Formal Board meeting 5/9/2022

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening the cypress fairbanks independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting on monday may 9th 2022 in the boardroom of the cypress fairbanks independent school district instructional support center located at 10-300 jones road houston texas at 6 pm i want to welcome the members of our audience and our television viewers to this meeting of the board of trustees at the cypress fairbanks board of trustees we're here to set goals listen to reports approve budgets contracts personnel appointments make policy for 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

002of the board of trustees not a meeting of the public the meeting is open to all who wish to attend and 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 of the board's council as a meeting parliamentarian continued or repeated disruption of any board meeting by words or actions may result in removal or loss of the privilege to attend the meeting prior to this 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

003is necessary in that event the board will meet in closed session to consider matters duly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.071 through 551.084 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 respectively ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and they're all cell phones or turned off or in silent mode i'm turning mine off my brother always enjoys texting me in the middle of a board meeting thank you bill 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

004to take this opportunity to recognize our community leadership committee members who are in attendance this evening that would be nancy frankel stacy anderson if you all would stand thank you we also have with us from troop number 61. scout romero gramaldo if you would please stand thank you for being here [Applause] the invocation for tonight's board meeting will be given by derek l bess area representative for the fellowship of christian athletes northwest houston coach best was born and raised in suffolk and portsmouth virginia after serving his country in the usaf he coached high school basketball and now serves through the ministry of fca coach bess and his wife paula have four sons thank you for being here tonight sir and we appreciate your support and service to our district before the invocation i would like

005to introduce the scifir high school af jrotc cadets who will be presenting the colors this evening carrying the american flag is cadet first lieutenants marcus ramirez on the american rifle as cadet captain dallas lopez carrying the texas flag is cadet first lieutenant tomas caruso and on the texas rifle is cadet captain skyla kasmiorski these cadets present the colors to you under the direction of senior master sergeant retired usaf michael claiborne at this time i would ask for you to please stand for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance that will follow let us pray dear lord again we come to you thank you for all the many blessings you bestowed upon us blessings of yesterday today and those not yet seen you know right now we just thank you for just allowing us to to

006be here just to wake up this morning with air in our lungs to breathe is a blessing and we don't take it for granted lord right now we just thank you for this opportunity to come together we thank you we ask for a special blessing on each and every member here each and every person under the sound of my voice we thank you for the opportunity to discuss matters that will affect our school district and we we thank you that we ask that everyone who is involved um that you will humble their hearts and their spirits as we make decisions in matters that will affect um everyone in our district we thank you for our leadership we thank you for dr henry and his continued leadership all of the assistant uh superintendents and we ask

007you just bless them and keep them and and this board as they make these decisions um that they will continue to lead us and allow us to be the best school district in the state of texas and across our nation these and all other blessings we ask in your precious son jesus name amen amen okay and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated board member julie heinemann will read the district's vision and mission statement for the benefit of the audience our vision at cfisd is formed from the acronym lead to learn empower achieve dream lead our mission is to maximize every student's potential through rigorous and relevant learning experiences preparing students to be 21st century global leaders we're going to go

008ahead and proceed with the recognitions portion of the agenda first the board will recognize mike and darlene jarrar of gerard company as the volume buyer for the 2022 cypress fairbanks isd livestock show and sale i am going to request debbie blackshear assisted by julie heinemann to go and help with the recognition debbie as many of you know has probably been the strongest supporter of the livestock show ever in the history of trustees for the school district we can't verify that but it certainly seems to be appropriate and natalie after debbie gets down where she needs to be i'll ask you to join as well julie and debbie were there for the auction natalie came down for for part of the pre-judging the livestock shows is always very important once everybody's in place miss denise quebeca

009will be presenting the award [Applause] mr jackson board of trustees and dr henry it is my pleasure to present the 2022 cfisd livestock show association volume buyer award presenting the award to our winner will be representatives from the various ffa chapters in our school district so let me have a moment for our representatives to come forward you can just kind of go stand on either side of them this award is given to the buyer who made the largest contribution at our livestock show and sale i would like to recognize mike and darlene gerard and gerard and company incorporated their daughter jennifer and brando brandon dorfler of gerard and company are here tonight to accept the award mr and mrs gerar are joining us virtually right here on the laptop in the first row jennifer and

010mr dorfler would you come on up there are a few words that can express the level of appreciation we have for the tremendous support we continue to receive from the girards this year the girards contributed 76 which accounts for over 10 percent of our total sales that is worth [Applause] but wait there's more their contribution this year represents 20 consecutive years of support with them receiving the volume buyer award 14 of the 16 years it's been given i think that's another round so in honor of your long history of support we're including a little something extra with this year's buckle their 16th a custom belt to show off that buckle and a small little multi-purpose case with our logo so students would you please present those awards to our representatives and please join me once

011again in thanking them for two decades worth of generosity thank you the board will recognize uil state tennis finalist class 6a girls doubles i will ask the three men to join me in front to help recognize our finalists athletic director ray cepeda challenged me to bring my junior college letter jacket with a tennis emblem on it to see if it can still fit i'm not certain it will fit but i'm up for any challenge give it a go though right absolutely sir so gentlemen if you would let's go to the front well as as we get ready for that mr jackson board of trustees dr henry it is my extreme pleasure to be here tonight representing our athletic department in this school district to present to you two athletes from bridgeland high school that competed

012for a state championship in tennis at the uil state tennis tournament in san antonio on april 26 and 27th i truly appreciate the time that you're affording us to publicly recognize these highly deserving athletes in the execution of our program our athletic department is focused on three core areas of focus competitive excellence in uil competition academic excellence through athletic participation and service to our wonderful community the two honorees tonight exemplify the three ideals of our program and it is truly an honor to be able to publicly recognize them for their high level of achievement at this time i would ask that emma eads and divya talluri come up to the front join our board members along with associate athletic director kirk eaton who has a certificate for you and i want to talk a little

013bit about emma and divya i said i was going to make them stand up here awkwardly as i did this they had a tremendous senior year competing for the bridgeland bears this year they were a large part of the bears winning their third team district championship in a row in the fall and carried that level of excellence over to the spring season where they carried a 31-0 perfect record heading into the state tournament at the state tournament they won a tough quarterfinal match against a very talented team from flower mound marcus kemp come back to win came back to win that and then defeated a very good team from south lake carroll in the state semifinals to advance to the finals they ended their season in the state championship match losing a very close match

014to another's doubles doubles team from south lake carroll as mentioned in the introduction besides their unbelievable athletic achievements they are also very strong students who have worked very hard to give back to our community emma will be attending oklahoma state next year and divya will be off to georgia tech the girls are coached by head coach emma mcdougall and emo if you could come up to the front as well she is assisted by martin skoda at this time i would ask that ridgeland principal mike smith to stand up also to be recognized and really uh their parents and the family members that are with us tonight if you if you guys could stand to be recognized if you know anything about competitive tennis i think these uh wonderful parents would attest that these young ladies

015didn't get here by themselves uh they they transported them to several lessons matches tournaments and uh they're just great uh cfisd families and we appreciate all of your support so as we conclude our portion of the meeting i want to thank the board and dr henry and dr henry's administrative team for their support of our athletic programs when dr henry first brought our team here he said he wanted to compete to be the best i can truly say that emma and divya represent the best of our community thank you guys we appreciate you and congratulations on a great senior season and great career so slightly on twitter oh they get further [Applause] i was a little more you may need your help getting out of it they weren't long enough to be called shorts we

016will continue with superintendent remarks and honors thank you mr president trustees cfisd audio video production students in collaboration with our district video production team recently compiled a highlight of cfisd happenings in the month of april please enjoy the brief video that illustrates how cfisd is bringing out the best [Music] congratulations to deca students for from scifire cypress falls and cypress lakes high schools who competed at the state conference february 24-26 at the george r brown convention center 28 students represented cypress fairbanks isd and five of those students made it to the top four which qualified them for the deca international career development conference teaching and training students from bridgeland high school cypress creek high school scifir high school cypress ranch high school and jersey village high school competed in the 2022 state texas association of

017future educators competition in dallas march 3rd through 5th these aspiring educators showcase their creativity and expertise in teaching stephanie loza from sci fair received a thousand dollar scholarship alyssa cofer christina delgado zeke felix and melanie raina we're in the top five for excuse me top five for the professional development category ashlyn brown from jersey village won in teacher created materials and is now a national qualifier going to washington dc to compete this summer congratulations to fbla students from bridgeland cypress ranch cypress ridge cypress woods and jersey village high schools who competed at the state fbla conference march 23rd through 25th at the galveston convention center approximately 100 students represented cfisd and 50 of those students placed in the top five which qualified them for the national fbla conference over the summer cosmetology students from jersey

018village cypress lake cypress springs and cypress ridge high schools competed in the state skills usa competition in corpus christi on april 1st and 2nd these students distinguish themselves by earning a first or second place award in the various cosmetology related competitions from building salon mock-ups to nail art and braiding congratulations to evan nguyen cypress ridge high school advanced culinary arts students for student for placing first in mystery basket emily bile cypress ranch high school culinary arts students for placing first in cupcake presentation and kirsten vincenti cyprus ranch high school culinary arts student for placing second and cupcake presentation at the family career and community leaders of america state competition held april 7th and 8th in dallas fccla is a career and technical student organization that functions as an integral part of the family and consumer

019science education curriculum and operates within the school system congratulations to cfisd technology student association students from scifir bridgeland cypress creek cypress park cypress ranch cypress springs cypress woods jersey village and langham creek high schools and cook hamilton and spelaine middle schools who placed first or second and the state technology student association held april 21st and 23rd in fort worth the district had approximately 400 projects on site competition entries of those 400 cf isd had 183 first 183 placed first and 154 for place second it was a great competition for cfisd cypress woods tsa was named division 6 state champs spillane tsa was named middle school ute state champ congratulations to hosa students from bridgeland sci fair cypress woods and langham creek high school who competed at the state hosa conference april 20th through 22nd at

020the galveston convention center approximately 26 students represented represented cfisd and 11 of those students placed in the top two qualifying them for the hosa international leadership conference over the summer that's all i got mr president we're going to take a brief break i know this is a final season so that students and and parents can leave if they wish obviously they can stay i do want to make one comment while athletic director cepeda is here when he came on board he and mark and they were supported strongly by the board to bring a whole new emphasis to the athletic department and athletes throughout the entire district and that was to emphasize more than just being highly competitive on the field it was being highly competitive in the classroom and also being heavily involved in community

021service that being an athlete meant you had to excel in all areas and so i want to say thank you athletic director sepeda for a job well done we have said it before but also to the two ladies who excelled at the highest levels in tennis and for those of you all in the audience who played tennis it is very very hard just to make the state tournament but to progress is a completely different level but more than that you did it while keeping your grades at a very high level and by also performing community service and so ladies athletic director cepeda coach and all the other coaches in the entire district and the other athletes i want to say thank you for taking our athletic program to a whole new level and with that

022i'll stop talking so we can all have about a two minute break that'll give me time to maybe get out of this jacket and people if you want to leave you can we will now proceed with public comments agenda item 3a patrons who have duly registered per policy bed local may address the board and make public comments on an agenda item during or before the board's consideration of the item the board may allow public comment on agenda items at all meetings the board will continue with the remaining agenda after the registered patrons have had an opportunity to speak patrons who have registered to speak this evening may see the order of their names listed on the screens to your right and to your left they're already up before your name is called please move forward

023and sit in one of the two reserve seats on the front row our first speaker this evening is megan bradley mr secretary are you ready and i will remind everybody at the 30 second mark the yellow light will flash when your time has expired the red light will come on it will start to beep and we ask that you go ahead and wrap up your comments thank you thank you good evening board members dr henry thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is megan bradley as you heard i'm here to speak on agenda item 9b the budget amendment my husband and i moved to houston in 1997 and settled in the cypress fairbanks independent school district due in no small part to the quality of the school district we

024had no children at the time but that was in our plans and so that was a factor in our decision we had two daughters um both of whom have gone through the system are no longer students they went to sampson elementary goodson middle school spelaine middle school we did both and then cyprus woods high school where they both are graduates my youngest will be finishing her degree at west point next week and will be accepting her commission into the army and my older daughter is finishing her master's degree at the university of north texas and also just recently enlisted in the army she'll be performing with the um the army ceremonial band at arlington national cemetery so we're obviously very very proud of our kids but we also know that their success is due to

025the quality of the education that they received here in the district they had amazing teachers they had access to tremendous facilities and obviously strong strong extracurricular programs that the board has supported the teachers have empowered and i think that that really speaks to the message that dr henry has has put forth the district of opportunity for all and what julie spoke on earlier the lead vision that is so what they are all about and what we should all be standing for the budget needs to align with those priorities i think that the board has done a tremendous job of that as well of making sure that you have the support that you need most especially for the teachers who are on the front lines every day please continue with that support and ignore the noise

026and the challenges that you face thank you so much [Applause] our next speaker is julie ricks hello i'm speaking on agenda item 9a i propose that the board nominates natalie blass and game for the position on the tsa b board of directors for region 4 position f she won me when she took time to research other boards and the time allotted to people to speak for the import for this of importance shows her sincere responsibility for precision and respect for those and the indicator that she is someone who is fair as an awake grandparent julie heinemann currently filling the interim position set to expire 2022 is not our choice and not a fair representative for parental rights and the morals of the majority considering her record in support of policies promoting the indoctrination of children

027with crt and the sexualization of students taught in the classroom in addition she is a member of the sci fair civic alliance and in alignment with their values and their campaign to literally put pornography back in school libraries recent local elections greatly indicate that the awoke agenda is not acceptable direction in our schools or community god family country is the moral majority we need fair the fear of god amongst us because we are all in a position of responsibility that and will be held accountable to god for the manner in which we disciple the next generation comparable to when we borrow something we should be thankful and have the responsibility of returning it like it was given to us and hopefully better there is no adult here that grew up going to school learning the

028nonsense in the current school curriculum we can do better we must be better please make my speech an official part of the board's record thank you our next speaker is jennifer chanette i want to say that it's woke not awake i'm speaking on agenda item 7b reading is fundamental to learning and help kids feel seen and heard at the last meeting several members of the community spoke about the book flamer such outrage from people who probably haven't even read the whole book they cherry pick what they want and then they scream about it and then they get their friends to come and scream about it after that meeting i bought the book it covers racism bullying religion homophobia domestic violence friendship peer pressure etc an adult character tells the main character this is all about

029figuring out how to get where you need to go it's not always straightforward you have to figure out where you are in the world first then adjust for the setbacks to find your way we all feel lost sometimes in the end this is a book about self-discovery and self-acceptance isn't that something that we want for our kids in this district our cfisd librarians are required to have a master's degree or higher from a recognized accredited college or university i'm curious to know how many people complaining have a master's degree each time a person screams about banning a book in the school library are basically taking a direct shot at our librarians i think these board meetings should provide frequent flyer punch cards every fifth time someone stands up here to complain they should have to

030volunteer at the school of their choice help out in the library read to a first grade class help out in the cafeteria go see firsthand how hard our teachers administrators and support staff work every single day i will end with a quote by my favorite childhood author judy bloom i believe that censorship grows out of fear and because fear is contagious some parents are easily swayed book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children's lives this fear is often disguised as moral outrage they want to believe that if their children don't read about it their children won't know about it and if they don't know about it it won't happen good luck with that thank you for your time [Applause] our next speaker is danny moss before we start i just have

031an email that was not answered by any of the board so i'm going to go ahead and make sure that you got a copy of it so if you could just pass these by i just want to make sure on record that everybody got one because it's been multiple days and i didn't even get a mr secretary start the timer thank you earlier this week i went ahead and emailed the board with some concerns that i had with some materials in our board in our libraries so i'm going to be speaking on 7a the preliminary budget i have a few questions number one who did or will make the official purchase of these book bundles many of them contain books that are in current violation of texas state law so i would like to know

032who's responsible for purchasing these books how much was the official cost of these books in our libraries what is the total cost of training for your librarians who on your website are listed as attending out-of-town conferences and how much do you plan on budgeting for your legal defense this year because from my understanding you're going to need it thank you [Applause] our next speaker is nikki coward good evening my name is nikki coward i'm the proud president of the american federation of teachers in scifire and i'm going to use my two minutes at the microphone tonight to speak truth to power and the truth is staff vacancies across all sci-fi isd departments and the looming staff shortages predicted for next school year are keeping me up at night and quite frankly they should be keeping

