Barry Center when I was with my daughter at school practice and one from home two different IPS I could take the survey twice so there's a lot of uh shenanigans that be played with that and I did hear some of that on social media so I'm cautious to look at that data because I think it's irrelevant I think the big thing is is the value to our students and how it helps them and I appreciate the fact that y'all came here and gave us the detail and I thank that I've been reading your emails and I really do appreciate your thoughts and on that
078stuff we we look at that data and that's important for us we're not making a decision tonight but it is very critical data for us with that being said we're going to move on to our next topic 4B the administration provide a report on the beginning of the year formative assessments Dr M you're up again thank you so this evening we'd like to provide you with some information regarding our beginning of year DPMS and other formative assessments that we provide you may recall from last month when we talked about the the new uh your new strategic plan and the goals and performance objectives that one of the ways to be able to look at uh if we're if we're on track with with where we need to be is utilizing our formative assessments and so
079you're going to find that through throughout probably each month we will be bringing the summaries of the formative assessments because the DPMS are given at different times math might be given in in at the end of September but but social studies might be given at the beginning of of November so when we have the data we will bring it uh to you tonight we're going to talk about about uh goal four and goal seven and it is they're both primary uh type uh performance objectives but I wanted to just share with you oops there just a little bit about formative assessments Dr K stop laughing at me because I need to get through this about formative uh assessments so in Cypher ISD I don't know a time when we didn't do formative assessments and when
080we didn't do uh uh data digs and and utilize that to guide decisions this is a datar rich uh district and we've always used this data but just to provide you a little context uh uh about them in Cipher we do have common districtwide formative assessments it's the same assessment that is being given from campus to campus to campus and they are used to monitor student learning to provide feedback for teachers on how to better improve their learning uh and of course to provide feedback regarding students and where they're at and how to enhance their learning they're used to identify learning gaps and they're used to be able to tailor instruction to meet the specific those individual needs of students and all of that is done through the data digs so once once the assessment
081is given teachers and administrators sit down they B basically tear that data apart and and they are reviewed by the Admin the campus administrators by the teachers and by the District staff and they're pinpointing what are the areas of concern but also where are areas that kids are excelling so that they're not repeating the instruction that maybe a child has already mastered and then we use them here at the district office to analyze and to see where we need to provide additional support do we need to send a curriculum coach out to school a because their science cords are not where they need to be or do we need to provide some additional resources so we are constantly looking at the data at the data as well so today we're going to look at goal
082four which has to do with students in grades K through two and their Proficiency in reading on the map or the mclass assessment and just to remind you that the fiveyear goal is is that by 2029 our students 90% of them will be at I'm sorry they'll be at um 95% by this target goal 2029 and that we are using as a performance objective the map and also mclass and that we're looking at at increasing this by 1% each year the mclass is required by the state that we uh that uh that we give this and that it's measured so this is the mclass data for the beginning of the year and you can see there's a a Kinder through second grade group this is this is reading language arts and you can also see
083that we're providing you the data by the all everybody but also by the African-American group the Hispanic group The White group the Asian group and the economic disadvantaged special education bilingual and ESL group and board I sent you this information uh I think on October 25th uh just like this with with a lot of different backup to go along uh with it but you can see that that uh uh when when you look at the at the kinder first and second and you just kind of look at the at the all group you can see that that did that about 10% of the kindergarteners were were scoring below the 25th percentile the other thing I want you to look at is that across the board you've got the percentiles this is a norm reference test
084but we've attached the percentiles up on top the did not meet approaches meets and Masters the same language that we use for Star just to keep some consistency with the vocabulary and that you're hearing the same thing and everyone else is is hearing the same thing but you can see if you move if you move on to the approaches meets and Masters you can see that uh our kids are are pretty close to being on target for that that uh that Kinder group but as you continue moving uh moving down you can see that first and second grade we've got some some work to do there though those numbers increase of kids not being uh On Target yet 25% for first and 29% for uh for second grade and then you can see as you
085as you move down especially our economically disadvantaged uh we're always looking at at um at our Ed population 61% of our students are economically dis disadvantaged and you can see that 28% of our students are still at the lowest levels so we continue to have some action plans for them and then you can look at special ed as well bilingual ESL uh bilingual and and ESL so our campuses have all of this information they have it by student they've already disaggregated all this information and created their their target groups at the district level we have all this information my team has all this information they already have identified the schools by the content or or I'm Sorry by by the grade level uh that are struggling and they already have a plan in place whether
086it's additional coaching support uh some of these schools that that that uh you see the largest challenges they have a reading transition teacher in there that's specific to providing additional reading support for the Primary students so that's the map uh reading language arts if you look at the at the M Class the data is is is pretty similar as as as a map there's a there's a very strong uh correlation there and I'll just like you let you uh look at this but basically the the the same uh uh topics I just shared apply to to uh to this as well we've already um gone through this with fine tooth comb and uh already putting some some supports in place as well we also um Miss Cole's team and I meet on a regular basis
087our our two teams together and so we go through all this data as well we identify the schools that are needing support so that we're on the same page the next goal goal seven is is uh has to do with math primary math so K through two Again by 2029 95% of our our kids 95% of our kids will will be um On Target and so you look at the performance objective again we're measuring the growth in this case it's on the map just on the map test and so again you have the data uh before you uh the same setup where you have the the grade levels and then you have the all the different um Target groups including the special populations uh there and then you can see the areas where we're seeing
088that we need to provide additional support and we've already started doing that as well so I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have Linda I want to first off by saying thank you very much for the data it's a lot of data I know for us board members but this is the main thing we should be talking about every meeting and we really appreciate the fact you put this together for us and summarize as well and I'm um really thankful for that as well anyway questions I I guess a easiest question why why the significant difference between going from kindergarten to first grade I mean that's that that's the biggest Gap that I'm I'm seeing as far as number numbers going up what what are your thoughts on that are you looking at
089at the like a at the at the um reading language arts data all of it I'm looking at all it so so when you look at when you look at uh all the data you're right you see the big the big uh jump in students not meeting the the the target between Kinder and first grade and so we have gone back and looked at our curriculum and we have increased the rigor of the curriculum because we want to make sure that we are providing the appropriate rigor in there to show so there there's not such a huge discrepancy with with with this so we've going back this summer and and uh just improved our design of the curriculum so that we're not showing such a discrepancy uh same thing I um wow it's a wonderful
090moment getting to have us have the data in front of us and even have it be labeled you know goal four and seven I want to go ahead and appreciate uh Teresa Hull in her leadership and Christine and her leadership of our academic safety vision and planning committee uh members the three ladies over here are the members of that committee and all of the team uh Christina everyone Doug I mean our superintendent Dr kilan everyone's there and it's been really um really uh deep and relevant conversation because the main thing is the main thing if we cannot if our students aren't able to read and uh do math um we can do a lot of things but if we didn't uh let them do that and you can see from the data there are challenges
091right we have uh we have our work cut out for us um but I just wanted to uh Teresa did um took very big ideas and was able to P it down and speak the language better than the people who brought the ideas or write the Books and so I definitely appreciate that we are literally getting a monthly report on the data so to this data I would like L I didn't ask you ahead so I apologize I'm sure I think you probably have it in that binder but I think we're talking like in acronyms up here maybe and I want people to understand what we're measuring with these assessments so and that would actually answer to Todd's question you know that big jump can you talk a little bit to about um so for
092example the rla the map for reading language arts what are those skills we're looking at for kindergarteners and first graders and second graders what exactly are we tracking um because it also tracks into like science of teaching reading and how we assess and how we do a lot of things so the mclass is is uh very correlated to the science of teaching reading and so when you get to second grade I mean yeah to first grade you're really deep into the signs of teaching reading and so kindergarten has some components in it but second grade really I mean first grade really has it and so that's where I talked about beefing up the the curriculum and and that that uh rigorous piece of it but the the mclass has early literacy skills that that they
093that they measure like letter naming fluency phic awareness nonsense type words um uh word reading at at the level of of of the of the student oral reading um some spelling in in there um as well and like I said very tight alignment to the science of uh of reading the the M Class both of these are Norm reference tests so so you're looking at what is the 50th percenti that's kind of where you want to where you want to go uh with it the the mclass has been used by many districts for a long time we're pretty newcomers uh to to the map but it it gives you a lot of information on individual growth so that's where we're getting our growth measure and getting the growth measure for for the teacher incentive allotment
094that's where we're getting them from because it tells you right off the bat where the child scored the beginning of the year where they're expected to be at midye and then where they're expected to be at the end of the year so you see a you see a huge growth measure with the with the uh with the map that's different from the mclass thank you um would you also talk a little bit about the skills that are measured in the math section of it because I think this is very important for our citizens to understand this is I mean those what you just said were the foundations of what it takes for a kid to put together literacy and uh we're tracking and we know each kid um by in detail in those areas we're
095getting report here we're going to have continuous reports and we're tracking that they're growing um and so I think it's very exciting and so how about math yeah the big piece of math is that num numercy that's that's the big piece of it because this is again the we're talking about the Primary students so they're learning really the fundamentals of numbers and what those numbers mean and and making those connections with the numbers and setting them up as we continue moving into spe specifically second grade where you have more rigorous text in place but it's really the foundations a fundamental piece of mathematics thank you um so then I would um so when you see um let's just say the map Reading language art speaking either your measures here right so you can see that
096of the 22,100 kiddos that we assessed we had 4,785 individual little kiddos that's 22% of the individual little kiddos who were wh below the 25th percentile um so this is um I just want to give I want to honor our teachers you know that's um that's one in four kids in your classroom who um you have that are you you're having to make up ground for and you're having to really show like more than a Year's growth in a year's time to make sure those kiddos are tracking so I want to honor the challenges and then I also want to appreciate that we've done that by the the different demographic groups that we're held accountable to for the state and to understand that there are challenges right and if you for economically disadvantaged kids 28%
097of those kiddos and special education 39% bilingual kids 41% if you're an English leer 22% so we have you know we have all sorts of factors that are complicated and and hard but we have almost you know we have 5,000 kiddos who we already know right now and so I just uh for us to understand this data and have a continuous track of where it's going so we can provide the right resources and supports but also I think it's going to be have to be a CommunityWide effort as we get tighter about our work then we can get more volunteers more people in to say like you just named very discreet skills guess what um people out there could give some time and do something very specific to teach a very specific thing about phic
