001time is now 5m I call this meeting of the gr School District to order let the record show that a forum of board members is present that this meeting has been duly called and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas open meetings act Texas government code chapter 551 we will begin with the invocation led by Barbara Townson please join me in prayer Papa God we thank you for this day we thank you for those who are here tonight who care about the children of Granbury ISD father I ask you to open our eyes our ears and our hearts to you and what each of us have to say to each other May the words that we speech the words that we speak and the actions that we take be
002pleasing to you father Jesus I ask you to bless our time here tonight and bless each person who is here and I pray all these things in Jesus name amen amen please stand and join us in the pledges by of the United States of America and to the for it stands na indivisible Justice for All flag i al to Texas St God one and invisible okay the first item on can yall hear me bring closer I'm like okay there you go okay so the first item on the agenda is a presentation by our superintendent Dr Courtney morosi and there is a feedback form on the table over there if you were not able to grab one I'd encourage you to get one now it is interactive during the presentation so please feel free to grab
003one screen too yeah on the QR code is also on the screen so if you could scan that you'll be able to participate in the feedback as well during the presentation and then after uh Dr mory's presentation we will then go into public comments open public comments perfect okay so um can you hear me if I don't use a microphone or would you rather I use a microphone you can hear you okay great so it's so wonderful to stand in front of you guys this evening and some of you may have heard this presentation before but hopefully you'll hear something different this time um you'll see there's kind of two parts to it there's some slides that talk about me and the district and then there's a chance where I ask you some questions and
004you guys will give feedback and the great thing about it is as you're giving feedback it'll show on the screen and so I'll tell you when that starts so you can relax for now you don't have to pull out your phones right now but I'll give you a warning when you can do that and it's really um it's we really want to hear some feedback and so um I encourage everyone to use a phone if you have it all right so I always start off by thanking the people in this picture um they are all focused this is our leadership for the district and they are focused on students and every time we get together I'm reminded um about how hard they're working to make sure we're making decisions that are based on students and
005so I'm grateful for everybody in the picture and most of them are here I think everybody's coming they're just a little delayed so thank you to the board um we have a mission and vision here in granbery and these were developed over time um with different people some of you may have been involved in the process but the mission of the school district is committed that we are committed to empowering all Learners to achieve academic excellent and then the vision goes further and we want to inspire excellent and Empower all students to be future ready and positive contributors to their community and so really my job as superintendent is to look at those two things and seeing if we're living our mission and vision every day and so if we're not then we need to
006make some adjustments um going along the way y'all come on in everybody's welcome so I also want to tell you a little bit about myself and who I am and where I came from I think investing in a relationship together as we get to know each other is important um and I want people to know that I'm approachable and I want to hear your thoughts um and get to know each of you and so these people are really important to me this is my family and so you'll notice my husband is behind me his name is Terry we've been married for 25 years um he's from Tyler Texas I'm from Mansville Texas and so spent most of our time here in the um in this area and then the two young men are my Sons
007the one on the right hand side is Jackson and so he is in Oklahoma City he's doing computer science um specifically cyber security um and then his fiance is right in front of him and they're getting married next month in April so lot going on and then my younger son is a sophomore at University of Central Arkansas in Conway and he is pursuing an accounting degree he wants to be a CPA so that's him and his girlfriend's behind him hand and she's um been with us a long time too um my mom is poking her head over on uh the the right hand side of the screen and so uh she has moved to granberry as of this weekend and then I know my husband and I have moved here too uh my other boys
008they're not moving here yet so hopefully we'll get them closer that's what I'm fig well they'll be here so that's my family very important to me um so you'll hear me talk about them a lot and hopefully I'll learn a little bit about your families as we go along um here are some just quick facts about the district many of you know these facts but I think it's important toind remind ourselves about some of these things we have hovering on uh 7900 students um employees welcome come on in we have 1,384 we've got teachers 678 and then we've got our starting salary of uh 60k and so a lot of work has been done on that recently to get that that um starting salary up our average teacher has been here 11 years which is
