Board Work Session 08/04/22

001[Music] good evening let me try this one more time good evening everybody the cypress fairbanks independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a board work session on thursday august 4th 2022 at 6 p.m in the boardroom of the cypress fairbanks independent school district instructional support center located at 10-300 jones road houston texas for the purpose of reviewing that portion of the monday august 8 2022 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 to this meeting of the board of trustees as the cypress fairbanks board of trustees we're here to set goals listen to reports approve budgets contracts personnel appointments and make policy

002for the district it is not the role 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 of 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 counsel as a meeting parliamentarian continued or repeated disruption of any board meeting by words or action may result in removal or loss of

003privilege to attend the meeting prior to this meeting 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 close session to consider matters duly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.071 through 551.084 of the texas government code these proceedings are airing live on comcast channel 16 and 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 including mine are turned off or placed

004in silent mode thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and for your interest in the cypress fairbanks independent school district i would also like to take this opportunity to recognize our community leadership committee members who are in attendance this evening nancy frankel and leslie martone please raise your hand or stand thank you for being here i appreciate it the invocation pledge of allegiance vision and mission statement remarks and recognitions board comments and citizen participation portions of the agenda will be presented at the regular board meeting on monday august 8 2022 as a start to the new school year we have made changes in the meeting agenda and have new procedures in place for audience participation during the board's team of eight training consensus was reached regarding these changes persons who wish

005to participate in agenda comments formerly referred to as public comments and or citizen participation may sign up using the designated reserve registration form link posted in the meeting agenda on the district's website beginning when the meeting agenda is posted through 12 pm on the day of the meeting persons wishing to speak must complete the designated registration form in full and be present at the meeting to make his or her own comments during the designated time for agenda comments and our citizen participation to be eligible to speak any registered speaker who is absent from the meeting at the time for the agenda comments and or citizen participation forfeits the opportunity to address the board at that meeting but may submit written comments to the board at each open meeting of the board patrons who have registered

006in 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 patrons wishing to comment on more than one agenda item must complete a separate agenda comment request form for each item unless the agenda is otherwise rearranged by the board president during the meeting agenda comments will generally be taken prior to each agenda item at each regular meeting of the board patrons who have registered in accordance with procedures in bed regulation may address the board during citizen participation on any matters of interest or concern that are not posted agenda items individuals may only register to speak one time per meeting under citizen participation unless the agenda is otherwise rearranged by the board president during the meeting citizen participation

007will generally be held after reports and action items for more detailed information on the amount of time allotted in the number of registered speakers for both agenda comments and citizen participation please go to the district website under addressing the board going off script since we are now rolling this out i am confident there will be hiccups along the way and we will address the hiccups as they become known to us and and get all the wrinkles worked out we will now proceed with the reports portion of the agenda 3a the administration will provide a report on the results of the cfisd survey administered the parents staff and the community now remember i said before presentations of reports or discussion of agenda items we will permit speakers to make comments tonight there are no speakers this

008evening presenters mr teresa hall leslie francis good evening president jackson board of trustees and dr henry this evening we will provide you the results of a stakeholder survey that we distributed in the spring goal 4 communications and community relations target objective 2 of the board monitoring system addresses increasing opportunities for stakeholder input and feedback with the timeline for reporting of august 2022 this evening we will provide you with the results of a district-wide survey distributed to our stakeholders to assist in the development and distribution of the survey the district contracted with vaselise and associates basilice is a national research firm and their experience includes conducting opinion research for numerous school systems in texas and across the nation this is the same research firm who conducted the 2016 parent and community survey which allowed us to

009provide you with some comparative data on those questions there were four key objectives or focus areas for the survey the first three objectives were included in the 2016 survey allowing again for the comparative data in those areas number four focuses on the five characteristics included in the portrait of a cypress fairbanks isd graduate the survey provided the opportunity for the respondent to identify and prioritize the qualities and characteristics they believed are the most important for a cfisd graduate to possess the portrait of a cfisd graduate was developed in the early 90s and has served as the unifying vision for our entire educational system although all of the qualities and characteristics are still relevant and important we want to provide the board with the input and feedback from stakeholders to determine if any modifications or changes

010are warranted not only in the portrait document but in the board goals as well the survey was distributed electronically to a district-wide random sample in 2016 and 2022. the time frame for distribution was almost identical april 14th through may 15th in 2016 and april 15th through may the 25th excuse me i got to put my glasses april 12 through the 25th and 2022 because of the timeliness of respondents to the survey and reaching the sample size goal in the spring basilis was able to close the distribution window much sooner the respondent groups differed slightly between the two surveys in 2016 the survey was distributed to a random sample of parents and non-parents in 2022 the survey was distributed to parents community and staff the pie charts represent the number of responses received based on the

011number bacillis determined provided a valid sample size you will note that we requested a larger sample size for 2022 the larger sample size reduced our margin of error which i will share with you in just a moment to orient you to the pie charts on the left hand side of the screen there are two groups included in the 2016 survey the purple represents parents with the sample size of 840 and the gold non-parents with 200 respondents on the right hand side are the groups included in the 2022 survey again purple represents parents with 1450 respondents green community with 447 respondents and blues staff with 667 respondents besselise worked with our technology department to distribute the survey in batches by zip code not only did basilisks want to ensure a geographic representation of the district but

012also a demographic representation including representation by ethnicity economically disadvantaged and at-risk indicators before i turn over the presentation of miss francis to begin sharing the results of the survey i want to note the margin of error reported by basilese in 2016 because of the smaller sample size the margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percent for parent and 6.9 percent for non-parent however for the 2022 survey the margin of error for parents is plus or minus 2.6 percent 4.6 for community and 3.9 percent for staff again that difference was due to the increase in the larger sample size for the 2022 survey i will now turn over the presentation to ms francis who will take you through the comparative survey questions and data good evening the first portion of the 2022 survey asked questions

013that were also asked in 2016. i will take you through the results of this section showing you comparative measurements first i want to orient you to the colors that are used so that with a quick glam glimpse of each page you can paint a picture for yourself of how respondents answered the questions dark green is excellent light green is good so any shading of green in a chart is a favorable response gold is fair red is poor and purple is unsure i will primarily focus on the parent group as i move through the slides but will occasionally point out data that stands out in the community and staff groups at the top of each slide you will see the question in gold this slide represents the question rate academic standards in 2016 81 of the

014parents rated academic standards as excellent or good compared to 75 percent in 2022 overall you can see that the charts do not show significant differences between the years the next question was to rate the condition of a campus the graphs on this slide are similar to what you saw in the previous slide with the majority of all respondents rating as excellent or good this question asked to rate classroom conditions the larger percentage of unsure in the 2022 parent chart could be indicative of the limited parent-in-person events during covid19 safety and security of our campus there was a slight increase of the number of respondents rating as fair or poor which is not surprising considering the tragic events that have occurred across the nation in the last couple of years [Applause] financial accountability the results in

0152022 are very similar to what we saw in 2016. the next two slides are in relation to our communications and i'm going to go through these a little bit differently the first question was how do you get information first from cfisd and i'm going to go through the comparison of 2016 and 2022 line by line there are a couple of responses where you'll even see an asterisk beside them and that indicates that the person had already indicated that they had students in cfisd so the first one is cfisd emails you'll see in 2016 90 of parents got information by email in 2022 96 received emails from cfisd and as i go through it the next the next one is pre-recorded calls to your phone you'll see little change there information sent home from school with

016your child you'll see we went from eighty five percent in 2016 to twenty twenty to seventy nine percent in 2022 which could be indicative of more electronic methods of communication now and less paper in the backpacks the next form is going to the cfisd website you see that that remained pretty consistent email newsletters from your child's school fairly consistent text messages to your cell phone look at the jump there we went from 69 in 2016 to 87 in 2022. home access center or e-school app went from 50 to 74 percent that was a huge increase local media such as newspapers or tv in the parent group we went from 49 to or a decrease facebook remained relatively stable twitter the same the district's cable tv channel relatively similar and then instagram we saw a large

017jump from 5 to 13 also indicative of instagram being a fairly new social media platform when the survey was first given in 2020 2016. the next question says how would you prefer to receive information from cfisd and i will share with you that we shared this information with our principals this morning i think this is going to be extremely helpful for principals as they develop their communication methods this year with their parents that they keep these results in mind as well as joel weckerly will be working with his team and our strategic communication plan to keep these preferred methods of communication in mind as we go through the same list again you'll see emails 96 percent in 2016 remain stable at 97 percent in 2022 email newsletters is very similar text messages you'll see 86

018percent in 2016 and 92 percent in 2022 so our parents want to receive text messages also which is great news sent home from school with your child stable pre-recorded calls similar going to the scifire website similar home access center again we're seeing a huge rise there 56 in 2016 to 22 at 69 percent local media we're seeing a significant decrease there in our parent group 50 percent preferred to get information in local media in 2016 and it's down to 33 percent in 2022. facebook remains stable the district's cable tv show has a significant decrease from 24 to 16 twitter little change instagram again we see that bump which i believe is indicative of a newer form of social media the next question said if you get your information from going by going to the website

019then respond with how often you go to the website green is more frequently and red is never again our same color of purple is unsure i think interesting here is that in our non-parent group up in 2016 there was a significant number who never went to our website and though it's not an apples and apples comparison our community group we've we've had a lot more people that are now claiming that they visit our website not is our staff they frequently you utilize our website as indicated in 2022. the next question said if you have a child or children do you feel welcome at your your child's school and although there was a slight decrease in the approval rating on this question again two years of limited on-campus activities and opportunities for parents and adult visitors

020could have impacted and these results the good news is still around 90 percent of our parents feel welcome at our schools the next question said which of the following is the biggest challenge facing cfisd in 2016 the number one challenge was reported as growth and overcrowding followed by quality of instruction and student discipline in 2022 the number one challenge was reported to be student discipline followed by growth and overcrowding safe and secure environment and fourth quality of instruction i want to point out on this one if you look in the staff group of staff said student discipline was our most challenging issue in general do you think the overall academic standards in cfisd are and green was about right blue was too high yellow was too low and again our purple color is unsure there

021was no significant change from 2016 to 2022 which of the following best describes your opinion of how cfisd manages the money it has to operate there are two shades of green for favorable responses red is a poor response and again are purple for unsure and the results in 2022 are again similar to what we saw in 2016. do you believe local schools enhance property values results remain consistent and continue to be one of the objectives of our district marketing plan in 2016 we asked um if scifir if if the respondents remembered hearing that scifire voters had passed a 1.2 billion dollar bond package in 2014. this year we asked if voters recalled passing a 1.762 billion dollar bond package in and although there's not a substantial difference in the parents here um we thought it

022was interesting our staff has a huge percent of having recalled that and and also keep in mind that the bond was several years ago and we have lots of of new employees so we thought that was a very favorable response we are going to continue to look at new ways we can update the community on what's going on with our bond dollars at work and you're going to see one of those examples tonight in a later presentation indicate if you think each of the following items is being addressed or will be addressed with the 2019 bond package and each of the six components of the bond package are listed up there and i just want to point out that the the most significant response occurred in the area of technology and i believe that that's

023undoubtedly due to the amount of technology we've deployed in the last couple of years during the pandemic our lt one to one chromebooks our hot spots and our learning management system schoology the following question said which of the following is the biggest concern facing the district in 2016 all three groups stated school funding as the biggest concern and in 2022 all three groups stated academic achievement graph gap was the biggest concern and at this time i will now turn it over to miss hall who will review the remaining portion of the survey with you thank you okay we'll now move to the survey responses focusing on the portrait of a cypress fairbanks graduate went the wrong way sorry i think we will am i going the wrong way okay there they all look the same

024all the slides similar to the results ms francis just covered you see the survey question at the top of the slide these questions were surveyed in 2016. therefore there is no comparative data the first question allowed the respondent to provide an open-ended response to the characteristics that best describe a successful student who graduates graduates from cfisd the top responses were preparedness attendance discipline and responsible you a second just to kind of look through that the next question asks the respondent to rank the five portrait characteristics in the next few slides blue will represent most important and gold next most important of the five characteristics of a cfisd graduate parents ranked competent problem solver as the most important while the community and staff ranked responsible citizen as the most important i will point out that in

025this section this is the only question where there was a difference between the parent ranking and the staff and community ranking the remaining survey questions on the portrait asked the respondent to rank the skills of each portrait characteristic as most important and next most important for effective communicator all respondent groups parents community and staff rank good listener as the most important skill and persuasive speaker as the next most important the next portrait characteristic competent problem solver all groups ranked analyzes as most important and resolves avoids conflict as next most important skill moving to self-directed learner all groups ranked continually seeks knowledge as the most important skill in this area and sets achievable goals as next most important for responsible citizen respectful of others was ranked as the most important skill and accepts understands and deals

026with diversity as next most important the final portrait characteristic quality producer works well as an individual or part of a team was ranked as most important and able to monitor and correct own performance as the next most important skill the last three questions of the survey provided the opportunity to respond to questions focused on diversity these three questions were reclu were included in response to board comments and concerns that the survey conducted in conjunction with equity audit did not include parent and community member voice green represents agree with the statement read disagree and purple unsure the majority of the respondents agreed with all three statements listed vasilis provided the district with a number of key findings or on their own based on their analysis of the survey results parents ranked academic standards six times higher

027at the excellent end of the scale compared to poor good news we are providing communication to our parents via the their preferred method the survey results supported the need to provide communication through a variety of platforms and there was a 13-point increase in the preference to receiving information from the home access center this may be a result of the pandemic and immediate transition to online learning not surprising to anyone student discipline and safe and secure environment rose to the top as the biggest or next biggest challenge facing cfisd it was great to hear that eight out of nine parents feel welcome at their child's school and hopefully our strategic marketing plan is helping with the result of seven of ten parents staff and community even more so believe the local school enhances property values since

0282016 school funding and budget cuts decreased as most important or next most important concern facing cfisd but i bet if we gave the survey now after you adopted the budget they may respond differently over the same time academic achievement gap and district management increased the key finding on findings on this last slide again summarize the information i just reported on the most important and next most important characteristics and skills of a cfisd graduate and i won't go through that it would be redundant this concludes our presentation after this evening's presentation the results of the survey will be posted on the district website for parent staff and community member access and at this time we'd be happy to answer any questions or seek guidance and feedback on maybe next steps that you would like to take

029based on the results of the survey i'm going to start to my right mr henry a lot of information to consume and thank you very much for doing it a lot of work was involved in this um still digesting it so i may have other questions so i may ask those separately okay um i guess one of the things that came up on here i guess was a big one which was on um what's the biggest challenge facing cfisd and and maybe i think it's come from the diocese as well is how do we address i guess from both the both our community both our parents and also from our staff is how do we address the discipline issue and that may be one thing we can take offline and and talk about down the

030road how we can look at that that maybe one of the action items i'm not asking for us to do the rest of the day that one has an action on him for later on that we talk about um mr henry i'm not going to give any details now but i can tell you and i think all the people in this room would tell you that in all the conversations i've had with leaders that's been the number one uh word out of my mouth uh that we're going to address that and make sure our campuses are orderly i figured as much i just just when people see things they want to make sure they hear that yeah i just want to reinforce that that was the only thing i think it popped up everything else

031i think was in line what we thought was going to come back but thank you very much again for all your time put into it dr blasey yes i echo uh thank you for the effort the time put into this fantastic i smile looking at the characteristics that of what we're looking for in our students and i thought of this the address made by dr henry last night at the summer graduation having those students think about five years the time that they will never get back and how they spend that time and setting achievable goals and so sure enough we value that here in our in our district um i am i'm pleased also when it and when a document can give us direction and i see the discipline and the achievement gap really sticking

032out and also the opportunity to update the portrait of a graduate as a true north for ourselves and an accountability in the way the state sets us up in an accountability a high-stakes accountability system sometimes testing and those things can crowd out our vision for what we want and this can allow us to focus on the vision of what we want in our graduates rather than being you know letting the numbers be the only story i am a little interested in seeing i see the total numbers and i know it was according to our demographic census i really appreciate the attention to the zip codes and the groups i'd love to see that data if i could about what our respondents who our respondents were what that looked like and um to see if i

033were any other things i know i don't think have any questions just again really really great information thank you mr schrabia excellent presentation threesome leslie well job well done um like scott said a lot of information in here a lot of pertinent information and stuff that we can get into right now i have no questions it was a job well done good job ladies and your staff moving to the left i think it's interesting to note and i know that the staff is already probably working on this so on question two please rate the safety and security of the home if we look at the responses from the parents and the staff they're almost identical but if you look at that of the community there's a large gap and i don't know about everybody else

