001good evening the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Board of Trustees is now convened in a regular board meeting on Monday May 6 in the boardroom of the Cyprus Fairbanks Independent School District Mark k your Administration Building at 6 p.m. I want to welcome our members of the audience and those who are online viewing this meeting we are here to set goals listen to reports approve budgets contracts personel appointments and make policy for the district is not the role of the board to make daily operational decisions the management and daily operations of the district are responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a public meeting of the Board of Trustees not a meeting of the public the meeting is open to all who wish to
002attend in the maners discussed audience members may not participate in the meeting outside of designated agenda items for CI participation or agenda comment disruption of the meeting by any person including the audience is inappropriate and will be addressed by the board president or the board counsel as a meeting pararan continue repeating disruption in the board meeting by words or actions may result in removal prior the meeting board members did receive information related tonight's items aenda items may not be res represented in the budget in the order listed during the course of the meeting the board May deter determin a close session is necessary in that event the board will meet close session and consider M's dly posted permitted by 551.071 through 55108 of the Texas government code these proceedings are airing live on the district
003website they'll be available on the district website F tonight's meeting for the video to adequately represent the proceedings please respectfully ask to refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones either turned off or in silent mode thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and your interested in the Cyprus Fairbanks Independent School District tonight we have uh three different elected officials Representatives here we have Grace Hanley from representative Tom Oliver's office we have Elizabeth Stinson from senator Paul P Court's office and we have John rosenal here as well there are no Boy Scout Troops or Girl Scout Troops at the end of each open meeting the board patrons who have registered in accordance with the procedures established and bed regulation May address the board during the design agenda comments
004prior to the board's consideration on a action action for or the item unless the agenda is otherwise rearranged for the board president during the meeting agenda items and comments will be generally taken before each agenda item also in accordance with the procedures established in bed regulation patrons May address the board during citizen vitation on matters of Interest or concern that are not posted on agenda items for detailed information or instructions for registering under agenda comments please go to District website at cfisd.net patrons who have register to speak this evening will see your names listed on the screen behind me before your name is called please move forward and sit one of the reserved seats in the front row when you approach the podium you'll see that there are two uh one to my right and
005one to my left you will see a monitor inside that Podium when it's your time to speak a digital pres presentation timer will be displayed at top of the monitor we set in accordance with the number of speakers this evening there'll be a 30 second and a 15-second warning light to wrap up your comments the invocation for tonight's meeting will be given by Dell enman senior pastor of Autumn Creek Baptist Church before the invocation I'd like to introduce the Cypress Creek High School junior RFC Cadets who performing tonight's Color Guard carrying the US flag is Cadet major Carrie tuin on the rifle is Cadet Sergeant Annette mon Montoya carrying the Texas flag is senior Airman moo PA and on the left ri rifle is Cadet first lieutenant Caleb roham these Cadets present the colors to
006you under the direction of major Craig Lawrence retired US Air Force at this time I'd like to ask you please stand for the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance and as a personal privilege I will also do the Texas uh pledge as well how's it now I feel like I'm at church am I on am I on I just want to thank so much for CCI here what an awesome District this is I was on conro ISD School Board some of you may know we always admired you guys I just want to thank the Lord for you guys so if you would bow with me in prayer father what an awesome night it is to be here tonight at scair school district father I thank you so much for the superintendent and the associate superintendents
007as well as the board these men and women that take their time and energies to devote uh to devote themselves to what's best for the children of this district and the educational outcomes of the kids here father I should be with the parents that are here tonight again uh and also the taxpayers father we just thank you so much for all these different stakeholders that take this so seriously to come tonight uh and be here in the in the dealings of our meetings tonight father we thank you for the men and women tonight they'll be honored and lifted up and given positions uh of uh just celebration tonight what an awesome night it is father again we thank you I can't help but think your hand is not upon cair as prestigious and as great
008as this district is Father we thank you for this our your our lips will always sing your Praises in Jesus name I pray amen 3 for [Music] flag of the United States of America and to rep stands na indivisible andice for you may be seated please Chris comach will now read The District's vision and mission statement our vision at cfd is formed from the acronym lead to learn Empower achieve dream lead our mission is to maximize every student's potential through rigorous and relevant learning experiences preparing students to be 21st century global leaders we'll now proceed with remarks and announcements portion of the agenda thank you Mr President um the month of April was a busy one for cfis please enjoy this April recap video highlighting how our students and staff brought out the best 1
0092 3 4 [Music] [Applause] 2 3 [Music] 4 all right the bringing out the best character trait for the month of May is patriotism thank you to all the campuses for emphasizing strong character for all of our cfis students the instructional technology department hosted the cfd student edtech Expo on April 11th at the Barry Center attendees interacted with students as they shared the technology they have been using in our classrooms this year also on display was the Middle School robotics exhibition and many of the high-tech CTE opportunities that our high school students have um please watch the short video highlighting the student edtech Expo the student edtech Expo showcases all the technology that students are using in the classroom it is an opportunity to showcase everything our kids have learned and it's not just really
010about using technology but how they apply their content their knowledge what they've learned throughout the year in their different classes we get to show off different kinds of Robotics we get to show off our Fine Arts all the wonderful things that CF does throughout the entire year every project made here is made in a single year which is really impressive we have a lot of our CTE programs here showing off things that we use like our laser engravers 3D printers our Automotive program is here construction so all our specialized programs are here to show off the technology they use in their classrooms and how our students utilize it every day the 2019 instructional technology Bond really is a blessing for every single classroom in cfd it allows us to put high-tech equipment on every campus
011regardless of where they are in the [Music] district all right the national school lunch or school lunch this National School nurses week is set for May 6th through the 12th and school nurse day is May 8 we'd like to thank our 93 School nurses six licensed vocational nurses and 60 Clinic assistants who go above and beyond to keep our schools safe and our students healthy please join me in thanking a school nurse um whenever you have a [Music] chance also right around the corner this uh this month is the week of May 12th through the 18th is designated as National Police Week and May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day we thank our local a agencies and especially our cfis Police Department for ensuring the safety and protection of our students thank you for going
012into Harm's Way to keep us safe to the men and women of the police force thank you and right around the corner is a culminating activity for us graduation ceremonies for all 12 of our high schools will be held at the Barry Center May 28th through June 1st as we plan to recognize nearly 9,000 for the class of of 2024 um the full graduation schedule is available on our website remember folks that the traffic will be heavy in the Barker Cypress Corridor during this time actually this whole week so be prepared for that but it's all for a good cause um summer programs right around the corner as well from camps to ummies to mobile libraries there will be many extracurricular options available to students this summer visit summer and cfis block on our website
013to learn more more and Monday May 27th will be the student uh student and staff holiday and observation observance of Memorial Day as we recognize the sa sacrifices made by our servicemen and women in defense of our nation lest we forget and then summer break the last day of school will be uh for the 2023 24 school year is set for May 31st June 3rd will be a professional development day for our staff we wish a safe and restful summer for all of our students and staff and just a personal privilege piece I'd like to really quickly say thank you to um Vanessa coach and uh Terry Bradshaw um we had a uh AP showcase that's our audio video uh performance showcase this last week at the um the video performing arts center next door
014um we had a ton of students representative from all over this uh School District that brought their audio and visual performance um pieces um for award ceremony and I know Vanessa and Terry were instrumental in organizing that and also doing a lot of service and so Vanessa and Terry I have a superintendent coin just to say thank you so much for all that hard work it was amazing seeing all the the video work and actually Vanessa is in the back Booth right now helping out so thank you very much and I believe we have some new administrative announcements so I'll turn it over to Christina Cole thank you president hen Henry Board of Trustees and Dr Killian I'm always so grateful to have this opportunity to introduce either a new leader in a new role
015or a new principal um I think since I have started in my position this might be around the 12th um principal that I've announced I'm hoping it's not me um but I do want to tell the principles and the audience that are watching from home that I will not be accepting any more um resignations until December all right um so the first person that I would like to introduce to y'all this evening is Chris Hecker he will serve as the new assistant superintendent for school leadership come on up Chris Chris began his teaching career in 1997 with Cypress Fairbanks ISD at Langan Creek High School his passion for Education helped him land the role of assistant principal at Dean Middle School in 2004 where he remained until 2006 transitioning to Cypress Woods High School in
0162006 Chris continued to support both students and staff fulfilling roles as both an assistant principal and a director of instruction his commitment to curriculum develop and instructional Excellence was further exemplified through his concurrent responsibilities as a district curriculum coach for high school social studies in 2008 Chris assumed the principal ship at Dean middle school until the opportunity arose to serve as inaugural principal at Cypress Park High School his exemplary leadership was recognized in 2022 when he was honored as principal of the Year Chris Chris's academic Journey includes a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Texas and a master's in educational leadership from the University of Houston throughout his career Chris has actively pursued opportunities for development participating in programs such as the Rice University leadership Partners training and certification and achieving nesp National
017Mentor certification his expertise and dedication have been shared widely with Chris presenting at various conferences including Texas Association of Secondary School principles leadership secrets to accelerate change and creating a culture of change presentations Chris and his wife Monica have been married for 25 year 25 years and they have three children Sydney graduated from Cypress Woods Baylor University is now a law student in Penn State AB graduated from Cypress Woods and is currently a junior at the University of Texas studying international studies and Global relations and Cole who is a senior at Cypress Woods will be attending the University of Arkansas in the fall Chris is a huge sports fan in case you didn't know especially college football and stays very active in his church like Second Baptist Cypress campus so please join me in extending
018a warm welcome to Chris Hecker in his new leadership role as assistant superintendent uh president Henry Board of Trustees Dr Killian associate superintendant just what a honor it is to serve in this new role I thank God for the calling to teach and I still consider myself a teacher uh many people come up here and say they're a product of cciir ICD meaning they graduated high school uh I did not graduate high school I from cyfair over in Klein but um my professional career is I am a product of cciir high school or cciir School District uh there's countless mentors and friends and leaders uh that just too numerous to name but each and every one of them have been a blessing to me uh thank you so much for the opportunity to learn and
019grow and sometimes stub my toe and learn from that uh but thank you for your commitment to me and I will definitely um repay that opportunity by serving all of the principles in our school district our citizens our parents and and of course our students and so thank you very much I'd like to recognize my much better half Monica and my two kiddos that could be here Sydney is uh finishing up finals up at Penn State and my mom is actually watching online so hi Mom great great to see you guys but thank you all I'm sorry and I'm so sorry my great in-laws they are definitely in-laws not Outlaws uh guy and Judy Matthew who have been such a blessing to us as well so Christina don't let me out already so thank you
020all so [Applause] much I'd like to introduce our um first principal of the evening IET Garcia for Bane Elementary School IET has 40 years of experience in education she received her bachelor's degree from SE Houston State University and her master's degree from Steven F Austin university iet's journey in cciir ISD is a testament to her dedication and passion for Education she started as a student teacher and later taught at Moore Elementary as a kindergarten teacher in 1984 after spending two years in California she quickly returned back to the district I will add to teach at Sheridan Elementary her roles expanded as she served as an instructional specialist and assistant principal at Post Elementary in 2005 she moved to Holbrook as an assistant principal until she was named the principal at Frank con Elementary in 2009
021in 2012 Evette transferred uh to Holbrook Elementary as a principal and she was elected as principal of the year in 2017 in the same year she moved to serve as a principal at truet middle school until 2022 Evette left the district to continue to share her knowledge with others as a consultant for campuses in various districts but Evette has missed the principal ship and she's ready to come back to cfd and we are so grateful as a principal at Bane Elementary Evette has two children that both live in Blanco Texas her daughter and son-in-law have children that she visits every month because she does not want them to forget her Wella when IET is not traveling to Blanco she enjoys cooking and baking and is trying to master the art of sourdough bread IET said
022she just couldn't stay away from cyer and so excited to be back on campus IET has a niece who is an elementary teacher at post please join me in welcoming IET Garcia I think I got that right president Henry Dr Killian Board of Trustees thank you thank you thank you I am so excited to be back I love the babies love the babies I've done middle school but I think right now my heart is with the babies I um I started thinking about all the people that that helped me become who I was a lot of namesakes and I had to write them down so I would not forget I'm just going to say Barbara Burks Peggy duer Betty ryell Janet Hoover Robbie Sheridan Dr Anthony and Carla brahan and anytime I find myself struggling
023to make a decision I think about one of those leaders and what would they do instead of what would Jesus do what would Carla brosan do what would Dr Dr Anthony do so thank you I um I'm just excited to be back I just I could stay away any longer so I appreciate the the opportunity I would like to intro introduce my sister Christa who used to work for the district and also I have Mom and Dad here with me so thank you thank you so much thank you the next Prin principal I'd like to introduce is a principal at Moore Elementary Rebecca hignite with a 27-year career in education Rebecca's Journey began as a teacher in Spring Branch ISD she also taught in Lamar Consolidated ISD and Katie ISD before joining cciir in 2008
024and we're so glad she did she joined as an atris specialist at him andway Elementary School in 2009 she became an instructional specialist at Copeland Elementary a year later Rebecca assumed the role as assistant principal at Reed Elementary eventually transitioned to her current position as assistant principal at renell Elementary in 2015 furthermore she has played a prival role as a summer school principal at ban Frank con Woodard and leader elementary schools Rebecca's commitment to professional development is evident through her participation in the aspiring principal Institute and her mentorship of numerous new assistant principles Rebecca obtained her Masters in educational Administration from Walden University and a Bachelor's of Science and interdisciplinary studies from the University of Houston Rebecca and her husband Sergeant kugan hignite police supervisor with cfd Police Department had four children Hunter who graduated
025from sanch high school and is currently working with Novo elevator while running his own glass company cougar Jr who graduated from cciir high school and is now a second lieutenant in the Army and will be graduating from CM Houston State University Cassie is also a graduate from cciir high school Cassie and her husband Michael are staff sergeants in the Army and live in El Paso with daughter Aubrey they are completing their degrees at Purdue University Britney and her husband Daniel and their four children Benjamin Nolan Isabelle and Timothy are currently living in College Station and are both graduates of Texas A&M University I was waiting for that in her Spare Time Rebecca enjoys traveling from the snowy mountains to Island Beach teaches Rebecca enjoy spending time with friends and family with most with most of
026her time spent on their boats in Lakes all around Texas please join me in congratulation congratulating Rebecca hignite on her new leadership opportunity thank you so much president Henry Board of Trustees Dr Killian and the leadership cabinet I cannot thank you enough for giving me this opportunity to be principal at more Elementary I deeply honored and grateful to accept this position first I would like to share with all of you that I am 100% committed to serving the students staff families and community of more Elementary and I will continue to work alongside all of you to uh make sure that we model those core values and principles that really are part of Cypress Fairbanks ISD second I'd like to recognize a few guests that have attended tonight my husband kugan hignite who has been my
027champion and has believed in me 1,000% thank you for being my biggest fan my son Hunter thank you for all those years waiting for me falling asleep on the floor at school as you did many times as I finished my work and I think you only asked can I go home now can we go home now maybe 200 times but you still waited for me and so thank you seriously for not complaining so much and being there for me I applaud you for having such a work drive and I am beyond proud of you my stepson kugan Jr who is here tonight also and is almost a graduate from Sam Houston with his degree in criminal justice um as a lieutenant in the Army he is going to continue his training in July so as
028soon as he graduates he's off uh to his Bullock training school I applaud the discipline you have for being such an outstanding bonus son that I am proud of my stepdaughter is also here tonight with two of the children the other two are in the car waiting one's really little um thank you so much for traveling from College Station and being here and part of and being part of this uh moment for me and my mother who is watching tonight thank you for teaching me the importance of following your dreams which at 7 years old I knew I wanted to be a teacher and she bought me this huge chalkboard at 7 to play school in my room I never stopped playing school and the audience I know could have given me lots of tips
029the imaginary audience um a few more guests I'd like to recognize um are two important leaders that I've had the privilege of working with throughout my educational Journey I'd like like to recognize Mrs Leslie Thomas my former principal of Reed and ryell she encouraged me to be the best that I could be showing such Grace compassion and kindness to everyone she encountered but with a few office pranks on the side I will never forget those crockpot dinners that you always made for those that were in need and she would have her Crock-Pot dinners going in the in the office during the day while we were working she is the epitome of a servant Le leader thank you I'd also like to recognize Dr akres principal at ryell for being such a true role model of
030what a lifelong learner and a cre creative Visionary are I applaud your work ethic and I am thankful to have worked and learned so much from you and I want also want to shout out to all my peers the co-workers and two of the best assist assistant principal Partners I have ever had the privilege of working with I could have never done it without you you supported me listened to me and were always my cheerleaders every step of the journey to my ryell family some of you are here tonight thank you so much for attending all of you are living proof that we are all in this together and every one of you is strong resilient dedicated and a part of an amazing work tribe thank you for being one of the best group of
031Staff members I could have ever worked with and finally I just want to express again thank you so much president Henry Board of Trustees leadership cabinet to all of you I do will I want you to make sure that I will lead more and with an ethical everything that we do will be ethical and um I feel immense gratitude to serve all of you I'll leave you with this more is not my campus it is our campus and we're all together in this so thank you so much next I'd like to introduce Courtney speca principal at swinky elementary for next year this is Courtney's 25th year in education all which have been in cfis she began as a teacher at homesley Elementary in 1999 before becoming an instructional specialist at Keith in 2007 two years
032later she began working in her current position as assistant principal at a Robinson Courtney has also served as summer school principal at matky elementary and is an adject Professor for lonar college teaching courses in education Courtney demonstrates a commitment to continued growth and development as evident through a participation in the aspiring principal Institute and by serving as a mentor to new assistant principles she obtained her Masters in administrative leadership from Prairie View A&M University and a bachelor's in interdisciplinary studies from Steven F Austin university Courtney and our husband Ronnie have one child cash Ronnie is a professor and department chair at lonar college sfair and cash attends sard's middle school and will be in seventh grade next school year after Courtney and Ronnie married they decided to travel the world before settling down and starting
033a family Courtney still loves to travel and explore new places and also enjoys being a team captain for their ms150 um team team believe please join me in congratulating Courtney esca on her new leadership um [Applause] opportunity good good evening um president Henry Board of Trustees and Dr Killian I am incredibly honored and humbled to be standing before you today I look forward to serving the um community staff and students at swinky elementary I would like like to first start and um thank my predecessor Dr Liz Miller for establishing high expectations um at swinky and not only making swinky a good school but a great school um I am very excited to continue with the strong family culture that swinky has they have built such a rich um tradition of community and pride and I'm
034excited to start that um I do want to um recognize a couple of or a lot of supporters that have led on me my whole 25 years and encouraged me um to continue and letting me stand here today I would like to um thank my husband Ronnie npca um thank you ronie for encouraging me to get my Master's Degree 20 years ago um I would like to thank my son cash NPA um who is in sixth grade at sards um I would like to also thank my mom and Dad I know my mom is smiling down on me right now grinning ear to ear um my dad is at home in Fort Worth um watching so hi Dad um I would also like to thank my Robinson my past and present um family at Robinson
035that are here tonight um thank you for all your support and um for loving me um even though this is a very Bittersweet opportunity they will always um hold a special place in my heart um I have been very um blessed to have um amazing colleagues um mentors and principles some that are here tonight um Susanne Thompson Christina Cole um Kelly tretti um and Patty money they have definitely shaped me into the leader I am um and kind of molded me and that is why I'm standing here um I know I will make each and every one of you proud and I look forward to the amazing opportunity to be the new principal at swinky thank you thank you Courtney the next principal I'd like to introduce is Michael George who will be the [Applause]
036[Music] Principal Michael has his fan club over there um Michael will be the um principal at Dean next school year um Michael brings with him a wealth of experience and expertise in education he holds a bachelor's degree from Balden Wallace College in Ohio and a master M from Lamar University Michael's 15-year journey in education began as a social studies teacher at Deany High School in Spring ISD he spent three years at Magnolia Junior High where he taught history and served as a football coach in 2015 Michael joined the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School um School District he initially taught history and coached at sard's middle school before transitioning to Cypress Creek High School where he served as an assistant um principal throughout his career Michael has demonstrated a strong commitment to continuous growth and development as
037a leader exemplified by his active participation in the aspiring principal in Institute and other professional development opportunities Michael and his wife Jamie who is a maass CCIS at sprag Middle School have two daughters Ali and Lauren who attend Wells Elementary School Michael was born and raised in Ohio but has been in Houston for the past 15 years and is loving every minute of it he says in his spare time Michael loves Trav with his family audio books coffee football season and just good barbecue so please join me in extending a heartfelt congratulations to Michael George the new principal at Dean Middle [Applause] School good evening president Henry Board of Trustees and Dr kilan I'm honored to stand before you tonight to be introduced as the incoming principal of Dean Middle School God has truly blessed
038me by surrounding me with amazing people in my life both personally and professionally to my family most importantly I want to recognize my wife Jamie she has been by my side for the past 12 years and I would not be standing here if it were not for her patience and support we have been blessed with our two beautiful daughters Ally and Lauren love you girls I'm also thankful for the love guid guidance and support from my parents I grew up in a small town in Ohio my mom was a high school math teacher for over 30 years and my father was a local Pastor in the Methodist Church needless to say growing up I was unable to get away with a lot of misbehaviors trust me I tried thank you Mom and Dad for keeping
039me on the right path unfortunately my parents could not make it here tonight my dad just had KNE surgery last week but I know they are watching back home with friends and family in Ohio professionally I've had the pleasure to learn and grow from some of the finest leaders in our school district Liz wood current and soon to be retired principal of sard's middle school thank you for giving my me my first opportunity in cfd as a US history teacher and football coach to Vicky snook house six years ago you blessed me with the opportunity to serve s Creek as an assistant principal I was also surrounded by a dream team of Administrators many of those who are here tonight some of which have gone on to become principles in our great School District amby