098awareness or phological this or and so I just feel like it could be a really exciting time in our community where we all are all in to make sure every kid um is able to reach that Mark and then I'll mention for the audience not really a question but because last month we um sorry I opened it on my phone I think where was that um so last month when we had our committee report and we understood on like our strategic plan and our directives and the great work that Theresa and the team have done and Dr keilan and uh everyone um we had wrote a goal where we said so first of all this was goal four right which is about the percentage of kids um but goal five then said 90% of the
099students in grades 1 through three who did not meet the prior year end of the year score and we have a different score because we have to use a different measure that RIT score will meet the 50% of me reading Mastery score so what we've now done as a system is not only said we're going to track these kids all year but but if I let this kindergarten right here get out of kindergarten not be on level we're going to make sure the next sure that we're tracking them until we know that they're on level and so we have a system by which we can know are we closing that Gap and are we meeting kids individual needs and so I just couldn't be more um pleased or proud or excited or challenged truthfully because
100it's not easy um this is you know this is a a a widespread concern but I definitely know it's the right work to do um if you and and we'll have a report for you on that go uh in December too awesome well thank you so much for your incredible work and so fast and um so powerful thank you Linda you and I talked about this very briefly but it maybe a question for Marne I reached out to Marne I wouldn't able to get a hold of today but have we ever researched and I don't even know if it's if it's lawful law for we were able to get this but breaking down student groups into two parent households or single single parent household or even no parents any any way of getting that information
101and actually seeing and I was you know I been questioning on Star as well um is that even possible I we um I don't know that we would have a way to aggregate that data we have in our um record keeping online we do list Guardian one Guardian 2 but students may have um legal Guardians that um don't you know fit what you just described so we wouldn't have a way to aggregate that data through echool to my knowledge um yeah I don't we don't collect data whether they're in a two parent home or a or a single uh parent home I just have a comment um Linda I want to say thank you again for this information um to you to your team um to the cabinet uh for working on this this information
102is so extremely helpful it helped us to set our goals and then to see the data and we know that the teachers and the schools and all of them have been doing this hard work and we so appreciate that and to be able to bring it to the board in the community I'm very super excited for that that the community is going to be able to see through the regular updates of curriculum and instruction we're going to be able to see this data and we're going to track these kids and we're going to see where they end up at the end of this year and I Echo what my colleague said Dr blasing game that I hope that we get more uh in U volunteers and and businesses that are invested inair that will come
103in and help these students um and make a difference because we will see the results of this as coming together as a community so I want to say thank you so much this is excellent work yeah so yesterday I was at Warner Elementary School uh thank you to the principal and APS out there for your time and as I was going through the tours I've done with lots of other elementary schools I had a chance to see the science of teaching reading in action and what they're doing doing in our first our Ka first and second grades um what as you're bringing this information to us I I already know so I'm really saying this for the community that all of our principles and instructional Specialists they share best practices among the different schools so
104I already know that that's occurring do you guys plan on bringing to us the recommendations of what you've seen work to move the needle to improve or or the learnings that you're taking away from this and you applied approach number one approach number two approach number three and you found out approach number two seemed to work better in certain situations what can we expect as a result of this information back from the administration we can provide a report as you're asking um at any point that that you would like it we could um well as as you said we do share that um uh campuses uh they visit each other sometimes and and and and walk campuses and then at our uh curriculum round tabls the principles will share different different uh strategies that are
105working for for them we actually when we look through the data we'll Identify some schools and ask them to to share at the round taes um as well but if if the board would like us to put together a report and bring it either in maybe in December or January we can certainly work with our campuses put it together and have a couple of them come and share I you know just feedback from my colleague I think those are the stories that the larger Community needs to hear that they don't get a chance to be in the schools the way that we do I think that would be something that is Meaningful a we're going to get insight from it as well but I think it's part of the story of Cipher ISD that the
106larger Community would have a chance to hear that sharing of knowledge sharing of best practice and the results of focused effort and I know that that that uh that you've talked Mr scandin before uh firsthand about visiting some of the schools and actually seeing the data digs in action um at at different schools one question I have Linda so for instance I appreciate how you've put this in um star terms as well does not meet approaches meets and Masters just for our understanding when we're talking about uh like for instance goal s goal 7 says the percentage of students in grades K through 12 uh who are proficient in math MAP will increase from 90 90 to 95% how does that correlate to the star are we are we considering proficient approaches meets or Masters
107when we're looking at this so approaches is passing OnStar me meets and Masters is going beyond that it's going beyond that right but when we're but when we're when we are actually determining what's proficient how what are we how are we equating that to Star so you're looking at kids that are at about the 50th percentile that that would be the think about the curve cuz this is a norm reference test so students who are like right at the 50 or right below the 50 those are the kids that were saying you're you're you're you're pretty on you're you're pretty on where where you need to be so we're so we're looking at if we uh increase from 90 to 95% 2029 what we're saying is that we are going to have uh increase from
108approaches to Meats we're going to move into Meats because that's above 50% that is correct okay thank you questions go ahead Julie um really just a a comment um the uh having additional um data is is extremely helpful for us to help us understand how we're um uh how we are meeting and working towards our goals I just want to uh express some caution about asking for um more data more testing more reports and and just allowing our teachers to teach and our administrators to administrate um sometimes we just need to like sit with it for a a short time and then just see what additional information we might need or what additional reports we we might want but allowing our teachers and our administrators I mean this is new like let's let them sit
109with this for a semester and then uh add additional requirements or requests that's just something I would like us to consider on um I agree with you with request more campuses but none of this data this data is not extra extra uh testing that they had to do this is testing that we were already doing and they were already pulling it we just pulled it into uh uh a report form so my team is the one who spend more time trying to pull all this together but the campuses were already doing the map the map assessments and the other assessments too that we're going to be pulling that's one of the things that as we we talked to the board we were looking for assessments uh that they were already doing that we could pull
110the data from yeah I understand that in my uh visits to schools I hear so much feedback from teachers about all the testing that is taking place I just want us to be very cautious of that and I also want to be sensitive to your team if they're doing extra or if they're having uple additional reports that we're just considered of that especially since we've cut your team yeah thank you um another thing that I would I'll just add is that this summer we spent a great deal of time working with some principles of how we could realign the assessments and because that's what we were hearing exactly what you said is what we were hearing and so we spent a lot of time with realigning the assessments and even reducing some of the assessments
111so I'm hoping you're going to hear as you're as you're out there this year that uh that they were able to have fewer assessments and like you said that time to be able to teach and collect the data um actually you mentioned something just quickly in passing the teacher incentive allotment and how this data was used so I just wanted to um revisit that um that's such an in that is money that is provided by the state that can be right in the pockets of teachers and so I've there's been a really good job done and this is like getting to see the fruit of it where teachers that our first data is off to get validated can't wait to hear which teachers got extra earned extra but this with us all focused on this
112work we're going to help more teachers because we're going to identify like where like for example just the question asked by Todd about why is it so different from kinder to first and then you said well we see there's some rigor gaps or something we need to do to prepare kids up I cannot wait for us to as a whole system make sure every kid's growing and then the state has can validate every teacher and kider first second grade and they end up all getting them teacher incentive allotment money because of the fact that their kids grew and grew and grew um and so I would also challenge us to see like so we started with some Core Curriculum areas and that's right um but I can't wait for us to also then be able
113to have this in place and move on to some other core areas or other curriculum areas so that more and more teachers can take advantage of the of being able to qualify for Teacher incent of allotment um and uh because teacher pay is hard to increase you know every time our budget crunches and every little increment but that's something that is not District money it's state money and it pays right to teachers and so let's go get more of it we've started working on that uh Dr blasting game we just had a a meeting this week regarding the possibility of looking at our benchmarks our DPMS that we already have and seeing if there's a growth measure that can be embedded so that we can begin adding uh more and more doctor um clay and
114I just had a visit uh with a statistician about how possibly we could look at that so we're going to do we're going to do some modeling to see if that'll work awesome thank you just a couple of questions go ahead Doug okay just a couple of questions I want to drill in a little bit farther you dialogue with Lucas about replicating success where we see success in our district I mean we have a lot of great we're so big sometimes we forget that there's some so many great things going on and I see it lot of our schools but how do we replicate that success and then acknowledge those the greatness from what we have and then push that forward as well like you know I know youall have a your your big seminar
115you do every year which brings in money for the district how do you get those people in front and center to recognize them but also share those best practices around I'm not asking for an answer but I would just encourage you to keep to look for those pockets of success we have so much great we have we do around here we often forget that and we see that in the field so I just want to encourage you to look for those places nuggets where people are being successful which goes my next question which you answered it effectively and I just want to drill into a littleit farther you know look at the assessments and making those slight changes or even big changes right you talked about that earlier by providing the additional resources for low
116performing uh areas um how do you make those changes and if you talk a little bit more about that in your mind how do you when you look at this data from the assessments and how do you make inst structural changes based on that data based on the school schools and the talent and and the different things going on cuz your school's a little different all little bit snowflake well I think one of the things you said about looking at the campuses who are doing well so there are times when we will uh for a lack of better wordss pair pair campuses and and make and and see how how they're doing their planning and then we are in there and the campuses are in there with their planning time and then making sure that
117what they're discussing in their plan of how the instruction is going to happen that is really happening in the classroom so a lot of monitoring and a lot of support we've also you all have heard me talk about the monitor School process and so any of our campuses that are struggling this is part of the monitor School process they dig through this data they go out to the campuses they sit in the planning they visit classrooms and that monitor school team includes not just not just uh curriculum and instruction But it includes Miss Co team uh we make sure that we have someone there from special ed from bilingual we have people in there that can make decisions on the spot including some resources decisions on the spot to help support the teachers so the
118big thing is what is happening in planning and then is that being uh is that also transpiring over in the actual teaching actually when you said bilingual that actually made me raise a question that I didn't realize I had looking at the data I have map math in front of me but maybe I'll go up to map um rla bilingual 41% that are sitting at the did not meet or the below 25th percentile um in bilingual is that um what language were they assessed in for this was this their their their um measure in Spanish this is our measure in English and the M class we have a Spanish and an English measure and they're they're combined so we can break it up for you so that you can have that next because that's something