033you awake too legally a budget has to be discussed and voted on by this body prior to july 1. when are we going to stop challenging each other and instead come together and face the real challenges facing all of us great leaders or forward thinkers and great leaders know why it's so important to let their employees know that they are valued our union believes all scifir employees deserve to be valued and deserve respect our scifir aft retention and respect committee have been meeting weekly for the last several months we have done deep dive of surveys data collection with teachers para as bus drivers on budget variance reports and insurance packages because respect means fair pay respect means reasonable workloads it means safe working conditions and respect means affordable health care bottom line salaries of texas

034public school employees have fallen over the last years when adjusted for inflation but pay stagnation and higher turnover rates are not just recent due to pandemic problems and ultimately these staffing issues are collectively facing that we are collectively facing are affecting our students so what can school boards do locally to help right away make the investment by increasing salaries for july 1. the scifir community overwhelmingly agrees about the importance of public education and all that remains to secure the future is for local leaders to implement solutions necessary to both attract and retain our most valuable assets our employees the clock is ticking quickly now to vote on a real pay raise coupled with a retention stipend and that has to be our focus because our employees and our kids are worth it thank you our

035next speaker is christina woods good evening i'm speaking on agenda item 7b college career and military readiness plans i continue to be disturbed by the district's apparent tracking and profiling of students for degree plans prescribing for them what they will be capable of after high school i struggle to understand how this is not the very structural racism that feeds school segregation i dare say who i was at 16 or 18 bears very little resemblance to who i am now yet lucky for me as a white person there was rarely other than white men people in line telling me what i could or couldn't accomplish when the district tells students they can't attend college there are real world implications beyond the obvious which are devastating enough poverty and the involvement with the criminal justice system this

036kind of tracking and profiling dehumanizes our students of color especially our black students it questions their intelligence their dreams and their place in the world public schools public schools should never be in the position of prescribing for a child what they are capable of accomplishing or not if we are mostly telling black indigenous and students of color that they aren't intelligent enough worthy enough or that their dreams career or higher education goals are above their pay grade literally then we are creating further hardships for them that is the definition of structural racism i implore the district to implement the recommendations from the equity audit our black students and our other students of color's futures depend on it the brooking institute says it hardly needs saying that the connections between race gender education are highly complex

037and deeply personal however one thing is clear educational and economic outcomes for black men have profound implications for the prosperity of black families and the prospects prospects of black children and for racial equity more broadly thank you oh thank you okay i'm speaking on two agenda items and i get two minutes for each so 9b i mean sorry 7b despite dr henry's opinion this is an official notice to our elected board trustee trustees i want to talk about ribbon reads in regards to early childhood literacy this is the mission statement from the sci-fi isd website the ribbon reads book list is a selection of titles for k-8 students that reflects and honors diversity of culture ethnicity race religion physical and mental and emotional abilities sexual orientation and gender identity for kindergartners the objective of the

038exposure which is an odd word to put of these titles is to build awareness acceptance and respect questions i have regarding this it says k-8 so i assume this means kinder through eighth why does my elementary student need to read books or be encouraged to hear about sexual orientation five years old do parents have a choice to opt out what takes do these suggested encouraged books cover why do all of these books on the list have to be three years old or less why is there books about gender identity being read by adults to my child what purpose does including sexual orientation and gender identity to children as young as kindergarten serve parents it's all there for you to go look yourself sci-fi isd is openly promoting books discussing sexuality to five-year-olds and gender preference

039to five-year-olds now i'll go on to 9a please stop so we can reset the timer okay please continue despite dr henry's opinion this is an official notice to our elected board members please do not nominate anyone to tasby get out of tasby the tasbee calls parents who speak out against board policies domestic terrorist let remy remind you of my speech at last month's board meeting and then i'll tell you the effect i outed sci-fi civic alliance as groomers who succeeded in putting porn back into the library i added the fact that this is an organized group with three current elected officials one of them is tommy bayless president of esd9 controlling two percent of taxes dr henry along can we stop please for a minute they cut the sound off again who is scifire isd's

040head of student and health and mental health why is did you did you cut my mic no hold on they cut the sound off on comcast again no yeah it's comcast i know this happens every this happens every board meeting mr dr henry but it's not i know this is this is the s this is the second month in a row this has happened dr henry can we please get this fixed in the back before we continue henry please that's what i'm working on yeah let's get this fixed in the back please technical issues we're gonna have to just stream it and not do channel 16 because it's this is the only speaker this has happened to and this happened last meeting as well i'm seeing a con can see a continuous problem with public

041comments on this i'm just bringing this up as an attention item i know please get this fixed i appreciate it i'm just saying mr henry it's not us but that's not fair it's comcast let's let's go on we can continue that apologize so let's go ahead and start this over again with the fresh two minutes despite dr henry's opinion this is an official notice to our elected board members please do not nominate anyone to tasby get out of tasby the tasby calls parents who speak out against board policies domestic terrorist let me remind you of my speech at last month's board meeting and then i'll tell you the effect i outed scifire civic alliance as groomers who succeeded in putting porn back into the libraries i added the fact that it is an organized group

042with three current elected officials one of them is tommy bayless president of emergency services nine controlling two percent of the taxes along with bevin gordon who is cypher isd's head of student and mental health head of the shack committee tommy appointed her to serve in on esd9 along with him and then cancel the election so the community never actually voted for her the effect of my porn grooming outing testimony was a voter turnout increased for the esd 9 election on saturday from a thousand percent it went from eleven hundred to eleven thousand and tommy bayless and the rest of the incumbents were voted out how many other elections including the last year's board election have to happen before dr henry will acknowledge that children belong to their parents and will no longer tolerate grooming curriculum

043he promotes as the leader of the curriculum writes writers and the leader of what's purchased and allowed you are the number one groomer and i want it to stop thank you very much [Applause] our next speaker is stacey demeyer my babysitter canceled last minute a little mini next to me um hello tonight i'm speaking on agenda item 7b i attended last week's working session and found this presentation incredibly informative but also troubling and i'm not troubled by the results per se i have reasonable expectations on how our students will be performing during and after the pandemic learning loss is understandable and it's okay our children have been through a lot over these past two years i am worried about how much of the responsibility of making up for this learning loss is being put solely

044on the shoulders of our teachers first the target achievement goals appear to be unrealistic potentially creating undue stress for our teachers when president jackson asked about the discrepancy between the district's goal of making up the learning loss in two years with the commissioner marath's determination that learning loss will be made up in double that time it was said that the teachers are committed to doing whatever they need to do to make sure their students are successful this felt similar to a comment made at another meeting when it was asked how the demanding summer school enrollment will be staffed with teachers a time when teachers get their necessary r r the answer our teachers will do whatever it takes our teachers are burnt out and the resolutions to problems our district faces shouldn't include making martyrs

045out of them second the solution provided for learning loss recovery is teacher professional development that's all as vice president heinemann pointed out the learning loss is concentrated in the district's economically disadvantaged students a demographic of students that were affected more than others by the pandemic avoiding this reality and not considering other solutions that focus on these students rather than just their teachers is doing a disservice to these students and putting too much responsibility on their teachers there must be more student-focused plans to make up for the learning losses of the pandemic thank you [Applause] our next speaker is jeremy shide hello my name is jeremy scheid and i'm a teacher here at scifir isd um for the past couple of years on my id we've had this little tag called lag nap and for those

046of you that don't know it basically means to give that little extra well this been a a motto that we've been following for the past i believe three years now teachers have been giving more and more and extra and extra each and each and every year and not just teachers support staffs custodians administration bus drivers everyone in the community [Music] i teach seniors and while every time this time of year it is sad to say goodbye it's even sadder when i have to say goodbye to my co-workers because they can't afford just the basic necessities for what y'all pay i've seen paraprofessionals who have to work two jobs i've seen teachers who are completely burned out because of additional responsibilities that are not in their contract but yet they continue to do it because they

047love their work more and more or my co-workers are leaving because of this burnout and stress i have witnessed teachers crying i haven't witnessed teachers just given up and not because of them no longer loving the work but because of the stress that is put on this is why i'm asking for a substantial increase and not only salary for sell a substantial increase not only for pay for salary workers but also especially for our hourly workers as well and i understand what i'm asking is very large but i think it's because of the necessary work that is needed is why it should be reflected i'm asking for a 13 raise for salary workers and a minimum of 22 hours for hourly workers that is my time thank you [Applause] our next speaker is monica dean

048there are three levels in the scifire district to access books possibly for a few include the district textbook study sync the first level is the campus and online library where children can check out books either in person at their campus or online through the destiny discover or soar apps the second level is the classroom library of student choice books this is the library that was funded by the taxpayers for book purchases made by the district the board recently approved 2.8 million to vendors for district books the district purchased a variety of books for each ela teacher to have a classroom library for students to have choice in the reading the third level that no one has touched on as of yet is what we will refer to as the t a teacher's personal collection library

049this personal collection of books is located in each classroom these books are purchased by the individual teachers personally not by the district i appreciate that teachers are encouraging independent reading through student choice because teachers are personally funding these books they find cost-effective ways by purchasing books at places such as half-price books garage sales or if a teacher retires they may get a donation the teacher's personal collection of books is displayed on shelves in each teacher's classroom and students have access to check out these books and or read them during the class most teachers k-12 have a personal collection of books they are willing to share with students what guidelines are specifically being given to each teacher for oversight of these personal collection of books for complete transparency faculty should list all of the personal books

050on their district website so parents can review the books being offered in each classroom and update their website as changes are made once those guidelines are established the campus principal should make sure those procedures are followed for not only accountability but complete transparency from the teacher to the parents as they work together towards the student success our next speaker is burke miller i'm speaking on 9c and instructional materials on the monument i'm here to lodge a complaint about some of the materials being purchased and used in the district as others have mentioned some of these materials are are clearly racist obscene and pornographic this material this material may include the no place for hate program or other critical race theory materials some of this some of this material is very positive and worthwhile some of

051it is overtly racist and sexually very inappropriate for children some is even pornographic the terrible covet 19 pandemic did have at least one positive effect it made parents and the public aware of what was being taught in our schools and we were appalled and disgusted at what we saw we had a big school board election here last november in which three candidates advocate advocates of the critical race theory and other left-wing policies were defeated by people with common sense family values which was which the vast majority of the community supports there were school board elections last week here in the houston area where people like our values won in the spring branch isd pearland isd fort bend isd katy isd and clear creek isd just to name a few even the president of the texas

052association of school boards who was a crt supporter was fired by the fort bend isd election voters i strongly urge all our school board members and the superintendent to take a a stand against critical race theory and the obscene materials that often come with it we don't need people with perverse views doubling as educators talking dirty to our children thank you [Applause] our next speaker is monica dean had to split these in two okay at the start of every school year a parent is required to update their student record online some of the boxes to be checked are left unchecked are things such as if you want to receive text or email alerts from the school messenger your students class average or parents can check a box giving permission to have their child's picture or

053video taken this basic technology of setting and receiving alerts via text or email has also been used by large corporations such as amazon netflix and apple these corporations offer parental controls to filter programs and alert parents if their child is accessing content that either needs approval prior approval or needs to be reviewed since the cipher libraries have become a huge concern for parents due to the sexually explicit and age-inappropriate content the district has the perfect opportunity right now to give parents a voice by applying this type of basic technology so here's the idea the child goes to the library finds a book the librarian scans the student's id scans the book barcode if that parent has checked off that box in the student's record that says yes i would like to receive a text or

054email alert when my child checks out a library book the system will immediately send the name and author of the book and the options to accept reject or hold for review once the librarian receives a response they can proceed with the parent's request this type of notification encourages parental involvement so the parent can decide what's best for their child and it also ensures transparency by the district and continued partnership with the parents great news on march 30th solid learning the creators of destiny discover that cypher currently uses is already developing this technology which allows parents to more easily monitor their children's choice of library books this is not about restricting books it's about giving parents more rights and granting permission to what their student is checking out this is a 21st century tool to be

055viewed as a winning strategy to put ownership on the parent districts across texas have reached out to followed learning bullseye fair and will the superintendent and board members choose to be followed model district and become the leader in texas and across the nation to adopt this technology [Applause] our next speaker is dr tara cummings hi i'm going to do my best to cover a lot of ground tonight on items 4c 7a 7b 9a 9f and 9g dr henry recognized some of our amazing teachers tonight and i want to piggyback in light of recent teacher appreciation week pardon me for interrupting uh and i'll have you start over are you asking to speak i'll do it all in two minutes very good uh mr secretary start the time over again reset it thank you dr henry

056recognized some of our amazing teachers tonight and i want to piggyback in light of recent teacher appreciation week meaningful ways to show appreciation include compensation autonomy respect for their humanity and their rights as teachers and reasonable expectations for their roles responsibilities and professional development i want to echo my neighbors and some some of our educators calls for arrays i'm asking for at least five percent plus a competitive rep retention bonus and ask that you provide staff information about their salary prior to the cut off for signing their next next year's contract regarding budgetary decisions i also urge the district to budget for implementation of the equity audit recommendations on the basis of equity period but also toward improved retention and recruitment of diverse highly qualified staff i would like to remind everyone of the importance

057of consistent access to diverse challenging literacy literature toward early childhood literacy and college career and military readiness efforts as has been the case every single parent has the opportunity to opt out of any literature that they so choose for their own child no one is grooming or indoctrinating anyone in making tasby nominations i urge trustees to remember the importance of competence the tasby code of ethics our new trustees unethical bad faith track record including indicating on video that they want to do away with cosby's quote liberal agenda and the best interest of cfisd in providing true opportunity for all accordingly i ask that our new trustees not be nominated for a tasby position it's clear that our students require increased emotional support and without it teachers and staff face increased burnout to address both the

058need for increased support and staff wellness and retention i'm glad to see the mou with sam houston state for a degree in school counseling i'm also very glad to see on the agenda the agreement with harris county resources for children and adults as a pathway for providing much needed no-cost support for our students and families who are at risk or in crisis thank you [Applause] our last speaker is kathleen shaw her share good evening my name is kathleen sharer and i am speaking proudly on behalf of the sci fair civic alliance on agenda item 7a budget thank you to cfisd for excellent management of our district finances it's truly commendable what the district does for students and staff under considerable pressure and constraint the state of texas does not adequately fund public schools despite its

059wealth and i hope we will all keep that in mind when we vote in november cfisd teachers are required to sign their contracts for the 2022-2023 school year by this friday but they have not yet learned their salaries amidst a worsening teacher shortage we must act quickly to show our teachers how much we value them the cost of living in cyprus has increased dramatically in recent years and now we're dealing with high inflation furthermore trs health insurance is subpar while we're glad premiums won't increase next school year our teachers have struggled with rising insurance costs for a long time now we appreciate last year's raise and these challenging times call for another please give all teachers a retention bonus and a five percent raise without a midpoint caveat any delay may cost us some great

060educators please communicate about pay before this friday's contract signing deadline another budget related issue that has been brought up shortages of paraprofessionals substitute teachers cafeteria workers and bus drivers paraprofessionals are skilled workers who meet the needs of our most vulnerable students yet we do not pay them a living wage our subs aren't paid a competitive rate and we often don't have enough of them to cover absences we also have a shortage of bus drivers and cafeteria workers our students cannot thrive without these important employees please give them a raise as well i urge cfisd to do everything we can to improve compensation for employees who work directly with students but let me be clear the state of texas underfunds our schools the fault ultimately lies with the folks in austin so let's all keep this

061in mind come november please wrap up we will now proceed with board comments by bay any board member may make a comment during this portion of the agenda without prior posting being required comment items may not pertain to the character of any student staff or board member and may not be discussed or deliberated upon at this meeting i'll start to my right scott henry evening and thank you everyone for coming out tonight uh and thank you everyone for watching online as well uh i want to stop briefly with just a couple of comments on a lot of feedback i've received the email and also to me personally about the book situation i thought at least make people aware of what i've done address the situation behind the scenes i've sent the new policy over to

062our legal counsel for them to review and take a look and see how it can be incorporated into our local policy as well i and other trustees have asked for clarity on how parents can review library content an administration has been very very helpful in giving this information to us if you have any questions on books in our library i invite you to go to our cfid or our scifi website there no login is required for the information and if you need help on that i'm sure that uh your kids can probably help you with that as well more than you it is a little difficult i will say i'll also encourage you if you do have problems as a parent with any of the books that your kids are looking at work with your