040clink scale and Dr Mike Anders thank you for your continued mentorship to Mr Martin Drayton and the current team at s Creek they were well represented tonight thank you sir for this past year and your support and my growth as a leader a team I have loved every opportunity that we have had to serve together there is no job in the world quite like being a high school assistant principal thank you for going on this ride together finally to the staff students and community of Dean Middle School it is readily apparent that Dean is a special place with a love for its Mustangs I hope to carry on the tradition of service family and compassion that has currently been established by Mr Raam thank you sir for your guidance of this extraordinary campus during your
041time I'm incredibly grateful and thrilled to greet our staff and students when they return for the new year thank [Applause] you our last announcement but definitely not least is um the principal at sard's Middle School Stacy erson with 28 years in education all within cyer ISD Stacy brings a wealth of experience and dedication to her new role she earned her bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University and her MERS from Sam Houston State University Stacy's Journey education began as a math teacher at Arnold Middle School with her passion and proficiency quickly leading to Promotions including serving as an academic achievement specialist and later the director of instruction at Cook Middle School she then transitioned to assistant principal at Goodson Middle School and later to more Elementary in 2015 she was selected a principal of Burks Elementary
042her commitment to continuous professional growth is evident through her active involvement in numerous professional organizations and committee Stacy has participated in programs like the principal Institute the transformational leadership academy and the nasp national Mentor certification program she has generally generously shared her expertise by mentoring new principles and serving as a cluster leader during her tenure at Burks Elementary Stacy and her husband have three daughters Emma is a Jersey Village high school graduate and later this week will be graduating for the University of Texas mccom School of Business key is also a Jersey Village graduate and is currently a junior at the University of Texas also studying business business the youngest Avery is a junior at Jersey Village High School When Stacy is not working she enjoys traveling and spending time with her family and friends
043please join me congratulating Stacy erson as the new principal at salard thank you president Henry uh Dr Killian Board of Trustees thank you so much for this opportunity first of all I would just like to tell you what an honor it is to be a principal in this District the servant leadership is just undescribable and um I have just been honored to have so many mentors and colleagues that have stood by on my side through these past nine years as principal at Burks I now will be moving on to sards and thank you so much for that opportunity as I step into that new role um sards I cannot wait to continue the Traditions with the sards community of um continuing those traditions and just building upon that family that we have already in the
044uh sards community so I would like to thank everyone um for being here tonight I have quite a crew here which I am just honored to have everyone here supporting me um I want to say thank you first of all to my husband Lindsay erson and my two daughters that were able to make it from um home from school one um key and then um Avery who's at still at Jersey Village and then my my third daughter Emma is graduating as Christina said on Friday and so she has to get her last bit of University of Texas in under her belt so um then my mom who is also besides my husband my biggest cheerleader and is also a u retired employee from Jagger Elementary and cyfair and then my sister-in-law and my niece are
045also here tonight so I just appreciate them being here as well then I have my um Burke staff who I just can't say enough about uh when we talk about servant leadership they are the epitome of that they are just um by my side 100% And then I have my new salard staff here several of them who have also joined then some of my colleagues have just Stood Beside Me throughout my journey um there are many listening there are many that are here tonight if I I could go on and on with the list of everyone that's supported me and just stood by my side and mentored me and loved on me throughout the years I can't wait to as I said serve this sard's community and just to continue um just filling that Community
046with the love and support and family that we have amongst amongst everyone there the staff the family the students and so um thank you again for this opportunity and um I look forward to this [Applause] journey congratulations to all of our principles and to our assistant to Mr Hecker we'll now proceed to our recognition pors in the agenda if I can get Justin Lucas to get on the front uh we now present our two bringing out the best awards from the board if we can bring up um Miss Graves and also uh Edgar Kiva to front come to front our two Award winners this evening uh Sophia uh is Administrative Assistant in the may have here uh she served as the office of advanced academics for seven years has been an invaluable member of the
047team she goes above and beyond to serve her parents students and scair and does a willing heart and a cheerful attitude she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to her role and willing to share these others Sophia continually gives her time and talent to support the programs and events the office we're blessed to have her part of the team congratulations to miss graes Mr gra then Edgar uh from Wilburn Elementary School Edgar is invaluable member of the team of the elementary school he's amazing with students and creates an atmosphere to learn technology ology while building relationship with those students Edgar is very knowledgeable and helpful in solving technology issues and when not help when not teaching technology he's working hard to distribute our onetoone devices won's social media page is filled with photos and
048great content edar has created Mr C brings out the best in Wilber congratulations now turn over to Matt Morgan for his presentation president Henry members of the board Dr Kellan tonight we're joined by Scott blank oh sorry tonight we're joined by Scott blank the Director of Business Development for Robie Kisner uh Robie kizner is an engineering consulting firm that has worked with the district for many years and been a valued business partner uh they do Geotech environmental Consulting construction materials building envelope inspections Mr blank is here to present a check to Melissa McKay teacher at Aron middle school and the coordinator of our Special Olympics program in March of this year Robie Kisner hosted a fundraising event to provide support for cfis special Olympians the funds presented tonight will be used to purchase new equipment
049for our students we'd like to express our sincere gratitude for Robie kizner and Scott blank they could have chosen any other District in the area but they chose ciir and our children are the benefactors of that so thank you [Applause] Mark Williams he here Mark there he comes I'll have um Julie and also Christine for this award uh the board now recognize Mark and Darlene javar of the jar company as winners of the volume buckle for 2024 sciare livock show Mr waves if we would please the board I'd like to um change the format a little bit we were going to do the students first so that the students would be up here when we recognize the JS is that okay with everyone okay thank you I apologize about that yes president Henry bard of
050Trustees Dr Killian it is my pleasure tonight to close out our Livestock Show season by honoring our district Champions while the 30th annual scier ISD livestock show was held back in February we waited until this evening to bring the Champions before you to line with the honoring of our volume buyer which is the next item on the agenda this is fitting since the buyer we are honoring purchased projects from sever Champion students students as I call name please come forward I'll will ask you to remain here so we can then acknowledge your family and campus support once we have the group together without further delay I present to you our Champions with the grand Champions Darlene cner Cypress Ridge Angelina Smith Cypress Ranch Katherine Carly Cypress Ranch Derek Richman cair [Applause] Clayton worek scair Valerie
051PR scair Katie mccastlen ciir Katie Oaken Sai Woods kaen Filmore sa creek Jesse Williams sfair Austine arazo sfair Claire Waterman sfair Gabriel black Cypress Woods Madison Fierce Cypress Woods Colton Porter s Woods and Kine for fonte Cypress [Applause] Ranch while we here to celebrate success of each of these students had with their projects I would be remiss if we did not also celebrate success of the family members and campus staff who supported these students in the process would any family members a teachers or other campus staff of these students please stand so we congratulate you on the success of your [Applause] projects president Henry with your permission i' would like the students to remain up front for the next agenda item okay president Henry Board of Trustees stock Killian it is my pleasure to once
052again honor Mike and Darlene gerar of the jar and Company Incorporated as recipients of the 2024 cfic Livestock Show volume buyer award Mr and Mrs Gerard would you please come to the front jar and company has spent 99,900 at the 2004 2024 cfic live Stock Show earning Mike and darling Gerard the title of volume buyer for the 17th time in the 18 years this award has been given countless students have benefited directly and indirectly indirectly from the generosity of jars over the last 20 plus years students raise your hand if one or more of your projects were purchased by the drawers this year or in the past there you go thank you well while these students represent our Champions many more students with projects in the Frieza sale and even the silent auction sold their
053projects to JS as well as even this and as well I'm sorry please join me in thanking JS for the continued support they are making a difference in the lives of our students okay students if you want to come for we are eternally grateful for all your assistance over the past 20 years thank you so much students [Applause] [Laughter] thank you again please mark your calendars for the 31st Annual cfis Livestock Show sale taking place January 29th to February 1st 2025 so see you in a year thank you go and turn your mic on good evening president Henry Board of Trustees and Dr Killian it is my pleasure to present you this evening a Jersey Village High School student who has distinguished himself in speech and debate competition senior Nim Alim won a state championship
054in program of oral interpretation or POI in this event students must craft a 10-minute performance in which they create a presentation using selections from multiple genres of literature such as Pros poetry and drama around a central theme about 200 Texas private and public schools of all sizes from 1A to 6A were represented at this prestigious prestigious speech tournament held in Houston in March because of the rigorous qualification process to even attend the the TFA state competition is considered one of the most challenging in the nation only 80 students from around Texas qualified in POI and out of those 80 students n place first bringing Jersey Village its first state championship in speech and debate since 1994 coaching the scam to this incredible accomplishment is director of forensic Jersey Village High School Ian ethd Mr eth
055is a product of cfd he was a speech and debate student at Cypress Lakes High School and is now a diamond coach in the National speech and debate Association Mr E is both a highly organized and highly creative teacher who challenges his students to think critically and act professionally under his Direction the Jersey Village team is qualifying more and more students every year to State and national championships the life lessons they learn in his classroom extend far beyond competition Nim please come forward so that you can be recognized for your outstanding achievement I would like to ask Mr ethd uh and Nim's family to stand to help me celebrate the accomplishments of this outstanding student Nim and Ian cfd are so proud of you and your accomplishments this year and we are so excited to
056see the Legacy that you're creating at Jersey Village High School [Applause] I don't have my notes Here who's next so whoever is next you may come to the podium good evening I'm Dr Sharon hog CTE coordinator president Henry Board of Trustees Dr Killian it is my pleasure to present to you this evening the first and second place winners from the state cosmetology competition for skills USA in Corpus Christie Texas on August 3 through 7 20124 several of these students were able to join us tonight students please come up when I call your names I will ask you to remain on the platform so we can then acknowledge your family and campus support once you're all together okay from Cypress Park High School the teacher is Darla Drake students who distinguish themselves are rayel Baker Ariana
057kose Jasmine coseo Kevin Tovar Penelope loan Ty Stringfield and Audrey [Applause] Eckles from Cypress Lakes High School the teachers are Danica Rea Smoot and Jamila Anderson students who distinguished themselves are Madison Ortega Kate L vau Haley Gonzalez and Jazz Marie [Applause] trimmer from Jersey Village High School the teachers are Natalie Galan and leveda Knox the students who distinguish themselves are Evelyn Morales anaiz Alvarado Arlette HZ gel Martinez and Hannah [Applause] Figaroa the students and their teachers are to be commended for their hard work in competing in their chosen profession as we congratulate these students we would like their parents friends administrators and teachers to please stand and be [Applause] recognized e for on the on the podium hit your Nik on the podium there you go welcome our next group of exceptional students are representing
058FBLA oh sorry wrong wrong one good evening it is my pleasure to present to you this evening students who have distinguished themselves at the DECA State Career and development Conference held in Houston Texas February 15th through the 17th 2024 Deca is a national Career and Technical student organization whose mission is to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing Finance hospitality and management you can find Chapters in high schools and colleges all over the world deca's core values are competence Integrity teamwork and Innovation it is my honor to recognize the following students who advanced to the DECA International career and development Conference held in Anaheim not California April 27th through the 30th 2024 will the honor come forward as I call your name am Mo [Applause] aoy Tim [Applause] Elmore Arch Singh Ava lamb
059and Lena [Applause] Tran okay hold on I have a lot of hair our next group of exceptional students are representing FBLA these outstanding students distinguish themselves at the FBLA State Leadership Conference held in Galveston Texas April 10th through the 12th FBLA is a national Career and Technical organization whose mission is to inspire and prepare students to become community minded Business Leaders and a global Society through relevant career preparation and Leadership experiences these experiences bring together leadership and education to create positive working relationships through innovative business leadership and career development programs it is my honor to recognize the following students who placed either first or second at the FBLA State leadership conference will the honores come forward as I call your name Briana or Brianna [Applause] Baka adnik thonda Arnav Jane thank you and congratulations to
060all of you e [Applause] and at this time we would like to acknowledge the their administrators their teachers and their friends and family here here at sport you thank you [Applause] president Henry Board of Trustees and Dr Killian it is a pleasure to present to you this evening industrial technology education students who have distinguished themselves by placing in one of the top two positions in their respective categories at the State Technology Student Association competition held in Fort Worth April 4th the 6th students from across the state were represented at this competition from middle and high school I am extremely proud to say that as a district we had 244 first place and 187 second place winners tret Middle School play second in the state in the Middle School Division 2 JY Village High School is
061the state champion in High School Division 3 and Cypress Park plays second in the High School Division 4 students as I call your name please remain standing at the front while we honor your advisers parents administrators and take pictures it is my honor to recognize the following students from bridgelin high school who have placed either first or second Alexander Hernandez Alexandra cardones Andreas Jimenez Arnav Jane Brady Denton [Applause] Carlos borgus navadeep korri Hussein kabi ilon Alana Jake Harrison Kaden [Applause] Rossy Keana Wyatt [Applause] Lauren [Applause] Moro Leighton Carlile Levi [Applause] Simmons Mushi Chang Nicholas Schuster Steven tomasi William mcgomery and Wyatt Hughes as we congratulate these students for their accomplishments we would like to say thank you to their advisers Josh Simmons Devin Murphy Jesse Fuentes Helen Kenny David Laughlin Alex Garcia and Brett lekin
062we'd also like to recognize their parents and administrators for their support it is my honor to recognize the following students from ciir high school who placed either first or second Isaiah [Applause] Montes and Isaac Zamora we would like to say thank you to their advisers Darien mcgomery Sean Finn and Clint Smith as well as their parents and administrators it is my honor to recognize the following students from Cypress Creek High School who placed either first or second Alexander Garrison Arie Khan Desiree Nichols Hunter atopic Isabelle utai Jaden Adams Jeremiah Lucas Jimmy trong Jose Salazar and Stacy trong thank you to their advisers Tracy Blackman Clyde salsman and Mike Daniels as well as their parents and administrators [Applause] from Cypress Park High School we have Sebastian [Applause] kulie thank you to his advisers Bob Macintosh Dr
063Lewis Iceland Spencer Heasley and Cornelius kulie as well as his parents and administrators from Cyprus Ranch High School school we have Braden Schuler Josh abil Rah mathala and Summit [Applause] sahu thank you to their advisers Christy Grove Heather Robinson and Juan Lopez as well as their parents and administrators [Applause] from Cypress Woods High School we would like to recognize Crystal Paro Monica Montoya [Applause] Torres Riley Wooten and yolon urbe thank you to their advisers Samantha Lopez samtha light body I'm sorry Jerry Ford Steve Britt and James fonty as well as their parents administrators from Jersey Village we would like to recognize Adela doy and Joseph [Applause] W thank you to their advisers Doug Pearson Andy Ranken Daniel sample and Mark wetstein as well as their parents and administrators from langum Creek High School we'd like
064to recognize Benjamin Whitten bana [Applause] montor Dylan [Applause] Logan Fernando kasanova Grant deran Isabella Diaz Jaylen Collins [Applause] Milani Casanova and Milani was also elected as the state reporter for Texas TSA Natalia win Rebecca somavarapu [Applause] and Roby Davis thank you to their advisers elazar alenes Jared KS and Rashad Maye as well as their administrators and parents from sprag middle school we'd like to recognize Amanda Mika Hari giant sham Giant and shuy Lou thank you to their advisers John Michael laosi and Rober Berto jenez as well as their parents and administrators from tret middle school we would also we'd like to recognize Bryce Brook Bower Kimberly Campos Leanne Rivera and Taylor Holland thank you to their advisers F fatimat Leon Wendy Harris and William hunt as well as their parents and administrators yeah this is
065all of TSA so if y'all will come back so we can take a picture squeeze in to e e good [Applause] spe it is also my pleasure to present to you this evening a culinary arts student who competed in the FCCLA culinary arts state competition in Dallas April 12th through the 14th it is my my honor to recognize Nico Earl a student at Langham Creek High School who attends cfd Culinary Academy East for placing second at State as we congratulate Nico we would like to as we congratulate Nico we would like to say thank you to his adviser Ry madano Falcon his parents and his [Applause] administrators I believe that's it yes congratulations to all of our students uh it's quite an honor to be make it the state and we have so many inside
066Fair it's it's a great accomplishment but also want to thank the parents who drove them to different things and also all their teachers and principles who support them along the way I know it's a lot of work at this time we are going to take a 5-minute break anyone who would like to leave uh and you're welcome to for the rest of our meeting we have a few topics to go over and that also gives people in the back when to move forward to your cane as well uh principes and assistants if you mind stick it around so we can shake your hand and say thank you the all Award winners thank you very much five minutes now [Music] he [Music] ter [Music] he [Music] he [Music] he [Music] he [Music] he [Music] he if
067you would take your seat please we're going to go ahead and begin we'll now proceed with board comments board members may make comments during the agenda time on schools visited meetings conferences attended district and community events the board may not take any action on items discussed I will start to my right Dustin well thank you Mr President uh thank you for everybody in attendance this is what a great way to start off our meeting tonight that was just a tremendous celebration of all the achievements of our great students here in cciir and um of course as everyone can imagine it's uh been a busy time for our district uh much of which uh deals with uh the budgetary challenges that are on the Forefront of everybody's minds and of course we'll we'll definitely be addressing
068that in the course of the meeting and I'll address that too in my board comments as well uh but I want to start off talking about all the good and exciting things uh that I got to witness and participate firsthand in in our district um hands down the best thing about being a trustee is going to campus visits um I want to thank uh principal Jeff Loke at alt Elementary for the school visit and the conversation that's one of the best things I get to do is sit down with our campus leaders and talk about you know their challenges at their district and their recommendations and their Insight uh it's extremely valuable and I really appreciate that um we just discussed the state of public schools we discussed our districts and uh it was awesome
069because he had student ambassadors who met me and walked me around the entire school and and took me to literally every room in school in the entire school and it was a great and thorough tour um Woodward Woodard Elementary Susan Brent and my old friend Lori Nichols um what a great positive campus experience and I'm really appreciative of their time and insight as well Becky Denton her team at scif Falls I got so much informational feedback just walking and talking with their team and learning about about uh you know the challenges they have at their campus the challenges all of our students are facing and I really appreciate their Insight liby Middle School Michael conteras Jake Robbins they showed me all the Fantastic things they're doing on their campus and it's anybody who's been around
070middle schoolers they're absolutely hilarious I asked I asked these guys that how do you not crack up every single day with these kids I mean they say the most they say and do the most bizarre and heads scratching things it's absolutely hilar ilious these middle schoolers are fantastic my son's 14 and I can only imagine a school full of of my son and you know what I really appreciate everything that you're doing and it's a it's these kids are hilarious but it's so rewarding at the same time um Kayla Middle School Joshua Carol I saw you here earlier this evening I don't know if you're still here with us but uh principal Carol and his staff and students they had an awesome welcoming committee for us and I got to sit in on a mock
071trial their students conducted a mock trial in Kayla County in which we learned that Thor yes Marvel's very own Thor and the fat Thor on top of that was the culprit of the crime and went and serve the time and as you can imagine it was amazing fun experience over at Kayla Middle School TR at Middle School plaz Williams Wendy Harris they hosted myself and state representative Lacy Hall uh we had a great visit and another and a very informative walking and talking session as well I want to thank representative Hull for her support and participation so remember when I was saying earlier how fun and exciting and just crazy these middle school kids are well true it did not disappoints um I was standing there and seventh grade lunch had let out and they
072were all scrambling and one kid comes up to me and he says I like your style I what do you mean he's like you're looking pretty sharp today greatest compliment I've ever had so thank you very much for that random compliment I really appreciate it from the seventh grader another kid came up to me this young lady came up to me she's like you want to create a handshake what do you mean she's like come here slap slap dab dab high five and she was out so I mean just these guys just have such fun such a fun Whimsical value to them and great and thank you everything that you guys are doing on the Middle School level and across our straight our great District as well in addition there was the there were the
073everpresent committee meetings uh fifth grade Coral festival at the Berry Center that my daughter participated in as well uh and the student tech expo which which we learned a little bit about this evening um special shout out to S Creek Superstar Navia makapa I saw some of our sa Creek Family were here today as well what a superstar uh I got to spend some time with her and learned about her ambitious goals with ew and a noble goal at that so we've got some really really bright Minds at sfair and they were on full display at the student tech expo so you know it's always good to reflect on all the positives that take place every day especially during teacher appreciation week I mean it goes without saying how important our teachers are how much
074we appreciate all that you do and we see it on full display when we do all these campus visits and you know reflecting on those positives help us put our challenges in perspective in particular the budget challenges that we deal with um regardless of anyone's position on the budget you know we all agree it's a difficult and it's an upsetting Endeavor we you know we're faced with a large dollar Gap um that's close to almost 90% of our budget is comprised of salaries and that means that staff reductions are unfortunately unavoidable in my career I've been on the receiving end of what they call reductions in force and it's a stressful and upsetting experience it's disruptive and scary and so I completely empathize with anyone who's you know who who may not have a position
075with cfd as a result of budget cuts I've been there and I completely empathize with it but the positions identifi to be reduced or Consolidated we a collabor we a collab we a collaborative District effort the board tasked the superintendent with identifying over $60 million in cuts which unfortunately included Personnel reductions the board did not direct any specific positions to be cut or Consolidated the positions for reduction were identified by the administration and individual school campuses and I want to thank everyone involved with this difficult process and I plan to support their decisions furthermore the community budget reduction advisory committee put forth several recommendations and I expect those will be many of them will be incorporated in divinyl budget and we again appreciate their time and their input lastly um there's a lot of work
076ahead for us the board will Advocate fiercely for sciare with our local elected representatives and officials in Austin today a bipartisan letter letter from the sciare area State reps was submitted to the tea requesting a release of surplus funds so things are moving and will continue to move there will be many there will be many many conversations in advocacy much of which won't be visible but rest assured this is a priority for us and I know people want the board to identify the Bad actors who got us into this situation we're not going to point fingers and we're not going to attack anyone because truthfully we all played a role in The Saga and the best course of action is to work honestly transparently and collaboratively with our officials in atic Austin and I'm I'm
077optimistic that together we'll continue to commit Texas to the Future Public Schools Mr President those are my board comments this evening thank you Lucas thank you we will have a long meeting tonight because we have a very healthy representation from our community that wants to speak so I'm going to not spend much time speaking I do want to mention that as Justin had discussed one of the true honors of being a trustee is to visit with our schools and understand the folks that are doing the work work on the front lines many of whom are in the audience tonight I got a chance to go visit uh and when we think about our visits uh as a board we said we want to visit every school in Cipher ISD this spring and in our fall