119I've had a question about I do believe that a foundational literacy in a native language will later segue to strong literacy in both languages and so I definitely would want to see that data broken out and make sure that we are giving children especially these as young as Kinder first and second grade access to found literacy in their native language and a bilingual program which is what the bilingual program is so I'd actually U like a little bit more information about what our program looks like are we doing a bilingual program what is the science of teaching reading in Spanish it's a little bit interesting since it's so phonetic and so as you probably will recall that in the primary grade spr K And1 we have a one-way dual language and so it's a 50/50
120model very similar to the two-way that we're piloting but it's with one group of kids yes and so we do do some instruction some uh assessment in both languages so 100% of our bilingual classrooms in K1 and two are oneway dual language yes that's amazing well done um okay yeah thank you I'd love to see that bro that data broken down a little bit and then just understand and I have never I never asked that question before so I'm just intrigued about data science of teaching reading and what the state has guided Us in in the area of Spanish literacy so that would be great to learn they have had their training for the bilingual teachers D bling I'm sure they do awesome thank you say there's no more questions I go ahead Dr real
121quick um so Linda so you were talking about um Norm reference and is the other test a Criterion reference test is the mclass yeah no the mclass is also a norm reference they're all Norm reference and the mclass is required by the by the state and then they will use that data and they will uh uh include it in the taper report so how does that line up with a Criterion reference test that they're going to end up taking in third grade that doesn't never mind but aren't we finding that it is predictive for example our um RIT score we did see right that that even though them uh taking that assessment as a Criterion reference test and it's predicting their performance on Star the map test the the map test has some stronger predictability
122and actually we've been uh the Consultants have been out here visiting with us this this uh this fall and talking to us about how how all of that work but yes Dr for the map map assessment there's some strong uh predictability so isn't that crazy it's predictive of a criterian reference test but thank thank you Linda appreciate it Dr msas and just a reminder too to go to one of the points I heard earlier if there are any legislative requirements that have been put on by the teachers or staff that you can provide to the board when we go meet with legislators we'd love to provide that list to them to tell them to quit making youall do we would love to have that as well so thank you uh the board now review The
123Following sent agenda items during review of the following items any board member May remove one or more items at which time these items be arranged in a vote on individually on the Monday meeting if any board member has a question regarding agenda item please ask be recognized on the consent agenda items 5A the minutes of the October 7th meeting 5B the board consider on second reading revisions Del from uh 5 B1 DFE termination of employment resignation 5 C the board consider approving the third add denim to the water sewage and drainage Services contract with Emerald Forest Utility District in Cyprus Fair Banks ISD 5D the Border consider granting RightWay easement located Spain Middle School to the North Harris County Regional Water Authority 5e the Border consider granting R of way of easement located a Robinson
124school to North Harris County Regional Water Authority 5f border consider awarding bids contracts and authorizing purchase orders recommended post to items items of 5 F1 con concrete installation and demolation ballards 5f2 hazard waste disposal we'll now proceed with the non-consent item 6A the board consider approving theic's recommendation for the 2025 2026 instructional calendar do you have a presentation is it you again Linda I have friends this time that uh that are going to be uh joining me so we so we have our DIC who has been working tirelessly on uh preparing a calendar an instructural calendar to recommend to you but I'd like to start by just sharing information about about what the state requires because there are some State guidelines that we have to follow so first of all I I just want to
125remind you that that per the state instruction for students is measured in minutes however for teachers teacher work days is days it's not minutes so that kind of causes a little bit of confusion uh sometimes the state has mandated that districts are to have a minimum and I want to stress minimum a minimum of 75,6 minutes per students and our teachers uh contract is 187 days the state also requires us to include on the calendar two inclement weather days so every year you see two days on the calendar and then some might wonder well why don't we use those because we've had a hurricane well we've had enough minutes in our calendar because of our days that we have that we haven't had to uh make up any of the days for inclement weather and
126then another important thing is up until two years ago we were not allowed to to start school so the first day of instruction before the fourth Monday in August but because we are a district of innovation we are now able to start school before that but no one in Texas can end school before May 15th so that is like the D drop down so just a little bit of of what the state requires now in in working through the calendar the DIC working with the calendar I just want to share with you the makeup of the DIC to share that it is well representation well represented of our community first of all an important point is that 2third of the membership of the DIC are teachers so the teacher voice the teacher input is definitely
127loud and clear through the DI but we also have parents in the DIC we have business members we have community members and we have non-teaching professionals also as part of the deic this is the work that they did we stay they started off with the first DIC meeting of the year uh in September and half of the meeting was focused on setting basically the the work ahead the scope of the work ahead uh then they came back on on uh on on October 17th and they were charged with pretty much coming up with two calendars that the community could provide uh input on and they were they were supposed to be there from 4:00 to 6:00 they were there till 6:30 6:45 they they were Troopers uh they're working and then you can see there's
128a little break between the second and the third meeting and that's because between those two meetings they uh the Cal the two calendars went on our district website again Communications did a great job with just pushing it out anywhere everywhere through through a social media blitz and again on our on our on our website um uh uh calls made so that we could get some input so then they came back last week was that the thir last week and uh and reviewed all of the input the information that you received regard regarding the survey and that one was a survey not just input it was a survey so they came back and reviewed all that information they looked at the calendar that had that was most favorable and then they worked from that calendar to
129see if there was any uh tweaks maybe that they could make to the calendar and now here they are and they will be recommending a calendar uh to you I everybody's anxious to see what that calendar looks like the committee had the the charge that they have every single year and that is basically to recommend to the school board a calendar that's based on what is instructionally B uh for students and they were charged with building the calendar around 173 instructional days we have a 61% of our students are economically disadvantaged and as I always hear Dr blasing game say time on task is critical for our kids so that was their charge but this year we added a second point so a second minor point and that was to also consider as a as
130they were working on a calendar a calendar that that would also serve as a retention and recruitment tool for our teachers because we know that our teachers have choices not only with salaries but also now with calendars whether it's the calendar that came up over and over and over again from one of our surrounding school districts that had that has a week in October whether it's that calendar and by the way the committee got a copy of that calendar so that they could look at it um as well or another calendar that gave them sometime in October which is really what they had been requesting testing these are some considerations that the committee considered uh uh kept at heart as they were working through the calendar first of all as I've already said the first
131two it's instructionally best for students um uh a retention tool the days they also look to see can we have a calendar that can balance as much as possible the first semester and the second semester one of the things that was important there is in previous years this year is an exception in previous years if we had any Elementary teachers who were uh retiring at mid year they had to wait till January to retire because the elementary semester didn't end until mid January but if you were a secondary teacher and were wanting to retire at mid year your retirement date would be uh at the end of December so they looked for a calendar that could be more balanced with with reporting periods for elementary as well as what they have for secondary also timing
132of professional development days and the number of professional development days they they considered the State Testing calendar uh the state is a little bit more flexible with with the calendar they give us a couple of weeks so Dr clayon Works around the established calendar and designates a days for for testing but we certainly didn't want a a a professional development day or a holiday on on the day of a certain a certain test so they looked at that they considered uh uh the student attendance and and and making sure that kids were going to come to school and then they also looked at at summer programs and they looked at when do we start summer school how many weeks are we going to have when does Lone Star start their summer school because that's important
133too that we don't go too far into June because then we we uh we have a conflict with that summer school program they also looked at the Historical uh expectations of our community typically every two years we do a survey with the community and ask them about their thoughts of spring break the different vacations this is one of this is our off year but basically every year we get the same we get the same results that the commit wants a week at Spring break they want the full week at Thanksgiving they like a minimum of two weeks for the winter break uh they have asked for election day to be a holiday especially at the elementary with the polling sites there they're concerned with with with the many visitors strangers that that are there and
134then these are the standard holidays that they basically uh share with us that they would like every single year so they they considered all that as they were uh developing their calendars so the process that they that they used was we we had the room divided into 12 tables basically every feeder pattern uh had a table so uh one of our presenters today is is is from Cypress Creek High School David and so at his table were parents community members uh other uh teachers from the site Creek feeder pattern that were sitting at his at his table working on a calendar so they created 12 calendars and then each group presented their calendar and then the group as a whole voted on calendars and then at the end they had two calendars to share with
135the community and so these are the two calendars that were on uh everywhere where the community could give input so there was a version one and and a version two and uh the calendar that received the that was most most favorable was calendar 2 and I'll share a little bit about that uh in just a minute but I do want to highlight an important uh date on these two calendars and that is spring break if you look at calendar vers one you see spring break is the third full week in March that is the same spring break as Lone Star that's what they have calendar two is the second full week in March that is typically when when spring break is the second full week in March um and so the the committee had to
136weigh which way to go with with a recommended spring break do they align with with lonar college or do they align with some of the surrounding school districts that also have a spring break that is the second week the ninth so for example at this at this time I'm under my memory Katie has has their calendar out their spring break is a week of the 9th Tomball has her calendar out their spring break is a week of the 9th conro has her calendar out and their spring break is a week of the 9th there's one other one that's out I can't I can't remember right off I'll look it up but so the question was or the concern was we have teachers that that live in Conroe and in uh Katie and these other surrounding
137school districts whose spring break is a week of the ninth and so do we align with with with our teachers to make sure that that they're going to have their time off with with their families and especially when they were considering a recruitment and retention tool as well for for this so just to just so that you know that that was a a a biggie um I did have the opportunity to to talk to Dr Jones the president of lonar college cair and share this with her and they were not aware that these other school districts were not aligning to to their calendar so she's going to take that back to to lonar but we have a great work working relationship with lonar and basically this this impacts obviously our dual credit classes well the
138majority of our dual credit uh students taking dual credit are sitting in classes with our own dual credit teachers right that we share with Lone Star so that's not an issue because they break when we break and they come back when we come back but we also have I think it was 50 51 maybe courses where we have a a certified teacher in the classroom but they don't have the credential for the for the Dual credit so lanar provides the Dual credit teacher via VIA online and so that was a question we asked but most of those teachers are also our teachers so that will be we can work through that there's only a few that are not so really the issue would be students who are taking a course at loone Star on their