034in the dice and all the leaders in the room but when we had the horrible incident at uvalde i know my cell phone blew up and i know that i was spending a lot of time talking to folks and i know that we are messaging out to the community regarding the safety of our students and how we address that and i know it's top of mind it's just it's interesting to see that even before that incident occurred correct and and just as a note our next report is going to be on school safety after this one there you go um you know it's interesting someone who is actively hiring young people all the time i think it's fascinating that the number one item selected by the parents community and the staff was works as well

035as an individual and as a team and i i regularly and i mean like today regularly spend time coaching young people on how to work through that and um i'll be interested in you know i'm sure that our team and our leaders over here and across the district are are actively looking into creative methods into how to get students to have conversations and how to problem solve on the fly and be creative but i know most people can identify with this statement the job that i am doing today did not exist 20 years ago there was no vision for what i was i'm doing today or my industry even when i was in high school and the same will be true of all of these students so the number one thing we can do for

036them is give them confidence and problem solving and self-directed learning as you said so i think that's fascinating um and i think it's not so much a comment well this last the statement of what's the most important aspect of a responsible citizen being respectful of others i think that's not necessarily a cypher isd characteristic i think it's more of a cultural characteristic of all young people in this day and age and i know that the community the village that i'm a part of this is a constant discussion and fortunately in my village i know most of the parents and so when i see their kids doing something silly i just look at them funny and that's usually enough but i know that we again are going to be working towards creative solutions to encourage and

037emphasize and reinforce respectful behavior and we have a presentation on that tonight also there you go you beat me to the punch and not to be long-winded because no one wants a long night but i i am fascinated by question 14 and in these kinds of questions where we ask uh respondents to rate i'm not surprised that discipline's the number one item that's shown but i am interested in the number two point which was motivated right motivated meaning inspired someone has an opportunity to be creative explore something that's passionate for them and challenging and rise to a challenge etc so i would love to see this information as we work through the year i'd love to see a refresh of this information in the spring to see if these numbers have shifted any or gain

038some awareness of whether or not the students in our classrooms feel motivated i don't even know how you'd begin to do that but i think that would be an interesting data point as we go through more and i'm going to use air quotes here normalization for another year you know whether or not they feel those opportunities to be creative and build confidence and character and etc so again wonderful job and i think it's great that the administration uh compliment to you dr henry uh that the first question the administration chose to say is you know parent communication and transparency was how do we communicate so i appreciate that of our administration thank you miss blackshear yes sir good evening and thank you teresa and leslie for this report i'm saying looking through it there's nothing

039in there that jumps up and surprises me because i feel we do a good job inside isd but it's always nice to have the feedback and i think it was like scott said or maybe gilbert it's going to take a while to go through it and look at it and digest all of the information and see how we can best be responsive to it i'm what if you're watching and you responded to this survey i thank you because so many people don't respond to two surveys but feedback is the most valuable tool that this district can utilize and the same thing for businesses i always respond to feedback as i used to tell members of my credit union if they had a complaint about a system or one of the employees the only way i

040can fix a problem is if i know there's a problem and then i can can respond to it and i think this gives the district a chance to respond and lucas to your comment i think it was i don't remember this question 14 but about to be respectful that would be one of the first things i would say too but that is our challenge these days because so many times so many kids are raising themselves or i guess you could say technology is raising them because they're allowed to bury their head and their phones and their computers their laptops but i know that's a real frustration for a lot of teachers because the students come to them with a disrespectful attitude and where does that come from that comes from home and uh what we

041all we can do is try to turn that around in the classroom setting and to try to teach students to be more respectful for some it's too late unfortunately and we see we live in a more disrespectful society we see that behavior by adults i used to say that that people sometimes would stand in front of me and scream and yell because that was the way they thought they could get what they wanted now and i think it's just a product of our society but i think it's great that our teachers work on trying to turn that around and you know as we've said many many times unfortunately for some of our students we are the parent we are the only way they are going to get uh some direction they're the only way we

042are the only way they're certainly going to receive knowledge so we take the tools that we have and we try to i won't say mold because that's kind of a i don't think we're trying to mold students what we're trying to do is is to help our students be and become the best that they can be and i tell you when i uh as natalie mentioned summer school graduation last night i was so proud of those 100 199 students who for whatever reason didn't finish with their classmates but they persevered and they finished and they graduated and what a great testimony to them and their desire to be successful so again i just kind of came full circle i guess but i just i appreciate the district doing this and again i really appreciate those

043who uh who did the survey because that's the best feedback that we can get and gives us some direction so thank you very much and just to add to that miss blackshear and of course luke touched on it also being respectful is going to be a big part of our focus this year again i've already talked to our leadership teams about that it's going to be emphasized our schools are going to be the safest and the best place for all kids and all adults to be and i think the best way to address helping young people learn how to be respectful for adults is for us to be respectful of each other and to be respectful of students so respect is a two-way street and we want to model that as adults i totally agree

044miss heiderman thank you for the excellent um feedback report um and as my colleagues have said we'll it'll take some time for us all to go through it in depth um i find it very helpful to have comparative information so having the same questions that were asked six years ago i do appreciate that we did this survey now because as the board had said we needed some more information from our parent groups and our community group so this information is extremely valuable i think it's helpful from a comparative standpoint looking at the trends the differences over the last six years but i think also the information related to the um characteristics of a graduate of the cfisd graduate is really going to help us shape how we move forward how we deliver instruction and really

045what the the intent how we're going to measure our success of delivering that instruction and the fact that parents um also had an increase in priority for academic achievement that gap the ident they they're aware of that gap and they've made that a priority for us and i think that again just validates what we already knew but it really helps us focus our energy around that so i i found that very helpful i am just so um moved and touched by the greatest response from parents the community and staff were related to val valuing valuing the the diversity of our community and of our students and of our teachers i just think that was just overwhelming and i think that's again just more validation that the community appreciates um who we are uh and who

046we are the school district reflects the community and um and to see that that great validation was just really very very good to see that so thank you first i want to say thank you for a job well done a little bit of self-directed humor when i when i saw the questions that that you were coming out with i really wanted to get in there and say but no you have to ask this this this and this and happily i remembered my role as a trustee was to back off and not put my fingers into the weeds and it's good i did back off because the questions i would have that i really wanted you to ask were all the wrong questions and and i mentioned that simply because even after 11 years i have

047to remind myself of the job of being a trustee and it's not management no matter how much i want to cross over that line i have to kind of direct myself back you all did a much better job than i ever would have done and that's why you all are management secondly i want to say good job to my colleagues up here thoughtful questions much appreciated the attention as well as the forward-looking comments that that everybody here is making a couple of observations one 12 years ago some of the hot button issues interestingly enough disciplined it was financial accountability and financial transparency and parent communication i was pleased with that some indication of financial accountability was present with the knowledge of the bond package but of course the it's awfully difficult to move the nickel

048no matter how hard we work in trying to increase the awareness of financial accountability the step i took is i have beaten our cfos and our auditors over the head repeatedly when i have whenever i have the chance to try and draw out the concept of transparency and accountability and yet that number doesn't budge but i firmly believe we are doing a superb job and of course for school districts there are no other governmental agencies more transparent than us and i appreciate continuing in that regard i was surprised and disappointed when it came to the technology question technology 12 years ago not so much with the community or parents or students it was with our staff very much a hot button issue for them also a hot button issue for myself as well and it

049has been addressed in the level of technology has been dramatically increased from where it was 12 years ago both within the district but also comparative to other districts and if you all want to comment why the numbers are where they are or maybe the numbers are exactly where they should be but i would have thought the numbers on the on addressing technology would have been so much higher because we have poured tremendous resources and the technology we have available now is no comparison it's not head and shoulders better it's two people better than it was 12 years ago but also in 16. i do find it interesting as my colleagues have said that the concept of discipline is runs throughout all the questions that have any degree of similarity the portrait of a student basically

050we're saying you should be self-disciplined that's really what what the answers are saying you have to be disciplined number one i would note that this board when we set the budget we went to management and we said and i led the comments what if we sacrificed two months worth of operating reserves to address the question of discipline how would you use that money and management came back and said well here's some ideas and as a board we supported it i also attended the leadership symposium which of course included all the leadership from every one of our what 92 campuses mark the lead comment that mark had going forth number one was discipline there was no doubt in anybody's mind in that room what the number one matter to be addressed going forth would be so

051i think as a board we did allocate reserves senior management has addressed it senior management was probably more aware of it than we were as a board and had already taken steps but two years at covin as i discovered when i went to national across the entire country discipline has been in shreds everywhere so this is a challenge not just for us but for every single school district but but i'm glad that we are in fact taking steps i also find it interesting that once again both the community the parents staff but even wall street says the number really the number one thing they want our our graduates to be whether it's college level or high school you have to be a team player and that gets back to the concept of being self-disciplined you

052can't be a team player if you can't discipline yourself and can't discipline your thoughts and as mr scanlan noted we can't predict what a lot of the jobs are going forth but we can predict that you will always have to become a team player mark has addressed this when he talked about sweeping out the corners and let me give you an example of of one of those corners i chatted with one of my scholarship recipients this week and he explained and and as i do with with any of my scholarship recipients i want to know about them what are you involved in what are your co-extracurricular activities and one of the things that he wanted to talk to me about was the fact that he was president of an e-club and one of the benefits

053of being a president of a knee club and this is a fellow who is very gregarious he's very outgoing and he pointed out that it drew in students who tended to kind of stay within themselves and didn't seek others out and didn't necessarily want to be part of a team not that they weren't a team player they didn't want to be part of a team yet bringing them in to the e-club all of a sudden they found a team and it was good funny story on this the concept of e-club was actually brought up by this board about i guess nine or ten years ago and we had casual conversations with senior management saying what about this and of course the originally the thought was e-club activities would rot your brain but of course we

054found out that's not the case and it and it in fact does help address a number of students that otherwise we might not find mark pointed out speaking to the leaders that one of the most important aspects that this district does is our co and extracurricular activities and he actually said it was number one well guess where you develop the concept the team worked best and that's co and extracurricular activities uh and and perhaps there's a way that we can measure our participation in that i'm not saying that we should not saying that it's a good idea to measure it but but then again perhaps we should i do like the idea of refreshing data points i'm data geeks i always want multiple data points but i'm also aware that you have to let things

055mature and process so those are my my comments um my only question is why why do you think our our respondents did not appreciate the steps we made in technology more and i guess a similar question on financial accountability so i was really surprised when when both of those came out when i saw the questions i really thought okay we're going to have vindication well we got vindication but of a different sort so i'll be quiet and if y'all want to comment i'll listen to what you have to say yeah i don't know that i'm really able um to to tell you the why in the based on the responses of the the parents and community but uh that could give us some direction an area that we may need to focus on a little

056more and dig into what do they see uh as the the you know what is driving those concerns and why they didn't uh rate those areas more favorably but you know karen is over finance and technology and she may have some more insider thoughts about that you know okay i really don't have anything to add right now on the finding because on the financial accountability because i feel like we're providing more and more information all the time um so i like teresa said i think i would have to dig deeper on that on the technology piece i was looking at the information i wasn't seeing that there so i must have missed a slide on the technology aspect because i see one about the bond package that's listed here question 12. oh is that the

057one you're talking okay i'm looking at 16 let's see no and maybe my expectation is wrong younger 12. you know from my standpoint i was looking for a number of like 95 98 right okay i see what you're saying because when i was looking at it it was 70 percent like for staff you know in the 50s it seemed to be one of the highest ones out there of how they thought we would spend our bond money so i guess i interpret that as good when i first looked at it and mr jackson i would probably look at that chart a little differently and that i kind of look at the fully mostly and partially compared to the not and then the unsure to me or probably a lot of empty nesters or people who

058are not as as aware aware of of what we're uh doing i would hope it's not because we haven't tried to communicate it but as teresa said i think it gives us an opportunity to find new ways to reach out to folks and let them know what we're doing and perhaps technology these days is becoming way more transparent it's hard to see if it's done well right so an example of our doors being able to be remotely locked that's really hard to see peripherally and and for our new board members something that was done pre-covered that management put together is they invited community members as well as elected officials basically to go on a bus tour of different campuses and that permitted them to see technology at work it permitted them to see safety in

059action as well as different programs and obviously with covet you can't do that covet will evidently is going to be always with us so i don't know if we can do that again but but certainly the people who went on that including elected officials from the austin area gave us very favorable feedback and so perhaps we might consider that thank you yes absolutely and actually we've already started discussions about scheduling that day i think we're looking at october-ish that's kind of always a a good time let school get started let everyone get settled and then schedule that and we're looking and welcome the feedback on especially those of you that have participated in the past about what we can do to maybe change and allow our community and legislators to see different aspects of our

060schools because i think that is one of the best days ever when they're able to to walk inside those campuses and see the great things that are happening so thank you for saying that can i make a recommendation on that yes sir maybe do a video uh maybe five or ten minute videos on the update technology updates make don't make them too long or crazy players won't look at them but if you make them small enough sorry to make more work for joel but um on updates that we've done on different things around the community those might be good to show off and to advertise what we've done security updates like i know we're doing farney elementary the different things we've done on safety and technology updates those might be good vignettes to show off

061the things we've done and to highlight and to give the community some assurance on the things we've done bond packages and speaking of that i mean we do have a page but i think adding technology we maybe need to do a little heavier focus on all of our efforts to increase technology and access for our students and then again with the bond update we're going to provide you you're going to be the first to see the latest video that the communication team has put together highlighting all the safety and security upgrades that we have completed up to date very good thank you any more questions comments 3b the administration will provide a report on the cfi isd safety and security measures for the 2022-2023 school year there are no speakers this evening we do have

062a oral report and that includes dr henry chief mendez joel wackerly dr baker dr pasterek and i will leave it to you all as to who is going to be speaking well i'm going to kick it off and kind of just give a general uh overview and then i'll turn it over to the experts but as many of you know hopefully everyone knows that for over the past decade uh we've been focused on making our campuses uh the safest place that young people that staff and that visitors can be and uh it started way back in 2011 when the police department was established and we we figured out early on that just one thing will not make our campuses safe and secure so we've kind of taken this approach a layered approach which you've heard

063us talk about and we're going to touch on all those different layers today we're not just talking about when someone actually penetrates the envelope of a building because once that has occurred all of the layers have failed so we wanted to make layers where we identified issues before they ever got to a campus thus our focus in this district on mental health and our psychology department the all the dozens of counselors that we've added the last few years so we want to with our police department with our mental health professionals intercept any problem that might occur very early on so then we've made all the improvements to our campus hopefully you all saw the letter that i sent out i believe it was in the middle of june just to let our community know some

064of the efforts that we've made and those are some of the things we're going to discuss this evening to make our building envelopes safer and then of course our response the response if something does get by all of those layers what do we do then uh and uh i know chief we'll talk about uh some of that as he as he comes up so i'm to turn it over to chief right to start with and then he can just hand it off from there thank you dr henry president jackson board of trustees i'm just going to cover some information about safety and security make sure i push the right button here there we go so i'm going to talk mainly about the ta letter that came out from the direction provided by governor abbott every

065school district across the state was given the same information and we have a deadline that we have to do certain items before the start of the school year and so that's what we've been working on ta issued the director to all schools prior to the start of the school year that we had to conduct a summer targeted partial safety audit we had to conduct an exterior door safety audit we had to convene our safety and security committee which we've already done our safety and security committee met in july and we'll meet again in august we'll have a special meeting in august and i'll get to why we're doing that here shortly we have to ensure all of our campus staff including our substitutes are trained our substitutes are trained you're probably wondering do we train

066our substitutes we do we train through the substitute office and we we provide the information that they need prior to them going to work at a campus and then again we need to schedule all of our mandatory drills we've already done that we have the navigate 360 app where we keep all of that information and we have already scheduled all of the drills for our campuses for this coming school year the campuses know that if there's a issue with the schedule that they can contact our emergency emergency management office and we can get that changed over for them to a different day and again we have to review if necessary and update all of our access control procedures this is all required from the directive by the governor so what's targeted in the partial safety

067audit we have to complete for each instructional facility we have to look at our safety and security practices that's underway our office of emergency management police department and we're working with our campuses to look at all of our safety and security practices and protocols we have to identify actions to make campuses more secure prior to the start of the school year this is not a substitute as you know we have to do a security audit a safety and security audit every three year cycle for the school safety center this is not a substitute for those audits we're currently going into year three of our audits and you should be getting a report i think at the end of this this school year on what we're submitting to the safety center for the this year the

068partial audit has to be submitted to the school safety center and tea by september 9th and so we shared it the leadership i shared at the leadership symposium this information to our campus leaders and provided the information to them about when it's due as part of the audit we have to look at access control we have to inspect every exterior door we have to look over our visitor procedures we have to identify and make sure we know where all our keys are our entry cards and make sure all of our staff have their ids and that we account for all of our ids we have to do interior checks of all our classroom doors our portable doors to make sure that they're functioning correctly and that their locking mechanisms work as they're supposed to and

