Board Work Session Jan. 10, 2022

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening the cypress fairbanks independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a board work session on monday january 10th 2022 at 6pm in the boardroom of the cypress fairbanks independent school district instructional support center located at 103 10 300 jones road houston texas for the purpose of reviewing that portion of the thursday december 13 2021 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 budgets contracts personnel appointments and make policy for the district it

002is not the role of the board to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a public meeting of the board of trustees not a meeting of the public the meeting is open to all who wish to attend and 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 the meeting parliamentarian continued or repeated disruption of any board activity by words or actions may result in removal or loss of the privilege to attend the

003meeting prior to this meeting board members received information related to items on tonight's agenda agenda items will not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice during the course of this meeting the board may determine that a closed session is necessary in that event the board will meet in closed session to consider matters duly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.0 through 551.084 of the texas government code these proceedings are airing live on comcast channel 16 and the district website they will also be available as video on demand on the district website following tonight's meeting for the video to adequately reflect the proceedings i respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones like mine are turned off or in silent mode we thank

004you for taking the time to join us this evening and for your interest in the cypress fairbanks independent school district i would also like to take this opportunity to recognize our community leadership committee members who are in attendance this evening and when i call your name if you would please stand or wave your hand so we we know where you're sitting ryan irving tana lamb stacy anderson nancy frankel tanya yaeggy thank you for being here we have no boy scouts in attendance this evening the invocation pledge of allegiance vision and mission statement recognitions board comments citizen participation and public hearing portions of the agenda will be presented at the regular board meeting on thursday january 13 2022 we will now hear public comments in the order in which they have they have been presented we

005do have a timer mr secretary are you ready very good uh our first speaker this evening is stacy de meyer good evening i wanted to begin my comments on the resolution condemning racism by thanking the board for drafting and signing this document back in september of 2020. the events that took place several months before the signing of the resolution brought the conversation of race and injustices to the table which was not an easy topic for any school board or school district to discuss thank you for handling this discussion with care so as to make every student of our incredibly diverse district feel like they and their experiences matter sixteen months later the resolution is now being revisited and this concerns me greatly i would love for the resolution to remain as is but i understand

006that others may feel differently than i do a rewording of the resolution is certainly preferred over its termination altogether a termination that would be harmful to so many cfisd students staff and families however this process must come with transparency the current version of the resolution mentions having transparent dialogue and the new board members campaigned on the importance of transparency in order for there to be transparency in this process the board cannot be the sole contributors in the re-drafting of the resolution this must be a district-wide effort that also includes students teachers administrators and parents in the discussion now would be the perfect opportunity for our district to create some sort of committee that is responsible for matters concerning diversity and inclusion this committee's first task could be to work on updating the resolution but they

007can eventually work on other tasks such as accountability over the equity audit results and coming up with a proper alternative to the no place for hate program our district would significantly benefit by having such a committee and honestly it's overdue please consider how the board can include folks from all across the district in the discussion regarding the resolution and how to make this process as transparent as possible thank you for your time and so our timer is not working yet so our our secretary will be keeping track of the time on his cell phone and he will let you know when you have hit the 30-second mark [Laughter] and once your time has expired i will ask you to conclude your comments our next speaker this evening is alexi swarsky yes i had hoped to

008comment on the resolution and i could not find it on the website neither could i find the equity audit i work a lot in the texas capitol they have over three thousand bills in a regular session you can find all of them and all of that information very easily on the texas legislature online website so all i conclude is there's the lack of transparency and honesty and we elected three new board members to address that and hopefully the other board members are on board with that if not we're having another election in a couple years so the citizens of scifir isd and the taxpayers and the parents of the students in osaka isd deserve to know what is being taught what is being proposed what is being suggested by the cypher isd board it's just

009astonishing to me that something would be on the agenda and i could not find any information about it online so um and shame on anybody that is trying to withhold that information there was a house bill passed 3979 by representative steve toth in in june of 2021 and it makes a lot of this racist teaching illegal my grandmother was a principal for 20 years after being a teacher for 20 years in elementary schools she said the saddest day of her life was when she had to go collect the bibles out of the schools we need to allow god into the schools i didn't say promote him but not restrict him and this racist social engineering should not be part of schools the main part should be education okay i'm going to read a few lines

010from this law that this is what is not allowed to be be spoken of taught in texas a teacher administrator or other employee of a state agency school district or open enrollment charter school may not be required to engage in training orientation or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex be required to teach that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race of sex an individual by or to teach an individual please conclude your comments basically to have teaching based on sex our race is illegal in texas now and people should not they cannot shame and guilt students into feeling guilty because of their thank you thank you thank you and if you would bear with us that was two minutes

011and 23 seconds i'll try and give you a little better warning so that you have an easier time of wrapping up your comments but thank you for working with us our next speaker is christina woods mr jackson mr henry trustees good evening and thank you for your work i'm here with cyfair civic alliance and others i wish to address issues related to the resolution to condemn racism in 2020 we as a society experienced a national reckoning around structural racism and racial violence which led to this board in good faith drafting and adopting this resolution to assure black indigenous and students of color that their lives matter in this district and to that end the district pledged that it would do everything in its power to dismantle structural racism in cfisd and to protect black and

012brown students from racism and bigotry in all of its forms however now i understand the board has stricken the resolution from its website and intends to reconsider the content this is of great concern since at the last board meeting one trustee denounced the resolution and another has said he wishes to re revisit it i ask that the board repost the resolution to the website and hold off making any decisions at about the resolution at this thursday's board meeting being that the board is majority white and is in a district that is majority students of color it is an integral and principal decision to make sure that those affected by structural racism and inequity have a voice in what it means and have a voice in what it means to condemn it it is critical that

013the board take the time to connect with black indigenous and students of color in the district in an intentional way about what a resolution condemning racism should include please show the students of this district that you want to do right by black black and brown students and marginalize students by making a commitment to fully engage them in endorsing the resolution's current language or creating new language that matters most to them the board should have an honest and measured response in giving voice to its condemnation of structural racism and racial violence that has been perpetrated by those in our government and those in positions of power in our communities since the inception of this country the time is now for the cfisd board to listen to students and support them in creating a resolution please control

014your comments racism and makes makes a commitment to their education and humanity thank you thank you [Music] our next speaker is brian henry good evening i address the board as a member of the sci fair civic alliance we applaud the unanimous vote taken by the board of trustees in 2020 in favor of the resolution condemning racism while some have taken issue with specific language in the resolution the spirit and purpose of the resolution remains admirable and relevant recognizing the ways that racism and discrimination of the past continue to impact the present is not a condemnation of the people alive today but an invitation to construct a more just future admitting that systemic racism impacts our community is not an accusation that our community is racist being honest about our history admitting the truth about the

015present even when it's hard it's how we improve individually and collectively we have not as some have suggested arrived at a point in history where racism and discrimination no longer exist and it is not divisive to teach students how to recognize and address the inadequacies and injustices that remain this is what it means to participate in the intergenerational struggle to gradually perfect our union we applaud scifir isd for courageously participating in this effort and we urge a continued commitment to anti-racism and opportunity for all thank you our next speaker is dr tara cummings good evening i'm dr tara cummings and i'm a parent i want to start by commending the board for drafting and adopting the resolution condemning racism given that the district is approximately 80 students of color such a resolution is absolutely crucial

016to the property of our district cfisd cannot fulfill its mission if students and staff do not feel explicitly safe secure and supported the resolution was one imperative step in creating and maintaining that atmosphere hearing that the board is now revisiting the resolution is incredibly concerning especially given the rhetoric of the recent board election at last month's board meeting one of you stated i do not support the resolution of equity which calls our district and by virtue the staff and students systemically racist i have carefully read and reread the resolution and because i have a copy of it before it was yanked from the website uh and nowhere does it come remotely close to saying any such thing such a statement from one of our trustees is not only inaccurate it is inflammatory and divisive and

017has no place here in terms of revisiting the resolution first there must be a comprehensive judicious and transparent conversation an actual dialogue between the board district admin and staff students and community members before any decisions are made regarding the resolution i anticipate that the equity audit results which i'm super stoked to finally hear about tonight will only further confirm the need for the resolution i understand that there may be divergent perspectives regarding some of the language of the resolution as it currently stands i believe it is reasonable to consider revising some of that language as long as the spirit of unequivocally condemning racism remains so that it opens the door for a commitment in both word and deed to racial justice within our district of particular import voices of students and staff of color must

018be prioritized in any conversation or decisions regarding the resolution in the interim the resolution needs to be reposted to the website and across the district facilities its removal sends the message perhaps inadvertently that cfisd does not condemn racism and that message is immeasurably harmful thank you our next speaker is tana lamb mine's a little more personal thank you for letting me speak i'm here again like everybody else in the resolution condemning racism i'm actually happy this is being revisited because we should get more community input make sure the language is not too overreaching and also make sure it's reflected the entire district not just one side or the other parents and kids this is not really a contest about which side is right or will get what they want but it should be a collaboration

019bringing people together for listening and compromise um same as tara said during the 13th board meeting it was stated by one of the trustees that i do not support the resolution of equity which calls our district by virtue of sap and students systemically racist it's not in there i've read through it and it does not state that to me at least this is kind of a broad and flexible statement that actually serves to divide and really stir people up in the district more than bringing us together um as you can see i'm a white woman i don't take any offense to what's in that resolution whatsoever in fact i actually agree with everything in it but i also know that you know other people have different opinions and that's fine so we can change the

020language we can change the tone to make it more acceptable to everyone i also have a child that is part of the lgbt community so i'm happy that it talks about that too in the resolution um maybe someday my kid won't be called slurs in the hallway like he is now and our board trustees won't feel the need to campaign on extremely ugly rhetoric against our lgbtq kiddos instead of us being against everything and scared that the kids will somehow be indoctrinated in our schools we should be striving to embrace and understand our differences i don't want to win anything i honestly just want my child and all of our vulnerable children to stop being attacked and please remember that just getting rid of this resolution without any work to compromise would be sending a

021very clear message very clear to parents and kids a clear message of who does and does not matter in our very diverse districts our next speaker is judy de haan good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak let me begin by stating once again that every child is precious and that we should not succumb to the divisive parks as propaganda to divide our community teachers and especially our children based on race gender ethnicity religion or any other aspect it is wrong i began speaking with you last year about the racist narrative that was being thrust upon the community and the children via the equity resolution that was unanswered unanimously approved by the board and also removed by the previous board not this board from off of the website the board felt it was

022then justified without evidence to conduct an equity audit to date even when requested via legal means by an open records request the district has not provided the parents with the actual survey document to be utilized nor a process of selecting vendors they have stalled at every opportunity and have now advised they are sending the information request to the attorney general for ruling what is the board and the district that they do not want us to know information that has been provided is validation that the board and that the board approved is number one a hanover research to design a survey and facilitate a focus group under a three-year subscription costing a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars per year ending in 2023 a contract with millennium learning concepts to analyze policies and practices regarding perceived systemic

023racist racial inequities as a cost of 75 000 their client list includes only small cities organizations and isds the largest being hisd why would we select an organization that is providing the same services for the largest failing district in texas and that is also an investigation for corruption and finally tyrone howard uh providing training on equity and crt throughout on cultural relevance disproportionality of student discipline teaching with equity raising culture in the classroom for forty thousand dollars all of this for a total of taxpayer dollars spent that are focused on assisting children not focusing on academic basics of reading writing arithmetic but providing division total of 466 000 that is unacceptable thank you our last speaker this evening is teresa thomas good evening as an indigenous female i am here to speak to say i

024am offended to continue to read a resolution that calls everyone in this life your community by inference and by spirit you me every parent and every child are racist this is hurtful this is causing more harm to our community and why would we want to take this wonderful community and children backwards god loves everyone yet there are people here who would be intolerant of this reference tolerance would appear to be limited to what is outlined in this resolution you said you want opportunity for all your opportunity for all is to call these children and me racist by inference and by spirit with the equity resolution and audit i am offended at this categorization of this community and especially the children money is being spent on divisive programs while teachers pay out of their pockets to

025get supplies for their classrooms it is clear that this racist resolution and the audit want more non-academic programs why do we need another bloated california-based program here in scifire would monies be better spent going into instructions of science math reading and writing that an indigenous woman benefited from to prepare the children for future success this board raises money through various means under the auspices of children fiduciary responsibility is key lester appear usury of children it is time to return to the basics and provide for their academic education instead of the advice attendance of opportunity for all where is the audit of standards for this district why do we not have standards for academics why is this very foundation of education not a priority let us be known as the district with the highest standards that

026are the same in every classroom parents have a right to know that their children's minds are not being manipulated but instead are being taught the basics to ensure that they have the ability to achieve please stop denying these children academic time and money rescind this resolution as an indigenous woman i ask you want to thank all of our speakers and and patrons of the district for helping us work through our technical difficulties i'm sure we will have this this matter resolved by thursday before moving on i would like to ask the board if they would agree to reviewing agenda item 10j construction proposal and contracts before we proceed with the reports portion of the agenda out of consideration for our guests architect companies vlk and paige who are here to answer any questions we may

027have this evening let me look to the right and to the left then let's go ahead and proceed with item 10j the board will consider approving construction proposals and contracts paid from bond funds to the recommended contractors and authorize the superintendent or designee to execute all necessary documents related to such contracts we have a brief presentation for matt morgan mr morgan president jackson dr henry members of the board tonight we have two construction contracts for your approval 2019 bond work at andre and walker and 2019 bond work at hoover moore and pope most of this scope includes the safety and security components included in the 2019 bond which include security segmentation which we all also refer to as security for open concept classrooms and what this involves is combining class uh pods of four that's

028eight classrooms and providing doors so they're lockable we also are including additional impact resistant glass additional card readers on exterior doors additional lockdown buttons additional security at the front desk classroom phones and security fencing andre elementary will also get a kitchen renovation and more will get an eight classroom addition to accommodate the segmentation uh we experienced no flooding at andre in preparation for your question but andre hoover pope or walker during the harvey uh storm and more we did have significant flooding but we did a renovation and a restoration there in 2017 and including included additional on-site detention so no mitigation or additional mitigation will be required at any of these campuses i'll be happy to answer any questions so let me start with to the left mr scanlon miss heidemann and then to the

029right mr scott doctor blessing game mr sarabia so just to be clear that we're bringing the name schools back up to par with the other ones that we have in the district is that correct yes sir to the best of our ability we're increasing increasing classroom size uh mostly to 700 square feet adding the security close concept for additional learning improved learning environment and all the safety and security features outstanding thank you matt and mr henry i apologize for putting your last name uh first and your first name last i'll work i'll work on that for thursday right it shouldn't be that difficult matt if if you would you know we're we're here about academic attainment why in your opinion do you think these modifications will enhance attainment for our students or do you think

030that it will have no impact i think it'll have a significant impact if you go visit the campuses that we just completed this summer and talk to the principals they talk about the improvement in acoustics uh less less noise in the classroom less noise in the passing periods from the hallways the additional lighting the larger classrooms the flexible furniture all of them have been very impressed with the impact we've had on the educational environment thank you and and since we have new board members please review for us what happened to moore well we had in roy correct me i i think we had about two two to three feet of water in moore we had to go completely gut that school and build it back within a matter of months we used uh what was

031matzky on jones road we called it more on jones road during the interim while we put the school back together but vlk was the architect on that and did a fantastic job of getting that school put back together did we do any testing to see if there was any bacterial infiltration into the brickwork absolutely sir we had a efi our environment environmental consultant do testing before and testing after to clear the building thank you miss blackshear do you have questions no questions mr jackson uh and and that brings up uh another matter but but first there are no other questions may we move this to the consent agenda or do you want it to stand alone let me look to the right consent to the left uh this will be on the consent uh thank

032you miss blackshear and thank you mr morgan so we had a voice that came out of the air let me turn to our attorney uh miss sims would you please explain to to us about how one of our trustees can be off-site and uh can she really talk about what's going on is it legal for her to be here legal for her to listen participate the open meetings act actually does um specifically provide for either video conferencing or um or audio conferencing um they both have very specific um reasons and times that you can do that audio conferencing is a little more limited and has to be an emergency situation but the video conferencing feature so long as a quorum of the board is physically present in the location that is open to the public

033oh i'm so exciting i'm clearing the room but um it's not the first time fellas don't worry about it but as long as a quorum of the board is physically present in a location that's open to the public if there is a trustee who can be available video and audio at the same time so it has you have to be able to see your fellow trustee and hear her and she has to be able to see and hear you then she can be part of the deliberative body and part of the quorum and and vote and participate in the meeting as if she were present and interestingly this was actually available prior to 2020. we remember we went remote this is not what you asked this is why i clear rooms but we went remote

034for a very short period of time for everyone and that did require suspension of certain provisions of the open meetings act which our governor did do and then that's since been lifted and that's how we were able to do everyone remotely but we've always been able to do if we have the technology and thanks to paula ross and her team we do if you have a trustee that needs to participate remotely this is an option and it is um it is legal in accordance with open meetings act which is always the first question that mr uh president tom jackson asked me very good thank you we will now move to the reports portion of the agenda the administration will prepare will provide an oral report on the equity and culture audit the presenters are dr

