Board Work Session | August 3, 2023

001all right [Music] good evening the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Board of Trustees is now convened in a board work session on Thursday August 3rd 2023 at 6 PM in the boardroom of the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District Mark Henry Administration Building located at 11440 matsky Road Cypress Texas for the purpose of reviewing that portion of the Monday August 7th 2023 regular board meeting agenda designated as action items and to hear designated reports and recognitions posted in the meeting notice as required by Texas law I want to welcome the members of our audience and our television viewers through this meeting at the Board of Trustees as the Cypress Fairbanks Board of Trustees we're here to set goals listen to reports approved budgets contracts Personnel appointments and make policy for the district it is not the

002role of the board to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a public meeting the Board of Trustees not a meeting of the public the meeting is open to all who wish to attend and to hear the matters discussed audience members may not participate in the meeting outside the designated agenda items for citizen participation or public comment disruption of the meeting by any person including the audience is inappropriate and will be addressed by the board president or the board's council is meeting parliamentarian continued or repeated disruption of any board meeting by words or actions may result in removal or loss of the privilege to attend the meeting prior to this

003meeting board members received information related to items on tonight's agenda agenda items will not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice during the course of this meeting the board May determine that a closed session is necessary in that event the board will meet in closed session to consider matters duly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.071 through 551.08 for the Texas government code these proceedings are airing live on the district website they will also be available as video on demand on the district website following tonight's meeting for the video to adequately reflect the proceedings I respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones are turned off or in silent mode and let me turn mine off now thank you for taking the

004time to join us this evening and for your interest in the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District attending with us tonight we have Grace Handley from representative Dr Tom Oliver's office Grace where are you raise your hand there you are good evening grace we have no scouts present this evening perhaps next time the invocation Pledge of Allegiance vision and mission statement remarks and recognitions board comments and citizen participation will be presented at the regular board meeting on Monday August 7 2023 at each open meeting of the board patrons who have registered in accordance with the procedures established by bed regulation May address the board during the designated agenda comments period prior to the board's consideration or action on the item unless the agenda is otherwise rearranged by the board president during the meeting agenda comments will

005generally be taken prior to each agenda item for detailed information and instructions on registering to speak under agenda comments please go to the district website at www.cfisd.net patrons who have 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 on the front row to my right when you approach the podium and as you can see there are two one to my right one to my left you will see a monitor inside the podium when it is your time to begin speaking a digital presentation timer will be displayed at the top of the monitor the timer will be set in accordance with the number of speakers registered this evening there will be

006a 32nd and 15 second warning light on the monitor to wrap up your comments we will now proceed with a reports portion of the agenda 3A the administration will provide an update on the superintendent search there are no speakers on this topic this evening Martin do you have any comments for us well we as we discussed um with the search Consultants we wanted to make this monthly item so that our community was aware of where we were in the process and also uh to allow the board if there were any comments that you all wanted to make or or share information you wanted to share about the search process as you know we're still early on um and we do have a web page that citizens can visit to get information since we had the

007presentations for the search firms and the board selected a search firm we've met with the Consultants once the board has met with the Consultants established a timeline and the applications are open and they're coming in at the board's Direction worked with the consultants and we're going to be working with focus groups to gather specific information from the community about the process and the qualities and characteristics that our community would like to see in our future leaders and we've got multiple opportunities to provide input including a short Open session for anyone in addition to the scheduled focus groups from a cross-section of community members nominated by the board and then we also have an online survey Teresa's wonderful Communications team is working on that at your spec certification and we will have that ready to go

008right after the next board meeting and so at the next board meeting we will have done conducted the focus meeting Focus meetings and we'll have an update for you at that time but otherwise I guess I would turn to you Mr Jackson is there anything that the board would like to share in regards to the the search any comments let me look to my right let me look to the left I would I would say a thank you to my colleagues we had a number of sessions that were in closed session the conversations were robust they were detailed not spirited very often but I think we all came away with the understanding of what our goal is which is to select the very best individual to lead this district for the next 7 to 12

009years and we are all focused together on that single goal we had very good conversation how best to bring in participation from the community as Marty pointed out there are a number of different avenues that will be available and we hope that the community will in fact Avail themselves of those Avenues so I appreciate the work done by my colleagues but also uh our consultants and of course Marty is is working as the facilitator in this regard and so she has a a significant burden to bear and and most of it uh will be done in the shadows and and away from the light of day because certainly we want most of this to be confidential until the final candidate is selected which won't happen for some time moving on item 3B the administration will

010provide an oral report on the disciplined Trends in CFISD there are no speakers on this topic this evening however the speakers would be Dr Stewart Dr agumakay Dr Baker I don't know who's going to take the lead good afternoon Dr Henry Board of Trustees student services is responsible for board goal two safe and healthy environments this includes monitoring all classroom incidents that result in removals from face-to-face instruction this evening Dr ifyoguma Kay and Dr West Baker will present an overview of disciplined Trends in our district over the last five years Dr ogumikay take it away thank you Dr Stewart good evening Dr Henry president Jackson Board of Trustees thank you for the opportunity to present to you the district discipline trends for the last five years as you heard Dr Stewart is giving you a

011quick overview of the goals that we support um last year student services partnered with the Hanover research group and Hanover research conducted a comprehensive analysis of the district discipline data for the last five years they focused on three areas they looked at the disciplined population which would be students who are who are involved in discipline they looked at discipline actions assigned and they also looked at disproportionality along with our partnership with Hanover we also partner with District departments we work with several departments such as our counseling and our Psychological Services team to look at the behavioral initiatives we have in the district continue tweaking them and identifying how we can better support students so this has been like Dr Stewart shared Dr West Baker one of our district psychologists is here with me and he

012is going to start the presentation thank you uh good evening thank you all uh so in a few minutes Dr aguma Kay is going to be reviewing last year's discipline numbers but of course in order for numbers to have meaning uh it's also important that those numbers have some context and so before we talk about cfist specifically I'd just like to take a minute to talk about student Behavior within a broader context so as we all know in March of 2020 scifare ISD entered the covet lockdown along with most of the rest of the nation with many students not returning to in-person education for I don't know until the fall of 2021 for many Educators the start of the 2021 school year felt like getting hit by a truck they were faced with academic gaps

013and deficits they were faced with new behavioral challenges within the classroom colloquially we refer to this truck as the covet effect and when we take a look at the behavioral challenges that we're facing now when we are it's easy to attribute everything to this covet effect however when we take a look at behavioral Trends and mental health Trends in the preceding 20 years before covid we can see that we've been staring at a looming mental and Behavioral Health crisis for the better part of two decades and that's just been exacerbated by covid so on the screen here we have a timeline of the roughly 15 years preceding the covet lockdown and we just have a few snapshots I'd like to review about the mental and Behavioral Health Trends preceding that from 2007 to 2018 ages

01410 to 24 the suicide rate increased by 57 percent 2011 to 2015 youth ER visits for mental health and behavioral crises increased by 28 percent teen lifetime THV vaping rates from 2013 to 2020 doubled and recent use as defined by uh once once used at least once in the past 30 days that use increased by 425 percent from 2011 to 2019 absences so students who self-reported being absent from school due to feeling unsafe on their campus that increased by 50 percent and all of these resources are interesting all of their reputable but I want to call your attention to this first when the U.S surgeon general's advisory report this was released in 2021 and this is the U.S Surgeon General reviewing mental and Behavioral Health Trends in these years preceding covid and they track a

015number of interesting interesting statistics and they they track with that main theme that we've been seeing a mental and Behavioral Health Trend but what's particularly interesting is when they talk about what's potentially contributing to these Trends and it's important to understand that because our children in this District are facing all of these so starting right here with the growing use of digital media we know there's been an explosion of social media throughout the early to mid to 2000s we know that social media use among our youth is is quite pronounced and growing uh and although correlation doesn't equal causation we know that we can associate increased social media use with decreased mental health in youth in particular with regard to self-image and it's not just that we know that by increasing access to social media

016with our use with our youth they're also increasing exposure to social stressors and this isn't just Broad Social stressors we're also talking about increasing access to things like cyber bullying as well as social aggression through social media this one I want to pause for a minute because because it does affect our youth directly Mental Health America is a non-profit organization that tracks mental health prevalence within States as well as the state's population access to mental health supports within the community they release a State ranking on these metrics every year in the with the most recent report 2022 with regard to youth mental health prevalence in Texas so this is the the rate at which youth in Texas are reporting mental health symptoms of say depression or anxiety we ranked 46 out of 51 and that's

01751 including Washington DC number one would be top 51 would be the bottom in terms of individuals in Texas ability to access mental health care for these mental struggles we ranked 51 out of 51. and so what we have in Texas broadly and in our community specifically we have a prevalent mental health a prevalence of mental health struggles like I said a growing Mental Health crisis as well as limit access to supports within the community relative to other states certainly drug and alcohol availability and use has been on the rise talked about the THC vaping rates as well as increasing academic pressures but certainly to temper these numbers a little bit it's important to point out that our youth gen Z gen Alpha they do a much better job of expressing their own mental struggles

018they did a good job of confronting the taboo of talking about their own mental health struggles and because a lot of these numbers are based on self-reports when they when they're more open to discussing their own mental health struggles we will see these numbers increase somewhat so that that we can attribute some of the increase to that so this was all pre-code this was all leading up to covet and then covet hits and we go away to lockdown and during that time our students experienced a 20 increase in anxiety symptoms 25 increase in depression symptoms a moderate increase in impulsivity and irritability and now we're here a year past covid and we are certainly seeing that those same mental health Trends Across the Nation but this study in particular is interesting it was released in

0192022 and it focuses not on the youth mental health but on the perceptions of Educators within the nation on the students that they're serving this was a survey conducted as I said in 2022 it was released early this year 84 percent of respondents this was 1100 something teachers across 42 States believed that students uh that they were working with in the classroom are now behind in self-regulation and relationship building relative to the year preceding covet 68 reported an increased concern about student Behavior again relative to the uh the year preceding covet and this is a national trend so all this to say is that we have growing needs in the area of Youth mental health and in the areas of Youth behavior and this is Nationwide and this has been happening for again 20 years

020these challenges are complicated they're multi-layered when a teacher deals with a student's behavior in the classroom that teacher may only be so that behavior may only be somewhat related to anything that has actually happened in the classroom we say that mental health and behavioral challenges are ecological so they're impacted by all the facets of the world that a child lives in and so it's important to understand these facets and the fact that all these layers have taken a hit in the past several years we talked about the individual at the individual level all of our children many of our children have experienced an increase in mental health or behavioral challenges families the family unit is certainly not immune to that we've had parents who have been impacted similarly and the family unit has struggled we've

021also seen a lot of our families take an economic hit this has been Nationwide and that's also been local within the broad Community covid resulted in a reduced access to social connections and support networks and and now we see people trying to regain the steam to re-access those mental and behavioral and physical supports that they had beforehand certainly in the last decade we've seen an increase in cultural clashes our children are not immune to this you know they they're aware of the 24-hour news feed as well as the Doom scrolling that comes from a readily available social media and then when we're talking about our our ability to intervene in these challenges in our own students we have to take a look at how these challenges have compounded over time so rewind the clock for

02210 years to 10 years ago we have a student who is struggling then what are the implications for that now for a high school student who may not have received the supports they needed over that time so that's the big picture that's the big National picture that's the big chronological picture in which these discipline numbers are occurring and with that I'm going to turn it back over to Dr gumake thank you Dr Baker and now that he's given us a little context we're going to pair down and look at our district our discipline trends and when we look at it I think Dr Stewart shared earlier that classroom removals we focus on in-school suspension which is what we know as DMC out of school suspension placement to the daep and expulsions to the JJ AEP

023I want to just give you an idea of who we're looking at we're looking at a very small percentage of students in our district and when we look at the data I'm going to present the data in three different levels Elementary Middle School and High School levels so you can see how the three areas compare and we're looking at a pattern over five years and here is our elementary pattern for the last five years when you look at the data I know that we've talked about so many things going on with aikidos but when you look at the general Trend in elementary you can see that there's been some decrease in in-school suspension and out of school suspension so the numbers have stayed pretty steady and actually decreased in some areas when you look at

