Formal Board Meeting 10/11/21

001[Music] good evening everyone thank you for joining us for this evening's meeting the cypress fairbanks independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting on monday october the 11th 2021 in the boardroom of cypress fairbanks independent school district instructional support center located at 10 300 jones road houston texas at 6 pm i want to welcome the members of our audience and our television viewers to this meeting of the board of trustees as the cypress fairbanks board of trustees we are here to set goals listen to reports from the superintendent approve budgets contracts personnel appointments and make policy for the district it is not the role of the board to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies

002and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a public meeting of the board of trustees not a meeting of the public 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 the meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed during the course of this meeting the board may determine that a closed session is necessary in that event the board will meet in closed session to consider matters duly posted for this meeting as permitted by sections 551.071 through 551.0 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

003following 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 all cell phones are turned off are in silent mode i just did mine thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and for your interest in cypress fairbanks independence school district i would take this opportunity to recognize our community leadership committee members who are in attendance this evening if you're not familiar with that group they meet once a month and they learn more information about the district and how the district is run and what is happening in within the district our community leadership members are would you please stand nancy frankel thank you nancy tana lamb thank you tana stacy anderson thank you stacy i appreciate y'all

004and certainly your devotion and dedication to supporting scifire the invocation for tonight's board meeting will be given by andy spell associate pastor of west houston church of christ andy and his wife cheryl have two sons a daughter and a grandson andy's children attended sci fair schools and his daughter and son-in-law are teachers at psy ranch high school and his daughter-in-law teaches at pope elementary school andy has been in the ministry for 35 years and loves this community thank you andy for being here tonight before the invocation i would like to introduce the cypress woods high school a a f j r otc cadets who will be presenting the colors this evening carrying the american flag cadet caden stewart carrying the texas flag cadet daniel singer american guard cadet austin letterman texas guard cadet adrian gonzalez

005these cadets present the colors to you under the direction of christopher soto master sergeant retired united states air force at this time i would ask you to stand for the invocation and then the pledge of allegiance would you pray with me please our father thank you so much for gathering us in this place tonight what a privilege it is to live in this community at this time and we thank you for this school district and this community father tonight i thank you for the school board for the superintendent for the administration that leads this community father especially today i thank you for all the teachers and paris and support staff and administration throughout this community at each school that are pouring their lives into the students father thank you that we have dedicated servants that

006give themselves to loving children and teaching on education to them so father thank you for all who work tirelessly for our schools father i also ask you to please be with every family and every student represented in this this beautiful school district father i asked tonight that you be with each family and that the very best is is being given to our children here father as i look at this community at the world and what is going on right now father i continue to pray that covid is has gotten rid of so we can go back to to normal possibly soon and especially for the health of all the families around this community and father i at last asked that that the only agenda in this community be the agenda of educating our children well

007putting them first loving them well and may our children leave this community knowing that we see the best in them that we love the best in them and that you see them as your children and that you delight in them father we give you this night we give you this school year help us be a community that loves children well that sees them succeed and expects goodness in each one and it's in your son's name that i pray tonight amen so arms i pledge allegiance to the life of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all arms you may be seated thank you reverend spell and thank you sidewoods high school board member don ryan will read the district's

008vision and mission statement for the benefit of the audience mr ryan our vision at cfisd has formed the acronym lead to learn empower achieve dream lead our mission is to maximize every student's potential through rigorous and relevant learning experiences preparing students to be 21st century global leaders thank you mr ryan uh that we will now proceed to the rec i'm sorry would you're not used to that okay all right we will now proceed with the recognitions portion of the agenda the board recognized ici construction for the donation of funds to purchase school supplies for economically disadvantaged students don tryon president covey board of trustees dr henry tonight we are celebrating a gracious humble business partner that utilizes its resources for this community to strengthen and enrich the quality of education for our students on behalf

009of cfisd i am thrilled to recognize ici construction and specifically bart cobb its president ici has an ongoing tradition of donating funds to cfisd at the completion of their construction projects this donation is designated for the purchase of school supplies benefiting economically disadvantaged students their most recent gift of thirty thousand dollars continues the tradition of impacting the lives of students across the district over the last five years ici has generously donated 000 dollars to support our district we uh we appreciate you mr cobb for your dedication in bringing out the best in our community thank you dr henry will make remarks and announcements including the honors and achievements earned by staff and students in recent weeks dr henry thank you mr covey cfisd recognized 18 honorees of distinction at the 27th annual wall of fame

010ceremony on september 27th at the berry center both the 2020 and 2021 classes were recognized in a joint ceremony the honorees included 14 staff members who earned significant achievements or held prominent offices during the 2019 2020 or 2020-2021 school years we also recognized four friends of education who have made major contributions to enhance the educational experiences of cfisd students our 2020 friend of education was sci hope executive director linda zalinka our 2021 friends of education were three local hospital ceos jerry ashworth of memorial hermann cypress keith barber of houston methodist willowbrook and jim brown of hca houston healthcare north cyprus you can re-watch the wall of fame ceremony on the cfisd youtube channel 13 cfisd seniors representing seven high schools were confirmed as semifinalist in the 67th annual national merit scholarship program the 13 semifinalists

011placed among the top 1 percent of approximately 1.5 million students who entered the merit program by taking the psat during their junior year congratulations to all of our semi-finalists mr covey back to you thank you dr henry we will now proceed with the public comments portion of the agenda 4a patrons who have duly registered per policy bed local may address the board and make public comments on an agenda item during or before the board's consideration of the item the board may allow public comment on agenda items at all meetings the board will continue with the remaining agenda after the registered patrons have had an opportunity to speak tonight our first speaker is burke p miller if you've not spoken here before the lights will come on the green light you will be given a minute

012uh you're full of two minutes and at 30 seconds before the yellow light will come on and at the red please summarize i'm speaking on agenda item 10a about the school board elections that dr henry is going to remark about i'm speaking primarily to the three board members running for re-election in your resolution condemning racism from last september which you three signed among others you opposed systemic racism and systemic oppression systemic racism is defined as racism written into america's laws and institutions the norms and practices of only white people are what define american culture all white people are racists and oppressors of everybody else systemic oppression says all whites have an unfair advantage because of their white privilege so basically they cheat others out of opportunities these two terms are key elements of critical race

013theory mr ogletree a few months ago in a board meeting you spoke about how we all should love and get along with one another you are pastor of a large church sir excuse me um this is a public comment item on remarks and achievements and this we don't have a public uh excuse me we'll have an item posted on the election yeah the seven tenants gonna speak about the uh the election and the forum tomorrow night and that's this election is that tomorrow night sir that's not tonight and per but his but his remarks are are in 10a tonight i read them do you have attention but sir my point is is that you can speak about the um agenda items but not specific individuals or about agenda items this is an agenda item 10a

014is speaking about the election and the superintendent's comments i would sir i would just go ahead and conclude your remarks please okay i've only got about 30 seconds left but just don't address to specific individuals just about the agenda item is is my point well i i don't agree with that but um mr ryan you're an insurance agent and a member of the cypher school chamber of commerce again this is about an agenda item not directly it is an agenda item an individual it it's about the election i don't sir please address the agenda item and not individuals i'm just asking for you to follow individuals run for the election don't they okay thank you if you can just conclude your remarks without addressing individuals just just talk about the item thank you yeah i

015appreciate it okay all right i won't mention individuals names how's that okay the agenda item what you're addressing individuals i'm just asking you to address the item i just would like for you to follow the rules that's all i'm asking i get that okay i'm addressing the election just wrap up you'll be good thanks okay well some members have um have have expressed um ideas that are antithetical to a lot of the regular folks that are in this room um one of the members has five grandchildren i have five grandchildren um do the board members really believe that these ten children are little racist many oppressors and young cheaters just because they're white maybe someone should tell them and everyone else as well it's time for us to get the word out about what is

016being taught in the district thank you [Applause] angela martin greer good evening everyone i'd like to take an opportunity hold on just a minute she's got to reset the clock just okay sorry okay good evening everyone i'd like to take a opportunity to thank the board for letting me speak as a sci-fi resident i would like to comment on agenda item 9c 2 compensation and benefits compensation plan proposed revision to pay during an emergency closure those not accessing emotion emergency closure leave i am in support of this clarification as this provo proposed revision i appreciate the board recognizing changes affecting students and staff alike and taking the necessary measures to provide the best overall environment when my sister who's a teacher in the district was diagnosed with covet last spring the federal government had measures

017in place to provide compensation for teachers while out on with covet however those funds were no longer available this fall the board recognized the shortfall spearheaded by dr ogletree the board took places to address it now affected teachers have 10 paid days off to recover from covid allowing them to focus on their recovery without worrying about their income i've known dr ogletree for years and he has a reputation of being someone i'm sorry i'm so sorry um the agenda item is on leave and so i need you to stay within the agenda item and not address individual board members please okay thank you given the challenge during excuse me given the challenges currently facing our community and district learning loss income loss and physical and mental health challenges largely due to the pandemic consistent proven

