Board Work Session 05/05/22

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening the cypress fairbanks independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a board work session on thursday may 5th 2022 at 6 pm in the boardroom of the cypress fairbanks independent school district instructional support center located at 10-300 jones road houston texas for the purpose of reviewing that portion of the monday may 9 2022 regular board meeting agenda designated as action items and to hear designated reports and recognitions posted in the meeting notice as required by texas law i want to welcome the members of our audience and our television viewers to this meeting of the board of trustees as the cypress fairbanks board of trustees we are here to set goals listen to reports approve budget contracts personnel appointments and make policy for the district it is not the

002role of the board to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a public meeting the board of trustees in our 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 or the board's counsel as a meeting parliamentarian continued or repeated disruption of any board meeting by words or action may result in removal or loss of the privilege to attend the meeting prior to this

003meeting board members received information related to items on tonight's agenda agenda items will not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice during the course of this meeting the board may determine that a closed session is necessary in that event the board will meet in closed session to consider matters duelly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.071-551.084 of the texas government code these proceedings are airing live on comcast channel 16 in the district website there will also be available as video on demand on the district website following tonight's meeting for the video to adequately reflect the proceedings i respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones are turned off or in silent mode i'm turning mine off now thank you for taking the

004time to join us this evening and for your interest in the cypress fairbanks independent school district i would also like to take this opportunity to recognize our community leadership committee members who are in attendance this evening we have nancy frankel and we also have ryan irving thank you for your attendance the invocation pledge of allegiance vision and mission statement recognitions board comments and citizen participation portions of the agenda will be presented at the regular board meeting on monday may 9 we will now proceed with public comments [Applause] off script i always like to think of these as being public agenda comments but for now we call them public comments 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

005consideration 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 before your name is called please move forward and sit in one of the two reserve seats on the front row our first speaker is alexi swarsky this is a formal complaint and i'm addressing agenda item 9c on instructional materials allotment my complaint is that there are no specifics whatsoever about what curriculum is being bought in miller versus california the supreme court ruled that obscene material is not protected speech i'm concerned that some of the instructional materials

006may violate harmful to minors laws our house bill 39 by 3979 texas house bill 3979 by representative steve ho toth which otherwise is known as the critical race theory bill children are to be educated protected and cherished federal and state laws prohibit exposing children to obscene material you can call me a book banner all you want but those who are doing that are just trying to rephrase the argument to take the spotlight off of anyone in the school district who is harming children by exposing them to pornographic material whether these criminals or school board members school administrators or teachers it is an abomination and they run the risk of being arrested and prosecuted harmful to minors laws seek to protect minors generally considered those 17 and younger for pornography obscenity and other material that may

007bring harm to them nearly every state has some form of harmful to minors loss many of these laws limit distribution of sexually explicit material to minors the majority of these laws have survived constitutional challenges any violation of federal child pornography laws is serious crime and convicted offenders face serious statutory penalties for example a first-time offender convicted of producing child pornography under 18 usc 2251 faces fines and a statutory minimum of 15 years to 30 years maximum in prison in addition to facing imprisonment and fines convicted offenders of federal obscenity laws involving minors may also be required to register sex offenders and therefore ineligible for employment in school districts i'm asking that more details and information on exactly what curriculum this allotment is for be provided to the public thank you our next speaker is carolyn

008rospierski good evening and a big thank you to our teachers every day but especially during teacher appreciation week my name is carolyn risperski and i'm speaking on agenda item 7a budget this week cfisd teachers receive their contracts for the 22-23 school year with a deadline to sign by may 13th they have not been informed of their salaries as an hr manager a contract without a salary baffles me but besides that other school districts have announced raises retention stipends and signing bonuses amidst a worsening teacher shortage can we afford to wait to tell our teachers their salaries for next year our teachers have served our students through two of the hardest years in living memory please give all teachers a five percent raise without lowering their amount for experienced teachers with the midpoint caveat any delay

009may cost us some of our best employees and potential new hires please communicate before the may 13th contract signing deadline teachers must complete a yearly average of 25 hours of professional development on their own time to earn the highest ratings of their evaluations and are not typically compensated while the 25 hours are not required this privilege policy privileges people with time and resources it is not equitable years ago cfisd teachers were compensated for their development time let's bring that compensation back another budget related item shortages of paraprofessionals and substitute teachers pairs are skilled workers who meet the needs of our most valuable students yet we do not pay them a living wage substitute teachers are needed more than ever yet we do not pay them competitively with surrounding districts when we don't have enough subs

010which is often teachers feel guilty about taking time off and forcing colleagues to cover their classes this contributes to burnout please increase wages for subs our resource-rich state does not adequately fund education and this needs to be addressed at the ballot box therefore not only do i urge our school district to do everything we can to improve compensation i urge every voting age citizen in cyprus to vote for pro-public school candidates in the november midterm election thank you our next speaker is christina woods hello my name is christina and i'm speaking on 9a nominations for tasby board of directors such a position is one of influence it is crucial therefore the trustees think carefully in nominating one important consideration is competence we would be better served by one of our more veteran trustees who have

011leaps and bounds more knowledge and experience in running a large school district than do our new trustees as is the case for any novice your freshman year is the time to listen learn and seek to increase your understanding of your new role another important consideration is integrity tasby has a code of ethics which is about more than just following the law it's about setting a higher standard to ensure that decisions and actions reflect the interests of the district as a whole in your brief services trustees miss blazing game doc mr henry and mr scanlon you have repeatedly engaged in actions at odds with the code code of ethics to name a few appointing your spouse's friends and financial supporters someone who hasn't have no children in the district and don't in fact even live here

012to to a district committee making racist comments about black teachers and students stating explicitly that you don't like opportunity for all attempting to interfere with activities delegated to the superintendent and calling out special and a special needs student who you referred to as a repeat offender while campaigning mr henry discussed his intention on video to do a lot of damage while dr blasengame and mr scanlon expressed agreement with this in the same video mr henry promises to get rid of tasby as mr scanlon nods enthusiastically in his blessing game grins and exclaims wow wow it is abundantly clear that our new trustees would not engage in good faith actions were they to be nominated to tasby so as you're considering nominations i urge you to i urge you to remember the importance of the competence