024placement last year we placed only 24 students at our elementary level so generally data has remained the same in the same general area when you look at 2018-2019 and look at our placement we had more discretionary and mandatory placements put together than we've had in the last two years now this is our Middle School data and you will notice right away that the trend is similar to the elementary Trend and just slightly different in the increase in out of school suspensions and also increasing in school suspension but not by a dramatic change we see these Ebbs and flows every year with discipline actions but strikingly when you look at expulsions you will notice right off that we had less or fewer students expelled at the middle school level last year we had nine and this

025year this past uh school year we had five 20 21 22 we had nine and 20 22 23 we had five so that uh you know significant decrease for expulsions at the middle school level and this is a high school data you see the same pattern as we have in Middle School there's slight increases across discipline actions but not too much we did see just a you know increase in our mandatory placement due to some of the laws that changed requiring students placed for certain behaviors so but generally the numbers have stayed pretty consistent there were more mandatory placement than discretionary placement at that level the next chart now is our overall District data and I spoke earlier that we had increases at the secondary level for middle and high school and that's what you're

026going to see when you look at the overall District data you're going to see slight increases across the board but when you look at expulsions to the jjaep even with the struggles that we've gone through over the last three years our expulsions have stayed pretty steady in 2021-22 we had 39 students expelled to the jjaep and last year we had 40 students in 2018 2019 prior to the pandemic we had 37. so that shows some alignment now we're going to focus on some big key findings now that we've quickly looked at the the data across the three levels generally we found that in schools suspension actions decreased from 2018 to 2022 but slightly increased in 2023 at the secondary level uh we found the same pattern also for out of school suspension at the secondary

027level and when we look at ISS and OSS and look at the students who were removed from school we out of a over a hundred and eighteen thousand students enrolled last year just over 7 000 students received out of school suspension now we're going to look at some key findings for our ALC placement we have two ALC locations in our district and I noted earlier that we had some slight increases in placement most of our placement happened at the high school level most of the students placed where male students and predominantly in ninth grade students and that was a pattern that we saw I'm going to share some demographics for you I spoke earlier about mandatory placement 29 of our students who received mandatory replacement were African-American 55 percent Hispanic 10 white and six percent

028other races now when we look at discretionary placement the data showed that 64 percent of our African-American students received discretionary placement 26 Hispanics six percent white and four percent other looking at our expulsion trends last year we had 40 expulsions we had one Elementary student but that student was placed at the SOS we had five Middle School students and 35 high schoolers who work sprout the demographic for our expulsions were 20 African-American 63 percent Hispanic 13 White and five percent other now that I've shared the overall District data Dr Baker will come back and give some more information and I'll come back and wrap it up foreign thank you I promise I'm not all doom and gloom I'm going to turn it around so as we reviewed before these behavioral challenges in schools are multi-layered

029of course schools are not in a position to support all the challenges that students may be having at each of these layers we can't directly affect these however we can have a positive impact in all of these layers and so I want to talk for just a second about what cyfair is doing and can do in each of these layers to to confront some of these behavioral challenges so at the individual level this is all about positive relationships positive relationships between students and staff relationship building as well as investing in empirically supported de-escalation and classroom management practices to help maintain support and maintain those relationships at the family level engaging in continued parent Outreach this is something that we do very well and we need to continue to do this parents nights weekend activities at

030school working directly with families to provide resources in the district invests in individuals whose job it is entirely to provide resources to Families Our counselors do it very well in our youth service specialist that's their job and they they are it's impressive how well they do it within the school Community each of the schools need procedures and processes for established standardized conflict resolution they need routines that support consistency and positive interactions and this does include restorative practices as part of the discipline process this is not restorative practices in lieu of disciplining consequences this is restorative practices to support a student's learning so that when consequences have to occur they they have the the education and support to move forward with a better choice next time a conflict arises within society as a whole certainly we

031we can't affect what's going on within the headlines but what we can do is model positive citizenship for our students and that can start with digital citizenship that's where a lot of our students live is in the digital sphere um scifier ISD is starting a strong digital citizenship program continuing a strong digital citizenship program we need to teach students how to channel their awareness of current events that are happening into critical thinking and when we have disagreements as staff as Educators we can model respectful discourse with others and then finally something that we do well is monitoring student progress and adjusting as needed and that's something that we need to continue to do as we continue to invest in empirically supported programs we need to monitor their progress with those programs and how they're doing

032and again make changes as we need to and with that back to Dr aguma Kay to expand on CFISD supports okay now let's talk about some more uplifting things um in cfic we have several resources and supports for behavior management student services compiles and reports School level and District level discipline data every nine weeks this information is shared to uh so campus administrators can analyze and monitor behavioral Trends and patterns just like Dr Baker shared principles and assistant principals are encouraged to use the information to create Behavior Support and discipline management plans that best fit the respect their respective campuses and the culture and also adequately train their staff and their students now I'm going to share some things we have inside there for Behavioral Management first and foremost is a student code of conduct

033and the student handbook these two documents serve as proactive teaching tools for students as we know chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code requires that districts adopt a student code of conduct uh and approved by you the school board every single year the student code of conduct and the handbook are available to our community and our district and individual campuses on the respective website in English and in Spanish paper copies are available at every campus upon request there in the principal's office the ap's office the registrar's office councilor's office library and the reception area regarding teaching expected behaviors at school parents and Guardians are most significant support and partners in educating their students therefore we want them informed about the student code of conduct and handbook guidelines so each year parents and gradients acknowledge receipt

034of the code and handbook when they complete registration and online annual student update parents are encouraged to review and review the code and the handbook with their student to help our students better understand expectations for Behavior assistant principles hold code of conduct presentations for students throughout the year in addition to the two required presentations in the fall to kick off this the new school year and in January for students who register in the spring APS also ensure that the code is highlighted when new students join our campuses now I'm going to speak about another resource that we have at our schools for our students PBIS as you know PBIS is a research-based proactive positive systems approach for creating and maintaining safe and effective effective learning environment and building that relationship that Dr Baker spoke of

035just a few minutes ago I am thrilled to share that 85 of our comprehensive campuses currently implement the PBIS process this includes nine over 12 high schools all of our 19 middle schools and all of the 57 elementary schools and we're very excited we've already started working with our two new campuses this year and they're ready to go and we are very very excited to support them so we're going to be adding two more PBIS campuses this year another resource is the amazing professional development opportunities that we have for our campus staff assistant principals receive yearly training on de-escalation strategies substance use education gang awareness training and much much more in 2021-22 principles were allowed to hire a behavioral interventionist there are 66 bis in our district four of the high schools 13 at the

036middle school and 49 at the elementary level student services provides the behavior interventionists monthly training on classroom management strategies so they can go back to their campuses and be able to support those level one help the teachers and model so we can support the level one and level two behaviors in the classroom also every year student services offers behavior management training opportunities to the entire District in 2022-23 197 training opportunities were offered to over 9 000 teachers and paraprofessionals and we still have more resources I think Dr Baker and mentioned earlier are counselors our mhit team and our Kai's workers we also have four classroom management teachers four attendance officers and they dropped out Specialists for students struggling with behavior and attendance concerns in 2018 we implemented clear backpack on all our secondary campuses also

037our secondary campuses are equipped with both handheld wants and walk through metal detectors and of course last but not the least the amazing support from our cyfair Police Department whose presence is felt on all our campuses these are this is the data from a cipherit tip line a resource that also serves our community sci-fi tip line is a district Anonymous reporting system which provides two-way communication between the campus its students parents and Community 24 hours a day and seven days a week the tip line allows users to submit tips via the CFISD website text messaging and a mobile app to to report concerns last year we had over 2 000 tips that were reported all right now that we've gone over the support I'm going to talk about next steps as Dr Baker shared supporting

038student behavior is complex and it requires efforts from several different areas for this school year we're going to continue to improve and expand training on PBIS I hope we're hopeful that we can complete that but the three campuses high school campuses that are not PBIS do use a research-based behavioral program so we we're covered in that area but we're going to keep refining and making it better additionally we're going to continue training our assistant principles and at bis using the the escalation strategies of Life space Crisis Intervention this summer about 90 of our administrators were trained and the goal is to continue training and finally we are going to continue working to implement our well-managed school program we're going to continue monitoring and evaluating to make sure it's being effective on our campus this summer

039we are seven elementary schools joined that that group of three middle schools that we piloted last year I cannot say enough about how thankful we are to serve in a community with majority great students and parental support I wanted to bring this presentation um in closing to share that the data that we presented this evening represent a small group of our students and that majority of our students come to school and there do amazing things that we just you know it's evident every single day less than seven percent of our 118 000 plus students received OSS which means that 93 of our students never received OSS they they were in school placements were less than two percent to the daep on the flip side means about 98 of our students were never placed at the

040daep and finally idea at jjaep .03 percent and that's 40 students out of 118 students I wanted to close on that positive uh we're very happy to support our kiddos our campus staff our APS do an amazing job um this brings me to the end of my presentation I want to use this opportunity I think I have two team members here Stacy and adri two of the directors in student services and of course our team that you know supports us so um I thank you so much for your time and this is the end of our presentation thank you for your presentation let me see if my board members colleagues have questions or comments let me go to my right Scott I know it's hard to see me um just a quick question and thank

041you for the presentation we'll Oblivion on that question I get a lot of times from from constituencies on consent for treatment I know a board policy ffeb talks about that before we do any treatment as far as counseling treatment as far as psychological treatment examination testing things like that uh we have to get parents permission is that correct yes unless it's under a couple exceptions sure yes that's all yes we do yeah so a psychologists under their license uh can't provide psychological treatment or psychological assessment without parent consent right thank you very much Gilbert uh thank you Doctor um quite thorough and yet forthcoming with what the doctor has said about a national Trend but the solutions we have in place hopefully we have plateau and we can come back down from the significant increase

042of the post-pandemic because the numbers were significantly um worrisome for everyone at that point and also when we visited uh other members throughout our our conferences it was ongoing everywhere and stuff so hopefully we have plateaued and thank you for you're in your team's work and hopefully I'm getting this back on on board where we need to be at but the numbers should Trend uh vitally to the positive side we we believe that too we think we're kind of moving in the right direction exactly thank you doctor looking to my left Lucas yeah Natalie is on the screen Natalie difficult to manage I did have a question on the three high schools that were using a different behavior management system if they were showing more positive data if they're similar as far as their demographics

043and stuff and we can certainly present that information to you but we haven't noticed any significant difference so I would you know eventually say yes that they're aligned with all the other high schools uh thank you did she mean middle schools uh no she meant three high schools all our middle schools at PBIS really had three high schools got it I don't use them thank you I did wonder if there was anything significant and how that looks so that we could learn from anything different thank you you're welcome now to my left look at president Jackson um thank you both doctors and the Department's for your service and help to our kiddos very much appreciated a question on the well-managed school so we piloted a program to my understanding this last year at three middle

044schools is that correct yes sir three middle schools and then we added we trained uh seven more elementary schools okay is there any findings that's specific to what your goals were at the outset of the program and what the findings were during and at the end of the program um since we piloted the first year we've been working with the principles of the middle schools and um what we the the goal is to provide teachers it's about providing teachers the skills to be able to respond to those level one level two behaviors in the classroom so that that's the goal across the board and we're working with those principles we've seen some positive uh things we've received positive feedback from principals and we're going to continue to evaluate which is why we slowed down the

045implementation and we we're going to continue working with the principals to see what kind of progress and receive feedback from them so we'll have that this year very good I'd be excited to hear that you know throughout the year maybe a couple of times you know if not quarterly somewhere in there okay Debbie yes sir thank you uh Dr ogumikay really good uh insightful presentation and just a couple of things so bear with me I've got notes on different pages but it occurred to me you know when we looked at the middle school numbers of in school suspension from the 2018-19 school year to the 2022-2023 school year and for high school as well it didn't increased with middle schools about 3 000 and what about 3 400 for high schools my thought is what