009a great sign because that means people want to stay and they're not leaving quickly once they get here so love to see that number and we have 10 campuses this is a snapshot of our student diversity as a district each campus looks a little different um but as a district as a whole we have um 68% of our students are white and the next largest category is our Hispanic students and there is 26% of those students and then some smaller um groups in there as well and by the Numbers this number is really important and I think we need to remind ourselves all the time about the number of our economically disadvantaged students we have 57% of our students that are economically disadvantaged and sometimes when you look around the city of greyberry it doesn't
010look like that and so um that's a big reminder for us to constantly think about who we serve every day some campuses have higher number of students that are economically disadvantaged and some have lower which kind of depends um I would even venture to say that that number probably is higher because not everybody fills out that paperwork and so that's part of um the process welcome welcome uh 91% of our high school students take a CTE course uh 16% of our students uh have a special education service associated with them and then 9% um are gifted and talented and once again this is a snapshot of a particular day these numbers fluctuate as kids come and go welcome y'all come on in and this is another fun thing to think about in our district and
011that is the size of our district um so I believe I've been saying we have 225 square miles I was Rec recently corrected to we have about 250 square miles so it did say Plus on there but um and so to give you some reference Fort Worth ISD has a square mileage of 215 you might want to fact check that but I'm pretty sure that is exactly right um right around that range so we are bigger in land size than some of the more concentrated um districts and so what that means is we have buses that travel a whole lot and so the statistics here is that our buses travel a combined 5,436 Mi every day that's like driving from San Diego to Charleston and back so what that does it puts a lot of
012wear and tear on our buses a lot of gas and then right now we've got that dual route trying to make sure all kids get back and forth where they need to be we also have some challenges because of only three uh is that right three access points across um the water so that's another challenge our in our district over 3,300 students partake in our trans ation services so that's a large number of our students out of that 7900 that ride our our transportation services each day our finances our general operating budget is um these these number it's about 93 I think we fact checked that it's 93 901 right there for last year's budget or this year's budget that's this year this year thank you and then the other things on here are as
013well the combined tax rate the average home market and the first rating we've been Superior for the nine nine years in a row all right so the question that I get asked the most is what's my vision as a new leader um and I always like to say that the best way to learn as a new leader is to listen more than you speak so um what i' would like to do is give us a chance to start interacting and so if you have phone Now's the Time and the QR code is going to come up on the screen or if you have a paper in front of you can do that um hopefully we'll have no technology problem s um if make sure that we only give you time for you to get in
014and then we'll start going through some items so I'll give you just a second and the real goal is that I don't come in with a vision that we created together and so what we really want to do is hear from students we're going to talk to students parents community members and staff I've been doing the same presentation with different kinds of groups across the district and we're going to put together some Trends and I'm going to report it to the fabulous board okay I feel like I'm ignoring y'all back here okay are you we we good does anybody still need help getting on because we've got I've got technology help is somewhere in the room here hopefully he's at the back yeah oh yeah I see him back there both y'all he's okay anybody
015need help okay we really want to hear your voice I want to make sure you have a chance to do that okay all right so this first question is super easy what best describes your affiliation with the district are you a staff member a parent a Community member or a student and you can pick some of you play a couple of roles just choose the role that you're going to answer the questions from the lens up today so you'll see it's just starting to move and usually what I do is just wait till it kind of finish finishes wiggling a little bit does the board participate they have they would y'all like to participate they can some of them have done it in a different session it's a good question I'll help you out okay
016all right so most of the people in the room here are community members we've got some staff we've got some parents and then no students identified yet on there all right we're going to next screen all right so for some reason those little images come up but um there are um some things on the board here that uh I've already heard about in talking to people I'd like to give you a moment to think to think about what you think our district should focus on and so some of those things can be reading and writing as one choice Math and Science communication and transparency as a district um we've got student behavior and bullying cell phone use climate and culture in general career focused learning or more Choice opportunities and choice opportunities to me mean