035debra stewart and annika mayers dr stewart thank you good evening board of trustees and dr henry thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share the findings of the cyprus fairbanks isd equity audit the audit was conducted by millennium learning concepts mlc led by dr roger cleveland is a consulting team that is well versed in educational practices and offers over 32 years of experience including equity-based studies the district partnered with mlc to conduct an audit throughout the 2021 school year in order to number one examine student learning outcomes in district culture two examine examine the district's strengths and areas for growth for ensuring that all students continue to have opportunities to be academically successful and lastly to assist the district in identifying next steps to reduce opportunity gaps and enhance an equitable learning environment for

036all students onika mayors in her role as hr director along with many others have been instrumental in facilitating the audit process so at this time i would like to turn the presentation over to onika mayors onika good evening president jackson board of trustees and dr henry millennium learning concepts also known as mlc utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods during the 2019-20 school year to complete their assessment and capture an objective snapshot of the district the mlc research team designed survey items for the district-wide survey and utilized shared interview and focus group questions and classroom observation protocols interview questions and survey items were utilized to gather specific information addressing the district's mission school culture support for all students and the presence of equitable practices related to language disability class gender and race documents reviewed by

037mlc included but were not limited to materials related to teaching and learning achievement data discipline data staff and student handbooks previous survey results fiscal distribution of resources board meeting minutes and the district's improvement plan in april 2021 921 surveys were administered to district employees almost 000 staff members completed the survey 674 surveys were distributed to middle school students 7986 surveys were distributed to high school students almost 12 000 students completed the survey in may 2021 trained assessors from ls mlc conducted small group interviews with randomly selected students from middle and high schools only participation was voluntary and required parental consent selected teachers and other staff from 14 randomly selected campuses and central office staff were also invited to voluntarily participate in small group interviews the data gathered in this process helped to capture the perception

038beliefs and experiences of students and staff related to their campus activities learning opportunities and district and school climate this information also helped to establish the extent of equitable practices in cfisd and determine how the district might improve upon developing equitable learning communities the achievement data reviewed was for the 2018-19 school year and was taken from the 2018 2019 and 2019-22 texas academic performance reports in ela reading and math these percentages that you see reflect the percent of students who meet or exceed the grade level standard mlc reported that african-american hispanic and economically disadvantaged students as well as students receiving special education services are not meeting their potential and developing the skills they need to become 21st century global leaders based on this achievement data set further they noted that across ela reading math sat and

039ap access and outcomes the data demonstrate consistent learning opportunities large learning opportunities exist across racial and ethnic groups for example the percentage of white students meeting or exceeding grade levels standard in ela reading and math is nearly 20 percent higher than the percentage of their black or african american peers according to mlc cfisd also underserves economically disadvantaged students and students receiving special education supports as demonstrated by large learning opportunities where these students fall behind their middle and upper income peers and general education peers the district discipline data is representative of the four largest racial ethnic groups in cfisd the data reviewed by mlc was retrieved from the texas education agency 2018-2019 discipline report discipline trends show that black and african american students in cfisd are suspended at elevated rates and that takes away learning time

040and limits their academic potential black students are less than 20 percent of the cfisd student population but make up nearly 40 percent of students receiving in-school and out-of-school suspensions mlc noted that this pattern does not appear to impact students of other ethnicities and harms african american students similar to achievement patterns this discipline pattern is a district-wide concern consistent across cfisd and has profound consequences for student learning and academic outcomes the staff demographics data represent the four largest racial ethnic groups and was based on internal 2019-20 staff and leadership data mlc highlighted that the diversity of the cfisd student body is not represented by the demographic makeup of cfisd professional staff and leadership hispanic or latino students and asian students do not see teachers and leaders across cfisd who look like them and share their cultural

041backgrounds mlc cited research from gershensson and others in 2018 and lindsay and heart 2017 which shows that students benefit academically and are likely to be suspended less when they have at least one teacher who shares their racial or ethnic background these findings according to mlc are significant giving the learning opportunities and discipline patterns impacting different groups of students in cfisd in sharing their commendations mlc acknowledged the district's many successes strong star pass rates and a graduation rate 4 percent above the state average investments in resources particularly technological resources which support teaching and learning as well as robust extracurricular and athletic offerings for students a culture of data-driven decision-making staff including teachers and counselors working diligently to support students and exemplary fiscal transparency and efficiency survey data specifically indicated a culture of using assessment data to

042drive instruction over 90 percent of staff responded strongly agree or agree to the statement in our school assessment data are used in faculty and department meetings to inform instructional practices mlc also noted that cfisd possesses several equity related strengths which serve as a foundation for further equity work these strengths include dedicated supports for english language learners include including 13 new arrival centers educational support services and community engagement central office departments some professional development addressing diversity and equity and tens of thousands of connected devices laptops and hot spots as well as thousands of meals delivered to students throughout the covet 19 pandemic to support engagement and learning above all else staff and students consistently spoke about cfisd as a welcoming community as one student reflected quote i think all the teachers and leaders at our school

043have been so welcoming another student added quote i feel the sense of community and belonging here for us i like the fact that most of the teachers are really cool and understanding many times when things come up or if we need to talk to someone they will make time for some of us added a third student many staff members also echoed a sense of community and belonging in cfisd schools quote this is a familial type climate it is a warm environment for all one teacher shared while a different teacher added quote we have a great environment we are a family an extended family a third teacher added we welcome everyone with warm welcoming personalities and faces finally a staff member simply shared scifi isd is an exceptional place to work survey data further support this

044important commendation 91 of cfisd staff responded strongly agree or agree to the statement our faculty and staff feel safe in our schools the findings of the mlc equity and culture team indicate three major growth opportunities for cfisd to assist in creating an environment that fosters maximum achievement and success for all students the following are three recommended opportunities for growth first staff and students are sometimes unclear on where the district stands when it comes to diversity and equity many staff and students shared that the cfisd mission vision and district leadership more broadly have yet to define and clarify what commitments to diversity and or equity look like in practice in cfisd revealingly staff often described school and district administrators as caring instructional leaders committed to fostering a positive district and school climate but less often described

045district and schools administrators as equity leaders next the audit found that a system-wide focus on equity is inconsistently in place in the day-to-day activities of cfisd staff praised the district for supporting schools and students with resources ranges ranging from technology to social emotional learning supports while at the same time drawing attention to inconsistent commitments to equity as well as specific inequities in cfisd staff mentioned occasional district communication and professional development addressing equity however they drew attention to patterns concerns and questions they believe reflect a limited or inconsistent commitment to equity as opposed to a systemic approach where equity is at the core of district decision making one teacher commented quote my campus has good intentions to address equity and i appreciate working with open and equity-minded people however i don't feel that we are engaged

046in the right systematic a process that addresses equity-based practices nor are we effectively weaving a vision mission and goal into our planning professional development and daily practices another teacher added quote race and equity are hardly ever discussed by administration also i've never received regular communication from the district that emphasizes the importance of diversity end quote third while some staff described recent pd or professional development addressing diversity as helpful staff often called for deeper and more sustained forms of equity learning and equity efforts mlc describes capacity building as more than a series of professional development sessions or a list of resources capacity building they said refers to the collective power of an organization or district to engage in and sustain learning and action that further a commitment to in this case equity and equitable access to

047opportunities one teacher pointed out quote while i agree that most of our faculty and staff have an intellectual understanding of educational equity i do not believe that we have an adequate plan to realistically address the inequity present in our school in practice the children attending cfisd come from a variety of cultural backgrounds more than 100 languages and dialects are represented within the student body the demographic makeup of the cfisd student body is currently 45 percent hispanic 22 percent white 19 african american 9 asian 3 percent multicultural and less than 1 native american and pacific islander a minority enrollment is 78 of the student body slightly more than the texas state average of 72 percent 51 percent of our students are economically disadvantaged while 14 percent of our students are english language learners and nine percent

048of our students receive special education services mlc recognized that cfisd is a diverse system that serves approximately 117 000 students across 91 campuses in northwest houston in fact it is one of the largest and most culturally diverse school systems in the state of texas they also made note of other culturally diverse school systems in texas and shared that fort worth isd's office of equity and excellence houston isd's office of equity and outreach and austin isd's equity office provide relevant and local examples of district equity offices and broader infrastructure including equity data dashboards equity advisory committees equity policies and various equity staff positions on a final note mlc recognized that this once rural district has made its mark as one of the most progressive and innovative school systems in the country and continues to find strength

049in its humble beginnings and strong roots cfisd is now a suburban district among the 40 largest districts in the country and continues to grow rapidly to ensure that we continue to create a welcoming environment for all stakeholders and meet the needs of all students based on their individual circumstances we must continue to work diligently to reduce opportunity gaps and enhance an equitable learning environment for all 117 000 students entrusted to our care by identifying board goals and establishing our next steps we will help to bring out the best in every student thank you we will now open for questions and let me turn to the right mr henry yes i have a lot of questions um start on page six of the equity audit report uh i'm a big data guy so i know data

050data can be skewed any way you want to and it looks like the way the momentum skew this data makes it look like they cherry pick the data very poorly um it says black students are less than 20 percent of the population of sciaffair but make up 40 of the students receiving in-school suspensions if i go back to the data which we're going to talk a little bit later as well about the reports i think we have another report as well mr jackson correct about police reports and other things as well in the agenda is that correct that is correct okay i believe we only have i think 18 reports in there as far as it have alluded to that high level of actually things but if i go back to the actual numbers of

051the report uh i show on here that of the black students only one hundred 5 four students of black and only two hundred thousand six or four percent of the entire black population have actually been on insta intuition uh in in schools in schools bench suspensions that number looks big and scary 55 percent but really that's not a big number if you look at the total population of the school district so let's put that in perspective to the public that's not a big number at all in fact just give you perspective i want the houston isd is putting this report as a glowing example some we should look at houston xz they have 35 percent are actually put on in school suspension [Applause] pretty bad considering this school is majority black i would like to

052know beyond that did we ever interview the parents involved in these indie school suspensions do we ever interview the kids the teachers to find out why these kids were actually involved in school suspensions probably not do we ever involve the opposing parents the kids involved in that so why they're actually involved the systemic problem of why they're being actually involved in these in-school suspensions because looking at bare numbers that tells us nothing we have to find a systemic problem of why these kids are getting involved in problems one after the other after the other just like we do with reading with dr mccena right why are they having reading problems or why are they having problems with math so we have to look beyond the raw numbers to understand with the why so i think

053this pile of rubbish we have here quite frankly is a cherry pick the numbers okay let's go to page 25 of this report i'm sorry for the audience y'all need to look at this page 25 it says you mentioned austin isd and i'm not saying you austin isd and houstonized here shine examples yet houston isd is involved in a huge scandal in fact one of their trustees is now in jail their ceo is under indictment districts about to be taken over by the state in fact they're actually people leaving in droves in austin isd invector chief of police which is actually just involved with uh last month helped an officer uh was actually choking and we gave an award to uh he told me he left there a couple years ago because people are leaving

054because the policies of austin isd and millennium gave them some great examples of diversity and inclusion they're not doing them so well 30 of their population is actually leaving because of policies there not a good examples of thinking this report natalie let me ask you a question you used to work for hcisd correct last five years has performance gone up or down of hisd up or down down fact reading report's been going down year over year let's talk about the dna at this stuff as well i did some research online this is from the oregon association scholars the high cost of diversity and bureaucracy of oreck and public schools which is what the millennium is recommending by the way which is to off open up a associate superintendent of diversity and inclusion which is a

055i guess if you look at the total cost of that it's going to be around 175 dollars fully loaded person had a staff of secretaries and added staff of other people there we're probably looking another i don't know half a million dollars where is that going to come from what are we going to pay for that i just had a conversation with a lady in the audience at this side of the week taking books at a library now we're going to pay for a 7.84 dollar book but yet we want to put more people in the administration office let's talk about this university of oregon psu oregon state talking about 218 000 for some dni 1.5 million dollars in staff costs overrun taxpayers are being cost to this the overrun cost over and over again

056and yet the numbers of working universities are going down over and over again sats are going down terrible awful i'd like to also look at page 11 if you would please page 11 of dnr report i'm not sure i was supposed to get out but unfortunately it did i was very disappointed to learn that our administration put forth the speaker during the summer pd that talked about white privilege very disappointed if this is true dr henry i would like an investigation in this why we put forth a speaker that input and forth in front of our teachers white privilege and then according this report teachers were walking up because they were embarrassed for their own race and you shamed them in this in this pd if this is true dr henry i would like to

057investigate this why we did this who did this why it cost who caused it and we should be held accountable and quite frankly someone should be fired for this this is this is unacceptable it's now a law in texas we can't do this under sp3 the new law is in place but that's unacceptable i've heard more stories around the round about this but we cannot do this to our teachers we cannot subject them to making them feel bad because of who they are as a race i would like you to look in that dr henry please i'm not sure about this audit report was put forth to our board members but i don't like it it doesn't match what i was told it was going to be in the first place i talked to a

058couple of board members previously and the intention i was told in the first place was this was going to look at every single school member school person within our district and say what is this district standard for for a kiddo in our district or they go to farney elementary or they go to a different school in different side of school and do they have the right computer do they have the right part of their education are they getting all this great school supplies do they have the right teacher in place because we talk about opportunity for all i don't like that i would rather say what is the district standard across the board i'll give you an for instance let me give you an analogy i'll go buy a car i'm gonna go buy me

059a say a ford mustang i'm gonna go to one dealership here and i go to another dish up here what is the standard i'm gonna get from that car does it have roll-up windows i'm kind of dating myself now but or does it have electronic windows what is the standard for that car i'm gonna get and making sure i can look at that analogy across the board and that's what the standard should be for every kid with our district i want to make sure where that kid is black brown white or whatever he is whether his social economic schedule is really high really low he gets the same level of education that's not what this report came across that's not what it did at all and i know i talked to another board member i'm

060not going to call that person out but that's not what this report did at all and i'm ashamed that we didn't do that it failed instead this looks at trying to look at a bloated dna office to include more overpaid people that don't share our community values and take away critical programs out of the pocketbooks of our own kids and our teachers my mom was a teacher for 40 years and every year she'd come home and talk about how much money she spent on our own classroom because quite frankly we don't pay enough money for stuff that goes in the classroom i remember my kids were in school at farney we had to do a drive because we couldn't afford paper copy paper we had to go supplies copy paper for the school kids at

061school i know teachers are hurting every day you four voted for this this thing i didn't vote for this natalie didn't vote for this lucas didn't vote for this it's on y'all quite frankly this heap of junk that we paid for the committee elected those three trustees because of one thing because they saw there was a problem with this board that we had quite frankly a lot of it became because the the equity i think which we're going to talk about later which was this this i know we've been talked about earlier but this whole this whole proclamation you all came out with which really denigrated the denial of the entire community and the most people ever voted an election came out 34 000 people and voted us in i would suggest that we cut

062bait and move on from this thing i would suggest that we we don't approve anything in this quite frankly at all we have an election you don't have election in two years and i hope you do the right thing because quite frankly it's not on me it's on you all which i'll do i would again suggest making this opportunity for all differently i'd also like to point out thing which i forgot as well on here you mentioned talking about people that look like us and things which i would like to remind people our teachers are our most important asset within our district i love our teachers i love what they do for us every day my kiddo loves our loves love our teachers but i looked online you were talking earlier about people that look

063like us and we have such a hard time getting teachers i know it's such a hard hard job you all have a hard job getting teachers very hard people just don't want to be teachers anymore and i get that it's hard but scifir has what 13 black teachers i know you mentioned earlier earlier do you know what the statewide average is for black teachers not at this moment i looked it up the estate wide average for black teachers is ten percent houston isd which i'll use the shine example you know you know what their average number of percentage of black teachers is 36 i look that up you know what their dropout rate is four percent i don't want to be four percent i don't want to be hisd i want to be a shy

064example i want to be the district standard i want to be the place the premium place where people go to go to be and quite frankly we have a limited budget with limited resources we have a great place and let's don't mess it up for everyone else i apologize if i'm passionate about this but it means a lot to me because i love the teachers of the district and we got to keep them here we got to keep them engaged and teachers are leaving in droves for other politicians i looked our numbers the other day and look it was like 30 percent of our teachers correct me if i'm wrong i may be wrong on this i'm sometimes wrong but 30 of our teachers are or 15 15 years or over in tenure that's a

065large number of teachers that could turn over here very soon that concerns me it's the same thing i face in my industry in technology we have an aging problem people are aging out and so we got to be very careful what we do here going forward i apologize compassion thank you very much for your time did you have any questions mr henry i asked my questions and i don't think she had all the answers but i don't think the people that answer the questions are actually here because she didn't create the report you're just presenting them thank you for recognizing that and so i might my frustration was not at you my frustration was that the people who created this report so maybe you can get those answers i hope you can get those answers

066for me back um just some possible can you go over the uh the questions i will get those in writing how about that before the next meeting and i'll get those to you would that be appropriate absolutely dr glassington thank you for a thorough presentation of the information provided to you i would like to say that i think this is a model of the level of professionalism and reporting and uh looking for input from diverse groups that i would like to see um when we look at the parent invoice input survey we do around choice that we would have this kind of level of engagement and professionalism i would say the first thing that was very concerning to me is that the stakeholder group of parents was not included that is a concern our community

067has voiced that parents are being sidelined in their child's education and the fact that we failed to have parents included in this report to me is a miss and therefore it does not validate the results i would definitely want more information before i would want to take action on something that doesn't even include parent voice because parents are the ultimate authority in their child's education i appreciated tana earlier suggesting having input into revision she said students and parents and that's the right spirit i would also say i'm very disappointed when i am passionate about education i'm passionate about children learning to read i look at the reports we'll look at later with our um increasing challenges given the pandemic um to have all children read on level when we're in the 40 percentile and the