046is the difference in what was the difference in the student population in the 2018-2019 school year compared to the 20 22-23 school year in other words were there a lower number of students total in those beginning years then here in this final school year we just completed um without looking at data here I would assume yes kind of feeling assuming that maybe that's why the increase yes okay okay let me find my next notes uh and also returning from the pandemic which is the hard line and it's understandable why that 20 20 20 21 school year was uh so so less drastic I guess we could say okay why do you think uh current year numbers are smaller than previous year here on the tip line report the cyfair tip line report because it shows

047that it it dropped not significantly but uh for the Middle School it it dropped about 220 reports and uh it just struck me as kind of odd that that this last year that there'd be less tip tips in the year previous any ideas but that's really where we Trend with the tip line and that number shown us that there's so many things on the campus the students have relationships with the administrators where they can go to the administrators to speak to them and Report things rather than do it so that's yes so there's a we believe that's the key okay okay that would make sense okay well thank you again for a great Julie thank you Dr McKay and Dr Baker um I what's helpful is that we're looking at data um over a five-year

048period so that we can look for Trends so that's very beneficial I appreciate that you mentioned um that some of the increases do uh to uh disciplinary action was due to changes in laws that affected mandatory placements can you explain that a little bit well it was uh we've had some changes with THC placements and Drug placement okay so yes uh placements that we typically expel for in previously some of them were being placed at the daep so those became and this year also we're good there's another law HB uh 114 that we're currently training our administrators on and that also will impact some placement numbers with uh I'm trying to remember that one is that if uh yes ma'am materials yes and we're working through that to develop a plan and also communicate with

049our community what those changes are that's exactly what I was thinking I think it's very important that parents understand and if their children come to school or they are in possession of vaping an apparatus even part of it that they will be there is a consequence there is a consequence and they will be placed at the ALCS and we're working through that we've we met with our APS we're going to meet with our principals just to talk about what that looks like and how to communicate we're working with our Communications Department to put some messaging out there so our parents are well educated about this change implications some of the students make videos and share that with their peers it may catch students attention even more so yes will it be interested in the student

050handbook as well it will be addressed in the in the code of conduct in the code of conducts yes it is it is a change proposed change in our code yes yes so that means it will be communicated to students then when they have their code of conduct it will be sessions at school yes ma'am okay I will say that oftentimes as parents you know we don't read the code of conduct or read the student handbook until we're in a situation where we need to know it so it's important that we continue to reinforce that those are important documents for our parents and students to know okay I have a question regarding key findings under expulsions and ALC placements when we look at demographics for expulsions if you look at the expulsions by race they're

051very close to marrying our student population our student demographics but when we look at ALC and under discretionary placements um there is um disproportionality so how is how are you going to be addressing that I think Dr Baker spoke a little bit about that that was one of the areas that we had started addressing prior to the pandemic and we're going back again now that things are settling down to educate our administrators and you know you know we're not saying not to disciplined students but we want to make sure that we're applying discipline you know across the board in the same way yes okay thank you that's exactly what I was looking for I appreciate I'm Dr Baker explaining that restorative practices are not in lieu of consequences but that they're actually in addition to

052consequences so that behavior can be tools can be given a strategy shared with students so that it will modify their behavior moving forward so they don't repeat yeah that was very helpful thank you for sharing that I think also there's a connection on that page we're talking about the solutions individual family community society and effects over time I was connecting that with what you opened with was um that nationally there was this concern about students not attending school due to safety concerns so I think if we can we we look at these Solutions holistically we can address that concern with safety it's not just about discipline it's also about safeties no absolutely it absolutely is and back to uh actually the question that you asked about the tip line and then Dr gumagay's response that

053developing those relationships with administrators leads to a safer sense of sense on within the campus absolutely absolutely our 66th Behavior interventionists those were paid for using Esser funds which we know we are now out of essered out is that is that a word um so we maybe uh in preparation for next year's budget we look at the benefits of those Behavior interventionists we look at feedback from principles of the value and if we are going to have to look at making trade-offs on if we can continue to have those positions or not we maybe need some data around that to help us make that decision for next year's budget um okay my last question is for both of you um because we deal with policy are there any recommendations you have for us as a

054board on either changes in policy or how policy is implemented to address these concerns you can say no I just I just if there's something we can do from a policy standpoint to support your efforts I I think you based on what was discussed at the last board meeting we're on the right track and we have some initiatives that we've presented that you've allowed us to Pilot and um we're gonna give you some feedback and I think we're moving in the right direction so really now we're just looking at the implementation of the policies and then measuring them and ensuring that they're as effective as possible thank you first let me say very solid dwarf very thorough I do appreciate the trends looking both nationally as well as bringing it down from the local perspective

055the first question is have we experienced the national Trends here locally I.E do we see what we see nationally is that also reflective of the community anecdotally yes um you know that we we aren't capturing all the numbers that they're capturing on a national basis uh with regard to those Trends but certainly anecdotally the you know the increase in THC vaping we've seen an explosion of that within the the community and within the Houston area broadly um you know and certainly the the mental health Trends um have have not been trending necessarily positively in the way that we would like within the Houston area uh similar to the national scale so yes thank you always important to make that distinction thank you um I do want to repeat something Julie already mentioned it but I

056I it needs to be repeated we have restored restorative practices right is that in lieu of discipline or is that in addition to discipline and there they are it's two sides of the same coin it's they they consequences and and teaching new behaviors are both part of behavior change you know I think that that often in the community as parents we see perhaps restorative practices and and we don't see the discipline unless it happens to our child and if it happens to our child I think we see the discipline but not not necessarily the restorative practices but it's important to know that that they are there and available for all children all students Mr Jackson when we train our assistant principals we tell them that the consequence is the consequence but how you deliver the

057consequence is the restorative aspect of it you deliver the consequence in a way that you maintain relationship so that student has a way to come back and repair some of the you know the the the hurt that they caused other students so the consequence is still there but we deliver in a respective way and a relationship-based way and it is all about learning we know that not just in our district but truly across the the nation back when we were part of nasby and I visited with trustees from Across the Nation they all felt that because of covid students lost the understanding of proper behavior in classroom and certainly true in our district but in every other District do we see recovery of that or the students backed from a behavior perspective or they back

058to where they were before covid are they still learning and growing I think we're all still learning and growing but I believe that we've seen significant improvement in our students based on feedback from our principles and our assistant principals uh when we're on campus we still you know even prior to kovid uh that we still we had students who struggled with behavior and that's going to be that's just part of you know what we do but the intensity of the behavior right after we return that seems to be typing off and we're seeing some some good Improvement yeah that's a that is a key point I know when our students came back from covid there was considerable learning that needed to take place and it's good that that they have made significant progress in that

059regard let me return back to vaping most of it's already been been covered and answered but I do want to emphasize part of it first I want to applaud this board and the predecessors so my running mate made a point of vaping 12 years ago that it was part of a campaign that she ran on the district heard her and put vaping into the student code of conduct so it's not just now coming in it's been there for a long time but the new law is now significant um I always want to know how big is big and how small or small so so this new law that says if somebody is caught e-cigarette vaping device they go to the equivalent of ALC will that swamp our ALCS I know that immediately after covid we

060were running at full capacity and turning away those who wanted to be there so to speak well um we when we look at the data we had last year we had about 1200 incidents of e-cigs and when you know those would be situations now that a conversation about a placement in Mandatory Action will have to happen so we're having conversations the law also says that if we have students at the daep who have committed more egregious violations and there is no space at the daep that we can have an alternative placement on campus so we have to it's a very um uh the this new requirement is one that we have to work collaboratively with our campus staff to to figure out what where how we're going to meet that mandate as a district the

061the next question is really for our parents so when one of our students has the opportunity to go to ALC it says they don't get to play football while they're at ALC they don't get to play a band instrument they don't get to sing and acquire they don't get to do any Co or extra curricular activities is my understanding that of that correct yes sir and so if a student brings any type of vaping device on campus and they are found with it then that means they suffer those same consequences doesn't matter if they're the quarterback or the football team or the head cheerleader or the All-State trumpet player or the honor student the same thing will happen they will lose the Privileges that otherwise they would have earned absolutely just as the student who

062is at ALC I would have lost theirs the student who receives a consequence for that would lose access to those opportunities also during the term of their their placement while we're talking about this uh I do want the viewing audience to know that every member of your board has gone to JJ we all have towards ALC uh most of us gave a full day in the effort we all gave at least four or five hours in doing that to to better understand the situation I know that and this is probably my third or fourth tour of JJ at one of the tours uh the lead administrator mentioned that we would prefer that students not go to JJ because they operate they have the opportunity to learn from other students who are there for perhaps very

063serious requirements because that mandatory placements are very serious and I would say the parents on the question of vaping try and encourage your students not to bring those vaping devices to school because if they do and they've wind up at ALC they may have the opportunity to be introduced to other behaviors that you may not want your child to be introduced to I don't know that that's true I know that we were told that at JJ uh and and the question of vaping is is significant um so I do appreciate that we're looking that the law does permit alternative action to take place but the penalties still remain right yes sir the penalty during the term of the consequence will be the same so the you know lose Privileges and will not be able to

064participate in those things during the term of their consequence so basically zero tolerances has come back our predecessors on this board I guess 15 18 years ago adopted Zero Tolerance on discipline which was very popular among the community until it happened to their child uh and when it happened to their child uh and certainly while I was on the board I know that state officials were contacted uh being concerned about zero tolerance but this is in fact legal Zero Tolerance not a board action well it's a law right Mr Jackson will also um even with any consequence that remove students from school were required to look at mitigating factors before issuing consequence that would be for out of school suspension daep placement and expulsions and so we always consider that situation and that incident with

065the filters so um Julie touched on an important legal question um as we look at comparisons across subpop groups with I don't know that as a board we need to see it but within your department do you make comparisons of our district to to other districts to see what the Norms are like uh we don't make comparisons to other districts where we look at National Trends we look at National Data and compare what we look like to what's going on globally that actually is what what my uh research was on well the point is I always like to we have to look internally but I think we all also have to look externally we always need to have some type of external comparison uh I do have a sensitive question related to all of this

066data I will probably ask that offline but it will be it will be asked a basic question here that I think is also very important correlation is there a correlation between uh disciplinary action and academic attainment both for the child but also in a group setting uh Mr Jackson for some time we have uh and that's part of why we partnered with Hanover to take a deeper look into not just the discipline and academic attainment but also attendance so that's one of our goals to look at to see how all those play together so that's one goal that we have excellent thank you and then the last question a minor point we did bring up the fact that we do have metal detectors are these mobile on the high schools yes we do have I'm

067going to go back on my memory as a principal uh I would say yes that they can be moved we also have the handheld ones and we have the metal detectors that can be moved around I believe so is cheap amen there there Chief gives me a thumbs up yes so they are excellent uh you know that's an important piece of information for our community to understand we do believe in the layered approach for safety but we also believe in a layered approach for student discipline thank you for your report very good very solid report other questions comments and Natalie I apologize I saw the screen up there I never realized that was you so do you have other comments or questions before we leave this topic no I'm good thank you Tom okay very

068good item 3C the administration will provide a written report in the 2020-2023 district Safety and Security audit report this item may be discussed discussed in closed session pursuant to section 551.076 of the Texas government code we have questions only this evening do we have a brief presentation no questions only looking to my right I'll ask him private looking to my left we are going into closed session okay I have I've emailed you a list of questions oh okay great thank you the board will now review the following action items during review of the following action items any board member May remove one or more of these items at which time these items will be addressed and voted on individually for a the board will consider approving the minutes of the June 20th 2023 regular board

069meeting there are no speakers on the topic may may we move this to the consent agenda so move 4B the board will consider nominations for the Region 4 position F large District member seat on the Tasman board of directors does anybody wish to be nominated for this position Natalie I can't see if you're shaking your your head or raising your hand yeah no I'm not interested in a nomination thank you okay very good there is no interest item 4C the board will consider approving board members to serve as delegate and Alternate delegates to the 2023 Texas Association of school boards annual delegate assembly our current delegate is Natalie do you wish to continue in this role Natalie uh no time I do not wish to continue in the role okay so uh so I presume