013of the tasman code of ethics our new trustee's unethical bad faith track record in the best interests of cfisd and truly providing opportunity for all thank you [Applause] we will now proceed with agenda item 7b under the reports portion of the agenda agenda item 7a under under reports will be presented at the regular board meeting on monday may 9 report 7b the district will provide an update on the early childhood literacy and mathematics proficiency plans and the college career and military readiness plans presenters are dr linda macias and dr ashley claiborne dr claiborne good evening president jackson board members dr henry this evening we will provide a report on the early childhood and college career military readiness also known as ccmr proficiency plans house bill 3 passed by the 86 texas legislature in 2019 requires

014school boards to adopt detailed plans developed by their district teams that achieve goals in two key areas early childhood literacy and math and then also ccmr you may have heard us share several times now that our goal has been and what we've discussed with campuses is that we want to get back to we keep saying whole we want to get back to where we were in that's the year that that our students performed academically very well academically and our district earned a 93. and so the goals that we have set is to get back to that to that hole and then to continue moving forward from there so you'll hear dr claiborne as she as she continues with the presentation a little bit talk about that and talk about the performance of our kids pre-covet

015and you'll hear talk about the the targets that we said were based on pre-covet but we we don't want to lower those we want to continue moving forward from uh from those targets so dr clayton i'm going to turn it over to you to continue with the presentation texas education code 11.185 related to early childhood literacy and mathematics proficiency plans requires that the plans must be set for each elementary in the district use third grade star data scifire selected to use the meets grade level standard or higher because the board has challenged us to increase the percent of students reaching the meet standard and this is the level where we want our students to be performing targets should be set by student group any group with 25 or more students will have a target the

016goal should be set for five years the district should submit an annual report to the board on the district's progress toward the goals the plan should be posted on the campus and district websites and targeted professional development will be provided for classroom teachers in kindergarten first second and third grades who are assigned to campuses that have not met the plan goals texas education code 11.186 related to college career or military readiness plans requires that these plans must be set for each high school campus evaluate college career or military readiness indicators used in the state and federal accountability systems should be set by student group any group with 25 or more students will have a target again the goal should be set for five years the district should submit an annual report to the board regarding

017progress toward the goals and the plan should be posted on campus and district websites to access the campus level plans on the district website the board and viewing audience may follow this path to access the campus level plans on the campus websites the board and viewing audience may follow this path to develop the initial plans we collaborated with the texas education agency region 4 surrounding school districts our internal curriculum team and elementary and high school principals our focus when setting the initial target was the concept of returning to whole campuses were and still are working to achieve the same or better star performance than they had in 2018-19 when as dr macia said we were an unofficially a district now let's review the early childhood literacy data tables as approved by the board of trustees

018in january of 2021 as the board in the viewing audience may recall students may score at one of four levels on star did not meet approaches meets and masters while most students in scifire score at the approaches or higher level on star these goals and targets were set at the meets grade level or higher standard for third grade students taking star reading since we're focusing on these higher performance levels levels the targets are not yet in the 80s or 90s as previously noted the 2021 targets were set to match the campus level performance from 2018-19 thus returning to whole the two following years we intended to work toward two points of growth followed by three points of growth in the 2024 and 25 school years the mathematics targets were structured in the same way these

019tables set meets grade level or higher targets for third grade students taking star mathematics once again by focusing on these higher performance levels the targets are not yet in the 80s or 90s the 2021 targets were set to match the campus level performance again from the 2018-19 school year the two following years we intended to work toward two points of growth followed by three points of growth in 2024 and 25. regarding college career and military readiness also known as ccmr let me begin by drawing your attention to the portion of the table outlined in yellow these columns are annual graduates along with the reporting year in the first row of the table outlined in red you will see that the data for the annual graduates from the 2020-21 school year were reported during the 2021-22

020school year the targets for the class of 2021 were set to match the campus level performance from the class of 2018-19 returning to whole the four following years we intended to work toward two points of growth as we move to the portion of the presentation where we will share the 2021 results with the board we would like to first remind the board and the viewing audience of the timeline leading up to these results in march of 2020 traditional in-person instruction moved to learning at home may of 2020 saw the star and eocs cancelled by the state in september of 2020 the district was fully open and we provided both face-to-face learning and cfisd connect for virtual learners in january 2021 the early childhood and ccmr proficiency plans were approved by the board of trustees star

021and eoc assessments returned in april and may of 2021. participation rates were at an all-time low due to the state not providing a virtual option for either the star or eoc exams this past august scifire was once again fully open and temporary virtual learning was offered for kindergarten through sixth grade students in the fall semester in november 2021 the administration provided the board with the opportunity gap presentation in which star data for scifir were compared with the state and beginning of your benchmark data were also reviewed this february the administration provided the board with data on the mid-year reading levels and growth as compared to beginning of the year reading levels as the board and the viewing audience know learning gaps have been created due to covid19 as previously mentioned the opportunity gap presentation on

022november 8th 2021 and the texas academic performance report public hearing on january 13 2022 identified as much therefore it will not be surprising to see that the campuses were not able to meet all their 2021 early childhood and ccmr proficiency plan targets before you now is a table displaying the third grade reading target data at the meets or higher proficiency level for the 2020-21 school year beginning at the far left hand side you will see the major student groups how many individual targets were set for each group how many targets were actually evaluated for each group because the number could change if a student group no longer had 25 or more students the number and percent of targets that were met or exceeded across all campuses and the number and percent of targets that were

023missed across all campuses before you now is a table displaying the third grade math data table at the meets or higher proficiency level for the 20 20 21 school year again at the far left hand side you will see the major student groups how many individual targets were set for each group how many targets were evaluated the number and percent of targets that were met or exceeded across all campuses and the number and percent of targets that were missed across all campuses finally we have the data table displaying the college career and military readiness data for the class of 2020-21 please note these data do not include targets for bridgeland high school or cypress park high school because they did not have a graduating class in 1819 for us to use to set the initial