078semester for 2024 and we divy up who count of schools that we would attend some can do more some can do a little bit less and then we were assigned which schools that we would attend and so for this past month I attended postma Elementary School and then I also visited with Anthony Middle School I'll be visiting with two more schools this coming uh in about two weeks during that time I got to know Teresa Bell over at postma elementary school and she is retiring and I have to tell you that it was an amazing time with principal Bell she is a she is a profound leader our time together she walked me through how the student students interact Ed with all the structure all the systems that they had in place I understood how
079our students needed to have that structure how they needed to be reinforced and the time that they would spend with that staff and the families with those APS from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade and the transformation that would occur we got some really happy moments where some kids had attained breakthrough even while I was there doing things that they couldn't do in the in the prior year in the year before that so I want to be I want to say thank you very much to our love our wonderful Teresa Bell because she is now going to retire to spend more time with her family she's having a new grandbaby and I wish her well in that endeavor I also had a chance to spend time with Dr Bennett and much like you Dr
080Bennett organized a student committee to help me understand their school and so I had a chance to walk around and participate in the CTE classes understand uh our special uh teacher of the year that we had last year in our language arts in Spanish and it was amazing to watch our students interact so thank you very much Dr Bennett when we think about our district and when we think about the choices that are in front of us please recognize that none of this was something that was uh not thought out we have worked hard as an Administration we've worked hard on every single campus to figure out what is the needs of our students and as I visited with principes throughout the spring the res sounding messages help the principles be involved in the process
081so that they can communicate what is best for their communities and that is what we did that is exactly what we did so our Administration worked with all of our principles they understood how to organize and how to best meet the needs of our kids we do have to respond to the limited budget that we have we do have to make some tough decisions and as Justin said I've been on the receiving end of those personally I empathize with every one of our families that are impacted it's no fun however we still must meet the high Mark of bringing out the best qualities in our kids and giving opportunity to our students and we will work hard this spring the rest of this year in the fall and going forward to make sure that we
082hit that goal and thank you to all of our Administration our budget reduction committee our parents and community that came out to support us and all of our teachers administrators principls and staff at our schools that are going to be carrying that Vision forward and implementing it we will work together to get through this and not just get through it but to do well for our kids thank you thank you Todd well my back's hurting just so you guys know from carrying this board on school visits this month uh I I visited 11 schools this month um we I started out at side Creek High School principal Martin Dron I want to uh tell you thank you very much for U obviously the the hospitality uh there was about 10 10 students that that uh
083took me around and introduced me to the different teachers and classrooms and uh in addition to that saw uh my first emotional support animal and S uh cyer Independent School District uh so I really appreciate the visit uh in addition to that spra Middle School Elizabeth Bradley uh thank you for actually um exchanging schedules with uh Center uh at such a quick notice uh Miss Mrs Bradley does a great job at sprag Middle School my son actually attends that school as well so I was able to actually see him at lunchtime um fabulous facility out there um and the uh staff and faculty um just topnotch in addition to that BL Middle School Michelle Provo I will always remember my my meeting and my school visit at BL because in the next uh for the
084next 22 years there will not be another solar eclipse so I got got the uh opportunity and and like many of you we saw the overcast clouds the sun actually peaked through and we actually got to see the solar eclipse um got to share that that experience with the blow middle school so thank you very much for the hospitality had a lot of great conversations Adam Elementary School was my next visit uh principal uh Carrie mccollister uh took me took me around the school um informed me of all the challenges and uh things that they they deal with on a day-to-day basis uh a lot of respect for the staff uh I hope I didn't um bore the kids with some of my dad jokes uh but I did take advantage of uh making some
085of the kids laugh uh Danish Elementary School is my next visit at Kelly Dalton Kelly Dalton um the energy and um enthusiasm that this per that this uh this lady shares she is an absolute Spitfire U firecracker and she's I mean just would love would love to have her uh as as my kids's principal so um uh show showed me around wanted to also throw throw out there there was actually fourth and fifth graders they do something called the Danish Daily News it only comes out once a week but they do uh weather uh Sports they you name it they have a um they also do the announcements uh great job from those kids and actually the fifth graders teach the fourth graders on how to video edit um so I felt really old and
086not smart um row Middle School was my next visit staa Karu I want to uh tell um tell her I appreciate the hospitality as well visited dang near every classroom in about an hour and a half uh anybody that knows me you get me talking it's supposed to be a one hour visit I think it's I think an hour and a half has been my my my uh lightest visit so far so um thank you for stasa and everyone at uh row Middle School him andway Elementary School at Crystal Hammond uh a again great experience over there tremendous staff really really appreciate the hospitality out there as well Wells Elementary School Cheryl fiser I believe she has a husband that uh is in the audience that that right is that Cheryl fiser is that Joel
087werle he's in the back where's he at he's in the back so Joel I met met your wife so she does a great job uh while I was there uh got to visit the the library and there was probably 30 um volunteers that were being recognized at that time so really appreciate the volunteers that are helping out at Wells Elementary School Milsap Elementary School uh Joy dolphin um again there's there's so many experiences they're kind of just run running together right now with so maybe I'll cut it down to like eight eight visits next month but uh great great job again staff I've I've been very impressed with everyone that I've that I've met so far uh I finished up last Friday cyfair High School Anna Martin uh walked the entire campus they're about to
088have a a renovation done it's going to take about three years $91 million project and that it is uh well uh timed to to uh sink some finances into that uh facility uh great job uh Anna thank you so much for your hospitality and then I finished up with Arnold Middle School and Ambi clink scale uh awesome awesome principal uh met a lot of a lot of uh teachers that actually of kids that I coached uh and when they were like 11 12 years old so uh very excited uh that I I got to do that and also meet so many people so um just for for those in the audience or viting audience we have some amazing leaders in our school district and uh I don't care what you here I would say just
089like any other organization we've got 85 90% is outstanding what we do at scair um I wanted to move on to obviously the the the comments that are going to be made tonight some of some of the comments and for the people that uh I just want to kind of remind my colleagues that uh it is not a not the job of the board to to be the superintendent and make day-to-day decisions uh I want to also let everyone know that um in addition to the the amount of librarians that are being reassigned we had 320 teachers that are going to be reassigned as well in addition to that we had 66 PA professional and support staff that are going to be reassigned 150 district and campus level administrators and professional support staff they're being
090reassigned 60 operations and 21 maintenance positions they're being reassigned of the 50 Librarians Library positions that that are that are being um reassigned 11 of them uh seven of them were retiring two were were were leaving and two um two we had two open campuses during this time last thing I want to I I want to touch base on for all you bookworms out there there's a book that I read at the beginning of my career called the greatest salesman in the world by ogmandino that book changed my life I'll never never forget one of the opening chapters is greet each day with love in your heart it takes more energy to hate than it does to love and I can tell you this for the people that are on this board and our superintendent
091they're doing it out of love we take a lot of knocks we take a lot of hits some deserve some not some not so deserved but I can't stand silent when good men and good women are being attacked for no reason we're trying to do the best that we can we listen to the Committees that are put together and we hired our superintendent to do a job and I'm very proud to sit up here with every single one of you and I really appreciate you and Doug you're doing a Fant fantastic job I know it's difficult keep your chin up those are my board comments for the night thank you Natalie uh good evening everyone thank you uh to everyone for your interest in sciare all voices are welcomed and valued uh public education is
092critical to a strong Community I'm fully dedicated after serving 30 years and volunteering my time in this role to making sure that cfic is the best choice for every student budget cuts are difficult as a principal I needed every position in my building and more uh there was never enough staff members there were never enough staff until every child could read every child could do math on level and every child was College and Career ready ready to go into a four-year or two-year degree to trade school with a certificate to enter a career until that was true there were never enough staff members so I definitely understand the the challenge that this is for everyone in the system um we will all have to face these budget cuts with resiliency and creativity um and I'm
093pleased that we are in such a situation where it's a layoff situation and not somewhere where we're having to riff people at this point in the budget decisions um Based on data that was provided to our teacher ad hoc uh ad hoc board committee on Recruitment and Retention of teachers during the 2223 school year we had 1,142 teacher positions um teachers that resigned from our system this means that even with these ability to take in our our staff members and make sure everyone still has a place in cfd we still will need to recruit more teachers and so hopefully we always ex um even just the Excellence today with our students and our staff at here that people will understand this is the best place to come and work all districts are facing budget cuts
094um and Cipher will do it better and will still be the premier place to come and work um I would like to thank I had several campus visits um Dean middle school and Bay Elementary both are receiving new principles they seem like they're going to be just perfect at Dean there was such a great student centeredness and there was really an effort to make sure every student was known and felt known and cared for and had a really sweet little Spirit of uh humor around it and in Bay Elementary they were so creative in their structures for doing interventions for the students and making sure that they didn't miss out on on things such as PE and art and music when they were really spending time during the school day getting um interventions for reading
095a math and so those were really great practices and I commend those uh leaders who've been there and I com um really excited to see what our new leaders that were announced to they can do at those campuses also really appreciated I got to go out to S Creek twice this uh this month um that was invited to a a poetry reading in The Knack classroom and then also just really uh enjoyed getting to see an algebra one team that is outperforming in the school district and while I was there I learned about a new data point that would actually help us for setting our goals for the district um because it's was really looking at the growth of students over time in algebra and so I commend that team and I know why um
096there was a picture today with me getting pied in the face and you know what I will pie in the face for kids to learn algebra and to celebrate a real good team um this algebra 1 Carnival is something they do each year and you know there's a lot of fun activities that keep kids motivated but this is they literally retach the skill right on the spot the student gets one-on-one help from expert a teacher right there to learn the the the last skills that they need to polish up before their EOC and but more than that is the spirit of that school 100 prizes nice prizes are gathered up teacher teams everyone I saw them running up to the lady in charge Miss Teresa who's actually here like oh I've got another gift for
097the kids and so really just celebrating students but more than that also the way that team operates together they're a true team they enjoy each other they love their students they know intimate details about their cares and their goals and their needs and their concerns and so I just congratulate that team for being so excellent for students and and that's why I can see why the achievement's there that's a magical combination so thank you SC Creek for hosting me I want to congratulate our retirees got to attend the retiree banquet and um people had worked since the 70s in the school district it was a the longest generation and the kids who performed were really great to just uh punctuate that that event also the VIPs appreciation lunch in uh tables and tables full of
098people who donate and give their time to uh the district and in times like this in budget cuts we so are going to rely on every last volunteer every last person to be able to give us time and and to continue to support our school so thank you to our VIPs and thank you to the VIPs board and those who put that event on it was a really honoring event um I also want to mention today I got to go to the luncheon and I thank you for the invitation to cyfair that's an association of retired Educators those educators are special they don't stop so they may be retired but I just they um really to sum up these they gave over 48,2 65 volunteer hours to our school district and if you put a
099value there's a $1.94 per hour that was $1.5 Million worth of time and they continue to do community support in in food and they work on um children book donations and adopt a campus even so I just really appreciate the sciare group so much that I'm going to join I'm very excited and I thank them for that invitation and um also just want to mention just advocacy is important for our role and so I am not sure yet but I I would thank the group that's organizing a Southeast Texas Education Coalition where school districts in the area can look for common Solutions in positive ways to address our needs in the region and also the GK GCB the Gulf Coast Area Association of school boards another place where we can um uh brainstorm and and
100collaborate with other districts in the area to see how we all find Positive Solutions to our issues and I just want to thank School nurses and our police officers in this month where we celebrate them such critical roles as a principal I knew a lot of things about instruction but I knew nothing about a kid who needed a fibrillator or student was coding so I thank a school nurse the fact that we know that we can take care of the other things because someone there who can take care of the Health crisis and our police officer safety is job one so we can do our main job which is educating children so we thank our Police Department for their service thank you thank you Christine good evening cyer it's been a very busy month and
101I wanted to say start up by saying thank you to all of our teachers Librarians Paras cafeteria maintenance facilities and District staff and our administrators you have blessed our students and I wanted to clear up some rumors or stories that have been going around the district the superintendent fund run does not fund the district it funds scholarships the vip's luncheon was underwritten by generous sponsors and so most of the costs were covered by vip's Partners not the district we are not closing School libraries no one has been fired no one has been laid off people are moving to other positions and all kids will have access to our school libraries the board members and Dr Killian and his cabinet have worked tirelessly with state legislators and the tea to address our budget shortfall we can
102only base the budget on what we know not what we guess we will be able to produce with the revenue generating ideas that have been submitted there are a lot of fabulous ideas that they have come up with and I look forward to us implementing as many of those as possible I want to thank everyone that worked on the budget reduction advisory committee and the people who submitted ideas in all areas just to recap our transportation costs have increased 20% since 2019 student devices 33% General Insurance 72% construction costs 35% food service 25% health insurance 44% I also wanted to take a moment and remind everyone that as we've been working hard to address the budget crisis it's not uni unique to Cipher many school districts out of the 1200 across the state are facing
103similar situations we've asked the governor the state legislature and the tea to work with us on getting the budget crisis resolved we will continue to work with our elected officials to address the problems we are facing I wanted to borrow some comments from Debbie blacksher who I replaced in this last election Debbie reminded us to be respectful and kind comments that our personal attacks on individuals are not merited and should not be happening we all want cyfair to succeed we may have different views on how to get there but we should never stoop so low as to stalk harass bully or belittle people we should try to model this for our students in cciir every day because they are watching the adult in this room and in every campus on our in our district we
104want to be prime examples shining examples to our students now on to better things I had a lovely visit with Kelly geretti at a Robinson Elementary and was greeted by a lovely group of stuco student council students who were so kind and H hospitable to show me around their great campus principal jetti believes that instilling leadership and a love for learning W is what will make her Rockets really go um I visited Kirk Elementary with principal Katie Ford and wow what energy and what a great visit the mighty tigers are working continuously on Improvement teacher collaboration and helping all students to excel I had an amazing visit with Dr Tracy Bennett at Horn elementary and was even gred greeted by their amazing mascot hound dog who I happened to go to high school with so
105that was a lot of fun uh Dr Bennett is focusing on the fundamental five with focus on literacy and capturing kids Hearts I wanted to thank Toshiba for adopting horn we support we appreciate your support I had another amazing visit with principal Liz wood who is retiring from sards and what a great talented group of students and faculty um that the Bengals possess they're humble whether they win or lose and they always focus on academics art and Athletics I was also able to attend Congressman Wesley Hunt's Congressional Art Contest we want to congratulate bridgelin High School sophomore Ellen tan bridgelin junor Shane lard and Cypress Woods High School sophomore volana West who had all of their works showcased out of the five submitted by the cyfair by cyfair for the contest I also was able
106to attend the audiovisual uh showcase and that was an amazing amazing experience the videos were touching poignant well-crafted we have such talented students in our district and I thank the teachers who've helped them with that um I also was able to attend the VIPs luncheon the entertainment was amazing uh the the story shared very inspiring and I also was able to attend the cyfair retired Educators lunch in today what a group great group of ladies I hope that they will and some gentlemen too uh I hope that they'll come back and serve as substitutes in our district um so that is my board comments thank you Jill thank you since the last board meeting it has been a busy month uh I made three official campus visits to Watkins Middle School Cypress Park High School
107and Thorton Middle School school events that I attended were the side Creek Algebra 1 Carnival I had lunch at langum Creek High School to celebrate staff appreciation day I attended the CID volunteer appreciation luncheon that was catered by Culinary Arts students including um Chef Nik who received an award at tonight's uh meeting I went to the last game for Coach sedeno uh who coached baseball at Langham Creek High School for 32 years and has the most wins for any cfd baseball coach it was wonderful seeing past students and staff members and families come and celebrate um and share their stories and connections I attended the scif Falls High School dance spring show um where I got to um cheer for four of the students that I'm currently mentoring at scif Falls I attended the bringham
108center student leadership impact project at Cypress Assistance Ministries and I tried to catch the cyer high school uh High School B uh baseball game on Friday night but I just missed it so I caught the beginning of the SII spring senior celebr ation instead District events that I attended are the um fifth grade Coral festival at the Barry Center the student Ed tech expo at the Barry Center where thousands of students from elementary middle and high school shared their projects for robotics coding um architecture construction um it was truly an incredible Gathering of some of the unique programs that we offer to our students from kindergarten through 12th grade um it's not just the future it is right now and I'm proud of the Investments that we are making in edtech in our district I
109attended the redefining 420 at the Berry Center this was an opportunity to for the district to share resources to parents regarding drug use substance use treatment safe gun storage and local mental health counseling thank you to the cfis guidance and counseling department the cyfair mental health intervention team and to our Police Department alre services for sharing those Resources with our parents I attended the Art Exhibit at the vpac next door it's the third of four exhibits where we are showcasing artwork from elementary school through high school by feeder pattern I encourage you to attend there's one more Art Exhibit coming this year uh the middle school region choir concert um I attended for the last two Saturdays the mobile Library we have a mobile library that provides books access to books to students um closer
110to home it may be in a parking lot at a church it may be in a community center um but thank you to the cerd Librarians who staffed the mobile Library I hope that this is something that will be continued over the summer on a weekly basis as it has in the past I also attended the retirement banquet and the future educator Signing Day so it's in the same week we say goodbye to people who had retired from our district and then we said welcome to students who are graduating this year and going to college to become teachers uh and then then we um we let them know that they are welcome to come back and do their uh student teaching here and to interview to be teachers um that's part of our grow your
111own program to assist with our teacher um recruitment efforts I also attended the VIPs appreciation luncheon and the AP showcase as well district meetings I attended were the superintendent student Leadership Council special education parent advisory committee the district educational Improvement committee and then the Community leadership council meeting today I attended the ciper spring luncheon today with our retired uh employee friends and then I also weekly U Mentor students at Sai Falls sidge and C Park high schools um moving on I want to thank all those who have advocated by sending emails and calling your state reps and the tea commissioner regarding the $30 million reimbursement for half of the loss in state aid due to our local homestead exemption I'm grateful that representative Harless personally called to ensure me that he is encouraging the commissioner
112to do the right thing with the Tea's very large Surplus it is in the commissioner's hands to take action in the past week board members were instructed to not focus on fixing blame but I would ask shouldn't we hold our elected officials accountable just as our community is holding us [Applause] accountable I I want to I want to address some some of the concerns have been raised as our community has become more aware of the financial crisis in our district and across Texas first some have suggested that the deficit has been hidden or masked due to the use of federal Esser funds to fill the budget Gap over the last few budget Cycles while it is true the Esser funds which were made available to address increased cost and learning loss within our student population
113has filled a significant portion of the deficit for the last three years the district has been very clear about that in multiple multiple public board meetings cfic spread the available Esser funds after the state supplanted the first round of federal funds from us we spread those funds across three years in order to be fiscally conservative and responsible with the funds and to void to avoid this financial crisis sooner second many have asked why the prior board didn't see this coming and address it before this year the current Financial issues have been discussed in every budget meeting held by the board since 2021 those of us who have served on the board for the past 2 to three years have been well aware of the financial crisis approaching this year District's leaders and local community Advocates
114like the community leadership committee have gone to Austin to advocate for additional funding for years we have tried to impress upon our local legislative delegation that funding at 2019 levels is not sufficient that the state has grossly underfunded special education imposed unfund funded mandates for school safety and that our state aid has been reduced because we have provided property tax relief through the local optional homestead exemption unfortunately those efforts have mostly fallen on deaf ears as some of our local legislators have focused their attention on vouchers and culture War issues instead of the Constitutional Duty per article 7 of the State Constitution to provide suitable provision for the support and maintenance of public schools setting that [Applause] aside setting that aside could prior boards have made some budget and policy decisions over the past two
115years to lessen the impact of the state's dur election of with respect to that constitutional Duty the short answer is yes the longer answer is that as you can see now these difficult decisions have a significant financial and emotional impact on students parents teachers Librarians and other employees within cfis and on the community itself could the board have reduced the local op optional homestead exemption yes in my four and a half years on the board it has not been the will of board members to do so the board had the option to reduce the local optional homestead exemption in order to increase the actual state aid we received but that option has now been removed by the state legislature until 2028 the reason past boards have kept it is that the vast majority of our
116employees live within the district and benefit from the reduction in their property taxes I accept responsibility for the part that I have played as a board member I should have been more vocal about the local optional homestead exemption I recall during the 2021 budget discussion I reached out to a fellow more experienced board member on this issue when we foresaw the coming financial crisis and he shut me down using harsh and inconsiderate words but it was still my responsibility to speak up and I own it more recently yes we could have cut positions or best service last year as we waited for the state legislature to release the $4 billion allocated in the state budget to public schools that never happened even after multiple special sessions but then thousands of students would have lost their
117bus service a year earlier and people would have been reassigned a year earlier could employees have not received a pay raise last year yes but we would still have had a substantial deficit and faced losing teachers and employees to other school districts and to private employers could new Revenue opportunities been explored earlier yes but with unknown Financial impacts and we would still have a deficit budget today Cipher SD has earned the highest Financial Integrity rating from the state of Texas for many years because of our very high rate of efficiency our low administrative ratio and our healthy fund balance balance as a reminder despite starting each of the past three years with a deficit budget our fund balance remains healthy today due the due to the sound financial management by our CFO and this cabinet