139own and those are very few but Dr Jones assured me that they would work with us to to minimize the the workload there so I want to just to share that because that's an important Point regarding regarding the calendar so this version two is a calendar that uh received the most favorable support uh it was about 159% I believe of of uh the community supported this one but I did want to share some of the some of the highlights with with uh via the survey that they liked and things that they didn't like and so they like the student teacher holidays uh the teacher work days uh and and they like where the professional development days were placed basically they liked that they had opportunities for three-day weekends throughout through throughout the year a couple
140of things that they that they disliked were that uh school would not end before Memorial Day and so that was certainly something that that they shared and then they didn't like the third November 3rd and fourth the way they were situated because if you look at November 3rd and fourth you can see that on this calendar uh the fourth would be the election day the third a teacher work day and they wanted for the fourth to be that Monday so they would have the three days holiday so that was something that the committee was able to make some some adjustments to where the fourth is a the the holiday is on the Monday so they have a three-day holiday and the teacher work day is on uh is on that Tuesday so before we we
141actually we're walk you through the calendar a little bit more suspense here Dr uh Dr um Clayburn is going to walk you through just a summary of the uh survey we will begin tonight with a brief overview of the cair instructional calendar survey process the survey went live on October the 22nd 2024 and ran through noon on October 30th 2024 it was publicized in the following ways the calendar survey page popup on the district homepage as well as the parent and student resources academics staff community and calendar Pages the popups contained a direct link to the instructional calendar web page where individuals could view the two options and take the survey a school messenger email was sent to cyer students and staff the Board of Trustees the cyer Educational Foundation cyer ISD retiree the Chamber
142of Commerce community members faith-based leaders substitutes super seniors and VIPs this email contained a link to the instructional calendar web page a carousel slide on the district and campus websites also contained a link to the instructional calendar web page since everyone who participated in the survey use the same survey link we did have instances of multiple responses coming from the same Internet Protocol address also known as IP address this is an identifying number that is associated with a specific computer or computer network therefore therefore we will provide you with two sets of data for each question one set will have all responses captured and the second set will only have one response from any given IP address the data taken from the server survey were shared with the deic on October 30th where they used
143them as one piece of information while considering the calendar options tonight we will share the survey results from all participants and then four additional disaggregated data sets one for District employees parents students and community members let's start with the results from all participants please allow me to orient you to how the data are presented on the slides the survey question is in the top leftand corner for this Slide the question is which best describes you directly below the question you will find the number of respondents for this data set the number or the N for this question was 16,144 this is the data set with all submitted responses directly below the number of respondents you will find the results for that question then you will see a second number of responses that are unique for
144each IP address in this case the number or n is 8,525 directly below the number of unique responses you will find the results for that data set this slide depicts data on District employees again the data for all resp responses are on top and the unique IP address data are on the bottom for those respondents with children in the district these graphs depict their children's educational level before you now our data on ciper student responses next respondents were asked to identify their calendar preference those that selected a preference for calendar 1 were asked why they preferred that version for those that preferred version one we were interested in determining if there was anything they liked about version two similarly for those that preferred calendar version 2 we asked them why they preferred that version for
145those that preferred preferred calendar version 2 we were also interested in determining if there was anything they liked about version one for those that did not prefer either version we asked them to identify the reasons why now let's look at yes uh oh I think that's the end of my presentation okay yes sorry about that so now uh David Hunt is one of our teachers at Cypress Creek High School and he is also a member of the DIC so is he's coming up he's going to walk you through the calendar but before he starts I want to take a moment just to thank the DIC again for all of their work and I know we have a few members here so if you're a member of the DIC worked hard on this calendar please stand
146so we can recognize you I know there's some of you out there thank you so much again as I said they were they were there till 6:30 6:45 and all they got was a cookie and some water and coffee so thank you so much for your work okay good evening cair school board and school board members and and audience of the community my name again is David Hunt I'm a math teacher in the math department chair at Cyprus Creek this was my second year to serve on the deic and calendar committee uh well formerly last year the calendar committee this year are charged within the deic to function as also a calendar committee uh I have bus Duty in about 10 hours so I'm going to try to keep this as short as I can
147but there's many elements to this calendar that I think it's really important that you understand were very thoughtfully planned and purposely placed first off I want to begin with the mission that we were charged with that mission if I may repeat is to recommend to you an instructional calendar that is based on what is instructionally best for students and I would like to propose to you along with this calendar tonight that what is best for our students is the best teachers in Texas and that is where this Recruitment and Retention component to this calendar is so critical if you want what's best for kids you want the best teachers best teachers make the best lessons and make the best of kids so keep please keep that in mind as we review through the calendar uh
148there were over 600 hours of service given to the committee just within the committee's meeting dates as provided uh in addition to the homework that was done we reviewed over 25 local adjacent District calendars to make sure that we could align with some of these other districts and our dates and also take into consideration as Dr msas pointed out that a lot of our teachers don't live within the district and therefore it's important that we take into consideration their needs as it pertains to their families and where they live uh again we were charged with creating a calendar with 173 instructional days that also included 187 teacher contract days and if I Can Begin by directing your attention to August uh as we chose elected last year there we begin our year with seven professional
149development days for our staff those days beginning on Monday August 4th and going through Tuesday August 12th those days and and whether those days and how they are broken up uh amongst campus and District time equivalency uh that's not decided by the committee uh so that is outside of our charge but what we were very purposeful about is selecting that first day of school and last year as we sat on the committee I know that the proposed calendar also put out there a Wednesday start date and that was modified in the adopted calendar I would strongly urge you to maintain that Wednesday start date and if I can give you some perspective as a teacher as a parent what that does is our students come back from summer break and they're in summer mode and
150when you put them in a classroom on Monday and you say you've got five days to grind gr it out it's too much for that child from the kindergarten preschool all the way through our 12th graders beginning on a Wednesday as many districts in our area do provides our students an opportunity to come in kind of brush off the rust and come back that next week with a full gas tank ready to go so we want to strongly encourage you as a committee to maintain that Wednesday start date um it also gives our families an opportunity to get back from their summer vacations and have some time to adjust on that Monday and Tuesday while teachers are in staff development to prepare their kids to enter the classroom on Wednesday if we continue with the
151calendar September nothing there other than Labor Day nothing's changed the first real significant thing to point out is the October what we referred to as the fall break uh Dr msas referred to one of our adjacent districts that has a full week Break um if you are unaware or haven't had the opportunity to look at their proposed calendar this year they actually have the option of doing away with that break there are some very strong disadvantages to having an entire week in the fall and one of those disadvantages is when you have an entire week the 15th if I can direct your attention to October 15th 16 17th our high schools are full of students that are participating in athletics extracurriculars where if you were to have an entire week break those students aren't afforded
152that opportunity because they have obligations to their teams their clubs and other uh entities that they belong to um we approximated approximately 60% 60% of our students wouldn't even have a full week break so what made more sense to us is to provide a short break where everyone has an opportunity on that Monday the 13th and 14th of October to recharge and have an opportunity at the end of that first nine weeks which ends on October 10th to collect themselves and come back on October 15th to start that second grading period if you'll also look on the 10th of October that is uh designated as a teacher work day that gives our teachers an opportunity to prepare their grade books to uh close out the first nine weeks have a couple days off and then
153come back again to start the second nine weeks Run It Forward Dr msus already discussed the switch on November 3rd and 4th November 3rd originally November 4th was proposed to be a a staff student holiday to provide our campuses uh to the community for election day um obviously as a work day that wouldn't be too much of a problem so we elected to switch the third to a student staff holiday to create that three-day weekend and move the teacher workday to the fourth uh Thanksgiving break hasn't changed Christmas break uh again trying to balance the two semesters we were able to actually close out the semester on the 18th if you're a high school campus secondary campus that's perfect you take one final on Monday then you take two finals Tuesday two finals Wednesday two
154finals Thursday and you're done it's a great calendar for the secondary and at that point I know our elementary teachers are ready to get out of the classroom too teachers would then return on January 5th to start their second semester that gives them one day of professional development to get themselves readed for the beginning of spring semester where students would then return on the sixth that also get students a day to prepare themselves to get back into the the rhythm of school uh run it forward to February February 13th is a professional development day uh that could potentially be a campus time equivalency day where if teachers take opportunities to develop themselves over the summer in conjunction with the 16th that could create themselves a extra long weekend for our students that gives them a
1554-day weekend where they if you look at the month of January February and March February is a long hard arduous period for them to endure and that gives them a 4-day weekend to kind of split the difference between the start of the semester and spring break on the 9th um spring break being on the 9th through the 13th Dr has did a great job of illustrating why that shouldn't be too big of a concern for you um I will tell you from my son's perspective who is a freshman at Rice he's not interested in spending spring break with me as I don't believe many of our spring break students are but the biggest concern we had in the committee were teachers saying I struggle living in this District outside of cyfair trying to find Child
156Care trying to find the time to spend with my family who are on spring break a different week than we are so we tried to align and we elected as a committee uh unanimously to have our spring break the 9th through the 13th to give that opportunity to our teachers and our staff that live outside of cair April 3rd is our Good Friday student staff holiday we tacked on the Monday as a Time equivalency day uh professional development day uh to give our families an opportunity to a 4-day weekend over Easter Easter's on Sunday coming back from Easter that's difficult you may be with family uh out of town and this provides them an additional day to get back safely and not have to feel rushed getting back into the classroom also uh important to
157note the testing calendar begins on April 6th uh beginning testing on April 7th is a window there's plenty of opportunity for our administrators to begin that window on the 7th and not interrupt with any of our testing and then running it forward this is the most critical part of the calendar that I wanted to address because of the survey in the survey you saw people did not want to extend the year Beyond Memorial day but there's some real elements to that that you need to be aware of and these are primarily at the secondary level our elementary teachers they're ready but our secondary kids they have some charges that extend beyond that Memorial Day and I'll illustrate these for you on the week of May 18th through the 22nd that is our late AP testing
158window so students that had double booked AP test they need to move that second AP test to that week uh if we were to end our school year before Memorial Day students would be asked to take final exams and late AP testing during the same week and that's frankly not possible in addition to that and this is maybe the a more important point that does apply to our Elementary uh campuses we don't receive our early student level results from Star EOC typically until that Friday before spring break I excuse me before Memorial uh Memorial Day so the critical component to that is our campuses get that data and they've got to have a very quick turnaround to report to families to report to students we need to get your child in interventions we need to