024targets this table is formatted exactly like the previous two so please take a moment to review these data dr macias will now provide you with information on how we're supporting teachers in closing the achievement gaps created by covid19 yes sir i'm sorry make sure your mic is working oh should i start over on this one yes okay it sounds like it's working to me but let me read this one again finally we have the data table displaying the college career and military readiness data for the class of 20 20 21 please note these data do not include targets for bridging high school or cypress park high school because they did not have a graduating class in 1819 for us to use to set the initial targets this table is formatted exactly like the previous two

025now dr macias will provide you information on how we are supporting teachers in closing the achievement gaps created by covid19 and our suggestions for moving forward so as you heard dr claiborne share a little at the beginning part of the requirement is that we do provide targeted professional development and so this wasn't anything new for us because we provide a lot of professional development for our teachers in this district but this is just a little bit of what we are providing we have a digital uh learning conference which i've talked about we have new teacher literacy academies that's focused on making sure that we are we are addressing the gaps that have been created by the by the pandemic august professional development we provide one two weeks actually professional development for teachers before the first

026day of school one week is very much targeted to to the instruction and to the the curriculum that we will be provided uh by the district we have a day where all of our teachers go through the barry center we call it the rigor relevance and rigor relevance and relationships uh day for our teachers and so they are hearing uh consultants and they're also having time to plan for the the upcoming year and then the second week is actually at the campus and it is specifically target to additional instruction that the campuses have in place we also have just in time professional development so throughout the year we're providing professional development for our teachers and just in time means before the unit is actually taught we're actually doing training we're providing resources that that they

027uh that they can use we have we are providing closing the gap teacher academies so we've got reading and math and science academies that that we've had uh this year for our teachers to come they have received training on different materials to use and then they left with uh with with different materials that they could immediately use back in their classrooms we have weekly content common planning and so that common planning again every week and so the campuses make sure that that is happening and the the the discussions and the there's training that happens there as well is specifically targeted to the needs of students we also have as you know the five teacher work days at that that you approved as part of our calendar and those days are again for our teachers to

028plan and prepare to support our kids we have teacher share sessions so they're sure sessions for each of the different content areas again those are ongoing and that's additional instruction for for our teachers we also have a model school teachers program and so we have teachers that have applied to be model teachers and so that means that they are the master teachers and they apply for these for to be a master teacher a model teacher they they're there's evaluations that that happen for them the teacher the principals recommend them and we have them in in all different areas of the district all different content areas uh and all different grade levels so principal can say we have a teacher who's needing some support and we'd like for her to go see a model a model

029teacher for fifth grade we can actually share with the principal okay here's here's a model teacher or the list of model teachers for your cluster group so like schools like like type students and they can go and again re receive more training and assistance there and then of course we have different planning sessions we also have very targeted training for our bilingual and our esl teachers are you know this this keeps changing our eb emerging bilingual is what they're what they're now called so we have specific training for our teachers uh on working with students who are learning a second language so moving forward we again would like to recommend that we leave the targets as they currently are we know that they're higher we didn't adjust them based on that but based on the

030pandemic as again again as i shared our goal was that we worked to get back to where we were and we continue moving uh moving forward we will continue to revisit the targets and uh and certainly look at the star results for this year to see if we need to make any any revisions and we will continue providing intensive professional development to our teachers based on the needs of our students if you we are happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time let me start to the left lucas thank you as usual wonderful job in your presentation very thoughtful and concise so do we have data i'm looking at the chart and i'm trying to interpret it against the 2018-2019 data and am i missing something i'm not seeing a data

031point that helps me understand the comparison so we don't have data compared to star results as we presented them previously to the board we also don't have data to compare to the state or to other districts because every district sets their own targets so we can we can look at this our star results these are these are based on our star results for 2021 yes 2012 the goal was we're going to get back to 2019 so i'm looking for the 2019 number so the 2019 number those that's in the very first column so the 2021 target is the 2019 number okay okay yes okay that helps me and i was not sure how to interpret that number okay i apologize if i didn't answer that correctly okay initially all right i may have other questions

032tom but that's where i'm at right now very good julie um i mean obviously these are disappointing i know you were disappointed as well um i am not surprised that the reading numbers are higher than math because we've seen that across the state that's actually something that's statewide and i think we've had such a focus on reading on early literacy that i think we're starting to see some of the results of that but obviously still disappointing looking at the third grade reading target data and the third grade math target data the all category and the economically disadvantaged categories are so closely aligned i feel like if we focus on those economically disadvantaged kiddos i think we can lift all numbers do you know what i mean absolutely miss heidemann uh wholeheartedly agree with that that

033is a focus that we have with our campuses that economically disadvantaged number and then also as you know we talk to our campuses about about incremental growth we want to see though that growth you know going up we want to see that growth so yes we too were are disappointed with the numbers we could have gone back and readjusted the numbers and lowered the targets as i said we chose not to do that because we felt that we needed to stick to where we were and continue moving forward i have a question about the class of 20 20 21 ccmr data uh the data include the criteria includes graduation rates and eoc scores is that correct no ma'am the data for this include there they come from domain three of the accountability system and basically

034they're looking to see which students met at least one of what the state considers a ccmr criteria so for instance did they meet the tsi the texas success initiative targets on the tsia the sat the act did they take a dual course credit and then earn at least credit for nine or more hours in any subject or three or more hours in reading or math did they meet the ap criteria ever three or higher on an ap test did they earn an associate's degree so we know we're going to have a lot more kids earning that associate's degree did they receive an approved industry-based certification did they graduate with a completed iep or workforce readiness did they graduate under an advanced diploma plan and be identified as a current special ed student or did they

035graduate with a level one or two certificate so this data is looking at our kids that met one of those benchmarks and ashley this is this a year that uh the military was not a part of it yes this was the year that the military was taken out i'm just surprised that not one school met the target if that is those are the criteria because we have such high graduation rates we have so many kids that take ap and dual credit classes and the reason is the scores were so high in 1819 and so when covet hit and we know we had some losses they did not remain as high that's essentially what happened because we were very high in 1819 scores on sat and tsi just on the ccmr area in general with kids