118because of our fund balance we can access some funds to address this year's deficit but that will most likely not be an option for next year I ask that our community not only hold this board accountable but to also hold our elected and appointed State officials accountable not just today and not just on social media but also by being an informed voter and using your voices at the polls and in person during the legislative session next year finally finally I want to end with I am so proud of Cipher ASD we have a legacy of educational excellence and we have a legacy of being a strong community so I encourage us to stay together these are very hard times we have been through hard times before and we're going to get through this again as
119long as we stick together I'm so proud of our students and the teachers and and Educators who pour into our kids I look forward to celebrating them as they cross the stage for graduation and um I thank you for your time tonight [Applause] I want to thank again our principles our new principles and our new super assistant superintendent and all of our award winners congratulations to all of you like all the other board members I've been involved in qu quite a few activities I won't go into all the details for time sake but I do want to highlight a couple of them was retirement bqu what we went to uh it's also it's so wonderful to hear of the 30-year vets that are retired and all the REM reminiscent of the invaluable contributions of retired
120members made the incredible Mark they left on our schools their presence will be deeply missed and their legacy will endure another event was the teacher Signing Day witnessing the enthusiasm of so many young graduates embarking on a journey in the field of Education was truly inspiring and I'm also th report the numbers have significantly increased from last year that is a testament to the dedication of our educators delivering on the support they've received along the way to all the teachers and mentors who shape the future of these inspiring Educators we extend our heartful gratitude we also invite you to come back and work for sciare in the future in addition that I've had a privilege in eng engaging in meaningful conversations with elected officials advocating tirelessly for the needs of our district just last week
121had a very productive conversation with the representative from the governor's office articulating our concerns and outlining our priorities similarly in previous weeks have had a very fruitful conversation with State reps from various districts across Texas garnering support for critical issues such as safety and our other programs for full funding these they're very retive to our cause in fact they even brought up our sh's issue with me when I had my conversation and I've exceptionally uh their resolution to fix these issues especially the homestead exemption issue is very promising while it's tempting I think to criticize officials I believe it's best to to have constructive dialogues that yields far meaningful results in fact last time we visited Austin besite despite the initial hesitations from one local officials due to the leverage they ultimately let met with
122us and very had a very productive meeting this just reinforces the importance of maintaining a positive and respectful dialogue even in the face of our differences it's impaired that remain at the table actively influencing decision makers and fostering positive change within our community moving forward this board made steadfast our commitment to cons to securing full funding for all our programs and addressing the local homestead exemption Gap we're dedicated to producing Solutions with professionalism and optimism knowing that our Collective efforts will pave forward a brighter future for all of us now as we anticipate the upcoming graduations which I for me look forward to very much I want to celebrate the remarkable achievements of our 9,000 seniors and the countless opportunities that lie ahead the resilience determination and a spirit that serve as a Beacon of
123Hope for generations to come together let's continue to support Empower our students as we embark on a new chapter of lives thank you we'll now proceed with citizen participation portion of the agenda I'll turn this over to our board secretary Justin ready continue perb Ed local patrons May address the board during the regular board meeting under citizen participation on any matters of Interest or concerns that are not posted agenda items individuals may only register to speak one time per meeting and must register in advance just a reminder patrons whove registered to speak this evening may see the order of names listed on the screen behind me before your name is called please move forward and sit in one of the two reserve seats in the front row due to the volume of speakers comments will
124be limited to one minute this evening our first Speaker this evening is Tara Cummings our six self-identified conservative trustees do not serve the best interest of cfd Henry blasingame and comback explicitly support school choice last year Mr Henry played hookie from a cfis committee meeting to attend Abbott's little B voucher rally collectively they've repeated placed their anti-public Ed Pals on multiple District committees to include the budget committee they've supported book Banning efforts led by none other than Lucas scanlan's wife Mr LMP has been obsessed with false claims about porn in our libraries and I got to just I just got to say me thinks the trustee doth protest too much that's Shakespeare all six of them have accepted partisan donations from folks actively attacking Public Schools they are friendly with and vote for elected offical
125officials who repeatedly work against public education and so we do not trust them but they can change their ways they can earn our trust they can truly serve the best interest of cfd and they can start tonight Jennifer shanet I have some questions about community members on committees Terry donated over $10,000 to the new board members campaign he's now on the budget reduction committee Clyde is also a member he sent his four kids to private school he publicly harasses women on Facebook I cannot count the number of women who have had to block him he harassed four of the women who ran in the last election I think Todd nominated him Bethany scandin was appointed to sha by Natalie so was a woman who lives in Tomball Bethany is also on the library committee thanks
126to Natalie again she single-handedly attempted to ban multiple books at our schools Todd was randomly selected for that committee he attended one of Bethany's meetings to learn how to submit book Banning requests now now here we are 18 months later and we are losing more than half of our Librarians can you connect the dots I can't wait to see the details about the new board policy committee I'm sure there'll be total transparency with that one right several board members love to scream about transparency unless it's about them Olivia Penrod um High School members Librarians are important to me they've helped me find my voice and I want to see their is protected they they have helped me find books that got me through some tough times and represented me they've encouraged my love of reading
127and pointed me to genres that I wouldn't even have thought about they've helped me feel safe and feel like I could talk to them whenever I needed because of the budget cuts I worry about how often I'll be able to access library with our remaining librarian time being split between three campuses we have already had attacks on the content in the library now you're recognizing the people who have helped curate that content I worry about how this will ffect me academically and I wish you could you would rethink your rethink reorganizing their positions thank [Applause] [Music] you Mindy Penrod good evening so it's been said before we need Librarians they Empower they encourage and they create safe spaces for growing critical thinkers it Bears repeating they're the heart of our schools please find another way
128to reorganize your staff to make this a little bit easier on them and everybody and all the teachers as well um with the budget cuts already ruin our reputation the the 1 to 2% raise really isn't helping the morale and it's not going to really attract new teachers and many as in as many in the librarian Facebook group have said keep the money so we can keep the staff instead of blaming the spending on previous boards we should be looking to Greg Abbott we all know he's holding our tax hostage over vouchers on purpose this was the game plan all along to those on the board supporting this scheme you're advocating dismantling everything down to the very positions you hold do better thank you Ally Fitzpatrick the funding crisis created by Governor Abbott's quest for
129vouchers is being enabled by your continued silence eyes an admitted refusal to be transparent about what if any actions you're actually taking at the state level to demand the funding of our public schools that we are entitled to there has been a distinct lack of transparency regarding the most recent staff reductions as well as the plan for future reductions our community deserves an immediate comprehensive and transparent disclosure on what your plans are for Staffing cuts the timing of said cuts and the projected impact on our students and remaining staff the lack of transparency has eroded trust and morale within the district and has enraged parents as we watch you sit back in smug silence claiming you're doing all you can but offering no proof while our schools are being held hostage say Abbott's name and
130demand he fund our schools and to Dr msas I will just say shame on you your time is up please your our librarians [Applause] Christina Woods good evening whether you as a trustee or a seven Mountain mandator an unabashed Christian nationalist or someone who has hitched your star to one or the other to advance your political career you are part of the problem you're part of the problem because you have the ear of the governor and our Pro voucher and Not So Pro public Ed State lawmakers and still we have a devastating budget shortfall you all with the ex exception of trusty h men are in those positions because of a party that wants to end public Ed in Texas so it's not hard to assume you support what is happening in the district one
131also has to consider that this is part of a national movement to return public schools schools to separate but equal remember py versus Ferguson then enshrine racial racial segregation in this country until Brown V board almost 60 years later Struck it down and held that racial SE segregation of children in public schools violated the 14th Amendment Amendment and yet our district delayed integrating schools until it was federally mandated in 1967 that's 13 more years black students were denied their constitutional right to an equitable education in our district time is up please conclude your remarks don't trust you and we're ready for the [Applause] fight Joshua Allen this past weekend I was with friends who have a child that is a former sciare student I he was listening to us discuss the outcome of this fake
132funding crisis created by Abbott's ridiculous voucher campaign and expressed utter shock and sadness at the idea of the schools he had previously attended without dedicated Librarians this interaction drove home for me a fundamental truth strong public education for all children is foundational to any great country and our community I ask the board do you really truly feel the same way we should not be trading Librarians and other uh staff for Teacher raises it's simply not necessary it's time for each of you to show that you're here because you fundamentally believe in quality public education I implore you bring out your best stand up to legislators and demand that our schools get the funding that they deserve Michelle Marshall good evening Board of Trustees superintendent my name is Michelle Marshall and I'm I am a very
133proud cfis employee who is grateful for your dedication however I am concerned about the lack of transparency and respect for our Educators clear goals and resource alignments are crucial especially regarding recent announcement on budget cuts including staff positions all while having a job fair seems a little puzzling the Brock committee lacked inclusive representation hindering informed decisions having been in education since 1996 I understand teaching challenge es and especially postco all facing we are all facing these Cuts throughout Texas and for cair to be to stay attractive to other Educators we need to continue to address our school calendar our attendance policies as we know our parents need to get those kids back into school that is a part of our problem and school hours needs to be addressed all of these are vital while a
1344-day week may not be feasible exploring any time is up please conclude your remarks okay and then we have we could Implement um Chromebook insurance that could raise over $2.3 million please conclude your remarks your minute is up thank you we email those to you Chris schwager why would Todd L comp appoint a man who is a cyberstalker and a known harasser of women myself and a member of this board included to the Brack does he agree with his behavior was his appointment to the Brack some kind of attaboy for his heinous actions Lucas scanland continues to violate My First Amendment rights and the rights of many others why does he believe the First Amendment only applies to certain people Justin Ray claimed I made him feel sexualized in a post on sexual media social
135media he offered no context and no proof why did he think I would admit to something I didn't do a known associate of Natalie blasingame has verbally assaulted and harassed me and my friends why is it because we have exposed her lies the voting public needs to pay attention is this what you all think I deserve for posting factual information on social media I did not rent from Schoolboard I'm a parent and a stakeholder that is all as trustees you now represent all of cfis not just your special interests Francis ramirz [Applause] riro good evening all I'd like to start out by saying happy teacher and staff appreciation week we love you at last week's board work session our community has had the opportunity to express feedback on the district's proposed budget cuts we all
136know who's responsible for putting our school districts in this devastating situation so the question now is what can we do to turn this around for the short ter for the short term I was going to ask that everyone here send letters to their state representatives to help us in recouping some of the Lost Revenue um of due to the homestead optional homestead exemption and ask for those funds from the tea but I'm happy to report that a bipartisan letter went out today to the commissioner asking uh for assistance and trying to get some of those funds back for our district so uh let's consider that almost a win but for the long term I want to ask everyone here to keep this fire burning to keep this momentum going because the legislature meets again in
137January of 2025 session please conclude your we need we need to keep this conversation at the Forefront thank you Stacy McKay Stacy McCay Maggie McCartney good evening I am the daughter of a CISD teacher and the mother of two cfd children while the fight to change Minds at the state level is a valid and necessary fight I would like to make sure we do not lose sight of another fact it is not by coincidence that librarian positions were the primary ones targeted by this board several of whom ran on the erroneous and offensive platform that removing books that promote diversity inclusion no one paying attention believes that cutting librarian positions was the only or even best option you could make just like no one paying attention believes the quest to remov books is about protecting
138children we know that this decision was part of a targeted attack on books that might teach children to think and learn in ways that you the board are uncomfortable with as the parent of a cfd child this decision does not give me Freedom or choice we see through the flimsy rhetoric we are being fed at all levels and we will remember it when it is time to vote you out Allison [Applause] Collins I'm a product of Jersey Village High School and mom to a third grader at Copeland Elementary who cried real tears when he learned about what's happening to our librarian Miss Russell this is them at Trunk or Treat just one of many examples of how she Fosters a love of reading in our youngest and most impressionable students the data is clear cultivating
139a l of reading is critical to the long-term academic success of our students there are very few things we can point to that are as impactful as getting kids reading as early and as actively as possible that's why our Librarians have Master's levels degrees and specialized certifications their work requires specialized skills because it's the type of work that actually makes a difference in the long-term success of our community this is not the type of work that can be done by a par professional this is my son with Trixie a specially trained Library dog who encourages our students L of reading Trixie is one of the most special parts of our campus but we all know that it's actually her human Miss Russell who makes all this possible can anyone on this board justify cutting such
140a critical role when childhood literacy is at stake raise your hand if you feel that student literacy should not be at the very top of our priority list is that what we're willing to give up because a a political game time is up please conclude your remarks [Applause] C Alicia craft Alicia craft Andrea love and and Andrea okay my name is Andrea love and I a product of the ciper district as well as my children and now my grandchildren I am currently a parent professional in the district we are greatly undervalued in our positions we work hard to help the teachers because we want to ensure that our students succeed in every as aspect of their education giving us a 2% raise is barely enough to cover the cost of infl inflation and Rising Insurance
141my husband and I are both diabetics and cost and the cost of our medication is ridiculous we switch off goinging to the doctor and getting the medication that we need if we knew that these funds and cuts were coming why did we not take steps in advance to offset these Cuts so that the district would not be in this situation if we can pay athletes and entertainers millions of dollars we could at least give teachers and prayer professionals what they really deserve to be paid thank you for your time and [Applause] consideration Caleb Holmes my name is Caleb Holmes I'm the student body secretary at Cypress wrench high school and I'm one of the many students who will be affected by the cfis budget cuts that they are forced to make not only will I
142be affected test scores reading capabilities and post education Readiness will also drastically decline now I can't in good faith place the uh blame wholeheartedly on our trustees because I have had the debate with local Statewide uh officials about education and I know the root cause of the issue now I have been a supporter of the Texas legislative and I have the pleasure of working with many of our legislators but a line must be drawn at some point and my line is drawn when the future of our nation the future of our state and the future of public Ed education becomes a term of negotiation and not the pillow of our great state thank you so [Music] much Chase [Applause] West my name is Chase West and I'm representative Scofield's opponent November as cciir ISD is
143facing a$ 73.6 million deficit next year I'm here to offer a solution to Dr Killian and the board regarding the unnecessary loss of nearly half of the district's Librarians and how to regain the trust in the eyes of the community Dr Killian as we have not met I have nothing against you personally professionally or politically I believe you were stuck in a situation similar to having $5 at a convenience store intending to buy a large soda and a bag of chips you get to the counter and the soda alone is $450 you have no choice but to put something back well this is your chance to become a hero or history in this District to be the hero you will publicly demand Greg Abbott call a special session immediately with the intention of funding Public
144Schools without vouchers you may not succeed but you will show the community that you are actively seeking other Solutions and willing to use your position to our benefit regardless of personal or political cost thank you for your [Applause] time AB abis Salon Ali okay okay good evening everyone um my name is Abdi from Cy Cypress Park High School I'm a senior firstly I would like to emphasize the the government that was elected to represent us the people have failed holding funds that would benefit the people as a whole to put more money to those private sectors is appalling we must vote them out as soon as possible or the lonar state's public education is no more actually the whole nation's public education is no more secondly our District's Moto is every child every day please
145the board I urge you to remember this when you are taking out are liberians I personally was affected by liberians I learned English through a Liberian so these people are very very valuable thank you very much vote for education for all thank [Applause] you Kendall [Applause] Clarkson good evening my name is kall Clarkson and I'm currently a prek teacher at Macau Elementary I wanted to offer the board and the public an inside look in to my prek collaborative classroom we have a large number of students with varying needs and abilities and the number is still growing half of our class is high need Early Childhood special education students also known as ecse this being said we see on a daily basis how the funds for ecse help our students when they are properly allocated Dr
146Killian please know that I'm not here to complain but rather to encourage you to speak up and call on Governor Abbott to release the fund for special education students I see firsthand how a non-verbal child with autism can improve and interact with their peers simply by having access to their proper resources please don't let these special education students fall through the cracks they deserve the attention and care that these funds can provide I am a proud cfis teacher but I strongly believe that change can happen when we speak up for what we believe in thank you so much Sophia low my name is Sophia loow and I'm a student at cyer high school I am devastated not just by the loss of My Librarian but also the loss of my College and Career specialist Miss
147Stockton is responsible for so much of My Success and I would not be where I am today without her it baffles me how you can shake my hand and pose for pictures while at the award ceremonies made possible by her and then jeopardize her position how you can wish me on my how you can wish me well on my college journey and congratulate me on the opportunities I've taken only to steal them from the next class of kids your job is to provide us with the best learning and possible yet our educational and emotional support systems are continuously attacked and we are robbed of the resources we need to thrive the decisions being made by our governor Senators ta commissioner and the cfd Board of Trustees are stunting us both academically and inspirationally I'm tired
148of the supposed efforts to improve student mental health while the district abandons programs like no place for hate underfunds our arts and removes our most influential mentors your inaction cowardice and poor prioritization will only serve to sabotage all that cfd stands for your decisions do not currently have our best interest at heart and I plead that you use your power to give my fellow peers and I the future we deserve you have the ability call for special session Dylan [Music] Carroll Dylan Caroll Julie [Applause] long the Jesus I believe in didn't differentiate between homeowners and apartment Runners he advocated for the struggling the orphans those with less for all people but in Texas people have voted for Greg Abbott and he's doing the exact opposite he's holding hostages State funding Surplus greater than the annual
149budget of 24 States he's been purchased with silver pieces promising to spend public dollars on private schools private schools where it's hard for a kid like mine an English language learner to get in and believe me we tried we're so grateful we chose to enroll her in public schools instead where she has access to counselors and interventionists Librarians and Specialists now all of these positions are on the chopping block so when Greg Abbott said that adoption had allowed him to experience unparalleled joy in his life I can say our family's done that too it's time we allow thousands of children to experience the shared immeasurable joy of the massive State Surplus release for public sto funding boards stand up to him stop attending his events fight for all the children your time is up please
150conclude your remarks Public School immediately Luke Beasley Luke Beasley good good good evening my name is Luke and I am a junior at Cypress Ranch High School and I'm currently serving as a student body president with all due respect I'll be blunt see if I see for a lack of better terms needs to stop practicing safety theater practically and realistically speaking clear backpacks do absolutely nothing and in fact Garner more negative than positives since the implementation I have not seen any statistic of drastic decreases in violence in on cfic campuses it unironically takes an IQ of five for students to sneak firearms and weapons on our campuses even with the new regulations whether whether it's through uh whether it's through lunch boxes that conveniently aren't clear Athletics bags or hiding the firearms in between items
151within the clear backpacks this singular benefit is the creation of a false hope within our staff in reality your time is up please conclude your remarks do better C if I see Lisa abuka first I want to say happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of our Educators and staff too all of your hard work dedication and compassion is not unnoticed thank you second I am asking for more more transparency from this elected body I attend these meetings to be an informed citizen yet that task is next to Impossible all we get before a meeting is this piece of paper then I have to speak about a topic before I know anything about it we also don't see what is in the board packet until after minutes are approved third where is the meaning of the
152public one thing we do not have is a way to network with fellow adults from our kids' schools to be able to support each other exchange ideas and advocate for the things our schools need please look into making these improvements Monica [Applause] Hatfield my name is Mo Hatfield and I am a student at cyfair high school recently Dr Killian made the decision to reduce the number of librarians even though there was a proposed plan that would cut $4 million more than originally planned this plan didn't include reducing Librarians but people claim it was a necessity given the shortfalls many people have been playing the blame game regarding the budget issues so fine blame the local optional homestead exemption blame a lower average daily attendance blame the shortfalls in allotments blame inflation blame Esser funds or
153blame Abbot it doesn't matter what matters is that you've had students say that their Librarians are some of their favorite people and you're taking that away from them not because you have to but because you can do you think cyfair will continue to be a destination district with this Choice do you think this will bring out the best in students I hope this decision will be reversed students need Librarians every day Brook [Applause] Simmons my name is Brook Simons and I'm in sixth grade at sard's Middle School let me tell you a little bit about Miss PFF in the library at my school Miss pfff loves pugs hugs Taylor Swift and has a rational fear con balls Mrs Puff cares about us and wants us to succeed Mrs Puff has encouraged me to explore different
154types of books and introduce me to mystery books my name what the FP Librarians are important for the teachers and her students Librarians help prepare us in many different ways without Librarians our education will be compromised they help us prepare papers by showing us how to research and look up topics they also help us with technology as they are the media specialist in our school in elementary my library My Librarian was Mrs Kaylor she made books come alive when she read to us she also had named that book and ran the book fair please don't take the way our Librarians at our schools they are important for students like me and matter schools thank you k Thompson hello and thank you for letting me speak today at this board meeting my name is Kinsley and
155I currently a fifth grader at Pope Elementary I am speaking on behalf of the 118,000 students in the cyfair Independent School District the librarian at Pope Elementary Miss CS me my five years at this school memorable I started at Pope in 2019 and my first grade year was interrupted by the covid-19 pandemic and one of the people that I was missing the most was Mrs kites I was is starting to get into reading big girl books when my passion for reading came to a halt I went back to school in the fall of 2020 Miss K helped me ReDiscover my passion for reading she encouraged my passion helping me to discover authors like JK Rowling and Shannon messenger the characters helped me escape the real world of covid-19 and I leftt into the lives of