063kids teacher work with the kids principal or work with his designate there is a policy called ef local policy and you can look that up raise your issue up work with your kids work with your kids school i will say as a personal thing facebook's probably not the best place for that just raise up the issue it's easier doing it that way if you can that's the best way to do that and handle that issue at the end of the day you are the parent you are in control of your parent of your kids education and we have to partner with you and we value that relationship you have on to my usual positive things i want to thank everyone again for coming here tonight this past week a week and a half we've attended

064many different celebrations it's one of the privileges we get to have as a trustee and also as a friend one of those celebrations unfortunately was with my best friend's father's funeral the finale sometimes is a celebration but it's also it's an accomplishment of someone's life it was also a very moving celebration and i didn't mean to make the whole room kind of get dull on me here but it was truly inspiring to see of someone's well life of someone's life that he lived very well for him another was for volunteerism it's great to see so many people that had so many great works that do so many great things for our district and for our kids day in and day out the other was for an award ceremony for kids and to see so many

065kids accomplished so many different things this past year is just amazing especially to get to see them individually at the different awards all three of these different events have a common theme to me it's celebrating the great accomplishments in life in different journeys of everyone's life you know there's no great limits to what our growth is as humans whether it's human intelligence or whether it's imagination or whether it's wonder i'd like to close with this very special challenge to our students your generation is coming to an age where it's the most challenging but it's also the most exciting time in history high tech is revolution on industries it's renewing our economy it's also promising new hope and it's also a lot of opportunity we have ahead of us but you must earn the reward that's

066ahead of you you got to work hard but the harder you work today is the greater half reward for tomorrow but you got to make sure you get that training you got to make sure you have the skills that you could take advantages of the opportunity ahead of you so get a good education that's the key to your success it'll open your mind it'll give you the wings to your spirit there's a fabulous new world waiting for you my generation discovered that just like george is out there has discovered it as well but you are summing all the faith all the effort and all the discipline you can muster to claim that for you as well i look forward to seeing all of our graduates at the end of the month and again i thank

067you very much for everyone being here tonight thank you [Applause] dr natalie blassington i guess my daughter will feel better about her ap computer science test you took today given your encouragement i'm going to attempt to make this in the two minutes i think i'm going to fail but let's try starting my timer teachers are the most important employees of our school system we all exist to make them successful in the front lines of our school district at the tail end of teacher appreciation week i do want to express how much i appreciate and deeply respect your work teachers thank you to all the amazing teachers we have in cfisd you bring rigor relevance and relationships to your students and i honor you today on a special note i want to welcome coach shot back

068he was missed by his lobo students i also want to advocate for each teacher to have a classroom to teach in the pasta study last month looked at capacity versus enrollment and i'm asking our administration to study how many teachers are being asked to float next year even after the additions that we're going to vote on today and agenda item 9h3 which is relocation of portables floating makes teaching very difficult and i feel like it doesn't honor the profession first things first i'm dedicating to keeping i'm dedicated to keeping cfisd the district choice for the very best teachers also to all the mothers and fathers please know that i'm committed to respect your lines of authority in your decision making for your own child i understand that our role as a district is to partner

069with you in a values aligned way to bring life to the hopes and dreams you have for your own child i respect parent choice and voice to the aspect of voice i continue to advocate for greater opportunities to hear from our citizens at board meetings in the third largest district in texas i will vote for measures put before this board to increase the number of community members able to share voice with the board and when i say community members i mean parents grandparents taxpayers educators students business members non-profit leaders faith-based leaders etc living in the geographic boundaries of cfisd is great but anyone who cares to serve our community and our students to fight for their education for their hearts and their minds is welcome here we don't always have to agree that voices deserve

070to be heard i want to go on the record with my stance on library books parent choice period this goes for library digital library classroom libraries including teacher purchase books in the classroom libraries and any materials our students are 18 and under their parents have a legal responsibility for them and are the ultimate authority of what they have access to we differentiate for all kinds of things photo permissions student records alerts for weather school cash online let's apply our ingenuity ingenuity to access for books finally human sexuality curriculum will be on the agenda of the shack meeting tomorrow i have reviewed the curriculum after special arrangement i'm advocating for greater transparency and access of the curriculum for parents and community in reviewing it i saw just one area we're at two minutes so uh one

071act one i just saw one area where i feel that greater discussion is needed um we have received formal requests for the shack to create a human sexuality subcommittee like the existing one for fitness it has been stated that the board needs to approve this creation of the subcommittee and i propose that we move to create a subcommittee i appreciate the presentation on early childhood and ccmr proficiency plans and i look forward to data in june about the literacy growth of our students in cfisd this year literacy is a civil right finally thank you for the privilege of serving our community mr sarabia welcome everybody here as always a wonderful happy mother's day to all the ladies here and the mothers here yesterday i want to start with um i got out to see a

072few events throughout the district um lovely participation throughout great presentation here of some of the award winners uh that were lucky to advance in their field the district is coming back uh full blast i like to see that and it'll last through early summer and stuff as well i look forward to getting out and about with the graduations coming up that scott had mentioned we were talking about that before and how a great job that if he and deborah put out there for us as trustees helping with the graduations on a different note about 20 years ago my oldest was in eighth grade and i got into coaching uh his eighth grade pre-high team and baseball and i that started me on where i'm at still i was coaching baseball yesterday on mother's day a

07314 and under 8th grade team um i was notified a little over a week ago that uh i'm going back to mental illness and uh the stress that our educators are on and not only educators but the public for the last couple of years the students as well and so i was notified that um one of my players is no longer with us so um the stress that goes on uh through these young minds is is horrific to deal with i can't imagine the stress as parents as leaders as a district as a community in a whole we need to come to a healing part to where they can reach out to us the district has done many things to help with this it was troubling i i heard scott also say something about somebody

074passing recently and i didn't want to bring down anything but mental illness is um something that some of my board members have always stressed the last couple of years and i'm here to advocate for that i texted my son a minute ago and i said uh we don't seem to be in a good spot and it's not good for our children um we need to find a medium to where we can agree on that what's best for the children uh with of course without stepping on their on their rights but also making sure that it's what the parents want to so we need to do better um the remarks that we hear from whoever when they come at us it's it's not good um it's never well to speak ill of someone i really believe

075that and i try not to do that and show some leadership in that aspect but i want to make sure that everyone is heard and we're not hurting anyone in any way but to realize that we're not all the same we we are each other's brothers and sisters and we need to do better sorry tom to my left luke skinlin thank you president jackson i will keep my comments this evening brief so first congrats to the students and the parents who are about to graduate what an exciting time and a big milestone in your lives so it's you know we made it you guys made it so it's it's wonderful to see for all of our teachers principals staff support services thank you for your support and the excellence that you guys continue to focus

076on as i've been out in the schools this year i witnessed it firsthand and i appreciate the the dedication that i've observed to the small details and the connections that i've witnessed in the classroom to the students so positive comments um i had the opportunity in the last week to go and attend anthony middle school their spring orchestra concert and so me as a musician that was my first career i got to see young people learning how to play an instrument and i always encourage any kind of extracurricular activity because it's a wonderful way for them to a develop new friendships but also be challenged through friendly competition to be better and to have teamwork and to find new ways to excel both in the classroom and outside of the classroom especially if the children

077who are who may listen to this the children who were in eighth grade who began as a who started their journey in normal cases a student will as a sixth grader choose to play an instrument but in this case we had three eighth graders in their eighth grade year decide they wanted to be in orchestra and pick up the instrument which is an unusual path not and so in that they had to be brave they had to do something different they had to do something for themselves and be passionate about doing that thing for themselves so i was really encouraged to see those students choose to do that in their eighth grade year regarding potential areas of improvement and the last board meetings we've heard comments regarding books and a lot of passion around that

078on april 11th the tea released guidance on statewide standards for policy regarding library content i passed that policy and the guidance to dr henry and to president tom jackson on april 12th the next day simply asking a question are there areas in which we can improve and so dr henry and mr jackson will work with the administration to determine if there we see areas to improve uh in the meantime echoing what dr blastinggame said parents we support you we've always supported you we want you to be the first person in line for your kids and so the process as mr henry alluded to earlier the the administration was helpful to us in providing us guidance on what the process is we have a decentralized process where if someone has a question about books for their

079kids they can reach out to their local schools they can reach out to their local administrators and have a discussion and understand what's available and so it's interesting this evening i happen to have the principal of my daughter in the audience miss meredith akers soon to be dr meredith acres and uh so i can tell you personally that mrs akers is very connected to my daughter my daughter knows exactly who she is and dr akers i'm already calling you dr acres mrs akers knows who my daughter is so there's a wonderful connection i know the connection i have with my own school because i'm involved and so if i have a question regarding my child's access to books i'm going to follow that process and i will work with mrs acres and we will find

080a path to success so in the interim i look forward to hearing from the administration if we have opportunities for improvement and for our parents that are out there we hear you and we're listening and my last comment regarding teachers and pay this is a non-political item period i we support our teachers and we are endeavoring to give our teachers the best competitive package possible i can say that for all the board members here and so we will strive and continue to strive to earn their trust as they give their careers put their careers in our hands we will seek to be competitive no more comments debbie black's chair good evening everyone um i want to comment a little bit on uh mr miss gerard that we honored this evening i have been involved with

081ffa for probably 32 years now and in all my tenure i have never known a community partner who put back more into our students than mr jarror and his family do each year throughout the years i've watched people come and go as top buyers but mr jawar is the first one not only is he there for the kids who get grand and reserve but he cares enough to stay throughout the cell and make sure that the students at the bottom that didn't place as highly get a very competitive price for their animal as well and in today's society that is very rare that someone because i mean sometimes we're talking three three and a half hours it's in february sometimes it's cold sometimes it's really warm in the barn but mr girard is definitely there

082for our students each year time and again and i just want to personally congratulate him for all he does for our students we have many great community partners and community individuals throughout this great community who support our students and i so appreciate it because it takes all of us as a community working together to do the best for our students next i want to touch upon teacher appreciation that was last week i mean i've heard dr henry say it time and again we can all remember a teacher that was special to us i can remember a teacher that was special to both my boys she had them in the first grade they were not twins they were two years apart but she came to texas as a ride out of college was recruited from wisconsin

083and taught she knew not anyone except she and her roommate came together and throughout that time she uh poured in to my boys and to her other students and truly showed a love to them so much so that when summer came she called me to see if she could come and pick him up and take him to the zoo and one year she came up and picked them up and took them to the ice cream to get ice cream now that is a special teacher and my boys when she married were invited we were all invited as a family to her wedding but we still keep lines of communication today her own children are grown and one's a nurse and one's in landscaping but truly a special teacher that my boys remember and i remember

084and through volunteering at danish i can name you any number of special teachers at danish that pour into their students as do teachers throughout our district so i just want to show my love and appreciation not only for all of our teachers but our parents our uh our cafeteria workers our transportation workers our custodians you know it really does take a village to raise a child and they all do play a very important and significant part in the education of our children and uh on the note of educators uh i was privileged to be able to attend the retiree banquet a few weeks ago where we honored all of our retirees it was three years rolled into one because of the pandemics of the past two years but it was so wonderful to have an

085opportunity to recognize and show our appreciation for those who have given so much to our students into our school district so one more time congratulations to all our retirees and you will be terribly missed and then finally i want to say congratulations to all of our 2022 graduates i can't believe there's another graduation upon us i know i told you a few months ago that i hoped i would be able to walk i will not be able to make all the graduations this year i will be present for some and unfortunately will not be able to walk with them but will be able to be on stage to welcome them and show them our appreciation and how very proud we are of our students our students in cypher isd have an opportunity like no other

086school district in this country and my boys will tell you this is why they moved back to cyprus after graduation to raise their families so their children my grandchildren could have the same type of opportunity so here's to all the 2022 graduates may you go far and may life give you all the best thank you [Applause] julie heinerman uh i want to say thank you debbie for sharing your heart and your passion with us you have been a joy to serve with um and a role model um as a school board trustee your heart and your passion for our district and for our kids um at the end of the april formal board meeting somebody came up to me afterwards approached here as i was packing up and she said um i know we don't

087agree on anything but i just want to thank you for being a good listener and i thought how do you know we don't agree on anything you don't even know me and i think that sometimes other people try to define us and i would encourage you if you have a question about me or you wanna know what i think go ahead and ask me yourself i'll answer but just because something is said at that podium doesn't make it true there's been a narrative that it's schools against parents or teachers against parents or principals against parents or dr henry against parents but i would encourage everyone to remember that teachers and principals and administrators are parents too their kids go to our schools it's not in us versus them our teachers work so hard every day

088to love not just their own kids to love your kids too and my kids and dr henry's grandkids um so i just would ask maybe for some grace maybe ask maybe ask questions instead of just listening to uh someone who doesn't know me doesn't know your kid's teacher doesn't know the librarian doesn't really know dr henry um i would encourage the district to get moving on this library book issue i know we're working on the pilot we're looking at the procedures and the policies and it's very much left up to the parents to reach out to the schools but there needs to be clarity about that so we need to pick up the pace on that okay i know it's frustrating especially for those who are not parents because for those of us who are

089parents we know that we can contact the principal or talk to the librarian and that we can control what books our kids have access to but for those who don't live in our district or who don't have kids in our schools it's frustrating because they don't know because they're not part of it that's kind of intentional because the goal is to protect parents rights the parents of our students it is about parents rights it's about the parents of cfisd students so in addition to the events that some of my colleagues have mentioned i also did attend the national merit recognition celebration which was wonderful to see the incredible accomplishments the academic accomplishments of our students and it reminded me when my own daughter crossed that stage and received her national merit recognition as a finalist

090we i also attended the knack celebration which is the new arrival center and those are for students who are brand new to the united states and don't and didn't speak english a year ago and that night they sang to us and they shared their stories and that is truly opportunity for all whether you are the highest achiever or you are someone who didn't even speak english when you when you started school this year and now you do their the berry center was packed with families to celebrate all of those kids uh i also got to go to the art show and to celebrate all the incredible talent of our students um in terms of sculpture and photography and painting and drawing and just to see students thrive artistically is just as rewarding as the academic

091achievements i went to the volunteer celebration always such a great great fun event we are so blessed to have volunteers in our schools and we are always looking for more if you feel passionate about cypher isd i encourage you to volunteer in our schools there's plenty of opportunities finally i attended the future educators celebration this was an amazing event where we were celebrating those students who are graduating and going to college to become teachers it was so fun to celebrate them and their families to see that when they when they get their degrees that we will welcome them back with open arms some of our very best educators our students were students here in our district before finally this is our last board meeting before the end of the school year so i just wanted

092to say thank you uh this was not an easy year i appreciate all the hard work of everyone in our schools and i wish everyone a very blessed summer thank you [Applause] on a couple of points that mr henry mr scanlan noted shortly after receiving the email from mr scanlon i arranged a meeting with vice president heinemann dr henry and other senior members to review the library policy on the books my approach as a trustee is more higher level as opposed to putting my fingers in into the weeds senior management has reviewed it as mr henry noted that initial review was in fact shared with the board i can't comment on any details because the manner in which the meeting took place other than we have taken steps we have discussed it may not move

093as quickly as some might like but there is movement charles lee gates in washington hamilton and burr jefferson and adams political smear campaigns been part of our history's pastime since our country's creation it might even be said that it's part of our very fabric the clothes we wear are dna it has found its way into blogs about school boards and rhetoric across harris county and the rest of texas i know it won't stop but it really should i have said this before multiple times this year a strike against one board member is a strike against all prior to covet i made over 100 school visits but my first two for this school year didn't happen until this last month they were at woodward elementary and anthony middle school both of these are excellent schools and

094high performing as viewed through the contextual lens of opportunities that walk through the door a special note is woodward where the approach is not on test scores but rather on creating a warm and supportive culture where teaching and learning can flourish and test scores will follow anthony is a wonderfully diverse campus with constant constant successes to celebrate which would include a science olympiad team that has qualified for state every year of its existence and a ban program always earning consistent ones at uil on a side note mr scanlan i know you're aware of it but perhaps the viewing public isn't once again this year scifir was recognized as one of the best musical communities in the united states you're a musician so you already know this but being one of the best in the state

095of texas automatically puts you in one of the top three or four states in in the country so being recognized as one of the best in the nation is not a surprise but it is welcome of note at anthony is plans that a middle school watchdog program is being rolled out on a trial basis so far the results are very encouraging at the last board meeting a colleague indirectly suggested i limit the time of my comments this is not the first time a colleague has made mention of this and i'm sure it won't be the last the board operating procedures were drafted and adopted when i was a trustee and i jokingly told council it looked as if one of the points in there was a muzzle tom rule she assured me that such was