036earning one of those indicators we had students who couldn't take their certification tests because the the facilities were not available or the students were not there in class enough to earn the credit or the time that's needed to be able to take the test so there were a lot of factors that really they're all covet factors that have contributed to this we're hoping that that this will be much better next year when we present to you um i've no doubt it will be um so okay well thank you for that clarification and i know that we're doing a lot in terms of professional development um i think it's important that we also look at what else we can do besides just professional development for teachers absolutely thank you thank you to the right scott so

037thank you for the presentation you you actually answered my question earlier i talked to dr massina earlier so thank you that uh a quick comment or question i guess maybe is is my understanding next year or maybe the year after we're going to an online star test is that correct next year next year the 22-23 school year every star assessment will be online unless we have a special permission from tea for a certain student to take a paper test due to very specific needs just to comment i'm a little concerned about that because that will affect in my belief the scores for our kids and i think that will dramatically adjust these in a negative manner just my concern for you and for the district secondly the technology involved in that is going to be

038immense the networking involved the back end i know our government works so well but just that involved secondly i know we did a test run as well um how did that go can we answer that do we know so i'll share first of all that we too have some concerns i think the entire state probably has concerns that that uh that every that every single student is going to have to take the test electronically because not every single student obviously learns the same way or has or is able uh to do that we have been practicing some with it we have many of our campuses who who uh have been chosen to to take the test uh on the computer but we have others that felt that that the students weren't weren't quite ready and

039you're right next year we will not have a choice i think across the state the concern has been uh how how is the bandwidth going to handle all this is are we going to really be able to handle it we know that we've had concerns already with with uh some of the online testing so it's a big question mark mr mr henderson how that's all going to play out and finally i just wanted to add one thing to that that's okay our cypher technology department has done an amazing job working to get us ready for this year's testing that's online and for next year as well and typically if we see an issue with online testing it's something from the testing vendor not related to our system in cypher isd that is correct thank you

040the issues we've seen have been on the state side not really on the district side so far i have no doubt in our abilities i think we'll have no issues i don't it's the other side i always have issues with because when you have that many kids going at the system at one time there's always going to be an issue so um and also i understand they're going to change the format of the test as well we're going to change multiple answers for a test not these two as well so all those wrinkles a lot of changes with it yes there's going to be some concerns and changes so those are some red flags to me that we might want to consider for next year just just letting the district and the board know that

041it's not your fault so thank you thank you natalie first of all it makes me so happy to be talking about student achievement data thank you for this report um i also uh in 93 was incredible and so to not meet a target because you were chasing something that was and really high achievement i think is maybe the only acceptable reason principles like dr martinez and others working really hard out there to make sure our students are college and career ready i also support the notion of leaving those targets high i appreciated lucas's question to the point of what were those scores that we're comparing to so understanding that column and so because to me that is you know that is the goal is restoration and accelerating that restoration um as fast as possible um

042i also have um the timeline was so a great way as always you show a great visual way to to lay out the problem one thing i would like to do i found myself writing on the data and putting on the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged at each campus and then i found myself translating the percentage into a number of students i would prefer we look at this data as a number of students because when 56 percent is a goal in 2025 at andre for example that still means 44 of the children which might let's say there's a thousand kids right that's we wouldn't be in that grade level but that's still that's 440 kids who are not making it and i think that personalizes and makes it very real for us the

043challenge we have ahead um and that we're all can tackle together because this district as a 93 it's proven it can do that long before we were here and we're here to help be a part of that positive growth the professional development first of all on teach appreciation week i just could i got a warm feeling inside thinking about these model teachers i just think what an incredible compliment an accomplishment to be in this huge system and to be recognized by that level of excellence and to be willing to share your expertise with other teachers um i think those maybe superheroes need a little cape um and so i think that's great and also the history of rich professional development i know it's challenging for teachers of time and the requirement of professional development so

044we hear that input but i definitely say that this is a strength of the system one thing i'd really like to see um and maybe even as soon as you know in the summer months of our meetings i'm interested to see the interventions that are in place for students i know you've started those intervention plans and and really if we can start to assess the efficacy of those interventions what exactly did we do for those students who were not on level and what of those things worked i'd also like to see the resources aligned to the interventions so with the percentage of free and reduced lunch or economic disadvantaged students and english language learners or now we call them eds what did what do you call them again up to b emergent violence yes emergent

045bilinguals sorry forgive me emergent bilinguals um i would definitely like to see us also look at that data very specifically i'd also like us to be able to track that for outperformers who are moving those numbers so that we can track their promising practices um and so i feel like this is um you know this would be very exciting in order to really make to understand the decisions that we're making in policy and in budget decisions and how those impact because i have had a question about even the esther dollars and their alignment to the specific needs of a campus and the specific number of students who are economically disadvantaged um so i just feel like that may be a way that we leave those targets high and we can hit those targets and also

046make sure we're making decisions on the best decisions about where do you spend our funds um to to close the gap and get back to that you know we're getting back to 93 we're going for 99 99 or 100 if there's if it's possible um i think that uh that is the conclusion of um the comments thank you all so much uh dr blessing again i'll just share with you that as you mentioned the esser funds with sr funds the interventions that the campuses have listed in their plans any resources that they purchase are tied to the to the intervention as part of that plan and then i just want to just give a shout out to our campus leadership and our teachers because they have done an incredible job over these last two years

047uh with our students and and making sure that providing whatever is needed to help them be successful and i'll shout out to dr martinez who's in the room i see him doing that every day and i heard very loud cheers for him at the ap awards assembly from its students so i thought that was very great gilbert another wonderful presentation dr macias and slayborn i'm not surprised i'm i'm thankful for the the work put in to to get us through these past two years um it doesn't mean that i'm disappointed or satisfied by no means but i do believe in our students i do believe in our educators i believe in our admin and our employees and i believe in our parents and our families in the community here that like we always do we

048when we bounce back we bounce back strong and uh and leading uh not only in the region but throughout the state so um i have faith in in what we're doing here and i look for those numbers to be uh going upward in a good trend and stuff once we get everything on board though and thank everybody here for their participating thank you i will add my voice to my colleagues excellent presentation i have a couple of observations and questions when i presented the leadership tasby one of the requirements was that you had to present about your district different qualities different aspects and you basically presented to trustees from 18 to 24 different districts and one of the items that i chose to highlight in the presentation well is what we call pyramid services and