156Harry Potter and Sophie Foster thanks to Mrs crates I am now a very active reader and I finished books within a week in a book by sh Silverstein and one of the poems it taught me about freedom of speech thanks to Mrs crates I'm staring here before you trying to save Librarians positions in SC I hope you understand the need for librarians in Cipher community in school district thank [Applause] you area Adar area adaru my name is Arya and I'm a fifth grader at Pope Elementary I've been at Pope since kindergarten and have enjoyed my time there first impression I was completely overwhelmed the school is pretty big with only a few people that I recognized the only person I remember always being there was our librarian Mrs k every time I walk into the
157library a new adventure begins but what is an adventure without friends and the most needed person a guide over my years I pop I the best guide I could ask for I recall her reading a book about kindness to US every year this year she showed us the effect Miss K had a bucket of water and Ma drop stones in it telling us how the water Ripples and how it's similar to how kindness spreads if Miss Christ wasn't here next year who would be that rock Rippling love and kindness to our big family at Pope who would teach us every single day how we can learn to love each other Miss CR is loving joyful and she cares for us spending hours working for our community here at Pope I'm sure that I speak for
158all students at Pope and I say Miss cret is who we wish could forever be part of our library I hope hearing all the student feedback will help you understand how necessary a librarian truly is through our school Journey thank [Applause] you Leslie gilmart my name is Leslie gilmart and I'm president of Cypress families for public schools the cfps board of directors has selected two cfd High School seniors to receive college scholarships we award these scholarships specifically to aspiring teachers because they're the future of public education we hope this war award Inspire students to return to cfis to teach knowing their Community is behind them thanks to the generosity of friends of cfps both students will receive $1,000 follow us on social media to learn who our Scholars are later this month in the meantime
159sfair neighbors let's let every student and staff member know we value them by continuing to advocate for excellent diverse joyful fully funded Public [Applause] Schools Lyn [Applause] Blair I'm ly Blair and I taught in scair for eight years I love teaching I love the kids I love the parents I love the staff what I didn't love was the way the district constantly push curriculum changes only concerned about numbers and appearances and the micromanagement that came with it and of course those never-ending budget cuts I was an amazing teacher so many of my friends were amazing teachers was and were are the key words there when I left amazing teachers were leaving in droves now instead of teachers leaving we're literally pushing them out after the Berry Center in this beautiful administration building were built hundreds
160of Staff went on the excess list you can't fire them but you sure can push them to leave after ripping them away from their beloved campuses Mr LMP it is not a flex to say that you are also taking away and putting in excess other teachers not just Librarians I understand that these things come from different budgets but optically it's a horrible look especially when sending out the most recent excess email to Librarians at 10:30 at 11:30 p.m. and then telling them that if they didn't like their new assignments that they could apply elsewhere and lose their sen seniority please do better your time is up please conclude your remarks and i' like to say I'm off to the Caribbean now the land of the teachers thank you Mr Ray and um please don't pose
161next to a book cart when you knew what was happening two years or two weeks later thank you sir we'll now proceed to reports Administration will present an oral report on preliminary budget 2024 2025 school year uh we do have some speakers we'll start with the speakers first Ashley Buckner Ashley my name is Ashley my name is Ashley Buckner I am the organizer of cair cfd parents for librarians and um as I've previously stated I do not intend to stop until we have a librarian back on every single campus and um you can take that to your meeting with Dan Patrick this week thank you Jennifer [Applause] shanet glad to see Clyde's already posting about me on Facebook uh there's no need to sugarcoat it Abbott is sitting on a pile of money because he's
162mad that school vouchers didn't pass let's not forget when he came here he didn't visit the third largest school district he went to Cypress Christian instead Scott joined him and now he's the board president because of Abbott we are losing over half our Librarians it's all part of the master plan to continue the dumbing down of society and then Christian nationalism can be injected with a big needle take a look at the dysfunctional family tree we start with the orange Messiah that many of you worship did you know that Ken Paxton was in court with him the other day in New York City then we have Greg and we have his fan club like oliveron and Bon Court then they have their fan club Lucas Scott and Natalie have attended Tom's Christmas parties Bethany has
163hung out in Paul's office in Austin beware of those who say they are pro public education we know all about the wolves and sheep's clothing we are surrounded by them and we need to vote every single one of them out if we want public education to survive in the meantime abot can do something about it the question is will he Dr Tara Cummings the current budget crisis is unequivocally the fault of Greg Abbott and our Republican L state government in my earlier comment I outlined why we simply cannot trust our majority self-identified conservative board to manage this crisis well trustees in addition to my request that you prove me wrong and earn the community's trust I have some demands I demand that you stand up to our elected officials and hold them accountable for the
164mess they've created and for serving the best interest of public education I demand that you set aside party Allegiance Allegiance Allegiance and extremist religious ideology for your oath to cfd I demand that unless and until they fund public education you refuse to vote for Republicans the letter to tea is an important start but not nearly sufficient because here's the thing the Republican party of Texas is out to destroy public education they said so themselves and this crisis is further truth so if you are in fact committed to cfd prove it with your decisions regarding this budget your interactions with elected officials and your future votes we're watching Christina Woods I personally know a teacher who lost her job or is on the list that might magically match her up with another job I know how
165much this woman loved her work I also know what she meant to her students if she isn't matched with another job she is unemployed when staff are cut students suffer when staff are cut other staff that are already at full burnout stage are picking up the slack so they suffer too our trustees claim to care about our black and brown students and that they are always behind our white students on test scores and yet the Gap persists I've heard trusty blasting game a PhD in education clearly states she does not want to know what causes their scores to be lower but just wants them the scores to be increased first on the face that is a racist statement and second how does that Gap close when the district plans to cut so many Librarians peras
166Behavior behavioral interventionists and teachers behavioral interventionists help sped students with behavior problems complete their school work successfully and manage their behavior and emotions while in class how cruel for those positions to be cut Paris also offer support to students with learning disabilities and other disabilities how cruel for students and teachers to be left without Paris to support the needs of those students thank you Caleb Holmes [Applause] [Music] uh like truste Ray said previously our voices are attempted to being heard uh as a leading youth political leader I have had the difficult conversation with local and Statewide elected officials on both sides of the Ia about how education is the foundation of our country and not just numbers on a spreadsheet but in fact that the deing the deciding factor in the future of our nation
167so I will leave I will leave with this our voices have been heard and they will continue to be heard because there are hundreds of people in this room who will not stop fighting to my generation and generations to become become priority number one again but but we all should remember that we should not tarish the name of another person and the words of the Bible do not let kindness and Truth leave you bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart thank you Daniel Fernandez Daniel hello my name is Daniel Fernandez and I go to Copeland Elementary where I'm a fifth grade student council representative I am here to talk about school liberians and why they are important to our school first they help with reading programs such as
168name that book name that book is a great program because it lets me have fun with my friends while teaching us responsibilities such as ATT attending team meetings second who would run the school library School libr liberians do more than manage books they make great recommendations to students for for example my school libarian recommended a fantastic book to me because she knows what our kids like and our reading levels third our librarian teaches about Library resources and how to use them I've learned how to use new types of technology for my schoolwork we usually go use Google Docs at my school but My Librarian introduced me to a new app that me that helped me make a poster for school that I was proud of last the library is one of my favorite places to
169go in school thanks to My Librarian my two siblings that go to Copeland think the same thing we and we would all be sad if our liberians left their schools in conclusion liberians are an important part of our education and schools and each School deserves a librarian like mine thank you fret and Herrera in the best interest of children was the ironic sign off to a lengthy email detailing a budget reduction plan that impacts over 500 teachers Librarians Paris district and campus level administrators and and support staff none of which sounds remotely close to being in the best interest of our children the kicker was that next year there may double the cut you could have spared us all of the excuses of how we got into this mess and instead told the honest truth
170that this deficit as a result of our governor holding funding for public education hostage until his vouchers are passed unless you are pro voucher serving on a board for public education you should be living that he is threatening to leave you all with the legacy of failing the 118,000 students and families you have been privileged to serve it while the state sits on a six on a $30 billion Surplus we refuse to believe that your hands are tied and that this is our fate and we urg urge you to publicly Advocate on our behalf for the governor and commissioner to release our funds immediately our community is watching your actions not your words to prove that you truly do care about the best interest of our children thank you Rosemary Wilson good evening my good
171evening my name is Rosemary Wilson and I attend Feast Elementary I Love My Librarian Miss Booker I do not want her to leave my school My Librarian is such a great person she's an expert and a professional she's kind and loving and she even remembers everyone's names the library is very important to students it is a fun and educational place where kids have free access to books a lot of kids aren't able to visit public libraries so their school library May may be the only Library they have having a full-time librarian is vital for learning the life skills of using a library school librarians have worked hard to get their jobs if they lose their jobs they have to find another library or all their hard work will be ruined the Librarians who get to
172keep their jobs will have to work at multiple schools causing them to be overworked and less dedicated to each School Dr Killian please let us keep our Librarians thank you Dr [Applause] Toons my name is Dr Jan Carlo to adanes I am an assistant professor and pediatrician for a major medical school the opinions are my own and not endorsed by my employers I am a father to two students at Swanky Elementary and an active parent volun here M Miss Arnette is my children's librarian and Advocate I strongly support the inclusion of all Librarians in Cipher ISD Librarians not only provide books to our children they serve as it Specialists program developers like named that book and confidence as many of our students have already mentioned Librarians undergo additional training along with childhood education their role
173is science the American Academy of Pediatrics regard literacy as a pillar of optimal childhood development they recommend partnering with other child Advocates that support and promote literacy Librarians are an essential partner 90 million adults in the United States lack the literacy to effectively negotiate the Health Care system will our children be one of them I implore you to reconsider your recommendation please explore all the resources at your disposal I have done my best to speak for my children I ask you that you do the same for ours thank you Wendy Callen [Music] my name is Wendy Cowen and I'm a sciare ISD parent I am here again to share my thoughts on the recent budget deficit I understand this is a tough situation however we knew this was coming after the 2023 regular session and
174the three subsequent special sessions failed to provide any funding for public education it is important that you know we don't support removing Librarians from our schools we need our school board to be transparent about the budget deficit and for the community to be involved in the process of adjusting the budget and raising the funds our public schools have been politicized by those seeking higher office but our local public schools and students are the ones left to bear the consequences we need to be communicating to our elected officials that our Public Schools need to be properly funded and any elected official that isn't openly doing everything possible to support support public education will have to answer to the voters put our students first not personal agendas thank you for your time Caron trong hello board trustees
175viewers and attendees of this meeting my name is k trong with the budget crisis we have lost our Librarians this issue has gone much further than expected and we all must work together to protect the liberians who are members of our community this issue is no longer one where we stand with our political party ideology this is an issue where we all must work together our board members are actively working to get legislators into a special sessions and we have members of the audience advocating for the exact same thing in order for this cause to advance we need you the viewer to call your legislators and tell them to F uh fund public education Angela Martin green good evening I'm a long-term resident of sciare and my son was a student in sciare public schools
176we have a significant budget shortfall and the district's main Advocate is our superintendent he should partner with other area superintendents to get the governor to release education funding whether School voucher program is funded or not student education is not a bargaining chip it is unacceptable for the district to eliminate numerous positions and services to balance the budget when the funds are in Austin however the budget process excuse me crisis didn't come as a surprise to the district as an accountant the district should have had a contingency plan in case those funds were not released including district office Executives taking pay cuts and delaying nice but not necessary expenditures the quality of our students education and opportunities should not be diminished due to funding shortfalls in the spirit of transparency the budget line items how the
177proposed Cuts will balance the budget along with impact on students and campuses will hopefully be made available to the public allowing faculty parents and concerned citizens to weigh in on proposed Cuts thank you Kylie [Applause] rackliffe hi my name is Kylie and I'm a fourth grader at Robson Elementary my My Librarian Is Miss RC we should be keep we should keep all Librarians because they are important part of a school librarians provide us with books that help us learn that help us build love for books by reading to us or introducing us to books that we are interested in they also give us activities that help us build teamwork that we will use for the rest of our lives we should raise money so all schools can have Librarians think about you when you were
178kids did your libr Lian help you in any way if yes then they made you made an impact on your life Librarians have a positive effect on each and every kid in schools there are many reasons we should keep all Librarians even if we have to raise money for it I want to thank my friend Nana and my mom and my librarian Miss kubak for helping me thank [Music] you Courtney lender you until there's push back from our state's largest employers demanding funding for better education I fear nothing will change by 2036 More than 70% of the jobs in Texas will require post-secondary credentials Early Learning and access to the library is critical for this but you already know that so I want to talk to everyone that's here and watching from home it is
179imperative that every single person be intentional about making an impact encourage your employers to sponsor or a school a maker space a team and then make it happen my di third graders were able to send over 200 letters to state representatives it does not matter your age set a goal and accomplish it I have a 9-year-old and in her lifetime she has been through Harvey the freeze Uvaldi drills a global pandemic two of the most contentious elections in modern history and a complete 180 from Chrome book from books to Chromebooks for kids to stand in front of you and tell you that the library is where they feel the safest matters please listen to them and do better Jeremy [Applause] Eugene good evening my name is Jeremy Eugene I teach special education English and reading
180at Cypress Park High School um and I want to share with you a way that you can immediately take action on all of the things that you have heard from us and um we have requested of yall tonight if you scan this QR code you'll be taken to a petition started by a Community member here who agrees and understands that in order for us employees to perform at our best to serve the students at our best we don't need to choose which things we're going to cut we don't need to choose which positions we're going to cut we need to be have access to full funding um so we need Governor Abbott to release the funds and we need you to publicly put your names to this petition to sign it and to say that
181you demand that we get the funds that are needed in order to support our [Music] schools Monique [Applause] Lee cyare ISD is known nationally for performing performing at the highest levels in academics Athletics and arts yet how can we remain a top District by eliminating school librarians and programming in this age of screens it's more important than ever to inspire kids to read and create name that book author visits Poetry Slams Book Fairs have all encouraged my four eager learners but it is the atrisk children who stand to lose the most Librarians are valuable for special needs populations and without a strong Library program the district will see lower standardized test scores and graduation rates cyfair made waves with the most expensive football stadium in the state yes those were bond funds but what does
182it say about District priorities that we boast such a venue but do not provide our kids with basic literacy support we understand budget cuts are necessary to keep the lights on but there is a better solution and we need to find it Elliot Lee hi I'm Elliot Lee from Spain middle school and I believe Librarians are important because they set up more of a personal connection to books in elementary we had to read aloud every time we went to uh the library this made me want to not only read books but go to the library as well and even without read alouds my libr uh librarian is constantly recommending sites and books and all sorts of things next year there will be kindergarteners without a librarian that they feel close with also in all the
183time before they're done with school they won't have an amazing personal librarian to read books or give cool websites and a lot of other things so in a way by doing this kids will most likely read less books for all these reasons I believe Librarians are very important and if you have to make budget cuts I recommend something less important thank you for your time John Rosenthal go ahead and turn it on turnic thank you for letting me speak tonight good evening I'm John Rosenthal I'm the Texas state representative for district 135 tonight I Rise to comment on the budget not so much uh on the specific Cipher ISD proposals but I'm calling on you the board and every Texan who can hear my voice tonight to contact your legislators take action regarding the current
184historic underfunding of our public neighborhood schools by the Texas government underfunding our schools doesn't help our students to succeed the state is sitting on a historic budget surplus right now we have $4 billion in appropriated money that's unspent and we're going to walk into a $30 billion budget surplus in the next session I encourage all of you to contact your legislators and especially the governor and demand that the state fulfill the Texas constitutional requirement to quote make suitable Provisions for an efficient system of public free schools y'all please join me in calling on our governor to bring us the legislature back to session to increase funding to cair istd and all of our public school districts in the state we have the money we can do it and the last thing I'm going to say
185is how about these students coming up to speak tonight they have been amazing they are the products of our sciare system please do the best that we can for them thank you very much John [Applause] ultry thank you thank you uh we are here tonight uh not because of something self-imposed in our district there's not been misuse or mismanagement of funds it is because elections have consequences when you put people in office who vote for party over policy we end up in situations like this so you've heard said tonight that they are talking to uh the legislators and contacting the governor but it's going to take the community to do that we all have to do that to say we want our schools funded look there is a surplus our students need that money and
186what's best for our students is of adequate funding what's best for our students is Librarians in every school what's best for our students is no counselor to lose his position or her position what's best for our students is all staff to be adequately paid and to get their raises please wrap up we have to know that elections have consequences and it's time to have people who put policy [Music] overing Hunter [Applause] cobor is Hunter here cynthy Coburn Dave May no good evening board Dave man parent resident as has been said this evening the blame for this entire budget crisis lay at the feet of one man Greg Abbott his diabolical scheme to destroy public education in Texas at the behest of conspiracy theorist Christian nationalist billionaires is being played out right here in cfd and
187every other school district in Texas by H by Abbott holding our tax dollars hostage until he can intimidate the legislature into passing his voucher scam if you support vouchers You Are by default anti-public education it's as simple as that now we all tell our kids to be careful who they associate with not to fall in with the wrong crowd and that if you want to know someone look at their friends well who do you associate with Todd Justin Christine you were sworn in right here by Pro voucher anti-public Ed State Rep Tom oliverson it's Scott Lucas you attended a Christmas party Scott you attended some Pro voucher event distance yourselves from these people distance yourselves from them fight for us do you stand for vouchers or for public Ed do you stand for the interests
188of this community or some political ideology choose Julie Ricks Jill Ricks Diana Alexander esteemed board members I'm a proud uh diagnostician at Dean element sorry Dean Middle School since time and Memorial humans have gathered around Fires for nourishment yes but also for the stories Tales of loss love and learning were passed orally until the Advent of books where stories became the foundation for our schools today we are at a Crossroads due to a deliberate underfunding crisis intentionally beset Upon Us by Greg Abbott and those who wish to starve public education in this time it may seem tempting to cut Librarians but they are our storytellers the ones Duty bound to curate our Tales resist this inclination we need Librarians to hold our story safe to create the nurturing space for our kids as a veteran
189educator a kid who grew up with many barriers I sought comfort in books y'all how many of you took refuge in the library raise your hands thank you I include our speaker Karen see waiting for them to just a second here Hunter did you want to go speak my name is my name is Hunter Coburn and and I come from h m school who m and I'm here today to ask you to not get rid of of My Librarian she us more than no it's not just it's not just these Book Fairs and story times it's the your help she gives the students like me the ones with learning disabilities I'm above averag and Rain they love of books chain Ste in me learning is hard enough or some like me please don't take away
190one of my few Advantage advantages thank you for your thank you for your [Applause] time all right Karen you may proceed thank you president Henry and the Board of Trustees tonight I will be presenting the 20242 preliminary General operating budget developed by Administration after input from the budget reduction advisory committee the district survey campus and department administration the board at the April 22nd special called board worksh budget Workshop in the finance and operations committee the legislature determines how much funding each district will receive which is our entitlement in other words they determine the size of our cup once a District's cup size or total funding is determined the state starts to fill the cup with local local property tax collections first this is called the local share in some districts the the local share partially
191fills the cup in other districts the local share completely fills the cup or it may overflow the cup and if it overflows the cup this is recapture then the state starts to fill the cup with State funds or state aid however a School District offers tax relief which is a major concern of the legislature and the governor through a local optional homestead exemption the state funding formula never fills the cup Senate Bill 2 passed in the 2 88 special session prohibits the removal or reduction of the local optional homestead exemption until January of 2028 however there is a solution the legislature could modify the adjustment to the controller's property value assignment for the local optional homet exemption so in other words uh the state funding is reduced as assuming that we collect property taxes on
192100% this has been one of the legislative priorities for the district if they recognize 100% it would provide approximately $63 million in funding meanwhile Dr Killian as soon as he pretty much as as soon as he came to the district started advocating for at least recognition of 50% of the local optional homestead exemption the commissioner in a uh year where their surplus funds can actually after they fund special education cameras can provide authorized funding for up to 50% relief towards the local optional homestead exemption as mentioned in the previous Slide the two major sources of funding for school districts are property taxes and state aid property values are determined by the Harris count Harris Central Appraisal District and the tax rate is compos composed of the maintenance and operations tax as well as the interest
193in Sinking however the M rate is capped and cannot go above a certain amount uh with the m which would be the maximum compress rate plus five uh of the enrichment pennies without a voter approval tax rate election cfd has provided additional tax relief to our residents with a 20% local optional homestead exemption since 1983 State a is based on the legislative State funding formula set in statute property values for the state funding is based on the controllers values which do not recognize the local optional homestead exemption it state aid is also influenced by enrollment average daily attendance special population such as special education bilingual career and Technology enrichment pennies as well as the property wealth of the school district the current state funding formula is not adjusted for the cost of living or inflation
194as you know inflation has been at its highest in decades districts receive $6,150 per average day regular average daily attendance which is also referred to as the basic allotment which has not increased since 2019 districts have multiple funding sources however most of the funding sources are restricted on how they can be spent the maintenance and operations tax generates local funds for the general operations of the district including salaries contracted services such as utilities General supplies such as instructional supplies and fuel for buses other operating such as property insurance and capital outlay the general fund has the least restrictions but even the general fund receives State funding for programs such as speal special education that can only be spent on the specific students it serves the interest in syncing tax rate generates funds required to service