096not the case i'm i still have not completely decided that that is true i have ridden 100 yellow dogs and anybody who can claim half that number come see me let's share a cup of coffee and we can chat about how long i talk special events i attended including national merit student recognitions the new arrival center graduation celebration the retirement banquet for teachers staff and administrators the first district-wide adjudicated art show with entries from every campus the bipps appreciation lunch and of course more jrotc the bits of recognition is always special as i am reminded of the support the district receives not only from the faith-based community businesses other non-profits but awfully but also financially established campuses within our district adopting other campuses in our district truly from one school reaching out to another watching

097the talent walk out the door is always bittersweet but i'm reminded of the mentorship program the leadership academies as developed by roy garcia and the strong work by dr debra stewart and her team to help replace that talent when i was a student there was not a special recognition in my district for national merit kids i am pleased that in addition to the district-wide recognition individual high school campuses provide additional recognitions for these talented students it is always fun to speak to the students and their family members at these events and learn the future plans i visited the knack program every year of its existence in scifire and the knack celebrations are truly a moment of joy dr macias borrowed a program from another district and changed it to fit the scifir business model and

098in so doing received national accolades and awards perhaps most poignant was the art show when parents and students asked me to see student art a special note were too special were two self-portraits one a charcoal that bore an excellent resemblance to the student herself and another that was equally well done but was meant to convey a meaning i dropped to one knee so i could be at eye level with the student who was the artist she explained her drawing to me one aspect of her drawing was to represent that everybody has the same color of blood reminded me of my dad a decorated combat veteran in normandy who told me remember son we all bleed red and so tonight i tipped my hat to all who made woodard and anthony a better place for our

099students and to those who have given so much of their life for the students of this district but also to those who have stepped up to take their place [Applause] we will now proceed with citizen participation as a reminder of our new process if you have registered to speak this evening you will see the order names listed on the screens to your right and to your left before your name is called please move forward and sit in one of the two reserve seats on the front row closest to the podium on my right agenda item 6a patrons who have newly registered per policy bed local may address the board regarding matters of concern interest to the district other than the character of any student staff or board member the board may not act upon any

100matter that is not listed under the action item portion of the agenda to participate tonight registration was between 5 30 and 5 50 on the day of the board meeting at the entrance to the scifir boardroom and our first speaker tonight is deborah edwards to the board of trustees of scifire isd my name is deborah edwards and i'm here this evening to talk to you and share some of my views about the violence that's going on in scifire schools on april 22nd houston news stations aired a video of a 13 year old black girl that got beat down by another black girl his her father had gone to school and reported it several times nothing was done by the school or by the school district there was nothing done to stop this child from being

101bullied this is unacceptable the violence and sci-fare isd must stop now i asked scifir isd knows exactly what to do to stop it but you choose to do nothing sidefair does a great job great job of taking over parental responsibility responsibilities like feeding and clothing students but you refuse to do the job that you were hired to do and that is to teach them to read write and reason and keep them safe at school i believe that scifire won't do what it needs to do to stop the violence because it has no expectations for the success of economically disadvantaged students i thank god that when my husband and i were going through school the system just discriminated against us because we were black never because we were poor as i take my seat my final

102comment to you all is this the god in heaven that i serve sits high but he sees mighty mighty love and those of us that know better he holds to a higher standard thank you our next speaker is george edwards jr good evening to the board of trustees superintendent and the district staff violence inside fair schools is out of control and needs to be addressed head on a recent incident of violence against a young black female student at thornton middle school was the latest example of why district-wide time-out is needed to address the issue of school violence what is a time-out a timeout is initiated by the leadership of the school district all school leaders would be assembled at the same time and the district leaders would issue a directive that simply states that violence

103will not be tolerated on any of the school campuses if there is something brewing or school leaders have been told or warned a problem beforehand they should act to resolve the problems promptly with the follow-up to the parent or student who brought forward the complaint if the principals and assistant principals need to walk to school halls to ensure order then that needs to happen thank you for the opportunity to speak [Applause] our next speaker is charles strange good evening my name is charles strange and i'm here to advocate for a third wrestling coach for all sci fair high schools currently there are approximately one and a half coaches at each school that cover the junior varsity varsity for women's and boys wrestling most schools have a head coach dedicated to sport and a part-time assistant

104that coaches football as well this puts an undue burden on the coaches and athletes coaches are spread thin especially during the fall trying to teach the sport and coach at tournaments kids struggle to learn because of the high kid to coach ratio and sometimes they have to compete without a coach in their corner a third coach would help by improving the athlete to coach ratio it would improve the safety in the practice room as in the fall sometimes there's only one coach 40 50 kids all trying to learn the only approved combat sport in high school and it would hopefully help improve the high coach turnover that cfsid has with the high school wrestling coaches so thank you for your time our next speaker is sandra roland munoz i come before you a very broken

105mother thank you mr mrs edwards my child has been beaten on campus three times i have the videos in my phone engraved in my heart and they haunt me in my dreams i have begged my campus principal i have begged the staff i have emailed y'all and i have begged y'all to hear my cry for my son who on march 21st survived and attempted suicide who again last week tried suicide what is it gonna take for y'all to give me a minute of your time without coming here publicly and begging mark henry i have met with you and you have met my child mr garcia i have met with you i have cried i have been kind i have been patient i have been forgiving i still show support i shall still sow grace i

106need y'alls grace this isn't about my tea complaint for his special education issues this is about my son being retaliated against this is about my son being sexually harassed this is about my son living and me not having to bury my child on march 22nd of 2010 i already had one child attempt suicide due to the bullying endured on this district's grounds by the grace of god my precious child survived but i will not stand any further and allow y'all to take another life from me i will not allow my precious son who is an innocent he's made mistakes and he said and done things but he has a mental illness that is documented that shall refuse to accept and acknowledge his responses and his behaviors are documented by three hospitals and by medical staff

107to be recognized as please wrap up they are recognized based on the trauma he has endured for the last four school years i have begged you all to please call me and talk to me personally i have been kind to mr garcia i have never been disrespectful to please right i ask you for a phone call mr henry that's all [Applause] our next speaker is bob kobe it's amazing how nervous it is out here president jackson board of trustees dr henry awesome 18 that i love so dearly faculty my god principles and administrators and teachers from all over this district just i love you so much and i appreciate this district in listening and watching board meetings i've been pleased to hear that there have been positive and growing understanding of just how great scifire

108isd is compared locally statewide and across the nation i'm prayerful that this awakening continues as dr henry always says we are not perfect and can always improve but we are solid in our opportunity for all last month or two months ago because i didn't get to speak last month i didn't get my name drawn last month two programs were highlighted by the board comments and i felt a need to share how wonderful these programs are and how they came into being watchdogs which was created by the national center of fathering addressing the need to have father or father figures involved in students education in 2010 2011 dr john ogletreed online and myself attended an nsba conference in jacksonville florida where the session was presented and addressed discipline issues that were being helped by the watchdogs

109i believe some of our local principals had seen a similar presentation when we returned scifire tucsoffair and through dr ogletree's leadership and our insistence it was implemented and the pilot program began and in my most successful dear god that went fast okay the next one is the new arrival center i'm going to tell you this real quick of course you heard our president say that we borrowed it we did borrow it from galena park isd and the superintendent there was dr mark henry and we adopted it but linda macias made it better we tell him that all the time but i'm going to tell you one of the things that we've done i'm so proud of these kids that walk across in the past 10 years i've congratulated each and every one as they walk

110across that stage i challenge each one of you to do the same thing thank you very much [Applause] our next speaker is brian henry good evening i'm a sci-fi isd resident and parent i am a proud member of the sci fair civic alliance and have been teaching in texas public schools for 12 years i speak at these meetings because i care about this district its staff and its students i choose to believe that most people who speak at these meetings care about the same things i choose not to question people's motives or intentions but what we saw last month on display in this room the vile things that were said and read the ugly accusations made against neighbors here and online does nothing to support the students of scifir isd it does nothing to retain

111teachers it does nothing to reduce teen depression teen anxiety teen stress teen drug use or teen suicide because that's why we're all here right we are desperately trying to figure out how in the hell we can make this broken world safer for our children to grow up in but here's the thing taking books of fiction off the shelf at the school library isn't going to change the reality of the world they encounter outside the classroom or see on their smartphones it is true that our kids are confronting a lot of ugliness in the world right now but it's not coming from the library at the local public school we have heard a lot about parental rights i support parental rights but i support the rights of all parents whatever their politics or religious beliefs i

112also support students rights everyone in this community has a right to be here and to have their voice heard but how we participate matters we are modeling through our behavior what civic engagement should and shouldn't look like to the youth of this community if they copy what they've seen in this room and online in recent months we aren't setting up for success we aren't improving this school district and we aren't improving our society this has been a hard year for teachers administrators staff students and parents let's strive to do better and be better next year and going off script miss and demaio who personally attacked dr henry you are basically joseph mccarthy at this point and when senator mccarthy accused president guys and the audience audience everyone knew he was full of it so thank

113you okay everyone in the audience okay ma'am you have zero credibility now ma'am you y'all have to guys in the audience you have to to let people speak [Music] so if audience audience members please be quiet several times names have been mentioned tonight if you choose to mention somebody's name don't be surprised if somebody mentions your name as well no the poli the policy does not change let's return to the board agenda the next the next speaker is kayla acosta good afternoon everyone my name is kayla acosta to the board and everyone here tonight i appreciate and allow you the time to speak i am here speaking on behalf of my daughter both of my daughters but especially one of them that is a fifth grader on april 11 last month does anyone know what

114last month's awareness was well last month's awareness was sexual awareness sexual harassment awareness month and on april 11th at frank hone elementary school i got a call that my 11 year old daughter was sexually assaulted not only by one child not only by two but three of her peers in the cafeteria amongst all of her peers when i got the chance to speak to my daughter my daughter let me know that no one was there to protect her not only on april 11th when i was informed of this i also wrote a letter to the school asking my children could they be excuses my children on april 8th did not want to go to school and i'm an advocate for education i am an educator i'm a qualified mental health professional i am also a

115licensed a licensed angry resolution therapist but all these things that i ask of you board members today and everyone listening i hear a lot of people saying show people grace and show people mercy and i teach my children that every day that when they go to school i teach them girls make sure you go and be what be a leader and they follow it with mommy not a follower but the school district and that school the principal and the franklin staff did not protect my daughter for a minute and four seconds while those boys put their hands all over my daughter and her private parts and the only thing that the cypher isd police did was look into it and decided that oh no charges will be pressed because there was no penetration how do

116you not know nothing was penetrated on her i've asked i've come up here day after day and i waited for this moment and i will wrap up so you don't have to stop me but this is not acceptable and i will be going forth any further that i can since you guys cannot seem to do it yourselves thank you [Applause] our next speaker is i say indimayo i think i know why there's so much bullying because at the leadership it is allowed i was assaulted at a board meeting in january i brought it up the last two board meetings and my letter to home says thank you for participating i want the leaders to let people know bullying is not okay but you don't you let the assaulter serve in leadership it's the craziest thing

117i've ever heard now i want to talk about grooming i'll read the definition because that's what i'm calling dr henry and julie heinemann and i stand by it i don't need to know your personality because i know the definition and i know the stuff you promote grooming the deliberate act of bringing a child into a sexual political or racial ideology practice cult or lifestyle without the knowledge or consent by his or her parents for the aim of isolating them from their families so the external party can abuse and manipulate them julie said she wanted uh more clarity about the books i'll give you three examples this is called all boys aren't blue available in seven libraries i'll quote it he reached his hand down and pulled out my dick he quickly went to giving me

118head i just sat back and enjoyed it as i could tell he was too this book beyond magenta available at watkins middle school and available at the high schools from six up i used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood and make out with them and perform oral sex on them i liked it i used to love oral and i touched their you-know-whats last book red white and royal blue it's available in seven libraries alex rolls his eyes for sake man you just had your dick my dick in your mouth you can kiss me good night at the end of the day you are the one who signs to get all those books so talking to the principal which i've already done send you on a cyclical matter in which we can never get anything

119written on your policies when linda macias calls me it doesn't qualify as my written response that i ask for i want proof of your policies so i can tell parents and you haven't given to them all year please wrap up our next speaker is jen williams these meetings are really hard to be at but i keep coming because it's worth it so i'm going to continue i'm going to say i'm going to change directions my name is jen williams i am also a proud member of the cipher civic alliance in honor of nurse appreciation we wanted to take a moment to thank our cfi cfisds head nurse bevin gordon and the nurses on every single campus who have shown up daily to keep our students and staff safe during the during the pandemic but also

120during the height of flu season life outbreaks spiked fevers bloody accidents on the playground potty accidents and daily responsibilities like feeding tubes and administration of medication and more and more and more and more there's a lot of talk about all of the wonderful people who are working so hard on our campuses i was and will be a teacher soon i know firsthand what goes on on campus nurses are a part of that too they're part of our community and they're the reason that we succeed our nurses spend time with our most vulnerable students daily thank you for caring for our kids while we're away thank you [Applause] our last speaker is stacy demar hello hi okay [Music] um i'd like to speak about teacher appreciation and the amazing amazing educators we have in our district

121last week was teacher appreciation week and i was thinking about all of the teachers that i've come across during my three years in the school district i'm very involved in my children's school and volunteer regularly in the library and classroom i have also become certified to be a substitute in our district as a way to help with the substitute teacher shortage our district is facing i interact with a lot of teachers and i even have experience with filling the shoes of one for a day i have learned two things from my experiences one our district has done an amazing job at selecting the absolute best teachers around every teacher my children have had i love shout out to mrs laphos mrs noack mrs truitt and mrs brown formerly ms hemphill at keith elementary and two

122they have incredibly hard jobs teachers use so much physical emotional and mental energy every moment they are in their classroom add in the politicalization of public education and i could see how this job can become unbearable i can understand why teachers are leaving the profession the unspeakable attacks by many people in this audience right now and our teachers librarians and administrators is wrong and must be stopped we have people from both inside our community and out calling out these teachers and librarians by name and all over social media their claims are disgusting and false enabled by the new trustees as seen tonight and are simply a part of the current strategy to attack public education before book banning it was crt before crt it was masks and when the book banning outcry dies down they

123will have their new attack like clockwork these people are making a circus out of our district as part of their strategy and their political games and our teachers and students are collateral damage i hope the district can do something to protect these teachers being attacked and to prevent outside influences from having a platform in our meetings thank you [Applause] mr president i'd like to make a statement i am not a groomer and neither is dr henry these statements are made here tonight are offensive and inaccurate okay guys miss miss indimayo miss intimate y'all can't speak from the audience you can't shout from the audience miss miss indimeo no actually legally you can make comments hey guys guys we're going to be taking a five-minute break as a board we will have to meet to consider

124the personal attacks against people on the dice but also against people in the audience we cannot let this continue to go on and as a board either we will move together to do something about it or we will take a stand and some will say there are four personal attacks and some will say they are against it but we can take a five minute break right now agenda item 7b the administration will present an oral report on the preliminary budget for the 2022-2023 school year dr mark henry you want to open with some comments yeah okay okay yes just uh as we were putting this budget together in my 31 years as a superintendent this has probably been one of the most difficult in fact thankfully we have esther money which is the federal money

125or we would really be in a tight spot as many have spoken this evening that there there is no mechanism in place at the state level to account for inflation so when you have a year where inflation is going up like it has the last couple of years there's no adjustment to the basic allotment which is what allows us to function that's that determines our state aid so as you hear the budget today it's not a rosy picture but the great thing is is we've got two more years of esser money that's going to help us to uh weather the storm while we hope and i hope that you will all lobby your legislators to up the basic allotment so it accounts for inflation and that we can we won't have to make major cuts

126because in all honesty we've got 22 and 23 school year and 23-24 school year where we can we can make it we've got enough esther money to fill the bucket but come 24 25 it's not sci-fi isd it's almost every isd in the state is literally going to fall off a fiscal cliff and we'll be back to where we were in 0809 where we're cutting out 100 200 million dollars uh in spending and when i say that and karen's going to talk to you a little bit when you cut out 100 million in spending 89 million of that is personnel because 89 of our budget is personnel so you gotta it's not just dollars it's faces uh when we start talking about cutting so uh my encouragement and you're you're gonna hear our proposal this