017means things like Meo is a in our district the way that that steam Academy is so those are your choices you can choose up to five you don't have to but you can choose up to five and I'll give you a few minutes to think through that we're still wiggling so we'll give you few more minutes okay so in this room when we look at the results in this room um and this is not surprising this really has been a trend across time but reading and writing Math and Science are two of the biggest um things that that we feel in this room are important for us to focus on and then as it goes across there's several that that are kind of the same we've got student bullying we've got climate and culture and
018and then career Focus learning and so um what we'll do is at the end of all of these sessions we're going to put it all together and see what the most important things are to all of our groups and they're trending about the same there's some differences especially when we talk to different you know staff versus community members so it'll be interesting to see how that all comes together all right I'm going to change slides once I change there's no going back all right here we go okay so this is a statement and statement is the grber ISD staff has high expectations for all students and is committed to the individual success of each student so the answer could be yes it could be no or it could be some do some don't so think
019about that statement and how you feel about that okay so we're slowing down on the the wiggling um so as a district we would like for everybody to to to feel and every student to have high expectations and so that is an area that we we have some growing to do we would like the answer to be yes on everything um and so that's good feedback I appreciate you guys answering that honestly this one is important to me because I really want to know U who's comfortable expressing concerns and so the fir the question or the statement is I feel comfortable expressing my concerns desires and opinions to granberry ISD personnel and there are uh classroom teachers you feel comfortable doing that campus leaders and then District leaders and it goes from strongly disagree to
020strongly agree and so you can choose on that on um on your own device how you feel about each of those groups if you don't have interactions with the teacher you should be able to skip that still wiggling a little bit maybe some minutes hey what's great about this is in the background you'll see it looks kind of like a mountain going up um so that's kind of where um the answer it shows you where those answers are so on this on on this particular one campus leaders and District leaders we've kind of got an arc on both sides so that's something to consider is that people F either one way or the other and then that kind of averages out in the middle so that's good feedback as well um and this is important
021as I mentioned because we want to make sure that there's an Avenue um a process a system to make sure that you feel confident and comfortable sharing concerns or questions with um the right level of people thank you for providing that feedback and going to the next screen already all right now here's where I want you to know whatever you type on here comes up on the screen all right so just keep that in mind which could be good could be bad but I just want to make sure that you know that where you're typing comes up on the screen um and the first one is pretty easy we're going to get our minds ready for for this and it's think of one impactful teacher that made a difference in your life and what made
022them special you can put up to three things so think about your own life somebody that made an impact on you as a teacher that so as I start to come up the words that are a little Bolder a little bigger are repeat words and so they tend to be in the center so kind care attentive um empathetic is on there knowledge engaged some great words that really talk about great teachers I'm give you just a minute more to get those entered so on this slide what we want to think about is we want every student that comes through granberry ISC to have an impactful teacher and we' like to have every year so in order for us to get there we know that we probably have some areas that we do things really well
023and some things that we need to get better at so the next two questions are directly related to that what can we what do we do well to make sure this happens every day every year for every kid and what do we need to get better at so the next one question is what do we do well and it's an open-ended question we'll give you about a minute and a half to respond and this will pop up on the screen here all so as you're doing that I'm going to press the space bar on this laptop because it categorizes them for us and we'll see what categories pop up and you can still enter things but what we'll look at is kind of the big trends it'll take it just a second to categ for
024so things that we do well um caring for students opportunities for students we saw some of that in the comments CTE programs which some of those opportunities were CTE programs communication um Community engagement and there's eight that work categorized but just know that I'm going to go through and look at all of them and get them in categories but that is where we are for here some of the comments um are prepared my child for Life After High School capturing kids s we've got some that are probably belong on the next screen some teachers teach uh cares for students Community involvement uh and then teachers need support more support good leadership okay lots of great things foress to consider now this next screen we do want to hear some things that we can do better