018leadership is vital i'd like to thank the board for all that they do thank you laura mulholland so where's the is the timer reset i'll start when you start sleeping okay hi my name is laura mulholland i've lived in cyprus for 15 years and my children attend cfisd schools one graduated in may and one is currently a junior at cypress ranch i want to speak in support of the shared service agreement between cfisd and lone star this program helps many students prepare for college many students struggle with math my own kids included i used to teach the advanced algebra class by allowing them to get credit for the developmental classes in high school this greatly helps their self-esteem many students only require college algebra in college so if they can take that right off the

019bat then they're then they have a good start lone star does an excellent job supporting our kids and our teachers and um i enjoyed teaching that class so i'm in support of continuing uh on a side item my all my daughter was in the college academy class that graduated this past may i just wanted to show y'all she was core complete so she got all of her core classes um taken care of crossed off by her advisor i'm very thankful for that and the joint effort between our schools and lone star i'm very thankful for that so i want to thank y'all for that and that's it [Applause] tawana i'm having trouble reading your last name would you step up will you tell me what your last name is please thank you thank you i

020am also speaking on agenda item 9e the board will consider approving the shared service arrangement between cfisd and lone star college we moved here august makes 10 years my youngest was a kindergartner and my oldest was going to third grade from beaumont texas she was in private school then and we had to determine whether or not we wanted to keep her in private school after reading about sci sci fair isd and doing my own research i could see that you all genuinely cared and i wanted to look back so i looked as far back as five years and i could see the progression i knew that that is what i wanted for my children as well as the various opportunities my oldest order it just graduated in may she is a freshman at spelman college

021in atlanta she was a part of the dual program with lone star college and she obtained over 20 hours she also was selected to be a part of leadership high school which is a partnership with lone star college and i will tell you that so many wonderful things and opportunities came as a result of her being a part of leadership high school and anybody else who's had a senior or has a current senior you know that when scholarships come up as well as applications for admittance having those college hours made a big difference so i will support and encourage you to please continue the partnership with lone story college and continue to support our students thank you very much william ealy my name is william ely and i'm a parent of two in the district

022i'd like to thank the district for adding detail for public comments in the meeting minutes from our last meeting a much better reflection of the spirit of that input however i must say i am deafened by the silence from this board on the issue raised in the last board meeting regarding the regular pattern of offensive statements made by one of its members to refresh our memory here are three of those statements mr ely mr ely i need you to speak on the minutes reflects on last meetings minutes that's what i'm commenting on last month you can't speak about individuals it's in the meeting agenda sir but i didn't mention no names i mentioned no names sir you're i think yesterday's clue no sir no sir i'm sorry sir in in it was too much last

023month and you know ma'am and so sir you can't speak about individual staff or publicly i mentioned no names the public the community should be aware sir public comment you're making public comment on an agenda item my comments speak my comments speak directly on the policies my comments speak directly on the policies of this community the public comment is on the minutes and you've made your comment on the minutes and thank you for that but beyond that you're you're i am talking about the policies that this district has put in place it's a double standard that you put on the fact that's not administration in our students they're not applied to these board members sir your public comment form is to speak on the minutes and you've covered that is in the meeting agenda does

024this board have to prove the media minutes my comments are referred to those meetings you've covered the meeting minutes huh you've covered the meeting minutes in your comment when you go beyond that you're beyond the these those are my comments in those meeting minutes no sir you you're speaking on the minutes themselves whether they're approved or not and you commented on that when you yesterday sir when you go beyond that then you're going beyond the public comment agenda posting so thank you so much thank you so much you're done thank you thank you sir you've just gone beyond i should get to comment on the policies that this district that's it but sir you're just excuse me public comment excuse me i mentioned no names bob i mentioned no names excuse me excuse me you

025also you have to understand that this is a meeting of the board it is not a meeting of the public and once more i'm sorry but if you look at but bob can't a member of the community cannot comment on the policies of this district as they apply to the administration the faculty the students and this board my comments are talking specifically about the ethics of the board the policy that this is put in place and i understand that what you signed up to speak on for public comment was public comment on the minutes what you've just described speaking on the policies speaking about board members that's not what you signed up to speak for i'm asking you to follow it it's about the lack of any voice from the last meeting that's why i'm

026raising it again but sir they were reflected in the minutes and you acknowledged that it's reflected but there's no answer there's no voice from the board and the comments but that's beyond what you signed up for i'm just asking you to follow the rules on public comment we have other avenues to address citizen participation reporters the community should hear these comments to be aware of the policy that the board is put in place sir citizen participation is the opportunity to share comments with the board it's not an opportunity for for the public to have a meeting or for you to make public comments it's for you to make comments to the board and you've done that or the slots for are the slots for citizens participation full i i don't i don't know sir what's

027that can i speak in those minutes if there's room if you signed up to speak in that then you could if you signed up to speak i'm sorry i'm hold on i'm sorry okay now we are probably going to break thank you very much if you want to stay guys i can't i can't even hear mr ely so i need you to please be quiet because if you disrupt the media we'll have to stop the meeting marny we're going to stop the meeting right now let me ask let me answer mr e lee's question i couldn't hear him so i don't know sir if there are um but let me check on that and we can had i known that i would have applied for that one okay okay my comments were on 8 a

028it's clearly an agenda i'm speaking to those minutes if that that wasn't allowed then and if there's slots available and citizen participation i'll do it then if you would like i have i will check while we go on because the board has to go on with the meeting and then how hard is it to check how many you have in citizen participation i i believe they're signed up but i'm going to check on it further if you would please you just have her say how many i think that's the last one so okay the board would like to go ahead and move on and we will come back to this if that's what we need to do we will now proceed to the board comments portion of the agenda any board member may make a

029comment during this portion of the agenda without prior posting being required comment items may not pertain to the character of any student staff or board member and may not be discussed or deliberated upon at this meeting i'm going to invoke a presidential privilege because i would like to make a statement as board president this evening regarding the no place for hate anti-bullying program that was been issued by some of our campuses for over 20 years we are listening and working to understand the concerns of our community regarding the program we have been meeting with parents students church leaders and community members in august dr henry stated on a discussion item that he would be working with the superintendent student leadership council which is represented from all 12 of our high school because of the changes

030in some of the materials offered by the anti-defamation league the developers of the no place for hate program we have made a decision to direct the administration to put a hold on this program across the district our intent is for the district to develop an internal age appropriate series of programs specific to scifire isd to be implemented to our at our campuses during our discussions with the community members we realize that most people are unaware of certain requirements placed on public school districts by our state government the governor has specifically charged school districts to address bullying and to support positive school climate as part of his school safety directed following school shootings in texas the state legislature also passed a law in the 86th legislative session which is now being defined by the texas education

031agency that requires school districts to add character education to their curriculum beginning this school year this specific law house bill 1026 was passed by a former representative from the sci fair area and is now state law for all texas public school districts scifir isd will use input from students parents faculty and community members and follow the letter of the law to create a program that best meets the needs of our students the development process is just beginning we will share more information as soon as it's available thank you board members do you have anything you'd like to see miss heinemann were you moving toward the mic okay um thank you mr president um i wanted to share just a couple of statistics um i'm i'm not sure if we're gonna get an update tonight but

032um i uh understand that we are over 116 000 students 117 000 students that's fantastic news in cypher isd over 15 000 employees at our 92 campuses we have the highest financial accountability rating in texas with one of the lowest administrative cost ratios simply means that we do more with less and focus on what's most important which is students and teachers in classrooms i was especially thinking about the having over 15 000 employees so i looked up the largest 100 employers in texas we are right in between philip 66 and md anderson cancer center that says a lot about our school district out here in sci fair isd um recently i had several people reach out to me to say i don't know how you do it i couldn't just sit there when people are

033yelling in the boardroom and saying all kinds of things at the podium and the truth is i don't have a choice this is very frustrating to me you see the board operates as a corporate body a body of one not as individuals we are bound by state laws that permit us to conduct district business only in the public and only under very specific rules believe me i wish i could respond sometimes especially when false statements are made in these public meetings so the best i can do instead is to reach out to community members to have a personal conversation to strive to better understand concerns and to offer insight and accurate information since the last meeting i've met with lots of people including parents pastors and business leaders i listened to their questions and hopefully

034cleared up some misunderstandings at the superintendent's faith-based leaders meeting a pastor shared that when the board sits here silently during citizens comments it comes across as if we're not listening that we don't care and that we don't want people to come and share with us please know that is very much the opposite we are listening we do care we do want people to come and share their concerns and thought with us [Applause] i am thankful for the pastor's honesty and for the opportunity to share that we are unable to react or respond due to state law but we absolutely are listening and we care during my many interactions with community members over the past month two different people shared that they wanted to come to a board meeting to speak about their positive experiences with