069we already know about we have over 3 700 cameras i think with the new elementary going online we're going to be over 3 800 and then when the new vpac and ise come up we're going to be over 4 000 cameras across the district but we have to make sure that all our cameras are up and running um i told dr henry this the other day so our my old kpis you know the key performance indicators i used followed was 98 for our cameras we're now looking at 100 percent we need to make sure that our cameras are up and running at every campus every day so we're working on getting that taken care of our security system our intrusion systems which you all know we have now done door prop alarms the prop alarms

070are through our intrusion system so we're working through that and making sure we're up and running there and then again our emergency communication and that's through the uh school messenger system that we utilize for our parents and our staff to notify in case of in cases of emergency again our policies and procedures a school-based law enforcement security we have to have on-site presence which we provide during school hours which we have addressed and with our officers as you can recall back in the spring i gave a presentation about safety and security and at the time we had 110 officers this budget year you granted me six more so we're now at 116. and that was to provide extra patrols for day shift to provide more coverage to our elementary campuses across the district again we

071have our emergency drill scheduled for the start of the year we have an anonymous reporting system with the tip line and you know and i've i've reported this to you all before that it's not uncommon for us and the police department to go out in the union in overnight hours and knock on doors and make contact with parents and students when we get information about a possible tip that is to occur the next day because we want to make sure the next day the kids are safe going to school and then we have our referral resources the threat assessment and our referral network and and dr baker and dr pastor they'll talk a little bit about the threat assessment but i will say that the threat assessment tools that we use are on our navigate

072360 app that we use as well some of the observations we have to look at the exterior of the building and our doors are they sturdy non-removable hinge pins all of our doors if you go to our campuses and you'll notice that all the exterior doors are numbered all the way around the building starting at one and they work around and that's to provide first responders easily identifiable entryways when we have to respond and we are able to say go to door 13 instead of go to the door on the northwest corner just around the corner we don't need to do all that is just go to door 13. portable classrooms the portable classrooms should have peepholes or door viewers and if they don't and we also will get that taken care of but we

073also have the camera systems to look at the portable areas of our campuses we have to look at the doors should have still doors frames locks from the inside and they do and then the cafeterias all of our cameras are up and running in the cafeterias and then we have to be able to monitor our parking lots they have to be well lit and we have to be able to have either monitoring or views from the building and we do we have addressed the primary points of entry and exit at our campuses and we're working with our campuses so when i talk about door prop alarms not all doors on buildings are now going to be used as entry and exits we're going to identify key entry and exit points and the rest of the

074doors will remain closed during instructional time the pus they will be used for emergency exit use only our classrooms will remain locked and closed that's what we're going to this year every campus during instructional time classroom doors will remain locked and closed they can be locked and propped during passing periods but the rest of the time classroom doors will remain locked and closed and then again monitoring and surveillance our security cameras inside and outside of the school and again i've said that we're we're working to maintain 100 operational function with our cameras throughout the school year some of the overarching uh considerations and i've touched on a lot of this we have to look at our staff student and visitor procedures to make sure that they are where we need to be to ensure that

075we're able to identify people coming and going and we give them proper access to the building again building access and security we want to make sure that our our intrusion systems are up and that our card access systems are up and that the doors are in place that need to be in place we have our communication system we operate on the police department operates on two radio networks we have one network that we operate just with the school staff and then we have a law enforcement uh radio network that we have capabilities of talking to precinct for precinct five harris county the fire department's ems and so all that is in the events of emergency we have direct communications and then again law enforcement engagement we are at our campuses and we are seen i

076have been contacted by the sheriff's department and by precinct forum precinct five their departments have been their deputies have been directed in those departments to go out and learn the campuses in the neighborhoods they patrol so we're working with them we're we're liaisoning and facilitating campus visits for those deputies so they can learn the layouts of our schools and we can build a relationship amongst the officers and those deputies so in the event of an emergency they know each other and they're able to better respond training everyone is being trained or has been trained officers staff the week before school starts our department we decided that we would train every single staff member at every single campus in civilian response to an active shooter event and so for one week we will train all 92

077campuses and make sure that they are prepared and know what to do in the event of an active shooter maintenance operations and emergency emergency preparedness so steps to complete the summer audit we have to have our campuses convene their campus safety committee they have to review the safety audit and develop and complete a survey they have to develop a campus improvement plan to address any deficiencies they need to submit any necessary work orders or i support tickets and we've also informed the campuses to send direct emails to the individuals responsible for those repairs so that it doesn't get held up in a system and take longer than it needs to get repaired and we've instructed all of our campuses to work with the office of emergency management to address any planning or training needs the

078date that you see there on the slide monday august 15 2022 is when our campuses need to finish their partial audits to submit the information to office of emergency management so that we can one gather the information prepare the report share the information of the report to our safety and security committee which convene i believe on august 30th to review the information before we have to submit to tea in the school safety center in september during the school year our campuses are required to do weekly exterior door sweeps so at least once a week our campuses are required to walk the exteriors check every single door to make sure that the functionality is still there for the locking mechanisms and the doors are staying locked and secured and then they have to look at all

079of our doors to make sure that they're all operational and again if they're not they need to put in the work order so they can be addressed immediately our campuses do have the ability to participate in a webinar that teaches them exactly how to do the door sweeps and that's and on this slide you don't see it but there's a qr code that we've given to our staff members so that they can scan the qr code and know when they can take the webinar the next one was august 11th and then again we have uh placed a door a weekly door sweep tool on the shared drive for all the campuses to be able to access the information i'm going to go out on a limb and tell you this because but it's not ready

080yet navigate 360 because they know everything that has to be required now for school districts and we're not the only customer they have they're actually going to start load they're uploading those tools on a navigate 360 to make it easier for the campuses to just do it digitally from their devices so i'm going to now kick it over to joel you moved on me joel content into our comprehensive communication plan this includes posting weekly photo progress of facilities in addition to monthly topical video topic video updates on social media all featuring the cfisd bond hashtag this month's feature by our video production team pertains to safety and security updates we have prepared a video that will premiere on facebook and youtube later this evening detailing many of the latest updates to our safety and security

081action plan and here is that video for you to view now [Music] cfisd continues to evaluate and enhance our safety and security measures in our 2014 and 2019 bond programs we dedicated more than 250 million dollars to safety and security upgrades [Music] the district has made significant progress all of the safety and security work included in the 2014 bond has been completed in the 2019 bond we invested another 207 million in safety and security we've already completed security improvements for open concept classrooms at 16 campuses we'll complete another dine campuses this summer we've had security vestibules placed in the campuses we've done security fencing at the perimeters we have doors at the academic areas you have the phones in the classrooms now that can immediately call 9-1-1 you have log-down buttons we have security cameras

082intrusion panels have been upgraded to all of our high schools and middle schools which include dwarf prop alarms so if a door is left open for more than 30 seconds an alert goes off at the receptionist desk and they can pinpoint where that door is left open a camera points at that door and we can make sure that it's secured we are confident and we know that we can get to any one of our campuses in less than four minutes [Music] we also have the tip line anonymous reporting in our district you go in from your mobile device and you can put in a tip and you let us know that something's not right and we're going to investigate it it is not uncommon for our officers in our department in the evening and overnight

083hours to knock on doors and talk to parents and talk to students to ensure that this campus is going to be safe the next day with our different layers of security we feel confident in our approach to securing our schools cfisd is dedicated to keeping our schools the safest place for staff and students to teach and learn with your help we can make them even safer remember if you see something say something thank you all so much for the opportunity to come and talk about our safe and supportive schools program here in the district at this point we really can't talk about safety and security in schools without talking about the safe and supportive schools program this program does address the overlap between mental behavioral health and school safety so you may be aware that

084in 2019 the texas legislature passed senate bill 11 otherwise known as the safe and supportive programs bill this wide-ranging omnibus bill focused on promoting prevention and intervention strategies in schools and one of its main focus areas was threat but it did cover a lot of ground these are the components covered by the sssp bill uh dr pasteuric michelle and i are going to talk about the first five this last component emergency planning and execution this is something that's well supported by the scifir pd in the department of emergency management and chief just addressed a number of the issues under that so this first component promoting a positive school climate so a positive school climate is one in which students feel safe and included in which they feel that they're respected as individuals and in which

085they take some ownership and pride um and while it's important obviously that we we promote this for a number of different reasons from the perspective of just safety alone this is vitally important when students are connected to their school community they are much more likely to act in a way that protects that community they speak when they're concerned about a potential threat they don't align with others who may pose a threat to the school and they're much less likely to become a threat themselves with regard to this other component building multi-tiered systems of support or mtss senate bill 11 also promotes this and of course we use mtss and scifire to support both academic and behavioral needs mtss supports safety by focusing on early proactive interventions and addressing problems and frustrations before they escalate and

086of course this is the big part of senate bill 11 conducting behavioral threat assessments with regard to behavioral threat assessments there are several different models out there this is the model that we employ the comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines or seastag this was specifically designed to be used in schools and we've been very fortunate to be able to collaborate directly with dr dewey cornell who's the who developed the model for the last several years as we're working to adapt the model as well as his training for use in scifire back in 2019 we invited dr cornell to come into the district and train our staff and so so he trained a number i don't have the exact number but a number of our school-based providers uh and responders in the use of this model and

087then he stayed around for another two days and trained roughly a dozen staff internally as master trainers and so we have several master trainers in this model and so we're able to keep up a training model internally and train new members or new personnel as they come on because of the size of our district we use campus-based threat assessment teams but we do have district level consultants who are available to support those efforts as needed with regard to those teams it's both a best practice and a legal requirement that threat assessments be conducted by a multi-disciplinary team and so as we can see this is taken directly from senate bill 11. the senate requires that teams be represented by individuals who have expertise in counseling behavior management mental health and substance use classroom instructions special

088education school administration school safety and security emergency management and law enforcement and that's a real mouthful that you know but that doesn't mean that we have to have nine is that nine nine unique individuals representing each of those areas on the team we just have to have people who are able to speak to those areas of expertise as the team does its work right here we see what might be a typical team composition so during a threat assessment we have administrators campus counselors and school resource officers are standard team members on our campuses other team members often include maybe a special education case manager a classroom teacher and then of course district support such as mhit we're regularly supporting these teams senate bill 11 also includes provisions for a threat assessment oversight committee and so

089the language for this is a may so the superintendent of a school district may establish a committee but we think in a system as large and complex as ours it is important that we have this and so that that is what we're doing this year this this committee is being created this year when a district does choose to have an oversight committee it has to be comprised of individuals at the district level uh who have some oversight authority in each of these areas um so it's a it's a large committee the individuals on those committee have been informed and we have our first meeting scheduled for august 30th so we're very excited about that the committee is going to be responsible for reviewing our district level procedures regularly throughout the year to ensure that they're

090robust they're consistent with best practices and that they're being implemented with fidelity at each campus and at this point i'm going to turn it over to dr pestward to continue talking about threat assessment and the other components thank you thank you dr baker and thanks to each of you for your support and guidance in this so starting this school year we have appointed threat assessment leads on all secondary campuses these individuals will lead all threat assessment teams they will receive all training and updates on both c-stack and cfisd procedures and threat assessments they received training and updates on the navigate 360 software the behavioral threat assessment portion which we'll talk a little bit later on in the presentation they will consult with all principles on the transition process when a student goes to a disciplinary

091alternative education program based on terroristic threat and is returning back to their home campus the leads will also meet with mhit each semester either in person virtually or we will go out to the campus to meet with them so we don't pull them from campus for too much time and they will be the point person who will contact mhit during or immediately after a threat assessment just just a quick reminder mhit is a mental health intervention team for anyone that might not realize that yes we love acronyms so much we're fans and i'm going to give you another one so another component of the sssp involves ensuring staff are well trained threat assessment training is one of those areas that they look at we recently trained new administrators for both secondary and elementary schools in

092the c-stag fundamentals we will also set up quarterly trainings as needed for new aps throughout the year we are also working with campuses to set up tabletop exercises on their campus so the on-campus team is able to practice the process and the communication needed for an effective threat assessment and we're not only looking at training and threat assessment senepo 11 and the sssp guidelines also indicate other areas for staff training one of which is suicide prevention staff who work with students receive training on suicide prevention measures through the cfisd compliance course through the scifire professional growth system as well as trainings presented by counselors to school staff at the beginning of each year training and screening methods and district intervention procedures are also provided to all of our counselors psychological services providers and youth service

093specialists training in grief or trauma-informed practices is provided through the cognito trauma-informed training for educators through our professional growth system training in mental health or psychological first aid is also a requirement members of our safety and security committee are trained in psychological first aid for schools as well as a percentage of our counselors psychological services providers youth service specialists many of which you have also received mental health first aid training as well and just to put in a little plug next week at our district staff development we will also have a mini skills session on psychological first aids in the school for our teachers the texas education agency also anticipates releasing a training on the safe and supportive school program soon and we are routinely checking for updates and last but not least is data

094collection our district has been fortunate enough to acquire the navigate 360 software which which supports the tracking of threat assessment data tea requires the reporting of threat assessment data conducted as well as numbers of staff members who have been trained over the past three data cycles the data collection and reports have been completed by a combination of student services along with dr baker and me it's been a district-wide data collection this year however moving forward ta is mandating data to be collected and reported at the campus level so next june a member of each campus will need to complete a survey in order to help facilitate that process dr baker and i will be working to support campuses this year on these collection efforts and with that we're at the end of our presentation um

095i am not the answer of all questions but i can answer some of them so um i wanted to see if you have any questions so let me look to the left to start with mr scanlon not at this time that's a very um i'm excited for the program i think that's going to be very valuable and i'm glad to see the training that we're distributing so thank you that's wonderful i have no comments miss blackshear just a co just a comment i just um i'm very thankful and grateful that we have uh people such as you that are so well qualified to lead this effort and i'm thankful to our district and to dr henry that we had the foresight what three four years ago to uh to do this and uh you provide

096an invaluable um asset to our district and i thank you for all that you do for our students our district and our community thank you miss heiderman thank you and i'll echo that i'm grateful that our district has invested so much in the safety of our students not just from a facility standpoint but also from the the culture and the environment of our schools for our staff and for our students and that has been a long-standing commitment in our district for many years but also from our community our community has overwhelmingly supported bond programs that have allowed us to bring in these resources even before they were required by the governor and tea we were these were already in place we're just now documenting them and showing them that we're doing it um so i'm

097grateful for our community for continuing to support these investments in our students one thing i want to just mention um you know we talk so much about hardening schools and locks and cameras and all that our schools are loving joyful inspiring spaces so i think sometimes we hear all these these parts of it but when you visit our schools and you're in the classrooms and you're with teachers i mean they're just joyful bright loving spaces so i think you know all this is so much in the background our students don't necessarily experience that um we want our students to feel safe and happy and to learn and i think that's we managed to balance both in our in our schools mr henry just a question for chief mendes party make you walk uh we we

098mentioned earlier putting the new officers in place i know hiring's always been an issue for you how's that coming where are we at do you need any plug for new officers so we're we're moving along we're trying to get people hired and and i've met with in the last two weeks i've probably met with agency heads of i don't know 15 departments 20 departments and everyone's having the same problem of finding resources but we've been doing pretty well uh here in the last week we've i've actually sworn in five individuals so we've hired five officers we have a few more to go we do have recruiting trips that we make and we're fortunate and i'm not going to say it publicly but there are fishing holes and cities that i like to go to because

099individuals in those cities really look to move to more urban bigger areas that we have attractions here and we do we market that we're not in houston but we have the benefits of houston with pro sports and concerts and all of that to try to get individuals here and so i won't say publicly where we fish because i don't want other agencies to go do that but but we are doing a good job at getting people on board and just just to add to that i mean you all do the thankless job in the 100 degree weather during the safety issue getting people on campus so i thank you for that and that's not just part of the safety but it's also the safety of traffic control which is a big part of that it's

100why i asked that question because we have their school starting up and that's gonna be a big part of your duties as well not just for crowd control which is car control which is always a big thing on the first opening days of school in the first two weeks the first two weeks plus the school you'll see an officer at every single campus during every single arrival and we do we work uh traffic at every campus and again i i work with partnership with precision forum precinct 5. they're big help to us when we have traffic issues because they help at a lot of locations with it but we we we will be out there at the start of the school year that's a blessing thank you for such incredible information and chief you're a

101consummate professional and you bring confidence uh to me as a board member and as a parent um in the team of course that's all around you making these plans um i was there were a few things that are probably comments i think that that's very encouraging when senate bill 11 came out that whole we had the impetus to look for engagement from other police departments to hear that they now have that impetus as well to really engage and learn our schools it's very exciting um i think that could definitely increase the way we can respond in the situations that come up i also i think there was a lot of practicality in your ideas the idea about the door sweeps the idea of prioritizing those work orders and also the idea of training requests by