159get your child child into a summer remediation program and if we were to end before Memorial Day that eliminates that opportunity for us to communicate to students to families to staff uh who those children are and then give them ample opportunity to provide those chances for students to address their shortcomings in uh those STAR test results other than that uh this is our proposed calendar uh your committee they gave everything they had to this uh last year I I addressed you from that side uh I'm hoping standing from this side today that I have a little better luck this calendar works this calendar will help retain it will help recruit teachers to sfair the best teachers will make which will make for the best instructional opportunities for our students and if I can leave you
160with just one final thought here at s Creek we have a motto and that's trust the process so I'm asking you to trust the process that your calendar committee excuse me your diic uh went through to create this proposed calendar because they had a lot of difference of opinions and we were able to come to a consensus a very unified consensus on this calendar and I'm just asking to trust that that committee is presenting you with the best possible calendar for scair for the calendar year 2526 six thank you thank you David we will entertain any questions or comments you might have I have H I want to thank the deic committee for the work that they did I was able to attend several of the meetings and see the work and see the passion
161the energy the enthusiasm that every school brought to the calendar and everybody was passionate for their calendar and made great arguments and came down to the final two uh really appreciate everything that was done through that process I do want to just speak um to Something in the spring the board was newly formed and we were tasked with the uh responsibility of adopting a calendar that would work for the community and and the teachers and so moving with the date back two weeks was excessive to a lot of parents and even teachers told us that had count had a vacation scheduled in August already and we struggled with that because we know the de iic committee took a lot of time and effort to plan out what they recommended and I so thank you for
162going through that very detailed thorough process for why you picked every single date so helpful um but we had that that responsibility and so we rather than go with a two-e push back of the start date we went with a one-week and it was not to usurp the deic committee in any way shape or form it was the feedback that we had received from the community so we honor you we thank thank you we hear you I think this is an excellent calendar I love what y'all have come up with I think it is fabulous that it's going to be a recruiting tool and it's going to meet more of the needs and y'all came up with it and I I just think it's fantastic so I I thank you for your work and everybody
163that participated the feedback that came back the process that was offered through the district and the feedback uh so I just say thank you so much I really appreciate yall thank you Justin uh there's absolutely nothing to pick apart on this calendar um very thoughtful good job I want to thank everybody for their efforts um I had the privilege of uh attending those meetings as well uh was very well run and there was a lot of consensus and collaboration from everybody involved um one of the things I thought I found very interesting is there was almost unanimous consensus for the start date um I mean literally everybody picked the 13th uh between all the working groups that was really interesting um and and David you said something something that I've also echoed as well especially
164when it comes to the calendar you know what's best for our teachers when it comes to this calendar is also what's best for our students and so I'm glad that we have a teacher and educator focus when we're developing this calendar um I was a big proponent of you know re you know adding those October breaks for that October burnout and I think that everything just kind of Falls in line with that one question David and this might be a good question for you is um I know that there were some concerns in the previous calendar for lack of teacher work days I think I think we have six here um three what the green St the green stars are your teacher work that's right I I one two yeah there's three so that's right
165so there's three I mean have we I was looking at the other counter my apologies but so we have three work days um is that enough is that is that from the teacher perspective because I know there were concerns and they wanted enough teacher work days is that kind of hitting the mark uh so Dr msas has kind of a a rule of thumb that a lot of our surrounding District will at the end of their grading periods provide a half day for teachers to compile grades and get those in for submission and if you were to add four grading periods together that creates two days uh so we as a committee felt that three days was even PR uh I don't want to say generous but it was adequate um more days always better
166um if you're asking a teacher of bias to speak we would much prefer teacher work days as to professional development days but we also understand that those days are necessary to make us the best in instructors that we can be um in the current iteration of the calendar what we've created here is we can't go to a four-day school year or four-day school week which a lot of people would love to push but in a 36 we calendar as we have here you have 13 weeks where you've in essence created a three or four day school week primarily four day weeks uh where teachers have an opportunity to get caught up up and students have an opportunity to recharge so there are threein teacher work days but there's the way the counter is constructed there's
167opportunities for teachers to catch up and be prepared that maybe previously didn't exist okay U thank you very much and again thank you very much for your efforts um very good job and I'm in support of the calendar as proposed to us thank you Natalie go ahead uh I just also wanted to give a appreciation to the deic those teachers who served I want to honor uh the leadership of our Administration team that led that process very well and I'm very proud that as a system that we're prioritizing understanding that our teacher Recruitment and Retention is a primary focus of how we create our calendars because our teachers are our most critical resource our most important Frontline employees so thank you very much to everyone in the process I um also your questions about the
168calendar Lucas you have a question uh not a question just a comment uh David thank you very much for relaying all the detail regarding every date that's significant on the calendar so that really helps me understand the perspective of the community uh the committee I think this is a great calendar I think this is going to meet the needs for a district uh I'm excited about uh being able to apply to our families I think it's going to work well uh so thank you very much for both to you and to the rest of the committee members that are here and at home for all of your time uh deeply appreciated for all of our teachers that are out there doing our best for our kids every day I also wanted to say thank you
169to Dr Killian and to Linda and and the team Dr msas uh for after we voted on the calendar we were asking for this to be done sooner rather than later uh to give people proper notice and and so I really want to say thank you to y'all for being so proactive about it and The deic Taking It On full charge and doing an excellent job thank you I also want to tell thank you guys for for putting this together and again everybody that participated in the committee I really appreciate your time your efforts energy and all this stuff uh Dr Marcas thank you so much for not having to delay this you know to the second semester for us to you know actually approve something approve the calendar uh but I also wanted to
170kind of throw this out there too the the two weeks uh the two week early earlier start date was kind of an issue for our renovation team as well so we we had a couple schools that were going right up to the Finish Line plus we didn't anticipate bad weather events and Matt can kind of kind of touch based on that when you have millions of dollars of taxpayer money we want to we want to make sure that our that these jobs you know get get complete they're not rushed does that make sense so um there was a little bit more that kind of went into that where that two-e jump was just a little bit going to be going to be too tight so um I hope again I apologize for the the for
171the folks that were on the committee previously but there's there's more to it uh than just just approving that but I also want to just let everybody know this was a great calendar I I I think everything kind of just kind of fell into place for you guys so uh I appreciate again everybody that that that participated in this and um you know I I I agree with uh you know with Dr msas we talked about really with the teacher shortage you know that we're experiencing we we really need to kind of focus on our retention efforts as well so thank you thank you so much for David for your presentation Dr Clayborn uh and um Dr killing as well thank you any more discussion thanks thank you very much for all your hard work
172appreciate your time and investment and it's Linda's fault you only got cookies we offered chicken but she wouldn't do it wow so hey those lemon cookies were good I know you ate them all uh 6B the board will consider adoption of non business days of course marne's not here uh for calendar of 2025 for Texas Public Information Act calendar I can I can handle this if you are there any questions on 6B no questions 6C mon got off the hook the board will consider approving the district's District uh 2024 annual comprehensive financial report and single audit report accept the auditor's report on District's general purpose financial statements in single audit for fiscal year in Ed June 30th 2024 uh while Amanda's getting set up right real quickly I just would like to take a moment
173because Amanda BS and Greg Peterson will be doing the presentation but I would just like to recognize Amanda and her team um you know it's Amanda Mabel Isles who's the director of finance and then Melissa mcer the director of budget you know this this is a Year's worth of work from their team and and they do an excellent job and making sure that everything's accurate they make sure that uh everything is prepared for the audit Mabel Isles is responsible for the entire preparation of the audit along with her team but then also the preparation of this annual comprehensive financial report so I just want to recognize them Amanda thank you Karen appreciate it good evening Dr Killian president Henry uh members of the board tonight I will present to you the financial results for fiscal
174year 2024 um like Karen said with me tonight is Greg Peterson the audit partner with Weaver and Tidwell and Greg will be sharing the results of the annual Financial audit and the federal single audit report um the annual Financial audit is required by the Texas Education Code and the single audit act actually requires the compliance audit of our federal funds um I want to Echo what Karen said and recognize our director of financial services Mabel Isles um she does pretty much all the work of this report right here um um this is actually her last report she is retiring at the end of December um after 19 years of service to the district so she will be greatly missed and like Karen said her team is amazing um Annette Pete and the Director of Business
175Services Melissa mcer um we are only required to submit an annual financial report to tea but we actually choose to do the comprehensive report instead it's a more transparent report and includes 10 years of data for ease of comparison and the district continues to receive the certificate for excellence in financial reporting for the government Finance Officers Association and the association of school business officials so one of the required statements is the statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance which reflects the effect of District Operations during the fiscal year as of June 30 2024 the general fund reflects total revenues of 1.88 billion and total expenditures of 1.91 billion which results in a deficiency of revenues under expenditures of 2.8 million due to accounting requirements for leases and subscriptions we are required to record
176new additions to leases and subscriptions to both expenditures and other financing sources in the fund financial statements which results in the district's net change in fund balance of 3.98 million and and the ending fund balance as of June 30 2024 was 56.7 million for 2023 2024 we budgeted for and issued purchase orders in the amount of 5.7 million these are expenditures that we were that we budgeted and planned for but the items were not received Andor paid for by June 30th of 2024 we're required to set aside fund balance for these payments to be made in 2024 2025 as you can see this is more than the net change in fund balance as Miss Smith discussed when the 2023 2024 budget was adopted we budget for All funds to be spent for and for all
177positions to be filled we also budgeted for all expenditures that we knew would be covered with the Esser Federal stimulus funds so that the board and the district would know our true ongoing cost without the one-time receipt and use of federal stimulus funds the 2023 2024 budgeted deficit of 138.5 million was offset by using 92 million in the remaining Esser funds to cover ongoing operating expenditures in the general fund the variance between the budgeted deficit and what the deficit would have been if we did not have Esser funds was due to the record high unfilled positions and higher than expected interest income just a couple of general fund highlights the general Administration costs were 1.87% of total expenditures and remains well below the Statewide average of 3.5% and the district continues to have one of
178the lowest administrative cost ratios at 3.96% which is well below the tea threshold of 8.55% for school districts with more than 10,000 students now I'll turn it over to Greg Peterson to discuss the results of the annual Financial audit and the federal single audit report thank you Amanda uh so yes I'm I'm back uh this time with some more great uh financial information so you know the whole purpose of an audit is for the auditor to render an opinion on the financial statements to provide reasonable assurance that the numbers are materially correct um we're going to be issuing an unmodified opinion on the financial statements so that's the highest level of assurance that you can receive in an audit uh we conducted our our audit in accordance with government auditing standards but we do more