049we may have new viewers online who have never heard that term before but since we're looking at the budget in a sense we're talking about alignment of resources or as i like to say moving resources to where they're needed what either ashley you or linda tell us what do i mean when i say pyramid of services and maybe we don't even have it anymore right well we do have a pyramid of services uh here in our district you've heard me talk about our monitor school process that is part of that pyramid of services we we monitor where our campuses are at and which campuses need the the greatest support and so we provide that support based on their needs so if that's what you're talking about the the where we're making sure that we're providing

050more support to students or to campuses that are performing at at the lower levels so we so we do in fact allocate more resources to those campuses that demonstrate a need for more resources absolutely they get more resources they have more more staff they have more training and staff development dr gorrie where are your doctor corey dr gary over there is is the one that she's our assistant superintendent for school school um thank you transformation i just went i just went i went blank uh transformation and so works very closely with with uh with a group of campuses that they're not necessarily failing they're not failing but they're not at the level that that we expect that we expect here in scifire and they're very open to the support so they get quite a bit

051more support thank you for clarifying and providing a little more detail to that concept we can always look at a glass of water as being half full or half empty from my perspective i'm going to ask a question that i asked both last october and last november in the context of what you presented today these goals have relatively low percentages in terms of achievement are they low in context compared to the state of texas or esc number four granted already know the answer but i always love to ask the same question twice you may get different answers i'd be happy to answer that as i mentioned just a little bit ago each district is setting their own targets so the state gave each district's board of trustees the ability to approve the targets that are

052appropriate for that district so we can't really compare ourselves with these targets to the state or to region four however we do know that when we look at just our overall general star target our star data we definitely outperformed the state in student performance at the meets level overall in every single content area and when i asked this question last november i asked you to go back and take a look and see did the delta change we've always outperformed and so when i asked you did the out performance increase decrease or remain the same what was your answer you have given me a chance to redeem myself because i have that right here and the answer is that we continue to outperform the state so clearly our percentages are higher even though we fell down

053a little bit we were still higher than the state in in performance in every area and we in fact increase the delta yeah i we increase the degree of outperformance that is correct for myself and i know commissioner williams and uh and our current commissioner morath have always encouraged us to make certain that we understand the context when we look at data and evaluation on college career and military readiness pre-covered what was the level that we were assessed by the state of texas did we have a b or a c or we actually had an overall rating of a 92 so we were an a and that goes back to what i said that those scores were really high before covid so we were we're in a nccmr i would like to to re-ask a

054question that's already been asked but i think the answer is important uh we are a leader in the state of texas with having a robust jrotc program and i believe a jrotc program is a critical piece of the puzzle and many of our students do choose a career in the military how is that choice of theirs evaluated now under cc mr so under ccmr the state has removed the military readiness indicator for now because they are unable to get information on which of students in the state of texas actually enlisted in the military due to safety concerns so because we are not able to obtain that data from the federal government we are unable to have a ccmr indicator and we've also asked the state if we could use students enrolled in jrotc as a

055ccmr indicator and at this time they have said no well that's unfortunate because that's always been one of our strengths but even though we will not receive credit for it i still believe firmly in that program as being valuable in enhancing student attainment not only for the cadets but for the students that they happen to influence by their behavior lucas asked a very important question as to the beginning numbers where did they come from i shared the concern of of scott when he talked about our moving forth into testing on a computer i know for myself personally i did much better on a paper test where i could skip problems then go back solve them and go back to them and i know that professional exams now are have major portions if not all of

056them are on the computer and many students very capable students of all professions have difficulty with that approach and it's not particularly real world so i share that concern plus the changing of the test questions commissioner morath has already indicated that the plans are to make the star test more strenuous which makes achieving targets going to be more difficult which is the reason why i always go back and say we have to look at it in context because law of large numbers says we can compare ourselves to the state of texas or esc number four and they can change the test all they want to but that's the comparison that's meaningful but you are correct the law requires us to make an internal comparison only and i appreciate you making that point because it will

057in fact at least in my opinion invalidate some of those results going forth and we have to be careful that that as trustees we understand what the data is telling us which which is always a challenge the tea website noted that it is a requirement to have targeted professional development certainly you identify different categories of professional development linda how do we know that that this is going to be targeted to the needs of that of those teachers in that particular campus so as i as i shared i'm trying to look around karen as as i shared mr jackson we always look at the data so we're looking at the data from every single campus so we do general staff development and then we do specific staff development based on on the needs that we're seeing

058in the district but at the campus as well and then we really drill down at the campus level as they're having their specific training as they're having their planning sessions as as i mentioned as they're using the model teachers to provide specific support you know they they'll they'll they might say i want i need to send this teacher to go see a uh a reading workshop lesson who's the model teacher i can send i can send them to so they can really drill very specific and have that development right at their fingertips when you brought out the program concept of a model teacher at that time we did not have a stipend allocated for model teachers have we added that into the budget we have never had a stipend for our model teachers that that

059hasn't been something that that we've done so no it's under the budget and we've never had a stipend sadly i was thinking that was going to be the answer we have targets here of two percent and three percent and this is always a standard question to mine why do we think that two percent and three percent targets given that we're coming out of covet and we have kept the targets in place from pre-covid explain to me why this is a reasonable assumption again and how will we be able to properly evaluate this come next year in context commissioner morath has told us it will take four years for us to get back to whole we've grilled you linda as well as mark and your goal is to get us back to whole in two years

060well those the answers from the commissioner and i've worked with him when he was a trustee just like us i think he's uh he's on top of the numbers and i know you and mark are so so aren't we setting ourselves up for disappointment on setting these targets have we set targets that are in fact achievable i know we we don't want to leave the kids behind but by the same token as a manager i've always known we had to have targets that we knew we had a chance to reach so so that's my comment but also the question is why do we think these are in fact achievable in such a short period of time well first of all um commissioner morat doesn't know our teachers and our leaders that we have in this