068fact that we're discussing here where it says reduce achievement gaps not opportunity gaps they're saying here that we need to reduce the opportunity gap it's basically all talking about the problem and not addressing the problem every penny and all resources should be put on making sure our children can read and do math and think critically and this is driving us into discussing the problem instead of solving the problem i would rather see all that that be that money be spent to make sure that we are achieving what our mission says which is that our children in this district will maximize their potential every child every child maximizing their individual potential every single child i don't color creed preferences doesn't matter every child is achieving their potential and that is not what i see this this

069is discussing the problem and so i would like to see i would also just like to mention that um the spirit of the district that comes through in here the fact that people do feel like they have a family a place that kids will express so much positivity i think that's something to be commended and i think that's the spirit of cisd that we go after and we figure out how we we make sure that every child gets their needs met and as we go through our achievement data later we'll all see how glaring that need is and i would like to see no distractions such as this but focusing on every child meeting their core needs to many of the things that scott says so again my question is how can we best use

070our resources to focus on the fact that we have 56 percent of students that are meeting grade level or above an ela in reading and how can we uh address how what can we do to focus all our energy and attention on the fact that we have 46 percent of students at meeting standards in math thank you and dr blasting did you have any questions for either miss mayor or dr stewart um well i think my question is question i don't expect them to answer that i think it might be one that would i'm shipped over to linda but i think that the question is maybe i'll answer it this way um does the district um linda from the perspective of uh curriculum and instruction um do you see the critical thing being that we

071focus our attention on making sure every student can read on level and do math on level that is certainly that certainly needs to be the focus i will share dr blessing game that the data that you saw is at the meets level not the approaches level so yes i'm saying needs because approaches means you're not on grade level so i'm holding kids and also in our report provided by a wonderful company for the equity audit they also go after meats right i was just sharing that that that's not the you know the past the test it's at the meets level uh yes and i i it meets means that you meet grade level standards approaches as an educator i definitely appreciated having that grace because it's a difficult challenge getting every kid to read on

072level however we are stating in meats that they meet grade level expectations we're saying it approaches they're coming close thank you mr rabia yes thank you for your report i appreciate it very thorough new feathers were going to get ruffled but that's what usually an audit would do so that that was already expected um i did have concerns about the huge disparity in the leadership numbers and we had went over that before quite a time back and its numbers are quite concerning the display numbers are also worrisome but that is something that is not only just our district but throughout especially after or during our pandemic at this time we have a lot of discipline issues going on throughout the district and many other districts uh see the same battle that we are fighting on

073that part the challenge is as we get to teach our our students to find that extra time that we were talking about to get the extra work that may be needed to make sure that each student is comfortable in their workplace and understand what we're trying to achieve and just not throwing everything down their throat because we have x amount of time because we went over that also the time constraints that the curriculums are needed to do per the state and stuff so we want to make sure that that's a challenge as well too 78 of the district isn't minority at this time it's just changing it's changing but we have to adapt yes there's um work to be done but i think and i hope as a board that we can get there um

074i don't like blaming the other districts or making uh muse of somebody else's failures i don't like that at all and if you want to put it on the rest of us for because we passed it fine we did clear your name that's good good for you but i want to make sure that as an audit is performed that we know our inadequacies so we can try our best for each student no matter what color or race to make them feel comfortable in their workspace and certainly we should involve parents if they're willing to get involved many times that's a challenge throughout many of the districts but hopefully we do find a group to see that but i appreciate your report i think it uh opened some eyes and hopefully we can work together and

075not uh against each other and stuff and try and solve some of these problems we have thank you and let me ask you mr ruby did you have any questions or just comments thank you so let me go to the left mr scanlon thank you i appreciate the work that it takes to put together an audit i do research and analysis quite often in my own business and so i understand the professionalism and the effort required so i appreciate i appreciate the professionalism i liked it that way so i have a few questions so one is that the equity audit raises a question of how well the district implements discipline and value creation and so i submit to the board a definition for value creation time of instruction delivered in class received by the students

076and if we understand and can agree pardon me is your microphone turned on it is turned on you can't hear me okay is this better okay great so i'll come back so i'd like to lay out a definition for value creation and so i submit that value creation comes from student in class understanding of the content delivered and what time it takes how much value we're actually creating in class the second point an assumption i'd like to raise is my understanding from teachers that are in district on the average time a disruption takes out of a class and that number is 20 minutes so if we evaluate an equation that says how much time in class is a value created and if we have value being eroded what does that look like well one obvious

077cause is a discipline moment now the question becomes how is value and i'll raise the point equity being measured and so when i look at this report i notice what may be a causal inference i work in data science i spend a lot of time with numbers i spend a lot of time professionally reporting to fortune 500 1000 firms on how to understand their data and so i recognize assumptions that may exist and when we have assumptions that may exist we need to examine them honestly and so the edit the equity audit raises the question of how well the district implements discipline and the value that is created by race we are seeing performance measures by race but i suspect that there is an underpinning kpi of how much time is actually delivered in value

078of classroom both by school and across all schools in the district at the elementary middle and high school levels and so if we can come up with a kpi as we have our second recommendation that talks about a dashboard to help us understand how what we're performing i submit that we can consider having a kpi that says how much time in classroom is value driven based upon the number of classrooms the time of those classes and how many incidents that we have on a per school basis further i'd like to evaluate how many repeat offenders that we have because let's face it we have repeat offenders we have students that have a hard time operating within classroom level and unfortunately students that have a hard time being successful in classroom erode value for the rest

079of the kids in that class on the campaign trail something that is important to me because i am a teacher is the ability for our teachers to manage our classrooms how what tools are we providing to them for them to be successful i cannot tell you how many st teachers i ran into i would knock on a door and i have no idea who's behind that door or what their job is and when they would open i would find out that they're a teacher and with tears in their eyes they state i can't teach the reason they can't teach is that discipline is going unreported they don't have support that is consistent from their aps or their principles much of the time within the same school and as i speak to other teachers or as

080i speak to all of my teacher contacts i find information that seems to indicate that we're not consistent in how we provide discipline and so i'm requesting and i'm going to come back to my recommendations all up at the end but one first request is i would like to see the information that was used to create this report i'd like to understand the survey questions i don't want to lead to assumptions either and if we're going to have a transparent honest conversation let's get all the data let's understand the survey questions who was surveyed the analysis approach that was used let's understand that information i want to make sure that if we're measuring performance by race that we're having the full conversation that also examines how much value was created across schools and if we

081have disruptions were the disruptions outsized by race and most importantly do we have repeat offenders because i suspect that we do so to examine equity we need to drill deeper into the discipline as a root cause of value being delivered i i am personally a little troubled that it seems that we have a narrative in that the millennium consulting firm that put this together has an approach they already have research that they've supported in the past that searches for equity in terms of race i want to make sure that based upon the questions that we've asked the surveys that we've conducted that we've not inserted bias into those into the analysis itself i'm concerned that that may be true but i'm not going to make the mistake of making an assumption and making an accusation

082i simply would like to see the data so with this being said i've got a i've got a personal story that relates to this and so i just want to share with the board a moment where unfortunately and for everybody that's watching online and in the room i apologize right now because i will be emotional so on the last day of the fall semester i got a phone call at about two o'clock in the afternoon my daughter had been choked on the on the playground by two boys and today i watched that video so in that moment i responded by calling uh our so my daughter goes to ronell elementary i spoke with mrs akers it was a positive conversation and in the opening of the conversation i let her know that our community embraces

083you we believe in you we support you and that is all true our community is a very favorable view of vanilla elementary however i had a student that put bruises on my daughter's neck when she came home bruises there were two of them and so i spoke with miss acres and regarding parent trust there are current rules and policies in place that say we can't understand the discipline that's been applied we have no perspective on whether or not these kids are repeat offenders we don't fundamentally understand the risk that our children face in schools and so as a parent i told miss acres i feel helpless and then separately i said as a board of trustee member i want to understand the process so let's separate the two so we addressed the process and i

084relayed my concern as a father immediately after the incident my wife contacted mothers in the neighborhood and we found out a the names of the boys b that they are repeat offenders third one of those students is a special needs child and is known by other mothers to tell their children stay away from these kids because they're problem kids uh in my discussion today with the ap and the principal i agree with the process they put in place to protect my daughter however i i'm relating to this board that our current posture doesn't partner with parents very well because it leaves us with a sense of no capability to protect our kids if something negative happens we have to trust blindly on a process going forward on how our children will be safe it's not

085helpful so from my perspective we have an issue across the district regarding how discipline is performed the consistency with which that discipline is applied and to what degree we have regular offenders we need to provide our teachers the support they need to control the classroom i can tell everybody in the room that we are not consistent in how well our teachers are able to manage their classroom some teachers have a good experience some teachers have aps that will respond immediately to them and support them some aps they're not as active and i'll leave it there and so if we have students where there are regular discipline issues what tools are being provided to those teachers to be able to help manage that kid to success because right now i'm not certain that our code of

086conduct effectively enables our teachers to remove a child who is continually disruptive from the classroom to prevent value from being eroded to the rest of the kids in the classroom i've heard many reports where the student who is an issue goes off to the ap 10 minutes later they come back they've got a sucker and a lollipop primia sucker and candy and they've written an agreement that says i will not be disruptive the net result is that we have children in our school district that feel empowered they have very little sense the repeat offenders have very little sense of accountability they're not afraid of consequences and so we see this continued pattern so when we think about the equity in our district and we think about how well we're performing as a district i submit

087that we need to have a broader conversation and we need to understand the underlying disciplined approach in management of classroom approach i.e our culture and how consistently it's actually implemented because i can tell you right now it's not consistent so my recommendations and i have a few requests so one for you dr henry and our supporting team whom i've appreciate i'm recommending that we conduct a study within district on classroom management that we understand our approach that is inclusive of feedback of teachers parents and leadership in the schools to examine the quality and the consistency of our discipline i would like to understand how that study will be created so i'm not trying to cite how you would do it i'm requesting a plan from the district on how you would go about performing said

088study how we would evaluate classroom culture how we would evaluate discipline is applied across the district i think that information would be helpful to have the broader conversation regarding this notion of equity and again before i form a clear opinion on this document i'd like to understand the survey questions i'd like to understand where the data was sourced from i understand data extremely well i spend a lot of time with it and so we need to understand how we injected bias unintentionally and i would like to in our approach i'd like to understand how are we managing classroom culture and what are the recommendations that our administration has for how do we measure that i'd like to see that planned within the next two months if that is a reasonable goal and we can iteratively

089define what should those kpis be how would we measure it i'm looking for this to be a partnership to be very clear i support all of our kiddos i support our kids having an opportunity to succeed i taught at all levels of socioeconomics and i can promise you that in my experience and from my perspective making the child accountable for their own success was the number one fastest way for them to realize that it was their responsibility to take advantage of their opportunity if i would assume the role of just giving it to them and not making them accountable we're going to fail so i'd like to see how well we're making our kids accountable for their opportunity and relate that to the findings that we have in this document that's all thank you mr

090sandlin miss heinemann so well she is sitting between y'all miss blackshear yes i i don't know that i have questions as much as i just have some statements and i i would like to say i was part of the board that did vote to conduct this audit and i still stand by it as something that i feel our district can benefit from the important thing is what do we do with this data and i i disagree uh with something one of my colleagues said because i think we do need to discuss the problem so we as a board can't address any issues uh i think the information that you know the feedback from teachers i think it's important to hear them i also agree uh with dr blessing game that we need to hear from

091parents as well i know uh in the past and visiting with uh ryan irving we had a discussion and he talked about suggested town hall meetings and i think that maybe uh that could be a benefit or some way i don't it's hard when you put together a committee to make sure uh that all voices are heard because uh that may not always be the case what is important is what we do with the information going forward and uh to address something that that mr scanlon just said um i i also would be interested in seeing a report on behavioral issues as a volunteer in our schools i have been in classrooms in elementary classrooms where there have been students with behavioral issues in most all cases either the their behavioral interventionist or the assistant

092principal was always quick to respond and remove that student from the classroom so they could work with them but to me i've always had a concern about you know the classrooms where that may not occur because uh students can be very disruptive and that does interrupt the learning process for the rest of the classes and you know i do want all students treated fairly and with respect but we do need to make sure because i i also too have heard of inconsistencies in some school um i think probably in most cases there aren't but there are some that uh i'm sure have inconsistencies and as a parent and as a grandparent i would be very upset if would occur to one of my occurred to mr scanlon's daughter and i know we as a district

093do the best we can but i think we need to take the information that was presented and use it in the spirit it was intended and not look it as an as a negative necessarily but as a way that we can make our school district even better and even stronger and part of that is making sure that we are communicating and interpreting our mission and vision statement uh for our staff and for our students i have to tell you for whatever reason i did not receive the board report on friday i went online over the weekend and thought i could get the re you know there was a report that i would be able to pull it off a board book i did not see it and uh as such i just assumed that the

094board that the report would be uh on our desk at the dice so teresa has forwarded it to me and i will be reviewing it before the thursday meeting but onika great job on your presentation and i hope we'll use this information we receive tonight as we delve deeper in a positive manner thank you mr jackson thank you miss blaster and miss heinemann let me ask you this do you have questions or just comments and if you only have comments i would suggest that miss mayor can resume can go to her seat because i i can tell you i'm probably only having comments and not questions but but i'll leave it up to you thank you uh no i only have comments so please you haven't even thank you so much we appreciate you thank

095you mr jackson um i appreciate uh miss blackshear's comments um you know when you when you do an audit um we you expect to become uncomfortable right we're looking for information um through data um to find where we can improve where there are opportunities to um to get better we're very blessed in cypher sd to be a high performing very efficient fiscally responsible role model of a school district in texas but we aren't satisfied with that we want to find those those spaces where we can get better and so that was really the purpose of the equity audit was to find out where are those places where we can get better to better serve all of our kids so it is uncomfortable it isn't comfortable to see this but that's the point of it in

096terms of um um any recommendations or any active actions we may take forward we don't have to take what the report says that's just because it's in the report doesn't mean we're gonna take all the recommendations so there's i i caution my colleagues on putting that out there and assuming we're going to spend amounts of money that we may not we may not take any of these recommendations we may take some we may decide to move um combine different things we have we're not to that point this isn't discussion it's not we're not taking action on that so i caution throwing out numbers because those can be misunderstood i misconstrued when we talk specifically this equity audit focused on academic achievement and discipline those are the two big areas that we wanted to focus on

097as a board when i know one of my colleagues said if we're going to measure performance by race dot dot we are required by state law and by the federal government to measure student performance by race that's not something we are choosing to do for the heck of it is because it is required by federal and state accountability systems um in terms of focusing on discipline i thought mr scanlan made a great point when he talks about consistency and discipline that's exactly what shines through [Music] harshly in the results of this report is that there are inconsistencies in discipline in our district um that when you talk about classroom culture and unintended bias that's also something that comes through in this report so again these are uncomfortable um concepts but we look at the data

098and it validates that those that the this uh unattended bias inconsistencies and discipline do exist in our district that's why we want to have this num these numbers so that we can take steps to improve and then we can measure that we've actually improved that we've closed the gaps on achievement and we've closed the gaps on these inconsistent inconsistency and discipline um when i actually had an interesting conversation with a community member over coffee and we talked about the definition of equity and there's some inconsistent um understanding what equity means um as a board when we chose to vote for this uh equity audit the way we looked at it was that edu ed educational equity has is about ensuring all students are successful it's about removing barriers to student success it's about working to

099close the achievement gaps so it's about two things resources do all students have the resources that they need to be successful and are we removing barriers that are preventing them from being successful when we look at these gaps we see we want to understand why why are there barriers for some students that aren't for others and why are there and which students need more resources than others and it's not just about race it is about economic status some kids have barriers to success and it has nothing to do with the color of their skin some kids have barriers to success because they have physical or mental or emotional disabilities that need require more resources that requires to remove barriers to this success that is what equity is all about i think sometimes there's too much

100of a focus on race it's not just about race it can be about gender it can be is there is there a gender bias is there agenda is there are there barriers based upon gender again it could be race it could be gender it could be economic status it could be uh special education and that comes through in this report so that yes it's uncomfortable it's helping us it's going to help us get better um last comment the comment that came out from one of the people who participated in the focus group said that cfisd is data driven and as trustees we look at data at the 50 000 foot level we are way up here looking at the aggregate information very high level principals look at data at the campus level and teachers look

101at data at their classroom level except they're not numbers their faces and names and their kids and that is where the we can make a big difference so i i want to make sure that we keep that in perspective we're going to look at the big picture up here but it's the teachers working with individual students that are going to make the big difference and and that's where the data has the greatest value um i think that's all my comments for right now uh mr jackson thank you thank you miss heinemann and this is a an important topic so if if somebody has comments after everybody has gone through and you have more comments to make we'll open that back up you know we're spending a lot of time on this and that's okay i

102will tell my colleagues not to worry i have broad shoulders i'm most willing to be held accountable for that which i do and say and i know you will be as well for each my colleagues we have an important job to do here i'm more than happy to to have broad shoulders and and say i will go forth i grew up on the audit side so i was excited to see the results of this audit i have to admit that i am disappointed in the construct of the audit my colleagues have pointed out some of the deficiencies one of the ones and you've heard me talk about this over time of course i have to get closer to the microphone right mr stanley i like to see trends the audit report gave us primarily single