025my only request is we want critical feedback but please be kind and respectful because we are going to look through this and make some Trends and see what we need to improve so um the next screen is where do we have an opport improve so same thing open response I'll give you guys about 90 seconds think through what we can do better so I'm going to while you're finalizing I'm going to press the space button and see what kind of categories we get in the opportunities to improve are and once again we will go through them individually because they won't all get categorized correctly give just a second just thinking really hard on this one so give it a second okay here we go um things that we can do better um School growth probably
026um we can look at that one individually probably included both the size of the school and academic growth probably both in that one Community engagement we saw some of those pop up communication transparency fiscal responsibility and there were eight that didn't get categorized yet and then we'll read just a couple of these as well of areas that we know we need to get better um focus on student outcomes transparency being honest educate voters on bonds uh listen and include the community communication you can see that word come up a lot Equity among campuses communication honesty communication so a lot teacher pay and engage parents so lots of great feedback for us to um think through okay everybody good we're ready to go to the next one okay the last one is specific really to me
027and my role and so the question is how can I the superintendent best serve and support the district and granberry and this is the last question that you're interacting with so you all need help you can use I use um so uh specifically what can I do to better serve and support you in your role whether you're Community member or some of your staff hey Mike it's a little bit longer and then we'll get the categories on this one so while you're finishing that up some of the things that come through is focus on education and performance be more responsive to parents and the community um when ask a direct question answer it knowledge of granberry and build relationships externally be forthcoming and honest uh respect the work done before you and keep the students
028the priority and I'm going to hit the space bar and kind cies it gives us in this area again to think very hard so student Focus Community engagement support for teachers transparent transparency and accountability there's three that are uncategorized minority support is on its own right there okay so I really appreciate the feedback for me specifically um as we go forward um and remember this is many groups I'm presenting to I think I'll have over 30 different engagement sessions as we move through um and then by may I should have some um results to present to the board and some action steps about how we're addressing some of the the highest needs trends that came up through all of the groups that I'm working with so I'd love to do a question and answer what
029time are we are we good on time yeah um and so if you're signed up to speak this is different so this is just you and me uh question answer going back and forth we still have if you're signed speak that'll be right after this part so if you have a question I'd love to see if I can have an answer and I've got more people in the room to help me today probably than a lot in the past so have any questions no question somebody just has to break the eyes okay yes um you when you gave this presentation a week or so ago and I was present um I think I remember you telling us that on the um slide that you showed of amount of district employes and teachers and years of
030experience the 11 years experience I thought I remembered you saying that was their total experience not their grur experience um I thought it was average in our where's Ryan I may have I may have missed fol so let's make sure I thought that was average years in the district is average years is average years in the district okay and so I said average years teaching last time I thought you said yeah average teaching overall not average teaching in G confirm that that's a good question let's make sure that we get you the right answer so yeah good question we'll get back to you see if we can get that answer right now great question yes Courtney I don't know if you've had you probably heard a lot about the the traffic problem in Grand b77
031you I know our last year we we worked really hand inand with him to try to figure out what the city the county and the school can do to you know to to not really necessarily fix the problem but to bandid it until we do get some some more more roads and stuff in here and stuff and I notic on you know on your school on your buses and stuff that's a good number but I is is that a number that you know is going to fix something like I mean because there's a lot of automobiles and a lot of cars and buses on the roads that we don't have yeah uh during school so it's a good question I'm glad brought it up it's on our minds all the time thinking about um future
032plans to make sure that we're preparing for even when there's road construction about to happen those kinds of things and so um we don't have a set solution we should be talking to the board about possibly some things that we could do that would make that better going forward but we don't have a a solid plan I think it was part of one of the bonds before is that right okay thank you so um we did not get that bond to solve that problem um but we know that still a problem so we're trying to work on what kind of solutions that we can put put in place right now the double routes is the best solution that we have um because that spreads out and and helps us meet the needs of all the