195the district's debt that was approved by the voters in a bond referendum the funds can only be used for principal and interest on payments on the bonds and cannot be used for the general operations of the district or to offset the deficit this chart shows the increase in property values over the Last 5 Years values in the 2023 tax year actually increased 145 14.5% but reflect a lower uh increase due to the passage of s SP2 last summer which increase the state mandated homestead exemption from 40,000 to 100,000 so that lowered the property values in addition tax relief to those over 65 was first implemented in tax year 2023 based on legislation passed in the 87th legislative session because property values were frozen for those over 65 they were not benefiting from the property tax
196compression since 2019 the 2024 tax values are the harison Central Appraisal District's preliminary certified values received in April of $7 71.4 billion property values are estimated to increase about 2.44% the Slowdown is due to less home sales this last year as a result of rising borrowing rates the M Tax Rate is made up of two components the maximum compressed rate and enrichment pennies the maximum compressed rate is comprised or compressed or reduced to the lower of the state compressed rate or the local compressed rate tax compression occurs when property values increase by more than 2 and a half% from the previous year current year property values will affect tax compression typically values increase between receiving our preliminary values in April and final certified values in August if values increase more than 2 and a half%
197the maximum compressed rate will decrease slightly the district has accessed all five of its enrichment pennies that it can without a voter approval tax rate election to illustrate the impact of the state and local Homestead exemptions on taxpayers in the district a homeowner with a value of $350,000 with the state exemption has a reduction of 100,000 in taxable value or a decrease of $1,081 in property taxes for the local optional Homestead exempt a homeowner with a $350,000 home has a reduction of an additional $70,000 $70,000 in taxable value and a decrease of an additional 757 in property taxes and this is based on the 2023 tax rate in addition to the optional homestead exemption of 20% the district also offers a $15,000 exemption for taxpayers over 65 or disabled however offering the tax Rel to
198our residents results in a decrease of $81 million in total property tax revenue now I will review student enrollment which affects State funding based on average daily attendance this chart reflects the district's changes in enrollment over the past 5 years you can see the decline of enrollment in 2020 21 Although our enrollment has recovered our average daily attendance is down enrollment is expected to be at a approximately 118,551 for the 2024 25 school year Ada has increased slightly as of the end of the fifth six weeks but is still averaging 2% less than it was prior to the pandemic average daily attendance has gone from 95.4% to 93.4% over the 5 years our typical average daily attendance was 95.25% pre covid the 2% decrease in average daily attendance amounts to almost $15 million in state
199funding we always like to provide the board a comparison of cfd teacher salaries compared to our neighbors our neighboring districts CF isd's greatest competition is Katie kleene and Tomball although Katie's pay is slightly higher than the districts CF isd's pay is above Klein and Tomball so this reflects the zero salary the 5year 10 15 and 20 year salaries and you can see the district is competitive before I review the general fund budget I want to review what the Food Service fund and bond funds can be used for as the uses are restricted food the Food Service fund is subsidized with Federal reimbursements and funds can only be used towards the Child Nutrition program and not for the general operations of the district it is important to note that the district's Child Nutrition program makes a
200profit and does not require the use of the general fund the bond or capital projects fund is made up of proceeds from Bond Bond issues or Bond sales the proceeds must be spent on construction renovation or equipping of facilities including technology and buses once again bond funds cannot be used for the general operations of the district or to offset the deficit general fund expenditures are 85 to 90% payroll Across the Nation without employees we would not be able to provide the services we provide to our students and support our campuses as you can see payroll is 89.6% of the budget for 2023 24 raises have a significant impact on the budget a 1% raise for cfd cost $9 million as mentioned appro as mentioned approximately 90% of the budget is payroll General Administration only represents
2012% of the budget and includes positions such as accounting Human Resources purchasing the tax office legal services and the superintendent's office instructional leadership represents 1% of the budget and includes cost related to managing directing and supervising leading staff members who provide instruction or instructional related services such as instructional administrators and directors directors for special populations such as special education and career technology as well as professionals that support these these positions School leadership represents 5% of the budget and includes costs for managing a school campus such as principales associate principles registrars and Par professionals it is not easy when cfd has the fourth lowest uh administrative cost ratio in the state to not impact others rather than Administration the remaining 92% represents teachers teacher aids Librarians counselors psychologists diagnosticians nurses Fine Arts transportation and many more
202before looking at the budget reduction plan it is helpful to look at the number of Staff in each position teachers comprise 8,912 of the total employees instructural administrators uh or Administration has 95 9 955 employees which is different than what was on the previous slide different than inst structural leadership because it includes both School leadership as well as instructional leadership Business Administration has 225 employees and executive leadership 23 although very difficult because every POS it is very difficult because every position is important with the amount of budget reductions needed the budget reductions also impacted the campuses however every effort was taken to minimize the impact to the classroom the 20242 preliminary budget was built on the following assumptions the expiration of the Esser or the stimulus funding it expires in September of 2024 but we
203plan to use the remainder of the stimulus funding by June 30th uh we reduced expenditures by $58 million although there were positions that were reduced there were no actual payoffs payroll at payroll we budgeted at 98% fill rate you may recall in previous presentations that I shared with the board that our budget is prepared assuming we will fill 100% of those positions however this budget is based on a pay a pay a a fill rate of 98% which will be is about amounts to about $20 million also minimal uh enrollment growth of 28% and the budget also includes a a salary increase on greater of midp pointer base of 1% for all levels of administration and 2% for teachers par professionals and hourly as well as an increase in the starting teacher salary from $62,000
204to $63,000 for a total cost of $17 million the assumptions also include a reduction of the Char's funding of 10.3 million continued 2% Ada decrease which is about $15 million the operating costs for opening of bird Elementary School the campus was uh is was built with bond funds however the operating cost for principles nurses uh for assistant principles all of that is has to be covered out of the general fund and that's $2.4 million also an increase in property values of 2.44% the current uh budget does not include uh the recommend any Revenue recommendations of the budget reduction advisory committee at this time because until we have seen what kind of Revenue will be brought in we cannot add that to our budget for example we plan on uh do releasing an RFP for naming
205rights and until that comes in for naming rights of buildings then until that comes in then we will not be able to see the impact also it does not include clud at this point in time if we are fortunate enough to receive 50% recognition of the local optional homestead exemption which would yield about $31.5 million Dr Killian initially identified 68 million as the target budget reduction amount the cost savings recommendations from the budget uh recommendation uh recommendations advisory committee identified approximately 4 35.5 million in savings so District leadership worked to identify an add additional reductions on April 22nd Administration shared with the board the plan for reducing the budget by 68 million based on feedback provided by the board the budget reduction plan was reduced from 68 million to 58 million and fund balance will
206be utilized to offset the difference the district began the budget reduction process by looking at vacancies and seeing where uh it whether we had to maybe fill up if we could take some of the vacancies and spread the duties out to other positions also looking at uh vacancies that may come up is through attrition we relied on the input from the survey the recommendations of the Brack and most importantly the campus level we relied heavily on principal input Administration started at the top and cut 5.8 million in District level staff 2.1 million in maintenance and operations and over 7.5% from District budgets before considering any campus reductions the budget reduction plan includes 29.7 million in campus staff reductions and you can see the information here once again every effort was taken to minimize the impact
207to the classroom it is was important to plan to prioritize through natural attrition for the placement of staff that had their positions reduced HR and our amazing principles have worked hard hard to look at certifications and qualifications to try to place these individuals first the district is also proposing to modify the bus service provided Matt Morgan will go into more detail about this Transportation plan later in the presentation the preliminary budget with with 58 million in budget reductions a 1 to 2% raise for employees and a fill rate of 98% results in a deficit of approximately 7 $7.5 million which will directly impact fund balance in 2024 25 since Federal stimulus funds will be exhausted fund balance is the accumulation of operating surpluses and deficits the only way to replenish fund balance is to have
208an operating Surplus it is important to have an adequate fund balance which is at least four months for districts with a June 30-year end to manage cash flow low points and un anticipated revenue shortfalls and unanticipated expenditures for example property taxes are primarily collected in December and January but the district still needs to have the fund balanced to make payroll in July through November cfd has been preparing for the budget deficit with conservative spending and by utilizing the federal stimulus funds to offset the deficit as a result the district has been able to maintain a little less than six months of expenditures in fund balance a healthy fund balance allows the district to address the budget deficit over several years based on using approximately 15.1 million of fund balance in 2324 at least that's our
209estimate at this point in time and 7 77.5 million of fund balance in 2425 it is estimated the district will have 4.68 months in fund balance at June 20125 now I'll turn it over to Matt Morgan to discuss the transportation reductions president Henry Dr kilan members of the board I'd like to talk a little bit about the student transportation allotment and this is how the state helps fund transportation and the services in the district for regular rout regular route Services regular ed services we receive $1 per mile for two or more miles of outside the service so if you live two or more miles outside of away from a school we receive a dollar for every mile we drive for Approved hazardous traffic we re receive 10% of the two or more miles service so
210if you live within two miles of the dist of the school we would receive 10% of the total regular route service for example on average we travel about 4 million miles a year in regular red regular red routes we travel about 1 million miles per year in hazardous but but we only receive the dollar per mile for 400,000 of those miles for hazardous traffic for special education routes we receive a dollar eight per mile for CTE that's the only program that's fully funded we received the regular route services for the preceding year allotment which is about $686 for all CTE transportation that c taking our students from a high school that doesn't offer a CTE course to a high school that does offer a CTE course for private route Services we receive 25 cents per
211mile these are our mcken vento students and we travel about 42,000 mies tra with for bikini vento students as you can see in 2022 23 the state funding was 8.1 million our total expenditures for transportation were about 43.3 so the state funded about 19% of our transportation expenses we took several recommendations to the budget advisory committee and the one that was recommended was the hybrid with hazardous route plans and hybrid with hazardous route plans is traveling or transporting students elementary students that live one mile or more from their eligible school or from their homeschool they would be eligible for transportation services if hazardous traffic conditions have been identified within one mile students affected would be eligible for transportation services for secondary campuses it would be 2 miles so for for middle and high school if
212you live two or more miles away from your home school you would be eligible for transportation services if hazardous conditions or traffic conditions have been identified within two miles of the school students affected would be eligible for transportation services we also the budget advisory committee recommended eliminating rate late runs we don't receive any funding from the state for late runs and also eliminating service for Alternative Learning Centers and the total savings are budget reduction would be about $4.7 million we listen to community concerns we listen to the board's concern and we developed a hazardous route plan I'd like to go over that with you tonight if approved by the board this would be our hazardous route plan for 20242 Transportation will be provided for elementary students within one mile if Crossing its hallway crossing a
213state highway crossing a Farm to Market road crossing a moderately to heavly traveled thoroughfare without a protected crossing a protected Crossing being identified or defined as a Crossing with a traffic light or a stop sign walking along a moderately to heavily traveled thoroughfare without a safe walk path or crossing a railroad track for middle school students Transportation will be provided within two miles if crossing a Tollway crossing a state highway crossing a Farm to Market road crossing a four or more Lan heavily trafficked thoroughfare without a protected Crossing again a traffic light or stop sign or crossing a railroad track Transportation will be provided for high school students within two miles if crossing a six lane roadway with a speed limit over 45 miles per hour crossing a Tollway crossing a state highway or crossing
214a Farm to Market Road and I'll turn it over to Dr Killian you want to go ahead and give me the next slide okay so first I wanted to um say thank you for all the public comment and um um thank you for all of your passion about our school Finance system and what we're facing in terms of a school district um all of our positions all of our staff members are very important to us and all the positions serve a very important and crucial need in our school district but with that we still have to make cuts um because we're $138 million shy of a balanced budget and we don't have enough fund balance to be able to U make it through next year by just simply not doing anything so um there was
215some talk about tonight about transparency so let me be really transparent in what I've been since uh what I've done since I've got here back on January 2nd when I first got here um I immediately started trying to work on what I saw was an impeding um or impending issue that's coming towards our district which was a financial issue this is not a surprise anybody that's gone back and watched um old board meetings can see that Karen and her staff have presented this issue for a number of years and um we've shared that with a number of folks in our district over the last couple years this should not be a surprise to our Community either because we've also had surrounding districts that been dealing with this I wasn't even in the Houston area and
216I knew that Fort Ben was in Dire Straits last year and had to do a number of things to try to shore up their budget we've seen Spring Branch we've seen Houston and we've seen a number of other districts that are having to Make Some Cuts in our area as a state we've also seen a number of other districts and some other metropolitan areas folks I've been in the business of um Public Finance for over 20 years now um this has been an ongoing issue in terms of funding schools um there are a number of factors in our school Finance system that have contributed to some of these things um and I've been on the Forefront of asking for money in the past um for a number of years so I was looking for something
217that we could do to um potentially mitigate some of the cuts that were coming um having seen a number of special session sessions and a regular session that didn't result in more funding that basically two houses could not agree on what they could do in terms of funding I was looking for other opportunities and from the get-go um I remembered the Obscure law about the local optional homestead exemption where we could get half funding so that year or that month January I had a meeting with the the um commissioner actually he was coming to see me um at the beginning of the the month of January um as he was uh supposed to be heading to Houston and would stop by and I was going to bring up the local optional homestead exemption and that
218he had the opportunity to fund 50% um he was he had to reschedule at the beginning of the month because he was called for some something else that he had to do um in Austin so I asked him for a personal appointment along with his um um Chief of Staff Hunter um when I went down there for a mid-winter conference um at the end of January it was at that point that um we had collected all the information and um Karen and her staff put together what the local optional homestead exemption would actually do for us in addition to that um I sent a letter out that with the help of Karen um that kind of detailed what the local optional homestead exemption issue was and um asking for their support in the meantime several
219of our board members arranged for me to meet with several of our um delegations and share this information so over the rest of the month of January and into February I met with each one of our delegation or had um an email with them and communicated with them um really quickly they understood what the situation was and what we were asking for that 50% funding that was available that was already in statute that there was a few things that we just had to get over um including special ed camera allotment and a few other things um I had that meeting in in uh January with the commissioner he understood his uh Chief of Staff even knew the Education Code that I was referring to and some of the issues that they'd have to investigate he
220told me at the time that he would look into it and get back with me about what he could what we could do um being um professional and allowing him to work on the situation um I reached out and shared this information to all of our legislators they got talking points also um a letter um that they could do and we um asked them to uh do a joint letter which um we kept getting um responses from our delegation that they were very interested in doing that letter um didn't stop there um we had several other folks from both um the Senate and the house that were contacted I know that several of the board members reached out to um their contacts around the state to ask for that funding too the reason why I
221was going for that funding was we already knew that the legislature had met in multiple um sessions and could not come up with a funding model there was a talk that there should be um a special session in January or February but when that didn't transpire um we knew that there wasn't going to be a special session going forward because a number of the representatives were lame Ducks after that so it didn't matter um whether or not we called the special or called for a special session that's a political trick um just to go up here and say hey call for a special session that's not really going to get you the additional funding so we were looking for working with our legislators and trying to use um our influence to try to get additional
222money flowing to us plus I knew we were up against a very tight deadline of July 1 to get our budget in so that meant that we had to make some kind of decision going forward at that point um I asked the board to um do recommendations for uh budget reduction um advisory committee and we had a number of folks both staff members in the district from across section of our campuses and then a number of appointees as well we also asked for the survey that's when I sent the letter out in February to ask for folks to fill out some ideas there wasn't really a lot of people that sent ideas in 1,200 sounds like a lot but we have 118,000 students that means there's 118,000 adults out out there that have kids in
223our district that potentially could have sent something at least so we had a 1,200 and after we summarized them they kind of went into a number of a few categories we presented those things to the brat committee um for consideration and they studied it over three meetings to try to come up with one Revenue ideas two um expenditure cut ideas and then um just in general Staffing ideas which is very difficult to get your head around the way School District staff uh schools um so they had to have a really quick tutorial and how we do that um we had a number of um ideas that came out of the committee and um you saw it in the last board meeting or the board meeting before that um we had about $45 Million worth of
224um cuts that were moved forward the brat committee did amazing work um with the amount of information they had in a short period of time to come up with that 42 million well short of where we needed to be in terms of about a third of the cuts so um the other thing is we didn't want to do cuts without hearing from our principles who are on the ground who have to deal with all these situations what they thought of the recommendations from the brat committee that was returned by our cabinet staff members to the brat committee or to the principles to go over those in addition to that we needed more items to be on that agenda so we actually asked principles and directors to come up with more items um and we wanted
225them to come up with them because they're the people that know what impact their campus the most and what they might be able to live with in terms of cuts we also wanted them to weigh in on the suggestions from the brat committee to see if they were actually doable um going forward um there was a laundry list of cuts that you also saw that um came out of that so I just want to make this statement at no time did any of the board members tell me that we needed to cut Librarians that's not true so nobody made those suggestions that actually came from I'm sorry to say principles they did not want to make that suggestion because there are so many staff members that are essential in our school district but it was
226one of the suggestions they met um made because we're in a difficult time and have to make hard decisions they are definitely Sophie's Choice kind of decisions they're not great decisions they're good they're not good decisions at all they're bad or Worse decisions and so that's what we were stuck with and so that's what we brought forward with those decisions to get us up to somewhere around 68 million what you see now is about 58 million and going a little bit deeper into our fund balance and getting a lot closer in our um budget to not having more than four months worth of operating and the reason why that's so important is we have to to make payroll we do not get property tax receipts until later on in the school year so we will
227have to make um payroll for several months before we start seeing Revenue come in and that's where our fund balance comes in I'm sorry folks we've been doing this for a long time in uh the school business and we know what it takes to get through a school year um sadly I went through the 10-11 cuts and I also went through the 2008 cuts and I've gone through a number of cuts since then and they've always been the same cash flow is an issue with us if we did not have the fund balance of four months to make that cash flow then we would have to borrow from our um Banks and be be charged interest to make payroll which is an additional charge that we have to make a cut for so it is
228um really good cost effective budgeting to make sure that we have four months worth of operating in our budget so we don't have to do that and that would hurt more people on our district and more programs in our district I wanted to share some other things that are out there they're just simply not true and it's really sad when you see the media report on something and don't bother to do any kind of Investigations we don't have any layoffs we have not told anybody that they don't have a job next year what we've told them is the position they're currently in is being um absorbed and we have other positions that we're going to pick them up in here's the other thing that you don't know that's behind the scenes that you probably haven't
229been told is we intend to provide the same money that staff are getting right now in those new positions we will provide them with opportunities to substitute or do some other thing in our district to make up for that so for instance we have some curriculum um coaches in our district that have plus 10 days is that right 10 extra days so if they go back to a classroom teacher job from um a curriculum coach they will lose 10 days worth of pay we will have them working on curriculum and a number of other things in their off time um in the summer just like they do extended where if they want to they can come back and do that same with Librarians same with all of our other staff members that are being impacted
230we don't want this to hurt anyone's bottom line because we know that um people live from paycheck to paycheck I've heard a lot about people saying that they don't want the one or 2% pay increase well I'm sorry but I also speak for those people that are living paycheck to paycheck our custodians I also speak for those folks that are bus drivers and those who are just barely making it we already know that there will be an increase in our health care um cost we know that that's outside of our control that is something that's coming to us this year and so if we do no pay increase at all it will actually be a decrease for those staff members and a hardship so that's why that's out there and from what I've heard from
231other superintendent and other districts in the area is they're all doing pay increases you saw the chart that um Karen shared um about our pay compared to others it doesn't take long to fall behind it takes a long time to get back caught up again and that's why we need to do some type of pay increase to keep up with what's going on in other districts once you start freezing salaries really quickly you can't catch up because is you need so much more money to get back to where you were and I've seen that happen in many districts um who don't make the cuts in order to um get their budget in order and go forward um I'd like to have that chart back up for just a second if I could yeah I'm really
232useless and using the clicker though um so the reason why I've shared all these factors is because these are legitimate factors that have caused this yes the legislature did not do any kind of funding increase but let me tell you something I was on the finance Commission in 2018 I spent a year learning all about this school budget business and and also listening to testimony for over a year um up in the State Board offices at tea and I served with a number of legislators both Democrats and Republicans a teacher um CFO um and a number of other folks that were placed on that committee there was a number of appointees and um in two in 2018 after we delivered our results we ended up getting a bill that caused the 2019 increases that you
233saw around the state I've been in this business for a long time I started off um before I got into Administration in the central office by teaching superintendent and school districts Finance there are not a lot of um superintendant in the business that know how the system actually works I actually had a boss in Region 20 who told me that I had to learn the finance system paper and pencil and it's on an Excel spreadsheet and so I hand calculated districts and how the system actually works and there are not a lot of people that actually understand how the system works there are a few superintendents in small districts that do not have CFOs that have to learn it themselves but most of them rely on their CFOs to understand this I understand it I