070you you are resigning as delegate yes Tom that's true so we have a open position for delegate is there any interest on the board foreign I would just mention just to my colleagues um last year both Natalie and I served as delegates to the delegate assembly and it's where representatives of the Thousand twenty-five independent school districts in Texas elect uh their representatives all the representatives to the board of the Texas Association of school boards but also they vote on the advocacy agenda so it's it's a really interesting process it's really how you understand it's our voice to for what will be advocated on our behalfs at the state level so I'd encourage my colleagues I mean I've done it before but I would encourage someone who hasn't done it before to participate it's a few

071hours on a Saturday and it's a it's a great way to represent our board at the state level well said I I have served as a delegate as well so if anybody has an interest serving as a delegate please let me know prior to next Monday or if you have an interest now let me know you know was there a certain time that we had to have a name in there Julie you know so we will uh so for the delegate we would need to vote on the delegate by Monday that's the action time so Holly uh we will leave that separate item 4D the board will consider the endorsement of candidacy for region four position a rose Avalos Marquis Holmes Doug James position B Darlene bro position D Angela lemon flowers and position G

072Christian Davison Malone so for position d b d and g these individuals are by themselves in in requesting uh endorsement and then we have a choice if we care to make it for position a so it's open for discussion from anybody Julie thank you sir so um I would say too there's also position I want to say it's position um f is also it's vacant which is our position so those ones that have no um opposition those are seats that are guaranteed by um uh that school district to that board to have a seat on the board of the Texas Association of school boards due to the size of their District so we are guaranteed a seat on the board it's about 40 people that represent again all thousand uh 25 school districts across Texas

073um so the reason why position a has multiple people is that that those districts that are part of that position a do not have a guaranteed seat like we do in terms of those folks I know two of the three two of the three um uh Rose Avalos has served for many years and um Doug James I know is from the Klein Independent School District I don't know that he has served on the taskview board before um I would feel good about either one of those names but I'd be interested in what my colleagues have to say as well before I make a vote yeah I would I would Echo your your comments Rose has always done a very fine job as well and I do know Doug James I think he would be uh

074good in that in that position sometimes it's good to have somebody new in a position as well but sometimes it's good to have somebody who has an experienced voice other comments okay then I would entertain a motion and remember we don't have to do this but I would entertain a motion if somebody cares to make it to endorse a candidacy for region four position a we will do this on Monday so if anybody cares to have that as a motion let's be prepared on Monday okay for E the board to consider approving an election orders calling for an election on Tuesday November 7th 2023 for Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District trustees positions one two three and four we have one speaker on this topic this evening Francis Romero before you start the ground rules are

075you will have a light that comes on to let you know that you have 15 seconds to wrap up Mr secretary are you ready almost okay we're ready when you wish good evening president Jackson members of the board Dr Henry and staff I'm Francis Romero Vice chair of the district's Community leadership committee I'm here today to speak on agenda item 4E it is very important in fact critical that citizens in our community get involved and engaged in this year's School Board election the 2021 School Board election turnout was only a Meeker 11 percent with the student population of over 118 000 students and a staff of over 8 000 we must increase our voter turnout this time around I encourage members in our community and as president Jackson would say those in the viewing audience

076to participate in this year's School Board election by doing three things first research the candidates to truly know who has the best interest of all of our students teachers and staff second attend at least one candidate Forum to hear the candidates Express their views on the issues facing cyfair ISD and last and most importantly get out and vote election day is on November 7th and went once this agenda item is passed everyone in our community will have the opportunity to decide the makeup of our school board over the next four years for positions one through four we hold the power of the ballot let's use it thank you Teresa do we have a presentation on this this evening questions only to my right to my left do we want to put this on the consent

077agenda so if you would Holly foref the board will consider approving the agreement for the purchase of attendance credits netting chapter 48 funding for the 2023-2024 school year and delegating contractual authority to obligate the school district under Texas Education Code Tec 11.1511c4 to the superintendent and sadly there are no speakers on this topic this evening I cannot imagine a more scintillating topic to for the community to talk about we do have a presentation I believe Karen questions only we do have information that was contained in the board book so let me to look to my left this time Lucas any questions comments Debbie Julie Natalie are you there I guess no no questions or comments uh from Natalie Tom can you repeat that okay item 4f the board will consider approving the agreement for the

078purchase of attendance credits netting chapter 48 funding for the 2023-2024 school year and delegating contractual authority to obligate the school district under Texas Education Code Tec 11.1511c4 to the superintendent this material was in our board book and so I wanted to know did you have a question or comment no no questions or comments thank you I did have uh offline uh questions that I asked to address this and this is a a interesting uh nuance Karen can you give us a four minute over or four sentence overview of this for sentence that that may be difficult but it will be it will be brief Okay so so let me ask the questions that I want to elicit okay so the Old Law about four years ago you're either a 41 or a 42. that's correct

079now you're either 48 or 49 correct a property Rich district is a 49. it's a 49 correct okay now if you're a 49 you have two tests you have a tier one test and a tier two test that is correct for the tier tier one test if you fall into category it requires you basically to pay a penalty my words not the law that does not apply to us tier two there's another uh mathematical test that's applied that does not apply to us either so even though we are considered a rich property District we are not in any form of recapture that's correct we don't owe any recapture at this point however the law requires us to take a step as saying that we have to take an action as if we were recapture that

080is correct so the action we are taking is as if we were a recapture District even though we do not have any Financial recapture correct okay thank you those were the points I wanted the the viewing audience to understand but it also came up when we visited Senator bettencourt's office so they knew we were a 49 but they weren't quite certain if and they knew we were subject to the law on recapture but they weren't certain if we had to financially provide funds back to the state so so it's very complicated but it is important for for us to to understand where we are on this now for this Karen are you satisfied that uh that the motion that it's fine to move this to consent agenda or does this have to stand alone because

081I know we have an option we have to select I may ask defer to Marnie if she I mean I I'm fine with it being consent but I honestly since there's a they have to approve the purchase of the attendance credits I'm not sure they can move that to consent but right that's what the motion is and if it's on the consent agenda it's the consent to all the Motions okay there's nothing and we're not actually buying any attendance credits so you are correct you are correct so I don't okay so so may we move this to the consent agenda please Holly 4G the Border considered a resolution to proving the individual authorized to calculate the no new Revenue tax rate the voter approval tax rate and other truth and Taxation requirements there are no

082speakers on this topic this evening Karen is available for questions let me look to my left questions comments to my right none may we move this to the consent agenda and Natalie I'm sorry but but I didn't they don't show me your television screen so I presume that that you had no questions or comments yes no questions or comments and yes to the consent agenda okay thank you so so maybe I need to have a a tiny little monitor here uh so I I can see uh we'll put her up there hopefully I'll never have to be on the screen again you can just do it right there in person I do apologize well well everybody has reasons to uh to miss from time to time and I know to my left we've had three

083that have been on the screens maybe I'll be on the screen soon if we go to item uh 4H 4G has been moved to consent agenda Holly 4-H the board will consider approving the memorandum of understanding with the University of Texas Health Science Center of Houston part of the provision and administration of telemedicine services associated with Texas Child Health Access through telemedicine tc8 ATT component of the Texas Children's Mental Health Care Consortium TCM HCC once again questions only we did have material on this in our board book any questions um I do have a question if Mr Sampson can um come down oh why well Mark I think you're right it's not easy to sit in those seats without moving a little bit Mr C orsan um thank all the background information that you shared

084with the board prior to the meeting it was very helpful and this is something that is new for our district is that correct that we've not had this before oh sorry I it is about the memorandum of understanding with UT Health Science Center for the T chat service I'm sorry yes ma'am it's it's not new it's our second time yes ma'am we've had it since uh took place okay and it's been a great benefit for our students good and just a just affirm that parents must give approval before the service is accessible by students is that correct prior to any student receiving any services from the licensed professionals uh they are required to submit in the on the online portal consent that the parent has been notified okay paint in the past with a service

085since we started this uh opportunity for students in between 1400 and 1500 students wow that we're offering this because I think it's a great way of you know we talked about earlier with Dr Baker the access to Mental Health Services is something that we struggle with in Texas so this is really bridging that gap for parents it kind of starts the process for them in a safe place and then my understanding is those visits are limited the Telehealth visits are limited to four visits within two months and then the student is transferred hopefully to a lawn care long-term provider correct and that's how this program came about because there was a delay in individuals seeking out appointments and this this opportunity was provided so that in the interim they would be able to have continued

086services and hopefully refer out if need be that's fantastic you know I was just it just popped to my mind too I hadn't thought until now that it also removes that barrier that you know parents having to take off work and go get their kiddo and then take the their child to a a provider for an assessment it can be done while they're on campus and that would that helps the parent as well the consent can be done while on campus but for the actual Services those are offered after school hours Oh I thought the actual Services were during school hours it's just the the actual notification of the parents and of course the students and parents can set up the appointments during school hours but the actual therapeutic sessions do not take place during

087the regular hours and they're all virtual there I knew yeah I knew they were all virtual but school hours or on the weekends okay thank you for that clarification no problem maybe we move that to the consent agenda Holly 4i the board will consider renewing the agreement with Lone Star College to facilitate the training for certified nursing assistance CNA certification for practicum in health science students there are no speakers on this item once again questions only questions looking to my right to my left may we move this to the consent agenda how they so moved 4J the board will consider the adoption of non-business days for calendar years 2023 and 2024 for the Texas Public Information Act calendar no speakers on this topic any questions looking to my left looking to my right morning for

088the benefit of the viewing audience I didn't mean to wake you up I apologize what is a non-business day for a school board our school system rather so a new bill passed and it's just attempting to make non-business days under the Texas public information act more uniform across the state and so now there are designated non-business days under the Texas Public Information Act and the and the reason that's important is that the time period in which public entities provide information or go to the attorney general to get permission to withhold information that's required to be confidential under the law is within 10 business days and so it's an attempt to kind of make that more uniform because previously the Attorney General advised public entities that non-business days were any day that the business was closed

089or on skeleton staff and so of course that varied according to the public entity so there was as a decision at the state level to make that more uniform however recognizing that different public entities have different calendars like school districts and so you can designate up to 10 non-business days each year calendar year not school year so that's why we are designating them for the remainder of 2023 and then 2024. for us um we rarely need you know the full-time sometimes bigger requests you you may need the full time but for us sometimes it's the access to departments or campuses to get information when the district is closed so you'll note in there typically winter break spring break are the Thanksgiving break are the times that we'll designate because it's just difficult to get documents

090from departments Etc when when no one is there even though we have Fridays off during the summer we rarely had any problems anyway so that's why there's no summer dates designated but I will say we are closed more than just 10 days so we'll have to you know just every year look at the calendar and be thoughtful about those days all of that was well spelled out in in the handout but I did wonder knowing that we're closed on Fridays during the summer that that somehow only having 10 non-business days for a school system did not seem to be quite appropriate yes and um the winter break if you'll notice you know this coming year we do have to kind of decide um campuses aren't back but central office staff are back so we'll just

091have to be mindful and if we do need additional time then we can make certifications under the act so we'll just have to um it Janet Ward the paralegal for the district she really manages that process and does an amazing job and so she will make sure that we stay on top of that no matter what you know what days there are so we'll take care of it but you're right it for school districts um it's not quite enough but thank you very good thank you may we move this to a consent agenda Holly 4K the board will consider approving on first reading additions revisions or deletions to District policies there are no speakers on this topic this evening there are two parts to it one CKC local safety programs risk management emergency plans revise

092to CPC local office management records management revise uh questions looking to my right what this is I'm sorry can we just explain what this is there's not much detail here uh so that would be uh Teresa either you are Marnie CKC is that the policy there are two policies yes so CKC and CPC uh taspy recommendations uh to update some minor uh language within the policies for CKC safety programs that is just the inclusion of a of a hazard such as a trained derailment to be included in the emergency operation plan and then for CPC we're just clarifying uh the records manager using a consistent title as record manager versus a a specific title within our district such as the Director of General Administration so they're very minor tweaks and changes I'm not sure why