127evening no one in here is going to be happy uh on whichever side of your own but but we tried to come up with the best budget we could with the funds we had available to make sure that we can survive these two years hoping that the legislature and state leadership will provide some type of writer and increase in basic allotment so that we can stay on firm footing having said that karen i gave you such a great lead in there dr henry just second karen yes uh mr sandlin uh i would ask your forbearance for you to make your comments after we take up the budget if that's okay sir agreed thank you sir karen floor is yours yes thank you president jackson and dr henry today i will be presenting the preliminary operating

128budget for the 22-23 school year the factors influencing the budget process this current fiscal year were the student in student enrollment and attendance as you well know uh we we've student enrollment in 2020-21 it was down this year this current year in 2122 we gained back that enrollment however average daily attendance was down and the state did provide some sort of hold harmless both years but it didn't quite hold us 100 harmless during that period for those costs associated with it so you can imagine for 2223 when we've had a decline in enrollment one year and then a decline in average daily attendance that it's very hard to predict where we will be in 22-23 also the kova 19 pandemic has not only affected enrollment and average daily attendance but it has also had the

129districts leaving districts dealing with learning loss uh recruitment and retention problems as well as inflation and supply chain issues also last month i reviewed with you the federal stimulus funds that the district uh has received as well as how much we've spent to date and how we plan to spend the remainder of the money we also shared with you that we are addressed using it to address learning loss and retain our employees but also unfortunately like many other districts in the state we're also having to use some of those funds to be able to balance our budgets and deal with the deficits that districts are dealing with during these uncertain times also another thing influencing the budget is increase in property values and when the property values affect actually a portion of our tax rate

130that i will share with you well actually our whole tax rate but it especially affects the maintenance and operations side because as property values increase there's further compression of the maintenance and operations tax rate and i'll go into more detail about that later in the presentation the board the budget goals are really the board goals in developing the budget they are to preserve the quality of instruction and services to retain and recruit quality staff to prioritize student and staff safety and to protect the district's operational infrastructure [Applause] funding of school districts i would like to go with that for the new board members who may not completely be aware or even our patrons i want to quickly review this uh this slide depicts the fact that you can kind of see that we're constantly balancing

131between property taxes and state aid funding and the state about 99 percent of our budget or our revenue budget is comprised of property taxes and state aid we never it there's a misconception i think i shared this with you last month that there's a misconception related when property taxes go up because property values have gone up people think we have more money but what happens as a property taxes go up the state reduces state aid so they're always balancing us out the only time that we actually receive additional funds is if enrollment increases our average daily attendance increases so we never as i said are actually getting additional money funding and when property values go up just as a reminder the who benefits from that is the state so i'd like to go into a

132little bit more detail about funding of school districts on the property tax side as i indicated values are determined by the harris county appraisal district we our tax rate is comprised of two two portions of the tax rate one is the maintenance and operations tax rate which is for our general operating cost and then the interest and sinking tax rate which is to uh repay our debt based on the bonds that uh the board the voters approved that the district could provide for uh construction of our facilities and renovation of our facilities and then the maintenance and operations tax rate is actually kept at a certain amount that we cannot increase it without a voter approval tax rate election so basically there is a maximum compressed rate that is provided by the texas education agency

133that we can't have more than that and then districts can access access enrichment pennies up to five pennies without having a voter uh approval rate tax election the district currently has those five pennies therefore we cannot go any higher on that tax rate just just explain to especially the community and our trustees what i know the the more vendors what enrich penny means yes um and basically our maintenance and operation tax rate is comprised like i said of the compressed tax rate and then the additional pennies are um the amount there's two types actually that i was going to share with you all later uh you you know that's okay i'm glad you brought it up now um is the they're called golden pennies and they're copper pennies school districts can have up to eight

134uh eight golden pennies and that's part of house bill three we used to be allowed six golden pennies but it increased it to eight golden pennies and what that golden means two things one we get more per penny um in funding towards that penny but also that we cannot uh they could do they we will not have what's called uh we've heard of uh having to re i just went blank on the term uh returning the money to the state recapture i just went completely blank on that um that can be recaptured so they cannot be recaptured then districts can have there's also copper pennies and there's up to nine copper pennies so there's a total of 17 pennies that can be accessed above and beyond the maximum compressed tax rate so the district currently

135has five of those golden pennies as part of our tax rate and uh also uh the optional homestead exemption is something that our district provides for uh for our taxpayers and it really we have about 87 percent of our teachers live in our district who also benefit from that optional homestead exemption however that optional homestead exemption does cost the district funding and then i would like to also go over the state aid portion of it and that is all done based on a legislative state funding formula that is set in statute it is influenced by enrollment average daily attendance as i mentioned before and also funding for special populations such as special education bilingual career and technology and i've already discussed the enrichment pennies uh that i was going to share with you as well

136as property wealth and as a district becomes more property wealthy if their enrollment is not keeping up with it that's when you deal with the potential aspect of recapture also as dr henry indicated the state funding formula is not adjusted for the cost of living or inflation and as you know inflation is about the highest it's been in decades districts receive six thousand one hundred and sixty dollars per student for the regular education of a child the term is also termed basic allotment that's the basic amount for we get for education of students of a regular of regular education and to further explain the impact of this i'd like to use an example like heb for whenever their produce costs go up or the transportation of bringing the produce to the store whenever those costs

137go up what do they do they increase the price to the consumer or to the customer whenever they have trouble getting somebody to be a checker at the grocery store what do they when and they need to increase the salary for that checker what do they do they pass it on to the customer however when districts are paying more for supplies and materials what do we get we get this 61.60 and that's the part of the basic lot we still get the 160 160. and then when that we need to look at what do we need to do to attract bus drivers and to track staff we still get the 6160 and we do not have the luxury of increasing our prices i'd like to share with you two property tax propositions that were on

138the may 7 2022 ballot they were proposition 1 and both of these provide taxpayer relief this is one that was related to homeowners who benefit from the frozen levy who are 65 or older or disabled and basically house bill 3 one of the things it did i've talked about tax compression and that's where they lower the maintenance and operations tax rate so that taxpayers do not see more than two and a half percent uh increase in value on the maintenance and operation side so what has happened is it was really just kind of a oversight is that people that are 65 and older are disabled we're not benefiting from this tax compression so what this allows is that in future years it will help adjust for that tax compression issue that they did not receive

139it uh is effective january 1st 2023 so it will not affect this current year but it will affect the next year and what they'll do is they'll go back and adjust for the tax compression in 2019 2020 20 20 21 and then 2122 and kind of catch up those that fall in this category that have not received the benefit proposition 2 increased the state mandated homestead exemption for school district uh property taxes from 25 000 to 40 000. this one is effective january 1st 2022 so taxpayers will benefit from this in the current fiscal year in both of these situations the district is essentially pretty much held harmless completely held harmless in proposition two and then with prop i mean with proposition one and then proposition two just a tiny little bit associated with the

140ins side where we're not completely held harmless and that is because it's based on debt as of september 1st 2021. so any debt that we had at that point in time and doesn't take into consideration any debt issued after that point in time so i would like to go over the impact of these homestead exemptions to our homeowners the first uh our average value of homes is about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars so the state homestead exemption if you look at the reduction of the 40 000 in taxable value benefits the homeowner by decreasing their property taxes by 536 dollars this is 201 dollars more than it would have been with the 25 000 homestead exemption this is the state mandated that everybody gets then just some districts such as cyprus fairbanks isd and

141we're one of three districts in the houston area that offer an optional homestead exemption our optional homestead exemption is twenty percent so this is an additional benefit to our taxpayers therefore on a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar home there is a reduction of an additional seventy thousand in taxable value and a decrease of an additional 937 dollars in property taxes however as i mentioned before offering this benefit to our taxpayers does have a cost to the school district and the impact to the school district is a reduction of 6.6 billion in taxable value as well as a decrease of 88.3 and property taxes on the maintenance and operations side as well as the ins side combined in addition our school district offers an exemption an optional exemption to taxpayers 65 or older or disabled

142of an additional thousand dollars and the board approved previously years before a freeport exemption on inventory for uh that is transported outside of the state within 175 days so if you take the cost of all of these exemptions it's about 123.8 million dollars so now i would like to review the uh the taxable values for uh that we have for this current year and it is 69.1 billion dollars and this is prior to taking into consideration the 40 000 uh mandated state mandated exemption because we have not received those values yet from harris county appraisal district because they would not didn't want to release them until the election had occurred but this will show you the last five years of our district's property value increases and this you as you can see uh our property

143values went up this year 13.03 percent and uh overall there's been a wide increase in property values within the state in fact harris county appraisal district actually sent out a notice to school districts letting them know how much this value was going up the residential property increased somewhere between 18 and 25 percent and commercial property increase about 15 to 20 percent our school district is 62 percent residential and homeowners with a homestead exemption it's capped at no an increase of no more than 10 percent and then as i shared with you there's further tax compression that affects the tax rate karen yes sir that 13.03 uh percent increase in local property values who who benefits from that on the mno side the state not us not us and karen once again remind everybody why that

144is but and it's the way the state funding formula works where they're always balancing us back out and so when property values go up as i shared they take state aid down and they're always bringing us back to the same level funding just just a quick example of one of our neighbors spring branch they're going to be writing a check to the state this year for 72 million dollars so their local property taxpayers are paying additional money to the state of 72 million next year it goes to 91 million so talk to your legislators the next slide is related to our student enrollment and once again we're showing you the last five years the chart reflects the district changes enrollment um that you can see that there was a decline in enrollment that we all

145knew about in 2020-21 the enrollment for 2122 is is as of may 2nd you can see our enrollment has recovered as i mentioned our ada was down you may regal recall that i reviewed the attendance rate adjustment and that was only for the first four six weeks of the school year so that adjustment is currently not being provided if our enrollment our ada is down the last two six weeks also enrollment is expected to be about approximately 118 673 in the 2223 school year the district was very conservative in our estimates at you know making sure that we are sure what exactly is going to happen with next school year every year for the new board members one of the things we like to do is show a teacher salary comparison for the current school

146year and show you how we compare to our competitors you will see that cypress fairbanks isd is ranked second in beginning teacher salary but we're ranked first in the 5 15 and 20 20-year salaries a few districts board of trustees have approved a compensation plan for 22-23 but most that you may be hearing about in the news or you're reading about maybe in the newspaper it is really from meetings such as this that is just a budget workshop where they're sharing their proposed recommendations very few have actually approved what the salaries will be for the next school year so quickly i would like to review with you because this does make a difference in what we can recommend for the 2223 school year in 20 in the 2122 school year the district gave a salary

147increase of 5 percent on the greater of midpoint or base how this and how this benefits is it's whichever is greater so if the midpoint is greater that's the salary increase they get but if the base is better that's what they get also we provided a retention stipend of one thousand dollars for hourly and paraprofessional employees also our teachers salaries that we offer are leading in the region four area so when you look at and compare what other districts are doing some of them are just trying to catch up to what cyprus fairbanks isd offers also uh last year or this current school year we provided local coven 19 leave in addition to the regular leave our employees get and this is 10 days of additional leave that they were provided they also received leave

148last school year um prior after the federal leave expired so there was a federal mandated leave of which we didn't get any funding for by the way and then there was additional leave that the district provided and chose to provide for our staff just just one thing uh before we move on to the next year uh also when it says the the raise that we provided last year five percent on greater or midpoint of our base uh there was no one touching scifire isd that gave as large a raise as we did last year so i say that to say that cypher isd employees benefited from a five percent last year and this year so they actually have two two years that they will have benefited from that five percent race so just a point

149of interest well and i the only two districts i know of that have formally announced their salary increases for 2223 are houston isd that are kind of in our com competition area from the previous slide in tomball and uh like houston isd last year provided a 2 500 raise for teachers um hisd did but as we said cyprus fairbanks gave a 5 salary increase and our lowest teacher increase was two thousand eight hundred and fifty three dollars which was above the increase provided by hisd uh hisd has approved a 6.7 percent average teacher salary increase but if you go back and look at the five-year teacher salary and and and look at that basically they're just getting the five-year up to where we already are um in 2122 uh tomball provided a two percent raise

150for all their employees and their board has announced a four percent raise for 22.23 but once again their current teachers salaries are below hours and uh our salaries i'd also like to share i know i typically hear from this by from ms blackshear asking about health insurance premiums and so last year trs announced they would be implementing regional rating structure for 2223 and this was to more accurately reflect the health care costs in the different regions uh basically the health care costs are not the same all throughout the state so for example in the south um the texas health care costs are way less than they are in beaumont therefore if you're you know in a particular area where it's lower then you might have less than the statewide average increase in health care cost

151and so just before they actually announced these rates and what they would be we were expecting to get our regional rates which we found out based on claims would have been one percent below the statewide increase in health care costs however governor abbott announced an allocation of some coven 19 funds or coronavirus relief funds actually that which helps share in the cost of health care therefore no school district in the state of texas was going to see an increase in their health insurance premiums if they participated in trs active care and in fact possibly could have a decrease in premiums which we will be seeing in most of our plans and as you can see here it really i'm sorry that it's a little smaller than i thought it would be but you can see

152that there's a decrease in tsa active care high deductible plan the active care primary um then the primary plus as well as the hmo plan so our employees will not see an increase in their premiums the trs active care two they left stable this is the plan that's very expensive and the state is really trying to push people out of that plan and there's no new entrance allowed into this plan and so that is why that plan has remained at the same cost karen i'm sorry and you may not have this information but just for the for board members to to know uh where which plan do the majority of our employees participate most a majority of our employees participate in in the high deductible plan the trs high deductible plan active care and then

153also a majority of our employees um purchase our employee only and take employee only coverage and about 50 percent uh 56 percent of our employees participate in the school district's health care plans in case you wanted to know that additional information uh quickly i would like to show you dr henry actually already shared this information which uh it it which is beneficial in that the general fund expenditures you will see here i'm showing you the 2021 2022 adopted budget but payroll is 89.5 percent five six percent of our of our total cost so you can imagine that raises have a significant impact on the budget a one percent raise for cyprus fairbanks isd is 8.45 million dollars save that again it's eight one percent raised is eight point four five million dollars according to um

154house bill three passed in 2019 this is where i'm going to go into a little bit more detail related to the maximum compressed rate tax rates are compressed to the lower of the state compressed rate which is based on statewide increases in property values and then the local compressed rate which has to do with our local uh increase in property values and so uh the statewide compressed rate this that they projected i guess for this coming school year was actually set in the general appropriations act for uh tax year 2022 was an increase of 4.36 if you recall i shared with you our values went up 13.03 therefore our tax rate will be compressed or lowered in order to help offset any increases that are more than 2.5 percent so they have been wanting to

155on the maintenance and operation side of the tax rate uh our tax rates are based on current year property values that that affect the tax compression and then state aid is based on current year state comptroller's value so that's something separate as i mentioned ours are set by harris county appraisal district the state are determined by the comptroller but one thing you may not realize there is the law requires that harris county appraisal district at all appraisal districts they have to appraise based on market value and so that is why based on that it's going up the 13.03 percent the tax code 26.042e provides relief to school districts to be able to adjust their maintenance and operations tax rate the year after a governor declares a disaster to help offset the cost of a disaster

156without an election however this option is only available for one year you probably have not forgotten at least i haven't winter storm yuri in 2021 the district had over 8 million dollars worth of damage to our facilities and we paid our employees for a week while we were trying to get our facilities back in place for employees to be able to return to in students to return some of you board members may remember that after hurricane harvey we accessed two of these pennies then they're termed disaster pennies to help during a period of time after a disaster therefore administration is recommending that we access three of these pennies in all three of the pennies can that we would access remember i said we had there's up to eight golden pennies and we have five they

157would all be golden giving us that higher dollar amount that we could recognize um but due to tax compression as i explained earlier because our property values went up we can access these three pennies and the taxpayer will still see a decrease in their property taxes the additional three pennies result in combined state aid and tax collection funding of about 38 million dollars for the school district so now i would like to go over the budget considerations that are included as part of this budget uh first of all um the we are salary we are recommending and administration is recommending a salary increase of two percent on the greater of midpoint or base and increase in the teacher starting salary from 58 500 to 60 thousand that will cost the school district sixteen point nine

158million dollars also dr henry mentioned in a previous board meeting that providing an increase in substitute pay would be a priority this year our recommendation includes an increase for all substitutes of 18 hours per day and just to give you an example this is 18 i mean 18 hours and that's god 18 per day i am so sorry that would scare you wouldn't it eighteen dollars per day um and this what this would mean to the degreed teacher uh is they would go up from ninety two dollars that is their current rate to a hundred and ten dollars per day so this is an increase of twenty percent uh for those teachers and uh you may wonder when we last increased a pay for substitutes it was in 2018 2019 this would make us competitive