234look for ways to manipulate the system and get the extra funding that's what the local optional Homestead is it's an obscure law where we can get temporary funding and we've reached out to try to do that the next time we will really have a funding opportunity is going to be in the next legislative session after elections we can call for um a special session that's not going to happen um there's no way that you'd bring back lame duck members in order to do basically what they did the last three special sessions and a regular session and not come to consensus between the house and the Senate um I was a government teacher for years I'm a political science and history major I know how the state government works it's the house and the Senate that
235actually pass um laws and then the governor just signs it yes he can call people into special session but if they can't agree you're not going to get anything so that's why I've been advocating for finding another um solution to this and working um behind the scenes to try to get this going I've railed Against the Machine before I've stood up holding a hippo flag and telling um a commissioner two Commissioners ago please fund public schools and it got us absolutely nowhere I've been a party to two State um um lawsuits suing the school state of Texas the commissioner to try to get more funding um the first time it worked in West Orange Cove as an intervenor we got a little bit more funding the second time it did not work we had the
236Supreme Court recognized that a lot of our issues were true but they left it to the legislature um to come back and try to fix the issue and that's what happened with the tax student fairness and well was a taxpayer trying to remember the group that we incorporated to sue the state I was in the original if you want to look it up I was in the original group that incorporated the student taxpayer and uh student fairness Coalition I'm trying to remember the exact deal there were three of us who did that and we filed that lawsuit and went all the way to the Supreme Court and did not get a a decision calling it unconstitutional but directing the the um state to go back that's how we got the 2018 School fin commission and
237that's how we got the 2019 funding system but it was working together with legislators so we can rail Against the Machine but I noticed that not everybody stayed so and this is what happens um with a situation like this I've seen it over and over again people will come and talk and fiery about an issue that um touches their hearts and brings them here but longterm they don't keep that momentum up in the last session um I wrote Every legislator in this state three times and all his CH all the Chiefs of Staff and their pu public education adviser um I worked with my CFO in fluger and we came up with the chart that actually came up with a reason why we needed a $1,000 increase in the basic allotment it was me that
238did that I will admit to that and it did not work um we had um the chart from 2009 all the way to current and what it did was it it charted the basic allotment and what those increases were every year and it tied it back to the CPI the Consumer Price Index we even did it by month in order to show what the actual inflationary increase has been and we sent those charts to every single one of the legislators to show them exactly what would take um with inflation to get to that new number um I know through my experience that working with legislators and not just railing Against the Machine is the best way to move the ball forward I've heard um a lot that we should go out there and um be
239critical of what's going on that's fine during election season and all that good stuff but quite frankly we need to come together as a country and as a state to fund public schools and the only way we're going to do that is by not yelling back and forth at each other no one's going to listen it's just like um um someone I was talking to today talked about um having a child come in and um yell at them about something they didn't like in in in terms of um what they were doing as a parent and then um a few minutes later asking for them to go uh pay for them to go to the mall with their friends and hand them some money to go do that it's kind of hard to on one
240hand ask for money and on the other hand be slapping them in the face and saying hey let's work together um that's I know that's really Vogue in our society right now but that's just not the way it really works s these items right here are truly things that have impact our school district the number one thing that parents can do in this District right now to help our school Finance system in our in our district is get your kids to school 2% cost us $15 million $15 million over the last three years or more is what we've lost that's $50 million roughly that we've lost over the last three years because kids are not coming to school like they did pre pandemic so a normal um District that is having solid attendance makes 95%
241or higher and we're sitting around 94 93% so and that's killing us and so if you want to really help us mitigate Cuts get your SK kids to school the other thing is this local optional homestead exemption um is not a penalty in state aid we have elected as a school District to reduce our local collections by $63 million and that's coming to roost and that is really a local issue not every District in the state actually F funds a local optional homestead exemption and that comes right off the top of our local taxes so when you go to the commissioner and say fund local optional homestead exemption you're asking them to give us more money than what they give other people so I'm doing that politely because we don't give that money to everybody
242else because no one else does that so there are a few districts that do it and um people were asking if I called other superintendents together yes we actually um have contacted someone that we're working with that have unified all the districts that are on the list that that provide a local optional homestead exemption and don't get extra funding um I think near us Clear Creek is probably the best example of that that's losing money but we're by far the one that's losing the most money um it would cost about $150 million for um the commissioner to fund that and he does have that money and that's why I'm using um political folks people that are in legislative positions to help reach out to him and express our case because those folks ultimately will be
243the people that I ask in January to actually pass a bill that will fully fund us for that local optional homestead exemption which will mean about $300 million cost to the state and will provide us with $63 million I think in total so that's a significant cut and or um progress into our um our deficit so half is what that would do and it's real money and it's stuff that um we can get behind um and we can get our legislators behind and they've been supportive of that um the expiration of federal stimulus money is a really big funding cliff yes we could have started doing Cuts before but we were also trying to mitigate um some of the learning loss we were also trying to do exactly what the state government does when they
244get Federal money we use that money to smooth over our budget and save some of our own money for a rainy day that's exactly what we were doing and what most districts were doing in this state um we actually spent more than the minimum 20% on um um learning loss um in our district and we had to hire staff members it was very difficult to find staff members because they're simply not out there so um also we've been growing um quite a few kids over the last basically it doesn't sound like a lot but 400 something kids that's half of a school an elementary school in this District so um when you find when you do that over the last couple years you need another facility to take care of that so we are looking
245at some other um um innovative ways to raise money in our district but it would be irresponsible of us uh to say yeah we can count on that money and then turn around and spend the rest of our fund balance to um equalize our money next year so um the other thing is there has been an increase in special education bilingual Safety and Security so since um Santa Fe and U valdi we have all tried to step out there and fund school safety and it's cost us quite a bit of money we were one of the first districts um to have a police department around the state that was not normal and that wasn't a funding source back when I was in school in 1983 when we passed our local optional homestead exemption um I
246was still a junior going into my senior year in high school and there was no such thing as police uh officers in school we didn't do that at that time so that's just been one of those cuts that's ballooned over the time that we need funded and that's why we asked for a $100 increase in the safety allotment we didn't get quite that much and we're going to be back at them this next time because that's something I think everybody can get behind there was an actual interim study in the legislature about how important School Finance was and how important uh school safety was and that's something we can all get behind the other thing is bilingual and uh special education um costs have been ballooning we have a number of kids that are qualifying
247for special education now and that's not really a state issue that's a federal issue the federal government does uh require special education and to serve specialed kids and they write the rules for all that but they don't give us enough money to pay for it the state gives us some money to pay for it but not all the money and the rest has to come from local so and it cost quite a bit more to include diagnosticians LSPs all those kinds of folks that um we need to serve along with speech therapists and a number of other dyslexia and all those things so we the state has recognized that um in one of their interim studies that special education needs to be fully funded um that they could probably that's an area where they could
248reach out and help us and that would um help us a lot you see that $71 million probably at least 40 million of that is probably special education that if we get that funding um that would make up a big difference so just in those two things the local optional and the special ed funding that's almost that's over 100 million right there so we're getting close at that point um you get a little bit of money for Safety and Security and we could get balanced out of this next legislative session so but in the meantime we have to pass a budget by July one and we simply don't know whether or not we're going to get a local optional hom set exemption and this has been coming up at us for a while um we've
249also increased salaries and um the retention stens yeah we did that um everybody was doing that because we couldn't find staff members um it's hard to employ plumbers it's hard to employ anybody in our school district now because they have so many options outside of public schools and yeah I believe that teachers need to be paid more that's why we also went for um the teacher incentive allotment so they have access to a pot of money that is over and above what we would get locally and we're in the final stages of getting all that approved so and I will say that yeah inflation um I don't think when we passed or when we came out of the um School Finance Commission in 2018 and made our recommendations to the legislature that we could have
250predicted that inflation would go up over 19% over the course of the next several years because we were all celebrating getting all that additional Revenue in 19 and then by the end of that school year it was started to get eaten Away by inflation so and all the other things that went along with our pandemic and um all the other things with the supply chain and all the costs and you saw of our board members talk about some of the things in terms of the increases um and then of course just operating new facilities cost money so I just wanted to share all that because to put it all into perspective so and kind of give you an idea of what we're doing and what we have been doing um we're getting traction um you
251several of you um that were speakers talked about how you saw um representative Olen posted the letter The Joint letter that's saying a lot about what's going on I keep hearing from folks in Austin about um we're making Headway um and we're making an impact on this local optional we need to have it decided before August though because after August the state goes into a new uh fiscal year um and all that money rolls forward and they can't use that money um to uh as a surplus to make up for our current budget year and we need that money to mitigate any cuts coming in the next school year um a little bit more um I'll just I just just would uh caution you about just playing the blame game on one person or a
252group of people there's enough blame to go around um we don't um our kids aren't attending like they used to and that's costing us money we made the option to do a local optional homestead exemption that's something that we did locally and that cost us local Revenue not state revenue the state doesn't make up for that um it assumes that you're collecting your local Revenue just as it does in all other school districts around the state so while it's it's invogue to blame other people we're also partially responsible for the situation we're in too and that goes for all the school districts in the state last year we had um some options um for some funding a number of different mechanisms and um we kept saying um $11,000 um or $1,100 or nothing else we
253wouldn't accept anything else and so there there was a lot of folks that were supporting that kind of mentality and um what we got out of that was nothing so um a little bit of a yield that was automatically already in the formulas for the Bas uh for the golden pennies we have our own options too a number of districts around the state have gone after additional pennies on a vat it's not something that people want to do um it's not something that's attractive to a school board to go out there and call for an election and ask for the local taxpayers to take on more burden um and so we're we are tightening our belt and it's not something we want to do but it's something that we believe is responsible and something that
254we have to do first to show um our public um that we're doing something to uh address some of the needs again no layoffs we're not closing schools I've had numerous or no not closing libraries they will still be open um we're still requiring them to be open we will still have Librarians um there was actually a recommendation to eliminate all Librarians at one level we didn't go there we modified that um and we changed that recommendation don't blame our principles though they're in a hard situation they had to come up with um limited amounts of um cuts that would um be the least impactful um we we lost um High School allotment teachers we lost um extra teachers that we fund to um make sure that um that we have lower class sizes um
255but we're all doing also doing some things that will'll try to mitigate some of these Cuts as well um we qualified a number of our high schools for Title One funding um that we haven't done in the past we went deeper with providing that money um to our um high schools so there'd be options we also provided options to the principles about what they cut um we made sure that um they could make a choice um on a number of positions they could give up one position and keep another position that met their local need trying to do what um we're hoping that the state or the federal government does for us is give us some local control over how we address our issues um and then finally I just would like to say that
256um thank you for everybody that hung around if you look around there's not many of you it's because we come and we say our peace and then we leave um and we expect somebody else to solve those problems those problems will not be solved um just by a few people it's going to take a number of people working together to find Solutions uh going forward and um I'll reiterate we were committed at the district level to taking hard Cuts with the fourth lowest administrative cost ratio in the state of Texas um for a school district that's saying something about how how efficient we are and how many multiple jobs um some of our administrators do this building is taking tremendous amount of cuts um there are a lot of people being returned to classroom or
257um support jobs on the campus level and we feel for them as well and it's been very difficult to make those decisions and move forward with it but we have to have a budget approved by July 1 to move forward and we have to be as close to balance as we could because we don't have a lot of fund balance to make up the difference now I'm very hopeful that the revenue um ideas that we have will generate a number of um dollars and hopefully we'll be able to add um Staffing positions back as we move forward with additional Revenue like a local optional homestead exemption or some of these other Revenue pieces but I have to be responsible as an administrator and offer as close to a balanced budget as I can to the
258school board um and then I have to continue to work on um other things that we can find for efficiencies in the in the coming month you're probably going to see us come back to our school board and ask for an efficiency audit to be uh done so we can find more things that we can do things like um that will take longer for us to implement that I had hoped we had more Runway to take care of um in the four months that I was here we simply can't find all the areas where um we can make some efficiency changes and it takes a lot longer to um go electronic on some things um doing our timekeeping and things like that are going to make it a little bit easier and we'll need less
259staff members to support those roles so that we can we can do those efficiencies and then um we uh over the course of the year we're going to make more um tightening cuts to try to get out of this next budget year with with more fund balance and more flexibility so we don't have to make as many Cuts next year we're really trying to be mindful that that um what we do impacts students but also it impacts our staff and while I appreciate the fact that a lot of people came up here to talk about Librarians I didn't hear hardly enough for the College and Career Specialists that do awesome work I didn't hear a lot about the curriculum coaches that do a ton of work um for our staff and help support our teachers
260the behavior interventionists both at the district level and at the campus level or the testing coordinators that ease the burden of some of our counselors so um and you saw us um employ one assistant soup we have two openings we only have four so we cut 25% of the folks that you will rely on when you have an issue with a campus principal or what a campus is doing the next person you're going to see is the assistant suit for leadership of that team and instead of being divided all the campuses the hundred something campuses that we have will not be divided by four it will be divided by three and you can think of think of the span of control and supervision that three people have to meet the needs of over a hundred
261um schools and a number of special programs that's going to be a daunting task for those folks to supervise and a number of people in our central office will be gone um that will were relied on to um make phone calls um to from the campuses to get that support they're simply not going to be here um because that that's what we're doing we're also going to be looking at all the facilities we have in the district what can we close down what can we sell so I know there's been some criticism of a number of District facilities but our our um this building is not money that we can use to pay salaries that's that's a um a budget item that's separate um it's taxes that cannot be spent on salary but what we
262can do is we can um consolidate as many staff as we can over here and close down older facilities that are more expensive to run than this more efficient facility and um when you go through our building here we're primarily in cubicles most of our staff members here that are in this building are in little Cubbies and there might be a joint meeting room that we have where you can have a team meeting but most of our people are out and about on campuses as much as possible to help support them so there there is a lot of things that I've seen in this District that um that are a blessing for our community and the work that our staff members are doing and they do a lot with um a little and um we're
263asking them to do a lot more with a lot little a lot less so I understand what that means um as both a first grade teacher and a high school teacher and I understand that that may need mean that um we need to pitch in more at the central office and we will do that um going forward so with that um I the budget that we presented to you is what we're going to move forward and we stand ready to um take uh board member questions about the transportation plan or anything else that's out there Doug I just want to apologize on behalf of what I'm of the community and what you've had to endure perception is not reality sometimes and have we not learned anything from the news cycle to to want just wait
264and and the truth will eventually come out I I I I want I want to make sure I want to make sure apolog I want to make sure that I understand you're very humble but we have to study history otherwise history repeats itself are you saying that we could have possibly recovered another $60 million over the last two years from the local uh local optional homestead exemption yeah if we had uh eliminated it a couple years ago we would we would be bringing in more revenue and what is what is the the the budget that we're cutting right as of right now 138 is what we're looking for and it's roughly 60 one thing that you do you will have as my commitment is that we will do our best if there's money to money
265to be had we will do everything possible to try to try to get that money for the school district um thank you very much for that I also um failed to uh um thank um Linda msas so there was a comment about the way in which um um staff members were told we asked that um the folks closest to the um the cuts would um inform folks so um she did that with her curric um coaches um and since the uh Librarians crossed all of the campuses we didn't leave that to um principles to do Dr MCAS had a meeting U the week before and explained what was coming um and that we would go through a process um to um identify um the staff members that would be impacted and we would do it
266rapidly so that they would know and then we could be um plug them into other positions in the district the reason why that took so long was because we made calls to each one after we did the calculations number one we followed our district policy as to how we do um identify staff members that are on those lists um number one you look at performance we looked at the we had to go through every single Librarians performance in the entire District that's what you do when you do a reduction in force that's the procedure we used uh for identifying folks when we found out that there was really not that significant of a difference we had to move to the next level which was tenure now granted what what day did you meet with them
267to let them know on Zoom that this was coming and met with all of them at the same time so they all heard it at the same time a week ago a week ago this past Friday so it was a Friday right so this this is what happened um after that so then we identified um everyone's tenure and that meant that the HR department had to help us and go through everybody's file when they started in the district and identify everybody and then what we had to do was go down the list from the most experienced in sfair to the least experienced in sfair one at a time and say hey you've been identified as one of the staff members that we are U maintaining in the position do you want that or not um
268I think you alluded to the fact uh Todd that um we had retirements so obviously those came off and then people that were leaving came off and then vacancies came off but we went one at a time that's why it took so long over the next uh two days Monday to finish up all that and then Tuesday to start notifying everybody because we had to contact each and every individual member and say hey you've been identified are you accepting the position if they did not accept that position then we went to the next person on the list so that's why it took so long to get through the list because we made sure that we made contact with each and every one of them till we had every single one of the slots filled once
269we had that we knew how many people to contact and that's why they were sent a letter and told that we had other positions and that they needed to contact their principal and that um that's what the principal was principles were doing thankfully on every single one of their campuses to find positions that we could either keep them on their campus or other positions in our excess list where we could find them and our HR department has made a commitment to try to find every single one of these affected staff members a position by May the 10th that's a really quick turnaround for the number of people that are involved in this but we're committed to our staff members not only to maintain their finances because we know that they have um they have bills
270they have kids in college they have all sorts of things that they need to take care of we're trying to do the right thing make sure they have a job going forward and that they don't see a loss next year um and then we'll just have to see what happens with um revenue for the year after that so I just wanted to share that that's why it took so long to get where we were on Tuesday but we had committed to notifying Everybody by Tuesday so they would be in position to be able to grab those positions that we've been holding on to there was a comment about why do we have a job Fair because we still need Staffing positions we will not find enough special education teachers that is in uh shortage there
271are math and science teachers that we will need um but we also said that we were going to fill these positions first because we value our staff members in the district and we're committed to them so I just wanted to explain that because there's been a lot of information out there about how this happened but that's why we were doing what we were doing to try to to get to staff members as fast as possible so we could take care of them any other questions I don't really have a question but I hope that the comments made tonight by our superintendent are taken to Heart by the community and that we listen to it there's a lot of vital that's been going around on social media yep most of it unfounded and I hold the
272community you guys hold us responsible as well you should we are the elected officials but the community members that are out there posting online and spreading information that's not true it's not helpful this is a publicly recorded meeting where we're telling the truth about what has happened and what is happening our goal is to make sure that our kids win and that's what we're striving for so regardless of whatever we're called doesn't matter we're here for our kids we're here for our communities we're here for our teachers it's teacher appreciation week we appreciate our teachers we appreciate those that are in our schools so I hope that as we go into our June budget meetings and we're having discussions and voting on this final budget that the community understands how we got here and that
273the community also understands how we can move forward um separately speaking on the change subjects just a little bit I want to bring up one point regarding our budget so the community it really resonates and it may seem like a little bit of minutia it's not in the past I I've been this will I'm coming up on my third budget meeting we have never said that we would plan for a budget that was not 100% allocated we have always planned for all our staffing positions to be filled and this is the first time that we're actually going to plan for 98% of our positions to be filled that's the long running average is usually there's a 2% shortage but it is a very big Delta from how we go about doing this it's a big
274Delta from our preceding meeting where we walked into that meeting and said we will plan for 100% funded allocation so now through necessity and to preserve positions we're changing how we do that so I want the community to understand that this is a significant move for us and that uh we're doing it with great care no further comments any other comments or questions I just have a comment it's a very difficult position that the district is in and that everybody that works for cyfair we our hearts go out to you we really do feel bad about the situation that we're in and it's not in any one person's control we are asking that the community the families continue to help your kids to show up we're asking you to give back where you can we
275need a lot of Parental support in our schools to make the district go and you're very valuable and we appreciate it we know that there are parents I've been a single parent had work three jobs at one time before it's a challenge to try to help in the schools where you can but we need to come together and solve this problem together to put one group against another because we don't see things the same way is doing nothing but hurting sciare we really need to come together so we may not agree on everything but let's what we do agree on is we don't want to we don't want to eliminate librarian positions but the fact is as the numbers are we have $138 million shortfall we have got to be accountable to that and so