093the red lines are not included there yeah so so they were in the board book when when I went through it yeah I'm looking I'm looking at it here and I don't see that I think Mr Henry they they were there and then they they disappeared so you are right there's there's not the the detailed backup since this is first reading we'll have those uh make certain they're there by Monday but this is just the first reading so you're not going to be voting on those so I apologize for that I'm not sure since information is not there I'm going to not put this uh on the consent agenda we'll leave it separate uh but when I when I looked at it earlier today it was there because I found it interesting that we had

094to take into account the train derailment but there may be some glitch we'll we'll figure it out item 4L the board of consider approving on Dual reading additions revisions or deletions to District policies we have two on here there are no speakers on this topic this evening item one ffac local wellness and health services medical treatment revised to efb local instructional resources Library materials revise so ffac and we will get the red line to you but I believe Miss hood is here with us if you have yes there she is our fabulous um director of nursing but she um and I have but we actually started working on this before the law was passed but the revisions are to address primarily the change in the law to provide for the um the opioid antagonist um

095distribution and implementation of that program in our district and if you have any questions we can answer those for you but it's to implement the um the law and to we have training already Christina Cole except ride in and she and Melinda have everybody lined up to be trained and will be ready on day one to be compliant with that new law and that's why we are asking for a dual reading on ffac and we'll get you a hard copy of the red line to have at your place on Monday that way you can really look at it before you vote and if you have any questions about that prior to Monday we are here or if you have any questions Melinda's here Marnie I would note on efb so what was in the board

096book you had that purple draft stamped horizontally and it was difficult to read the the the the red underline under that purple stamp uh if y'all could tweak it and maybe just move draft up like in the header or a footer I mean I was able to get through it but it was certainly challenging yes and I actually uh took draft off I realized when the color and printed copies for you but left them on my desk so after we finished the presentation I will get those and bring those I'll walk up and get them and bring them down to you because I do agree when I saw it on the online that it was hard to read so I took it off for you guys to have a copy and then we are actually

097going to walk you through and talk to you about those and then answer up those changes Linda's going to start with that and answer any questions that you have so will that be tonight or will that be Monday that's right now right now okay good evening it's showtime yes it is good evening president Jackson board members and Dr Henry we want to thank you for the opportunity to share with you the work of the district's Library materials committee and also share with you the proposal for revisions to efb local uh you may I don't have a clicker is there a clicker down there I realize that I have a clicker thank you Leslie the magician so you may recall uh in the spring we shared with you that we were assembling a District Library committee

098and uh and then the facilities for that committee were going to be and have been myself and uh and Marnie and then we have two coordinators are part of that leading that committee and that's Dr Heather header Heather Bergman our curriculum instruction assistant superintendent and Jennifer garceski our district librarian sorry sorry mine is correcting me over here our district librarian and and uh and then the charge for this committee uh was to review the actual policy efb local uh the library materials and to also to determine whether there were modifications needed to this policy to the current policy and and then help us with forming a recommendation to bring to you so that you would consider as as uh as approving efb local now for this committee we actually followed the district process that we've

099been following for forming committees so it was an application process and so on the district website under committee our community our stakeholders were able to go there and uh click on the icon and be able to see what the charge of the committee is and and uh and the membership and they were able to apply to be a part of the committee this is just a a larger look at the different areas that were represented in the committee and I will tell you that that this group did a fabulous job with working through the committee they were very dedicated and committed each time that we met which I'll share in a little bit they were there for a couple of hours and even the last meeting we had I think they were there for almost

100three hours almost three hours well we had a huge uh interest in this in this committee we had right around stakeholders who expressed interest in serving in the committee and Marnie and I thought it was because we were you know facilitating it we're sure that was it but 800 and so we were very excited that we had that many uh that much interest in this committee and so we took all of those the applications and uh and we separated them into each of the different categories and then we lined up every member under each of the feeder patterns we wanted to make sure that we had representation from each of the feeder patterns and so like for example for parents and Librarians we had 12 that were represented one from each feeder pattern and then

101once we did that then we did a randomization so that it was was very fair with which parents were selected beyond the committee or which which Librarians would like to be in the committee and so we randomized the list and then we kept it we we kept that list so we would have all these alternates so which really came in handy because when we started calling and inviting uh the people that were selected based on their organization some of them were not able to serve for whatever reason and so we were able to go to the next one to the next one very systematic and uh and fair and so then and if there was if there happened to be a a vacancy for one of the feeder patterns then we did make contact with

102with the school snap feeder pattern to make sure that we did have representation um so the committee in in uh their work as I said their charge was to provide input on any modifications that uh that were needed and so the first thing that we did with uh with the committee was we share they we shared our current policy and so they really had time to dig into the current policy and the current regs and be able to provide that clear input I think I forgot a Never Gonna slide let me think yeah there's a slide missing backwards they were able to provide just very clear input we've actually we actually have had four meetings with them we had one on on May 9th May 16th June 1st so all of these were prior to

103uh to House Bill 900 becoming a law and then we had a meeting with them on July 25th and that was after the the bill had become a law and then we're going to have one additional meeting because we saw some discussion to do on on the regulations that go with with uh with a policy they're going to give us more input and suggestions on how we Implement what does it look like to actually Implement uh the policy but they had time to share and discuss all the processes that that we have in place they were able to look at our current uh uh practice for for collections for adding them and also for the reconsideration for the challenges as we were going through different committees our meetings we reviewed with them what the bill

104was saying because it wasn't a law yet and uh and then we collect a lot of feedback from them they did Gallery walks so these pictures that you're assuming kind of give you kind of give you an idea of the different ways that they participated and and How We Gather gathered information there were Gallery walks they did a lot of Post-its they did table discussions they worked in whole groups and then they would share they had some feedback cards at their table in case they just didn't want to share out loud and then uh Jennifer also had an opportunity for them to give feedback electronically and then we would take all that feedback and Dr Claiborne's office analyzed all that feedback and provided that first and then we would share with them the next the

105next meeting we had regarding what the feedback was was indicating and then that last meeting as I said that we had the 25th by that time House Bill 900 hat was now a law so they were able to really dig into that and then be able to apply that to what what recommendations they had uh for the policy and then as I said we have another another meeting that we're going to be setting up so that we can really work on those uh regulations thank you so I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer and she's going to actually walk and give you a summary of house bill 900. okay so over the summer actually on June 13th of 2023 Governor Abbott signed House Bill 900 which is also known as the reader act reader

106is an acronym and it stands for restricting explicit and adult designated educational resources and at this time I'd like to share the highlights of the reader act thank you of the reader act which impact our efb policy and practices of the cyfair ISD libraries okay which one do I push nope that's the pointer click the green one there we go nope that's the one that's the sorry the big green button I did the topic the big green button there we go all right here we go so the reader act um it is effective for the 23-24 school year it requires the Texas State library and archives commission to adopt mandatory standards for school library collection development are basically how Librarians assess um select and deselect library books and materials these new standards must have a

107majority approval of the State Board of Education and they'll be reviewed and updated every five years the mandatory standards are required to prohibit The Possession acquisition and purchase of harmful material material rated as sexually explicit material that is pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable material the mandatory standards also prohibit removing material from a collection solely based on the ideas contained within the material or the personal background of the author or the characters within the book furthermore the reader act requires entities that sell Library materials to Texas public schools to evaluate the content and apply ratings of sexually explicit or sexually relevant to materials that meet these definitions Additionally the reader act prohibits vendors from selling any books to a district before issuing ratings related to sexually relevant and sexually explicit materials previously sold to schools and

108it prohibits the vendors from selling books rated sexually explicit to Public Schools the ACT requires the vendor to issue recalls for any books rated sexually explicit that it's previously sold to Texas schools and it requires the vendors to develop and submit to the Texas Education Agency a list of each book containing sexually relevant or explicit material sold to a district prior to April 1st of 2024 the vendors must repeat this process each year including an updated list by September 1st of 2024. Additionally the reader act allows tea to review books that were not rated by a vendor and tmtea if they determined that a book should be rated differently from what the vendor designated the vendor must comply with the change or the vendor will be added to a list of vendors from with from

109which a school district may not purchase materials finally it does require parental consent for a student to check out sexually relevant books the reader act does include a timeline for implementation by the Texas State library and archives commission vendors who sell the books to schools and to the school districts major dates include September 1st of this year which is when the law takes effect by April 1st of 2024 each Library material vendor must submit their initial list to the Texas Education Agency of each book sold to school districts containing explicit and relevant material this will be followed with an updated list submitted by September 1st of 2024 and vendors will repeat the process every year thereafter finally the reader act requires school districts to review the content of each book in their Library catalog that

110is rated as sexually relevant material by the vendor so by January 1st of 2025 districts will determine in accordance with their local policy whether to retain each book and post on the district's website a report of a report that includes the title of each sexually relevant material the district's decision regarding the material and at which campus the material is located and I'm turning it over to Marnie it's the big green you know button so wanted to talk to you about the changes that we are proposing to the local policy and we broke them into two different groups um policy changes that were required by the act and then policy changes that were the consensus of the library materials committee and so the first change and I believe there will be in the legal policy there

111will be definitions and in our regulation we will also have them but the policy itself the red line which you'll see in front of you we added at the very beginning the protection from inappropriate material now we already had last year we added um this section and this year we expanded it the red line you will see it includes the specific information required by HB 900 which is the prohibition against harmful materials sexually explicit material or obscene material and then there are actually definitions in state law and then the reference to material that's prohibitive it's pervasively vulgar or it can be removed if educationally unsuitable that comes from the Supreme Court decision and reference there and then in the regulation we will provide more information so that when the policy is implemented it will hopefully

112be a little bit easier for us to discern in addition to the information we get from the vendors and tea and so and you'll also see a change to the collection development standards previously T slack is as it's known but the Texas State library and archives commission has always provided standards that were guides to be implemented by districts as it fit within their collection development practices HB 900 clarifies that t slack will provide those guidelines and they continue to be advisory with the exception of the collection development standards and what t-slack puts in place for collection development standards those are mandatory and those will be provided we do have the framework of of what those are going to be obviously from the ACT but t-slack will provide even more specific guidance and so once those

113come out we will incorporate those possibly into the regulation because our policy says we will follow those standards and then kind of the implementation of it will be in regulation in those by Statute must be reviewed at least once every five years and then challenged resources as you've heard from Jennifer miss karsteki a few minutes ago really the focus in HP 900 was on the identification of books and collection development there really wasn't anything in the law about challenges to instructional or excuse me Library material resources except the clear clarification in the prohibition that a library material may not be removed solely on the basis of the ideas in the material or the personal background of the author or the personal background of the characters in the material and so we did add that to

114efb local and then some of the other changes you you will see come from our library materials committee and a lot of great discussion um a lot of discussion on the changes that we made last year and how those were implemented how a lot of them worked and then how some of them didn't work as well as we thought they were it would work in practice so we got lots of good feedback on that and there was lots of good discussion particularly about the reconsideration process and um that I thought was some of the best discussion and you know actual parents in the room sharing their experience with the reconsideration process and things and their feedback was really important in particular in some of the changes that we made because it was really good feedback

115and it helped us understand from both aspects of the librarian aspect and the campus aspect of administering that process and then the parent aspect of going through it but to start from the top the policy committee feedback we wanted to change last year we said all materials before they were added into any of our Collections and as you'll recall kind of industry standard terms that the publishing industry uses are the collections the juvenile collection the young adult a collection and then the adult collection and we said that all materials needed to be read in their entirety and recommended or reviewed meaning professionally reviewed by by industry standard periodicals and recommended for that collection as well as that grade span and what we found in implementing that is for non-fiction books that were truly non-fiction not

116literary nonfiction which you know hanging out with Librarians for the last year I learned that literary nonfiction is those are like memoirs but non-fiction may be an LSAT prep book or um some of the the books they were you know giving us examples of and so there were not any reviews and um not many people were willing to read you know the entire dictionary or thesaurus or the you know the SAT prep book and so we realized kind of functionally that the purely non-fiction books we were we were not able to add those to the collection as readily because there weren't reviews and recommendations so it was the consensus to remove those we also focused um that requirement on the young adult and the adult collections because we learned for instance as we were opening