159with districts in the surrounding area and the cost based on an 80 percent fill rate would be 4.2 million dollars in addition uh the budget includes a recommendation for stipends yes sir since you don't have it on the sheet go back and say again on the substitute pay increase it would go from um for the teacher degree teacher it would go up from 92 dollars per day up to a hundred and ten dollars per day thank you the stipends uh that we're recommending stipends for water polo is a new sport as well as increasing the stipends for early childhood special education and adaptive behaviors paraprofessionals deaf education interpreters and bilingual teachers that will cost us about eight hundred thousand dollars to be able to provide these increases in stipends just just one little caveat to

160that those are recommendations but we do have polo now so we will that one would happen that one's kind of one we have to do absolutely yeah it's a new uil sport um it'll be uil sport next year it would have been two years ago but because of the pandemic they backed it up a couple of years the recommendations also include an increase in the 230-day and 260-day custodian starting pay to 12 dollars per hour you may recall last year there were adjustments made for bus drivers and for food service workers and this is now taking care of the custodians and that estimated cost would be 400 000 dollars also um there would also be uh in order to deal with the growth that we are that is projected it would be we would have

161additional teachers and paraprofessionals that would cost about 15 million dollars absolutely so so right now we're holding unless you want karen to repeat something thank you the budget also reflects the increase in benefits in teacher retirement that occurs whenever you add employees or you increase salaries also we this is a have to so to speak is the increase in fuel costs we estimate they'll be about 1.9 million dollars in the increase in utility costs we're estimating 700 000 and then something that you may not realize as new board members is the additional operating cost to open our new facilities our facilities are built from the bond funds however we man them and pay for that portion of it out of the general fund now t for example we're opening a new elementary school well yes

162teachers are going to from one location to another however we still have to have a principal an assistant principal counselors nurses etc so this takes into consideration the cost of that increased property insurance increased utilities and then also includes the cost of our new administration building the vpac um in our new transportation center so this takes care of all the operating costs associated with that and that's 5.5 million and then lastly is just net increases in miscellaneous items such as property insurance software licenses supplies contracted services and other type expenditures of 2.1 million dollars the uh preliminary budget based on accessing those three disaster pennies mentioned and all these costs i just went over is an estimated deficit of 60 76.9 billion a million dollars this is before taking into consideration any federal stimulus funds

163we had do have enough federal stimulus funds to help offset this deficit completely which could would result in uh no deficit reflected in 2223. dr henry uh has already mentioned this but you know this year is really a transition budget we need to reach out to our legislators and ask them to increase the basic allotment so that we can fully fund inflation and properly take care of the cost of educating our students you may have dr henry referred to the funding clip after federal funding and you know this this federal funding cliff was really imminent based on the way the state funding formula currently works it does not enjoy just for the cost of inflation and salary increases for our employees so as you increase salaries for your employees if you're not adjusting for inflation

164sooner or later the money runs out so the state definitely needs to do something about the basic allotment so now i'm open available just a couple of things i want to add to that and i think all of our board members know this but i want everyone to know this we have a very healthy fund balance and we've built that up um over the past 11 years to make sure that we're ready for any disaster like harvey or yuri or lack of state funding so we've we've got a we've got a good cushion there what what's the percentage are it's somewhere around 45 50 we have a well based on june 30 2021 uh we had six months in fund balance six months in fund balance which didn't sound like much but our budget is

165pretty big as you can see so it's a pretty good figure 520 million and then i would add uh in the 11 years that i've been here the number that we're showing you and i know tom could tell you this the number we're showing you on here we think that's worst case scenario we think it'll be better than that number but we always think it's best to be conservative and the beauty of this year like i said is is really the federal money it helped us put off um some very very difficult decisions for a couple of years until we see if the state's going to uh step up and i and i think they will because the state the state is flush with money uh they'll even tell you that so well and i

166paid four dollars a gallon today i don't know about y'all that's a big driver of the state well and dr henry mentioned which i'm glad he did the fact about it usually ends up a little better and just for you that new board members what we do is we budget to fill every position because you don't know which positions you're going to fill or not fill but we we did have quite a few unfilled positions this year we also budget assuming everybody's going to spend 100 of their money and so they that typically is not done we usually have some money left over whether it be at a campus or a department so now i'm available for any questions that you may have so we're going to start questions a little differently to the new

167board members since this is your first time to go through a board review i'm going to call upon those who have a little more experience i'll go to my left first debbie blackshire when you start us off yes sir thank you a great presentation karen and thank you to you and amanda and all your staff i know there's a lot of uh from working on budgets in the past there's a lot of time and preparation that goes into this my first question would be looking at the starting pay for a custodian 12 an hour that doesn't seem like very much to me and it is um currently at i believe is fewer is it 10.50 1080 1080. what is the medium uh medium salt hourly rate for a custodian in our district actually let me

168see i'll pull that out for you just a second because i know that's not an easy well and i'm trying to remember and i could be wrong but it seems like back in the 80s when i was working for the credit union and doing a loan officer and verifying salaries it seemed like maybe the pay rate was around eight dollars an hour back then so that doesn't seem like very much for the debbie i'll find it for any minute i do have that here but i'm having trouble finding it right this moment okay yeah i would like to know that and i also um wouldn't like to know uh if we gave a larger increase to the teachers what would that cost us like if we did give them the five percent again this year

169what would the cost well it'd be over 40 million dollars okay okay gotcha okay yeah what is the feasibility we can do three percent well it would just further increase our deficit and then it would um it once again that's ongoing right and um if the state it depends what the state does with the basic allotment so basically they don't meet again until next year yes in odd years so um you know we would survive so to speak be okay with 2223 but the concern is the future year since that's ongoing and how would that hit that would hit our uh savings correct allotment pretty hard because it's ongoing and remember we gave a five percent raise this last year yeah so that was 40 million okay and then if you add on top of

170this it's it's ongoing ongoing you know i just maybe it would mean that we would possibly do anything we'd have to cut a little deeper yeah and you know that's the dilemma that we deal with because i think probably everyone on this diocese would agree with me that we feel like our teachers deserve a lot more pay than they're receiving but we have a responsibility to the overall district to our stakeholders and we have to it's a very fine balancing act because we don't want to put ourselves in a position where maybe in a couple years we were laying off employees i mean i still remember those years i was on clc back then and we were tasked with trying to help the district come up with ways to save money and you know as

171it is in our own budgets at home there's probably not a whole lot of uh as i say lean meat in your budget at well as well because you know we have to be we are charged with being you know having a fiduciary responsibility responsibility to uh to taking this budget as a very serious financial responsibility did you find it yet no that's where i know that i've got it here that's all of my questions for now mr president 13 26 they looked it up 13 26 and what does that come out to a year because well i agree with that whoever's saying that i agree with that but is that yes i mean is that 3 13 26 times 2080 approximately to come up with an annual rate if i remember my math from

172payroll i'm actually 2027.5 wow wow i don't know anyone who can hardly support a family on 27.5 so i think oh i think yeah i think i think in the future i agree teachers need more money but i also agree that our ancillary people need more money too uh in order to support a family so thank you mr president very good i'm now going to move to the other side gilbert's arabia yes um karen to go right piggyback on debbie's concern uh the custodians that was going to be my my first question also at 1080 and i'm very disappointed to hear that i'm just proning myself for not knowing that already or bringing it up uh 12 i think is not enough i'm want to get them up to at least 15 an hour at

173least if not more but at least 15. um also the um so last year we covered a lot of the the raises with esser funds can you revisit that with was that stipend only or what what can we use the escrow funds for so we can get a rehashment of where we're at last year well i mean of course we can use it for the different items we shared with you like learning loss addressing anything associated with the kova 19 pandemic also you can utilize it for the ongoing operations of the school district so that we can continue you know paying our teachers and and operating as we are now and so that's what allows us to do some i guess you could say supplanting uh last year what we did is we paid for

174the retention stipend for the hourly and paraprofessionals of a thousand dollars out of the esser funds and that is exactly one of the reason we provided that is we felt like those are our lower paid employees and we wanted to provide that stipend to them to help offset the cost as well as help them with health insurance right is the is that um those are funds still available for that general purpose yes we could um utilize some of the sr funds to provide a stipend um out of that however once again if we use it for that then we're not able to use it for maybe something else uh is such as offsetting the deficit so it's just one of those things you have to be aware of right i'm also aware of that debbie

175did bring up the point we had to be fiscal responsibly uh when when throwing out these numbers um i had a couple other questions so the custodian one was one i was thinking of i'm glad to see the 92 to 110 a day for the substitute degree uh that we helped a regular substitute who does not have a degree yes yes it was 18 per day okay for all the different levels so that would include our paraprofessionals our non-degreed substitutes okay um just bear with me for a second um the it's nice that you brought up the new schools and of course bringing up the uh the cost of opening new schools up all the way around that's uh very refreshing here again um the balance the the fund balance we have is six months

176when uh that's good to hear uh i know the new uh trustees may not be as familiar with that but we heard it last year uh definitely where we're at it's always a concern when we get down to a fund balance of what was that you said three months three months yes when we get down to a fund balance of three months there's a concern so we always want to have a general fund balance for uh right now we're at six months which is like dr henry said we're fortunate right now uh where we're at and stuff and we can use some of that if need be for um the raises were um if if we go that route so um also uh to deborah deborah are we where are we at uh staffed throughout

177the district uh minus the the jobs and we have x number of jobs where are we trying to feel what where where are we at in that number so we just talked about this last week and we are approximately if we look at our vacancy about 400 of average 450 450 employees this year our goal is to really focus on filling all of those vacancies but to hyper focus on those classroom vacancies right and that's throughout the district that number of 400 to 450. those are campus-based vacancies not bus drivers custodians okay now i had another question here just bear with me for a second the basic allotment of the 6160 and of course we're always looking for the state to increase that is that number the same for each district throughout the states yes

178that that's that's part of that state funding formula that i shared is set in statute and so that was it was actually chain changed i'm glad you kind of brought this up is the fact that it was increased in 2019-2020 however what they did is they kind of collapsed some of our allotments in with that basic allotment um and then uh so the true increase may not have been as much as you would think when they collapse into that allotment right um one of the things they collapsed into it is something they used to call the cost of education index of which had not increased in years upon years so basically we're kind of in that same situation again they gave that put this in 2019 2020 6 160 but as i said you can

179imagine what's happened with inflation over since this period of time so um but we still have the same amount of money even though inflation has gone up right the um it's good to see that we're very competitive if not leaders in the salary throughout our area um i would like us to keep that in check everybody on the board here i i hope i know i speak for everyone as grateful for our educators and every employee that we have in our district for the jobs they have done throughout their time here and especially the last two years heaven forbid we have another two years like that with all the uh trouble that we had not only with the pandemic but throughout the um the storms and everything else that we had so you you were

180saying for one percent would be an a hit a bump of 8.45 so right now we're given we're asking for with the five percent of around 43 million dollars extra uh on the raises if we hit it up another percent we would be somewhere around a little over 51 million yes i mean it's it's 8.45 per percentage right with that what consequences would that do to our fund balance it would uh start drawing on it pretty quickly um and and we would get down below the three months in fund balance just just one clarification here you're you wouldn't be adding the 8.45 to 43 million you know adding the 8.45 to 16. no yes but i think he was referring to the five percent raise yes the five percent raise i was talking about he

181was talking about enough yeah if we added another percent on it what that would put it at 51. so that would be a six percent raise that's what he was yeah yes exactly right so and that would be drawing on our fund balance quite yes would it take us down to the level that we do not want to be yes i believe it would okay that's all my questions for right now tom thank you thank you karen julie hunterman karen thank you to you and your team i know you've been working on this for months and i appreciate that um i think the challenge is that um school districts have very little control over their revenues the revenues are set the so the revenue side of the sheet is set correct by the state the

182the only side that we can do any we have any impact on is the expenditure side and 89 of our expenditures are payroll and we'll continue to be that the um i appreciate that you shared information about the basic allotment the six thousand one hundred and sixty dollars i think a lot of people don't realize that that number is set by the state um and we and it's very difficult to get anything more than that unless it's like a special education student or there's some special circumstances years ago many years ago the state commissioned a study to see how much it actually cost to educate students in texas and the number came out such that they were uncomfortable with it so they slashed it and picked another number that is correct um and over the

183years that has not changed drastically the cost of educating a cypher sd student on average what what would that number be you know um well our our cost is over and i can actually pull out the used to be like 9 300. but um it cost us about um 8 000 let's see i've got it right here it's about 10 000 right based on our budget so there's a gap there's a significant gap between state funding and the cap that's put on correct what we can even raise for money for educating our kids but this budget 2122 is 9 356 dollars okay so even though we can't we are we are capped on our revenue our cost of educating kids keeps going up definitely well that puts us in the bind when we're trying to

184pay our teachers more and this is why texas is ranked 44th in the country in public education funding you mentioned that we are one of three districts that offer an optional homestead exemption uh houston ours in the houston area ours is a 20 that's correct which uh decreases our arts part of that decrease in our ability to raise funds the other districts in the houston area do they also offer 20 uh yes houston independent school district and spring branch okay ooh spring branch is regretting that right now aren't they um okay we are experiencing difficulty in hiring substitutes and special education teachers and bus drivers and nutrition services folks and other operations folks correct that's correct so in the past we've always done just an across-the-board pay raise for everybody it's always all the same

185should we think about having more of a tiered system instead of saying everybody gets a two percent raise do we need to look at putting some additional funding into those positions that we're having difficulty filling and prioritize those positions um i know you mentioned that we budget for unfor filling all positions but i know we are cutting some of those positions that are currently unfilled and that's what's driving us to have a revised bell schedule next year correct now i'm not sure about that aspect food service okay now i know what you're talking about food service service and bus drivers okay now i understand what you're saying so i feel like that we need to prioritize those positions that we're currently struggling one struggling with to fill and two that are currently not paid to

186standards that we would like to see them paid to and and that would include hourly workers that the positions that are hard to fill but also um uh and paraprofessionals but also those bilingual teachers um and sped teachers that were also struggling with filling those positions yes and we we do have a bilingual stipend for the teachers and they're an increased stipend for bilingual teachers i see that and that's a stipend is a one-time payment versus or it's ongoing it's ongoing okay okay from year to year i think back to the stipend that he did last year which we're just wondering this is different this is part of our staff compensation plan okay have an annual stipend okay good okay okay i uh i'm struggling because conservatively you don't want to use short-term revenue like

187federal funding to pay for long-term expenditures like salaries but we're in that position where we're relying on a short-term funding source and then setting a standard for long-term but i don't know how we cannot step up and do everything that we possibly can to pay employees fairly and i'll reserve comments for later karen when we take a look at the teacher salary comparison chart you specifically mentioned houston and tomball a handful of years ago before we changed before the state changed the funding add-on based on a census block houston and tomball despite having very different demographics each received about fourteen hundred dollars more a child than we did at one point in time they both had eighteen hundred dollars more a child than we did i remember whining about that to the man who became

188lieutenant governor and so it was reduced but folks in the two districts stopped talking to me for for years um so the does that disparity still exist are we still of the major districts the least funded on a per-child basis well uh mr jackson unfortunately that's something really hard to calculate now based on how uh with the compression of the tax rate and then they've got the i mean i know that's the mno side but um all that it affects the funding side also in making up the difference i mean it hits the state funding side also there's something called the fast growth allotment right as well as transition grant allotments so all these items kind of distort the figures so that's not as easy to calculate as it would have been in the past

189do we have any reason to expect that the disparity uh has shifted in our favor prob i don't know um i don't think it really has i know that some school districts get you know very large amounts like for the fast growth allotment um but i know the disparity you're referring to also that had to do when they had the cost of education index correct and added in with the basic allotment and so there was some everybody had a different basic allotment because of the cost of education index in the past in the past funding formula when we when we took take a look at the basic categories i would suggest well first i appreciate the two percent increase two percent plus last year's five or seven divided by the two is obviously pretty simple

190three and a half uh which is more than what we've done previously i would be comfortable going from the two percent superintendent recommendation to four percent that 16 million shortfall 16 million times five years of course is 80 million is going to be more or less about a month worth of our reserves that still leaves us two months of reserves to deal with funding shortfalls going forth i would say however we do have increases that other than salary increases that are part of the budget so i think the shortfall would be more than that um and then we're opening as you well know schools this year and then we're opening additional schools next year well yes we do have the rlc and that always is an add-on and perhaps that two percent would cover an