035cypher isd and to express their support for the district and the board sadly both said that they were reluctant to because they were concerned about being heckled or made to feel uncomfortable by other community members in the audience one is a parent of two cypher isd students and the other is a pastor at a local church this saddens me and i encourage them both to have courage and to come speak at a meeting i also find it ironic and disappointing that a community member who has spoken several times at board meetings calling for greater transparency and more communication with board members actually refused to meet with me when i asked to sit down with him to listen to his concerns apparently better communication to some folks is only one way and only in front of

036cameras but not sitting down over a cup of coffee and having an honest conversation together other highlights since our last last meeting i had an awesome zoom interview with a teacher who's working on his phd the topic was school accountability we had an exceptional conversation and he's a great example of the continuing work our teachers do to grow and continue their own education our guidance and counseling and psychological services departments hosted a mental health resource fair to share so many local resources to support families and school staff focusing on student mental health i was thrilled to see a parent there that i had just met with that morning to talk about our coveted protocols and i invited her to come to the mental health resource fair and she was there it was so great to

037see her i also got to see some folks from umbel isd who came to visit the mental health resource fair they shared that they want to do something similar in humble and it was great to see that we are a positive role model for other school districts finally i want to share a conversation i had with a student at a football game during halftime she came and sat in the aisle next to me in the stands she's a senior and she wanted to share with me how excited she is about graduating next spring as a member of the college academy she'll be receiving her high school diploma and her associate's degree at the same time she's enrolling in the four plus one program at sam houston state university which means she'll graduate with her master's

038degree but it won't be the typical five-year program it'll be three years because of her associate's degree that she's earning here at sci fair so she's gonna graduate with a master's degree in three years is that awesome no no no it it gets better she's going to be a teacher she's going to come back and teach in cypher isd not great okay i promise i'm almost done she has a younger brother who is brilliant and has special needs he's been homeschooled until this year when he started attending high school as a freshman she said he's doing great and thriving in public school i'm so proud of him and of his mom and grateful for all the families who put trust in cypher isd for us to educate their children i love sharing good news and

039positive stories about our school district there's so much good in our classrooms on our fields and courts and across all of our facilities if someone's only talking about the negatives and complaining about our schools please know there are many more parents and employees who are happy with cypher isd and are appreciative of our teachers and the opportunities available in the district [Applause] i believe that we are the best school district in texas thanks to our incredible teachers administrators bus drivers nurses custodians and especially our superintendent and his team thank you [Applause] ms blackshire is blackshirt and welcome back i know you came thursday but i was out of state so thank you well there weren't uh many people here thursday night so i just wanted to once again thank everyone for their many prayers from

040our district from our community my family my friends if you don't know my last meeting here was in june because in the middle of july i came down with covid i was vaccinated but was autoimmune compromised and was not aware that the drug i took for that uh syndrome uh made me um im immune uh gosh thank you immune compromise i i call them covet moments now there used to be old age now it's coveted uh moments but uh i spent 18 days in icu i sp spent nine more in the hospital and 23 in rehab learning how to stand and walk again i never in a million years dreamed i would be in a fight for my life so if you think covid's not real just talk to me i can tell you and

041i was told by the doctors they said the only reason i survived was because i was vaccinated i know the reason i survived were the prayers that were lifted up for me and the grace of god and so [Applause] uh i'm back i'm not back all the way they tell me complete recovery will take six to twelve months i am amazed that i'm already walking with a cane but the body is still very weak and it lets me know because i tire easily and i still have breathing issues but it's great to be back with my scifire isd family and again thank you so much for your prayers your love and support thank you [Applause] dr ogletree thank you mr president i want to thank this board for allowing me to be your delegate uh

042at the tasby uh convention in dallas and it was my pleasure to be with all the delegates from across this this state uh covering all the issues that you can hardly imagine that confront our school boards and many of them are similar no matter whether it's in the panhandle or in west texas or east texas but it was uh a very good uh meeting and it was good to see you uh bob become our first vice president uh of of tasby and let's celebrate that [Applause] and i want to just go over a few of the courses that i i took and many times i enroll in courses to see what other districts are doing and to see and to contrast them or compare them with what we're doing and it never fails uh to

043uh come true that sci fare is way ahead of the game and sets the pace in so many areas across the state and i looked at the uh arlington isd's their effort that mobilizing social media and the to communicate during the covet uh pandemic and also i looked at the the collaboration of uh of of the school district with partners in the community on advancing equity i did do uh the legislative updates uh two of those and i was uh fortunate to be in uh our own royce briggs uh a workshop on the future of school administration spaces looking at the new uh architectural uh placement of spaces i also want to report that i was blessed to participate at uh the prayer at the polls this year i met coach derrick bess who is

044over the fellowship of christian athletes in our community and joined him at cypress ranch high school and prayed with the students there at cypress ranch and also went to spillane middle school and prayed with the students there and at each school there were faculty and staff there and and we had a wonderful time of prayer uh around the polls at both of those uh schools also as julie mentioned was at the faith-based meeting and that's another thing that our district is way ahead of and uh thank you dr henry for really promoting that and we had pastors from across our district there to listen to updates ask questions and many of those pastors and their churches have adopted schools like my church first metropolitan have and we heard a very good address from charles foster

045johnson who is the director of pastors for texas children so it's been a blessed few weeks for me and being a school board member thank you mr jackson debbie it is does my heart good to see you back i wear the mask tonight as a way of saying thank you to him and his grace and his mercy for you to be back with us md anderson told me that when you wear a mask it's not so much for your own protection but for those around you so we're a mask to respect your presence during the past month i gave a day of service teaching fifth graders about one of my favorite subjects formative american history sprinkling a little patriotism along with the with the history i was also in louisville talking to an education committee

046on much the same topic when i speak to children and i've spoken at at this point i guessed over thirty thousand school children and adults my message used to be that all three of our great ethnicities had a hand in creating this country but we all mature and learn and what i said and have said for the past few years is all five of our ethnicities had a pivotal part to play for your history buffs you have to figure out and follow the the tea leaves so to speak uh to connect all five ethnicities but it's right there in our in our great history i too attended the dallas convention courses that made a that resonated with me mental health teacher and student burnout and student achievement all three are challenges during the cove the

047second year of coven but i do believe that our district is in fact going in the right direction to address all of these i attended clc as i often do so mr president i was not surprised by your comment i had an inkling that you might be saying that i'm glad you did it's important to listen to the community i also attended the wall of fame wonderful people who were recognized in particular were the friends of education during the covet year we have relied upon their advice they are experts in the field and even though it's been difficult and community sentiment has been heavily divided on both sides and with good reason their advice has been something that we can in fact follow and we have done so this district for the last 20 years

048has always been held up to be the epitome of efficiency and effectiveness well in the last two years i'm very proud of the senior administration but also this board because we added a 30 that of empathy and once again leading our great state interestingly enough i also attended the chamber event where dr pamwell spoke and she spoke on the role of traditional school board members it was only with a touch of irony that i went to one of our our schools to speak on exactly that topic however with uh with a cafeteria full of school children i really didn't have to say anything other than to listen to their questions and parents of those children be proud of the questions that your children asked they were remarkably on point and some of them were rather

049poignant as well they wanted to know if i wasn't paid for doing this how did i afford to eat and what would i do for money if i was no longer a board member you know i had i had to think about that i'm not being paid as a board member but at some point in time i will roll off uh and of course as always i attended vips lunch and learn always attend these as much as i can for a couple of reasons when i first ran for this board 10 years ago there were many different campaign issues one of which was the closure of the science resource center which i believe should remain open for the benefit of our students and their academic attainment and so with that that covers some of what

050i did during the the past month mr president and i'm pleased to surrender the microphone back to you thank you mrs arabia first of all i want to welcome everybody agree or we don't agree i'm glad you guys are here i'm sure everybody else uh also supports that um i want to welcome debbie back debbie you don't know how much we missed you and pray for you and and um we're just so glad that you're back [Applause] also i'm gonna and and and and i don't i'm gonna say it this way but i mean nothing by it i love the julie heinemann uh the julian heinemann uh has has had a long summer and uh but with today i'd like to welcome her back as well because i stand behind julie heinemann's comments 100 percent

051great job julie heinemann nice to have you back um also the last month um going on to this week i had uh it's just been terrible year for me as far as uh people coming and going and mostly going uh my brother passed this past month uh and he was uh it was ready time for him to go he's in a better place but i wanna and i had like four uh friends and family members passed this past month just been terrible but i want to thank the administration my god there i turn around at the mass at the church and they're there and all the thank you notes uh from throughout the administration and friends i want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart uh that's um that's community there that

052shows uh that goes beyond the call of duty and i thank every one of you guys for being there in a time of need because it's never easy to lose a a loved one and stuff like that so um thank you very much guys i want to make sure i said that to you guys um on my visits i've been out and about i've been going uh uh and nina knows this i've been going to the berry center i've been going to bridging i've been catching games if you know me i've been i'll try and catch as many games as i can and most of the time i'm there again like i said before refereeing they don't even know who i am and i'm asking questions how things are going how things you know and