102campus because to me that is the ultimately you can make all those plans and i think we have that discussion with some leaders during graduation that it comes down to people understanding what to do um and i also wanted to um i was a very great uh for the m hold on i'm learning and thank you for asking mhit i think i figured it out but for your team thank you um it is really i think the layers and even adding that district layer in to support those campus teams looks encouraging and i'd love to hear more about the mtss the multi-tiered systems of support the way the academic the behavioral match in the middle with the departments um i feel like the i have some questions i'd love to see more about that navigate

103360 and also the cognito training to understand a little bit more how those support the process but it's uh as a parent and as a community member and as a board member i just want to say as to julie's point they were you were ahead i would drive up and see long before senate bill 11 told us there were numbers on the doors um and that alone is just such an incredible step to how fast we can respond and so you were always ahead as a group and a team and thank you for keeping us ahead and i would i make one suggestion uh mr wakeley great video i wonder if we couldn't just single out a video some of the same information but some people tune out bond because we already saw in the

104data not everyone is that interested or tuned into bonds as much as a school board or a district would be i'm just pulling out those safety features and making it a singular safety video i think you might see a lot more hits and clearly they want us to text it to them we saw that go up so that may be another way to communicate so people feel confident but thank you incredible work uh well done mr serabia yes an incredible report um chief the um scott asks the question i was going to ask about the the hiring and we had talked about that a couple of months ago and it's great to hear that we're out and about trying to get fully staffed uh in this time um i think julie also said something about

105um when you guys are always there i mean when we walk out of this building everybody we walk out late after everybody's gone and there's always somebody there and that's really heartwarming it's nice to always uh and and we leave different campuses wherever we're at we see the presence there um and it could just be them against the door or just keeping their eyes open uh it's very comforting to know that there's that layer there and i have yet in the last few years gone somewhere where there has not been a presence and that's been very uh comforting and stuff so especially this time the training i was glad to hear about the training you you brought up because that was a question we had brought up earlier a couple of months ago um is

106that one of the biggest challenges you have or what is one of the biggest challenges that you face right now besides hiring the number of employees that you need i don't know that i have any one big challenge i think hiring is always a challenge especially nowadays law enforcement you know took some pretty bad press over the last couple years and so you have a lot of individuals that just no longer want to be in law enforcement and so the pull has shrunk um fortunately again i i've had some fishing holes that we like to use that we've had a lot of luck with in getting people to come to our our department and so we'll continue to do that you know i i i think that just our community is great and we're very

107supported here and i and i've said it before if you've ever watched any of the back the badge events that have happened for our department and i've said on those videos that i'm nowhere in texas and i've worked in two different areas of texas i've worked in south texas and central texas and nowhere in texas i ever see have i ever seen the support of law enforcement like i do out here in scifire and so i think we're blessed with our community and so as far as any one challenge i don't think we have we have minor challenges that we have to overcome and we work diligently to do that and so it's just trying to get through that day-to-day and as to your point about visibility i will say that since i've been here

108our message is to our parents if you see a cfisd police car in front of a school that doesn't mean there's a problem that means your child is safe because we're there right um it goes to the uh the other areas of the presentation um the same question goes out to you guys that just presented is there a need in any area that we as a board can support you uh in a way if it's you won't get in trouble for saying something so but but i'm just asking because uh we always want to be supportive of everybody in the district and all our employees though so is there something challenging that besides employment uh as we know the numbers are are tough around uh everywhere uh to get the you know the qualified people

109that we need here though i guess i drew the short straw so um thank you thank you so much for that um i i can't say that we could be any more supported by the leadership at this district that we are currently i know that we're regularly meeting with teresa as well as marnie um they've made every offer in the world for for what more we could need you know um the i've i've always been impressed even before mhit as to how forward-thinking the district is with regard to the needs in mental health um and the district has always done a lot to really address that you know this time of year training time is like blood from a stone and so that's just a challenge right and you know new administrators are getting trained

110in this as well as a thousand other things and so um you know i'm thankful that the campus has welcomed us on throughout the year to continue the education with their administrators and to continue the support um but you know i don't want to pass up a golden opportunity but we are very well supported by my district administration thank you well it's good to hear that and uh i love the questions from our our trustees here uh um they ask very important good questions and make good comments and stuff um i like the way it's working it's uh very good superb job tom there's not a lot that i can add to what my colleagues have not already said but a couple of things one i've already seen the presentation once as you know it

111was even better tonight than the first time we practiced at least once i also want to say thank you to uh miss blackshirt she was before her illness she was the uh appointed board member for safety and i appreciate her service to the district in that area i have now taken her position on your committee and vp heinemann fills the the other spot having done this before this is my 33rd year as an election official so i've seen this before from a different perspective and having been through this process with the different governmental agency before i have to say i am overwhelmed with the display of your talent in rolling out the program the commissioner of education has said multiple times in multiple different instances that this district is ahead of the curve in fact

112one time he said scifir is ahead of the curve again for the viewing audience this safety plan was not new in fact the district presented it at a national level and all kinds of school districts wanted to know how was it done how could they emulate it how could they develop community support for it and i had the pleasure of being in the audience and just listening to these people from around the country and i knew that senior management but also everybody as part of the team was doing a superb job of looking into the future and that's not easy to do i will make a note as trustees we are given a wealth of information and one of the items that we were given was in fact a safety video that i think joel's

113fingerprints were all over and more than that that safety video actually made television as well so you may get a peabody for it i don't you know i don't know but but but i thought it was a it was a dandy video um i did i was privileged to be on one of our campuses as part of a school visit during an active shooter drill i certainly would welcome an invitation to be present once again as i said at a prior board meeting it was both horrifying as well as heartwarming to be to be there and to see the professionalism and organization that addressing it i don't know if other colleagues would we care to be part of that or not um i did have an opportunity uh to chat about your fishing holes and

114and no i won't won't say where they are but but i know you have been successful and i and i bid you good fishing thank you that concludes my comments i really had no questions very impressed once again a trademark of this district when i went through leadership tasby i got to go all around the state i got to visit many different school districts a mark of this district from the entire time that i've been on this board is the district puts talent where talent needs to be and tonight we see that talent on full display it's done very quietly but that is in fact the strength of senior management to recognize talent and the talent has to be in that particular position into my comments thank you once again mr dr henry somebody else

115had something yeah president jackson i have one additional comment um and related to safety and really dr henry karen um so we had the opportunity to make a case to the legislature in the last couple of weeks regarding where we're at in terms of funding and what we're doing and what funding that we've received as a district and so i just wanted to make some kind of high-level number comments for the viewing audience so that you understand some of the discussion points that we're having and one of them is regarding funding and karen please keep me honest here but the number that we're receiving from a safety and allotment perspective a million and it's nine dollars and 72 cents per child right and so our the vision that we had for what it took to

116be safe in our schools and to keep our kids safe it required an investment of approximately 15 times that allotment yes if we look at the just what's budgeted in the general fund for the security in the police department you're correct it's about 15 million dollars is what our budget was for this coming year yep and my understanding from feedback as i've spoken to other legislators around the state is that the the state recognizes the opportunity to improve and i invited them to have a look as i'm sure they already have but it is something that we're doing right and the vision that we have and you know chief to your credit and that of your team to keep our people whole and to your team as well doctors uh to keep our people mentally

117well those things are important and so we're talking to our legislatures and we'll be doing so throughout this coming year in the coming session and mr jackson just added that because luke took words out of my mouth that's what i was going to touch on but but he didn't and karen didn't even touch on the cost of the mental health efforts that we have in this district and the counselors that we have in this district that runs into many many more millions of dollars and we know that's a better approach than the police having to get involved and then on top of that you saw the numbers today literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to make our campuses more safe so a lot of money has been dedicated to keep our students

118and staff safe and we get 9.72 cents per student that really doesn't cover it thank you everybody board we're we're making it another change this evening as well heretofore we've always worked with a consent and non-consent agenda so tonight we're we're going a a different approach everything will be an action item so that means after every item i will ask your permission to move it to the consent agenda so 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 the board will consider approving the minutes of the june 13 2022 regular board meeting there are no speakers on minutes tonight so remember i said the way

119it's set up we will have speakers on every single agenda item so no speakers may we move the minutes to the consent agenda holly if you would 4b the board will consider approving construction proposals and contracts paid from bond funds and m o funds to the recommended contractors and authorized the superintendent or designee to execute all necessary documents related to such contracts these relate to 2021 black danish and durian elementary school renovations there are no speakers this evening we do have a presentation matt morgan or is it questions only but you can present so to my right mr henry dr blessing game not particular to the items but i had asked for to get some information about the process we had the rubric for how we chose architects yes ma'am yes so i'd love to

120see that but no questions on the item look great yes ma'am we'll get that to you mr serabia no he's a good guy really oh mr scanlon i'm not going to comment on mr rabia's comment affirm or deny thank you sir yes sir but no i i'm also curious on the scoring mechanisms and how we work with our architects that would be interesting information as well but i have no comments on this agenda item i'll provide that definition thank you miss blackshear miss heinemann well then as long as you're standing at the podium i i i really don't want you to make a wasted trip thank you sir so as it relates to the contract that that we issued in awarding this bid did we select the low bidder and if so why or why

121not and also explain whether governmental entities are either required or not required to accept the low bid yes sir we did not accept the low bidder we accepted the bidder that provided the best value to the district as a government entity we're not required to accept the load bidder we have some specific published evaluation score price is part of that so is quality reputation of the vendor ability to close out a job ability to complete the job as well as their subcontractors and their teams this was a fairly significantly sized contract why did we not break it out into a contract on a per-school basis as opposed to putting all three of them together we like to bundle our projects you know if we'd had these separated you would have had a five million dollar

122project a seven maybe an eight million dollar but as a 20 million dollar project it attracts a different quality of contractor general contractor and sub we also give value as the district through economies of scale when it's similar scope and all of these are similar scope briefly explain the nature of the renovations that are going to take place so these three schools are getting the 2019 bond safety and security upgrades which is segmentation security dope concept classrooms additional lockdown buttons we're also doing additional impact resistant glass hardening the front desk those as well as classroom phones which have already been installed security fencing and they're also getting new furniture so you use the term segmentation what does that mean so with our open concept schools we're going in and we're creating walls and pods of

123four to eight classrooms with lockable doors so that we can secure the open concept classrooms were any of these schools impacted by the last set of floods or the winter storm none of these schools were impacted by the last set of floods or harvey none of them are located in a flood zone there may have been some brooklyn sprinkler head pipes at these schools but the majority of the elementaries were unscathed by the freeze so you're talking about renovations you're also talking about buying furniture does this impact student attainment i mean our number one goal here is student attainment we we have a neighboring district that over the past 40 years has eschewed the concept of renovations yet this district embraces renovations do our students will our students benefit from these renovations absolutely when we

124do the segmentation and create the pods the noise from the passing hallways is greatly reduced we're also improving lighting and with the flexible furniture there have been a lot of studies that show that that enhances student learning excellent thank you sir yes sir may i move this contract to the consent agenda looking to my right to my left holly if you would please do so 4c the board will consider awarding bids and contracts and or authorizing purchase orders as recommended in the posted agenda item 4c1 contracted educational services and professional development services 4c2 food service equipment for nutrition services 4c3 northwest evaluation association nwea map growth enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year 4c4 restaurant catering and delivery services 4c5 spirit apparel and promotional items once again there are no speakers on this agenda item tonight

125darren crawford is available for questions let me look to the left any questions mr scanlon miss blackshear miss heinemann just a statement uh it is a significant um dollar amount for the award um but this is to approve this list of vendors so that they can be used throughout the year um this is something that's done once a year is that correct so that our campuses have access to these contracts and vendors for their activities throughout the year awards and promotional items thank you welcome to my right mr henry dr blessing mr serabia as long as you're there thank you i i would hate to disappoint one one of the budget items is 9 million dollars it covers a broad range can you give us a very broad overview one what the services are for

126why are they necessary how are they beneficial for students and staff okay so this is very similar in design to the spirit apparel and promotional items bit this is a a bid that's put out once a year it's for trainers consultants presenters that can be used in campuses or campuses or campuses or departments and it's really an open solicitation it's an effort to get the best qualified people that meet the qualifications that we need so that we can have them on a contract so that at any point during the year if a campus or a department needed a trainer a consultant a presenter there would be people readily available to come in and we could facilitate that quickly very good you know i i went ahead and googled map to see what that was all

127about uh for that for that contract briefly explain the purpose of that expenditure okay i will and i can also share that i too googled map and was shocked to see that on their website they do not define the acronym which really personally bothered me i was offended right i i know what is the acronym well actually nwa is northwest evaluation association but for actually matt right from now you're right they do not be fine okay so basically what that is and i will let dr macias jump in and bail me out at any time but this is an assessment program for elementary schools so for grades k through two they will do assessments during the year on reading and math and in grades three through five they will do math and science so it

128is an outside contractor that we are using um or that we're proposing to use with your approval obviously um to to do those interim assessments and also professional development for our teachers is included in that contract so i guess the the next question and it's either you or linda so so is this better than our internal assessments or is it another layer will it help our students will it help our teachers um it's um actually um you're correct it is for k2 but it also covers three to five for math and reading and then three to five for science and it is an assessment that will measure student growth and if it provides information on instruction that is needed and also does projections regarding proficiency it is it's a it is we are going to

129be able to uh remove a dpm for the upper grades at elementary it's an elementary assessment and at secondary it'll be an additional assessment it's all it's a 30-minute assessment and it's in its uh on the computer uh but remember that at elementary we're required to provide one of the state the state approved assessments as well and it's very much a one-to-one interaction with the teacher that we do with the assessments but in addition to that you all have heard that we are working towards the teacher incentive allotment and so this is also going to be to provide a growth measure so that we will be able to eventually include the primary grades and science in the teacher and center of allotment while we're adding and looking for more assessments thank you i know the

130the board has been highly supportive of the concept of growth enhancement and that was the topic of several board meetings that we had earlier this year so thank you welcome to the board i'll look to my left may we move this to the consent agenda and to the right holly if you would go ahead and put this on the consent agenda please 4d the board will consider approving the harris county easement dedication along westfield village drive adjacent to m robinson elementary and authorize the superintendent or designee to negotiate the final terms and execute all related documents there are no speakers on this agenda item questions only looking to my right any questions to my left to my right may we move this to consent and to my left holly if you would put it on

131a consent agenda for e the board will consider approving board members to serve as delegate and alternate delegate to the 2022 texas association of school board's annual delegate assembly there are no speakers on this topic so vice president heinemann is an automatic delegate to the assembly i did not put an email out to the board to see if anybody else would care to be considered so since she's an automatic we can still appoint somebody i will ask that we leave this on the non-consent agenda and so if there's any board members who wish to serve as a delegate please get in touch with me and there may be more than one of course and if there's more than one well even if there is one we'll still have an election and it it could also

132be zero uh and we will still be represented we will still have have a delegate uh so does that work for the for the board member handling that okay so we will put this on the non-consent agenda and any board member has an interest in serving please be in touch i have been a delegate before as has vice president heinemann so if you want to reach out to us to see what do you actually do please do so for f the board will consider a resolution approving the individual authorized to calculate the no new revenue tax rate the voter approval tax rate and other truth in taxation requirements once again no speakers on this agenda item tonight looking to my right questions mr henry dr blessing game mr sarabia scanlon miss black so no questions

133but but once again and and this falls on the category of trying to enhance transparency on financial matters karen if you would briefly explain what this is all about sure i'd be glad to just so you know last year was the first year we asked you to approve this resolution and this was part of the 86 legislative session and school districts are required to designate somebody that it's it's a long calculation is in calculating the tax rate and basically saying that we haven't calculated a tax rate higher than we really are allowed to have uh without an election and so basically you have somebody that is has to be uh trained in the area which would be our tax assessor because they're they're certified in that area and they they he calculates the tax rate

134i then review the documentation associated with that but we have to designate an officer that can calculate that tax rate and has the knowledge to calculate that tax rate and so the the entity that you are proposing you're satisfied as to the professionalism and competence in that regard absolutely very good may we move this to consent agenda holly please do so and while my voice takes time to recover vice president heinemann if you would uh start up with item 4g yes 4g the board will consider approving the 2022 2023 cypress fairbanks isd student code of conduct we do not have any speakers signed up this evening so we will go straight to our presentation from dr debra stewart and dr iffy aguma good evening dr henry president jackson and board of trustees chapter 37.001 of

135the texas education code requires that each school district adopt a student code of conduct approved by you the board we are here tonight to present the 2223 cfisd student code of conduct and at this time i'll turn the presentation over to dr ogumakay iffy let's see okay good evening dr henry president jackson board of trustees for the 2022-2023 school year there are very limited changes to the student code of conduct in your draft copy you will notice that the changes are largely reflective of the reorganization and formatting enhancements made to improve the presentation and the readability of the document our district utilizes ongoing and collaborative code of conduct review process that includes all stakeholders each year students staff parents and community members are asked to provide feedback on the code the process begins in early