117Brosnahan and trying to fill in entire Elementary library that for in the juvenile collection there's actually not a review on every single volume of Captain Underpants and so books such as that which you know some of those juvenile collection books and multiple chapters we were having a hard time getting those into the collection because there wasn't a review or uh someone who had reviewed and recommended it and so just the Practical aspect of it the committee recommended that change and the Librarians were in great support of that um the informal reconsideration part of the reconsideration request process was something again kind of based on a very collaborative conversation between you know parents and Librarians about what worked and that there was a real recommendation on both sides that the informal reconsideration process be one step

118not a step that is you know optional that it be step one in a reconsideration process and so we clarified that in the local policy at their recommendation that that is step one and it starts with the parent the librarian and a campus administrator and that there is a true conference so that the concerns with the material can be explained by the complainant and um you know a dialogue happened and hopefully addressed and the timeline so as part of that process if you do move into a formal reconsideration request after the informal piece it was the timeline in the policy we moved it from calendar days to school days and that was Universal um that was a something that we just didn't realize last year especially say for instance there may be one copy of

119a book and you know five and six members on the reconsideration process and they were having to get it read and passed you know amongst the committee in a relatively short time period and it didn't take into account non-business days holidays and things like that and we also got lots of good feedback about that formal reconsideration committee and there was agreement that it should be a district level committee and that the participation should be from a district-wide wide committees such as how we selected committee members for the library materials committee so like our other district-wide committees there would be application and opportunity to participate and we've we'll talk about in the regulation and that's part of of what we will continue to flesh out in the in the upcoming meetings but that's the concept is

120that it will be a district level Review Committee but that representation from each campus where the material is located would be on that committee we also did talk about if it is say an elementary level book and it's at 40 campuses that we would have flexibility within the policy to possibly go to feeder pattern Representatives Etc if if it is an um an unwieldy number on the committee but generally speaking if say it is at a secondary level and a book is at two campuses or three campuses then those three campuses would be represented and that would be what the librarian administrator and a parent from that campus on the committee and that because of it being a district level Review Committee we did make corresponding changes to any appeal process where it would go

121to the superintendent and then directly to the board and that's really kind of the most important there were there were a few tweaks um here and there but those are really the most important uh changes to the policy and thank you very much to Teresa for going upstairs and saving me and getting that for use as you'll see without that big purple draft it is a lot easier to read Mr Jackson and I'm going to turn it over to Linda so she can do some acknowledgments so before we we take some questions I as I said earlier that the committee was phenomenal and the time that they put that they invested was beyond what we even asked them to do and so we do have a couple of the representatives here I believe so if

122you served on the committee I think we have a couple of people here where do you stand yeah yeah we did have about 50 Representatives on the committee and uh and we invited them to come and some are watching and we had a couple that were able to go so I just want to thank them again for all their work so we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have questions let me go to the right Scott thank you for the presentation my boy um question on the HR HP 900 redirect it says the uh the guidelines for vendors are going to be determined a book rating system do you all believe the book writing system will be different than the current system we have today yeah um and so they will as I

123understand it I guess step one is going to be defining the or not defining because it's defined force and statute but denoting the books that are sexually explicit or those that are sexually relevant and those definitions as I said are statutory and then from that that list will go to tea and then that list will come to us some districts are um and and how they approach it I think everyone has to make their own decision I think some people are waiting for that we had already started looking at our policy at the you know at the consensus request of the board and really Dr Henry had asked that we you know look at it because we knew last year when we started making changes that we were gonna that this was gonna have to

124be something we continue to look at so we had already started this process and we I mean the law goes into effect September one and so we just really felt like we needed to start identifying you know identifying this and putting it in our policy and you know getting our arms around implementing it rather than waiting so I do think that with those tags Mr Henry that or with those definitions that there will probably be some tags within it but I don't see the vendors and I think it would have to start with the Publishers but I don't see them coming up with something extremely user friendly um for schools like the motion picture industry that to me would be ideal because you know when you I remember my kiddos were in middle school I'd

125be like okay PG-13 and you could look and you could see you know why it was PG-13 and you knew you know every once in a while a Disney movie when it wasn't G then they were you know probably had some farting in it I mean they you know crude humor I mean you you kind of knew when something you know went from G to PG we don't really have that from the publishers and so um and I think that will take an additional law and probably a nationwide movement but they will at least Define eventually identify um those two categories of books but we will be able to you know at the local level and we're you know to apply those um when we have um when we have the guidance from Tei okay

126I think there's answering there um just kidding can you please answer buried in there somewhere can you please define for me the definition of sex explicit versus sexually relevant what are those two differentiators because I don't see those particularly in your notes or the law uh particularly can you maybe talk about that please yes so let me actually pull um it's statutory and um so sexually explicit and we those will actually be in the um efb legal and then we actually plan to because it's easier to access we plan to put those definitions in efb regulation so we operationally have it there uh handy but that I mean find that for you apologize so I want to make sure I'm reading it from the foreign okay so sexually explicit material is defined in section 33.021

127A of the Education Code so that's 33.021 a of the Education Code and I can send this to you in writing so you're not having to write it down but it is a material that contains any description and that's written description illustration photographic image video image or audio file that describes depicts or portrays sexual conduct and sexual conduct as defined in the Texas Penal Code 43.25 and that description is done in a way that's patently offensive and patently offensive as defined in section 43.21 of the Texas Penal Code and so in our regulation when we finalize it but in the draft I will have that and then right underneath it I we will have sexual conduct is defined in 43.25 of the penal code to mean sexual contact and that's the touching I mean I'll

128read it as written if you would if you're Comfort oh you would okay because it's I can look it up okay and then patently offensive is so offensive on its face as to a front the current Community standards of decency and so sexually explicit has the same definition it involves sexual conduct but it is not patently offensive for that's not exactly how it's defined but I think that's the easiest way to describe it and so I would say they are degrees and so if it's sexually explicit meaning it involves the specific definition of sexual conduct and it is patently offensive in in its description if it is just sexual conduct in the material then it will be sexually relevant and that will as Jen said under the ACT require parent permission was there an answer

129in there somewhere somewhere is an answer yes um my question goes to we have the definition under Pico line and we have that we can also set age appropriate standards for our policy is that correct yes so as a board we can put in age-appropriate standards for textbooks and lots of Migrant material and those things is that correct yes you can as a board you can I would suggest as a board you're not giving this to Marnie as an example that we put together definitions of what these things are what is a sex act what is implied nudity what is implied sex act because right now we're given that thing to principals and other people and we really have this wiggle room of trying to figure out what is educationally appropriate and some of the

130things I've seen I don't think were educationally appropriate to our community they may be to certain people in our district but not to our community I think we need to give them better guidance so they can make a better informed decision on what they're looking at because what someone's decision on what is something that's appropriate and someone else's may not be the same guide it just gives a lot of wiggle room for some people and then it causes a lot of this consternation between our community the students and the parents that is my suggestion that I think we maybe should look at I know I provide the policy for you a model policy that we should look at because I know we have talked offline the reader act does not provide those definitions unfortunately on

131purpose to get it passed and those are things I think we as a board through age-appropriate standards can do and I think it's important to do because this this gives teachers because I hear from a lot of teachers all the time that they want more guidance on what they should do because I've talked to some teachers I just threw out everything because I didn't want to do it and that's not a good thing to do so I just think that'd be a great thing for us to do and that's that's my supposition that we should look at I know it's a longer process Tom but just something we should think about in the regulation having like I said because there are statutory definitions but you're exactly right Mr Henry um how what is patently offensive

132so offensive on its face as to a front current Community standards of decency I do see that some some people there may be some discussion about how that's applied so the definition is there it's the application of the definition and so we have talked about in the regulation trying to provide um whether it was examples or um thought about how we could kind of quantify the age kind of a appropriate standards we can um we can talk a little bit more about that but but yes we because that was some of the feedback from the committee we need some operational definitions I understand the statutory definition but you know what does what does that mean and so we we did try to add um where in the draft of the regulation but we started getting

133into the regulation and then I said guys we've got to make sure the policy is adopted first and then we will you know implement the regulation but we have started that work and we do understand that we can also talk about putting more in the policy um if that's the consensus of the board um some of the things that we were talking about in the regulation putting in the policy we can we can do it either way I appreciate that because I know unfortunately lawyers you'll make things intentionally vague not on purpose but it comes across to the Layman like myself is intentionally vague sometimes so this makes it difficult for us to read things on face value and get a consensus of what it means to me versus someone else and that's the only

134thing I think giving good clear Direction uh from the board and what our policies are for the public is very important so but thank you very much for everything you've done in the committee as well Natalie I too would like to thank the committee for their hard work and I want to commend the administration for leading that work and really being thoughtful about the process as we continue um Scott asked one of the questions I had thank you Scott and then Marnie you just answered the second question I had which I'd like to see that policy not just regulation because regulation isn't actually policy you have a little bit more detail and so I would love to see what that would look like and then I also would I also propose that we adopt the

135age-appropriate language and those definitions and terms such as Scott suggested so that's all thank you foreign going to my left Lucas thank you to the library committee I know it's a lot of work thank you to our Administration for putting that together so agreed with Mr Henry on defining uh terms and definitions because this past year we saw a pretty wide range of what someone found to be not appropriate versus someone else finding appropriate and I think the board has a job here that's our job to Define what those terms are so I would support that next I wanted to go back to looking at on page six at the end of it last year we were this past year we wanted to be able to view if a book was challenged I had actually

136recommended that we would have a copy of that provided to the board I see it struck here can you give us any feedback and guidance as to why it struck that the board would not receive a copy but it would just go to the superintendent of the uh the decision and regarding the recommendation last sentence last paragraph and so it did state that the Board of Trustees the superintendent and other appropriate administrators and the complainant shall receive copies of the term determination it now reads the superintendent and complainant shall receive copies of the determination because we um I believe and I'm trying to get back yeah I thought we put it somewhere or actually because the way we did like for instance the expedited review there were some things that were not going to be

137necessary because moving it to a district level committee and then the board being like almost the immediate appeal was why we can certainly put that back it was that the board was um the superintendent so the superintendent would get a copy of the determination because uh he or she would be the the next level of review and then the board after that and since we accelerated that appeal process that was really just an attempt to twos streamline it and make it more similar to our current appeal process in other areas but I certainly have zero concern with the board and the superintendent and and honestly as I'm processing it out loud with you if that's the next two appeal levels it's it's fine for it to to be received up front that's a that's a

138good point that's why I always like to have multiple eyes looking at things because sometimes the way I process it might be a little different so we'll add that back I did I did not read so to your you mentioned a appeal to the board I did not read that in the policy maybe I just missed it it yeah so if you'll look on page seven um under appeal we changed where it will start at level three and so level three is the superintendent and then the next level would be level four so um I can okay and I can be more explicit that's why I didn't see it um I wanted to go back to one of the the so over on page three it now reads item eight so one of the criteria

139indicates having received State and or national awards so to our I have a question on if we see if we're looking at the awards that a book receives replacement in a school library is it relevant to which what category that award was given I.E is the award given as a book meant for adult readers or is the award given for a book meant for children readers I would I was going to say I'm going to let Miss garstecki answer that from an operational standpoint these are kind of the The Collection development standards so these are the goals I my understanding is that it would need to be a state or national award relevant to K-12 readers that's correct um that's correct but so in this last year we had a number of awards that were

140given as a in my understanding is that awards were given as a not K through 12 but books that were relevant towards a adult reader that's my understanding maybe that's incorrect and it's fine if it is so we had resources that had Awards but the awards were for like an adult reader Awards correct okay there were multiple there were multiple types of awards just a combination of different Awards understood and where I'm going with it is that I recommend to the board that we actually insert language here specifically calling out awards given to K-12 readers sure if we're going to place it into our policy yeah I think that I I do definitely think that's the intent I don't know that [Music] um if there was a a book that received an award outside the