276we need our families to to come in and support where they can we're asking businesses in the community we're ask asking our faith Partners to come in and help in our schools we're going to have a shortage and we need help in our schools so I implore all of you to seek your hearts and to try to help make a difference make a positive change instead of accusing people and calling names and belittling them let's work together let's try to make this happen everybody on this dis they have deeply felt what is going on and we're not taking this casually I had a lot of sleepless nights praying a lot and trying to figure out how we're going to help and make a difference so we we implore our community to come together and help
277solve these problems and when we've had a history of some of these new Revenue generating ideas hopefully we'll be looking at another situation next year also with the um increase in the in the state after they meet in January um we're going to try to work together but we ask that everybody would stop attacking each other and let's try to work together for the greater good in this District because we all love cciir and we want to see it do well and we need it to do well thank you very well said with no other comments we'll move on to our consent agenda items portion of the agenda 6A uh the board will consider approving minutes of April 4th 2024 regular board meeting 6B the board will consider approving budget amendments for the period of
278January 1st 2024 through 20 through March 31st 2024 6C was moved to non-consent 6D the board consider proving to list Advanced courses for exemption 2025 20 uh 24 2005 and then 6E the board consider approving granting uh easement to the Harris County Municipal District number 165 located along West Road and West grien Boulevard in Grand Parkway and authorize the superintendent or has a des need to negotiate final terms and execute all related documents then 6f the board consider improving construction Pro um proposals and contracts paid from bond funds to recommend a contractor has authorized the superintendent Desi to execute all necessary documents related to such items 6 F1 2023 ELD and Falcon Transportation Renovations 6 F2 2023 wind form Annex Caron Cent renovations if any board member wish to remove one or more of these
279items for further discussion please do so this time hearing none I'll now entertain a motion to approve the consensus items as recommended or amended so moved do I have a second a second all those in favor please seeing by raising your right hand vote is 70 we'll now proceed to the non-consent agenda items 7A the Border consider approving on first reading additions revisions to District policies 7 A1 DEC non-local compensation benefits leaves and absences Revis 7 A2 dfbb term contracts non-renewal 7 A3 Eed local instructional agreement students um schedules then 7 A4 EAB basic instructional program required instruction Elementary Revis at this time I'll take a motion no it's for the whole 7A y it's in there if you want look at it no he's on 7B 7 a Mr President I move the board
280approve on first reading additions revisions or deletions to District district policies DEC local compensation and benefits leaves and absences revise dfbb local term contracts non-renew non-renewal revise Eed local instructional Arrangements student schedules revise efb local instructional resources Library materials revive uh ehab local basic instructional program required um required instruction Elementary revised may have a second a second are there any questions this time seeing no questions so we'll take a vote all those in favor please sign by raising your right hand 70 7B the board consider approving the district's instructural materials recommendations for the 2024 2025 school year may I have a motion um I move uh that we consider this I would i' like to have some discussion and propose um um an amendment we'll have to get a motion to approved first before we
281can have discussion so I move that we correct Mar if you would like to have some discussion um I think Dr blaston game is saying she wanted to um amend like some of the materials for consideration I don't think she was saying because you're saying you have to have a motion before you can amend it I think she's saying she wants to make a motion that amends um approval of some of the items okay so go ahead and make your motion to amend those things and just discuss uh tell us what your amendment is please I think it's in front of us if you don't want to read it is that correct my Amendment right correct yes um uh for item 7B I move that the board approve the posted instructional materials in 7B for
282the 20 2425 school year with the following revisions there are 25 books total and we thank the committee that worked on it but these are uh six we'd like to see a little bit of except them but with these revisions biology um by savat Learning Company um we would like to approve I'd like to propose we approve it with thir investigations 13 and 16 omitted the tees taught in that to be Rewritten by our local school um Team um in environmental science by engaged learning um approved with chapters five and seven omitted for Earth systems by engaged learning um approved with chapters 26 and 21 omitted in uh principles of Education and Training by goodart Wilcox company approved with chapters 7 12 15 and 18 omitted and uh for uh health science theory clinicals bu
283engaged learning um approved with chapters 8 and 10 omitted may I get a second second are there any questions this time yes um I am not clear on why one board member chose to override the recommendations of our highly trained Educators who selected these materials for next school year that have been approved by the State Board of Education um I do not support this amendment I I we should go back to the original motion which is to accept the instructional materials as approved by the Educators who reviewed the materials who are experts in these fields of biology environmental science Earth Systems principles of education training and health science theory Al Linda do we have to adopt material from the State Board of Ed recommendations or can we just write our own not approve these and
284write our own curriculum we do not have to adopt the materials from the State Board of Education um we do have to if we write on curriculum or anything else that we use we do have to um uh share with this with uh with tea that all of the texts have been covered and that's an option that we have through the other item that's on this agenda that would be the instructional materials approval process correct that we move to 7B last week that is correct so I'm not asking for us to employ that I'm asking us for it to accept the books with uh a slight revisions that would be um uh so that would be the uh that would mean that the Educators here would have a textbook rather than have not have a
285textbook that's approved um so can you talk talk to me a little bit about that process of what we how we do that in curriculum have we done that before we we write um curriculum at the district level is that a common exercise well typically typically the board would adopt the resources and then those are the resources that we would use to write our curriculum that's typically what um what we do so in in this instance uh with your recommendation then we would like for example Biology Chapter 13 and 16 we would look at the texts that are covered in there and then we would have to uh embed the text into into the curriculum that we're writing from the book that makes any sense um can I make a reminder we are literally in
286the process of reducing our curriculum and instruction staff at the same time we're recommending that they do additional work so I think we need to be considerate of that we also need to be consider of the timing we are in May the teachers have been we've already delayed this one month so that two people could look at the books so we we don't have t i question whether we have the time to go through this process and delay it again again I recommend that we adopt and accept the instructional materials as approved by the expert Educators within Cipher SD Scott Dr blaz and game I think it might help a little bit if can you go into a little bit of the um the actual recommended omissions the reasons behind them we get a little
287bit understanding of what we're wanting to Emit and why um uh there are concerns that were expressed across the state and in the district and in for example um let's see [Music] um in biology would be an example in chapter 12 it discusses um vaccines and it discusses um uh polio and all those and investigation 13 is an extension of that which goes into discussing a much more detail um around a lot of Co discussion a lot of uh focused on Health in that topic which is just an exension it's not required tis that's an example of uh something in the biology textbook and let's see in um in Earth Systems an example is um topics of depopulation and uh an agenda out of United Nations um in environmental science there's a lot around depopulation
288and also um you know a perspective that humans are bad um and so those are the areas that could be Rewritten and is that enough example for you it is so um it seems to me that the the thought process behind that there are some controversial subjects in some of these textbooks that might not be suitable we may want to re-evaluate but it goes uh Dr MCAS um you know trustee Henman brought up a point walk us through a little bit of what it would take for us to if we were to admit some of these sections as some of the some of the trustees of inter are interested in doing what are the steps we would have to do to um add that instructional element and how would we go about evaluating and how
289we how would we go about creating it to add those instructional elements that may be omitted um in this motion so as I said we would from the for example from the biology textbook we would be taking that textbook and we would be uh basically writing our curriculum we typically do a a very thorough um curriculum writing aspect when we when we do curriculum um as Miss Hinman said we have quite a few less staff to do that so we are going to have to probably rely more on the campuses or those teachers to do to go through some of their materials but what we would have to do is write the curriculum from write the curriculum from the resource and then these chapters that are omit it and the text that have to be
290covered because there are text for all of this um the text that are covered I think some of it is climate change if I remember correctly Natalie climate change and vaccines for example we had already tagged the the the uh chapter on vaccines and was not something that we were doing a deep instruction on actually I believe we weren't even covering it because it hasn't been um hasn't been tested on eoc's and so it's very limited what we would do there so we had already we had already planned to do a very just very you know slim uh teaching of that but it would require taking those texts and then writing curriculum and we would have to find something else to use to be able to write the curriculum probably our our current um textbook
291that we have and just pull from there and then write the curriculum from there and it is I mean it is I mean Dr B knows it takes time to it it takes time to to uh develop and write curriculum so it looks like out of 25 books there's 13 chapters where we're looking for some revisions can we can we approve can we approve it without the revisions and then turn turn this off after the fact is that possible these chapters that are controversial so we have visited with the companies regarding the online versions um saas allows us to turn everything off from the district level the other ones have have to be turned off from the campus or teacher level and um and then we are going to be ask them to see if
292they can figure out a way to give us access at the district level but right now we can turn off chapters um from the district veravas basically any chapter and for the others we can turn off the chapters but from the campus level so would that be any different than what Miss blasing game is is Dr blasing game is actually offering we can go ahead and approve these these uh books based on sboe appr approval and imp and the changes that were requested from SBO sboe on these Publishers once that actually takes place then we can actually order these books is that what you're saying but I don't think that's what Dr blasting game is saying the the the edits from that are requ the edits that were requested from the State Board of Education
293those edits will are already there actually with an online version with the textbooks they will be there once those books are purchased and uh and delivered so I believe if I understood Dr Bon U correctly she's asking that once we receive the materials with the edits from the State Board of Education that we remove these chapters is that correct Natalie yeah that's correct question Dr msas were the books that we reviewed or had the opportunity to review were those books the books that had the edits from the State Board of Education already within them not the books but the online version did okay so if we wanted to have seen those we would have had to look at the online version not the physical book that is correct got it so as an example um
294in my understanding is one of the textbooks had the topic of depopulation and that's an interesting idea that I am not personally aware whether or not that's in the online version or not or whether or not that's been a requested edit it is it's in the online version yes um these comments and revisions are based on Deep dive into the online curriculum that we were all given access to um because we serve in the academic safety vision and planning committee we committed large amounts of time in order to go in and read and look for those things so and current information as of this week and today okay I can't I can't support any anything teaching our kids about depopulation I'm 100% in agreement with Dr blasing game more questions look M on I don't
295I have questions any other questions or comments uh we do have a motion we do have a second if there's no more questions uh we'll go ahead and take a vote all those in favor of the amended uh motion uh please signify by raising your right hand I'm sorry against apologize thank you 6 C the board consider approving the 2024 2025 te certification form may I get a motion to approve please 6C I'll move that the board approved the 2024 2025 tis certification form may I get a second second any questions yes I have a question what the decision that was just made by the board how does that impact our ability to approve the te certification form well the te certification forms basically saying that we will be teaching all the that we're guaranteeing
296that we're teaching all the the texts yeah that the textbook is covering all the text that we're teach or the resources the textbooks or the resources that we have will cover all the text so basically the the textbook now do not cover all the text however we do have other resources that we have right now that we could use to cover the text the current resources we have right now the current textbook we have right now that we would have to use to cover the text so what you're saying is as it stands we would we do not have to submit the te certification form you have to submit you submit it but what we we will be able to cover with materials so what we're certifying to the state is that we have materials
297hold on here's the expert on that let me give you a little background the so Texas Education Agency and the Texas Education Code 311011 requires that leas certify annually to the State Board of Education and the commissioner that students have access to instructional materials that cover all Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for the required subjects except for physical education completion of the form indicates that we are giving access to our students that they will have resources to meet all the required teaks so therefore in those areas that you have omitted from the prior thing we're acknowledging that there are other educational resources that meet those required teaks to allow us to teach those in the te certification form your second question is we don't about not approving it approval of the te certification form allows
298us to open the funding source which is the the IMA funding source to where we can purchase those instructional materials with State funds that we get in bayum I have another question go ahead I was just goingon to ask a question we currently correct me if I'm wrong have books for biology environmental science Earth Systems principles of education training today is that correct one of them is a new is new just which is I'm trying to understand completely share with one which one is a new one so we do have new tis um in all of our science courses but the text verification form also lists District created curriculum as one of the pieces that helps us satisfy all the texts so either way we would be covered right thank you go ahead Julie um
299I have a question if we're going to use older books or books that we pre or resources we already have what's to prevent a board member from now from them coming and saying I object to resources that are were used last year I'm concerned about certifying that we're meeting the tees when I don't have confidence that I don't know for sure that we are or that someone can derail the resources remove resources from our Educators to use well all all I can I think answer to that miss hment is that with the books that have been approved and then going back to the resources that we already already half we would have to piece them together so that we do meet the text certification Dr Miss do you believe that we with what all with
300the efforts that you just described that we will meet the tis we will we will provide the tis to our students I do think that we have the resources we have a lot of resources we have a lot of resources and and when we're writing curriculum it'll be more difficult I'm I'm going to I will share that because you have to go back and and look for all through all these resources but typically we use the the textbooks not all of them some of them we use them like that's all we use but we typically will use the resource the textbooks as a resource as we write our our curriculum um but if you're asking is be more difficult to to get all this done yes but I do think that we have probably have
301the resources to uh pull from and when you say re resources you mean curriculum uh I'm concerned about the people resources um both on campuses and in um so when I'm talking about resources I'm talking about the actual material paper material actual materials that we are going to have to go through what we have to pull what to pull pull what we need uh as as uh Dr Bergman said there are some newti so we're going have to make sure that we have that we have all that material we may have to purchase some some some additional resources that are that are just supplementary to piece it all together as far as uh as a staff to get it done uh we're going to struggle because we we have lost a lot of staff at
302the district office so we're going to struggle and so it may look a little like um our campuses are are are used to having the curriculum ready or a lot of it ready by the time school starts it may be that they're getting two weeks at a time and then during those two weeks we're providing the next two weeks so it may be that type of getting materials out to them thank you Dr Maas that's disappointing other questions on 6C all right this time we'll take a vote all those in favor raise your right right hand 70 7 C the board will review and consider adoption of the revised board operating procedures outline duties of a public official this item was discussed in PL session pursuant to section 551.074 may I get a motion to
303approve please so moved and a second second any questions about this yes I just want to make um the public aware that there was um a change that was sent out by general counsel removing the section about how the board would write their own uh meeting rules we have uh re uh reverted back to following modified parliamentary procedures in Robert's Rules of Order so I just want to make sure the uh public is aware of that um I do have a question um uh maybe a suggestion to add a section either within the document um or as an attachment um outlining guidelin for complying with the open meetings Act and the public information act um there is clear evidence of a lack of understanding and or willingness to follow both of these acts and I
304think it' be helpful to have it in writing so it would clear up some of the confusion around those two um acts I don't see a problem with that at all okay um I have one other um request or thought to add is um to add a use second Mar you write that down sorry it's making sure Julie we got that covered thank you um I also um in the section for board meetings um I I would uh like it to be considered that we um uh say that there will be no use of cell phones texting between board members and with outside contacts during board meetings um uh those texts are subject to the public information act um whether they're on your whichever phone you're using um and they can be accessed by the
305public so I think just to ensure that there's no concerns that we should not allow cell phones in use during board meetings Okay Mar you got that down as well you all can take that to committee and review that appropriately yes so we can if you want to approve the changes we've made so far then we'll take it back to the governance committee and then we'll um come up with some language and then bring it back a plan one question yeah one question so to the comment uh trusty hman made earlier that we're going to write our own rules Marty can you add a little bit of clarification on the back side of that comment just to describe what we're doing here and why we're doing it in uh changing in our change regarding the
306modified rules Robert's Rules yeah so the governance committee and and Mr Ray as the chair can probably answer this as well um if not better but um the governance committee we had looked at the modified rules for small assemblies and because honestly even for small assemblies we don't utilize um much of that procedure and so I had marked up the handout and um and that's what I included for the board to consider if we wanted to modify the modified rules and just really make it I thought more simple for for us to read and follow but um after I went back upstairs and I looked at it I thought well I probably need to do a better job of of flushing that out so I recommended that we take I'd take a little bit more
307time and Mr Ray was in agre agreement with that and so that's what I proposed to the board was to just go back to the attachment we've been using which is just the modified rules for small assembly and that if we want to kind of do our own version um I'll do a better job of getting that out to you guys and getting your feedback it would just be simplifying it further yeah and just to add on to that that's what we identified is that it might be easier for us considering we don't use all of Robert rules to maybe do something to reflect what we typically do as far as our uh meeting procedures and our meeting rules but we also identified the fact that you know we need to get our uh board
308operating procedures uh voted on and approved so we didn't want to delay that in order to continue to evaluate our new procedures and potentially new r R so you know we've been operating under modified Roberts rules under our board operating procedures and so in order to not delay approval of our board operating procedures we decided to keep the modified Roberts rules in for now and maybe something we look into the future and crafting our own special rules for our procedures and our proceedings any further discussion c n will now take a vote on the uh approving the uh the adoption of the board operating procedures all in favor to raise your right hand 70 7D the board consider approving a superintendent's recommendation to give notice to the individual listed here to section uh 21.10 through
309103 of the Texas educator code that her employment with the district is under probationary contract is terminated this item was discussed in Clos section pursuant to section 551 074 may I get a motion please I move that the Board of Trustees gives notice to this person listed here that her employment under a probationary contract is terminated and a second a second any questions seeing none we now take a vote all those in favor please H by raising your right hand okay that's six I will abstain since I was not here at the last meeting to discuss this just in all fairness 7e uh the board consider approving the Super's recommendation to give notice to the individual listed here pursuant to to 21103 of the Texas educator code that her that his employment with the district
310is under probationary contract is terminated this item was discussed in close section pursuant to section 551.074 may I get a motion please um I move that the Board of Trustees give notice to this employee that his employment under probationary contract is terminated and a second second any questions seeing none we'll now take a vote all those in favor sign by raising your right hand UH 60 me abstain as well 7f the board will consider approving a superintend recommendation to give no to individual list here that are employment of the district under a term contract is proposed for termination and authorize the president of the board to notify the individual a proposed action pursuant to section 21211 of the Texas educat code this item was discussed in close section uh 551.074 may I get a motion
311please I move that the Board of Trustees approve the recommendation to notify this employee that her employment with the district under term contract is proposed for termination and to provide her notice of the same in accordance with the law may have a second second any questions saying none we'll now take a vote all those raising your right hand 60 me abstain as well 7g the board considered making determination that good cause did not exist is required by law for the individuals listed here to resign their respective employment contracts this item was discussed in close session 551.074 may I get a motion please I move move that the Board of Trustees render a finding under Texas administrative code chapter 24917 D that good cause did not exist as required by Texas Education Code sections 21105 C
31221.1 160c or 21210 c for the individuals listed here um to resign the respective employment contracts and notify these employees in accordance with the law that the district is submitting a complaint to the State Board of educator certification for contract abandonment may have a second second any questions seeing no one I'll take a vote signif raising your right hand uh 6 Z again me abstaining we'll now proceed to informational items uh any board committee updates the uh board members would like to talk about this past week uh the finance and operations committee met yeah rather two weeks ago we met and we discussed the presentation that we have seen today and really the the feedback that we gave was on how to think about um the safety and hazardous routes for our high school students
313we wanted to make sure that as students were moving from 8th grade into nth grade that the if they were crossing uh what we've defined as a hazardous condition that we would continue to provide that bus service so that was really the major change that we had in our finance and operations committee no further comments thank you anyone else I do for academic safety vision and planning um we met with uh District leadership and there was talking uh about they we're talking about the course selections coming up um more details will be coming on that uh college career and Military Readiness we also had an overview of the discipline data um on safety and then we talked about riew of the board monitoring system um editing some reports we may not need them on a
314monthly basis if the activity is not at a level that is necessary to save time and resources uh we also uh talked about the school health advisory report data for the year end and Christina Cole and I met on that and uh we will be getting an update on that this next month thank you anyone else see I'd like to thank everyone for being here tonight I question I'm sorry is the from the policy committee Todd is that you that's yours I was curious what the status is of updating policies related to revenue generating recommendations Prov uh proposed by the budget reduction advisory committee since several of those um recommendations require revising current policy is your a committee working on that yes ma'am we are uh that will actually be discussed in the next policy
315committee and in addition to that we may actually have multiple policy committees uh coming up before June just want to give you a heads up and I appreciate I appreciate the question great question will we have a special called meeting or will you be bringing those policy revisions at the June meeting we will be bringing those policy revisions at the June meeting okay um that uh and then I had a question um Natalie were you going to do a teacher retention update okay no we have not met um we're working up the data that we have and we're looking to see data that comes in and so we will be meeting soon but there's no report this meeting thank you okay I have a question the um the teacher Time study that was completed in
316March when will the results be released and what are the plans to implement the recommendations uh we actually just got um the final report today and talked about it um in our cabinet meeting so it'll be forthcoming after that sorry we just got it okay thank you so we'll take that committee and then we'll bring that back here for Action anything else I missed all right once again thanks being for being here staying so late i' like to thank those who are watching from home we have a motion to adjourn please so moved second second all those in favor sing by raising your right hand and we are adjourned thank you very much