136october when feedback forms are made available to the community via the campus and district website also principals are reminded to share this information with our various campus groups on the on their respective campuses such as the uh the campus performance objectives committee the cpac committee in december student services meets with the district educational improvement committee the deic to share the code of conduct review process and also use that opportunity to seek feedback on possible revisions so all through the fall while we're going through this process feedback is collected from various groups in february the code of conduct review committee comprised of a legal counsel campus and district administrators that are made up of principles and assistant principles from all levels counselors psychologists teachers and parents convene to review all the information and feedback that have

137been collected uh the process continues it's not you know it's just ongoing and then the committee review process continues through the end of april uh once that's done all the suggestions and the feedback that are gathered are put together and are very instrumental in uh what student services uses to complete the update of the code so that's all the all the feedback that's gathered from everybody so once that is done and the code is uh approved and adopted which is why we're here today we focus our efforts on making sure that the parents and the students our community understand the code so we begin first of all with making sure that the parents acknowledge receipt of the code when we have new students register or when our returning students go through the annual student information

138process online the code is available to our community like i said earlier on a district website and on every single campus in our district in english and spanish paper copies are available at campuses upon request and we have specific locations where those codes are stored we have them in the principal's office we have them in the library and we have them in the registrar's office and when campuses need them student services also has a bank that we can provide to campuses to help our students understand expectations for behavior assistance principles conduct could have conduct presentations twice a year they do it once in the fall when we you know right around august and september and then we repeat it again in the spring in january for students who register in the second semester in addition

139to that uh when we have student you know it's kind of a revolving door with registration aps make it a point to sit and highlight the code to parents and students and we also focus on encouraging parents to take some time to review the content of the code with their students i know this was a quick overview of the process uh this brings me to the end of my presentation i started out the presentation by sharing that it is a collaborative effort it's a it's an ongoing effort that involves us several stakeholders so i would like to use this opportunity to recognize my team student services led by candy meddling who is uh you know we call her the queen of the coach she leads that process along with staff from other departments who uh

140kind of join in efforts so we're very very much appreciative of all of them so um open for questions if you have any questions at this time put microphone on mr henry dr blasting him um i had a question just um that i won't ask right now i'll send it by email just comparing some of the the new measures that were put in before to be a little bit more restorative in nature and how those were blended into these current um the current level responses i guess okay i will make note of that i look forward to your question mr serabia yes going back a couple of months i asked the question of hoping to hear that the coming year would be better and i believe at that time you stated that you do expect

141better behavior from our students and stuff do you still hold to that yes sir i did excellent i did yes good i i believe so i believe so also as i'm a very positive person try to be and stuff the code of conduct we have new arrivals every year from different districts i'm not sure what the numbers are do we do anything special to welcome them and let them know because not that our district is perfect you know it's a thriving community you know but did we do anything to let them know that hey you're here in cfisd and we have certain standards that we adhere to do we do anything with them at this time um yes sir i shared that all through the year that's really one of the primary roles of the

142assistant principal to make sure that when students register they take some time along with the counselor aps and counselors partner together and campuses have unique things and ways that they onboard their students when they join us so we do have you know the presentations that we do and the one-on-one uh conferences that the councillors and the aps hold when students join well excellent to hear that um as some of y'all know i i do a little bit of refereeing on the side and we just had our general meeting before the season starts as we're given specific um orders to not tolerate anything throughout the state that's coming down from the state so um i i see it uh as tom stated we saw uh nationally in in the conferences that we went to in the

143state that it's uh epidemic and uh it looks like we're trying to get everything back uh accordingly the way it's supposed to be for a learning environment and a safe environment too though thank you great presentation thank you to my left mr chandler no questions just to comment um i do believe this is very readable very easy to understand and so i just wanted to say thanks to your team for putting this together i know it's a lot of work well we take a lot of pride in working and i shared it's it's a collaborative effort and we have the support of awesome legal legal counsel here so it makes it easier thank you miss blackshear a quick question for dr henry earlier when we were talking about students and we talked about respect for

144students for other teachers and vice versa where in the handbook do we will where will we find that in the handbook i guess is my question in the code that would be a level one well you know they're different types of disrespect and we start with level one which is what focuses on classroom um violations that the teacher typically redirects and then we have level two behaviors and you know disrespect could be non-compliance refusing to follow directives from the teacher or another staff member not an administrator and then the levels uh of misbehavior or you know disrespect right or non-compliance could rise up to a level three so but that that's how it's um you know on the contrast yes okay may i also add that i think you guys received your draft and if

145you look at the front of the code of conduct we start off by sharing with students expectations this is how we expect you to behave in school and it's all about being respectful to your peers and your teachers so there's a section for student expectations and there's a section for parent expectations in the very beginning there's a letter from dr henry where he lays out his expectations for for the students more questions miss blackshear no thank you miss heinemann um thank you dr stewart for bringing that up i actually did highlight that i thought that letter was very well written and it really did it talked about a shared understanding of expectations for student behavior and consequences and then it asks the parent for their support and encouragement um and communicating these expectations to their

146their student and that it was in addition to the normal communication that takes place between school and home and so i thought that was just it was just really well written and i think it sets the stage for we're not talking about punishment all the time it's not about consequences all the time it's about working together with families and students and and campus staff to ensure that our students can learn um so i think i think it's and um i thought that was just a good way to start the document and then the changes made were very helpful it i will say it was probably the it made it very easy to read it's been not untedious in the past it is very easy to read i think also the safety pledge and the way

147that the language that's used from the elementary level and the secondary level are also very easy to understand and that's something that i think that is important for parents to go over with their students absolutely thank you thank you just just to add one thing mr jackson miss heineman since you touched on it certainly we have the letter from me in here but i'm going to do something different this year than i've ever done in 32 years as a superintendent i'm going to send a letter to parents the week before school starts letting them know what the expectations are about respect from uh not only their students but the kind of respect that we should be modeling to our to our students and i'm also going to address fighting and any kind of violence in

148there so we're going to we're going to be really out in the open and up front to start the school year of what the expectations are and we want to make sure that it gets to every house possible every home possible mr serebio you had another question i'm not sure i forgot to ask the during the budget we approved the interventionist is that that's yes sir right how is that going as far as getting i think there was how many 87 i think what did we approve on that what number anyways how is it going as far as the hiring for getting them in place it's going great you uh approved either a behavior interventionist or testing coordinator for the elementary and middle school and um they have taken advantage of that for behavior interventionist

149we have an additional an addition 18 so you know some of them already had them last year we had 40 campuses with bis this year we have 58 in elementary last year we had six bis in middle school this year we have 15. for the testing coordinators last year in elementary we had 30. this year we're going to have 45 middle school we had three this year we'll have 12. so they appreciate the additional support and they've taken advantage of that opportunity to hire strong staff to help them do those usually come from in-house or are we out seeking that specific so most of those behavioral coaches interventionists are master teachers so they are from in-house but this year we are having a strategic year-long training that's specifically focused on classroom management and modeling great

150classroom management that will bleed into the hallways and hopefully alter the climate of the campus excellent nice to hear deborah sorry i forgot the question earlier iffy and stuff though but uh great job thank you dr blessing tell me to jump in front of you i know you have excellent questions um thank you uh first of all julia the comments as far as the message to the parents i think that's very uh and also the the speaking to the joy and the relationship factor inside our schools um i had a question um well actually i wanted to ask about on page cc9 the behavior management techniques i wasn't sure since i hadn't had the seat before to look at it from this eye but i did appreciate this idea that it discusses there how the

151consideration of the consequence looks at self-defense the student's history that kind of stuff could you speak to the change i do hear from students a lot this idea that whether they started it or not they had the same consequence or the you know the the way it was treated if they were not the aggressor and so is this new is this the same and can you just speak to if there's anything that's new in the training around it uh with the mitigating factors uh on cc9 we train our aps that whenever they're working through an investigation or working with students to always look at each student independently as they look at the situation that they're investigating and and those are the meeting the mitigating factors here on cc9 when you look through the document you

152will see the same mitigating factors in several uh places in the code just as a reminder and it's also a requirement uh by the law that we have to look through those filters i not nothing has changed this year but every situation is different with discipline when you're working with students and the uh consequence determines on the fact it's determined by the finding of your investigation so that changes every single time but we still work within the framework of this mitigating factors i'm not sure if i answered your question yes thank you i do think it's important that each case is considered individually in that in the idea of that respect back to the students that we're asking from them absolutely um and then also to uh thank you gilbert asked the question i was

153around the numbers and so i understand i think it's interesting to see how not all those positions went to particularly a behavioral specialist but the fact is that if you free up the people whose position it was you had the skill set in the heart for kids and for that to offer that fair discipline and that respect um then taking something like testing coordination off of their plate can free up how i will feel like we know it worked or did not work to put that extra investment as data and so i'd like for a baseline a report for us if we could have it you know as soon as possible it doesn't have to be that soon as far as the next meeting but i would definitely intend for us to have a baseline

154report um on discipline compared to last year we know it's getting better we've heard gilbert already claimed it and so did you if he um and we all believe it right so just really understanding the baseline looking at the different infractions and the responses of discipline um you know the level of responses and then just understanding and having that marked by the campuses that chose a behavioral person versus a testing coordinator and making sure and i'd like to see if we could have interim reports on this during the year our families already told us through the survey that discipline is the number one concern and so for us to have inputs outputs before the outcomes at the end of the year only so we have some out some output information during the year would be

155fantastic and that way we can respond and see if we need to offer any other resources to the cause thank you so much thank you so may we move this to consent agenda looking to the left looking to the right holly if you would i wouldn't mention iffy and endeavor job well done this is it this is exceptionally readable it was positive from the front and just like we do as parents we always lead with positive but we always remind if you want to make other choices then there will be other actions not as positive so so well done it was nicely put together julie if you would go ahead and handle 4 8 through 4k and maybe my voice will come back sure 4-h the board will consider authorizing the superintendent to execute the

156renewal of the 2022-2023 interlocal agreement with harris county for specialized services at the academic behavior school abs west there is not a presentation as questions only and there are no speakers signed up are there any questions for dr macias looking to my right nope so can we move this to consensus yes yes excellent thank you for i the board will consider approving the renewal of the 2022-2023 interlocal agreement with harris county for school-based therapy services presenters are dr linda macias and barbara lewandowski no speakers are signed up are there any questions looking to the right no questions nope can we move this to consensus yes yes boom 4j the board will consider authorizing the superintendent to execute a memorandum of understanding with nova southeastern university for speech pathology field placement there are no speakers signed

157up questions only for dr linda macias or barbara lewandowski to the right any questions nope we can move this to consensus excellent 4k the board will consider authorizing the superintendent to execute the renewal of the memorandum of understanding with the university of houston main campus for licensed specialist and school psychology practicum internship questions only there are no speakers signed up any questions for dr macias or barbara lewandowski nope we move this to consensus yes excellent thank you miss heinemann 4l the board will consider approving the interlocal agreement with the university of texas at austin to obtain the services for educational coursework or training project for the 12 cfisd high school sites there are no speakers on this agenda topic questions looking to my right to my left no questions may we move this to consent

158agenda holly if you would please place it on the consent agenda the board will consider approving on first reading additions revisions or deletions to district policies 4m1 dbb local employment requirements and restrictions mental examinations and communicable communicable diseases revised 4m2 eed local instructional arrangement services student schedules revised once again there are no speakers who have signed up on this do we have a presentation or is this questions only questions only looking to my right to my left may we move it to consent agenda holly if you would 4n the board will consider approving on dual reading additions revisions or deletions to district policies 4n1 bed local board meetings public participation revised 4n2 ef local instructional resources delete 4n3 efa local instructional resources instructional materials and 4n4 efb local instructional resources library materials ad four and

159five e h a a local basic instructional program required instruction ad 4nc fm local student activities revised 4n7 fnab local student expression use of school facilities for non-school purposes revised before the presentation we will hear from alexi swarsky who has registered to speak [Music] mr secretary are you ready with the timer button and since you are our first and perhaps only speaker this evening i will remind you that when you have 30 seconds left the yellow light will come on when your time has expired the red light will come on it will start beeping where are the lights right there okay thank you i didn't see that okay mr secretary are you ready please start when you want ma'am yes i am concerned that scifir isd may be exposing students to sexually inappropriate material um

160among other things i'm concerned about there's a recently formed committee that chose a character curriculum i'm not sure if they wrote that curriculum i cannot find the curriculum by that name on the internet i would like the public and taxpayers and parents to have a chance to review the curriculum before it's voted on which is scheduled for tonight seems kind of odd that if it's big enough for the board to vote on it it should be a big enough field for the public to be able to review it and give input to the board members before that vote i would like to make sure it's not including um sexually inappropriate our material that violates the crt law passed in the last legislative session by representative steve toth exposing children to sexually inappropriate material can y'all

161hear me okay thank you under the guise of education is devious and immoral and possibly criminal parents have the right to know what is being taught to their child as do the taxpayers have a right to know what their money is going towards any sexual material should be on a parent opt-in basis only in compliance with texas law which requires sexual education to be on a parent opt-in basis only presenting sexual education as something else is devious and circumvents the law the purpose of public schools is to prepare students for success in future academic and vocational endeavors i have in my undergraduate degree i have a master's degree i have a successful career i only receive very basic factual education in public school it was not needed for the school's purpose the parents have a

162responsibility to inform their children and educate them in the way they see fit on non-academic subjects not the school district children are most precious possession and treasure please do your job and protect our texas children transparency needs to be the norm not the exception the teachers administrators who value exposing children to inappropriate material they need to go please wrap up thank you very much thank you presenters teresa hall dr linda macias and i was just going to briefly share just for the board and just for edification um these are dual reading policies oftentimes you know we will do the single and then a second but because we want these in place this month that's why we're doing the dual reading so i was just going to add that and then dr macias is going to

163do the brief presentation on the efb policy and dr macias before you start counsel we do not vote on this this evening correct we we take the vote monday this is only a work session yeah this is a work session so we'll take feedback uh your feedback and we can revise and we've we've already been interacting because these were dual reading policies um as you all know you got these a couple of weeks ago and we've been i've been interacting with you all and taking suggestions and revising as we go and we'll continue to do that until you're comfortable and ready to vote thank you hi monday dr macias good evening president jackson board members and dr henry as you know since early last spring we have been working on possibilities with you on a

164board policy regarding our our library books we have been working with you on ways to strengthen and provide more transparency for our parents and ensure that they are making they have the information to make the adequate choices for their students i want to share that as we've worked through the spring we immediately engage the support of some of our librarians we are very fortunate in this district to have librarians at every single campus and and just for our audience to know our librarians have master's degrees and then they have to have a certification from the state of texas uh to be school librarians and so we're very fortunate that that we have some at every school as i said and that we have these uh experts experts in literacy and uh and in books and

165i'm confident that as you as you determine the policy that you want to implement then we will work with them to uh to implement this policy and thank you for allowing us to hire a district librarian and so this is certainly going to help us as we move towards the implementation process so in creating the efb policy we really looked and reviewed policies from ta from tasby we looked at local sources and we took in information from uh some suggestions in the spring from our librarians but certainly from the community as we heard comments um and just from other experts we also looked around the other districts to see what it was that that they were or had as as a library policy library book policy the test be recommended policy that added language to

166the district's curtain current ef policy and you all remember that policy actually addresses both just general instructional materials but also the library materials and so with if this approach with with going with the tasby policy really would have reduced the number of changes that that needed to be made or you might want to make to the policy but it didn't provide the clarity that uh that as you shared you were looking for tea actually recommended dividing the policy and having efa local which was really all other instructional material and then uh a policy just for library uh books which is emb which is what we're going to talk to you uh to you about and so what we're bringing forward to you is actually that what the ta recommended is having two different policies to

167be able to provide some more clarity uh regarding this policy so the new policy and regulation um outlines the collection development process along with the detailed process to reconsider selected books or collection designations the detail policy process in the policy is primarily based on our current practice but it's updated and strengthened based on input as i said from from you the board from listening to thing from comments that you had for us from here in our community and really all stakeholders that provided feedback in one way or or another a highlight in this section is the inclusion of a consortium of area school districts to review library materials being considered for inclusion in the library this is this is a big piece of this but let me share with you what that means as a

168school district we have great relationships with other districts and we continuously have different consortiums where we are sharing information and and just guidelines and working together as as a region four group to develop different processes to implement whether it's when when uh the eocs came into place and how we're gonna handle that so we so we we work together on this in this instance the the um really what what we're looking at is having a consortium just like we always have but of librarians that can share books that they have read and the recommendation and why they made that recommendation it's not intended for for the district to just adopt all these books that other other districts have looked at have read and have looked at it really is more similar to the reviews the