061district they are exceptional they are committed to do whatever they need to do to make sure that our kids are being successful our campuses have high expectations for all kids and for their teachers and i can assure you that that as we're disappointed with with uh with the results they too are very disappointed with the results and they're going to make sure that our kids continue to achieve we believe that we may not we may not reach the the targets next year mr jackson because as mr henry has shared and others there's a lot of changing variables that are coming our way with with the redesign of the test uh the everything on uh with technology but we believe that we need we need to we need to work towards getting our kids back to

062where they were and we need to accelerate the instruction we have plans for accelerated instruction for our students and uh four you think about what four years means that's a whole graduating class four years so we are very committed to to accelerate the instruction we've we've worked with our curriculum we've worked with our teachers and our teams to provide opportunities to provide that acceleration and move our kids faster than those four years that are predicted just to add to that the short answer is it's better to set goals high and not achieve and set them too low so we want we want to have high goals and we know that it might take a year or two but we want to get back not to where we were but exceed where we were so that's

063our goal i think the the challenge then is both for campus leadership but also senior management to be able to manage these expectations without pushing undue pressure into the classroom we have done it in the past and i expect that we will do it again but but i do want our classroom teachers to know that we are aware of the challenges that we're looking at and i know that we can trust leadership at both levels to make certain that the pressure does not become an impediment to our achieving our goals and our our targets i do have a question for you teresa it's always a great recommendation that if we have plans and goals that are influenceable by senior management and the superintendent in particular that the superintendency evaluation be aligned and somewhat indistinguishable from

064board outcome goals and progress measures so the question i have for you is this what we've identified here tonight is that part of the board monitoring package uh that by consensus we approved in january february of this year that's actually mine mr jackson because i'm the one that provides that uh that information and that this has not been part of the board of the the evaluation because we hadn't had an opportunity to do any comparisons this is actually the first year that we do a comparison of what the target was and and if we achieve the target but we will certainly uh work to include it in the next year very good thank you for addressing that and and i support uh moving this into that direction so that we were all that we're all

065aligned moving in the direction that we want to move into that concludes my comments and questions however lucas you you had a follow-up question yeah and after hearing the rest of the board i'm going to convert that to a comment and an encouragement for all of our teachers parents and families that are listening and so just briefly when my daughter started this year her ability to write dictation was not where it needed to be because my wife and i just never occurred to us to read a sentence aloud and let her write it down but we worked on it and now she's doing great my encouragement is that i know that we have to be creative and what i s what i saw in the presentation was teacher development plans and i know that all

066of our principals are thinking about ways to engage the community ways to engage the parents and get the parents involved in the outcome and the good outcomes of their kiddos so i wanted to comment i know that this board is very supportive of our the creative ways in which our principals will reach out to those families get those families involved and i know that we don't have data here but i did want to add the point that part of the plan i already know does include the parents and i i look forward to finding and seeing next year all the creative ways that our parents are being engaged by our principles so no further comments julie anything further and to my right scott natalie i did have uh two excellent points about that undue pressure

067in the classroom and giving teachers the flexibility they need to do the good work um i did have a question raised to me by high school math teacher actually they didn't raise it it was just conversation this idea about um the closing the gaps time and i think we came down you know it was a pandemic we had to respond and the federal government and the state keep um i think completely overstepped to put such specific um requirements on how esther funds could be spent telling us exactly the size of the group and who could teach it however i wondered about the ability to give back to teachers some flexibility for example saying oh that needs to happen in every math class on a tuesday then it's language arts on a wednesday i feel like

068that's not a natural teaching cycle if there's a concept that takes a few more days to teach or less days to teach i think it may be an interruption to teachers ability to test like give exam tests to the students you know towards their mastery of the content and the grading cycle and so i just wonder if that might be a way where we keep the expectations i definitely respect our superintendent and dr macias's um desire to set those high and rigorous goals and and for tom to come back and then remind us that that's also part of the superintendent evaluation i think that's keeping all these data hole in one place but i definitely wonder about the places where we could give back to teachers some flexibility uh now that we've been uh we

069played with that you know because we've had a structure and now let them see what they can do to iterate it and dr blasky remember that the closing the gap time is is outside of the instructional time so it's out of the class period time it's additional time it's not so so you know as far as uh whatever they plan for their class period they should be able to do that because that that time is built in to be additional time than the class period and there's one for every period of the day there is well campuses do it do it a little bit differently as you said some some of them will do that the high schools where it's a little bit different some of them will do mondays is is is uh english

070and tuesdays may be math versus doing it every single day at a certain period so there's flexibility at the campus the leadership takes care of that excellent thank you and just one general comment to that and we've got several principles in the audience here and i challenge you after the meeting to ask any of them in any of our other 90 or so principles i never talk about star test i it just not something i talk about we talk about uh providing great first instruction uh remediation and all the things that go into teaching but i never talk about star test scores number one i think they're way overrated uh and i don't want to put the additional pressure they put enough pressure on themselves so they're not getting a lot of pressure from me

071now dr macias made but it's not coming from me i can assure you that i'm gonna echo what dr news said they put pressure on themselves all of all of our leaders are top-notch leaders and and uh they're gonna make sure that our kids are getting what they need i really appreciate them and to that point i appreciate that your purity and um i would even say we i was able to participate at the legislative advisory council for tasby and this issue of local accountability and shifting the accountability system is something that's highly prioritized at every region in the state at this point and i definitely would support movements to make sure that we are looking at different at shifting the accountability um to more locally driven measures gilbert very good let's move on the

072board will now review the following consensus action items 8a the board will consider approving the minutes of the april 11 2022 regular board meeting and 8b the board will consider approving the minutes of the april 26 2022 special call board meeting i presume we can leave this on the consent agenda we can the board will now review the following non-consensus action items 9a the board will consider nominations for the large district member position on the tasby board of directors for region 4 position f we already have been through this process there will be a vote on monday but are there any questions comments observations anybody cares to make i'll look to the right this time scott natalie gilbert and to my left lucas julie uh that will not be obviously since we have to vote

073on it it will stay on the non-consent agenda 9b the board will consider approving the budget amendments for the period of january 1 2022 through march 31 2022 questions only tonight to my left lucas julie um yes i do have a question um i went through there was a lot of information thank you karen for this detailed information um we're coming to the end of the budget year so we're starting to wrap things up um i had a question regarding our initial budget when we passed it uh we still see that the majority of our budget goes to instruction rate 707 million we initially had a deficit of 88 million that has been closed to 71. correct that's correct and between now and when we finalize and close this budget a year do you anticipate