103point estimates and we really need to see trends trends will help us understand a trend is not going to be a two-point estimate you need a three-point estimate on that so i was disappointed in the audit i really expected to see those trend lines to tell us were we moving in the right direction or were we not on the qualitative aspects i think they did a nice job on the qualitative aspects and and i have done these type of reports myself and you do in fact have to make certain to account for interview bias question bias to be able to properly understand the data that is going to be presented one of the deficiencies of the audit report is there were conclusions but they were not supported by the interior of the report even for

104for a qualitative report and quantitative reports are much easier but you still have to do it but for a qualitative report i want to see it built almost like a pyramid yes i want to see the top of the pyramid but i want to understand the construct of what permitted you to reach to that conclusion and i don't think we were quite there with any audit there are recommendations and i would look to senior management in two or three months i want you to take a look at these recommendations take a look at the audit itself and come back and tell the board do you have any recommendations with respect to the recommendations made in the audit that is no different than i did a handful of years ago with our construction audit that was

105done on the outside they had a number of recommendations and it's true with with any other audit somebody goes out they do the work this is what they find uh so so that gives you an an overview of my observations about the audit uh i still think as my colleague ms blackshire pointed out there is some value in here but overall i was quite disappointed with with the results of it and my colleagues are right i did author i i did vote to authorize the audit so i bear some of the responsibility for the audit not being to a standard that i would find to be acceptable and now let me go back around to see if there are follow-up comments i'll go to the right mr henry did you have additional comments you wish

106to make no additional comments i would i'll put my questions in form backed on some of the things i have i just like to reiterate like you said very light on the recommendations and the backing of the information in there to why i mean i deal with sows like you do every day like lucas does every day and the analytics behind that data is very important and i think it's uh unfortunately y'all in the audience didn't get to see the the data behind that so it's very you're just kind of hearing what we're talking about so it's very difficult data and how you present that data is very pivotal in reports i feel like this was a boiler plate from another school and they filled in the blanks and i didn't think we'd get our

107money's worth i'll go back to my point that another board member has and i think someone said this i can't remember who it is i want to give bad credit but i want to find out are our students getting the standard of care or service we're going to call that i'm sorry i'm not in education like you are at every one of our schools are they getting the right kind of service at elementary middle school and high school that they have access to all the different programs they should in art and music and everything that's really what i would like to have an audit of quite frankly um within our schools because that's what if i send my if i live in an apartment complex in the far north side or a park complex in

108the far south side or a house on the west side that's what i want to make sure that every kid whether you're the poorest of kid or the most rich as a kid that every kinder district has the same opportunity at the best education within our district that's all i really care about at the end of the day and i think that's what all we are striving for at the end of the day we want the very best for every kid and we can't we can all we can do is incent them with programs and opportunity they have to do it of course we have fantastic teachers and great programs and great administrators they're going to help them along the way but that's really why what i want to know and i that's what i

109was expecting this report i didn't get that maybe i was misinformed so again i didn't sign this thing so i don't know that i did get a copy of the sow that was present and it wasn't in there but maybe that's something i would like to see maybe done in the future if we could is what is the uh educational are we getting the right education for every kid in our district and maybe if that's something we can do if the board would please that's what i'd like to see thank you mr henry dr blessing i definitely would also like to have the raw data for that because i do think they're really rich in the commentary there's a lot of rich we took our staff's time we took our kids time and they told

110us stuff so their voice matters a lot so i definitely would like to read it in the raw form if that's allowable in the contract with the um consulting company and um i want to just read a line that to me is how i hope to i think julie's comments about its individual kids like we use data and it's down to the name and the face and the personality and the little person that a person loves in their classroom um to me that is the focus that's missing in this report is that it says while closing learning gaps are part of the school improvement process and something the district continues to recognize schools for doing this assessment encourages the district to further embed equity and other significant it's taking it away from the focus on

111individual children and holding them accountable and this is coming from the biggest place of care a passion piece for me is making sure every child can read and if we look at a school-to-prison pipeline and we look at a study it's about this old now but it's it texas prisons and they analyze a random sampling of inmates in the prisons in texas and guess what it was a literacy crisis 86 were functionally illiterate and 46 were actually dyslexic when they look at phonological and phonemic awareness so our school-to-prison pipeline can be about a lot of things i can admire the problem i can tell you all sorts of things poverty is a huge factor but ultimately our job as a school district we are not the only social service agency we are a school district

112our job is academics and so i would love to to take to that spirit how are we looking and to the comments you made what individual children are not making it and why and i would also challenge our board to i don't think lone star governance that comes out of tea is our whole answer because i don't think it has the robust support that we would need however there's something very very powerful in there where boards are challenged to spend 50 percent of the time at the diocese discussing academic achievement outcomes i've been into board meetings for years and if you guys just think about the last five of them how much time was spent discussing academic achievement outcomes and solutions and so i would challenge us to also incorporate that in our equity solution

113how will we the board lead the change to make sure our children are getting access to reading math critical thinking thanks you dr blasting game mr rabia yes um being on a different board now i find it rewarding and enriching and apart because i'm a very big believer in checks and balances let me know what the other side is thinking help me understand what the other side is thinking so from what i heard today i'm very passionate about your about your uh you said your your your your vibe here to to have the students succeed and no matter what lucas brought up a great point on finding out where the questions arise from and how they were directed and i believe tom was kind of agreeing with lucas on on that area i would like

114to also find out that concept of it and stuff i think a few months is a good time to allow the administration and the uh firm to get back with us on that but very good questions and stuff um the the passion that uh debbie and julie have for the students is unmatched throughout as is tom and dr blasting game also brought out good points so what i'm saying this is a fertile discussion it's not that you're wrong or i'm right but it is a good discussion something that needs to be had and do we need to agree on everything no i think julie said also let's go into the discussion but checks and balances are a big plus for me i love hearing different opinions even if we don't agree and stuff but i

115think we can build on that as a board and stuff and uh into our administration and our educators and everybody else my son's an educator um and he's going to a tough time right now just like all our educators are too so it hits me you know it hits me good but as a board here in our district i believe we can succeed in the ultimate goal of getting our kids educated in a great environment um where we're not posing sides because you're right or i'm wrong or or what it is but together we can find a good answer and stuff like that so that's what i pray for and stuff like that so good points my colleagues love being on the board tom thank you mr rabia mr sandlin thank you team i spend

116a lot of time analyzing root cause and i get paid and my team gets paid to identify questions regarding root cause what is fundamentally an issue that if we attack a issue we're going to see the needle the needle move and we don't have a vanity kpi but we've got something that is actually meaningful so when i think about teacher success and i think one of our key metrics is what does our retention rate look like for our teachers and what do they believe is true across the district in terms of classroom culture i think those are important measurements that we could unpack you know i agree with julie your point that it's not about race it's more about access to and capability social economic status and so a lot of my background was teaching

117at different socioeconomic levels i agree some kid who is really just and i've had students like this many students where their measure of success was survival and i mean point blank it was getting home and coming back and that was it in anything that we expected beyond that was really something that they couldn't attain to and so it's not neces when i'm requesting a approach for how we handle classroom culture it's not neces and actually i firmly believe it's not a fits one-size-fits-all i think our principals they all have their own school plans and we need to recognize the barriers to your point julie that our students have in how are they going to be what is it's almost what is their capability from an emotional standpoint to engage in learning opportunities because many times

118they just don't have it and it's not necessarily their issue or a fault it's more about they just they're not there it's survival and so when we have those students that are in that survival category we need to acknowledge it and we need to think about our plan for how we're going to help them become successful i fully agree with that and i appreciate it that being said if we're going to retain our teachers and more importantly become a destination for learning we have to equip all of our teachers that they feel safe in their own classrooms i've got many teachers that do not and that we do have consistency in in terms of accountability how are the students held accountable for the level to which they can attain and i think that's the core

119build that i have right now how are they held accountable to the level which they can attain based upon where they're at in life only our teachers know that but unless we're giving our teachers the ability to take a kid that's either having a bad day or having a bad week or they've got parents at home that are just they cannot engage and that student is continually disruptive we can't allow for that situation to erode the value that's created in class we've got to manage them differently and that's a tough challenge it requires resources it requires room space it requires there's a lot of considerations and it's tough it's not an easy problem to solve and i don't pretend that it is but if we're going to retain our teachers and give them the best

120work environment possible we have to equip them and they have to feel supported by their aps or principles so i want to call out a couple of things one is that when i think about the and i'll use the word audit that i'm requesting regarding discipline i think it should be pre-covet as well as the last two years we need to see those trends to your point i think it needs to be inclusive of middle elementary high school randomly selected but i'm specifically calling out three schools and i've got reasons for doing so and i can speak to it tips elementary anthony middle school sci fault high school i would like to see those schools included in this audit because right now i've got information that i've got a question about and i'd like to

121understand it so all in all i want to assure the community that when we're re-evaluating this resolution it's not this from my perspective and i'll speak on my math my perspective is that we don't need to denigrate and i'll say it this way we don't need to denigrate white people because they're white and say that you've got systemic racism i fundamentally do not agree with that statement i think if we're going to approach helping our kids then i think it comes back to creating the right classroom work culture and enabling and holding our kids accountable and driving that back to them but you know as scott mentioned earlier taking our teachers into a work session and telling them that they've got to acknowledge systemic racism i know i don't believe in that approach and i

122would like to re-examine how we're messaging that to our teachers those are all my comments miss heinemann miss black's here i'm here mr jackson thank you you just don't see me there uh i don't have any further questions at this time my i uh our statements uh i probably will on thursday now i can see you you oh well you went away again but but briefly i can see you uh sitting in your chair my heart goes out to my colleagues as a dad whenever our children face challenges i have shared on camera at the board dies before regarding my eldest who is now the mother of three and an attorney a litigator and a situation that was very concerning the principal as i indicated moved to lacritty to to address the matter but certain

123matters cannot always be stopped before they happen but as a parent we're always concerned and i know that as trustees we're always concerned you know one of my my favorite stories is the daughter of namesake robbie sheraton taught me a lesson when i went to her school of which she was a principal and i walked into that classroom and and here was a young man and he was a he had a man's body stuffed into a child's classroom and that's the classroom the academic performance had plummeted and robbie sheridan's daughter was attempting to find a solution and her solution was to invite the parents to come and sit with their child on a daily basis and the the short story of it and i've given the long story on on camera before was that eventually

124it happened and then eventually the grandparents came and sat with the child and academic attainment for that classroom did improve and so the the point that one of my colleagues pointed out when classroom management consumes too much of the teaching time academic attainment does in fact suffer i make the point because since i've been on this board we have been concerned about this issue there is not a golden one that that we have found yet maybe it's out there that will make all classroom management uh challenges disappear uh but it is something that that we are and continue to be aware of so i want to say thank you to dr deborah stewart and miss meyers for presenting the audit that was conducted by another entity we do have next an oral report i would

125say let's take a quick five-minute break and reassemble this will be a a long evening and so i i appreciate the forbearance of my colleagues but also those of the the present audience and the viewing audience so we will meet back in five minutes thank you [Music] item 7b the administration will provide an oral report on the 2021-2022 board monitoring system for the benefit of the viewing audience what the board monitoring system is a number of years ago before lone star governance this board took it upon itself to identify what were major goals and try to establish quantitative benchmarks for those goals and then to attempt to identify different subsets uh that should be measured and so that's what the board monitoring system is all about however every year we tweak it and we change

126it and my colleagues have all identified certain items that they would like to see happen and the board monitoring system is one place where we can plug many of those items in there should be a fit and so i'm going to turn this over to teresa hull she will kick it off but each of the associates will handle a key section of this make a brief presentation and then be able to answer questions so so we want to be developing a document here as we go forth it won't be done tonight it won't be done thursday but we'll go through it we'll come back and take a look at it again next month uh so miss hull the microphone is yours yep thank you mr jackson uh as mr jackson indicated uh we began this

127process in 2014 and we've really kind of tweaked and modified it over time based on uh feedback from the board so really we welcome your feedback if there are any modifications to the format additional measures or or items that you would like for us to consider to include in there but the way it's currently organized it's broken down by the six board goals and these are target objectives that over time the board has identified as key areas of focus that they would like to have progress measures uh identified and reported to them throughout the course of the year and so that is under the timeline for reporting and so what we do it may be at a formal board meeting it may be in your friday packet it may just be a read item read

128only item on a board agenda but we try to meet those targets by providing you information on our achievement towards those target objectives if you tonight we're going to break it down by each goal begin with dr macias obviously focusing on goal one on academic achievement if would you like for us to take questions at the end of each goal or go through all six and take feedback and questions at the end so that we don't get disjointed i'm going to ask my colleagues please write your questions down and then after the entire presentation is made we'll then open it up for questions and i know the entire board like like myself we like to make comments and co-mingle those with our questions so it'll be comments and questions but that's the the matter that

129i prefer that we proceed if if that's acceptable to all my colleagues that i think it is so we'll make the full presentation and then we'll open it up for comments and questions perfect okay turn it over to dr macias good evening president jackson board members and dr henry i'm gonna talk about goal one i like to think about goal one as a main thing and so the main thing being academic achievement and so goal one is the district will ensure academic performance and achievement levels uh reflect excellence in learning and attainment of both high expectations and high high standards for all students there are seven objectives that we would like to propose as part of goal one the first objective is to achieve or exceed state accountability targets we always talk about that we

130don't want to be chasing star we want to be way ahead of the game with the start with a star assessment so our target is that all campuses achieve an overall scale score of 80 or higher and the evidence that we will use for that will be accountability reports from from tea and then we will do a report which we did this year in september typically once our once the data comes in then we will talk to you and share with you information about the results the second objective is to increase overall approaches meets and masters performance levels on star 3-8 and end-of-course exams we also agree that we need to not just look at approaches but that we look at the meets and masters and in fact president jackson challenged us a couple of

131years ago to make sure that we were including that and we were truly focusing on those higher levels of achievement as well and so our target is to increase the the the overall scores by two percent and again the assessments that will be used will be the state testing uh the actual state test and we will again share that information in october once we have the data from the state the third objective is to close the achievement gap by increasing performance on start three to eight and end of course exams in the economically disadvantaged student group we talk a lot about the economically disadvantaged student group that is the group that we that that we know is lagging behind it's it's it's not so much about the ethnicity it is about the economic so in

132that group is black white every every single group is in there and so we want to make sure that we are addressing the needs of this group that uh that is lagging behind we have a target to increase this by one percent uh this school year and the state star testing will be our measure that we use for that and that data will be shared again when we get when we get the results for the star testing objective number four is to achieve or exceed primary reading and math grade level targets uh dr blasting game i think this is one that you that you talk a lot about and so all campuses will have 80 or more of their students meet grade level targets in reading and math we actually shared this this year uh

133during the closing the gap information and for the literacy we look at the at the reading levels and for the math we look at the progress the data for our internally developed assessments objective five is to increase the graduation rates in all student groups and that target is to increase it anywhere from point one to one percent it all depends on where where a high school is regarding their high school graduation uh rates we look at the four-year longitudinal summary report that comes from the from the tea and we you will you will hear that presentation on thursday as part of our taper report the sixth objective is to increase the number of industry certifications earned and we are working to increase that by two percent uh that's what we're recommending for this school year

134and we use our internal calculations uh for that and we'll also be presenting that um on thursday as part of our of our presentation and then the seventh objective that we're proposing for goal one is to increase the number of students enrolled and earning credit in advanced courses in the economically disadvantaged student group again it is this it is our economic disadvantage group that makes up our our group that's lagging that's lagging behind and we're looking to increase this by two percent that's what we're recommending and we will again share uh the data for this on thursday as part of our texas academic performance report or the taper report from the texas education agency and so those are the seven objectives targets and evidence and timeline that we are recommending for goal 1. goal 2

135safe and healthy environment the district will provide a safe disciplined and healthy environment conducive to student learning and so for goal two we actually have three objectives but i'd like to emphasize that other than the three objectives we look at many many objectives but these are the three that the board has agreed upon that we will look for or look at and measure for this coming year and we'll be looking for your input on how to alter these add to these adjust and amend the first objective is to continue to implement the comprehensive safety and security action plan to improve the safety and security of all facilities the target is to improve safety and security for students and staff evidence of progress implementation of the safety and security action plan and you'll have a report

136of that action plan january 2022 and as ms hull said sometimes that will be a face-to-face report a written report but you'll get that report on that objective this month objective number two increase the number of students receiving face-to-face instruction by decreasing the overall number of students removed from class the target decrease actions resulting in removal from class by 50 percent your evidence of progress a variety of discipline reports the report of in-school suspension out-of-school suspension discretionary placements to the daep the discipline alternative educational program mandatory placement to the daep that's our alc and sos and the discipline report on expulsions you'll receive your first report for this school year in february then again in may july and next year in november our third objective is to expand the implementation of positive behavior intervention and

137support pbis process at all cfisd campuses the target is to increase the number of pbis campuses to 100 percent evidence of progress is you know to have those all of those campuses i think now we have 83 at 100 and we would present the roster to you we'll have a report to you november gold three human capital the district will recruit develop and retain highly qualified and effective personnel reflective of student demographics that's the goal three the first objective is to implement a recruitment plan focused on recruiting a diverse leadership staff reflective of student demographics the target is to work collaboratively with school leadership to implement the recruitment plan in an appropriate stages as determined by the review and evaluation evidence of progress identified recruiting efforts for diverse leaders applicants demographics compared to student demographic