169journal reviews that are both in the ta recommendation uh paul recommended policy as well as as in the task b it is rev it is a a review of books so not that we have to purchase them or buy them but another source of review like the journal reviews that really is the intention of the of the consortium so the policy also outlines uh a book the book collection access by level uh by grade level and the new regulation defines different content by level so parents can assist their students in making informed uh library material selections so it in in the in this recommended policy parents will make the decision whether they want their kids their students to have access not just to the default level but also maybe the next level for example at

170middle school the default level would be the juvenile level but if parents wanted their kids to also have access to the young adult level they would have to opt in they would have to opt into that they wouldn't just have access to to that level the new policy also creates a process for challenging uh library materials so similar it's very similar to the process for the instructional materials that that we have in place right now uh but it'll make it easier for for our parents to to use to follow and really more transparent up for even they can find it in in our in our in our system and then once approved whatever policy you choose to approve then that policy and the regulations will be posted directly on the library website and it'll be

171easily found so parents don't have to dig it'll be right there on the library website now this new policy and the regulations are very detailed also outline current practices practices that really provide that transparency and give parent choices give them choices along with some features and practices that we have had to develop for this coming year so specifically we are updating our library services page on the website so that it is easier to use more transparent for our parents uh we've already mentioned that whatever policies better policies that you finally adopt that'll go on that webs on that site as well so parents don't have to dig and then parents as they are able to right now will have access to really all the library materials that we have in the district by school so

172they can go to any they can go on the website they can click on any school they can click on the library and they can see all the books that are available at uh at every specific library and that's really handled by our online library management system in addition our curriculum and technology teams and i have to give a shout out to them because they have worked diligently on this and trying to set up some systems uh to handle the the proposed changes they have been working this summer to internally create ways to provide our parents the ability to select levels of library access for uh for their students and this will be done to the home access center but it's really the parent portal we have a parent portal that actually leads to the

173home access center that's really where where it'll be housed so after meeting with our library management software vendor there were very limited options that they could actually do in fact at one time as plastic game you may remember this at one time the library management uh vendor said oh we're gonna do this this and that and then they backed out and then they backed out a thought of what they were willing to invest and be able to do so it's our it's our team technology with curriculum the chrome team that have really have been working on this to figure out ways to uh establish programs and systems so that we can give better access to our parents so through the parent portal parents will be able to choose whether they will even allow their student

174to have access to the library to check out books so it's that detail where the parent can choose to opt out of of the library of having of having been able to check out books or library and and then as i said they will be able to determine whether they want their students to be able to access a higher collection so as i mentioned at middle school at elementary it's all juvenile that's the level but at middle school whether if it's there's a juvenile default level but if they want their children to access the young adult level then they have to opt into that at high school they have they will have access to default access to the juvenile level because we do have that there as well for kids and to the young adult

175level and they they want their their students to access the the adult level and this is adult level in the sense of school of school school-age students then they will have to give permission they will have to opt in for that as well so these are systems that uh we've been able to put in place but again we've had to internally be able to do that i mentioned that parents are abled or i don't go into this parents are able to log into their individual student accounts so the system was the the vendor was not able to provide us with a with a manageable way to be able to for parents to go in there and see what books or children had checked out i think at first they said that they've already one of

176the things they backed out from and and however our parents can go into their child into the system with their child's login and they can see the book that their child has currently checked out if they want to go into that detail um and then which we already did this now it happens now our parents can go even deeper in detail and contact their librarian so for example if there's an author that they don't want their their student to or their child to to um have access to or to or to read they can personally talk to the librarian call down there and say i don't i do not want my child reading books from such and such author and the librarian will assist them they do that already our parents do that already so

177the policy has also enhanced the uh the challenge the the challenge opportunity regarding regarding uh books challenging the uh any books or or bringing together a complaint about a book and typically the complaints really the challenges will fall into one or two areas either the materials fail to meet the standards laid out in the policy or two the designated collection level is incorrect so a parent may challenge a book and say you know this really is not a juvenile uh collection level it really needs to be a young adult and so that would be a challenge that a parent would bring forth so they're able to uh to do that and and they can do that in two ways they can do that through an informal informal challenge and really that that's taken care of

178at a at the school level you know when we started looking at what how many books had been challenged there weren't very many in fact it was less than a handful that's less than really the 10 books that have been challenged almost like five years for five years but that's because our parents have great relationships with our campuses with our campus leader and our campus principals and and they bring things like this to to them and they'll say you know have you looked at this what do you think about this and they work these things out and they determine what's appropriate for this for their child and what's not but if that informal process doesn't work out then there is a formal reconsideration process we have that in place right now as well but it

179has been strengthened in this in this recommendation um as well so if a parent does a formal complaint then the principal will convene a committee and what's been strengthened here has been in the in the current policy it says that a parent may be on the reconciliation committee this recommendation says a parent will be on the reconsideration committee and the parent will be one of the cpoc parents they know the school they know the community they've been working with the school so it's from a will to a must have a parent on that on that committee and then the the the policy also recommendation also states that within 60 days or soon after the committee will provide a written determination of the findings and this this uh written determination of the findings will be sent

180to our district librarian so that so that she can have all of that uh in one place but it will also be sent to the superintendent and and uh to the but we will have a report to the board members as well regarding the uh challenge books and then what the outcome was of those challenge books so that also has been strengthened in the policy so basically based on the input that that you have provided us board members and other input the i think that you'll find that this policy certainly speaks to improve transparency for all but it also speaks to that the ultimate determination of appropriateness of library resources remains with the student and with the parent and so with that if you have any questions that i may answer or marnie i'm going

181to give her another kudos over here too that's been supporting this process for us we will behave but we'll be happy to answer for you excellent let's start on my right mr henry thank you very much for everyone who contributed this and it was a lot of effort on everyone's part and thank you very much i know we spent time earlier on conference calls and it's a lot of my questions already answered so i appreciate the time you spent on that um just for clarification for everyone because they're probably going to see this in the policy i know we talked about this but i want to get this out there in the open so people know this the grade spans um specifically i know it's not the polly had to bring up my phone the

182nine through 12 great spans especially um you know the juvenile the young adult and then the adult there is some terminology we didn't create those great spans correct can you maybe elaborate on that so the public knows this information so we went actually back and forth within the great spans and at one point we actually talked about putting age levels to them but as you know our stu the students do not come in a nice little box of of the of just the same age and then as we sought some information from our our librarians that were answering questions for us we learned that for uh that many of the publishers this is this is what they use as their uh collection leveling system and so for us to go back and change to some

183other leveling system we just it wouldn't be possible for us to do that um i mentioned to i forgot to mention just for your information that when we're we're a huge district obviously right and so the number of books that we were talking about for this past year was over forty thousand forty thousand that's a lot of books be able to manage and support and that's why we have we we would recommend that you provide something that is manageable and these level these collection levels is more manageable we still have to go in there to assign a a level to some books that do not come with it but if you as you read the regs i i hope that you saw that it's very detailed very specific regarding what makes the juvenile collection what

184makes a young adult and also the adult collection and i and i think he wanted it because mr henry and i and he was one of our one of the board members several that we've worked closely with and incorporated um suggestions even before we brought it to you but he and i both talked that we were not crazy about the phrase adult collection and um and we had initially talked about linda on top i said let's rename them but that would have created um a lot more administrative work it's a little bit like what scott you and i talked about it's a little bit like um the movie industry pg pg-13 you know they um it's like that with the publishers as well so that's sort of their nomenclature and how they uh how they

185level the collections and so we did go with it but for the record we did not choose the phrase adult collection just wanted to get that out there so i knew that my last quick question is um it's more of a hypothetical question so i may not have the answer to get back to me on this but let's say a teacher for english department assigns a book and you're a you're you're in a parent and you say well my my book is in the adult signs a book in the adult section and i'm a kid i can't have the book in the adult section and that's the book we just talked about psychological issues we don't want to have a kid bullied how do we make sure that that doesn't happen so it's the entire

186thing so how do we make sure that those things don't happen so the kid doesn't get bullied or kidded because hey your parents will let you have that i just want to make sure those things don't happen because we're doing a lot of sense of issues here and i don't want to see someone get bullied for that just because their parents won't let them have certain kinds of books and things like that so don't you don't have to answer if you don't have an answer for that but that's one thing we might want to think about the unintended consequences of these things sometimes is those things and just to be careful and conscious of other people um in how we do this and do justice for our kids out there because you know how kids

187are i know how i was yeah i'd like to answer answer that thank you very much and thank you again for all your work on this first of all let me just share that there are other things that some students may not be able to have access to in in a certain classroom and so teachers already have to be very sensitive to these different things we also have the teachers next week for district act development training so we will make sure that we are uh addressing this um the the classroom libraries they will also follow the same process so we're gonna be working on that this was our first big piece to get to get the school library but we're working on that and there will be an inventory they will have an inventory of

188all the classroom libraries and they will have the collection level that's attached to that as well and then through through the technology system the librarian will have a list of what the student has access to whether whether they may not have access to the library at all or or these different collections and so they will work through that i know our teachers will work through especially when you get to the to to the dual credit or ap classes you know in those classes those books are assigned for the most part so the college assigns books we don't assign the books that that need to be read so we'll have to work through that as well and sometimes we're going to have to get special permission from parents so those are things that that we already

189do for different things and we'll continue doing but but but mr henry that point taken and we will continue talking about that yeah and that's a good point i was going to say that we would obviously need to offer um in a way that was not obvious and alternate um reading material and we already do that but we'll strengthen um our emphasis on that process and that that be available with the collections when there is a book that's assigned then we're going to need to look and make sure that we have one that's in um the span uh or the collection level for the students in the instructional setting as well mrs correct we've worked on having different books that that can be a science of a parent does not want a certain book they

190can't they can choose another one for that specific uh lesson more questions mr henry no thank you very much very good dr blasico truly brilliant work um congratulations to the team um i think that your last slide really captured that critical aspect the two most critical aspects transparency and the fact that a student a parent together can make those decisions about the books i also had the question about classroom libraries and you had i'm not sure policy that would follow but i saw that in the policy we addressed that as far as alternate sources and you also addressed digital and print versions so i think that was important to make sure we knew all the sources of books that a parent could understand and the um the addition of a district librarian just to give

191us someone who cheers and leads and is there to support librarians who are critical resources in our schools who are well trained and who play a critical function in supporting learning so i think that's fantastic that you provide that layer of support for them and truly i don't have questions because you covered everything that i've uh everything that we've heard from all the aspects you were able to incorporate here well done thank you mr arabia just like you did in san diego you have all the answers for many of the questions that were are going to be asked there's a team effort here i believe it um i do want to say that the administration as as always does listen and if given the time usually responds with excellence and this is another another job

192well done again linda marnie and the staff who delved into it um you know great job great job i applaud you guys mr chandler just so that the viewing audience knows and everybody in attendance knows um in topics like this one we will the administration will communicate with us and then individually each board member will have a conversation just back with the administration not with each other and and so there's been a lot of dialogue that has gone on this past week uh via email and uh so it's really it's been pretty healthy and like the rest of my colleagues i think you guys have well captured the spirit of what you're displaying on screen including the final accountability with the parent with student so we had some things that were in i see in

193my email responses and discussions back and forth with you marnie but i just wanted to call out um so in the scenarios and sorry i'm going to put on process oops sorry i'm done oh well okay all right so can i go yes okay all right now so putting on process hat and speaking as a process person and a process engineer so one of the things that i saw in this was in a workflow process there's such a thing as a control that's not a statement that means someone is a controlling person but there's a control that means that there is a policy applied at a certain step and so we ingest books and that process of saying does a book meet our standards that goes through a process of ingestion which our librarians and

194now our district librarians are going to review books to ensure that they're meeting those standards one of the other questions that i had in communication with the team was what about donated books what about books within a private library because the ultimate control is exactly what's up on screen is a parent working with the librarian of their own child school and with their child to make sure that they're comfortable with what their child has access to that's the end game so do all roads lead through that control point absolutely whether the book is donated or purchased by the campus or the district this is the process this policy that you adopt will be what we implement what's being implemented and that's what we're going next week next week when we visit with the um our

195librarians they they actually come back on on staff uh tomorrow and so this is these are some changes and a bit and a heavy lift before school starts and but we are committed to whatever policy that you uh deem is is needed then we're gonna work with our librarians and we've already talked to our principals yesterday um so every single book doesn't matter where it came will go through the same process okay and then i'm asking not a redundant question but a precise question so when a book is donated a book cannot go around the process and be given directly to a child no in fact in fact um as marnie and i were were have been visiting and as we visited with the principals yesterday we talked to them about uh that we're bringing

196the policy to to you that you'll be adopting a new policy and what some highlights might be in this policy and uh and even to the point that the library i know you're talking about the classroom about that but the class the but the library itself will not open until we have the books that students can check out with the correct with the correct collection and at the campus and at the in the classroom libraries we are more meeting with with our teachers all next week and so this is specific specifically for elar teachers because our other contents have really non-fiction books and so they're going to hear the same thing that uh they will have to create an inventory of all their books all books and they will have to have the assigned collection

197level and uh and again it's very clear in the regs and then those inventories will be housed with their librarian because they can answer questions they won't be the ones monitoring somebody on the team a literacy expert another literacy experience the team will be doing the monitoring but it'll be hauser because that librarian can answer questions about is this truly a young adult or not but that's all books and so we're working with them um next week and we'll be sharing with them that they will have to start working on this inventory and basically when school when school begins on the 22nd what kids will have access to is what they've already inventoried and then they'll continue adding as they finish inventory okay uh last question and it's really more of a i'm praising it's

198a question i already know the answer but i'm saying it for the benefit of everybody who might read the policy so regarding the idea of a consortium when we say that we are relying in part or we are working through a with a consortium of neighboring school districts to understand books that they have adopted books that they have read as we're making decisions on what books come into life into our library specific point is that we're not adopting their recommendation for inclusion as our own and not doing a review we're acknowledging the review but we're still doing our own reviews for every book so so mr scanlan there are books that there is not a journal review for okay so an educated journal review for and so this the the consortium and and the list

199of books that that that uh will be in some format of you know katie may have these books and tom ball may have we haven't talked about how all this is going to work yet maybe tom ball has these books and they have read them this is this is the the level and this is why they've recommended it that is more of another like a review sure like a review so not all books can be read there's 40 plus thousand books but but our our teams need ways to be able to evaluate what to buy this is just another evaluation piece got it just like a journal one the journal the the educational journals uh that that are also used for reviews so it doesn't mean that we're that we're gonna that we're gonna buy

200everything that's on this list we're gonna our librarians just like they do right now will look to see what books what what you know if they haven't read them what does a review say another review and then that's how they'll decide whether to purchase or not got it and again i'm i'm asking this question not as so much a challenge but just as a point of clarity for the entire viewing audience as they understand when they look at the policy and they see those terms what those terms actually mean right so we are conducting our own approval we may utilize a review by a neighboring district via that consortium but the accountability is still still ours the accountability is still ours whether whether it's a book that that that our librarians had to go to

201educational journals to select or they haven't they haven't read every single book but through an educational journal uh they've they've gotten the positive reviews and they're award-winning that's the same process that the consortium will will follow understood okay and then not a question but a comment and really a shout out uh logistically this is going to be a challenge yes it is and it's going to be a very heavy lift for all of our librarians everybody needs to go give lots of flowers and chocolate to our librarians and volunteer i heard someone say that thank you that's appropriate but it's going to be a heavy lift and um to all of our librarians who are out there who will watch this thank you we recognize that you're responding to the need of uh parents to

202have a level of comfort and and to i think it's going to be great for the district overall in instilling new levels of trust and open lines of communication that's it thank you miss blackshear first of all i i want to echo thank you linda and your whole team and marny for all the work you have put into this i know it's uh it's not been an easy task but i feel like what you've come up with is a very comprehensive i only have one question uh you mentioned about the levels of library access and that a parent could go say call a the school librarian at their student school and tell them that there is a particular book they don't want their student to read how is that library going to notate that is

203it something that they could enter into the system or is it going to be very labor-intensive so as i mentioned this already happens this already happens where where our parents where the relationships with with the librarians will call and say such and such library the system does not allow us to uh put like an individual book like that in there and do a stop block to it so it is it is with those relationships with the library uh the librarian that they that they work through that mrs blackburn okay thank you thank you yeah miss heinerman um again thank you um linda and team and marny and team um a lot of hours a lot of people hours went into this i know i'm crossways from la crosse from looking at this so much and

204i know you all are as well i appreciate um the opportunity to speak with you and work with you so much over the summer the spring and the summer on this policy it has grown tremendously a lot more pages and it started out isn't it but it has a great level of detail that i think that our community was seeking and i think that will help give us guidance moving forward so i appreciate that i appreciate the transparency that has evolved from this new policy development one note about the district level librarian we actually had that position before but when the state legislature cut five billion dollars from public education and cuts were made across districts that was a position that was lost so i'm grateful that our district has brought that back even though