053they usually say oh i recognize you now i recognize you now because i kind of go a little bit more to you are you are you getting everything that you need to be successful are you doing this and doing this and and uh and in a good way uh and so and they're very positive they're very positive in responses i'm out there talking to the community i'm out there talking to uh the people that run prejud and barry and the to see the the the students and they're yelling at the other side and they're yelling at this side and it's going on and uh uh the arden uh volleyball match-up at side creek and sci fair which went on there at creek and it went five matches 15 to 13 last five game match and

054uh and uh i'm just sitting there it's fantastic to be back uh in that part and i want to applaud the administration and the parents for trusting us with your children and everything else it's fantastic to see that just lovely i too attended tasby in dallas and like julie had mentioned uh you know i took in a seminar that directly was teaching us how to not get in trouble with the law and what not to say because we are held to certain standards and we cannot comment on it or we might not respond to it and they're telling us in the seminars don't do this because you can get in trouble you you could you you know it's against the law so um and i too attended a seminar on doing that and many others

055uh seminars there to get training done and it wasn't zoom oh my god it wasn't zoom so it was person to person and i thrive on that and it was great uh to be able to uh to like dr o said see our patriots compatriots throughout the state uh el paso to the panhandle to the valley to dallas and um a lot of passionate people there for public education it was great to see that again again um i want to say um around the district it's booming i didn't say it last time roy the construction guys are going crazy all over the place you got them building roads you got them building this this and this and it's fantastic the uh baseball fields are there i even visited the baseball guys uh building baseball fields

056in dallas are we going to be on schedule in january are we going to be on schedule just acting really politely you know with all the rain and they're like yes we're trying to get on schedule and it's uh everybody's working in coordination as a team to get everything on board always 24 7 here no matter what's going on and i just want to mention it's fantastic seeing everybody busy out there doing what they're trying to do to make sure this district run functionally another thing here one of the people that passed is a friend of mine a friend of yours uh joe beatty was a coc member and and he passed a week and a half ago and uh maybe two weeks and we were supposed to have coffee the week of his funeral

057and joe took me upon his uh wing there uh and saw something in me during the election and uh kind of a show to me in some places here and let's go have a coffee here and let's go meet some people here and the gentleman passed unexpectedly and got to visit with his wife and family and and thanked them personally for joe's community service to say the least joe was somebody who was good with a handshake and looked me in the eye and this is what we want to do and was always concerned with the other people even in one of our clc meetings when somebody took eel joe was there on the ground with him right away until the ambulance came until that's the way joe was and um we might not have agreed

058100 with joe but joe was good people and i know everyone in here is good people also and i just want to thank joe and his family for being good people and stuff and rest in peace joe batey um also the election is coming up and i wanted uh to wish everybody a safe election and let's um and let's honor the good people here and let's have a good election and um and be respectful in those terms and stuff so anyways that's all i had to say thank you bob thank you mr ryan thank you bob i'll be brief debbie thrilled that you're back with us missed you so much and you're a walking testimony to the power of prayer so i'm just i'm i'm just thrilled you're here uh the other thing i want

059to say is uh earlier we recognized mr cobb from ici construction bart i cannot thank you enough uh for your partnership and for those of you that are business owners uh in the community it it's not always about money uh you don't have to donate money uh what's just as valuable as your money is your time and so we have a pastor that was here from church christ they're also a great business partner if you want to be a business partner in the district reach out to don tryon she's amazing and uh we we welcome you we need you uh literally our business partners and our volunteers uh equate to millions of dollars uh in volunteer just in volunteer hours alone uh and we are so grateful and just know bart you guys have have

060made such an impact on uh students and that's such a great legacy to leave uh obviously we you know we appreciate your your your business within the district uh but i can tell you as a board member i appreciate your partnership even more because that's where you're making a lasting impact so thank you for that and again reach out to don tryon if you want to be a business partner in the district thank you very much thank you mr ryan uh just brief comments from me and that is uh much like mr jackson and mrs arabia and mr ryan and dr ogletree i attended the tas at tasmania the task is the texas association of school administrators and tasby the texas association of school boards and one of the things that's a highlight for me

061is the uh the students presentation and it's always phenomenal and it was a wonderful setting the president for casby is out of fort bend so his group that performed were wonderful and the president of i just went blank on who was president of towson where's that north side no no no what north side was it okay i'm sorry whoever it was they were awesome i will i will tell you it was both of them followed a same theme and that theme was to look on a brighter side and i think that our kids are really wanting to see that they're wanting to see that there's a restoration of normalcy which would be wonderful and also a collaborative effort i'd also like to take a moment and congratulate some of our outstanding extracurricular groups we've had

062some fabulous beginning of this school year if you attend any athletics football teams from 7th to 12th grade are working and competing and becoming more successful each year i say that because i've got a grandson that's a freshman at bridgeland and i'm very proud of him and what he's doing and watching him play and becoming really a better player and i see that in the arts bands orchestras choirs theater performers and artists are honing their craft some are upcoming competitions some are for upcoming performances or exhibitions or both once again i've got a granddaughter in middle school that's in choir and they're getting ready to put on a performance and they're just doing wonderful and then you look at the ffa and industrial arts and the students commitments are underway i think they had the

063the drawing for their animals recently the hogs okay and uh and there's all kinds of projects going on all of these students are being educated and trained by some of the very devoted teachers coaches directors and parents and guardians this is what is special about public education and this is what we need to support and defend for all of our students this is what i mean with celebrating diversity this is what i mean for supporting inclusion and this is what i mean by offering an opportunity for all thank you citizen participation patrons who are duly registered for policy bed local may address the board regarding matters of concern or interest to the district other than the character of any student staff or board member the board may not act upon any matter that is not

064listed under the action item portion of the agenda we have a number of speakers tonight first speaker is judy de haan i believe is right good evening and thank you board members for allowing me to speak with you tonight and however i wish that this was truly a conversation conversation is really where both parties get to have a meaningful exchange of ideas and statements as well as ask questions in watching and listening to what is happening today in our school board meetings and policy decisions at the federal state and local level we've lost sight of that fact conversation and debate are the primary means of how this country has made progress and decisions for the betterment of society we have also lost sight of the goal of our conversations at the school board meetings which

065is to ensure our children are receiving the best education possible to prepare them for the future the primary stakeholder in achieving this are the parents they are being left out chastised and now threatened by the federal government for trying to participate in conversations about their children's future texas state education representatives have become much more partisan and lost focus on academic achievement as well the focus has become much more about ensuring social and emotional programs and digital learning are the means to ensuring their views and standards are achieved we've seen our state academic levels decline year after year and i would encourage you to watch the august 24th public education committee hearing on the state government website whereby to understand why i make these comments and then there are the state open meeting laws that have

066been relegated uh or rather have relegated parents conversations to one-way statements of two minutes in length at board meetings why do i mention all this simply to refocus on the fact that it's a simple conversation of putting the child first in their education increased transparency and communication with parents involvement not with select groups or people the coc is not a fully representative body of parents or constituents to provide guidance to the board on policy decisions or issues of concern they are primary have been primarily prior partisan pac members vendors and or appointees and with the forum tomorrow evening it would be a perfect opportunity to have more of the questions asked of the school board candidates that are the actual concerns that have been voiced in this board meeting thank you thank you brian j

067henry good evening my name is brian henry i am a sci-fi isd parent and taxpayer recently i received campaign literature in the mail from three candidates running against current board members their campaign literature touted their christian values and opposition to crt i am appalled that these candidates are using their religious identity to attract voters the u.s constitution states that there can be no religious test or requirement to public office and i believe it is inappropriate for christians or individuals of any faith to promote or give preference to their faith tradition as a candidate or office holder i can only wonder how these candidates would react to someone touting their muslim buddhist or atheist worldview as a reason to vote for them as for their opposition to crt or critical race theory this has become a

068catch-all phrase used to oppose any teaching or curriculum that promotes diversity inclusiveness equity or anti-racism the result is to stifle free speech and shield students from unpleasant truths diversity inclusiveness and equity are american values god willing anti-racism one day being american value too a school board member should serve the entire community in all its diversity not the religious or political world view of one extreme faction i encourage those who care about this district and our pluralistic republic to vote for candidates who have already faithfully been serving scifir isd or who reflect the youth and diversity of our community thank you [Music] christina woods we don't make it easy if you're in the middle thank you for letting me speak i have a child in the district she has been bullied in a variety of way

069in a variety of ways in her high school but one more recent situation has been particularly disturbing it involves a student that in that is in several of her classes and is wearing clothing with language language on it that supports a specific politician known for inciting racial hatred bullying and bigotry my daughter feels threatened by this display yet is expected to take the high road because of her experiences i wanted to express my appreciation for the board and your efforts in keeping students safe in order for students to engage successfully in class work and in meeting and in meaningful ways with their peers in the classroom they must feel safe in order for students to excel and reach their academic and creative potential they must feel safe in their school in 2020 the cf cfisd