074that that deficit will decline additionally yes we anticipate that it will decline further um probably i mean as of now we think it'll go down about another 10 to 12 million maybe a little bit more than that give or take and then we'll offset that deficit with the esser funds okay um and allocate that was uh i don't know if you recall at the last board meeting that i indicated that the sr2 funds which was the second um amount given to the district that we felt like we probably utilized the majority of that to help offset uh the deficit okay um thank you for that and i had additional questions but uh regarding food service but uh mr crawford answered my question oh great yes thank you and to my right scott natalie gilbert may

075we move this to the consent agenda so holly if you would please 9c the board will consider approving the instructional materials allotment antiques certification for 2022-2023 questions only this evening going to my right scott natalie gilbert to my left lucas julie uh hearing no questions may we move this to the consent agenda holly if you would thank you 9d the board will consider approving on first reading editions revisions or deletions to district policies pardon me one second 91 ehbc local special programs compensatory accelerated services revised 92 eie local academic achievement retention and promotion revised 93 fl local student records revise that's all of 9d questions to the left lucas julie to the right scott natalie gilbert may we move this to consent agenda holly thank you 9e the board will consider approving on second reading

076additions revisions or deletions to district policies 91 cfd local accounting activity funds management revised 9e2 cqb local technology resources cyber security revised 9e3 fde local admissions school safety transfers revised lucas questions julie scott natalie gilbert i do you you know i can't go any longer than that without asking you a question you you knew it was going to happen so in 92 we are required to have a cyber security chief do we have one a cyber security yes and when did we appoint one yesterday no it was was it 2019 yeah 2019. so we actually appointed an individual long before we were required to do so yes and the policy just has slightly changed in the language um and it's really more related to the fact of who can report breaches is one of the

077main things that they indicated here used to be it was just the cyber security coordinator now anybody can report a breach and when we talked about this in 2019 and i have a couple of technology experts on the board if you would please talk a little bit about security breaches because school systems and in fact a very large one in the greater san antonio area not only was it brief they were held for ransom so so talk about what type of uh what what are we what are we required to do in this case i'm going to let paula ross come up here because she can do it more eloquently than i can there's a variety of breaches fishing ransomware malware antivirus there's a variety of ways that we could be breached data on the

078web submitted so and would you briefly identify what security measures we have in place to address yes so we have the taxes we have a security defense in depth approach and we start with our endpoints where we have antivirus we have firewall in place for internets we have data backups we have air gap backups we have a variety of measures in place depending on the different points on the network as part of this policy are trustees required to take a cyber security course and is your department charged with ensuring that trustees take this course in 2019 it was every employee and every board member and contractor i'm gonna turn to barney do our board members um requi they're not required any longer but as a cyber security coordinator we are encouraging that every board member

079and employee continue we're offering the training and we are monitoring the training thank you i think it's excellent training whether we're required to take it any longer or not i think it's very important thank you uh may we move nine e one two and three mr president jackson if i could just a couple yes comments um so regarding security um so then mr henry jump in whenever you want do you guys have you had an audit pen testing what types of audits do you run what's the frequency of those audits we have had a variety of internal and external pin test and we usually take those we typically take those results and work through triage through the results of that and implement procedures that according to the recommendations i don't recall any of the specifics

080right now but i can get you some of that information we tried to do we've done one um last year and then another one this year okay um and what considerations do we have so you know i i it's a very complicated problem because we have you know some 100 000 plus kiddos running around with our computers on our network what what could go wrong um and they're they're creative little guys and gals the chromebook specifically yes ma'am most of the chromebooks are um updated on a regular basis via google and google and admin and we have they're they're pretty tight devices it's not um as open as a windows device so they're not as susceptible to a lot of the uh vulnerabilities got it and i know that we have our own data centers

081and we're speaking about security but in my world security also means availability of data correct so what do we do in terms of failover plans and the ability to do a recovery disaster recovery we are working through setting up at different points we work through for example we have a failover when we i'll give you an example with our wireless when we originally designed our wireless most of our byot data went through one data center and a lot of our um and that was just um we had to work within type parameters when we said when we installed that recently we have redesigned that and we've we've balanced our wireless data between the two data centers and we have actually practiced a disconnect of one data center to verify that our wireless would follow would

082would transfer over to the other data center measures like that in place and i'm sure that went swimmingly nothing went wrong at all right it went pretty well actually i won't say that it was perfect but it did go fairly well okay nothing you did great lucas thank you okay so may we move this to the center agenda then yes yes holly thank you 9f the board will consider approving the memorandum of understanding between sam houston state university and cypress fairbanks isd to provide a master of education degree program with a focus on school counseling to my right scott natalie gilbert lucas julie may we move 9f to the consent agenda holly 9g the board will consider approving the first amendment to the 2021-2022 interlocal agreements with harris county resources for children and adults lucas

083julie scott natalie gilbert i do have one question roy this has to be approved by the trustees but since we're talking about the county how did the commissioners vote on this or have they voted they have not that's part of the process to where you get the opportunity to approve that and then we work with harris county on that we've got paperwork that'll be signed after monday night assuming that you approve that and then dr henry signs that and is sent to the county now this says it's the first amendment uh was it approved by the commissioners in its original form prior to the amendment yes if you think back i believe it was uh june of 2021 where you approved 18 youth service specialists and that was approved and this is simply making an

084amendment to that so if we choose to use esther funds for those positions or part of those positions we can do so and do you recall if that was a unanimous approval by county commissioners at that time i can't say that i know that if that was unanimous or not perhaps i don't know do you know about marnie or harry i i don't know that but this is a program in general that's supported by both sides of the aisle so it's my record so it's my recollection that it was in fact unanimous that's good to know but yes we have been in partnership for several years with them with uh specifically with you service specialists very good may we move this to the consent agenda holly 98 the board will consider awarding bids and contracts