138we'll have this report to you november 2022 objective number two provide a competitive compensation package for all employees offer a comparable and competitive salary as compared to the three largest school districts in the region that's the target evidence of progress a salary comparison data for employee groups reported to reported to texas association of school board members we have um a season for that spring 2022 it all depends on when we get the budget to you if it's a legislative year but right now that's spring 2022 our third objective for goal three is to increase the substitute fill rate our target is 100 fill rate our goal is to make sure that all of those classes have a qualified adult supporting students our evidence of progress all non-vacant teacher absences will be filled with the substitute

139we'll bring you that report november gold four that's not mine i think it's uh i just said that to lee to the mexico goal for uh for communication and community relations uh the first i'm not sure where okay we may need to just ask her to debbie you may want to mute on on your end okay i'm sorry i apologize uh to maintain and implement a comprehensive uh marketing plan we started our marketing plan in 2017 and really this has been our goal of trying to target those individuals in our community that do not have students enrolled in cfisd our demographer has indicated that approximately 70 percent of our citizens within the boundaries of cfisd do not actually have students that attend school so it really becomes important that they understand the value of a

140strong school district and why they need to make continue to support and make that investment into the local school district and this would be your pre-nesters those that do not have children yet could be your empty nesters that kids have aged out and are no longer living at home and it could be a combination of students that attend private schools so obviously all of them are taxpayers they're contributing to the school district so we want to make certain that we're marketing and community communicating the value of a strong school district number two uh the comprehensive communication plan this is something the board may want to consider removing this has actually become standard operating procedure over the last five years our communication team has done an amazing job of really sitting down on an annual basis

141and outlining those key communications that they know they need to schedule and predetermine when that needs to be completed and sent out this could be things like at the start of the school year there are key things we know we need to communicate the state of the district january board recognition month we know that we work with our campuses and and support them with key messaging send out communication about those events so it really has allowed that department because it is extremely lean that they can operate still proactively throughout the year instead of getting into a reactive mode when we're dealing with constant crisis and having to respond to media inquiries but they can maintain their focus and make certain we're having that proactive communication but i really think we have achieved that i think

142they do that well but obviously we have three new members that may have different perspectives so just you know welcome your feedback on that and whether or not you believe we should continue with that as a target objective the cfisd customer service model this is something that unfortunately has been put on hold for the last couple of years actually in the spring we started this project in 2019-20 and we had formed a committee and we went through the rfp process the bid process and we were ready to come to the board in the spring of 2020. actually in april we were ready to go with the recommendation for a company we wanted to contract with that was going to help us develop a really comprehensive systemic customer service model uh with that would provide training

143it would be consistent among campuses within departments well the pandemic hit and it really obviously shifted our focus and our inability for the 2021 school year just the struggles that our teachers were dealing with having to do the merged classrooms was not the right time and then we were hopeful we were going to be able to pick up this project at the beginning of this year and well started the school year with another surge and here we are with the third surge so we remain hopeful that we're going to be able to pick this back up in the spring and come to you with some recommendations because i do think it's an important project i think i know i've heard all three of the board members uh talk about that and just that consistency and

144and services and how we're interacting with our parents and with our our customers uh in the community so i do think hopefully we're going to be able to to move forward with that and make that a priority um and then the the last uh target objective under communications uh is to uh obviously continue all of our efforts to engage our community our volunteers our business partners we are so fortunate in this district that all of those different groups really have been amazing at looking for ways to provide additional support not just supporting their kids at a campus but these are people such as miss heinemann who no longer has children in the school district miss blackshear well all of our board members that they volunteer they mentor our adopt-a-school program we actually have tried to

145you know re-engage a lot of these efforts during the pandemic we really had to kind of pause on the mentoring because of the contact and the restrictions that were in place but we've resumed that this year hopefully we're going to have our first ever superintendent fun run well first ever return to our superintendent fun run in person this year uh april 9th i believe it is um so that is a great community event that raises a lot of money for the educational foundation so uh really no new efforts there but just continue to look for ways to keep our parents our volunteers and our business partners engaged and supporting the school district so i'll turn it over to karen smith for gold five thank you goal five is related to financial management and this is

146that the district will exercise fiscal responsibility to maintain the financial strength and provide the financial resources for the educational programs as well to support other needs of the district there are six objectives that i will be talking about first of all develop and manage an operating budget that reflects the objectives of the district improvement plan so that would be a budget that develo that actually supports the district improvement plan as well as the board goals that uh the budget will be presented to the board as a preliminary uh like a workshop i guess you could say to the board in may of 2022 and then we'll come back to the board because we have to adopt our budget by june 30th 2022 every year we have to do it by june 30th and we are

147required to have a public hearing on the proposed budget prior to the board adopting to the budget so that will be done in june twenty twenty two goal two is maintaining an appropriate operating fund balance and the target is a general fund balance of at least twenty five percent of operating expenditures and this is something that the board actually put into place formally in policy in june of uh the evidence of progress would be the adopted budget by the board of trustees and that was actually presented to the board in june 2021 for the 21-22 school year also we have quarterly budget reviews that are presented to the board and our next quarterly budget review actually be presented next month and then also the comprehensive annual financial report discloses total operating fund balance in it

148as a percentage of operating expenditures and that was presented to the board in november of 2021. then the next objective gold objective three is maintaining an underlying bond rating from major bond rating agencies and this is needed when we sell our bonds and the target is of what the the current rating is with moody's is double a one and then standards and poor's is double a and fitch is also double a uh evidence of it is the bond ratings that we would receive prior to selling the bonds and we actually uh sold bonds in september of 2021 so that's when we received our most recent uh bond rating objective four is to provide funding for facilities technology and program needs by selling bonds and we would esta the target is to have bond sales according

149to the established timeline and schedule and we present the bond orders to the board of trustees for approval that was presented to the board in april 2021 and then we did a status report uh will be done in february of 2022 and goal finding objective five expand the network security for students and staff and our target would be the increase in network security for students and staff and the way this is monitored or the evidence of the progress is incident reports uh purchase and update of equipment and software training of staff and students as well as maintaining the trusted learning environment seal the timeline reporting if you recall that was reported by paula ross in september of 2021 and then the last uh financial related or in technology related goal is our i mean i'm

150sorry objective is support departments in campus software and hardware integration needs and a technology item you know may be initiated by another department however it it falls on the network therefore it always involves technology so we support a hundred percent of the hardware and software needs of the district the uh and the evidence of this progress would be network infrastructure that supports the district needs we assist within assisting with upgrades integration in support of new systems installed and with a timeline reporting on that as annually i believe the next is goal six and that is last but not least is goal six operations management the district will ensure that facilities adequately support the educational program and other operations the more efficient we are in these support departments is the ability of building more dollars back

151to support the main thing and put it back into the classroom so we're always striving for ways of how we can be more efficient with our operations overall objective number one i need to reword it and say increase morning and afternoon on-time arrivals for our bus service uh our target objective there is 95 for morning routes and 92 for our afternoon routes we will utilize our zonar systems on time performance reports as the measure and the evidence of our progress and we plan on submitting reports both in the fall and spring semesters objective number two for transportation is to maintain or increase an 80 percent or higher transportation department employee retention rate our goal target is to be at 80 percent if not higher we'll manage this with quarterly reports as determined by our exit

152manager and again we'll submit reports at our fall and spring semester nutrition services we'd like to increase the reimbursable breakfast participation percentage to 30 percent that will be our target our evidence of progress will be our monthly uh increases determined by our monthly participation report and again we'll look at reports in our fall and spring semester objective 4 related to facility planning and construction we're want to develop the furniture standards for our new administration building and visually performing arts center our target is to have those standards developed and approved by our committees and the evidence will be is us purchasing or finalizing the standards and placing the orders by april 22 so that we can be in position to have that furniture available when those facilities are open our timeline for reporting this will be

153in february 2022 facilities planning construction we want to continue the completion of our projects approved in the 2019 bond program right now our target is to complete the phase 1 2019 bond scope projects and uh our evidence would be those projects completely paid in full to our contractors and all the punch lists have been completed and we anticipate getting our phase one jobs completed by february of 2022 and we would report on such we're currently uh in construction with our phase two projects uh as you heard earlier we're bringing some of our phase three 2019 bond projects to the board for approvals for contracts for construction and we're now in the process of starting our phase four design phase of the projects that are included in the phase four of our master plan our maintenance

154and energy management departments we want to ensure optimal performance from our hvac equipment to help reduce utility costs and conserve energy uh we would in uh and by doing our measure of evidence of target would be the increasing our completion rate of preventative maintenance work orders and we would use our software system school due to provide that evidence of meeting that objective and we would do that on an annual basis item seven is to continue to improve upon our indoor equality following the cdc and ashrae guidelines to include increased treated outside air increased air changes and improved filtration at our facilities the target is to maintain a healthy high quality learning and teaching environment for our students and our staff the evidence of progress would be looking at reports to reduce student staff absences due

155to illness and we will propose to provide semi-annual reports on that and our operations group we want to continue to improve upon our sanitizing and disinfecting protocols and maintain adequate supplies of sanitizing and disinfecting products ppe and related equipment we want to again maintain a high healthy and high quality learning and teaching environment for our students and staff and again we can use the same measurement with the number of reductions of student and staff happens absences due to the illness and will propose to do this in a semi-annual report as well so with that that concludes our presentation and we'll be happy to answer questions and thank you to teresa and all the associates this time i'm going to start to my left and and once again we'll handle this the way we did it

156before i'll ask you to bring forth all of your questions but i will go back to you after everybody has had an opportunity because sometimes it's difficult to be able to properly phrase all of your questions the first go around so mr scanlon so we have the target of decreasing actions resulting in removal from class by 50 percent my recommendation to my colleagues is that this kind of kpi does not necessarily address the fundamental issue of how discipline is managed it is possible for someone to achieve this target by simply not reporting discipline opportunities or instances so if we're going to have this target my recommendation is that we come up with a checks and balances kpi that would give us the other side of the story that indicates that from our teacher's perspective what

157is the ratio of reported versus unreported incidents what is the time in class that we are providing to our students by campus if we have repeat offenders what does that look like and can we reduce the number of repeat offenders by instance and what are the trends along those lines so if we have accompanying kpis i think it tells a broader narrative that we can use to make sure that no one is and i'm that we've got the whole picture and that we're not creating incentives for our leadership in the schools that isn't quite uh we're just not creating wrong incentives um okay and then lastly i am not certain that a decrease in actions resulting in remover from class at 50 is a achievable number i'd like to understand the data that says it

158is so it's just my ignorance if there's information that we have from history that says that that's an achievable number great but i'd like to understand how we got to that target for goal free so increasing of substitute teacher fill rate to 100 percent so one is that i'd also like to have a kpi that says what are the qualifications of those substitutes if we're filling our vacancies but these are for teachers that may not have education backgrounds or they're you know they may not be as highly qualified as others i think it would be an interesting statistic that we need to understand lastly regarding process i'm an automation and a process person and so my current understanding is that the process for someone to apply to be a substitute teachers requires that they fill

159out an application every single semester meaning resubmittal of the resume resubmittal of the recommendations i that is my understanding i'm not saying that that's accurate so i'd like to understand you know what does that process what is that process and got it oh okay i didn't know you so the process is that they resubmit their applications every year um you said something else that um tell me your other question and you spoke to it right what is the frequency of them are we creating unnecessary hurdles for our substitute teachers to come back that's really the question from the process so i don't think so and we can we did a report i'm not sure when on our on our substitute process and hiring and we've tried to expedite that process so we've really looked at

160how to remove those barriers so that we can get those qualified applicants into the the classroom and so we have improved our efficiency our application time our processing time so we've gone through that workflow and we continue to look at that you know what is it that you really need in order to be a substitute how long the process takes and so that's been um a focus of ours very good thank you very much uh in goal five so i'm adding a couple of objectives for goal five so when i look at it and so pardon my business focus because this is my space and technology teams so we have stated numerous times that we want to be a data centric organization so with that becomes what is our data strategy what is our approach

161to centralizing our data what is our approach to improving data quality how do we go about the process of cultivating and grooming our data if we're going to have a data driven isd we have to pay very peculiar approach party very strong interest in how we go about that process so i'd simply like to understand what other decisions have been made to date and whether or not it's meaningful that we create some kpi that measures our notion of data quality and i can i'm happy to sit down with anybody to talk about what that might entail and then work with stakeholders to flesh that out a little bit further and the last one is also the itgeek of me coming out automation and so today the costs for automation have dropped significantly it is more

162possible today than ever to accrete to decrease operational costs by simply applying good automation so if we're going to grow our service to students without convincingly growing the cost to serve those students we need to look for opportunities to automate so do we have an automation strategy in place if so what is it what decisions have been made to date regarding automation and if anybody would like to have that discussion about what that might entail i'm happy to support it so those are all of my questions thank you and before we move to miss blackshear i'm going to ask each of my colleagues if you have a question that you want answered go ahead and indicate you'd like to have an answer we all have comments on the document itself but occasionally we'll have questions

163as my colleague did of dr stewart but to make it easier on the associates go ahead and say can you answer that now or can you answer that next thursday mark is that reasonable okay so miss blackshare you're up okay oh there you are a couple of questions uh first one is for uh for deborah stewart um on goal three um you know over the course of the pandemic we have lost a lot of teachers who have decided for one reason or another that uh they no longer want to teach and it's not a problem for only our district it's for all school districts so i'm just curious um how uh what we're gonna do differently to recruit and hire train uh highly trained diverse staff when we're having a problem feeling positions as it

164is and she can answer it now or or thursday so i'll try now but we will amend it on thursday after i talk to the hr team you know as you know that this is a nationwide epidemic looking for qualified staff whether it's in the classroom restaurants um and so what we are doing with our excellent recruitment team and hr staff we are looking at our processes for recruitment and really doing a deep dive on our source campuses where we need teachers how do we need to recruit differently looking at our social media recruitment efforts so we have really just we're taking a stop look and review at our processes because our goal is to go out and capture those teachers whether it's to offer early applications some of those teachers that are resigning in

165chicago will they be a good fit here we can bring them on board now and so we're really looking at our efforts what do we need to do differently next year so we can capture teachers as they are ready to move to this excellent district okay then uh i also have a comment about substitute teachers because i have talked to a few uh you know i think uh last may june we voted a pay raise for all staff but i am told by substitute teachers that they did not receive a pay raise and i guess it was my understanding that when we voted it for all staff that substitute teachers would receive a pay raise as well and the comments that i heard was well you know we've worked as hard as the teachers throughout

166the pandemic so i just wanted to pass that along and i hope that when we do uh get to working on the budget that we will be able to increase pay for substitutes because i know that also uh continues to be an issue and i guess for linda okay go ahead debra i'm sorry mr jackson did ask you to you didn't say that was a question so i possibly should have waited but you're absolutely correct and it is on our um it is on our budget proposal for this year that when we talk about the budget moving forward to make sure that the substitute teachers are included in that discussion about uh giving them a raise moving forward and and miss blacks you're just just so you know i uh i told dr stewart last

167month that the first group that needs to be up for a pay raise next year are our substitutes so that is a priority for the 22-23 school year very good i appreciate that and uh i guess a question for dr macias um you know with everything uh our students and our teachers have been through uh through the pandemic i know we all uh are aware that um learning has been a real challenge uh you know for those that were doing school online last year how do you think do you think your goals uh that we'll be able to achieve those goals uh considering that some students are still coming from behind miss blackshear our campus leaders our curriculum staff are committed to working with our students to close the gaps and move forward and you

168may recall that you know when when we share the taper report on thursday you're going to see that that certainly we have a a gap we have a gap however the data is is a little difficult to interpret because there's so much missing data not all students tested a lot of a lot of kids uh chose not to so there's a lot of missing data but we feel that from last year from the 2021 taper to this one we plan to make to make growth and we plan to close some of those gaps to keep so our kids can be moving forward okay thank you that's that's all my questions thank you miss blackshire miss heinemann thank you um i actually my first question was going to be for dr macias it was exactly the

169same question as ms black shears just given the impact of covid on our students and the delayed learning that they've experienced these are very aggressive goals and i i know that our principals and our teachers work hard every day to close those gaps but again we want to make sure that we're being we're setting realistic goals so i appreciate that um just a couple of comments um for goal one um i always like to see the focus on industry certifications for students to achieve those industry certifications before they graduate so that they can enter the workforce immediately um or work while they're continuing their education whichever one works best for them and also to increase the number of students enrolled in advanced courses for academically um disadvantaged students i'm assuming that includes ap and dual

170credit classes is that correct that is correct okay thank you um for goal number two i'm sensing a need for us to maybe have a separate conversation about discipline and what that looks like in cfisd to better understand what these different categories are when what type of discipline is discretionary what's non-discretionary um i feel like that that as a board we probably need to have some deeper discussion about that dr stewart so that we can have a greater level of understanding absolutely we can uh bring you a different kind of report maybe explaining all those categories if you'd like okay or whatever works best for you how to best communicate that information to us or or maybe even it's just a sit down you know with folks that may have questions to better understand discipline