141K-12 realm um I would probably the way this process works think that there were maybe other reasons it was part of the collection if that were the sole reason it was recommended as part of the collection that would that would not be consistent with what I understand the purpose of that standard to be so I think having that clarification is a good one yep stood one of the questions that I also had was the amount of so right now hb900 addresses this idea of sexually explicit versus sexually relevant it does not express the idea regarding violence and so to my fellow colleagues I'm specifically recalling pictures that are in fact violent I actually don't really want to repeat them in front of the general viewing audience but includes things such as cutting use of weapons

142Etc and I'm wondering if we should adopt some form of perspective on a term of what does the term violence mean and whether or not it has a place we just got done hearing from Dr Barker about influence and mental health and if we have books that are I mean good Lord we had a challenge book this past year that had a picture of a gun in a girl's mouth in a graphic novel that's a disturbing image right do we need to adopt the standard or at least address the topic of violence in addition to hb900 so that's a question that I'd like to raise and evaluate among our colleagues and see if we can address that in policy itself that's all my questions for now doctor or president Jackson Debbie well first of all

143uh I too want to thank our library committee for all the work they've done this has been no small task indeed and I am very impressed when I was reading through the policy earlier today with all of the work that has gone into it in such a short amount of time my uh my thanks to you for that I guess um with all due respect um Lucas I have you know when you um we talk about the appeal level and receiving in we are the final appeal so therefore I kind of uh I have a concern about the the uh the reports coming to us before that appeal process it's like when we we have a when we have a level four hearing and we don't get all the materials until right before the hearing

144and uh so to um to validate the work of the level four appeal process I'm just have a concern about the Board of Trustees having that information [Music] before that that that would be one concern and I respect your concern about violence but where where do we stop defining what constitutes different things violence uh you know I I will tell you I have seen video games and to me that's where I think probably the students maybe that we need to be most concerned about uh seeing violence is seen in the video games in the video rooms where they uh at different places where they play video games I have maintained for a long time that video games that are violent are a big part of our problems so while I can appreciate trying to Define

145violence I'm not sure just exactly definitely a gun in someone's mouth is violence but I know from from their back where where does it start I mean to me Bullies Are violent and that's something we deal with every day in our schools unfortunately and not only in our schools on street corners you know shopping malls they're everywhere so you know I'm just not sure where how far we can go with all of this and what what you or I may maintain is violence some other parent may not you know and The Violet book should not be with our younger students anyway as I understand it that would be at the adult level reading and uh those kids will get that material no matter what because they just have to go to Target or Walmart and

146buy the buy the book so I'm just I'm a little conflicted I guess is what I'm saying about that I I I just want to be careful I don't want I want to see as a trustee I want to do the right thing for our school district and for our students but I also don't want to be in the position of deciding which books are banned and which are not and I think this policy is making great strides to put parameters in place and I think that once we get the regulations from tea that that's going to help us a lot in the process of uh where do we draw the line and like I said do um are are we supposed to be making decisions for society are are we supposed to be making

147decisions for our own families and so there's a fine line there because what what I know there are some books that I've read that others felt were inappropriate they dealt with incest it was a high school level reading book I believe deals with incest and things that are totally inappropriate but it is some of our students realities it is the real world for some of our kids and I have felt that if that book helps that student come forward to a teacher a counselor or an administrator it has served its purpose and not everyone lives in a Pollyanna world where families are perfect and you know everything is just perfect it's incumbent upon us as parents to establish what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for our children and yes you have standards for your

148kids and I have standards for my I had standards for my children I have standards for my grandchildren as to what I feel is appropriate so I just see that we're we're kind of in a Crossroads here at a Crossroads I guess and I think that that we need to do without a doubt what the law states and and follow our tea regulations whether we Step Beyond that I don't honestly know if I'm comfortable with that that's my two cents worth Julie thank you Mr President um I also want to thank the library material committee for all their hard work and just for a clarification I know we um shared how the members of the committee were selected through the application process and through a randomization process but in addition to that just full transparency

149each board member was also allowed to go to the list of applicants and select someone who had not been prior selected prior to be a also be a member of that committee so again full transparency I looked at that list and there was a Middle School parent that had that middle school was not already represented on the committee and that's who I chose so to have an uh another Middle School Parent from a middle school that had not been was not represented to be on the committee um uh I do think that the revised policy as presented is an improvement on our prior policy obviously the policy that we came up with and passed last fall at the very beginning of school year here we are again A year later um was had a lot

150of changes it created a lot of uh there was a lot of work a lot of energy that went into implementing that policy and here we are a year later I appreciate that we're looking at changes based upon input from so many key stakeholders I think that only makes the policy better um a couple things about the proposed changes one obviously the goal is to comply with state law that's just a basic foundational thing we have to do is to comply with state law um uh you know one thing about HB 900 is it really takes the onus off of independent school districts for making these decisions on what book falls under what category we don't have to Define ages or categories it's going to be done um by the vendors and by the tea

151so it really it takes that that off of us of having to say what kind of book this is what category it falls under that will be done by someone else and we will be implementing that when they when they provide that list to us um one thing I also like about the post changes is that we um centralizes some of the key processes like the reconsideration process versus having it be decentralized one thing that's a strength of Cipher ISD is that we tend to have a good balance between centralized processes and functions and decentralized and I think our prior policy it was decentralized and we learned that it was probably better to centralize the reconsideration process and be consistent across the district so I I think that's a good step um Marnie I do

152have some very specific questions to walk through the proposed changes um on page two under protection from inappropriate material um first paragraph the last sentence it says determined by administrative regulation I was conf I wasn't sure is that Cipher isd's Administration administrative regulation or tea or both um well it will ultimately be both but we at the request of the committee we had agreed to try and provide through administrative regulation a little bit more guidance and definition specifically for educationally unsuitable um and yeah and pervasively vulgar there's actually some Supreme Court not not in this line of cases but that you can kind of extrapolate for um pervasively vulgar and I've I've shared some drafts of that with the committee but that would be through administrative regulation and that's some of the work that we

153still need to do so it's cypherosd okay that's good um under collection development standards so I understand because I've read the HB 900 thoroughly the mandatory collection development standards I understand that but then the voluntary standards for school library Services what what does that refer to what library Services is that and that's the that's the language from the statute which is why I added and services uh you know I don't candidly I'm assuming that they because t-slack does both um K-12 libraries and public libraries I think probably public libraries provide some additional services but since it was explicitly in the statute I added that and then I talked and I said well you know we do check out Chromebooks we do I mean they do you know be some voluntary standards that come as well

154okay or they always they they've always had voluntary standards for Library Services okay all right I just was con I just was that was something specific in the statute that I was confused about um Okay so under now I'm on page four under parent consideration before I go to that right above parent consideration we're the committee was comfortable with our chart where it has grade span and content access level was the committee comfortable with that yes and actually we had we had a lot of discussion um about that and we we went a little back and forth um the really the question was about sixth grade and um putting it with because it was a little confusing where the collection base level to not be within the grade span for middle school and so we

155made a change um and then really our middle school librarians on the committee um said we just really feel like we you know we need to speak to this we really feel like sixth grade their their base collection should be Juvenile and then opt into young adult as opposed to their base collection being young adult and opting in to the adult collection and you know really the we talked about it and the parents and administrators on the committee we just we said you know what we are going to defer to the expertise of our middle school librarians and so the committee changed it back so we we went back and forth on that well no I appreciate that they were they were I had a seat at the table and could share their experiences and

156their knowledge and their expertise and the pair I'm the the committee was very vocal too about uh parent permission about that they really wanted to rely a lot on that parent making the decision for for their child always think about the policy that we introduced a year ago was that the parent has ultimate control beginning to end 100 on what books their children have access their own child has access to which that leads to my my next question under parent consideration District staff may assist a student in selecting Library material for Choice reading however the ultimate determination of appropriateness and access to library materials that's a good addition four I I wrote in mine for a student remains with that student's parent so just reinforcing that it's four right it's 4A student remains with that

157student's parent that is a suggestion I have frenetic just to be very clear that the parent consideration each individual student the parent has the ultimate determination for their own student also you know we say parent throughout all this and and even in HB uh 900 it talks about parents are the primary decision makers regarding a student's access to library material is there any need to expand the definition of parent Guardian or or is it just it's it's just understood I mean all of our students have parents so is it but is it just understood and that's not necessary apologize parent is defined under chapter 26 in and of itself to be um you know biological adoptive parent or a person standing in the parental relation to a child in the absence of a parent and

158so but you're I mean I could I can I'm not trying to make any extra work I'm just gonna make sure that that would include anyone who has ultimate accountability and responsibility for a student yeah but we can certainly say in the beginning when we say parent that that is um parent or Guardian kindergarten I can add or Guardian throughout okay just to be just to recognize through our adults who are Guardians um under challenge resources the first sentence a parent of a District student a I think it should say District student who is 18 years of age or older or any District resident just reinforce it's a District student just to be consistent on page five under guiding principles the following principles shall guide the board and staff in responding to challenges of Library

159materials I would like to suggest that we add the principles shall guide the board staff and reconsideration committees that those principles also guide reconsideration committees does that make sense yes yes I'm sorry that's okay taking notes and you're and you're correct um that's even on like the forms that we're gonna adopt that's the okay um number three it says access to challenged material shall not be restricted for students during the reconsideration process as except as provided in this policy but that actually was removed so just do we just take that out that we don't we no longer have that um exception for the expedited initial review yes since we moved it to the district uh level which I think is a good positive pain that's a good catch okay so now I'm on Page Six

160under formal reconsideration under the reconsideration committee should generally include a campus librarian administrator and parent from each campus or campus feeder pattern where the challenge material is located at multiple campuses is really what we're talking about but may include fewer Representatives should we should we have a minimum number or a minimum composition I mean I understand we don't want to have 40 people on the reconsideration committee but should we say there should be at least well we've talked about adding more detail in the regulation okay um but this was actually a fairly big discussion at the committee too about they didn't want the Committees to be unwieldy if there were sure um we're only giving 45 days now um to complete a reconsideration yes and if we're sharing materials and so that was um but

161we can I can look at that and see but probably that level level of granularity is typically going to be in an operational regulation okay no no problem um on the next page under frequency of review so after a library material has been reviewed through the formal reconsideration process it shall not be reviewed again through the reconsideration process within five years so cannot be reviewed formally or informally or just formally it through the process and so the process includes informal formal so it's both appeal Etc and that was and that was actually another um uh discussion about um aligning with the the new T slack um review cycle and then but we do say unless it's reviewed through the regular Library maintenance schedule we didn't want to because our Librarians do have to weed Collections

162and they do it by copyright um or public publication circulation date things that they'll look at because we only have so much space and so we didn't want to inhibit their ability through a regular weeding process um Something's Got a old what do you all anyway they were explaining it to me no no I remember when I was a volunteer in the library we would if books hadn't been checked out for so long we took them off the shelves because we weeded them out and to make room for books that the students were interested in right um in that same sentence uh it talks about uh five years from the date of reconsideration should we be specific and say five years from the date of written determination by the committee is at the start five

163years from when somebody first raised the question or is it five years from it should be five years from the date of the written determination by the committee and maybe that's granular as well but it's going to be specific okay that's all my nitpicky ones good yes okay sorry that's okay my last comments then are not specifically about the content of the the policy but just um uh the issue of implementation um I am just very aware that when we implemented this new policy a year ago it created a lot of um uh work and great work was done by our Librarians and classroom teachers to categorize their books inventory their books you know create the online um inventory I mean so much great work was done and it was a lot while we were

164trying to start school I'm I want to be conscientious of the implementation of this uh any revised policy or revised regulations that we are respectful of not asking our Librarians and classroom teachers to do something that may not be required um that that I so I would encourage us to uh be patient with the process of this law being implemented so when we looked at the timeline um let me go back to the hb900 uh when we looked at the Timeline the we actually are not responsible for conducting an initial content review and submitting an initial report until January of 2025. obviously we don't want to wait till then but we don't necessarily have to start right now asking our Librarians to start pulling books off of shelves in anticipation of this book might not