191increase in salary plus rlc to address that one area and if we go back a handful of years to the last bond fund mark and i were chatting and and mark made a comment to me said you know we we really need to build a third alc and quite frankly i dismissed it because i had walked both alcs and they were about one-third capacity are we at full capacity now for alc mark the last i heard we are but i would refer to dr stewart on that uh we are and that's typical for the spring so the first semester you know it's it's not full but it's typical to be full at this time and and certainly it appears that if we had a third one that might have any number of willing students to

192transfer to it perhaps not of their own accord the other way to address that is to increase the number of adaptive behavior specialists that we have available i certainly would like some thought given not my job to tell you how many are where but i would like feedback from management next time we take a look at this at the possibility of increasing adaptive behavior specialists if that would help granted we have to have some place for the students to go and mark's already indicated and of course deborah's indicated too that in the springtime we don't have a home farm i know that a couple of board meetings ago it was mentioned in board comments that we have schools at sixty percent of capacity but when i took a look at the schedules we don't mark

193do we have schools at 60 percent of capacity not that i'm aware of i know when i went back to school by school i did not find a single one i know it's projected by pasa in the years in the future if we don't rezone we might but we have always resolved i also and i've mentioned this ever since linda came up with her her model teacher program if that program has value i would think there needs to be some type of stipend even if it's just a uh size wise of a thank you stipend for our model teachers i only have one voice on on the board so that's not enough to convince anybody but i certainly like that idea i'm not certain that what we have for our substitutes is enough clearly i've

194already have staked out the ground i've always said that three months is the absolute minimum that's a red line we don't go under six months is the gold standard i'm willing to sacrifice a full month however the way i get to the month sacrifices divide that month by five saying that senior management has five years as well as the board to convince austin to give us additional funding before we have to pay the penalty of that but taking one month divided by five still gives us some dollars to work with i urge senior management to to come back and say how best do you think they're they can be spent and if adaptive behavior personnel is not the answer maybe there's another answer not my job to know your business that much but it is

195my job to help formulate the budget um yes sir go ahead just uh just to answer your question whenever we hear from all seven of you today we're going to try to come to some agreement with what y'all have to say and then we'll go back and we'll put the budget together and then we'll send send it back out to you and we can continue to make adjustments because we have until june well actually till june 30th at midnight to come up with a budget so and we always have the ability to call a special meeting and of course so we have done that at least once and mr jackson just just one more time and not for you but or the trustees but so everyone understands we we've got a couple of years to

196get this right and that's because of the yes or money we've got and i know karen you know she'll say we might not have enough to completely fill the bucket next year but i know how conservatively we operate during a school year so we'll spend less money than we budget that's correct and we'll be able to cover the next two years and what that does for us in the spring of 2023 we're going to know what the legislature did and if they didn't do what we need them to do then 23-24 school year is going to be a year when we start making those reductions for the 24-25 school year does that make sense yeah the and and debbie what we're going to do is everybody's going to have their their first pass but i

197want everybody to listen to what others say so they can come back with additional comments thank you but we still have three more folks and mr jackson if i may add the six months though is based on the expenditures for last school year not current year expenditures right so it might be five and a half correct right and adjusting my comment i'm still comfortable using a full month as a enhancement however you you deem it necessary from the eyes of senior management we know that two years of covet have done two things one it set our students back academically it also set them back in terms of social behavior it's no surprise not just here it's happening across texas it's happening across the united states we're better than others because for 11 years we have

198saved for a rainy day and i think it's time to pull the umbrellas out i think it's raining um we had we had given the teachers but i don't know that anybody remembers we gave them five days this past school year and and i keep hearing that teachers when teachers talk to me individually they they say we're very appreciative of those five days but when i i hear them speak at the podium there's no mention as if it never happened that there were of no consequence does the new budget contemplate five days or does that get washed away yes it's in the budget but is it four or five so mr jackson it's in the calendar it's part of the 187 days that they work but you are correct these days are teacher days they

199they are intended for them to uh decide how to use those days to either plan or you know grade papers whatever it is that they need to do but they're not directed by the lead by the school leadership or even from us they're not they're not staff development days they are truly days for the teacher to determine what it is that they need to uh better prepare for students so we have built that in into the calendar it is into the calendar and we did that last year as well the nobody on this board voted initially to create either the 20 optional homestead exemption or the freeport exemption but we do have to vote to extend those each and every year isn't that correct not on the freeport the freeport can't it stays the way

200it is but um on the optional homestead exemption um it stays at the 20 percent unless it's changed by the way so the freeport is a permanent exemption granted does the budget as presented include the fact that we're offering a stipend for summer school the stipend for summer school is in the esser funds so it is in the budget it's in the not in the general fund budget but yes it's planned for as part of the esser funds i have other questions but i think it's it's time for our new folks to uh to speak up so let me go to the right scott henry uh just a couple of questions if you don't mind um on the substitute pay increase which is great i know we've heard that over and over again that's underpaid

201uh on the number 92 to 110 how do we rank with other districts is that good is that bad is that medium is that yes and well in what we actually uh did look at dr stewart provided us great information on this and compared us with other districts and that 110 would get us right in you know there's uh let's see i believe it was uh poss let me pull the district that it was that we were getting close to but all the other districts it would put us above what they're currently paying thank you uh in this comparison group sorry you also have on here additional teachers i'm guessing this is for the new schools is that correct um actually no it is primarily just because of our you know where we are where

202our budget is now in the additional teachers it also includes uh additional special education teachers because they have to evaluate based on the services that we're providing our students each year what we need to what we need to have in place for the special education students also we've had an increa we have an increase in our bilingual students and so that's addressing the bilingual as well as any increases because of career and technology or something like that but it's it's it's combination of all those different increases do you have an approximate number how many additional teachers that might be uh let's see i think it was 300 wasn't it uh including paris and perry about 350. yeah that's what i'm remembering 300 and something okay and the last question which is probably you'll go over

203in one of our meetings you talk about this this funny money i'll talk about here a little different than us the golden pennies i know you talked about bringing those down so we can utilize those to make up some of the differences are those renewable or we just lose one time one it's a one-time opportunity the year after a disaster and that's why we propose in this budget to access three of them which would give us an additional 38 million dollars in this in our budget this current fiscal year or this next fiscal year and allow us to our deficit not to be as big and and scott just to add to that we would still be providing a lower tax rate this coming year and we would have a lower tax rate the following

204year so tax rates going to go down the next two years awesome thank you very much karen great reinforcement dr blessing came thank you again i always learn when you present this this important information i would just make a comment on the budget goals in the four areas we say preserve quality of instruction and services i definitely would want to add and improve student outcomes or close achievement gaps because that's what we're here to do and so that's the tricky balance especially looking at the learning gaps that we have um we already had and then we of course were added on by the pandemic so i have a question that i don't have last year's budget memorized so we see a total expenditures in this new budget of 1.13 billion dollars what were the 21

20522 or what do we think they will have been by the end of june up for the 21 22 total expenditures in other words what's the increase in total expenditures between this year and next year's proposed um i would have to give you get that information for you because ours is just an estimate at this point in time of where they will you know where they will end up um let's see maybe what did we at this time last year what did we think our total expenditures for the year would be well i our total expenditures that we've estimated okay as of now at june 30th would be a billion um 70 million approximately 1.07 billion yeah 1.07 it's about that's a math what we are projecting as of now at the end of june

20630 2022 but once again that can change because it depends on uh you know number of substitutes how many field positions you have all this a lot of different things of where that'll end up falling out so we're saying from 1.07 billion to 1.13 billion difference in expenditures next year with 761 more students projected so that price per kid is like we're like 76 107 200 something more per kid expenditure at what ada did we project this budget what attendance um we uh utilized 93 for high school and 94 for middle and elementary school and projecting this budget um i will tell you this current school year we've been below 93 percent um then the next question i had was on so accentuating the fact that how many um what if we spend the full

207ester dollar amounts that we're projecting in this budget to make that deficit up 70. sorry the 76 eighty nine what will be the residual esther dollars available for your three of us um you know uh we've actually been and natalie i'll have a better estimate of that um you know i would say in the next within the next month or something like that where we see closer to where we are this year we believe we will use most of our sr2 money we may have about four million give or take left over depending on where we fall out um but uh we may we'll have a little bit left with that however um on our s or three dollars there's enough to cover this deficit but not all of the deficit that would be in

2082324 um it is uh this won't estimate yeah so this is about 70. so you're saying maybe there's like 60 million maybe left towards it i would say if we what we would hit the next year well yes we would have probably about about 60 mil 40 to 60 million so that's 60 ml and then we would go into that uh rainy day fund or whatever 23 24. okay now we have enough to cover all of the deficit that i've shared with you today for 23.24 but i mean 22 23 but yes not 23 24. now we could make decisions on spending some of the esser dollars differently but as of now it it it would not cover the entire deficit in 2324. so i think it's wow from 1.07 billion to 1.13 billion and

209costs but now i'm going to ask some questions that seem contrary to that so basically looking at those costs or those those increases or you know things that are going that are proposed here that could potentially drive our budget um i do have a question on how we determine which stipends which like for example how early childhood special ed was chosen how abductive behavior was chosen i know i've heard from several life skills paraprofessionals i also wonder if you could tell me what the average salary of a paraprofessional is we were talking about our custodians but what is their average salary a paraprofessional we usually look at an average salary of about 30 000 yes so just like the custodial we did the math out about that we have paraprofessionals i know they work a

210little bit shorter days in a year but that is also a salary that i'm intrigued with and i wonder do we differentiate by those with teaching assignments um versus maybe some that are more on clerical assignments and is that something we've ever considered as far as being able to maintain those paraprofessionals and give them more than a living way well there there's a salary scale based on the different types of paraprofessionals and they fall in different pay grades so these early childhood sped pairs here who would get a stipend is not these are not hell uh these are not people who are paraprofessionals at elementary doing life skills they're it's it's a recommended stipend to provide them uh an increase in stipend for some of these it's for a hard to fill position that a

211lot of work is on those particular positions i mean that's and then the bilingual is to help us towards the bilingual teachers attracting bilingual teachers looking again more at these cost of budget considerations i'd like to to um i think they all look you know they're either are facts utilities cost more fuel costs more those things um but also what i don't notice on the list there's no increased reading support for those economically disadvantaged campuses i think we're going to look at the data we've seen that what is coming along we have over 20 percent of the kids at our campuses that aren't reading on level and i don't see any significant change to that we would be able to act and send additional people to teach children how to read at those campuses and

212so i'm concerned about that i also don't see on this list um i think tom had the exact same sentiment when he was talking about the adaptive behavior i think that i know that's a special education position so i'm thinking more general i've asked for us to discuss discipline at the diocese because i feel like maybe it's possible that there have these violence that people are talking about it might be that more people need to be doing general discipline on our campuses because i think that we've taxed out the administrators and other responsibilities there's there's just not many bodies and so it's possible that that's something we should consider in this budget how do we give more hands and feet on the ground in schools in loving and caring ways that our teaching and our

213supporting and investing in the students um but that's their main job is to help make that happen so they don't have to go be sent over to the alc but they can be dealt with taught in you know in ways on the campus and then the other thing i'd like to see listed possibly here we've already we have built the budget on an assumption that we 100 fill our teaching vacancies that indeed we do not and that it will be she can do some magic but if that happens fantastic however right now when we don't hire these teachers we have it in the budget teachers are covering those classes and so as a way that maybe can differentially compensate teachers without it being all in raised maybe to the point julie's point about who differentiating

214how we do those increases i would like to know could we pay teachers for that time when they cover other people's classes and teach that that will be a way that people have earned some extra money or earn could be paid for the time they're giving their planning time up to do that so i'm not sure exactly what the facts are in that but that would be something i would consider as a way to um support teachers who we've heard over and over tonight are absolutely um you know they're tapped out and then they're asked to do additional responsibility so i mentioned those not because i think i mean i think we're spending a lot more per student already but those are things that i could see being fair to put on the table as

215to the the emergency pennies or or what was it the disaster okay so let me just make sure i understand back to your see-saw what you're saying is we can ask for those and it just adjusts it doesn't adjust our taxpayers pay no more because the state just has to open up a little bit no actually that the seesaw is just our regular funding formula outside of the disaster pennies and basically as property values go up that means property taxes go up because your property values went up therefore they take away state funding to always level us out on the disaster penny portion that's something where we're allowed the year after a disaster to access additional pennies without an election and it doesn't penalize you on the state funding formula as far as the funding

216we get where i was explaining that uh the tax rate would still go down for taxpayers that's because as property values go up more than two and a half percent they compress and take down or lower that tax rate so that the taxpayer doesn't see any more on the maintenance and operation side than two and a half percent increase in their taxes on that side so because it went up 13.03 percent we're going to have quite a bit of compression so you can act have it go down let's just say depending where it falls out five six pennies still have those pennies in there and they still see a decrease in um taxes thank you does that make sense it did okay just had barely hanging on but got you thank you okay i think

217yeah i think that's all for my questions thank you so much finally lucas chandler uh you were all a very tough act to follow and coming up with something that's new so i think what i can do is offer an echo to certain points um just to provide some weight on where my where my thoughts are at so one i want to echo something that i want to try to balance a statement so julie you know i thought your point about pardon me mrs heinemann um conservatively we don't want to use short-term funding to pay for a long-term obligation so i wanted to say i thought that was insightful and you know i'm thinking about the model that you expressed president jackson about a five-year plan that would give the state time to catch up

218and solve for inflation solve for wage increases potentially there's a balance there potentially but i i think everybody on the diaz understands the warning that you're issuing because in a previous board membing board meeting i don't know which we had increased or did something about bonuses and for some reason the state of texas did not actually fund it at some point in time so i just want to go with the warning that we can make this step but we're doing so eyes wide open that there's no guaranteed outcome and hopefully we you know were able to reach out to our senators and congressmen in the state and win hopefully and so also echoing something else that miss heinemann stated where we've had difficulty in hiring for certain positions and finding a model that focuses there

219i thought that is a potentially creative way to try to fill those gaps and so if there's a way that we can break that out i know that we've already done so to a degree i can see that clearly right you've already documented where you're focused on your peras and so that's that's understood but if we can examine that and return to that question internally i think that'd be helpful dr blasingain's comment i've heard throughout the year where teachers have had to cover for other people's classes and it's always a source fenced and potentially if there's a threshold during the year at which point we realize we're just not going to fill certain positions perhaps that becomes an opportunity to use said budget to help contribute back to the teachers without overall budget raise up

220front because it kind of it goes with the notion of they're providing additional support we don't have the funding that's going out because we can't fill those positions and maybe three months in we say okay we're not going to fill those for this semester so we're going to go ahead and provide some additional incentive for those that are covering classes perhaps i'm just tossing out an idea i know that you don't have this information dr henry yet regarding how we would compete with other districts i know that you're in conversation with other districts all the time do you have any sense for the recommendation of two percent as it stands right now or the potential increase that we've all kind of thought about where that would align with the neighboring districts well when it comes

221to teacher pay we're we're starting from a favorable position uh because we're ahead of them to start with uh and and you saw the 5 10 15 20 year uh experienced teachers we're we're ahead of everyone and then at the beginning level i think of our com competing districts spring branch is the only one currently we're behind i think i think with two percent we would be uh come competitive certainly three or four percent would put us a little ahead but i think we're all going to be at the we're all going to be in the same boat in 2425 but again i'm confident confident with this being a statewide issue as you address yeah that hopefully the state will recognize that because their expenses are going up too they see it sure so hopefully

222we'll get some kind of help well with inflation at eight and a half percent by last reading it's hard for anybody to ignore um even so and dr henry i'd like actually a little bit more clarification when you're talking about i deal with financial large budgets and someone someone says uses the term cliff i pay attention so can you describe 2324 you know what you were alluding to a little bit more just so that we can hear it again sure um we have esther money that will cover our budget deficit in 22-23 so we're we're in good shape this next year uh as karen touchstone we'll still have esther money for 23.24 and we may have to do a few budget reductions or we may have to go into fund balance a small amount in