070board of trustees passed a resolution condemning racism the board then made a commitment to hiring an outside auditor to evaluate the equity of academic opportunity a representation in hiring and student discipline measures as they relate to race in the district they also you also adopted other actions steps laid out in the resolution that include requiring the study and celebration of the history of different races genders and other people groups the board of trustee trustees has shown commitment to studying and addressing racial inequality on a broad scale in cfisd this shows me that the district is taking the issue of racial equity seriously and is interested in ending the kind of situation my daughter has been dealing with this gives my family hope that things can change for her and other students in the district dealing

071with bigotry and inequality in all forms thank you marcel alvarado i'm corrected it's maricel okay thank you um my name is marcel alvarado i'm an um actually i'm a parent since 2009 of three kids two at ridgeland high and one in pope elementary i'm also an employee health nurse at houston methodist and i just had some the first day of school was actually i was very anxious but i was very thankful with um talking to mr smith of ibrahim high who's very addressed all my concerns and everything but i still think i know you guys can't mandate the mass but i really wish that you would still highly encourage and educate the um the teachers the principles and everything to just put out those signs saying you're reminding people the coveted protocols put out those

072you know remind people that say hey if your kids are sick make sure that they get tested before they come back to school i know kids i mean i know not everybody can afford to take these time off i lost two days already because i had three scares my middle one has a history of asthma and he's uh he suffers from allergies and we had his iep this this this past week and it's i feel like masks are just like people are afraid to talk about mask or vaccinations i mean this is not really a debate it shouldn't been a debate it should have been over by now if you want to help us in healthcare please vaccinate and educate and mask up not everybody can afford to um not everybody can afford you've lost

073time okay i have lost i work in employee health i manage these positive coveted cases most of these cases are from the community they're coming from their kids okay and i have lost people in staff that are short stuff because why they get sick because of their kids who just got sick so i just want to make sure i know you guys can't mandate i know you know thank you very much ms alvarado just want to make sure that you you know pronounce education nancy frankel president covey board members dr henry administrators and others thank you for the opportunity for me to address you this evening my name is nancy frankel and i'm a retiree living in the district my husband and i have two daughters who graduated from jersey village high school and they

074are successfully into their adult lives and careers largely due to the excellent education they received in the classrooms playing fields and band halls of cfisd i don't need to tell you about the challenges our schools teachers and students have faced over the last 20 months a global pandemic extreme weather events and rampant misinformation have made all educators responsibilities more difficult than anyone could have imagined i want to thank you for shepherding the district through these tumultuous times and keeping the focus on opportunity for all and the education of all students you've concentrated on academic excellence and the well-being of our children you've done this while lowering taxes providing pay raises and working to address staff murder excuse me staff burnout for this i am grateful thank you dr tara cummings hi my name is dr

075tara cummings i'm a licensed psychologist licensed specialist in school psychology and most importantly a parent of two cfisd students and i'm always mindful of our students mental health because it's a crucial component of their academic success and overall well-being i want to express gratitude to the district and our current board for the measures that they've taken to support and enhance mental health services in the schools this includes things like funding positions within psychological services creation of the mental health intervention team to respond to crises the mental health resource fair suicide prevention including placing suicide and mental health crisis hotline information on the back of student badges restorative discipline uh practices and efforts to move more toward that at my son's high school cy woods they recently put on a production of head over heels which

076supports that as well mental health is important for all of our students but especially those in marginalized groups that would include our black and brown students lgbtq plus students those who are economically disadvantaged our esl students those of religious minorities and our special education students for those students in particular supporting their mental health must include actions toward acceptance inclusion representation equity and justice i'd like to thank sincerely our current board members and the district for their tireless efforts and advocacy in that regard i want to urge the district to continue to support mental health in enacting the mission of opportunity for all thank you elias davis hello my name is elias davis and i'm a parent in cypress fairbanks independent school district my youngest daughter is a product and a graduate of sapphire isd k-12

077i am currently also raising my great nephew in the school district at campbell middle school in years past i was very proud to say that my daughter was a student in this district as parents our number one priority is to provide our kids with the best education that tax dollars can buy we have blindly trusted our educators in this board to also have the education of our kids as their number one priority somewhere along the way the best interest of all of our kids has shifted and now the board and educators agenda seem to have become priority i have listened to the district's mission statements well we're not preparing global leaders if we're teaching one group of kids that another group of kids are inherently racist and that the first group of kids have a

078built-in excuse and the first group of kids have a built-in built-in excuse that to be underachievers because they are victims and or oppressed all scifir isd students have equal access to learning and educational tools life is hard i tr i know it firsthand but social engineering and virtual signaling has no place in our school district if we want to empower our kids prioritize our stem programs so that all of our kids will be competitive global leaders your job is to is to approve curriculum that we as parents want not to implement your personal agendas if we're going to to make martin luther king's dream a reality we must at some point take our thumb off of the scale and stop creating more division this boy seems to have lost his way thank you mr davis

079[Applause] carol lee hale hello my name is carolie hale i'm a parent of a cypher isd student i would like to know why students with multiple disabilities are not allowed to ride school transportation safely why can't a safe contract be made for students that have been made for them two skill school years ago to ensure they still receive their rights as other students without disabilities receive why does a whole child's needs not being met but rather picked and chosen which to address every school year advocates must readdress the school and district this year i have been told five different excuses to why students cannot have their needs met after a plan was made to address this each time a different excuse in a different place or policy was blamed lastly it was a board that

080was blamed students rights should be given to students regardless of their disability or needs necessary for the rights to be given or addressed the students should never feel like they are not wanted or welcomed for something they cannot control about themselves please address your policy and how it violates students rights and how it discriminates disabled students i would like a safe agreement and plan to address all the students disabilities and then to be centered as a whole thank you nikki cowart tonight is the last formal school board meeting before voting begins for our cypher isd trustee election trustee the word trust is in the title of trustee and educators and community members alike just want to be able to trust that the people serving on this board are doing so for all of scifir isd

081you know something i'm guilty of not doing publicly often enough is giving thanks and praise to our school board trustees as the true volunteers that they are and when our union cypher aft has made endorsements in school board elections current and in years past not one time did we ask the candidate what political party they most align or identify with you know why and if you hear me say nothing else tonight hear this unlike the claims by some of the hyper-partisan candidates in recent weeks these elected positions are not about political party but rather policy so we wear purple tonight because this is not about red and it's not about blue republicans or democrats our union cares most about recruiting and retaining the best employees for our kids all of our kids do you know

082what i know for sure i know all of this for sure because in recent weeks we have knocked on over ten thousand doors all of them in scifire isd and quite frankly community members aren't concerned with the noise unlike the 10 or 15 people that have been coming to these meetings in recent months not a single resident that we have spoken to talked about critical race theory we spoke to everyone from parents to principals teachers grandparents retirees they talked about safe schools coupled with top-notch education don't believe me join us in knocking on the doors ten thousand polling the real issues and not the candidates at all so many wanted to talk to us about bullying student mental health social media tick tock challenges bus driver shortages even becoming a volunteer or a mentor at

083a campus thank you nikki tara lamb tana lamb excuse me nervous okay uh thank you for letting me speak dr henry and the board of trustees and i'm happy to see you back mrs black sure it's very nice to see you back first off thank y'all for lowering our tax rate again i think everybody can agree on that one right um i am the parent of an lgbtq child that attends high school in the district i appreciate the message of kindness and inclusivity from our district leadership and board members this translates kind of down to the school and the staff and he feels safe accepted and is happy at his school and this isn't about a lesson or anything he's being taught in class or any the teachers just teach the curriculum he actually spoke

084a few board meetings ago and said they don't say anything political it's really just about the general attitude of kindness and support that he feels from most of his teeth from all the teachers and most of the children now he does still get occasionally called the f slur in the hallway by people's children but he honestly blows it off i get upset he says don't say anything to anybody i don't care those kids are idiots and he moves on because he has a good group of friends um you know he's in marching band so great marching band has a good group of friends i firmly believe really that his happiness and how happy is at school is really due to just the overall kindness and acceptance and everybody's nice right nobody cares everybody just treats

085each other like they are and i really really do not want to move backwards on this one so thank you very much and the last thing i asked the kids what they wanted me to say and they said it's very important we don't have soap dispensers at bridgeland high school in our bathrooms we want to wash our hands because of the tick tock challenge so thank you we will now proceed with the reports portion of the agenda 7a in accordance with texas education code and the state board of education regulations the president of the board will announce the name of each board member who has completed exceeded or who is deficient in the continuing education required under state law the following members have exceeded their required continuing education credits per the above debbie blackshire with