085and or authorizing purchase orders as recommended in the posted agenda item gilbert you'll be up because mr bill powell is one of our presenters 9h1 athletic all activity student accident insurance renewal 982 audio meters for health services 9h3 portable building deck ramp and walkway installations 984 property insurance renewal that's all of 9-8 questions lucas julie to the right scott natalie gilbert no it's okay bill so i do have a question property insurance renewal please give us a brief overview this is a large contract it did go it did increase so so can we have a little bit of background on this please absolutely and actually i'd like to ask amanda boltz to come up and respond to the question hello good evening yes this is a large increase we were expecting about 25 percent increase

086but it ended up being about percent increase um so the premium is five million nine sixty one oh one zero um so our our broker mcgriff they actually go out and they um they try and get us the best bid possible and so they engage with over 50 insurance carriers and pools to provide competitive responses and so we actually have 16 different carriers in order to get the slow up a premium did that answer your question so why did it go up by somewhere between 18 and 25 percent um just the number of claims across the u.s actually 2021 was the second most annual records in history so 2020 we had the most of 22 billion dollar weather and climate disaster um and so in 2021 there was just two less so there was 20

087billion dollar weather and climate disasters any significant ones you mentioned united states anything significant hitting the school district um in 2021 we had winter storm yuri yeah we did didn't it for thank you for the viewing audience the answers that you just heard were all known to the trustees and material provided to us but when you see an increase of this size i think it's important that that we provide that answer to everybody who cares to to know about it so so thank you for going over that and and my colleagues thank you for your forbearance and in my asking a question that you all already knew the answer to so may we move 9h cons to consent agenda holly 9i the board will consider approving construction proposals and contracts paid from bond funds and

088mno funds to the recommended contractors and authorized the superintendent or designate to execute all necessary documents related to such contracts as follows 9i1 2021 ben bradley police building renovation and edition 9i2 2022 cffcu and prison stadiums led displays questions to my right scott natalie gilbert i've got one lucas so roy i've got a question on how we went about the process for selecting the contractor for the renovations we utilized a competitive sale proposal process and i'll let mr morgan uh answer further his team did the evaluation thank you roy i thought you had it i was gonna go sit back down we have we did use the competitive seal proposal method and we open the proposals at a given time and then we have an evaluation committee that evaluates each of the general contractors our

089a e team architect engineer team also evaluates the general contractors and we get references from other districts how many what are the can you give me an example the criteria that you should use to make a decision so we have 120 point scale we use price which is 40 points which is about 33 of the evaluation reputation of the offer the quality under of similar scope projects that they've done we use the completion rate for similar scope projects that they've done we use the response to warranty the closeout record how quickly they can close out a project their project team and their subcontractors i assume that that's a similar criteria to the criteria that you've used in the past your other contract criteria for years and what's our success rate and generally speaking in hitting

090on time on budget through that selection criteria process it's very high okay um thank you i just wondered when we had a large number like this i just wanted to understand what our methodology is we're very thorough very good okay thank you that's all my questions okay julie matt while you're there i had a question about the um cffcu and pridgeon stadium's led displays why are we using mno funds instead of bond funds for that purchase so this project has been funded through advertising revenues that have accrued over the years so it was a good opportunity to reinvest in the stadiums to enhance the stadium experience but also provide additional advertising opportunities yes ma'am thank you and a minor minor aside very quickly lucas thank you for asking that when i was a first year

091trustee i asked that question and then the follow-up question that i asked is that approach that we're using is that permitted by law i thought by law we had to accept the lowest bid no sir we need to we accept the most responsive bidder and price is a part of that but we want to make sure that we get a general contractor that we're confident can complete the job do a quality job at the best price very good thank you sir yeah and actually if i could real quick matt and as someone who is a my firm is a consulting firm and we don't bid on anything school districts so don't don't even go there but i just appreciate the statement that you just made we're not going for the cheapest we're going for the

092best value absolutely and that's a very important distinction and i fully support it thank you natalie i have a question about the process before you get the competitive sealed bid i understand the price reputation all those things you rate it on what are the screenings who's able to even give a bid are there sizes of the company or other criteria upon which it may not be open to everyone to compete for that we don't pre-qualify our contractors so we advertise the csp and anybody can respond we just open it and evaluate it appropriately is that also true like an architecture and all the other stages of building architecture is an rfq we can only do it based off qualifications so when we select our architecture firms we advertise an rfq request for qualifications we bring

093in firms we rate those through a committee and then we bring that recommendation to the board and we usually do that before or right after we pass the bond so the group of architects that we've had for the 2014 bond because the 19 bond kind of overlapped we continued with those architects so basically architecture firms could have been screened out by size or other qualification and not been able to bid anybody can submit the response to the rfq we will evaluate their responses to the rfq and decide who if they're qualified and who we're going to interview so there would be a record we could take a look at those who architecture firms who may have wanted to or responded to the rfeq but maybe didn't make it through the committee process yes the criteria

094for that that's correct i'll be interested in seeing that information okay okay great thank you yes ma'am may we move this to things the consent agenda uh and i will we'll ask this question um there's a difference and for those of y'all who have served on a mug board and i know i'm not the only one there's a difference between an rfp and an rfq is it true from a state perspective that for professionals you may only request qualifications you may not request a bid that is correct mr jackson and that includes architects and auditors it's professional services and it's enumerated very good statue thank you um nine i i don't think i got all the way through move to consent holly 9j the board will consider approving the superintendent's recommendation to give notice to

095shikaya 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 will be discussed in closed session pursuant to section 551.071 and 551.074 at the end of the meeting this evening the superintendent's briefing will be presented at the regular board meeting on monday may 9 2022 before we move to closed session i would like to thank everyone for being here tonight or viewing uh on your television or some other stream screen at home or wherever you're seeing us may i have a motion for mr jackson before you go to closed session i just wanted to recognize one of our outstanding graduates from uh so i'm going

096to embarrass her a little bit who's at the university of florida florida now which is uh allie heinemann and ali is here this evening with her dad so glad to see her she's home for summer break welcome to our meeting thank you for attending now before we move to closed session i would like to thank everyone once again may i have a motion to move into closed session regarding agenda item 9.1 dot j well i thought you were done so so moved motion's been made do i have a second motion has been made and seconded thank you we will adjourn to close session mr secretary please note the time as 7 29. [Music] you