165be okay it might be on the list um I think it's it's it's a warrants um uh caution and patience with um the process that the state legislature has put in place where it's supposed to go to tea is going to write the rules they're going to send us a list and we will we are supposed to respond to that list I'm concerned that we try to get ahead of tea and then we just get all tangled up uh and we've made we've asked him people to do things that maybe they didn't have to do or maybe we've uh we're just getting in the head of tea and I think it's it's warrants that we be patient and wait for guidance from the Texas Education Agency as requested in in statute and and house bill

166900. so I I think that we should respect and honor the law that was passed by our state legislatures and let it go through its process without trying to get ahead of it that's my thought on that um my only other concern or just something just for us to also think about and again I think this will come out when Tea Works through its rules is the impact on our students who take advanced placement or dual credit classes especially dual credit these are college level classes they are reading books that maybe we would not necessarily have in our libraries but maybe it's required for them maybe it's required to pass the AP Literature test or it's required to complete your dual credit work um so I think we need maybe need to I'm hoping some

167guidance will come with how school districts will partner with or work with our uh our local community colleges and we make we ensure that we are not doing we're not negatively impacting our students who are Advanced Learners so EFA would be the policy that deals with instructional materials so if a book is part of a course it's not it's not applicable to efb now if there is a library material that as part of the um as as part of the assignment you you know you get a research book you do something a library material can become an instructional resource and so that's why Library materials are oftentimes instructional resources but a required reading for an AP class for instance or a dual credit class is going to be covered under EFA that's part of the

168reason this board chose to to split those policies not every school district did they chose to address both materials under EF but you all made the decision a year ago to split and in large part because it I think it made it easier to address Library materials separately than instructional materials but I agree with you we continue to you know we continue to look at both policies similarly but know that um dual credit and AP are going to be looked at differently but our long-time practice in the district is to and I'll let Linda speak to this a curriculum practice but we do provide information about the books and then parents provide permission give permission they provide we've been doing this for a couple years now parents are providing written permission regarding the books that

169are being used in the classroom and if they want an alternate book then we provide that as well well and I think that's just actually the best policy across the board right that parents are engaged and have again are the ultimate decision makers on the books that their own and their own students have access to a new life so those are all my questions thank you for your patience first let me say thank you to the library committee Not only was this a lot of work there was a lot of emotional stress involved in doing this work this has been an emotional topic now for several years not just in our community but across the entire United States and it and when you're facing emotional situations like this and it's your name in your face

170doing the worst there's additional stress being placed on you and I just want to say thank you for stepping up thank you for taking charge of this it was not easy on many different fronts uh and we're aware of that a couple of observations first to my colleagues I think you did a fine job reading the document even with the the purple uh highlighter you know I really thought it might have been bright pink and recognition to movies that are out but but purple was chosen I would speak against the board taking a position on violence uh we have books that talk about war if you've ever read a Jack London book let me tell you it's full of violence uh I would never be one to say that our children cannot read Jack London

171and the list goes on and on you want to read a book about Quantum Parker let me tell you there's plenty of violence in it I don't know that it's our job to to Shield our children from those war is violent our country was created in the Revolutionary War uh I was in Midtown today over lunch talking to a business group and oddly enough they wanted me to talk about one of my presentations The Lion Sleeps Tonight It's all about the Battle of Trenton that was violent that was very violent one of the slides that I had in there I talked about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow well guess what that came from an actual situation that occurred in the early stages of the American Revolution The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and how the Headless

172Horseman became headless is very violent I do not think as a board that this is an area that it's our job to seek out the definition it is a slippery slope in which we go on it we can never recover I have only one voice but I will not be part of that and I will not support it I do think that policy needs to stay policy and the fine details should be down in the regulations I would disagree with one of my colleagues on parent if we wanted to bring out the concept of who a parent is that should be at the beginning of the document parent herein is as defined as and there's no need to go throughout everywhere listing all the different potential categories of of parent it it's very hard for

173trustees to to deal with policy because we want to get down into the specifics and detail and it is a significant challenge one of my colleagues spoke about shifting and would be looking over on page four from a grade span to to an age span you know you know once again if we move outside of grades uh it it presents different challenges I was 16 as a high school senior in my high school we had 19 year old kids uh and we have those year spans throughout our district I think the grade span approach makes good sense I spent a fair amount of time talking at different times with one of our state representatives who came up with the idea very early on about Shifting the responsibility for the books to the publisher I applauded

174him on his thinking and his work and I said that the work on this really needed to be done at the state level and at the tea level I think we need to permit the process started by the state to unfold the the law provides first state agency to come up with certain working definitions that's their job it's our job then to take those and if they need refinement we can but I don't think that from a policy perspective we want to get in front of that action I think it creates additional work another observation that that I I would make and we talked about this and I appreciate my colleague bringing it up when when our representative was was talking about moving the responsibility to to the publisher we had that discussion here at

175the board level if that discussion became law we were already developing our own policy wouldn't that create double work at that time we felt the need that we had to go ahead and address this and we did so I don't want to create additional work by getting ahead of the state agency that has been directed to provide us guidance I think the number of books that were probably talking about are remarkably few and I would not encourage the expenditure of tremendous resources ahead of the fact in this area so those are my overarching comments I did have certain detailed comments I do appreciate everything that my colleagues brought up because I think these are all important these are in fact discussions that we have to have just because we don't agree with everybody else doesn't

176matter we still have to have these discussions and the discussions are good and out of that we will find the appropriate path forward so having said that as I am often want to do I will Circle back around on topics that engender a fair amount of conversation to see if there are additional comments questions observations that need need to be made obviously we'll have another bite at this apple let me start to my right Scott no I'm not going to need to be that horse but thank you Natalie nothing further thank you let me go to my left Lucas Debbie Julie once again thank you to the committee uh much good hard work still more work to be done and once again thank you to the board I thank everybody who's being sensitive everybody that

177did their homework on this topic and that's how we'll move forth did you have comments uh Marnie so what I was going to say is a couple of things to kind of see if I understand or and reach consensus I'm going I'm just going to start back from the back on a copy following a formal reconsideration or whatever that determination is one thing I will say um you know obviously the Board needs to have an awareness of you know important things such as you know reconsideration determination I I don't have a concern with that what I was going to say is we started last year and we will continue on our library Services page to to make to be transparent about that and and have our list of books that are under reconsideration where they

178are in the process and what the outcome is so that is one data point um I can um I mean I was just kind of processing why I made that change I do not have a concern I appreciate Debbie kind of processing that um about adding that back in but I will say also that it will be information on the library Services page so that there is an awareness and of course at any time trustees have a a right of access to all information so if somebody's looking at something and they say you know I'd really like to understand that a little bit better say it's not appealed um and a trustee wants more information or is a you know as a standing rule they are just want that information we can certainly do that

179you know for the board so um so we can talk about that change that's not a problem and Marty before you go to the next one it is public information I think it's helpful and I'm asking my colleagues now that perhaps from time to time that we might be updated okay so it's not our job to constantly go through the Sci-Fi website to see what's been changed so why don't I just put it back I think that's probably yeah but there is value at us being aware I do understand Debbie's concern that we don't want to develop built-in prejudices but I do think it's appropriate to be aware Debbie's not here so we may wait for her to come yeah well and yeah we can certainly Circle back but that was just um that was

180just something I was going to share that maybe a a worker or you know just kind of a response because truly the the reason for the removal was really just thinking about in the context of other changes but it's not something that's really required Martin just a second yes Scott just a question um I believe I'm sorry I can't see me I was gonna say I can't see you for the monitors it's a grievance process is that correct still reconsideration is considered a grievance process we use um the either probably the FNG uh process but we are we utilize it in form and that and we but we start at level three my only point is on this I believe we receive other grievances through our board emails as well do we not so if

181we don't receive them until they reach our level okay I was making sure and so which which ones we receive sometimes I don't look at it yeah so we never we never receive anything for a grievance one or two but only when it hits our level we get to see everything that's gone up to that point so we see all the data but before it comes to us we really don't know about it you know other than we might hear about it in the neighborhood I just found that websites very easy to get to for us if you want to get to it's easy okay back in but thinking about kind of this conversation about you know how we can provide better guidance um I definitely to our reconsideration committees and sort of this you

182know giving you know parameters and information uh you know about violence so what whether it is I mean I don't disagree with the concept that um that there are going to be educationally inappropriate books based on the type of you know the the content that is other than sexual I mean they're you know there may be a book that's educationally unsuitable because of the level of violence or the depiction or something to that you know marked degree and so thinking about it as we give more operational definition of you know educationally suitable and we had talked about actually providing some examples or descriptions violence was one of the things that we we actually talked about in context um and so I do think that the the points are valid made all all around and that

183we can address that in a way I think that is not putting it at the policy level because that would require such Precision in the definition that it might make it you know we end up like the legislature where you you're trying to address it at such a broad level that it doesn't really give as much guidance as we might hope as opposed to trying to do it at the regulation level so why don't I take a stab at that and bring that back and the same thing with the age-appropriate levels we we to a degree try to we have tried to do that already in how we Define each collection level in the regulation and um why don't because this is a lot we put it as a dual reading because we thought we

184you know that we all might want to have some guidance going into the new school year but what I will say is we can bring this back in September we don't have to do a dual reading if we're not ready the other thing is we can I can try to get the regulation even though it's not going to be final I can get it in maybe a better spot bring that back with the policy so you can see how those work get some more feedback from the committee and then bring it back to you because the point made by some a couple Mr Jackson um miss heinemann that we I mean we are to a degree still going to be waiting on tea for some parts of it it's just our the administration and I

185know this board is not a group of people that sits in weights if there's something that's really not supposed to be you know on our shelves that we are willing to address it now we're not going to you know wait on someone else but we also aren't going to create work where where we don't need to create work so I recognize that it's a tightrope that we're gonna try to walk of um being we're going to be in compliance with the law being in a place that um that we are ready to start school without putting unnecessary pressure on any of our staff including our wonderful Librarians so um I just wanted to throw that out and so I can get a consensus from the board on any of that we can definitely move forward

186in any of those directions and Marnie the the guidance that you gave us this year regarding defining the the juvenile young adult and the adult it actually does speak to age appropriators it talks about similar age to the to to the reader so it's woven in there already if you think about it it is and we can flush that out we can refine that you know but we had started some what in that down that road Mr Henry um in our regulation in how we Define The Collection levels and so we can do more work with that and do work with our committee um but if you guys want to um think about that give some feedback Talk Amongst yourselves or well it's always uh a challenge as a board when we talk about board

187policy because we have to do it out in front um I don't think that we have a consensus or uh clearly it makes sense for you to continue to give us more information Monday we'll have another pilot the apple and we may start the school year without this being finalized uh you know when we talk about ages it's one thing to say age seven it's all in the details right if we say a grade span covers ages blank to blank that's one meaning of age if we restrict the age to age eight that's an entirely different level of description uh so I'm I don't have a problem as if we want to use the numerical age and fit that into what the grade level happens to be but as I pointed out we'll have a

188wide range of Ages in any grade level but you indicated that you wanted to do some more work and come back to the board and that's that makes sense entirely appropriate however on on those I don't see that we have board consensus we we have board questions we've had board discussions that then moves us over to 4m and vice president heinerman I'm going to let you have the microphone for 4M 4M the board will consider awarding bids and contracts and or authorizing purchase orders as recommended in the posted agenda item there this is for questions only and there are no speakers this evening for M1 assorted food for nutrition services 2023. for M2 CFISD Medicaid consultation and billing 2023-2024. for M3 college readiness and career interest tests for M4 contracted Educational Services and professional development

189services four and five district fundraiser services for M6 FCC application 200021002 Co-op quote 2020 cabling renewal 4m7 literacy instructional materials 4m8 Materials Handling equipment and repair service for M9 Restaurant catering and delivery services for M10 roof repair services 4m11 Spirit apparel and promotional items are there any questions for Darren Crawford or James Briscoe where'd everybody go okay hello [Applause] y'all have any questions one two three four oh we have quorum um yeah let's go okay uh are we okay to move these items to consensus yes yes okay Holly we'll move that to consensus boom um item four n was removed from the agenda I'll just keep going I would like to thank everyone for being here tonight and also like to thank those who are watching from home may I have a motion to adjourn

190so moved ice back in [Laughter] seconded and we are adjourned thank you