171we'd like to do that thank you thank you um i have a question dr stewart about um goal 2 objective 3 implementing pbis at all campuses um in my visits to campuses i have heard very positive feedback from principals okay regarding pbis so my question is um i want to make sure that if we if because i am a little sensitive to this requiring all campuses to do something to implement a program do you feel like we have buy-in from all campuses to meet a goal of 100 or do you feel like it may not be appropriate to request 100 of campuses to be ppi utilize pbis well that's a great question and you know in order to have pbis you have to have buy-in on your campuses and so that varies with the leadership

172and the community whether or not at the time that they want to to have pbis so our goal is that that that's what happens but we cannot mandate that it has to be buy-in right but if they don't have pbis they all have a discipline management process that they look at they have expectations for their students as it relates to discipline so it may not be the formal pbis but we all of our campuses are doing something to address student behavior agreed so that's why i'm questioning maybe the target isn't 100 that specific program but maybe it's that 100 of our campuses utilize a program that works best for their campus absolutely something just to think about that i want to make sure that we're being we're setting goals that are achievable and that we

173aren't it doesn't just become a compliance issue the principles are just checking the box but it's actually something that works for them for their campus i agree with you 100 thank you oh i also owe one more comment on that um uh i would encourage those principals that have used pbis with great success at their campus to share best practices with their peers and that may encourage more principals to want to utilize that program thank you you're welcome um goal three human capital just an observation i've had um visiting campuses over the last two and a half years um our efforts to grow our own i feel are very successful i see so many young teachers on our campuses that i recognize as students i had a teacher come up to me and call my

174name and give me a big hug and i remember her when she was in middle school and i love that we are we are bringing our former students back to campus as teachers so many of our principals also say they have teachers on campus that were their own students we have peras who have fallen in love with teaching and now they are working on getting their certification so i feel like we are creating an environment where we are growing our own and i think that will help us moving forward um there was i did make a note about the substitute teacher there was a great presentation last year at a board meeting about our substitute program and um that might be something we might want to re we could email out to the board for

175people who weren't in attendance then or didn't see that presentation we'll take care of that thank you thank you um uh goal four teresa regarding the marketing plan i did not realize that 70 of our community members do not have students in the district um and there's over 600 000 people who live here it's a very large community we take it for granted because we as a parent get communication from the district all the time we know what's going on but most of our community may not so i love that we are using our marketing team to ensure that we're communicating all the great things happening in cfisd to all of our community members i love that um that 70 number is pretty common across all school districts it's not just cfts no that makes

176sense that's i just never thought of that um as far as the customer service model i know that was such an important uh project bc before covid um i'm just a little bit leery right now we just we've got so much on our plate with with covid and trying to take care of our kiddos and our teachers i'm just a little bit leery of that i know it's important i know it will make a difference moving forward it's one of those nice to haves and i i don't know i'm just a little bit concerned about that so could i make one comment of course you can that uh certainly that has an external outreach but a big part of it is an internal outreach too no you're right improve employment yeah so no you're right

177that's just a big part okay all right you talked me into that just kidding um um i think that oh um paula on uh or um karen uh goal five objective six that seems to me like that is just also a standard operating procedure i guess i take that for granted you know what i mean yes and i understand what you're saying i would say and of course whatever y'all wants what we're going to look at on this but what i would say is this is kind of one of those that it's constantly changing mm-hmm okay and um i i can tell you for example with covid we saw quickly um you know how technology had to get involved in supporting some of those great points yeah um so but whatever y'all want to do

178no no that makes sense no i wasn't i was being very narrow and thinking about that so no i appreciate that that's because the thing about the time and energy and resources that went into ensuring that we were able to go one-to-one devices with all of our students whenever there's something new with the bond program for example we have to make sure the infrastructure is in place sometimes before something else can happen um so we're you know integrating with that so right it's constantly changing gotcha nope that makes sense i like that um i think that is all i had thank you mr jackson thank you miss heinemann let's go to the right mr henry sure question um and i'm not sure who this goes to but uh who is the actual owner of this

179document who keeps the record and who keeps that going forward so so really there's two questions there we the board are the owner of the document it is the responsibility of management to supply the documentation okay so let me let me ask the question maybe they'll answer the second part of that um in in business and look as i understand this in the corporate world we have a similar report for corporate it's an online report and we get score cards i would like to see this as an online report because right now it's a pdf and maybe with it can be very rudimen not to put more work on joel sorry or others i'm theresa's group but uh maybe just a very simple rudimentary thing where we show a score card where we can very

180quickly go and look the public can look as well to maybe see what we're doing as a district to see how we're doing across these goals just a suggestion going to make more work for for the administration i know we're very overwhelmed as it is but just an idea um next one um on goal number one um again not an educator so if these are stupid questions i apologize but um on number three um increased by one percent why not increase that by a larger number is that just is that an impossible i'm again i'm sorry it's a dumb question but why not make that larger number is that just an impossible thing to do to make that larger for that disadvantage group is that just a hard thing to do to get two percent

181or five percent is that just very difficult i'm just asking it is it is we we we look at incremental growth okay and so when we look at one percent we're looking at uh just shy of 400 more uh students or tests so it's a number it's more of a numbers game so gotcha yes okay yes awesome and i would love it offline if you don't mind maybe for a new board members how you actually achieve that what are the strategies and things you'll do around that i would like to know that from my own benefit i'm sure you all know that um thank you um on goal number two um question for you on this one okay and i think we talked about this earlier in the reports for pope elementary and uh for

182more elementary we have what i call the district standard and maybe this is already done but across all of elementaries we we have we're doing these upgrades on security and stuff and this may be a new point but i would like to see a goal if it's not already done but all of our campuses have the same level of security for entry doors and classrooms and make that a goal for all of our elementaries and middle schools and in high schools if they aren't done already maybe put that as a goal for us to have done just just to touch on that and roy can probably give greater detail but in in bond 2014 and 2019 uh you know the uh uh it's not called bulletproof glass what's it called bullet resistant bullet resistant glass

183and cameras and uh new pa systems a lot of things were done universally throughout okay all of the campuses roy any more details they covered the wall segmentation you heard mr morgan talk about earlier in bringing up our open school plans that you know the older plans up to a more secure situation so we do have tried to establish a standard across the board from a facility standpoint and the majority of those improvements are included in the 2019 bond program will be implemented during the course of all the phases of the projects okay maybe i would just like to see that is something we can track and figure out because again district standard i i think all kids want to feel safe when they go to classrooms especially getting away from the open concept and

184we'll make sure that they all have the same standard everywhere so just an idea again these are just suggestions just for your information some facilities might be limited as to what we can and do just because of the types of uh floor plans we had from the older schools compared to newer i like that magic one we talked about earlier exactly goal number three um just a suggestion again this is going to be one of those wishes and if i was a king for a day but we might suggest making implementing a bonus program uh for maybe attracting new teachers to our district might be an idea we might can do if we can find money somewhere somehow uh if we can trim something but just an idea okay again just just a thought uh

185goal number five um ms smith i one one suggestion i might recommend again just recommendations is take out i.t as part of financial management and put that as a whole separate goal i.t is very important for the district every single kid has a laptop now i think it's a very important thing it's very important to dr massena as far as educating kids and stuff i think that might be a good thing to put in there especially since funding and how we do technology and how we deliver technology is so critical for education one thing i might like to see added on here as a goal as a stretch goal is single sign-on technology for parents and students uh for schoology but for now always pronounce it mispronounce it i know it's probably school as you

186thank you always mispronounce it but as a parent i struggle with that getting online and figuring that out and how to get my kids programs i know other parents have as well but i would like to see that integrated more i know we talked about earlier is get to use your kids log in i know we would talk about getting parents logins i know there's a technology gap there but i would like to see that as a stretch goal somewhere in there for that might be a suggestion i would like to see and those are all the ones i have thank you very much thank you mr henry god for blessing thank you so much really it's exciting to think about um the goals and we just got this tonight so there may be some

187more questions thursday but of course goal one um academic achievement um linda i have a question a couple of questions looking at goal four i mean number four undergo one um can you tell me um what i know you said we use the internal internally developed assessments for math what is the reading assessment tool we use and then to what grade level do we track reading levels we use the fontes and panel system and then we track our reading levels through fifth grade so we used to do only primary doctor blessing game in about four years ago we moved to move it all the way through fifth grade that's fantastic um the question i would have then extending on that is those kids who did not leave fifth grade reading on level um if we

188have some kind of tracking of those students in our system to to ensure we are um meeting the needs of every student in the district so finding a way to make sure that that gap gets closed especially once they splinter off i have another question then yeah go ahead the the students that leave fifth grade so they're not successful in reading for example then we have a program that's called read 180 and read 180 also provides a reading level so what i think i would love to see if maybe we could have um because this goal looks at 80 you still have 20 of the kids even if you reach the 80 they're still 20 that are not on grade level with reading which i think are is my whole point in the in any

189work we're doing in the district that's the main thing i'm wondering if we could have like a goal for a or b or whatever it might be and that is the progress reporting on the growth of the students who are not on level across the system i would even question those who went to high school not on level um because i did go back to correct my faxes eighty percent of texas printed prison inmates who were functionally illiterate and 46 dyslexic so there are still kids in our high schools who cannot read so making sure that this is a comprehensive tracking system that we could maybe get a monthly growth report on that would be part of what we could discuss as a board and that moving towards like a lone star governance so making

190sure that when we have kids in the district who are not on level yet that we know that and we're acting to see that they continuously move in their growth and their literacy level and math as well but um maybe we could start with literacy and then be a little bit um you know build it up i would also like to um i'd like to study i've heard i think she's a real fan of dr henry's dr fagan and umbel isd i believe doctor i've learned from their board president martinez dixon that they have created a dashboard of sorts around literacy that sounds brilliant i'd like to invite anyone who's interested i'll um dr i mean miss dixon said i could use her name in an email to her superintendent you probably could make it

191faster dr henry but i'd love us to study what they've done and see what they've designed even if we could just buy from them or maybe because she loves you they'll give it to us they've created a really brilliant system it sounds like to make sure the main thing is the main thing they're even proposing for that to be an alternative accountability standard which would be wonderful because looking at these goals accountability around stores but you know the individual kids to julie's point earlier the individual kids within who aren't making it but i would just like us to really look at that as a literacy dashboard so that that could be active um work that we could do as a board around the progress of not just the large group of kids at 80 but

192the individuals within the the ones who are not on level yet and that would be kids who are in every group that we're trying to create equity around the point is we'd address them as literacy not address them because of their color or their other things well despite her lack of judgment i will contact her and see what we can find out beautiful i thank you she does uh i did get a definite report from her board president of while she thinks about you and how much she appreciates you and i got to be on some calls with the commissioner with her and she got to present something she seems very sharp so that's a big compliment to you um okay so um back to goal one i also don't see a goal specific to

193english learners who are 14 of our district i'd like us to see some tracking that's more of a longevity measure progress over time of english learners current and former um even looking at the program they participated in native language support or not um early exit bilingual early exit esl no esl those kind of things is different than what's on the taper that gives you current bilingual esl and and uh i think it's probably in toned in the literacy report once we go see what they did number i bet it's there it's really making sure that those kids are i think that to me it's more about cognitive development based upon language support at early grade levels but i think that's getting a little too complicated for this but um so let's see maybe if we

194literally we'll see what they have and then also i don't see special education called out and it's a population that i have to say on the campaign trail there were a lot of very sad and hurt parents that was an area where i feel like the district almost we have to defend the bureaucracy in the district versus the parent and their individual needs and goals it often comes down to legal and so i'd like to see some goal i don't know i think some of my colleagues could help craft one but i think that our special education students our population that deserve mention here and attention here okay that's goal one thank you that's my favorite area you know that so uh i'm excited about our visit and goal two um i think luke and

195julie everyone kind of mentioned that i had the question there about the idea of decreasing resulting removals from class that don't not ensure that that was the action item that we're actually going for the whole value creation conversation earlier so i think that'll be i feel like the request we've made to have a discipline an internal discipline audit of kinds will probably lead us to the places we need to go with this goal um because the whole point is about meeting the needs of all students the students who are struggling and repeat offenders what do we do to care for them and how are they improving based upon the work we do as well as the time on task and classrooms and teachers ability to work because i think that'll influence our goal around staff

196and human capital um also appreciate julie's comment on pbis so i agree as far as principals having choice as far as it not being a mandated option however i do think that we should have uh um maybe the 100 is that we have a published transparent system that that campus can tell us about and we can know what they're doing at their campus if it's not pbis so that we have a you know we have an indication of a consistency across the system maybe there's a to your point there's standards and they can tailor it to their campus needs but there's a standard that we expect of everyone in goal three i would like to see a goal added about bilingual teacher recruitment i was very pleased that within our even though i don't feel

197the report did everything i needed to do in our equity report there was a comment an area of improvement in our district is learning the value of bilingualism we're behind other area districts with dual language programs available in k5 simply because of our decades-old focus solely on state testing data for bilingual students please look at the innovative dual language programs in other districts that go as far as students being able to leave fifth grade with their high school language credit yay um i think that part of the reason i've been given over the years as a parent here i started asking when my daughter was in pre-k and she's in 12 i mean in 10th grade now and we still don't have a dual language program available and that is because bilingual teachers are an

198asset that are short so i would like us to have a goal around bilingual teacher recruitment and uh to the point made by one of my colleagues that um we have kids in our district who are teachers if we had started then taking the kids and our future teachers groups that are bilingual we're 45 latino and the majority are bilingual so i would like us to be able to build internal programs maybe working with lone star they've now have bachelor's programs provide scholarships and make sure that in four years we don't have the same excuse that we don't have enough bilingual teachers to pull off bilingual programming for our students in gold four i'd like to add a goal related to a parent survey i've made that a public statement here before when we're spending

199400 000 to market to the 70 of people in the district who are not in the district i understand our need to talk to everyone about the the values and the strengths of this amazing district that does amazing work for students strongest in the area however i do think that the parent survey is something the administration is already working on but i would like us to go ahead and add that as a goal here and make it an annualized recursive process where we gather input from the parents ask them about the choices they want to see us develop in our schools to create great choices inside public schools to compete as the public schools for all the best choices for all the parents and we need to ask them what they want so i'd like

200us to add a goal here around surveying and finding out their needs and then this process by your time which problems we gonna add and how you know the the way we do things with pilots and all that and making a goal around adding programs that parents want i just questioned karen on goal five when we say 25 is that that no less than three months of expenditures 25 in fund balance what what is that months of expenditures wise um it would be three months worth of expenditures is three months yes okay i just know there was a time we had we have extra beyond the three months amount set aside and we like that except for if we can spend it on reading i'd rather personally so we we do have about six months

201in fund balance so there's money to play with to get your reading done okay very good i'm just kidding sorry colleagues so you're required to have my law three months of fund balance right it's it's not it's a recommendation that you have that a minimum of three months in fund balance but um a little more than that i would say is definitely needed when you're a june 30 year in because you have to kind of float so to speak before the taxpayer money comes in to go five to luke's point about data like a data quality issue i think the literacy dashboard is an example of a way that you can bring some data on maybe that's automation these business guys left me behind with that term but um that's i think that's fantastic okay

202that's it thank you dr blasting game mr serapia yes um begin with a lot of these numbers are trying to relate during the trying time of course you know we went into the pandemic and the survival time we were trying to get get done so please take them to heart the uh go one number five the increase in graduation rate i also bring it up though and it kind of translates into the number seven also so i've been here a couple of years and done a couple of graduations already and what has sticks stick out to me i would like to see dr henry stand up there longer when he's doing the honor students for all those high schools because what i from what i saw there's a big difference in some of the high

203schools graduating many more honors students than some of the other high schools and i want to challenge our district to bring the other high schools up to par and i'm going to throw it out there with the side woods okay yeah they're they're doing something really great there but what are they doing that that we can get the other high schools to help out with and no it's just not going to be that easy i understand that but the numbers are a big discrepancy uh when we get to graduation that that's just doesn't seem we're doing it right the right way in that respect and the board members you all see that when we get to graduation i saw it for two years kept my mouth closed well up and behold i'm over here now

204i get to say something that i've been kind of thinking out loud for a while so anyways that's goal one go to the uh increased numbers number two increase numbers of students receiving face-to-face i like the uh the kpi behind it the suggestion there more into it that's going to be a lot of work for everybody involved of course you know for the bringing in reports and like our president once told me here always talking about discipline is always troubling we never have something good um come out of it because it's always a troubling subject so but i think that's a good idea there and but i would definitely like to see a decrease in and uh those numbers and have it be uh factual like you were talking about but i think we can

205do it uh i know talking to many of the uh leaders at different schools were having trouble after the pandemic there's a lot of fights breaking out there's a lot of discipline issues they were not in the school for a while they lost their their um time being in there and we're seeing it so everybody's having it throughout the state and not only our district or other districts everybody's seeing it so um you know just want to see those numbers get better and and hopefully keeping the students in class will help that i would love uh go3 i put wow beside it i would love the uh recruiting to reflect our numbers throughout the district i know it's going to be tough let's pick the teachers that are qualified but we can get some that

206are bilingual as well or a diverse group to come in so they can be role models to our students even better but let's certainly get the qualified teachers as we're going to and i'm sure dr stewart always does her best there going on subs for the new trustees that's been an ongoing issue for years throughout our visits the last couple of years we would come across that in almost every campus every campus and then throw the pandemic across it and a lot of the group that we would use were retirees and they just weren't going to come they just weren't going to do it and uh and i don't blame them and stuff um increasing the pay would help a lot with our subs he brought that up and we had a discussion about that