08620.50 hours bob covey with 25.25 hours julie heinemann with 28.25 hours tom jackson with 23.0 hours dr john ogletree with 28.5 hours don ryan with 21.0 hours gilbert sarabia with 22.0 hours thank you board members for all exceeding 7b the administration will provide an update on the general operating budget for 2020 2020 2021 school year karen smith before uh karen gets started i just i asked karen if she would prepare a little something so because as you know the last 19 months have been uh very difficult financially and i knew the community would want to know where we're standing uh what our standing is as a district financially so i asked her to kind of put together a little short summary today mr covey thank you uh president covey and dr henry um throughout 2021

08720 20 21 i've provided you all with several updates to keep you appraised of or apprised of the unique situations that our district has had and the different items that might affect our budget so now i would like to provide you an update now that we are through the end of the fiscal year of where we believe we will be with our estimated results for 20 20 21 i want to real quickly just review as i have before the coven 19 cost that the district has incurred during the 2020-21 school year the cost that you see reflected here are for uh july 1st 2020 through june 30th 2021. you'll see for the we had total uh expenditures of 119.7 million associated with coven 19. in the general fund of that it was 65.2 million dollars

088this included things such as payroll increases for the lead safely stipend for employees of 8.3 million and the retention stipend that the board approved for substitutes and temporary workers of approximately four hundred and two thousand dollars it also included payroll increases that we incurred because of additional substitutes as well as supplemental and overtime pay for various areas such as technology nurses operations police etc a majority of the non-payroll cost that you see here is associated with the one-to-one devices that the board approved that was paid from bond funds during the 20-20-21 school year we also included things items such as plexiglass dividers hot spot service as well as ppe the lost revenues a column the row that you see here includes lost interest income facility lost income because of facilities use uh athletic gait receipts

089concessions catering and one and then also what you don't see here that you may remember is food service actually had lost revenues of over five million dollars we since have received uh some stimulus funding that came through the u.s department of agriculture of four and a half million so that's why this amount is slightly less than what you previously saw so i would like to also update you on the federal stimulus money that we have received to date this chart reflects all the different types of federal funding that we received and we've gone over this several times which is the uh three different phases of stimulus money the esther one two and three funding as well as some coronavirus relief funds as you're aware the sr1 funds were utilized by the state to supplant state

090aid in 2019-20 the district drew down about 2.3 million dollars in 2019-20 and we specifically held back the remainder of the 15.4 million to offset our coven 19 costs in 202021. the sr2 and sr3 entitlement amounts were released late in the school year the grant applications have only been were only made available right towards the end of the year and then what they were made available for were the sr2 funds and two-thirds of the sr-3 funding so far we have not received a release or a chance to apply for the remaining one-third of the sr-3 funds the stimulus funding just so you know is you might look up here and you say well why haven't we pulled why isn't haven't we seen more money come in what that is is it's a reimbursement for costs

091that we incur throughout the grant period so these these funds for example with sr3 they actually are available to us through september 30th 2024 so we will be drawing down those funds as needed between now and september 30th 2024. uh we also received uh on june 1st approximately 7 million from the corona virus relief fund this is the one where districts could be reimbursed for 75 percent uh of their costs from march 1st 2020 through may 20th 2020 and as a reminder you know most as you well know most of our costs occurred during this school year so we really weren't able to capture the greatest benefit from those funds in addition uh the district uh barely received uh by june 30th notification of the prior purchase reimbursement program funding this relates to our one-to-one

092devices so i would like to uh say kudos to melissa mcaneer and amanda bowles because they worked very very hard because at first it appeared we were not going to receive much of this funding from tea and we worked with tea we worked for the texas department of emergency management and we actually ended up receiving more than we actually applied for in that funding so kudos to them also in addition the first uh stimulus funding that we did receive was the provider relief funds which is to help offset is about 742 000 and that was to help offset some of our shars expenditures which are related to medicaid eligible costs that we could get reimbursed for so now i'd like to discuss some of the factors uh that influenced our final amended budget uh that

093that would have made a difference in what we presented to you at the june board meeting i indicated that the absolute worst case scenario would be would be approximately a deficit of 53.1 million dollars and i'd like to share with you why the possibility of such a deficit was shared with you at the time first of all tea their guidance says that we have whenever we have a budget that the budget has to exceed those actual expenditures well you know at year end uh if there's no way you can possibly imagine what would have happened especially with last school year so it's very very difficult to predict exactly where we would be so we make sure that we have enough funding available in the budget by function and what that is is that's the functional

094areas such as instruction maybe guidance and counseling maintenance and operations in addition tea did not allow school districts to actually record or uh draw down record funds associated with the esser grants prior to receiving approval of the grant applications therefore at the time of the board meeting we had not received approval of that so we had to show the entire cost and not the revenue that the district would be receiving to offset some of those costs also tea announced that they would be providing some type of ada hold harmless for school districts to help with any reduction in state funding well at the time of the board meeting when we all had to approve the final amended budget we did not know what that ada hold harmless would be for several reasons one of which

095was it wasn't we hadn't didn't have clear guidance from tea yet on exactly how it'd be calculated but also our final peems results in submission of our ada data had not been submitted to the texas education agency we also had some supply chain issues where we were having trouble getting some of the items that we had purchased so we were unsure which fiscal year those costs would be incurred in but we recorded them in 2020-21 just in case they were received in addition the district was waiting on results of an appeal that we filed with the department of health and human services on some of our shars reimbursement and then as i've mentioned to you before we always budget to fill all positions and to spend all funds and we never know until until the

096year is over exactly how many of those unfulfilled positions were unfilled all year and how much unspent funds we had so let's go over the what affected the budget this last year and what our status was and with the budget first of all the board approved a budget of a 30 of deficit of 39.8 million dollars the adopted budget had so many unknowns and it included things such as 10 million towards coronavirus cost as well as less revenue because we anticipated that maybe our attendance would be down and it also included costs for increased substitutes uh in the previous slide i shared with you why the final amended budget showed a deficit of 53.1 million dollars but i also mentioned to you at that board meeting that i fully expected to see it be less

097than that but at the time we felt that uh this is way we had to present it because we did not have the information uh associated with ada hold harmless as well as we had not been able to we had not gotten approval of our grant application for the sr funds so once we allocated the sr2 funds because we did get approval of that grant at those grant applications prior to june 30th uh and as well as some of the items that i'm going to share with you on the next slide i'm pleased to tell you that we estimate the district will actually have a surplus of about 2.4 million dollars that we will be adding to fund balance in november the district will present the final the annual financial report to you as well

098as the external auditor's report on the financial statements so lastly i would just like to go over the items impacting the the actual results and why we are sure we'll be having a 2.4 million surplus in 2020 2021. first of all we did receive uh more informa information related to the ada whole harmless and it is actually going to be less than we had anticipated at the time what we were told uh it was that it could be as much as 50 percent of our sr2 funding and just to refresh your memory what happened with the ada hold harmless is the they were going to supplant state aid with that s or 2 money even though they were giving us a hold harmless how we were getting that hold harmless is through funding from sr2

099and so it was less than anticipated so you know fifty eighty four s or three hold harmless i mean sorry s or two grant amount would have could have been 84.3 million dollars so you know 52 percent of that could have been 42 million dollars that it could have been we were very fortunate and it ended up being about 15 million dollars it wasn't as much as we had anticipated it would be and then we did a get those grant applications in uh what we did is after the board meeting where we shared with you at the committee of the whole the esser plans we immediately submitted the sr2 and the sr3 grant applications and then we even went as far as to contact tea and asked them to please prioritize those that had a

100june 30 year in so we did receive approval of both those grants prior to june 30th and that allowed us to recode a lot of these expenditures that we incurred for coven 19. in addition we actually received notification and got a favorable char settlement and so that was about another four and a half million dollars uh also the district what we do to every year which you may not be aware of is we pro we actually uh appeal our property values much like a taxpayer would and so we received back you can actually appeal a second time your property values and so we received about three and a half million from our 2016 property value appeal and then also we appealed the 2018 property values and just to refresh your memory house build three what

101it did is it provided school districts the opportunity to get something called transition grant and how that worked is it compares your uh your year to what you would have received under old law one of the years that skipped whenever uh the hb3 happened we used to be funded on prior year values and then with hb3 it was current year values so the year skipped was 2018. so we apply protested those property values and fortunately it actually put us into transition grant so we will be we will be receiving uh 6.2 million dollars associated with 2019-20 and since that school year's over we will be recording it in the current school year in addition it actually benefited our state aid funding that we received by 5.2 million in 20 20 21 and we hope that

102it will uh benefit us again next year because that money will be running out after three years but it's very nice that we will be able to get that in addition uh we transferred funds from uh contra contributions that we made in excess of claims and our self-funded insurance into the general fund and then we had uh addition indirect costs on grants and what those are that's for the administrative costs for all the federal grants the district administers and we can take a portion of that money and it puts we can put it in the general fund to help us administer those grants and because of the ester grants we had more indirect costs than we would have normally had in addition our unfilled positions uh ended up being you can only imagine with a