22323 24. am i getting my years right but if the ester money runs out which it's scheduled to run out in 23 24 when we start the budget process for 24.25 if the state has not provided some type of inflation factor or increase in the basic allotment then that 70 to 100 million dollar bucket that esser has been feeling feeling goes away yeah so that's when the cuts come yeah so okay my hope is legislative session of 23 that that that our leaders recognize that okay well there's our that's our target for the school board and 23 is developing our buddy list in congress i think as i've as i've listened to the questions from my other colleagues i think i'm going to seed the floor so we can go back for next pass for

224anybody else that has questions okay time for second round uh debbie blacks here okay i'm a little slow tonight with my coveted brain but um i wanted clarification because i'm reading this over and over and this two percent raise we're talking about is that for teachers only it's for all employees okay all employees because i i was about to say i don't know how we could give one group a raise and not give everyone a raise because everyone has felt the challenge of the past year and it's not been easy for any one particular group so that's two percent across the board for everyone except substitute teachers who are going to get a essentially a 20 because they didn't get anything the last couple of times yes and it depends on which uh particular uh

225substitute you're talking that's the lowest okay some of them will it'll be more than 20 because they you know like the paraprofessionals okay very good i just wanted to make sure that was everyone's understanding because i wasn't quite clear on that and i feel much better now thank you gilbert yes on the um issue for the uh the violence in the schools and i'm all for having our children safe um i think our educators are trying their best at this time this is not a new new issue this is something that was brought up as the kids started coming back to school in the fall i checked with people through our educators and throughout our visits and then i checked with many of my fellow trustees and there at the governor's conference and i deliberately

226asked them that question and they came back yes and then i went to the state conference and the same question was yes then i went to the national conference and i sought people out from around the country and it was yes the same thing that you're seeing here you're seeing around the country it's not just our district it's an epidemic it's a crisis throughout the country you can see it uh as many of the of y'all have heard before as adults act the children will play out as well so for those i've done the um the research myself and it doesn't make an excuse for anybody getting uh bullied at all but it's an epidemic it's a crisis and it and it started when the children started coming back uh after the pandemic was at

227ease and we were letting the children back in um it's we talked about this during the last couple of years um and last year at the uh at length to where this is repercussions of what the pandemic had caused but it is a concern for everybody for our new trustees here and and i know you guys have good good good will here the legislature so use we're hoping that they'll come through in 24 25 but if you guys have been uh where we've been the last few years it's a struggle every year to get funding from the state it's your your votes matter and who we put into the legislature matters it's not going to happen oh okay well we're here it's going to happen no it doesn't work that way a lot of them

228think that um we spend money uh foolishly and and it's not that way our group the fair district administration spends money uh fiscally conservative at the most and we have showed it over and over and over throughout the years that our investments uh are legit and we're not a free spending liberal group here that just spends money because we're a big district it doesn't work that way here we have to get our legislatures you talked about calling our senators yes we do we you have to because that's not on their mindset it is not on our mindset when you guys become more attuned to what the struggles has been here the last 10 years of trying to get money from the state to fund here it's a struggle every time you can hear from stuart

229snow to karen in previous years that they struggle every year to get every penny that's allotted to our district there is no foolish spin in here going on here so just wanted to say that make sure that we were there on that and i and i like dr mark's comment here that we're going to um hear our ideas and they're all great ideas and there's not one that's without value but they'll come back with another package and hopefully we can get tough decisions made but we're all trying to do the same thing though tom go ahead something that we had in place and then we took it away this last school year was the concept of a full-time sub at different campuses and when we took that away i asked the question why we took

230it away and the answer was the principles did not support the concept i certainly would support that concept if if it had supportive principles the you know that was something that the board put into place and approved at the beginning of covid to help cover classrooms going vacant and making certain that we had substitutes available well um i i believe if you're referring to the budget for it it wasn't that the principal didn't support the concept we thought that we were kind of we thought we were coming out of covet a little bit and we knew we needed to start cutting some of our costs that were there because we had to address other things such as the five percent raise and uh that's that is kind of that's why that was not in the

231budget initially but then we put them back in uh and paid well we actually paid for gonna pay for them out of the esser funds we put them back in when cove would pick back up and it was worse than we had anticipated do we have full-time subs in the budget going forth if you're referring to the um what we call the the ais subs that was we were full at the campuses the answer is no they're not in the budget for uh next year for 22-23 so i throw that idea out once again not my job to tell you how to allocate it but i've given an idea of how much i would be comfortable with and i've always been the the cost hawk so certainly i would be supportive of that concept if

232if senior management thought that was a way to use part part of that that bucket that i've identified that i'm willing to sacrifice out of the reserves one of our neighboring districts was written up and it was in the newspapers saying that they were excessively conservative and this is a bit of a hard question but but if it was asked and charged against the neighboring district we have to ask it of ourselves do you believe that we're being excessively conservative i would i believe we're conservative i don't believe we're excessively conservative um i would say because uh what's happened is we for example you might have more unfilled positions but then we've had more subcost and you know you know temporary employee costs and some other costs that have come in uh you know supply

233chain issues inflation fuel so it some of that trades off with each other you know as far as the actual cost that we we realize and that i would just add to that mr jackson and the ais is i like the idea but what i'd like to do before we went that route is to see how successful we are in full filling our uh open positions if that makes sense with with full time oh absolutely we'd prefer if we're not able to we may have to go that route or come back to you and ask to let us go that route but definitely i like the idea of having that that full-time sub uh because i think next year will be challenging again uh and i think that full-time sub just provides a little mental

234health support for our classroom teachers i think i'll stop with that i i do have two more specifics but i always like to make certain i'm not too far down in the weeds so lucas uh i started with you last last time let me go back to you do you have anything to fill in okay sir scott henry just just one last question karen um i think this is correct health care premiums are going down that is correct that's a good thing so good first yeah we're very we were very pleased to see that great thank you dr natalie blessing you know and mr henry this mr henry i appreciate you bringing that up because uh we always hear that when we give a raise that it's completely it eaten up by insurance premiums yet

235when we look at this specific amounts that isn't correct but once a thought gets out there it becomes accepted as being true so i appreciate your you're coming back to highlight it at least this time whatever raise we give won't be eaten up because there's actually going to be a reduction right so i think we have exhausted the board looking to the left and to the right we may not be out of questions but we may be out of breath could could i just ask for one little clarification um i've heard lots of things yes sir is there a particular some different scenarios that this board would like for us to come back with not all the way to the june meeting i think we would probably uh email you some scenarios so we can

236kind of uh work through that in a legal way well well and that that's a good point um so so let me bring it up uh i proposed going from two to four percent uh would the board like to see that scenario as to what it would look like yes i would even like to go another percent up to see what that number would be uh so uh so two two different scenarios a four percent increase one percent on top of that and let me approach it a little differently i had indicated another way of taking a look at this is for you to carve out a month worth of reserves and you have you allocated where you think it is best to allocate would the board have any would the board like to see

237the management response on that yes so that kind of gives you three scenarios um so i did all the talking so now let me be quiet let me turn to the left uh input from y'all different scenarios julie henderman um i need uh to look at this some more and uh i'll email questions or thoughts to you and to dr henry um if there's any other possible scenarios okay good and to the right okay i think i think you all have some marching orders i'm seeking clarification okay we've got roughly 76 million in esser money that's filling in the gap are you telling me to take 100 million dollars from our fund balance or 80 million from our fund ballots and add that to this year's budget yes sir okay that's what everybody's telling me

238not saying that we'll do it okay but we want to see we want to see how you would like if you took a full month how would you allocate it okay you're writing that down karen i feel like that over years though like so that model i'm project out to two to three well that uh yes so that's not all 80 million in one year okay okay got you right got you but but you spread that over a certain period of time not to exceed five years and probably not to be uh just two okay yes sir you know but but trying to give you all some flexibility saying we'll risk one full month worth of reserves and if we give you that how do you want to spend the money over a certain time

239period yes we'll figure that out you know linda always says she's the main thing so i'm going to be battling her for every dime she already had her hand up well and if i may add mr jackson what we'll have to do is we'll have to look at for example the financial integrity rating system which is first because if you decrease your fund balance by too much you can risk failing first correct the other thing we'll have to look at is how it will impact our bond ratings okay of course this is all scenarios we'll have all those answers though very good sir now we can take a look at the consent agenda there is one we still have more work to do folks we'll proceed with the consensus action item portion of the agenda

2408 a board will consider approving the minutes of the april 11 2022 regular board meeting 8b the board will consider approving the minutes of the april 26 2022 special called board meeting the following non-consent action items were moved to the consent agenda during the boardwalk session on thursday may 5th 2022 9b the board will consider approving the budget amendments for the period of january 1 2022 through march 31 2022 9c the board will consider approving the instructional materials allotment antique certification for 2022-2023 9-d the board will consider approving on first reading additions revisions or deletions district policies 91 ehbc local special programs compensatory accelerated services revised 92 eie local academic achievement retention and promotion revised 93 fl local student records revise 90 the board will consider approving on second reading additions revisions or deletions district

241policies 91 cfd local accounting activity funds management revised 92 cqb local technology resources cyber security revised 93 fde local admissions school safety transfers revised 9-f the board will consider approving the memorandum of understanding between salmon houston state university and cyprus fairbanks isd to provide a master's of education degree program with focus on school counseling 9g the board will consider approving the first amendment to the 2021-2022 interlocal agreements with harris county resources for children and adults 9-8 the board will consider approving bids contracts and or authorizing purchase orders as recommended in the posted agenda item 981 athletic halls activities student accident insurance renewal 982 audio meters for health services 9h3 portable building deck ramp and walkway installations 984 property insurance renewal 9i the board will consider approving construction proposals and contracts paid from bond funds and

242mno funds to the recommended contractors and authorize the superintendent or designee to execute all necessary documents related to such contracts as follows 991 2021 ben bradley police building renovations in addition 9i2 2022 cfcu and prison stadium led displays so i'll remind the board how this works first i'll ask you if you want to move anything off i will then ask for a motion i will then ask for a second once we have a motion on the table that's been made and seconded we can then open it up for discussion so the first question is do we want to remove any of these and put it onto the non-consent agenda i say none now i would like a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented or as amended mr president i move that we approve

243the consent agenda as presented are amended or amended a second motion has been made and seconded now we can have discussion questions comments there are no questions or comments i will call for a vote all in favor please raise your right hand motion carries the following nine consensus action items remained on non-consensus the board will consider nominations for the large district member position on tasby board of directors for region 4 position f i need to hear a motion for somebody to be nominated yes ms baxter mr president i proudly nominate julie heinemann for this position ms heinemann has served on this board and served our district previously and she is the most knowledgeable of all on the school board on this board and i highly recommend her and support motion's been made is there a

244second second motion has been made and seconded is there any discussion on on the motion that's on the floor otherwise we will proceed to a vote all in favor please raise your right hand all opposed by the same hand so we have three abstaining four in favor motion carries 9j the board will consider approving the superintendent's recommendation to give notice to shikaya lee that her employment with the district under a term contract is proposed for non-renewal and authorized the president of the board to notify ms lee of the proposed action pursuant to 21.206 of the texas educator code this item was discussed in closed session pursuant to section 551.071 and 551.074 at the board work session on thursday may 5th 2022 so i will now entertain a motion to approve this non-consensus item as recommended

245or amended i move that the board of trustees approved the recommendation to notify shakira lee that her employment with the district under the term contract is proposed for non-renewal and to provide her notice of the same in accordance with the law motion's been made is there a second so moved motion has been made and seconded all in favor please raise your right hand motion carries uh one abstention yes i wanted to point out that i was not present at that closed session so i am abstaining from voting very good thank you for the clarification mr scanlon we've covered with the board business you had asked to make a comment you have the floor sir [Music] some of our audience members in the last six months have been very passionate in their views and understanding that

246passion but managing it correctly is important and so i want to encourage the members of the audience and the people that would listen to this going forward i think just about every member on this diocese has had something written about them some form of personal attack i don't know that there's an exclusion and tonight mrs heineman and dr henry both had named personal attacks i do not support any of it miss heinemann i don't support any of it dr henry i don't support any of it and i think i speak for my dias colleagues that we do not support those kinds of personal attacks so my ask for all of our audience members is that we find a way to simply say i disagree if we can have civil discourse that's the bedrock of our

247country we've got to find a way to get there so simply stating that we disagree with somebody and stating the reasons as to why and letting the chips fall where they may i think that would be a great standard that we could and the audience members could aspire to over the remainder of our meetings this year next and following so i think it's a source of encouragement and to uh to take courage that we can do that and still be heard i don't have any further comments thank you for your comments you said that more graciously than the comments i was going to make we have we have tried to let people speak their mind i was persuaded that if we let people speak their mind that some of the upset would go away but

248instead what it did in permitting people to speak their mind it merely exacerbated the situation and encouraged people to engender more personal attacks against everybody on the board whether that's at the microphone or in blogs one way or the other it will stop at the microphone i understand that there is a certain tactic to try and force either myself or counsel to take action so that it can be recorded on cell phones to make the district look bad i understand that that is a standard tactic but at some point in time we just have to stop and get on with the business of the board and there are different ways that that we can do it and as a board we will either all stand together or we will let each board member stand and

249say yes i support personal attacks and if you support them so be it but we can take votes on the matter and if that means we have to take votes on an individual sitting out one full board meeting and not being permitted back in will take that vote and if you decide to let a person in who wants to engender in personal attacks then that says you as a board member support personal attacks but everybody on here has had something negative said about them some more serious we've had serious threats in the neighborhood i've took i've taken two bullets to my cadillac while i was driving threats are serious and when words are spoken that inflame those who may not have filters properly in place then the matter becomes more than simple words and it

250is up to the entire board to address this matter and one way or the other we will so that concludes my comments and now dr henry will provide information regarding district events and items of community interest thank you mr president trustees we celebrated student artist on april 26th at the berry center for the k-12 student art show here's a brief video recap of the event we have about 670 k-12 artworks on display it being 2d and 3-dimensional artworks from various grade levels and all of our campuses participated so we have all 56 elementary all 19 middle school and all 12 high schools showing in this exhibit today and so this is just a very special show the work is a reflection of the students growth and a reflection of you know the things that they've

251learned this year they're art experiences and so we're celebrating the things that they've been doing in their art rooms and how they've been able to express themselves within the art program it feels amazing to have my work displayed here among so many other amazing talented artworks it's really cool i've been walking around and just seeing everybody else's artwork i've seen a couple of my friends artworks that are here i just feel so glad that my teacher wanted to put me amongst all [Music] the cfi cfisd career fair was held on april 28th welcoming nearly 1 000 community members to the berry center to meet and greet campus and department administrators it was our first in-person career fair since 2019. national school nurses week is set for may 9th through 13th and school nurses day is

252may 11th we thank our 92 school nurses five licensed vocational nurses and 57 clinic assistants for going above and beyond over the last two years to keep our schools safe and our students healthy this week wednesday may 11th is designated as public schools paraprofessional day we know that cypher isd schools would not be as excellent as they are without the hard-working para educators on our campuses and in our support facilities the week of may 15-21 is designated as national police week and may 15th is peace officers memorial day we thank our local agencies and especially our scifir isd police department for ensuring the safety and protection of our students and staff graduation ceremonies for all 12 high schools will be held at the berry center may 24-28 as we plan to recognize more than 9

253000 class of 2022 graduates the full graduation schedule is available on our website remember that traffic will be heavy on barker cypress even more than usual during this time from camps to academies to mobile libraries there are many extracurricular options available for students this summer visit the summer and cfisd block on our our website to learn more the last day of school of 20 21 22 is set for may 26th may 27th will be a professional day for staff we wish a safe and restful summer for all our students and staff and mr president just to finish up and i appreciate you and i appreciate mr scanlon and with your comments but i i i think something sometimes we forget in the age of technology that there's people watching these meetings and you know one

254of the things i enjoy knowing is that my dad a baptist minister uh for 63 years he's 88 years old in october and still pastors a church but he loves to watch these meetings because he gets to see his son i'm his baby and i can only imagine tonight um how he felt as he watched what occurred at this board meeting i came to sci fair uh because it was a destination district and i still feel that way why would i ever when all of nearly all of my grandchildren go to school here in scifir ever put any child in a situation where they're in danger we do our best we're not perfect as i've said before but you know i've got to look out for people on the right's children i got to look

255out for people on the left's children and you know i've got i got the back of our african-american children and our hispanic children and our special needs children our anglo children our lgbtq children i have their back and i have their parents back i believe in a parent's right to dictate their child's education but i believe in every parent's right not just one group of people thank you for allowing me to serve in this district i would like to thank everyone for being here tonight and i would like to thank our viewing audience at home we are adjourned [Music] you