207a while back like julie said deborah had a great presentation because the sub issue was internal here we brought it out and it's an ongoing issue that's throughout the whole state it's it's not only us but if we can make it right for them to come and work here we certainly can and i believe dr henry has always said let's try and do the right thing and so that's part of it i love your idea about the bilingual teachers coming in good job the um communications go uh go here engaging the parents volunteering uh when they can it goes back again to the pandemic being able to get out you know there's wary there so we had to understand that that time there i think go go four number three as part of the consistency

208for all that lucas was talking about get a consistency throughout our district on the training issues and what we're trying to get across to everybody i think that hits what lucas had talked about earlier was consistency throughout the district and that would be something really well well served i could i do see inconsistencies throughout our district and we just need to identify those and hopefully we can work that out though but good pointless um lucas had another uh good point on go uh five the uh the automation issue as you were talking she was doing just that part and i was like oh okay he hit a court good job you know and um and she'll fill you into all the information that you would want she'll probably even get into the golden penny which

209is oh my and stuff so so but she'll get you she'll get everybody caught up um with the financial management she's excellent and um let's see okay goes six transportation that's always uh an issue especially now we have our our state renowned award-winning dr smith over here uh can i ask you a couple of questions dr smith okay thank you so if you don't know him yet he's our award-winning transportation well documented thank you yes um what are what do our numbers look like and i'm not just you don't have to be uh you know to the point but what are they looking at right now uh with this recent surge that we had with the uh with the variant or our numbers uh i see us always advertising on on social media and i

210throw it out there you know we need more drivers we need more of this uh what what are we looking at right now we are currently about 120 drivers short meaning we have that many vacancies and we are covering anywhere between 175 to 225 positions on average per day uh i believe today we covered 240 this afternoon right and going back again uh the challenges that you have the uh now as you'll get used to it though dr smith will relay to you that he has you know everybody working in that aspect everybody throws in there if you haven't been a driver in a while and you're qualified you're driving and stuff so um that's right hiring certainly and we're hiring exactly and stuff so um the uh the challenge the challenges that that you

211see do you see us overcoming them by the end of the year or is going to be an ongoing battle you think it's going to be challenging to overcome it by the end of the year we've made some great progress we started off the summer looking at about 150 drivers short going into the school year we were able to enter the school year about 130 drivers short we've got a number of people in training right now but with absences with retirements we've kind of stepped back a little bit after december we're going to just continue to work spread the word advertise i feel like we will be in a better spot by the end of this year we're not going to be where we want to be but i feel like with continued efforts and

212work by our team we'll be able to get there definitely next year exactly so our district we run different start times for our schools so some of our drivers are actually running multiple routes is that correct yes sir most drivers will run three schools in the morning three schools in the afternoon that's an outstanding job that you do with our transportation department and we thank all the employees and everyone involved that they're getting our children there and back safely though thank you that'll be it right there thank you doctor thank you that's all my questions great uh report and i like the discussion great job mr arabia thank you [Applause] you know a challenge that we have working with this document is each of us has our own individual input it may be a little

213unrealistic to put all the different ideas into place i think management senior management is going to have to listen to all the comments made and see which ones seem to have more support and i'm going to to answer a question from mr my colleague mr scanlon to make that point so over on goal 2 mr scanlon said how did we come up with 50 that was a discussion between myself and one other trustee and we've had it on camera for three straight years and i think when it was finally implemented he just talked louder than i did but we had no input from other trustees that that was in fact a goal that we should embrace um and so we have senior management that is very sensitive to what we say as trustees but that

214also means that we we really have to have to be careful that we don't overload them perhaps they're and and i have mentioned that perhaps they are overly sensitive to our comments not not personally but but they want to implement uh what we come up with and since we have a very lean central admin anyway we need to exercise care not not to overload on the 50 i would support removal of that quite frankly i think whenever you establish a goal that is unachievable one or two things will happen people will try and achieve it and human nature being you will achieve it the best way you can and that will have unintended consequences that perhaps you don't want to face so i would prefer and of course i'm only one voice i would prefer

215removal of that one because i think it's not achievable but two in the time period of the pandemic we've all we we know this uh my colleagues have spoken about it but classroom management is strained not just with us this is across the district surrounding and certainly i don't have all the pipelines of information to other districts that i used to have but the ones that are still open and flowing i hear students everywhere are more challenging now and it is attributable to what's happened because of covet i also support the comment of two of my colleagues and perhaps three that we have a deeper dive into goal number two so for example on expulsion we follow a mandatory expulsion those are actions taken decisions made by our students that are simply inappropriate it's kind

216of hard to reduce those other than through restorative practices started early that can encourage students not to make that really bad choice but i don't know that that that's a goal we have to be aware of it along that line if it's possible i would like the board to take a field trip over to jj uh i'm sure dr blasting game has been there i may be the only other trustee who's been there as trustees we will have an opportunity to determine if one of our students should go there and i i think that our trustees we ought to have the opportunity to see what that's all about with respect to the others i would challenge that on a deeper dive into the data one i'd like to see it split by gender and right

217now i'm talking hypothetically so i don't want to create a data burden that's not achievable but i'd like to see it split by gender furthermore i would like to see it split on a person basis i one of my two nephews is a frequent flyer and if he doesn't take his medicine bless his heart he's a good kid i love him dearly but let me tell you he causes a ruckus and and i love him and but what can i say he is a frequent flyer and for frequent flyers they keep popping that that scorecard well that doesn't tell you about the entire population right um and and this is not a new topic for the board uh at some point in time we'll all go back out and and have our school visits uh

218one of the junior highs middle schools i went to the principal pointed out to me he had seven students who accounted for 95 percent of all discipline referrals seven and they literally consumed one and a half ap full time every day well that's a meaningful number and we're blessed to have those children don't get me wrong but it's difficult to understand the data if those seven are creating 200 incident reports i don't know if we have the ability to capture it on a per person basis i'm sure there's some violation for us to know that so we don't need to know the individual students but perhaps if it can be broken out let me give you another example where the data gets skewed and instead of talking about something that is happening current i'll go

219back to a time period where nobody was on the board one of our high schools had a rezoning issue so so the trustees at that time brought in new students and new cultures and by golly uh opening of the new school year we probably had about 60 students that were unhappy with each other out in the commons well that all showed up as that was one incident but you had a lot of numbers popped there and that's not necessarily a meaningful statistic i mean it's meaningful we don't want it to happen but that's a separate incident that can skew all the numbers that we're looking at and so i would like to see a little deeper dive so we can better understand the the discipline numbers the other observation i'll make one of our highly

220talented principals who graduated to borrow a phrase he opened one of our high schools and while he was there that high school was rated even though his title one was one of the best in the country and one of his goals was for late arriving students he would not let them go to the commons and skip class he said i'm not going to give those students what they want which is not to go to class so he made certain each one of them got walked down to the class so there is value to have our students in the classroom he made the point to me he said they may not be learning once they go in that classroom but they sure aren't learning if they aren't in the classroom so we walk a very fine

221line but i think for us to uh work together with senior management on this at least for myself i need a better understanding of the numbers that we're looking at so a reduction of discipline referrals may not necessarily be the answer happily as trustees we don't have to come up with the answer so those are my comments on goal number two goal number one i support additional resources for reading i know we already have some programs that this district started to close the gap during the summer time which have been highly successful and they have been lauded as best practices i've always supported additional resources i am very sensitive uh the three-month rule is absolute minimum five months probably is a good number we don't have a lot of leeway that six months that we

222had we needed every bit of that cushion when covet hit but i love putting more resources into reading however that makes sense happily it's not my job to tell you how to do it but i i support the the additional resources i would point out number six another reason why number six was added is the data shows that students who take at least one cte course with fidelity have a much higher graduation rate than those who do not and at the end of the day graduation is what we are all about um i would like as it relates to goal number one and and i've chatted with mark about this ever since i was a trustee and he mentioned in a prior life this was a board goal but we know that a neighboring district

223that one of our colleagues may have been a teacher in that district hired an out outside group to do an analysis to determine what are the most significant attributes of a graduate and what that very expensive study came back and said was participation in a co or extracurricular activity with fidelity um the the super has indicated in in a prior life they actually used to track that i only have one voice but i i learned that lesson as a parent talking to administrators from that other school district uh and i know dr henry has indicated that he believes that that concept and so i'd kind of like to see that popped in here someplace but once again i only have one voice and i've already said one voice should not be making a lot of

224changes and let me say with a point of humor i am pleased that my colleagues love to make comments that means i'm not the only one making comments and not asking questions i felt awfully naked out here a few years ago when i was the only one doing that goal number three i continue to support increase in sub pay i thought we had that hammered out coveted challenged our budget but i would like to see that come back in you know we supported on having teachers pursue additional certifications in their field and i went back and i visited with the lady who who did that study at the behalf at the behest of a very large school district using data supplied by the state of texas on a confidential basis and her results were that

225academic attainment was enhanced when those additional certifications and degrees were in the area of content being taught this is a program that we supported as a board i don't know if i know during covet there hasn't been a lot of interest and understand that i still support that concept because it leads to academic attainment i also believe that it helps with talent retention we know that very large districts the superintendent of that district made that point in a newspaper article you couldn't do that if you didn't have data to back it up i am concerned on human capital and we'll see this on thursday the toll the pandemic has taken in terms of turnover rate i always look at deltas and we always had a strong delta on comparison of turnover rate between us and

226the state and by golly when you take a look at it is it has shrunk dramatically i have no great ideas to pass on to management as to what to do about it other than to say i'm concerned um i do support the recommendation on goal four to remove number two uh it was put there years ago we hit the goal we don't need to keep uh beating that horse it has arrived i do support having the feedback system as i always have with our parents um it is important of course i do not want to do anything to damage the educational business model that we happen to have we are the envy of the state the lieutenant governor makes that point he used to do it annually now i think he only does it

227every every couple of years but there's a reason why we we have received his support and it's largely because of that business model i too as i have before have indicated that i would like to see it broken out as a separate area and i think that now that's at least two voices and perhaps a third the reason why we didn't do that initially is you you don't want to overwhelm management with major goals that's a basic tenet when you put this together but i think i t has become so important that it needs to be its own standalone goal and then as it relates to a dashboard you know we've kicked the idea around of a dashboard and i know when when they first came out and i first saw them i thought by

228golly this is the best thing since sliced spread so i still support the concept but i'm also aware that you have to have somebody who updates the dashboard uh so so i want to be sensitive to the fact that we're a little short-handed uh and i do like the idea of a dashboard on reading you know if we make it small enough that it is achievable i would definitely support that that concept i used to support the dashboard on reading and math and linda's beating me over the head with the fact tom if you can't read you can't do the math and i keep telling her math is its own language and i haven't sold her on it so those are my comments and guilty i didn't have a single question so i apologize but

229i didn't leave anybody standing up waiting to to field my questions yes sir gilbert you know me i'm never through with mine um but yes sir okay i skipped one by i want to make sure i got an answer on it um on goal three number 2 provide a competitive compensation package for all employees on the target school you want to be close compared to the three largest school districts in the region does the region consist of harris county southeast texas or the region consists of southwest united states region 4 area is usually what we consider which is greater houston area it's about 60 school districts right included in that are two of the three largest in the state scifir and hisd along with katie and i am proud to say that our starting teacher

230pays significantly more than both of those right no absolutely and that's just wanted to be clear on that and i would like to even increase it more by not only our region by but in the state also though so um compared to the three largest school districts in the region or state whichever is um higher we're the highest paying school district of the top three in the state there you go good answer that's what i wanted to clarify thank you so let's go back and see if there are or other concluding comments i know we're spending a lot of time but by golly this is important we we have a new trustees here there is a steep learning curve so i think spending the time is a good investment so let me start on this

231end mr henry no i'll just second the comment from natalie on special education um that is near and dear to my heart because of my kids but i would say add that as a column and one of the goals um uh i understand that we're getting audited this year for spatial education from my understanding from one of my parents our teachers told me last night so um i think that should be a goal in here somehow some way if we can again if it's appropriate i'm asking not telling so um again i'm sensitive to you all as well so if we can add that as something in there that uh be around that i'm not sure what it would be but i'm more than happy to to talk to you later about that if you'd

232like to talk about that but thank you that's one we can certainly add mr hendry thank you very much that's nearly to my heart that's all i have thank you very good sir dr blackson came no i'm great thank you very good uh i would point out in this and i brought this up before dr stewart i'll bring it up again goal three on so this district has supported the concept of visibility um i have been taught that visibility is a key concept to lead to academic attainment to achieve visibility since the lifespan of a teacher can be 20 years it doesn't change overnight i don't want to tell you what how to come up with your metrics i certainly can but we need to have more than just a single a single point metric

233you know me i'd love to see a five-year trend analysis on hirings and departures to see how how of an impact that would make but i really don't want to be the one to come up with the metric i want to to challenge you to come back with the metric that you find to be functional for you and informative for us as a board but but i never like a single point estimate i've always said by golly those just aren't very interesting and i apologize for going out of turn but if i didn't my my poor feeble brain would have forgotten it once again even though it's written down on my piece of paper uh mr scanlon thank you uh so i have two comments uh so dr edwards we're putting a lot on you

234and i just want you to know that we support you and however we can continue to support you or dr stewart sorry i'll answer to edwards i apologize [Laughter] thank you uh so i just want you to know that we support you and however we can help we're here as a team to support you thank you um and regarding dr henry parmee yeah it's late uh mr henry's comment on separating out i.t i think that would be an interesting approach to have it as a standalone governance model um in today's day and age and i see this across all the companies that i support is that we have to understand what digital means and we have to devote attention to governance we have to devote attention to the team members that are going to support

235that but you know i see the notion that we're supporting our network 100 internally so i can let this team know that there is a rapid and not inexpensive upskilling required to be able to support those kinds of goals so as we work with you to understand what that means we're going to have some competencies in areas that i suspect this district may not have dedicated resources to in the past and we'll have to examine the value proposition going forward on where we want to prioritize and i support your efforts and however i can help i'm excited to do so yes ma'am thank you mr scanlon miss blackshear i just would like to say that i do support adding special lad as an objective thank you miss blackshire ms heinemann um agreed i concur in

236adding special education as an area of focus two comments on goal two just based on based upon some of the conversation that's taken place while we may be eliminating goal to objective two regarding um uh focusing on a measurement of of decreasing actions resulting in removal from class i want to make sure that we don't lose the intent behind the objective the intent behind the objective is to keep kiddos in the classroom so that they can learn so the measurement may be something that we're not comfortable with the target but i want to make sure that we are maintaining the objective or the intent behind the objective that doesn't mean it needs to be part of this obviously behind this the board monitoring system is extensive work by the district they are building upon these

237goals with their own goals and objectives and target measurements and i know that each campus focuses on keeping their kiddos in the classroom because they know that's where the learning takes place i also want to make sure that as we continue to take a deep dive into discipline and looking at individual students that that we are careful not to label schools label campuses just like there are no bad kids there are no bad schools in our district we may have kiddos that have challenges and we may have campuses that have challenges but none of our kids and none of our schools should be labeled as bad thank you thank you miss heinemann good jolly we're now to number eight i still have to mention it but thank you eight public hearing the board will hold

238the public hearing on thursday january 13 2022 to discuss the 2020-2020 texas academic performance report the board will now review the following consensus items 9 a the board will consider approving the minutes of the december 9 2021 board work session i presume we may keep that on the consent agenda i'm looking to the right and to the left 9b the board will consider approving the minutes of the december 13 2021 regular board meeting keep that on the consent agenda we will now review the the following non-consensus action items the board will consider nominations for the large district member vacant region 4 f position on tasb on that what i am asking tonight and you can either do it on camera or do it off camera is to let me know if you have an interest

239in serving i am willing to meet with you to to let you know what i know about the time that i served i i was on tasby before i was sick i have also reached out to council to receive to make certain that i can do this without violating the open meetings law act and she said i can we can't talk about voting we can't talk about anything other than what the role is for whoever gets appointed to the tasby position or i can find somebody else who served in tasbi who can meet with you to to kind of sketch that out so if you're comfortable i'll ask you contact me offline and if you want we can arrange a time have a cup of coffee and i can tell you what bing on tasby

240entails i can sketch out the big picture and then i if you're interested i can tell you what i did on tasby and i think that i'm getting a sense all around so we'll proceed in that fashion we will not fill this position until february because i want to make certain we have time to meet if that's satisfactory can be the board will consider approving the calendar committee's recommendation for the 2022-2023 instructional calendar we do have a presentation of course that will be by dr linda macias and dr ashley claber i will provide a brief presentation [Laughter] so go ahead and go to the next one please yeah so just just really quick to the so that our new board members are understand the process we do have a district instructional calendar committee and we

241really work to get input from the stakeholders that represent our community and so that that's that's what you see up here the the different groups that are represented in our calendar committee and i actually had invited the committee committee members who wanted to come to the board meeting today tonight to come or to the board work session and i know i have some that are that are viewing online and there were some here earlier but when marnie started talking i'm just kidding i'm just kidding so but i do want to thank them for serving on on the committee and uh and providing us with a i think with a great great uh proposed calendar we also went to our dic so that's our our district committee uh and and the dic also supported unanimously the