205we may not have the funds we we've made it right i know right we've made it a priority and we hope that we can continue to hold on to that position because that position does provide district level guidance and support for campus librarians and she's here this uh this uh this evening miss heinemann uh jennifer lucas foreigner stand up so this is our our new district uh librarian that will be obviously instrumental in in the implementation of the policy that that you vote on and supporting uh all of our librarians yes and an an experienced campus librarian uh who is much missed at her campus but will add great value um to all campus librarians across the district so thank you for your hard work um i uh not just the partnerships between the librarians

206at each campus um but also you know i really think this policy helps to strengthen and emphasize the partnership between parents and librarians and campus staff hopefully it will open up more communication between parents and campus staff as mr scalin mentioned i actually did write this down to ask asking for patience that it will take some time to implement this policy i ask parents to please be patient with your campus librarian and with your classroom teachers who are having to implement this new policy it's coming very quickly right before the beginning of school so it may take some time so please be patient with your with your teachers and with your librarians um uh mr scalin also mentioned trust and i think that uh i was reading a um an article about library books uh

207in public schools and it was actually written from a perspective of a student asking for trust like trust us trust the student to uh in the books that they seek for its voluntary inquiry right these are not assigned books in libraries they're it's voluntary inquiry so it may be an opportunity for has first parents to have some good conversations with their students and listen to your students and trust you know listen to what it is that they're seeking for their voluntary inquiry and that may be another opportunity to build an even stronger relationship between parents and their students thank you for your hard work we appreciate you dr blasting game you have another question i didn't want to go in front of you um unfortunately one did come to my head and it was based

208on our process engineers questions over there um there's been i would say it's debbie downer conversation in some way the um there was they were early on as this book conversations heated up in the state there was a statement maybe out of the governor about how individual librarians would be held accountable for books that were pornographic or inappropriate then there were also lawsuits of school boards where school boards were held accountable for the collections in their um districts and i'm wondering about the enforcement of the policy if that's policy that's elsewhere in there who's accountable if there's a book in the library that's not appropriate what about a classroom library where's that level of um enforcement happen uh with the policy oh i'm saying i clicked on i guess i should say would you like

209for me to answer well i would say anytime there is um a willful violation of policy by staff members there are of course employment consequences for that if there is a concern regarding content that violates the policy and we do state in the policy that we will not have materials in the library that meet the definition of inappropriate material under the penal code or obscene under the penal code um and so if we determine that as mark says sometimes you know something slips past the goalie if it's not educationally appropriate i would i would be surprised if it met those statutory definitions um in anything that was marketed by a publisher through k-12 i can understand there are passages or pieces that parents may individually decide is not appropriate for their student and or they

210don't want their student to have access to that material within that collection but if there is a book that through the review process it's determined that it doesn't meet our policy standards and of course it would be removed and we would inquire as to what was there a particular we'd look back to see as we've done the how what was the process in um in that book coming in was were there certain reviews that we utilized was there something and then we would figure out where the breakdown occurred and work to fix that and so that would be as i say off the top of my head how i would explain it when you look at the definition of of obscene and inappropriate material within the penal code it always as in the law it

211talks about when you look at the literature taken as a whole that its predominant theme much like the definition of pornography is going to be that its dominant theme um you know meets the definition of obscenity or that it's period in nature and and has no redeeming otherwise no redeeming value and so that's a i mean that's a very high bar because you're talking about you know criminal prosecution and so it's going to have to be it's going to be a very high bar anyway so we would not be responsible of course for making determinations regarding prosecution but we would of course make determinations regarding employment actions if we determined that there was a knowing violation of policy which we would do with any policy and srita you know has got my back all the

212time when we look at our uh our non-renewal policy and we list the different things of which an individual can be non-renewed and one of those is violating district policy so i don't know if that was the answer you were looking for but i think that's um i think that answers the question yes thank you that did answer the question and then just to the idea of you mentioned award-winning books in and i feel like that's just one piece of a standard but that does that's a concern there are some awards given for various reasons and um so i do think that you mentioned and that you wrote but it's that's just one small consideration but that's definitely not the sole consideration for any book and as you know as as a as an educator

213uh there are really specific you know more specific books when we talk about award winnings like blueberry books or those blue bonnet books are though sorry flipping my book those yes thank y'all so much there's a blueberry blue bunny little bonnet yeah it's blue bought it it's blue bought it new berry new berry it is starting to get late a couple of comments and observations first for the viewing public mr scanlon made a very apt comment we were all given access basically to a rough piece of clay i did have the privilege of taking a look at it before anybody else as is appropriate i did add the piece about private collections and donated books so that that could be addressed before it went out to the rest of the board sometimes it's a little

214difficult finding that in the legalese that marnie puts in there but it was in there the point that mr scanlon made was we all had an opportunity to have input in fact what we're looking at is still redlined and the last red line was changed today as a matter of fact this has been a ongoing development i would like to reassure our librarians our board is not punitive that is not our focus and it will not be but i do think that this is a policy that needed to be addressed many things happened when we lost 5 billion in funding which never really was made up when you account for inflation uh you don't have the resources to to address different areas but a mark of this district is that when an issue comes up

215it will be addressed this issue and the size of it was so significant it could not be done in a month it couldn't be done in two months it couldn't be done in three months i do have a concern that the amount of resources this will take will be tremendous and i would ask that we let the process work and try and not bring to bear outside pressures that are unnecessary to move the process along but may in fact impede it i think it will take quite a while before we can get our libraries open and i'm happy with that i think we have to work through the process a couple of questions that have already been asked but i want to go back and ask again if a book is found to be inappropriate

216on one campus how do we treat that across all other campuses is that a individual campus determination or once that determination is made does that apply wherever that book may be found so if you recall i shared that all of the uh decisions and and the uh outcomes of the challenges will be sent to our district librarian and so she will have access to the system to be able to basically input whatever they need to to to remove that from all campuses and will the board be notified uh of challenges and results hold on he said i said something wrong go ahead marny well every campus and every campus community that uh because every collection is different and so each campus will have a reconsider formal reconsideration committee and they will make a decision for

217their campus library and their school community we will make sure that the district level librarian receives that information along with the board and then it's currently a she but that uh position she would uh then review it and may make the determination that it um and recommendation to the other campuses and libraries regarding removal but it's it's not as the structure is currently set up it's not an automatic process because you know each school community in different levels i mean it could be um you know at a middle school but removed from a middle school but not a high school so we are trying to invest that in the campuses and their campus communities that's how it currently reads of course um if if the board wanted to make a change in that regard but

218we tried to give enough structure that um at the district level we could make decisions as needed but without it being an absolute one way or the other knowing that every situation could be different but when that determination is made then the district librarian will be able to go in the system yes yes yes yes and of course this is not written in stone it's a brand new policy there will be hiccups and if hiccups need to be addressed i presume marnie we can go back and revise the policy say in october or november after libraries get opened and we test out the policy right yes i would think we might have to give a little more time but yes if if we see something as unworkable we had the idea that would work a

219certain way but when you put it into practice it's really not working um then we would come back to you with a policy change the policy is um a little the the lane it's a it's intentionally a little broader whereas the regulation if you noticed uh and we you were given both at the same time so you could see where operationally how we were defining it and so hopefully the tweaking would be more in the operational aspect and we would just advise you that we're going to need to change this regulation because the board sets the policy and then the administration uh the superintendent puts the regulation in place because that's kind of the where the rubber meets the road and so we will of course um knowing how important this is be lockstep with

220you and let you know what's going on with the regulation and take you know feedback but it might be the type of thing where the tweaking can be done in a regulation and not a policy but if it needs to be done in the policy then absolutely it would come back to you in this setting and the important point is if a tweak has to be made it will be done yes we've already talked about this but i think it needs to be repeated this applies to both hard copies as well as ebooks correct that is correct and the system is smart enough to know the difference between a hard copy and an e-book and whether or not a parent has permitted has given access to the child to have access either to a hard

221copy or to an e-book because the system sees them all basically as an e-book right we are working right now mr jackson with through our e-books because at this time right now it does not allow allow those uh i guess channels to be able to do that and so if we can't figure that out by the by the first day of school then my team already knows that we're shutting down uh that system until we are able to work through it and be able to have those approval levels in there as well we talk about the collection we can't that we can't they can't differentiate right now in the like in the sorrow system or in that is that correct jennifer yeah yeah right now i thought we could create buckets i'm not challenging but

222remember they were explaining to us that there were some broad buckets they couldn't go down but like the coal you could do patron buckets and collection boxes so we're working with with with the system right now but we have this the we have two really different systems you you're talking about the you're talking about the uh the the hard copy management system and there's a different system there's a different system for the e-books and so today right now we have not figured that out and uh and the system cannot do it so so we're gonna need a little time to figure that part out so if we can't figure it out by the 22nd then we'll have to shut that down until we're able to do that and and so i i appreciate and and

223of course uh for viewing audience these questions i already knew the answer to uh but but i felt these questions were important enough to go ahead and repeat and and i don't know that my colleagues knew that i had asked these questions or what the answers were because we can't share information otherwise would be violation of open meeting laws act but i do like the strategy of saying if this part of the system doesn't work we shut it down until we figure out how to make it work um i was never a process engineer but i was a css so so these are the sorts of things that that i look for i do want to say linda great appreciation to you and your staff not only was this difficult to do this was emotionally

224difficult you know from january through through now uh and and i appreciate the the stress that that happened and i'm hoping that we all can be a little more patient as we go through this think i i cannot tell you what won't work but some something some part of this is not going to work and we will have to figure out a workaround you know anytime you have a massive implementation of a brand new system parts don't work we just don't know what part it is but there will be a part of it that doesn't work and and we'll figure out how to make it work great job we do have an additional question mr arabia the i know we're using some terms shutting down or closing um this will the policy the new policy

225that we're implementing will it hinder our curriculum at any point our learning capacity for our students it may it may because it may at first because the the classroom libraries they use them for different things like book reports or things like that and so until they inventory uh that information that those books they won't but we don't expect this to be a long-term event before we are able to open um our libraries it's really it is a huge undertaking as as many of you have said so we may have to shut down the libraries as i mentioned for a while but we will get there and uh we're going to make it work we we we always make things work but as many of you said we're going to need your patience we're going to

226need everybody's patience as we work through not just the library the actual school library but the classroom libraries the classroom libraries are used in you know are used in different ways instructional as well as as well as choice books so they can pull things out instructionally but choice books they they probably uh would not until they until they uh determine uh the leveling right um i had confidence in our educators that we can work around this this at this time to get the kids still moving at the pace that they need to be moving at and that when it comes um available i don't want to say open or shut down and stuff no more i don't i don't like those terms but when they become available then we can proceed uh as a community

227and the district sees fit to it though so okay thank you ms heinemann um just a couple of comments additional comments um i meant to say earlier you had mentioned 40 000 books you mentioned that a couple of times it's actually 45 000 books that were purchased in the last year we actually have more than 1.5 million books uh in our libraries so um i just want to make sure people don't think we have 40 000 books we actually have one point five that will purchase this past year but there are yes there are a lot of books right um i also just want to um uh just sort of balance out this conversation about policy and and structure and rules and and all that with um the purpose of libraries is to encourage literacy

228and we want to make sure that we are we stay focused on that purpose um right and so we're not tr we don't want to put so much uh so many obstacles and barriers in place that we are discouraging students from reading so we just need to be very cautious about balancing that also this idea of libraries being closed students go to libraries not just to check out books so i hope when you say libraries are closed you mean the checkout process is closed to checkout that is correct the libraries will be open to students because students go to libraries for many different reasons absolutely they're going to be they're going to be closed to be able to check out books that's what i remember thank you for the clarification thank you other questions looking

229to the right looking to the left board because of the significance of this and and we've really have talked about this almost every month of this year i would like to leave this on the non-consent agenda if that meets with the board's approval so holly if you would this is on non-consent thank you okay we now have we are to 4-0 the board will consider authorizing the superintendent to negotiate and execute a memorandum of understanding with harris county first responders for coordinated and uniform emergency response protocols there are no speakers on this agenda topic however i think chief mendes is going to have some brief comments so the the memorandum of understanding is a memorandum that's being produced by the district attorney's office the sheriff's department houston police department as well as all the school

230district police departments and university departments across harris county and so we're working on the language currently but i think that the purpose was to get approval from the board to move forward very good questions looking to the right questions to the left consent agenda holly if you would thank you chief 4p the board will consider approving a resolution pursuant to education code 28.004 to convene the district school health advisory council shack to recommend curriculum material for instruction there are no speakers on this agenda topic we do have a brief presentation i believe dr macias roy garcia and bevin gordon thank you president jackson one of the agenda items is that you're that we hope that you will consider approving as eha local and uh that approval of that of that policy uh allows us to

231come to you to ask to convene the shack to be able to consider and look at some instructional material for human sexuality instruction as well as instruction in child abuse family violence dating violence and sex trafficking and the the the really the reason why why these uh materials are going to need to be looked at or considered is because there's some changes to the text so anytime that there's a change to the instructional materials that will be used for teaching these areas then the shack needs to be convened and the opportunity to review and evaluate uh material and then bring it bring a recommendation to you the board and then you the board determine whether you want to adopt that or not so one i thing i'm gonna go back here so so um the

232adjustments or changes of curriculum uh materials for instruction that the shack we hope will uh convene and look at are really in the fourth and fifth grade human growth and development because there are some some changes uh in there and then in the high school human sexuality instruction also because there are some changes in there and as i already mentioned the the bottom category as well now while you what you might be asking yourself is why isn't middle school in there middle school does have some changes to the text they have basically there are two areas one area is contraceptives and the other area is the stds and and the st i's that is already in our current curriculum and so there that that's a curriculum that that was voted by by uh by the

233board at one time and everything is in there already and uh as you all know the curriculum that we have is a scott and white program but what i do want to share with you is that while the curriculum doesn't need to be changed there there will be some dangers to the implementation of it one is based on input from from you the board and also as we heard from from the community one of the things that we heard uh over and over again was that sense of transparency and that the parents who who were opting in remember they opting opt-in for every single lesson were opting in couldn't see the entire curriculum unless unless they went to the school we had we had permission because it's a copyright material and this is different than

234the textbook somebody had brought up textbooks at once textbooks we have them for the kids we have classes or we have one for individual in this case a program is one for school or one per teacher so there's a copyright issue there and so scott and white have given us permission to utilize a couple of lessons to show us examples but we went back to them and asked if we could have access to the entire curriculum for our for our parents in seventh and eighth grade and they granted us that that permission so we are still working on on on where it's going to be housed probably the the parent portal as well and so parents will have access to that to make them true informed decisions for their kids uh the other thing that

235that uh you brought to our attention was the fact that there was one one lesson in there that there was an assessment there was an assessment for uh i think mr hender and i had conversations about about that as well and so that that part there was actually the science text anatomy and physiology that's why they were tested so that will will move to to just the general science instruction and so there will be no tests at all nothing there won't be any units that will be tied to a test uh in this in this program so that's why the the middle school is not uh part of what of what this uh recon uh this resolution um we have any questions i'll be happy to answer them this is this is really again like

236i said you're not approving curriculum you're really approving to convene the committee the shack committee to look at it and then bring the recommendations questions to the left no i have no questions to the right may we keep may we put this on the consent agenda consent agenda holly thank you linda for you the board will consider adopting the cfisd bringing out the best character education program there are no speakers who signed up for this agenda topic we have a brief presentation roy garcia dr glenda horner thank you mr jackson mr jackson board of trustees and dr henry we are excited to share with you we've got members of our steering committee from the character education that has been working on this since last fall and we have great information for you and for the

237community so you can see what has taken place i would ask dr glenda horner to come forward and then if there are other members of the steering committee in the audience if you would please stand so we could recognize you for your work in this process [Applause] and one final thing uh for now before dr horner begins is i think uh it's going to be interesting just hearing the different comments that were made earlier in the the meeting and what the desire is from the board and the community just look for those connections that you're going to see and that's bringing out the best character education program dr horner thank you president jackson board of trustees and dr henry texas education code 29.906 requires a district to adopt a character education program that includes identified

238traits character traits and personal skills the district may select an established character education program or develop its own programs offered under the code must stress positive character traits as outlined in the code use integrated teaching strategies and be age appropriate in response to this requirement the district at the request of dr henry comes before you to submit a recommendation to accept and adopt a locally developed character education program the proposed program is built on the district's continued commitment to bringing out the best in all of our students and so with this in mind please allow us to provide you with the what the why and the how we first explore these questions the first question is what is character education and what are the legal requirements the second is why does education matter and finally