179than just look at the numbers you know we evaluate the district's inter inter controls um because we want to make sure that's the foundation of how these financial statements are built upon the upon the internal controls so we do an evaluation of that um we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls so when you hear you're getting unmodified opinions you don't have any deficiencies in your internal controls you really can't get better results than that from a financial statement audit um let's see here Manda how do I go to the next slide so in addition to to rendering opinion on the financial statements we also test the um the federal programs of the district the the programs that we tested were Title One title three and and special education um
180as part of that process we render an opinion we will be rendering unmodified opinions on our testing of those three programs so we test compliance with Federal requirements we also test internal controls over compliance over those three programs um and one thing you you may have noticed is that you probably don't see a familiar program listed there you don't see the erer program as Amanda mentioned the eser is going to be going away so we're going to get back to more traditional rotation of your title programs your special education Your Child Nutrition will be um recurring programs uh going forward so just to kind of you know pair it what Amanda said with Esser going away your general fund is going to look different because erer was about 92 to100 million of supplemental funds to
181your general fund that won't be in existence going forward um so just wanted to to mention that um but again a as a board you know you really want to hear those key terms those unmodified opinions those you know in you're in compliance with all your federal requirements there's no material weaknesses there's no significant deficiencies um so again uh A+ audit um you know the amount of work that we ask for we ask so many questions during this process you know we we uh uh digging all the the crannies that we can we you know want to be sure that you know when we render our opinion on these financial statements it's very reliable so again I just want to say thank you to Amanda uh to Karen um to their their complete team uh
182I'm really going to miss Mabel I've known Mabel for a long we've been working together for a long time so I'm really going to miss her um I'm sad I was sad to hear that she was retiring but welld deserved she's put in a lot of work uh you know and when Amanda said she she does a lot of the leg work of this 170 page document it's a lot of a lot of time goes into that and she loves it so it's it's rare to find someone who loves it as much as she does so she will be very very missed so anyway I'm happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the audit um but yeah that concludes my presentation I think Amanda's here as well for any questions so just for
183the audience can you guys explain the standards against which you reviewed our financial controls and you formed the basis of this audit yeah so so government auditing standards requires uh that we obtain an understanding of your internal controls so when we do that we approach that from a risk-based approach um so we want to really get a strong understanding of uh those transaction cycles that are most significant to the district so uh cash dispersements so your expenditures and also your payroll so those are two key transaction cycles that um we test in detail um and deter and evaluate your internal control processes for Karen can you describe the relevance of this audit and how it applies to Future Bond ratings and future uh interactions with the broader investment Community well um yes because we do
184have to present as part of whenever we do a bond sale part of our official statement um that's includes our annual financial report so having a good um no findings and good results related to our annual financial report makes a difference in the success of our bond sales and the reduction our interest cost whenever we do have a bond sale and your experience sir when you're evaluating other school districts how do we rate on average across districts of our size what um I would say comparatively to other districts of your size um y'all don't probably receive as many findings in the control deficiency area I would say compared to your other larger districts um you know compared to your Houston isds or your Dallas isds um you know y'all come in with with less um
185deficiencies again I think that is directly attributable to the great accounting staff that you have other questions um I just want to confirm Karen that these documents will be posted online uh on the district website uh yes the annual uh we are actually required to post the annual comprehensive financial report on our website so it'll be posted once the board approves it yes thank you so I just want to make uh the public aware that that they're welcome to dig through the document and to that we share this information in the spirit of full transparency say no more questions thank you very much for your time thank you appreciate it very much 6D the board consider approving the budget amend for the period ending July 1st 2024 through September 30th 2024 just real quickly uh
186typically um one of the questions that y'all may ask me is if we've got any trans uh items that are maybe unique um is related to our uh budget amendments now one of the items that is not unique but that Amanda mentioned quickly is the fact that we have to budget for out of fund balance those purchases that were we thought were going to happen by June the 30th but they did not so we had to roll forward because they were going to be paid um in 2425 but also uh we allocated funds for uh for software renewals of some of our instructional materials and typically uh sometimes we we've been able to utilize the instructional materials allotment for this however because due to um our our textbook adoptions that are coming up there wasn't
187sufficient funds available for this so you will see a budget amendment of 6.4 million for that and there's also a budget amendment for uh Transportation midyear pay increase so I'm going to turn it over to Matt Morgan where he can share more information thank you thank you Karen I would like to provide a little more information about the budget amendment for transportation I think I've shared with the board in the past that for the past several years there has been a severe bus driver shortage in 2022 2023 we started the year 45 bus drivers short averaged 103 bus drivers short a day even with the reduction in services this year we started 59 bus drivers short and as of today I believe we're about 56 bus drivers short so transportation is a little bit different
188than other departments and Child Nutrition if they're short staffed you can close a serving line operations can delay or postpone cleaning an area maintenance can delay work orders but for transportation there kids at bus stops every day and they're expecting a a bus and transportation has to have a bus at that bus stop to pick the children up regardless of vacancies or absences and we experience about 50 to 75 absences a day so having a shortage of 145 103 bus drivers 56 bus drivers just not it's not sustainable because that means our area directors are driving our supervisors are driving our vehicle technici Ians are driving anybody with the CDL at a Transportation Center is driving a bus that doesn't allow us to take care of our campuses doesn't allow us to support our drivers
189or deal with student behavior issues on the bus it slows our response to any accidents uh any emergencies and not to mention the additional hours that this staff is working driving a route in the afternoon driving her out in the morning then performing their duties that they're assigned so I transportation to do a survey of area districts but more importantly a survey of our biggest competitor in the area what their salaries are what they start at and that is what's reflected in the chart on the slide Amazon Freight partners and they average from 22 to $23 an hour our current rate is $1 19919 an hour for a starting bus driver that is the second lowest in the area almost every other District in the area pays more than us and our peer districts that
190we were compared to last month's audit pay significantly more than we do so I went to the operations and finance committee and I provided three options for a bus driver pay increase to try to help us hire bus drivers attract bus drivers because it is a difficult job we discussed it and the option that they came up with or we decided to recommend it's a midyear pay increase for bus drivers is an increase from the current rate of 1919 to $23 an hour is a starting rate for bus drivers and an equity adjustment of $381 for all current bus drivers for attendants dispatchers and trainers because they all have CDLs and they're the ones that are driving these empty routes the projected total annual cost of this recommendation is about $5.4 million the three the
1913.5 is the prated amount effective December 1st Dr kilan did you have anything to add yeah I just wanted to add that so we're we're going to try this out to see if we can attract some more drivers and fill those empty positions that we have um from there we can start talking about whether or not we get additional Revenue um to be able to address anything else in terms of additional routes and all that I know there's been a lot of talk in the community about restoring some routes um that might be possible if we can actually get bus drivers to fill the vacant positions right now and so this was a good interim step um that U actually um Scott uh brought to me and talked to me a little bit about about
192and um when we brought it up and looked into it um I think the committee was supportive of that so we'll see how that that goes and then I would also say this is if this does work out and we are able to raise uh the number of of drivers and and lower the number of vacancies um we might be looking at this in some of our other areas as well because we've got a lot of vacancies in some other areas as well and I don't want to Short Change anybody else or or say that the bus drivers are more important than than anybody else they are all important to us special ed uh ed u educational AIDS um we have pair professionals um we have a lot of people um our our police officers
193obviously as well and our teachers and all that so um we really do need to some more revenue from our our state to be able to address some of these issues so thank you very much for bringing this forward and hopefully this uh works out to to help us with our our transportation issues I've got one comment um just for the community so the finance and operations subcommittee we evaluated uh options to do a lower pay increase a higher pay increase and building on what Dr Killian stated uh our goal here as we listened to Matt described what was possible is that we need to learn whether or not we can reduce our vacancies going forward and this is probably the most conservative way to to do that over the next semester so that as
194we're going into the audit par me the budget cycle and making decisions we'll have more information that we can use to be able to understand what the next steps need to be with our transportation our community's been very clear uh they've asked us to act well this can be regarded as step one right we have to be able to solve for this problem first before we try to evaluate additional routes so this will give us the information we need to understand understand where we fit in the larger Community as we're competing for those bus drivers and I leave anything out Matt okay go ahead Al okay so I just want to make sure I understand what so I ask there to be an item on the agenda to restore Transportation at the fastest paced possible
195understand routes restore routes for students who lost it maybe prior to izing the you know higher speed limit or other criteria on up and our biggest stumbling block is that we cannot hire bus drivers we have shortages and so in analyzing the situation pay and other factors are critical so we're looking at the budget to increase the pay this amount will it only cover increasing pay for the existing routes or would this have money for us to add routes in um so CU my request was an item on the agenda that said to add routes back so where are we at with this money and this budget increase and what would the process look like and how fast would that process happen for families uh that are looking to um at un you know at
196situations walking or having to walk or not have bus this year to school so the reason we selected this this rate is because we need to be competitive with the Amazon we don't lose a lot of drivers to surrounding districts it's mostly I think we lost a driver today he went to be a limo driver I I don't know what he's making but I'm sure it's more and he's probably not doing a split shift and gets to work more than 177 days a year the key to adding routes back is going to be to attract bus drivers and as we attract bus drivers and the resources become available we'll meet with Dr Smith to see where we're at and if we and then we'll bring that back to the committee to the superintendent he'll give
197us actually to the superintendent he'll give us some direction as to what he wants to do but the key is to add bus drivers we have to attract bus drivers we have to fill the 60 positions if we were to go back and reinstate all the routes that would be we we would be 150 175 bus drivers short that's a tall task because as we explained to you when you came over and met with this in transportation it is a process for hiring bus drivers training bus drivers at this rate we're hoping that we can attract bus drivers possibly from other places where they're already trained uh and it will shorten the time frame that we can put them into a bus did I say that quietly enough Kane okay so that this is the
198first step um and I I will I do want to thank uh the high quality Transportation staff and Yad and the team um it's uh uh we did have the opportunity to visit and understand more about everything and there's just zero questions about the quality in the operations and the um thoughtfulness and the preparation and even the environment the culture and and the attempts to really make it a place for our drivers to um to be attracted to and and money does speak um but I guess I'm still concerned uh I it's I guess if we do well with this is there literally do we have a path did this I asked for an item to say hey we would as a board restore Transportation routes where we could but at this point is there