103year like this last year a little bit more than we had budgeted for and then also unspent funds were larger than we thought they might be we were unsure of exactly where that would be we did have more than normal um it's called called roll forward purchase orders and what that relates to is money where because of supply and chain issues everything didn't come in this year and some of those items will come in in 21 22. so now i am available to answer any questions you might have board anyone got any questions julie um karen thank you for um thank you for being on our side uh thanks for shaking the couch cushions to find all the pennies and you know that's a lot of work that's a lot of effort and to get

104those grants in and to um fight for those dollars i appreciate your you and your team for what you do not everybody finds it as fascinating as we do um but uh i know right but um but this is like the true meat this is the business of the district so um thank you for all that um my only that's all good news that's fantastic news um i know as a community member when i would sit in the audience and watch the board pass a budget it always gave me heartburn that it was a deficit budget and it used to like freak me out but now it doesn't because i know how it works i know how school finance works so um the state is keeping a percentage of the federal funds are you referring

105to the the one-third yeah no i'm referring to like we got 75 percent reimbursement oh oh no and i'll parse it for the s for funds too i'm sorry don't mean but the state is not passing on all the funds they're keeping some of it is that correct that particular one was through the texas department of emergency management and it was administered similar to fema grants okay so that's kind of looked at a little bit differently the other funds are all being passed or is the state keeping some of those funds uh the esser let's see the s will that we already know about the sr1 funds which used to supplant state aid yeah so they kept all that there's a portion of sr2 for the ada hold harmless that was kept which was about

10615 million that was used to offset that we are going to get the rest of the sr2 money and then uh so far we have been able to apply for two-thirds of the sr-3 and and we feel that we'll get to apply for the additional third we just have not received anything from tea to give us notification that we can submit our grant application okay awesome thank you thanks for all you do appreciate that thank you for the hard work and staying on top of this uh do we have to in like the the balance that we have with esser 2 and then those funds that we are eligible for for sr3 do we have to continually reapply or want you all have requested is it just in the bin so to speak and then

107they will let you know or what else is required of us that's a great question um you may remember what i said is is that we get reimbursed for costs that have been incurred so we have submitted initial grant application and then one of the things that we will do in fact we're in the process of doing this right now is we submitted it based on what we knew at the time and we are allowed to then go back and amend it um at the time we weren't sure what our ada hold harmless would be and so we didn't know how much we would be requesting of what's called pre-award costs and those are costs that were incurred prior to uh the application date prior to that time and so you know we'll have to

108admit our application but it's been done all we have to do is amend it then it when it comes back approved then we can spend it in that manner but what we will be doing is drawing down those funds as we spend them and i know dr henry shared with you you know we have to kind of look at this at two and three years out because these grant funds are available to through for us through 2023 for the sr2 funds in 2024 for the sr3 funds so we're you know look we'll be addressing things such as learning loss throughout that period of time so we're looking to maximize the use of those funds mr ryan you got karen are these numbers all the numbers are giving us reflective of the recent pay raise oh

109this is for 20 20 21 so no sir it's not the current year 21 22. and then what would uh what would our fund balance be our fund balance will actually be i've got that right here i think it's about 500 and i believe 19 million let me pull that up and make sure and it'll be about 6.3 months in fund balance of expenditures okay i looked at that just i do have it it'll be five i was i was off by a million it'd be 520 million to 64. 135. if it ends up being about what we've estimated and we're pretty close to the end of um the audit so we believe it'll be very close to that figure okay thank you ms blacher well mine is more of a comment in that it

110still goes against my grain that any government entity could withhold money that is intended for this school district and the fact that the state used the first sr1 funds to supplant money really just as inexcusable in my book and you know we are in great shape in scifire isd we were able to buy and provide the chromebooks that our students needed for learning but that is not true for all school districts across this state and you know it's just it's just another example of our government overstepping i believe just a comment thank you mr jackson karen good presentation better than that is the good news that you had to share with us but that good news did not happen without a tremendous amount of detailed work and attention to both the law but also to

111the numbers so a tip of the hat tonight to you and your team thank you and if i might add just we have had wonderful principals and departments that have been good stewards of money and i'd just like to add that in too absolutely this is a a team effort we all know but i'll mention it for the viewing audience whether you're in person or at home sr-3 funds are primarily meant to address the impact of covet and probably in my humble opinion the most significant focus of this board is to lessen the covet impact so so to review those funds are to be spent over roughly a three or four year period of time is that correct that is correct through september 30th 2024 for esther 3. the other part of it is that

112it is up to management to come back to this board to say here is how we plan to address the impact of covet part of it as well is knowing where we are so we can know where we shall be we've talked about this in board meetings before and this is really the heart and substance of what the board focus is all about but remind us what month we had our for lack of a better word benchmark not your term but it's the one that that i can use because it's meaningful to me and this goes to you linda what time period did we roll out the benchmark when do we expect to have an analysis of it so that you can then give us a game plan albeit one that will have to have

113modification as we go along going forth the the funding helps to address part of it but now the ball is kind of in your your court since you know there will be some money available so so kind of sketch that out for us please so mr jackson we moved our benchmarks uh a little earlier than we typically do in the fall and we started them in september so this past month we've started them we're pretty much done with them we have a uh i think it's a primary grade that still needed a little bit more time to get theirs done and so now we are in the process of evaluating them we hope we had hoped to be done but we're not and so in the process of evaluating them and and we will have

114a report for you in uh in november because we're except for a little bit of primary we're pretty much through with them mr jackson just to add to that um there's a little uncertainty and the uncertainty is because we're running a virtual temporary virtual uh school we've got a lot of our instructional coaches tied up with actually teaching students virtually so in all honesty that's going to put us behind a little bit just because i mean i cannot thank our instructional coaches and our teachers that volunteered to be virtual when they thought they were going to be in person this year they've really really stepped up but we're encouraged just from news that's coming out that maybe a possible child vaccine will be available and maybe we can start sometime in december and january with

115everyone back in person and mr jackson i will add too that we're not waiting for the results of the dpms or the the district benchmarks to start working with students we provided all of our campuses with sr3 funds and with those or three funds they are using money for extended time learning for tutoring you may recall that you all approved the closing the gap time those 30 minutes for all kids be able to get some additional instruction all of that is happening some of them purchased some uh uh specialist reading specialist and math specialist they bought that with their sr3 money they're using those support kits as well so while we're waiting on data please please know that we are continuing with the work of supporting students [Music] a very key and important answer i'm

116not bothered that the timeline has slipped this analysis is far more important than the ones we have done in years past because in years past it was always fairly predictable this one will have all kinds of surprises both of both varieties early on we already knew that the surprise was better than what we were reading about in the newspaper from other districts so i would not at all be surprised that we have good surprises coming out of the data one benchmark since i was a national american always look at our numbers there although our numbers are down they're still strong and i see that also as a testament to the work of our teachers and our administrators i also appreciate the fact that you are not waiting to get the data back you're already moving

117ahead to address one of our campuses that that came in for special state recognition and i was privileged to actually interview the principal on film about it her point was it wasn't really the programs it was focusing focusing on each individual child each and every day and i know all of our principals as well as our teachers are doing that i will mention some concerns i have i'm concerned about lack of staffing i am concerned about burnout you know last year the effort put forth was absolutely magnificent but but there is a length of time where it's difficult to maintain that same degree of intensity and magnificence so i'm concerned about burnout we have enhanced mental health to deal with it doesn't mean that i don't worry about it almost every day of the week

118i worry that our curriculum department is understaffed for the demands that we will be placing upon it i have no answers for you other than that's a concern i have lack of people is lack of people karen just told us we have money again but having money doesn't address lack of people so those are my observations but for tonight at least i love the news you're giving to us it's wonderful and i look forward to hearing more about this in november and december as as your plans and data roll out thank you once again thank you it was a group effort mr sarabia outstanding job karen nice to hear about getting the extra money and your staff uh staying on them uh to make sure that uh the money is delivered to where it's supposed

119to be um i but also uh back uh miss blackshear's comments on government overreach it's just um it's not the right thing for them to be doing and stuff absolutely but it's nice to have a great fund balance as don had brought up there and making sure their fund balance is good i think you said we're about six months out which is really reassuring uh as the money comes in i'm sure linda will spend it wisely i think bones will attest to that and stuff so very very well good job there karen thank you very much thank you karen one more time i'm going to ask and i've been had this this question sent to me a number of times in the past few weeks uh and that is on the property values and uh

120if i can you restate exactly the control because there are people out there that believe if our property values are going up then we're going to get that much more money but there is a level of which we do get and the balance then goes to the state can you be more definitive on that for us absolutely the way the way the state aid formula works is uh it looks at it it basically looks at the local share which is the school district share which comes from property taxes and that's associated with whatever our property values are and then the state share we are basically going to get the same pot of money so to speak unless we have an increase in enrollment so as property values go up then that means if you apply