239how is the district addressing character education in cfisd in order to better understand the district's move toward developing its own character education program we begin with the working definition that help to guide our work character education is the process by which humans learn to interact with society usually through the teaching of core virtues such as trustworthiness responsibility caring and citizenship we know that character education can be implemented as a standalone curriculum or it can be part of a larger school or district initiative and in practice we know that it's more effective when integrated into the academic curriculum and other district and school initiatives with this working definition in mind let's examine the legal requirements as outlined in texas education code 29.906 the texas education code states that the state board of education shall integrate positive

240character traits into the essential knowledge and skills adapted from kindergarten through 12th grade as appropriate and was required to be implemented in classrooms beginning with the 21-22 school year the law further states that the following strands must be included trustworthiness responsibility caring and citizenship additionally in accordance with the rules adopted by the state board of education school districts and open enrollment charter schools are required to provide instruction in the texas essential knowledge and skills for positive character traits at least once during each of the following grade bands kindergarten through grade two grades three through five grades six through eight and grades nine through twelve schools may provide the required instruction in a variety of arrangements including through a standalone course or by integrating integrating the positive character trait standards and the teaks for one or

241more courses or subjects at the appropriate grade levels and per board policy eha legal in developing or selecting a character education program under education code 29.906 a district shall consult with a committee selected by the district that consists of parents of district students educators and other members of the community including community leaders while the what provides the definition statute policy and requirements for the district as educators we realize the importance of considering why character education matters to us character education allows the school district to establish a set of universal character traits trustworthiness responsibility caring and citizenship that everybody can understand parents students and staff and it complements the academic building blocks by uniting with parents to help shape the character of students character education matters because it helps our kids become conscious of the right

242thing to do it helps them maintain a commitment to doing the right thing and it helps our students become more competent in doing the right thing with the what and the why at the forefront of your thinking dr abe lozano principal at watkins middle school will share with you the district's approach in addressing the requirement of character education in scifire thank you dr horner good evening everyone in the fall of 2021 under the direction of dr henry the coordinator committee was born to guide the work around character education inside airbanks isd the charge of the committee was to gather input and feedback from stakeholders to inform the development of a framework and plan for implementing character education and finally to recommend character education lessons and activities the makeup of the core committee members included representatives

243from the superintendent's cabinet and campus principals from elementary middle and high school as well as several departments including school leadership guidance and counseling professional learning curriculum and instruction student services and communication since last fall the corps steering committee has met several milestones in determining how the district might approach the requirement of character education as the committee began to work we first studied how campuses were already addressing character traits through various standalone campus programs in doing so a comprehensive list was developed that included programs that campuses may have adopted and incorporated into the campus culture and address character traits and personal skills identified in statute and policy these programs include for example pbis a proactive positive systems approach for creating and maintaining a safe and effective learning environment in schools additionally the committee examined how character

244traits are addressed in the teaks and taught through the curriculum committee members charted and tracked how the required character traits and personal skills are addressed in the district curriculum for example the pace course is required for all high school freshmen several traits and personal skills were woven into the curriculum this is all evident in the core academic areas such as english reading social studies and science while the committee found many approaches to addressing various character traits and personal skills there was no district standard approach no approach addressed all the required character traits and personal skills casting against his backdrop the committee was fleshed out their next steps in their work first as the group went back to the code as we've shared the texas education code states that the state board of education shall integrate

245positive character traits into the essential knowledge and skills adopted for kindergarten through grade 12 as appropriate the law further states that the character traits displayed here must be included in student instruction as you can see the code outlines four strands including trustworthiness caring and citizenship under these four strands are 25 identified character traits while the code provides the district with common language a common definition of these traits would serve as the springboard to developing a locally adopted character education program in cyprus fairbanks we used merriam-webster's definition for each term as the dictionary is widely used by our campuses as well as a district spelling bee contest additionally the learn leaning on the expertise of the district's curriculum and instruction team definitions were specific to each grade band kindergarten through second grade third grade through fifth

246grade six through eight and grades nine through twelve with the terms defined we continue to work based on four cornerstones first character education in cyprus fairbanks would be integrated into an academic curriculum and other district and school initiatives second it should complement established academic building blocks third mostly monthly lessons should complement the various standalone campus programs already being utilized such as the widely implemented pbis program and finally teacher training should be embedded in the back to school professional development paramount to this district's decision to recommend a locally adopted character education program is the ability to design and implement a program that builds on the strong partnership and connection between the district its schools parents and the greater side fair community dr glenda horner will now discuss how our core committee shared progress and sought feedback

247from key stakeholders as an additional milestone throughout the spring semester several of the core steering committee members shared progress with stakeholder groups while seeking feedback and input all along the way and four action teams were formed to help drive the continued work doctors trisha riley michelle rice cheryl henry and i first presented to campus principles followed by the district educational improvement committee the deic which includes 92 teachers representing each campus district level staff parents businesses and members of the community including community leaders became a part of the full steering committee and provided valuable input and feedback in shaping the district's character education program the information initially presented to principals and members of the deic was also shared with the superintendent student leadership advisory council which includes student leaders from each of our high schools additionally

248the presentation was made for various district and campus administrators administration listed here as well as various parent and community leaders including the community leadership committee faith-based leaders and the superintendent's parent leadership committee all along the way of course we collected feedback and input as we closed the presentation at each of our meetings we asked stakeholders to respond to a simple open-ended prompt with the district's plan for implementing character education in mind describe what that looks like sounds like and feels like to you we collected close to 500 different responses via minty meter in turn we enlisted the assistance of hanover research hanover conducted an analysis of the feedback and provided the district with digestible summary of the responses to the survey's open-ended prompt hanover analyzed the coding sample and open-ended responses by first coding responses

249based on core themes that emerged within the data refining those themes or codes and as analysis progressed hanover totaled the number of responses within each sub theme that emerged in the main themes hanover also separated and analyzed the data by respondent stakeholder groups such as the student leadership group and calculated additional theme frequency rates based on the total number of respondents per stakeholder group hanover summarized key themes that emerged from the analysis three themes were identified first consistent messaging and lesson second stakeholder involvement in action and third better community and productive citizenship citizens in turn the key there were three key findings that were derived from these themes so first that stakeholders overwhelmingly envision character education as promoting a common language around core values and sci fare stakeholders some 62 percent look forward to the

250consistent messaging and monthly lessons that character education will provide not only in terms of alignment across all grades and schools but also shared expectations of students staff parents in the community second over half of all respondents about 52 percent believe that character education will necessarily increase stakeholder involvement and action while most agree that student involvement will be most critical to the success of character education respondents also highlight the importance of family teacher and community buy-in and involvement stakeholder engagement may look like more community and or school-based events such as family nights or community projects and finally nearly one-third of all respondents 32 percent predict character education will create a better more unified community that inspires productive citizen citizenry from all stakeholders some specifically hope to see improved student behavior in the classroom and in the

251community particularly in terms of student accountability responsibility and personal interactions some stakeholders wish for well-rounded whole child education such as career readiness digital citizenship and social emotional skills the findings from the hanover report will support cfisd as the district plans to implement its new character education programming next dr sherry mckegg an assistant superintendent in school leadership will highlight the work of the core committee's action teams as we shared four collaborative action teams were formed including a team focused on the traits another whose concentration was on the needed character education lessons one that helped determine a rollout plan for campuses and finally a team that developed a plan for communication members of the corps steering committee were assigned to each action team and a team lead as identified by the asterisk was selected for each group

252action teams continued to guide and engage in the work throughout the summer months in preparation for a fall 2022 launch of the program next you'll hear from members of each action team who will share what has been accomplished as well as what is on the horizon the action team that i led was charged with delivering a master document of purposefully sequenced character traits that listed a monthly focused trait with each month building on and connecting to the previous the 25 traits spanned three school years the focused traits for year one are included here intentionally our plan is to launch the program with a focus on school pride as it is an essential component in building a successful school community having pride gives students a sense of ownership school pride serves as the foundation for the

253monthly focused traits that follow additionally care was given to a lining when possible the monthly traits with special emphasis months or days for example random acts of kindness is typically celebrated each february so that month's focus corresponds accordingly now tamika williams principal at deurier elementary and a member of the lessons action team will share with you how their team supported the development of lessons that align with each monthly focus our action team was charged with determining a structure for writing grade band specific lessons we recruited teams of curriculum writers at each grade band the curriculum writing teams included counselors teachers and librarians over the summer each writing team began the curriculum writing process and as dr mccaig shared a moment ago the focus of the lesson for september is school pride after the initial launch

254of bringing out the best the various writing teams will come back together to continue the curriculum writing process next christina cole and assistant superintendent of school leadership will discuss how their action team supports the implementation of bringing out the best the rollout action team was tasked with providing campuses with structures and guidance to ensure a successful implementation of bringing out the best at each campus and across the district with this in mind principles were asked to select a botb lead who will serve as a liaison between the district and campus on an ongoing basis training and support will be provided to the botb leads who will train campus staff in leading lessons because we value the need for continuous improvement and feedback from campuses bot leads will gather input and feedback from staff leading the

255monthly lessons the collective feedback will inform lesson revisions as well as the development of future lessons now leslie francis assistant superintendent of communication and community relations will share the work of their action committee the charge of the communication action team was to assist in the development of a communication plan one of our deliverables is a video from dr henry highlighting and officially launching bringing out the best this video was shared earlier today with principals and it will be shared with each botb lead who is responsible for ensuring that it is shared with staff our team will also provide campus and district leaders with access to a media toolkit containing easy to use graphics and resources for bringing out the best additionally we've created a webpage via the district's website that provides parents and community members

256with access to the lesson theme for the upcoming month you can locate the webpage by going to www.c and selecting parents and students from the top menu bar from there select bringing out the best program housed on the web page you will find the list of character traits for year one additionally prior to the first of the month you'll be able to click on the tile to view that month's lesson in the district's approach to character education our next milestone will be the launch of the currently developed grade band specific bringing out the best lessons district-wide in closing president jackson board of trustees and dr henry thank you for considering this request and at this time we'll take any questions so let me start to the left mr scanlon i don't have this may seem

257odd um i'm just i'm really pleased with the attention and the detail uh dr lozano i could tell stories about our little walk around your school and i'll tell one now i'm so excited that you're on that team and i know there's so many amazing people but in a moment we were walking into place and he was showing me around and two students came around the corner and they saw him and he saw them in half a second they knew that they were in the wrong place and they were found out and caught and they spun on one heel and turned around and went back around the corner and dr lozano it was so great you didn't even say anything to me you just you're like no no no no come here and he and

258he pulled them back he didn't even say bye he just walked over it was awesome and but in that moment i sensed a respect for dr lozano in your school that those students had and it was a healthy respect they knew the right thing to do they knew they were caught and you know you work through the situation but it was something that was i saw everything that i would have hoped to see in a principle in literally a span of three seconds so anyway uh kudos to your team uh for this huge effort and it's a long time coming and so i'm looking forward to watching this implementation so i don't have any further questions miss blackshear i just want to say i love it i think this you know fits in so tightly

259with the things that we have been talking about at this meeting and about what we expect from our students and everything that is encompassed in this i think has the potential to do really good things with our students and teach them really good lessons i know when i was visiting the campus over on schrader road help me help me here mark hancock that's right and i had students that the principal had invited to take me on the tour of the campus and those students they were part of the the uh the student council but they told me what their traits were at their school and i mean this was pre-pandemic you know four or five years ago and uh you know that principle had put an emphasis on character traits in that school and i

260know uh where i volunteer at danish they have special emphasis on kindness but how much better now to have a program that there will be emphasis at every school in this district where we're all focusing on the same thing so thank you so much i think it is just awesome miss heinerman thank you um it's wonderful to see this come to fruition i i don't know that a lot of people understand or rema maybe even remember but um back in the 86th state legislature um there was a bill passed by one of our local cfisd um representatives dwayne bohac and he passed house bill 1026 and this and it was about character education this was a bill he worked on for several sessions and it passed then um senator hughes was the senate sponsor and

261and then of course it goes to tea for rules and then eventually it comes to school districts and it's taken several years for it to get to us and now to see it implemented in such a positive strong way i'm glad that we did not choose to just take up a program off the shelf that was created by someone else but this was created by our stakeholders by our teachers by our counselors by parents with student input so i think it's a program that we can really embrace and we can own i think um agree with miss blackshear that having a consistent language a consistent message across campuses is very positive we have some students that may move from campus to campus so they'll have the same message and the same time frame no matter

262what campus that they're at you'll have siblings that will hear a consistent message if they're in high school middle school or elementary school and how great those conversations that will take place around the dinner table when they're talking about what did you talk about with kindness or good citizenship but what i also like is that even though we have that consistency overall each campus will be able to implement it using their own unique culture their own unique personalities whether it's rise up or 212 this program can be integrated with whatever the current school culture is at those campuses so i think it's important that we respect the unique personalities and cultures of each of our campus but still provide this overall direction so thank you so much to the steering committee and everyone who put

263a lot of time and effort into this program you did a fantastic job thank you and now to my right mr henry now a lot of information um didn't know anything about it so i'll probably have more questions as i digest it so no doctor blessing uh fantastic uh just the thought of the fact that we're addressing those that well-rounded kid it definitely is uh in line what we heard in our stakeholder survey this idea of what parents are looking for in character i think the presentation itself was beautiful and brilliant and i appreciate the teamwork from the just the incredible strengths of all the people coming together um from the different perspectives to develop it and i flipped through a couple of the lessons here just seeing the pre-k up to the high school

264and how they're developmentally appropriate and have the right tone for the different groups and um i just think that uh i really look forward to seeing how it unrolls this year it's fantastic thank you mr sarabia yes outstanding presentation i echo everybody hears um comments uh always um i used to be surprised but i'm not surprised no more at the presentations that y'all give i do have a a question though um for i'm not sure who to go to who the lead person is but um were there other districts that has this already in place that we consulted with we did not consult with any districts in detail at the beginning of our process we did inquire about where they were and how they were moving forward with this but then our emphasis went on

265and dr henry challenged us sure we could go out and purchase a program but obviously he did not want to do that and we are so happy that we went the direction that we did to create our own so initially yes but then once we decided we were creating our own we utilized the tools that we have inside of our district and trying to capitalize on on as some of the board members uh mentioned just the talents that we have with our curriculum writers and just to continue i will share just as a side note we do want to hear your feedback we do want to hear the feedback of the of the community and we're going to have systems in place to ensure that we get that we also want to make sure that

266people understand what it is we're doing and as ms francis said that you'll have that curriculum on that website so parents can go and see that because we want to be as transparent as possible as well to make sure that they understand and see what is happening in each of the great bands at their respective campuses what are some of the particulars that you're hoping to see that can actually produce data for us that the program is working besides you know outstanding student behavior and recognition and stuff what what kind of other yeah great great question and and from the the work with the hanover and the research they did for us they touched on even the the stakeholders that were surveyed they felt that that could be a benefit to the challenge that we've

267we kind of started with with discipline we can also look at we started with school pride specifically as was mentioned because first and foremost we want all 93 of our campuses to to have the pride from those students of the 10 to have that sense of belonging to continue to to take that relationships to the next level so some of those are going to be anecdotal but we will be able to have some data sets in place to to see that yes this is working and again if there's adjustments that need to be made based on feedback feedback from the students we heard from our high school students and dr henry asks them think back to elementary think back to middle school you know they wanted us to make sure that we focus the lesson

268can't be the same in middle school and then we just hear it again in high school so we purposely shared with our curriculum writers they had the chapter 120 of the texas essential knowledge and skills and be able to utilize that to meet the requirements of the law but more importantly to connect with the age level of those kids and to make it to where they're inspired they're motivated to to be better individuals not just at the campus but throughout the community as well absolutely i love everything about it i would encourage well i would ask for the data as soon as you have enough time to put something together that that can reflect the uh the program itself because it sounds like a win-win for everybody i apologize that you went so late in

269the meeting because i wish this could have been up front where we might have a more viewing audience and stuff uh because stuff like this is what needs to be out this needs to be out to where the people can uh actually get into it and hear about it a little bit more though but you guys outstanding presentation um i'm just thrilled to uh again for the three new trustees um our administration usually it's not the first time they'll come up with something that's just outstanding and hopefully you can present this at one of the conferences here soon with the data to support it thank you guys you know i think my colleague summarized it well excellent organization strong committee structure rolling it out clear transparency i remember chatting with duane off and off off

270and on over the years about his idea for the for this bill and it took him several sessions to make it happen his view was that this approach would lead to greater student attainment that's the reason why he was pushing so hard on this he thought this was to borrow a phrase a silver bullet i've now been a trustee long enough that i know there are no silver bullets but i also know the layer approach works i know that repetition works and i think this this does in fact fit in with what the board has been talking about from january through june but also what the community wants to hear so thank you once again roy to you linda but also to everybody who put time and effort in on this i know it's an

271ongoing process and we look forward to the rollout to the board your preference consensus or non-consent consensus to the left to the right okay holly if you would please put this on the consent agenda and with that i want to thank everybody we are finally adjourned [Music] you