199even a path to restore them beyond what is in the cut budget from last year like is any is there even a a path to allow should we get a great response for people who lost their route this year to get their route back if we hire drivers quickly enough we could bring that back to the committee so Matt can I ask on that question build on that let's say we approve this and it gets going through December correct we I I would like it effective December 1st because that allows us to get the information out start getting applications and so bus driver applies for the position what is that length of time to get them trained certified you know trying toip how long does that take I'm gonna let Dr Smith answer that mean
200there's a time period right it's not like next day they're working and I'll say as he walks up that was um you know seeing how few it is quite a rigorous process as far as what to qualify for your background and then you're driving and all that so what was that percentage Dr Kane was it like two out of 10 10 it was about two out of 10 yes so when they apply the whole process it's two out of 10 so I do love this idea of being able to steal and I would encourage every board member if you haven't done it yet take the simulator and go do that as well it's very difficult it's very challenging to pass that we'll make it interesting for you when you come on the simulator but it
201is uh it is about four to six week uh time process from application coming in for training uh going through the certification programs going through the 80 hours of federally required CDL training the five written test and then the uh driving test and of those people who come in that 6 to 8 weeks how many actually typically in a typical run make it through the process 20% at best 20% 20% of the applicants actually make it through to make sure so 100 people you're going to get at best yes sir I think that the numbers that Kane shared the other day and we sent I sent this presentation to the board you've hired over you've already received over five about 500 applicants and out of that 500 applicants a portion of them were drivers part
202of them were attendants and you were able to hire or get 40 or 50 through training and of that 40 or 50 maybe 30 actually made it behind the wheel if that gives puts it help is that just uh just last year we received a total of 291 driver applications uh we were able to hire 58 of those to actually complete training and get behind the wheel of a school bus uh over 170 of those were not approved for whatever reason whether it being their driving record the background check pre-employment testing uh things of that nature I understand the data I'm just making sure you say it out loud so everyone can hear it in the room for sure thank you I I want to say thank you uh for the tour that we had
203for the transportation department and I recommend that the rest of the board go over it's a super impressive uh group that you have assembled there and uh the Excellence and the fun and the passion that they have there it was really wonderful to see and to sit down and visit with them we have to be um intentional about loving on them and the people that we've had we've retained they stay with us once they come uh the new hires are a little bit more of a challenge and we really need referrals people who know people that work in the district make great referrals because they have uh an investment in a bond with cyfair and so I want to encourage people to refer people and there's there's a bonus if you refer someone so1 that's
204another way to do it um I Echo uh Dr blasing game's concern I I want to be able to see these uh drivers get compensated uh but I really want Transportation restored I just feel it's so important that we make that commitment as a board to our community we've heard very clearly this is a huge concern in our district safety is the number one reason and so I thank you for what yall have been able to do and continue to do I myself was able to do the uh simulator I only H hit eight things so I'm not qualified to be a breast driver but I do want to encourage other people to apply for it you hit nine things I was counting before Dr SMI that's we put you through retraining before Dr Smith
205sits down I would like to compliment Dr Smith if you were to do a nationwide search for transportation director and you wanted the most qualified person that's the gentleman right there thank you I'd like to make one more comment um I'd like to go ahead and request that we put it back on the agenda an actual agenda item next month even though we may not be ready I wanted to continue to stay on the agenda that we're going to discuss and look at restoring transport ation um at the rate we possibly can and make a path possible for it I'm hoping people respond like amazingly to this um rate of pay so I'm requesting an agenda item for next month please any other discussion on this item Cena thank you very much 6 e we've
206already moved on the board will consider approving on first freeing additions revisions or dations District policy uh 6 E1 CS uh local facility standards ad any questions go ahead yes I have questions was was the well I before I begin with my questions was there any discussion or uh from the policy committee as to the policy that they're bringing forward to the board yes we had discussions last month this octob was it uh o October yes okay then I'll go ahead and begin with I have some comments and some questions um to begin with my comments this board has determined and shared its priorities as stated in our board monitoring system and our legislative priorities our priorities include increasing STAR test increasing participation in uh dual credit and advanced placement courses increasing industry certifications um
207increasing the graduation rate increasing math and reading scores for K through fifth grade increasing student attendance improving teacher Recruitment and Retention increasing funding for teacher pay special education safety and transportation nowhere in our priorities that we have shared from this Das does it state that the use of bathrooms is a priority according to notes from the policy subcommittee meeting on September 23rd it says quote Todd comp discussed concerns with bathroom use in Cipher ISD toddle comp discussed Community concerns related to safety specifically female students when biological male students are allowed to use restrooms in the past three years when four of these board members have sat here on this board I am aware of zero concerns or issues regarding bathroom usage in our schools to my knowledge and I have confirmed with Administration there have
208not been complaints or concerns expressed to the administration or to the board regarding bathroom use if there had been this board would have been notified and it probably would have been on the evening news I doubt I do not believe that this is a real concern good school boards don't govern by gossip or make rules based on rumors as trustees we ask questions like how does this policy support our mission to Su to provide educational opportunities for all cfis students now we must also ask is this policy driven by our mission as a public school district or by personal beliefs and agendas I have a concern also with this policy regarding litigation there have been several lawsuits by students against school districts around the country on this very issue at least two Federal appeals courts
209have ruled in favor of the student based on Title 9 and the 14 Amendment the US Supreme Court has declined to hear appeals from the school districts in those cases including as recently as January 20124 leaving those rulings in place only one Federal appell at court has ruled in favor of a school district on this issue that I'm aware of to additional Federal appeals courts have dismissed claims that allowing students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity rather than biological six assigned at Birth violates the Constitutional or privacy rights of other students I also understand there have been several lawsuits filed seeking to prevent enforcement of Title 9 guidance issued earlier this year that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity by school districts that receive federal funding and injunctions have been issued
210covering 26 States including here in Texas this is obviously a hot button for some people my questions are was their discussion regarding this policy opening up our school district to litigation was there discussions by individual board members with outside Council regarding the potential implications of this policy was there any discussion of waiting to see if the US Supreme Court takes up this issue and how it rules and why would you want to invite litigation against Cipher ISD in our school board this board seems to Pride itself on being data driven another question I have is is there any data to suggest that this policy is needed or that it is needed now have there been any formal complaints by parents who have students in Cypher SD or by Stu or by students themselves regarding actual
211instances where this policy would be needed to protect the safety and privacy of other students those are my questions for now Marty H is this how our current guidelines administr our guidelines right now as far as use of locker room bathroom facilities is this our current guidelines how we're operating right now we're just putting this into policy to kind of codify what we're currently doing so our Uh current practice we do have and we call it a Title Nine accommodation um process it does involve if um if a student or a parent on behalf of a student requests accommodations um then we will work through a process and what does that look like um first step always does involve parents um but I guess generally speaking uh it is the rule and the expectation on
212a campus that um uh students use you know the bathroom and the locker room uh consistent with their gender if you have a student who's requesting an exception to that then we on a caseby casee basis work with the student and the parent and create um a Title Nine accommodation plan um typically it will um take into account privacy interests of the student um um and the campus in general and there are um options for the student to have um single youth access to single use restrooms um Etc so we we do work it's an individual um decision and that is our our current practice uh thank you as far as why not now I mean I mean why now that we're while we're doing this I think that it it'll formalize the policy that
213it getes it provides Clarity and direction for everyone involved um I think it'll strengthen our ability to maintain consistent standards across our organization can one question uh why did you choose to put it in CS I looked at CS legal which is about construction standards procurement uh quality of construction why did you choose CS I think I'd lean on Marne on this one um in looking at um really just trying to the to address the primary concern which was facility use um my recommendation in looking at the policies and looking at um other districts that have uh policies similar to this which uh were shared with the policy committee um making it as um precise I guess as um possible it I recommended that we do CS which is a facility standard as opposed to
214some of the other policy um Provisions that were honestly were broader that addressed uh more issues and concerns um do have the floor Mr President okay thank you um um I um I appreciate this policy coming forward in fact I have proposed some policy maybe as broader to to the point of counsel um and that is based upon the concerns I hear in the neighborhood in the community at events um people ask me questions about whether their students are protected um mostly fathers ask me about their girls in situations um and Marne you just said something um that is why and and to Todd's answer so you said it's a we it's an individual Choice who do you mean it's an individual choice of like the principal you said it's like um this what case
215my case situation when a parent brings a uh a request a title line accommodation request you said it's someone's like it's case-by case basis or something to that effect who is making that decision so um I may not have been as uh precise in my words as I plan to be what I'm saying is that as any accommodation when it is brought forward it's an individualized decision regarding that student so um just like we have accommodations under other Provisions 504 for instance those decisions we don't have like a standard response to a student that's in 504 and so that's what I mean if we have a student um either directly and or through the student parent that asks for accommodations then we step one is that we have a meeting um involve the parent and
216um have a conversation about what is it that um the student or the parent on behalf of the student what is it that they're seeking in regards to exceptions or accommodations and then we look at it um overall then we create an accommodation plan and we notify the individuals that need to assist and support with the accommodation plan so by creating this policy we're just making sure that that individual accommodation plan has some grounds upon which what is not possible by policy is that right yes so let me ask you another question um this board hasn't for years and years discussed can you tell me when Title 9 changed and what happened at the federal level that created this change and this need to discuss not gender but gender identity what happened in the law
217that changed in Title 9 and when did that happen oh gosh totle 9's been I would call it a moving Target for um at least four years so there were Provisions the title non accommodations went through their most recent greatest change um in the summer of 2020 and then there was guidance um from the US Department of aded um in 20 20 late 2021 um with some more specific guidance in 20 I'm sorry I'm doing this off top of my head I want to say 21 um that specifically addressed some of the things um such as gender identity and um sexual or orientation in regards to the purview of Title 9 UM there were some court cases um in in our circuit and across the state that challenge the rul making process for that because
218in order to similar to state but in federal law in order for a regulatory agency to um enact regulations based upon the law itself there has to be a process and so in 2021 there were some dear colleague letters which you may know are similar to like to the administrator address letters so you think about that at the state level This was um at the national level and so the dear colleague letters um gave some interpretive guidance regarding the applicability of Title 9 and so we actually created some guidance internally in the school district based on that and then there were some Court interventions um to that challenge um did um can you through a dear colleague letter do what is um considered to be a regulatory like through regulations because there's a rul making