121the you know as property values go up and you apply the tax rate depending on what that is typically property taxes will go up that revenue to the district property tax revenue will go up to the district because of that increase in property values even though this you know this year we we have a decrease in the tax rate but if property values goes up there could be a difference there but then we get less state aid when that local share goes up and as the property values if they we were in a decreasing environment then we would get more state aid so they're always leveling us out to where we don't have any more money unless we have an increase in enrollment or an increase in the special different uh funding that we would

122receive such as bilingual funding special education career and technology etc just i'm sorry go ahead i'm just going to say in simple terms all things being equal if if attendance are is the same and weights are all the same if we generate a dollar more locally with property taxes the state lowers their uh funding to us by a dollar so it always stays equal so rising property values help on the on the interest and sinking side on our debt but it really doesn't help any on our maintenance and operation side and that's kind of where the misinformation is out there and then one final thing is is our optional homestead exemption and you've explained this a number of times but once again the optional homestead exemption that we've offered for uh 30 years since 1983

123i believe 40 years that that's counted against us right karen uh basically what happens is as the with our state aid with our funding it's looked at as if our va as if we weren't re didn't have that optional homestead extension in other words our values were higher because what happens for the taxpayer is their value goes down by that 20 percent optional homestead exemption before property taxes are applied but the state looks at it as if we had taxed the home on the entire value and not reduced for that 20 optional homestead exemption so they don't give us the amount of money that we should be getting because we're offering the optional homestead exemption they do not give us additional state funding because we offer the optional homestead exemption thank you and i believe

124karen correct me but that's in the neighborhood of 80 million yes sir it's um about 80 million and i if you take into consideration the additional amount with the freeport exemption it's 118 million dollars thank you karen wonderful report appreciate your sharing with us i'm sorry tom one more there was uh one other concern and it's the biggest mark i have on my paper and somehow i didn't bring it up i have taught in the classroom and i have said here at the board microphone that the gold standard is six months worth of reserves pure and simple you go to any finance person they're going to give you roughly the same answer i am concerned that the state of texas is not concerned about best fiscal practices i will note that an individual very prominent

125in that area actually sent me a letter requesting donations because that individual's fund balance was insufficient to cover a black swan event that occurred during the summer time but if a sovereign says that you can't do something you can generally think that the sovereign will follow through whether it's good business practice or not i raise the point i know you're well aware of it but i do want the viewing audience to be aware that we will be punished for being financially prudent and and somehow this board and this senior management team will have to figure out how to address that going forth okay tom that one question right that was a statement right bob all my questions are really statements i know i know but but you asked that for the viewing audience so that

126they could distinguish between the two unlike you i was not gte uh is that right i wasn't one of those so okay now we'll proceed to the consensus action items portion of the agenda 8a the board will consider approving the minutes of september 13th 2021 regular board meeting the following non-consensus action items were moved to consent during the board work session on thursday october the 7th 9a the board considered approving the cfisd trustee tom jackson's request to attend the 2022 nsba advocacy institute in washington dc i asked this to be put on the agenda because texas association of school boards and with the national school board association offers this every year except for the past two years when we were unable to do that due to covet it is an opportunity for a board member

127from scifir or more than one board member and from multiple districts to go to washington dc to listen to presentations and then to get to sit down and meet with our representatives up there to talk about our school board business with them get their opinions share ours it's a wonderful opportunity last year we were able to do this we had 90 representatives from across the state of texas that went we were the largest delegation in washington d.c and we got to visit with a lot of ours so i reached out to each of our board members because we were getting close to the deadline to turn it into tasby because tasby does offer a stipend to cover the cost of the conference and mr jackson was the one that responded and said that he was

128interested so i had to go ahead and submit his name but tonight i would like and this is going to be part of the consent agenda to have tom jackson be approved for going to washington dc in 2022 so this is all part of the consent that's that's my explanation i hope you're not too confused and mr mr president i will have to abstain from voting oh yeah one that moved to consent though well it's not it is on consent but when we vote no i understand that but it's part of the consent agenda right yes sir everything it was all moved to that okay 9b the board consider proving on first reading editions revisions or deletions to district policies thursday presenters were deborah stewart and roy garcia on 9b1 dec local compensation and benefits

129leaves and absences revised 9b2 ffac local wellness and health services medical treatment a revised 9c the board consider approving on second reading additions revisions or deletions deletions to district policies presenters roy sprague dr deborah stewart and marnie sims 9c1 cv local facilities construction a revised 9c2 dea local compensation and benefits compensation plan a revised 9c3 local special education video slash audio monitoring of revise 9d the board consider approving and submitting to the commissioner of education a request for maximum class size waiver presenter on thursday was dr deborah stewart 9e the board would consider approving the shared service arrangement between cypress fairbanks isd and lone star college presenters were dr linda macias dr heather bergman nine if the board will consider authorizing the superintendent to execute a memorandum of understanding with the university of saint augustine

130for the health sciences for speech pathology field placement presenter was dr linda macias and barbara lewandowski uh now i will either entertain a motion or if there are questions well now i need a motion first so i'll entertain a motion mr president i move that we approve the consent agenda as uh recommended and or amended mr ryan may have a second second thank you dr ogletree anybody have any questions mr jackson yes sir yes sir dr stewart my question is the same whenever we talk about waivers when i was a citizen i stood before some of these board members to say i recommended going forth permitting waivers that was adopted as a trustee i don't like to hear about waivers so bring us up to date once again for the viewing audience where we stand

131on waivers okay this year 38 of our 56 campuses are requesting waivers these waivers impact approximately 350 pre-k through k students out of 40 000. um the majority of the waivers are we have vacancies and principals have decided not to move their kids around because of learning loss i think that's about as succinct as you can say it do we anticipate being able to fill some of those vacancies as the year goes on we do we are anticipating teachers in december after the second semester but shortages happen yes thank you mr jackson just to to add to that we we try really hard to hire all the outstanding student teachers that we have in the fall for the spring so we're hoping that we get a good crop of them this year but i would

132i would say the labor shortage is not just in schools it's it's everywhere we're fighting for bus drivers custodians professional staff everyone so just a tough market to hire it is a very difficult market understand thank you mr president and mr jackson you want to uh not vote so you want to say that or do you want me to just assume it's okay uh when you call for the vote uh you'll make the statement i will make any other questions all right so we're calling for a vote mr president i abstain from voting on this matter because i'm involved in one of the uh resolutions thank you all in favor raise your right hand that's unanimous with one abstention uh the board uh now we will proceed with the superintendent's briefing portion of the agenda

133dr henry will provide information regarding district events and items of community interest thank you mr covey trustees the cfisd trustee candidates uh forum is scheduled for tomorrow october 12th from 7 to 9 at the very 7 to 9 pm at the berry center theater 8877 barker cypress road the forum will allow the community to learn more about each candidate in the trustee election and we'll air live on the district website and on cftv comcast channel 16. more candidate information is also available on the district's website at www.cfisd.net want to remind employees and community members that we will have the privilege to exercise one of our greatest rights voting on election day november 2nd that's tuesday early voting actually begins next week those voting dates are october 18th through the 29th and leslie i'm looking at

134you that information is also on the website correct okay that information is is also available uh your early voting um hours plus the sites plus election day sites and times during the week of october 25th through october 29th 2021 cypress fairbanks isd will participate in red ribbon week activities the national family partnership organized the first nationwide red ribbon campaign as a way for people in communities to unite and take a visible stand against drugs the red ribbon campaign the largest drug prevention program in the nation originated in 1985 and used a visual display of red ribbons as a symbol of intolerance towards the use of drugs we hope you will join us in supporting our students during red ribbon week and certainly we appreciate dr evie ogumakei and her team for helping organize that along

135with celebrating red ribbon week cfisd will participate in national bullying prevention month a nationwide campaign held during the month of october uniting communities around the world to educate and raise awareness of bullying prevention the 26th annual district-wide college night will be conducted virtually this year through no through november 20th with the next live chat available on saturday october 16th from 11 a.m to 2 p.m all high school students and their parents will have the opportunity to explore and connect with more than 200 different colleges and universities from around the world providing information online more information during excuse me more information along with the link to register can be found on the district website national school lunch week is the week this week october 11th through 15th celebrating the national school lunch program that serves nearly

13630 million children every day and the importance of a healthy school lunch cfisd's nutrition services team serves more than 100 000 meals each day and is celebrating this year's theme wild about school lunch with special menus events student activities and more october 18th to 22nd is designated as school bus safety week a public education program addressing the importance of school bus safety the 2021 2022 theme is one bus plus one driver equals a big impact on education a reminder that friday october 22nd is a designated teacher work day and student holiday that's all i have mr president thank you very much appreciate everybody in attendance this meeting i'm sorry go ahead i had one one more thing i'd like to say and sure that is in watching the past uh school board meetings that i

137missed uh i don't think we noted or congratulated mr covey on receiving the texas state university distinguished alumni award thank you it's it's quite an honor and a whole lot of that award is due to this district and have the opportunity honored to serve on this board and one of the most favorite thing i enjoyed doing was recruiting students for scifire thank you very much appreciate you this meeting is adjourned