242calendar that we are proposing uh for you the the calendar committee's prior priority is really this is just to recommend to you an instructional calendar based on what is instructionally best for students that is that is our main purpose uh next slide please this is what this is what the texas education code says about a calendar an instruction counter for campuses it has to have a minimum of 75 600 minutes several years ago the the the legislature went to minutes of instruction for students but for teachers it's still days 187 days so minutes for kids days for days for uh for teachers uh they do allow us to take up to 21 minutes from professional development that counts towards that minimum 75 600 minutes they want us they want to see inclement weather days on

243the actual calendar and we are not able to begin school that first day of instruction until the fourth monday in august uh and then they also have in law that when you build your calendar may 15th can be the earliest day that can be the last day of instruction for kids and then as i said our teachers are still on a 187 day contract even though kids are on minutes next please so as we talk to the committee we share with them we call them parameters we you'll see in a minute when i talk about surveys we did a survey for our community we looked at region 4 survey and they take all of that account in in in looking at the calendar again what's instruction best for kids we share we want to make

244sure you follow state law as best as possible we want to balance those those um those semesters and that's very hard because there's more days in the spring semester in the fall however keep in mind the spring semester also has a lot of testing so there's really there it's more of a balance that it really looks like on paper because of all the testing that happens in the spring they look at the timing of professional days the instructional calendar the day is 450 minutes we look at the testing calendar the state testing calendar we want to make sure we don't have a holiday on a star test day uh we also look at student attendance what does that look like uh we know that that very short week typically means more 10 more absences for

245from our students next slide the for the last several years since actually since the minutes came into play we have included at least two inclement weather days into the calendar there's actually three built into this the current calendar and you're gonna see three that are being proposed and what that means is that if we are out for a weather event uh even even a cove closure for example uh if we're out for up to three days we don't have to make them up because already built into the calendar but if it's more than that then we need to go and and and find some days to to make up school uh we look at holidays and break and breaks and that includes election day we look we've looked at that for several years now and

246we look at our summer programs when we're starting and when the when lone star college starts our summer programs as well and then i mentioned the surveys so here's here's our proposed calendar that that uh the calendar committee is bringing before you and i'm gonna start just really quickly going through uh through month by month so marny i'll make it quick i promise so you see remember i said 187 days for teachers so those first two weeks are part of that 107 days you'll see in the purple is is our first day of school that's the first the fourth monday in august if you go to september you see in the blue that is a holiday so so holidays for students so anything you see in blue are our holidays uh if you go through

247october actually if you go to september september 26 you see a star a green star and those are teacher work days so this this will be the this next year will be the third year that we have teacher work days built into the calendar and those days have been very important to our teachers because they have they have so many uh so many lessons and activities and planning preparation to do for more kids than ever that have significant gaps and so we have we had five that are built in uh into the calendar but there are also days that if for some reason we had to do school closure more school closure we could use some of those days as well to make uh to make up days so you see though you see those

248and you see one in october on the 24th in november you see election day the the yellow and the day before election day we found that if we don't have that monday also we had a we have we will have low attendance one year we actually did that and then you see the thanksgiving break the community was very supportive that they wanted to continue with the week of thanksgiving and then when you get to december you see those two weeks for the winter break we actually asked in our in in our survey different questions about do you want to start it uh like we did this this current year or do you want us do you want to go a week later and do a week have a week off in in january and the

249community was very very clear about they liked the calendar like this and so was so was our committee uh in january you see january 2nd is a professional day for our teachers and then our kids actually come back on the third so january 3rd and then you see a teacher work day again and on the 13th and then martin luther king day on the 16th as a as a holiday and then in february again you see a teacher work day on the 17th and on the 20th is uh presidents day and you can see it is also an inclement weather day so we don't touch these unless we have to be out more than three days then we have to come to to take one of those uh that specific day you'll also note that

250as much as we could we tried to attach or back one of the one of the teacher work days to a student holiday that where our parents could have a four day holiday we've heard a lot of positives on that when you get to march you see a week of spring break there and that lines up with with our surrounding school districts and also lone star college and then in april you'll see uh student holiday on the 7th and then the teacher work day and then our last day of school for students is the 25th and for our uh our teachers it's the 26th is a work day and so that is our calendar that we are proposing it has 76 950 minutes and there are three days that are built in for any type

251of school closure that we might uh we might have it is very similar to the calendar we currently have it just everything is just rolled rolled over so i will entertain any questions you may have so let's start from the right and instead of starting at the far end i'll start right next to me mr serabia linda do you by chance have um the graduation days or would be dr stewart i can i can basically tell you it'll it'll it'll be identical to this year is going to be our proposal two on tuesday two on wednesday two on thursday and then three on friday and three on saturday is that starting on the 30th whatever that tuesday is uh what day is it 23rd the 23rd yes sir two on the 23rd two on the

25224th because we can do those after school and then or yeah and then two on the what days i don't have a glasses on julie 25th 25th this is the 27th yeah and three on that 26th and three on the 27th yeah and then the the last day would be the 27th yes as it stands now yes sir excellent that way just planning my vacation thanks guys well marnie insists we have those on memorial day weekend great job no questions great job on the calendar mr henry i have no questions thank you for your presentation miss heinemann miss blackshear calendar what's great very good no questions for myself either with your approval we'll move this to the consent agenda it's moved to the consent agenda um tennessee the board will consider approving a memorandum of

253understanding for two of the district's university partners grand canyon university and houston baptist university questions only so i do have have one question what are these partnerships about briefly what's the purpose of them i can respond to that and then if you need more detail we'll ask some is dr horner to come up i'll kind of spiral back to something that was mentioned before in the discussions about teacher retention this gives us an opportunity to continue to grow the leadership capacity in our district by providing them a variety of options so one of these partnerships is online the other is face to face we have about 14 of these partnerships with various universities and many of them provides our staff the opportunity to have those at this building or at the berry center or at

254high schools we're using lots of facilities right now for obvious reasons but it does cut back on travel and many of them are also the cohort model where they're also learning with their cohorts from scifire and sometimes other districts as well that will just assist them i know there were several things that were mentioned earlier but this is definitely one of those that we see as a good way to maintain our teachers and we talked about growing our own we do a lot of that as it relates to our principles and those in our pipeline to be a principal so good overview thank you sir attendee well first let me say yes ma'am are those new partnerships or those existing renewals great question uh one is new that is grand canyon and houston baptist is

255a renewal thank you other questions hearing none may i move this to the consent agenda we can it is moved to the consent agenda 10d the board will consider approving the granting of waterline and temporary construction easements parcel 3189 to the north harris county regional water authority located at millsap elementary school and authorized the superintendent or designated to negotiate the final terms and execute execute all related documents uh do you have some brief comments yeah just a brief comment i want to for the benefit of our new board members just give you a little background of these types of easements uh the north the harris galveston subsidence district was created for the purpose of regulating the withdrawal of groundwater and to minim in both harris and galveston counties to minimize any land subsidence in the

256areas and that was done many years ago the north harris county regional water authority as well as west harris county regional water authority are required to meet a regulatory requirement to meet 60 conversion of an alternate water source by 2025 and i think it's 80 percent in 2035 so the uh the regional water authorities are going around and acquiring uh easements to be able to facilitate the construction of these water lines to capture surface water and so we work directly based on that request we evaluate the requests see what kind of impact it has currently to our current operations as well as any future site development and then we work with the authority to work around those issues and then they also as part of this they hire a third party appraiser to come in

257and evaluate the value of these easement areas and in turn assuming the board approves everything and we move forward we will execute the easements finalize easements execute them and we will also work on collecting the funds that have been afraid the appraised value that's been established and that covers all five uh these next agenda items the first one's for milsap uh i've described the location so yeah the other four really extends from campbell middle school all the way down wind fern road to our maintenance center as well as a portion going up bobcat road so i'll be happy to answer any questions so i will ask the board to withhold questions until we read the next four i'm going to have vice president heinemann read 10 e 10 f 10 g and 10 h and

258then open it up for questions from the board vice president heinemann thank you 10e the board will consider approving the granting of water line and temporary construction easements parcel 31a 213 to the north harris county regional water authority located at campbell middle school old windford high school and authorized the superintendent or designee to negotiate the final terms and execute all related documents 10-f the board will consider approving the granting of water line temporary construction and access easements parcel 31a-12 to the north harris county regional water authority located at the natatorium and pridgeon stadium and authorize the superintendent or designee to negotiate the final terms and execute all related documents item 10g the board will consider approving the granting of waterline and temporary construction easements parcel 31a-11 to the north harris county regional water authority located

259at alc winform administration annex and falcon nx and authorize a superintendent or designee to negotiate the final terms and execute all related documents item 10-h the board will consider approving the granting of water line and temporary construction easements parcel 31a-4 to the north harris county regional water authority located at the maintenance center and authorized the superintendent or designee to negotiate the final terms and execute all related documents are there any questions from board members on these items [Applause] so are we okay with moving these to consensus okay thank you and i'll take the microphone back thank you vice president heinemann 10i the board will consider awarding bids and contracts and or authorizing purchase orders as recommended in the posted agenda item 10-1-1 drill team competition drapes and hardware it's really 10 i2 department vehicles police

260[Laughter] th this has a nice story behind it why why are you coming to us to ask for the drill team competition drapes and hardware bill our drill teams use these for competitions and also to hold different events and uh they they've been counting on on just support from the school but they really have not been able to purchase some and they're torn and they've been trying to piece them and share them among each other you know the the other part of it is some of our schools have boosters that are able to come up with the money but some of our title one schools do not uh and i think it's just a grand idea that we're going to be able to provide it for all of our schools irrespective whether they happen to

261be title one or not that that was the point that i wanted to make so so thank you dr macias uh questions may we move this to the consent agenda it is moved to the consent agenda we've already covered 10j 10k the board will consider approving the 2021-2022 school health advisory council shack membership ms gordon please president dr henry and members of the board i'll also give you a brief presentation today about the school health advisory council so the school health advisory council is a committee that is required by the texas education code and the main responsibility of the committee is to provide recommendations on topics related to school health you can see here some of the shack focus areas the shack considers these topics each year and then provides a written memorandum of all

262of the topics discussed that year to the board at the end of each school year and they summarize any recommendations that they're making to the board the shack has to meet a minimum of four times each year you can see here these are the meeting dates that are posted on our district website for this school year and meetings are open to the public so you are all welcome to attend a shack meeting anytime that you'd like to join us this is the current shack membership that we're proposing for your approval tonight we use our principal cluster group structure for our shack members so we have 15 shack members that are cluster group members the parents are have a student at the school that's listed in one of those cluster groups but they may not also

263they may not be a cfisd employee so the other five members are coming from our community member groups and those are usually citizens that have a vested interest in school health so we have physicians we have a member from the harris county public health group so community members do not have to be parents of students in the district and they they should also not be cfisd employees we do have a group of cfisd employees who routinely attend shack members or shack meetings but they're not members of the shack so the shack members being proposed to you tonight come to the shack from different sources one can be an appointment by a board member another may be a selection by a principal cluster group leader or committee community members can submit an application to us online

264so the structure that we're proposing for your approval tonight we've had members come from each of those three sources so at this time i will be happy to take any questions you have about cfisc's shack membership let me start on this end mr henry dr blasting i am interested in nominating someone so would i use that same community online form or would i send an email how would i do that i'd be happy to take an email from you we do still have a vacancy and we can always add additional shack members at your appointment i see that community vacancy is that a true vacancy our vacancy is in elementary cluster group eight we do have five members in the community group but we can always add we like to keep about 20 but we

265can add more if the um if board members want to appoint additional members oh i see there's some new names there yes okay thank you i'll reach out to you by email okay thank you dr blasting again mr arabia thank you sir miss heinemann um thank you for the information uh ms gordon do we need is there a requirement that we have to pass a resolution to authorize them to meet am i remembering that correctly so so a resolution will be passed but we won't do that tonight that will be on thursday thursday okay am i missing am i is that correct we won't be doing the resolution okay no no that is only for them to convene if the the board wishes to make changes to identify curriculum like the sex ed curriculum not

266for them just to convene okay good okay great and super thank you for the information miss black sure got questions thank you mr scanlan the question the membership is is so so what about approving the membership tonight you know this is a work session and we really don't take any action other than moving items to the consent agenda or keeping it separate tonight but all of that of course can can change are you clear on how to submit a name uh yes yes please very good just there was a we maybe need to check there was a communication that came out to board members requesting that nomination by january 7th i did i submitted names so we can always take additional members we can have additional community members so we can expand that group out

267a little bit if you'd like we have a meeting in february and so we'd like to be able to have some time as much time as we can in advance to get those members on board but we can add a few members there we like to keep the committee not too big so that we can make sure we're getting work done when the committee gets very large it gets harder to get things approved and get the work done but we can add a few members so i think we have two trustees who want to submit names and trustees if if you think you can address that before thursday excellent sounds great may we move this to the consent agenda or would you prefer to keep this separate since we're still waiting on adding names might

268not be a bad idea to keep it separate separate okay we'll we'll keep this separate but everything else has been moved to the consent agenda so we are now finished with that portion of the board business we will now proceed with the discussion portion of the agenda i know for the viewing audience you may think we have been discussing all night long but this is truly a discussion portion of the agenda 11a the board will discuss the resolution condemning racism and affirming the district's commitment of opportunity for all i i put this on for any number of reasons um i'm looking for a little guidance from the board on how to proceed we have a couple of steps that we can take obviously not tonight but i i need feedback from the board one we

269can choose to sunset this resolution we can choose to sunset it and write a new resolution of our own or we can choose to do nothing at all and and it's difficult to do this and not violate the open meetings law act so so so bear with me it'll take a little time but i would like a little feedback from the board i see those as being our three alternatives if the board sees a different alternative please go ahead and voice it let me start to my left mr scanlon okay do you have a preference for any one of the three okay uh so would that be sunset the old one and come up with the new one okay uh miss blackshear um i guess my uh desire would be to uh review the existing

270one and change what we feel needs to be changed so i don't feel that everything needs to be checked so basically we would come up with a new resolution if you want to put it that way yes i i am trying to put it that way but i need to hear that from you well in the sense that there will be change that there more than likely will be changes made to it then if you think a new one needs to be written i guess that would be my desire and if we uh come up with the new resolution that would say we would sunset the old resolution okay well well once again i'm not trying to put words in your mouth uh but but i am trying to to get some clarity here but

271but but we can't have two i'm having trouble following uh you tom because it looks like the choices are kind of coming together i don't feel a need to necessarily sunset the existing one i do think that we do need uh to make some changes to it well if we make changes we can't have two live resolutions at the same time no i agree i agree but when you say rewrite it makes me think that we're going to completely rewrite the resolution am i correct well i have no idea what we're going to decide oh okay okay well those are just my thoughts okay thank them for what it's worth very good that's what i asked for uh thank you miss blackshirt miss heinemann thank you um i my uh perspective is that the current

272resolution was drafted presented edited voted on unanimously and finalized by a prior board and it stands as is in that moment of time i don't think that it can be rewritten or modified because it is what it is um i think that if this board wants to write a new resolution and whether it's taking that prior resolution as a starting point and uh and editing it or starting new i think that's absolutely the right of this board to do so um that would be my uh that's how i view that and i'm i i think that's fine to do so thank you and i think that kind of matches up with with debbie and once again i'm not i'm not going to try and put words in your mouth but uh i think i understand

273what i hear from the two of you uh mr henry yeah my recommendation would be to sunset the resolution and uh if the board chooses to rewrite it fine um depending what's in it uh we'll choose to either sign or not sign it very good uh dr blasting came i would say but i do like this idea of engaging in citizen participation that will either to get more voices i like that focused on the work of literacy and math um so i would say the resolution's not the work um and i would like sunset and if the group chooses to then like scott said hopefully something goes through mr uh thank you dr blessing game mr rabia in agreement with debbie's word if you want to call it sun setting or whatever word you want

274to use it because we will make changes call it what you may uh and we're gonna adopt a new one but um my feelings are with debbie and some what i believe julie also to where we we have a basis of what we're gonna going to do but i also want to stay within the legal the legal um way of doing this also so if if if it's gonna be the board doing it there's we have to follow the rules of the board meeting and doing such work and not um as before or if we're gonna have other members involved in that that needs to be worked out because we don't want to do it the wrong way and then come back and bite us because we didn't do it legally the right way because

275there's going to be more or four of us involved in it at one point or another so again um i i'll say exactly what debbie was saying i believe that i understood debbie i think tom understood also we we want to use that as a basis and make uh amendments to it changes but then that will entail sunsetting the original one or uh the wording that uh that we're looking for though even though i'm not sure i like the word sun setting but uh yes i'm in agreement also with um drawing up a new resolution and it'll be good to have the board involved in it so will we have a sunrise on a new resolution so i have the input of the board um we we did hear from community members i i like

276that idea i'm going to visit with the superintendent i'll visit with council as well we will my current thinking after hearing the board is we'll focus on this in february it's not going to happen all at once it's going to be drawn out because we'll be doing it in public as lieutenant governor likes to say making sausage is always messy but i think that's okay so that's my current plan but the board can obviously overrule me at any point in time that that you all want but i think that's uh hearing y'all i think that's how we're proceeded with this um the superintendent's portion of the agenda will be presented at the regular board meeting on thursday january 13 2022. i want to say thank you to senior management other members of central admin who

277came here you've had a very long day your day started very early this morning i want to say thank you for being here members of the community bless your heart for being here and viewing audience thank you as well and and colleagues this was a good meeting we had disagreements but that's okay you know if we all agreed on everything we'd only need to have one of us here right and with that i can say thank you to all we are adjourned [Music] you