219process there's comments opportunity for input and revision and so then I would say in 20 gosh my title 9 expert is right here he's probably cringing that I'm uh butchering this a little bit but then the new regulations uh for comment were issued in 2020 three and then they became effective this spring um of 2024 they Incorporated because they went through the process the rulemaking process they Incorporated the guidance from the dear colleague letter however and so we made a bunch of changes um and then those were enjoined and so I don't remember the question you asked me Dr B basically thank you love so what basically this is new gender identity was never in Title 9 it was gender and then there's been this whole legal process it has come on and now we
220sit at a new time and a new day at this dis it's not this last three four years of complaints that came to this board or didn't come to this board we're in a new time legally based on this process of revising and dear colleague letters and all the other legal process so now Title 9 no longer says I protect gender it says I also protect gender identity which is Def as one definition I looked up to see it refers to the the notion or the it says actually the subjective notion that one can have an internal sense of gender that can be M fale male female or something else separate and distinct from one's sex body this concept not be confused or conflated with sex so my point is the definition changed of Title
221Nine so we're having this discussion about policy because we're facing a new legal landscape is that true um it it is true in that the um applicability and that's kind of maybe how I was using it earlier but the definition um as you've kind of referenced is true um that it has evolved um since it was first um enacted in 1972 um it really was um in that context it really was um more about um equity in athletics um is really how it started however it as um up through our Supreme Court the um non-discrimination provisions on the basis of sex um has been interpreted by our courts and has been judicially expanded um not textually like through legislation but judicially and and that's not uncommon um the Supreme Court and it's you know one
222of the three branches it it will in you know in interpret law and um so Title 9 is an example of one of those laws that over time has been expanded um judicially and then administratively as well through regulation um and so that is something that since uh 2021 has been a relatively uh new explicit interpretation although there were some court cases going back to a companion law called title 7 is in the employment context that uses some similar verbage um that started kind of the conversation about um equivalent application under Title 9 so it it I mean it's not explicitly the last two to three years but in regards to Title 9 in explicit guidance from Administration you are correct that that's relatively recent so I was a principal and guess what I dealt
223with all kinds of beautiful young people and I loved each of those young people and I served them the best I knew to serve them and so if I had students I needed to deal with I had a own restroom in my office and that was absolutely open it was a single youth stall so but I wouldn't want it left on me today as a principal this issue is too wide open it's leg new legally and so I feel like us creating policy that allows everyone to understand and know the regulations within which we do those then have those accommodation conversations I think that's the the best to me if I want to let to Todd's discussion about consistency to me I'm I feel like this allows for that and I don't think that it's
224fair to leave that in the back of our principles or others um because they have a lot of um things to take care of and the goals that we have set as Julie mentioned about our academic goals and our our things we need to accomplish as a school system um so thank you for answering why now and I'm fully supportive of us having standards and I just want to add you know when I'm in the community I I meet parents constantly and and we talk about a wide range of issues wide a wide range of topics that you know that that they're um maybe have a question about or have concerns about so if I bring it up in my policy committee it's because a parent talked to me about it beforehand so I'm doing
225my job as a trustee to to basically you know bring that discussion up um I think again we've even I've even had teachers have have approached me on this as far as what do we do we even have a standard policy or anything like this so I think our focus should be on bringing Clarity and structure um to where it's needed um and I think that ensures that uh our policies will align with our best practices and uh that's going to support our staff and our organization as a whole so I mean I hope that that anwers your question a little bit bring brings a little bit more of clarity to why this topic even came up uh thank you for that uh I also hear comments and questions in the community and I can
226typically answer them um and if somebody had asked me a question about uh someone a boy in a girl's bathroom I would answer honestly that that's I've never heard that as an issue or a concern that our board is focused on priorities like literacy right that we hear often uh uh scores um teacher retention and recruitment um I do have some concerns I what I heard I'm hearing two different things Marty has shared that we have a process that has worked for years um it is parent driven the parent typically comes uh approaches the campus what this is doing is it moving it's moving towards a board policy driven process so I'm just thinking out loud in terms of application um boys are fighting in the bathroom right in middle school that happens all the
227time a boy calls another boy oh yeah well you're a girl you're gay which seems to be great insults if you're a middle school boy but that gets reported to a teacher right so the teacher fills out a form for policy CES local takes it to their AP the AP goes to the registar pulls the birth certificate the they go to the nurse to do a gender examination to make sure it it matches the birth certificate and then the when does the parent get involved my point is the way it works now the parents drive the process it's not a policy this is just it's just somebody's checking a box we have so many more important things to focus on in this in in our community I'll share one more comment and then I I
228I know how this is going to go but in the finance thanks thank you sorry uh in the finance committee meeting that we held on October 29th statements were made about the need to rebuild Community Trust so how does this new policy build Community Trust is putting C cfis back into the news again for something considered controversial a productive m for this move for this board spending time on this issue when the board has greater priorities to address is inefficient and gives the appearance of targeting a very small subpopulation of our students this policy is a solution in search of a problem and good school boards focus on real problems one last note according to the notes from that same policy committee meeting the administrative recommendation was made to address this through Title 9 process
229that was the recommend from our general Council not to have this policy not to have a new policy under our facilities construction policy but to work through this through the current title n process I concur with Marney I recommend that we table this agenda item I have a question Miss Sims can you speak to the policy that is here it looks like you did research other school districts is this similar to what they have um was this just a few several 10 uh Spring Branch ISD um was the only School District um we focused on in the area it was the only School District in the area Katie has a different policy that addresses a variety of things um which we didn't uh recommend and so um Spring Branch istd has this um or at
230least they did when when I first started researching it pretty sure they still have it well I'm for protecting students every chance we get no matter what their background is where they come from and I I I want us to protect our students I would also like to I mean the the point of school systems and like the response to intervention or the multi-tiered systems of support is the all the sum and the few so to suggest a process that's looking at all students as if because there's a little some and few process of accommodation that happens to say then therefore we erase our responsibility to look after the all that doesn't make any sense to me so I'm saying we're doing our job we're saying I'm looking at all students as a whole and
231I'm saying here's some um Safety and Security and protection pieces and a solid policy that letes you feel safe and understand what is the all solution and then there's the sum and this is not hating on the sum or this is not singling out the sum this is just saying all some and few and so I feel very proud that we would take care of all and then we absolutely will take care of some and we'll absolutely take care of few because that is our responsibility to take care of every single student value respect love care for um but not without considering the all and making sure the all also has that safety so I appreciate the work of the committee to get this before us and I think it's a very good use of
232our time and and again I just want to reiterate we're codifying a current practice that we're already doing in this school district is that correct Marty um our current practice is to as I described earlier to work through um an individual practice and generally speaking I would say most of the accommodation plans have um access to a a single user restroom okay do boys go right now into any restroom or locker room with girls and change where they under the policy with they are uh undressed do we have approved that for any single accommodation plan at this point can you ask me that again I think I I know so we're not talking about any individuals particular students so it's not private but I'm saying have we approved accommodation plans will we allow people of
233the opposite SE to sex to go into a locker room or a bathroom and change or be undressed or some level of of undress in the opposite sex like do we have boys who right now go in and have an accommodation to go to a girls locker room or girls who have an accommodation to go into a boy locker room or restroom well we would be talking about um students who's who were talking so you would say a trans a transgender female for instance um and you're asking about a transgender female and access to sex segregated facilities consistent with the students gender identity CU When you're saying boys into like so okay yes I'm just making biological males able to go into girls locker rooms right now in our current practice and our biological by
234the definitions I could read you definition if you need me to but I think y'all have looked at that probably um is do we is that current practice that we do have that so I'm going to answer what I think you're asking me do we have um accommodation we have accommodation plans in place I'm not aware of uh any current accommodation plans for instance that have a transgender um male student for instance in generally in the male locker room so did I answer that correctly or transgender female generally in the female locker room but we do individualize and we may look if they are um well they wouldn't be playing a sport um in our state um but if if they were we would come up with a way for them to be able to
235participate otherwise in and so maybe locker room wasn't the the best example but we would come up with with a way for them to continue to participate we'd make an individualized determination and plan um so one of my good friends daughter played football Aragon Middle School and they did a great job of sorting out but it didn't let her change with the boys um and so but what you're saying is accurate that we're codifying what we currently do in this policy yeah our current that is consistent with our current practice we thank you I think everyone's had an opportunity to speak one last thing I will ask Marty if I read the policy again this does make accommodations for for kids within our district reasonable accommodations as it currently sits in the current policy as
236proposed is that correct correct um we a couple of things we noted that consistent with state and federal law because we always if there is a provision or a change we want to make sure our policy is consistent so we did we said consistent with state and federal law and then at the end we do say that there can be you know individual accommodations that are considered and you're asking me right yeah and and yeah and the last thing I'll ask is you currently as I remember I have this conversation a long time ago because I've dealt with this very personally um I'm not going to go in a lot of details but you do currently I think you and Harry you you have meetings with principles and discuss this exact policy at a principal
237level but not at a districtwide level today correct can you come expl that how you do that today yeah so we um this is my Title Nine sidekick over here but we uh we do districtwide training at the district leadership level so principes but that's also going to include coordinators you know Christina's team anybody that's going to support campuses um but I I don't go into campuses and train um like in individual staff members um uh Harry is my uh gal Friday or guy Friday um and so he if think it's a very complicated question or situation um I usually punt it to Harry so he will work individually with you know principles assistant principles di uh through every aspect of title n because there's there's a lot of aspects actually uh to Title 9
238um and so yeah so we will support them individually as needed okay to that point you don't teach every te every teacher doesn't get that same presentation no I don't we don't go in is the reason why this is here I've been approached by many teachers with a very clear policy they never knew about the policy so anyway that being said we'll go on to 6 um 6f the board consider making termination good cause not exist is required by law for the individuals listed here this will be discussed in Clos session in 6G the board of considered level uh what is this level four um uh appeal for a level three decision this the item will be disused in just in closed session um I will not be here Monday night um because I will
239be attending with the other bands at UIL competition wishing all our three bands very well success in that endeavor uh right now I think side Woods was winning the bridgin game so big game tonight hope them well for both teams even though I have a favorite Net game but anyway I would like to to thank everyone being here tonight uh thank you for your patience Chief we did not make 8:30 uh but I would like to thank you for those watching at home may I please get a motion to move in Clos session so moved second second those in favor