033kids and with the big what do you believe that most of the kids are riding the bus because they don't want to be on it so long because when you go to any of these campuses at school let out there's more cars there than their buses I mean they're L that's a good question I haven't asked that question so I don't know the answer to that that's probably something that families consider a lot of families uh rely on our transportation and don't have a choice so um you know the families that do have a choice I'm not sure you know what their decision making is it's a great question it's not we're definitely still discussing it we know that it's a a problem that's not going away um and that we need to find Sol
034solutions that we can afford right now Citizen parent emails a trustee and there's no answer can you help me understand that process or if you email all of them and there's no answer does that put you in a EMA all of you at once or is it better to email each one and what is a citizen to do if if you or any of you do not answer back when I was on the book Review Committee I submitted a lot of good information and it was pretty much Cricket I would think if you're on a committee they would say I've got it and I would love for someone to say I've got it or I can't deal with this right now I'll get back with you just some kind of something like that but I
035haven't seen it in the three years that I've been involved so I'm curious how that works or if I'm making an error by blind copying each one or not line coffee and normal Cofe but other citizens have not been responded to and I'm curious how to get a response or is that even does that make them step into something illegal if they're all copied well we can't have all of them on one email I do know that because once they respond it becomes meeting an open meeting and so that is true um another thing that I know that we do is we look for Trends across and so if we have many community members responding then that's something that they pay attention to and start prioritizing um it doesn't mean that we respond to each
036individual question or concern basically they represent everybody in the district um and so what they're looking for are um responding and categorizing and prioritizing um some of our our biggest needs and so I think that's what I know that's what I do every day um and I I know that that's what they do as elected officials okay it's a it's not I don't think it's very professional personally to not have a response at all but anyway we do appreciate the feedback yeah absolutely problem thank you for answering that because the whole you m them once then they're definitely not going to answer you Mage each one we should not because we um we don't want it to become part of a meeting of any kind okay thank you yes hey thank you for doing this
037tonight Dr morowski is there are there any plans to put us into a system where the trustees are elected by District rather than place so we would each have a representative to go to that's a great question I don't know the answer to that does anybody have any information here I think we are dis have we ever discussed zones versus places okay it doesn't look like at this time that's something that the board yeah we're at large sorry yes we're at large yes okay thank you for that question yes see your face yes um we have Wonder teachers here inry and I wonder what your ideas were on how to support them and keep them in our great question and we have some wonderful teachers and so I know that we are working hard all
038the time to make sure that we are competitive in salary but some of the things that we do really well is provide places for child care for them and so that is one of our retention things that happen in the district um and we're also beginning a teacher incentive allotment program which we recognize and retain from our high performing teachers so that is something that is really near and dear to our hearts we do want them to stay in our district am I missing any big retention uh recruiting information sens for specialized areas of need sens for specialized are like special ed maybe some filing Ru okay very responsive PD from the Cur curriculum Department um they look and Survey everybody on what they're needing and they will do very responsive um PD over the
039summer ands yeah and our administrative staff also does a lot of uh instructional coaching great question I love it when we focus on teachers they're the hardest working people in this district and we to acknowledge celebrate and support them every chance that we can get yes I saw some reports today of local some local districts considering going to a school we are you believe with that yes I am um and I it's you're not the first person to ask that um and so it is not on our radar right now um I never say never um to anything but um it's not something that we're looking seriously into in the past have we looked seriously into in the past it's difficult on families to find um child care if they have a full-time job so
040there's a little bit of there's a give and take to that too there like a lot of money on bus yeah it's something to consider so um we'll probably watch a little bit I'm not sure in in my experience a lot of smaller rural districts do that and that's one of the retainer retention measures for teachers as they get to come and do you know kids come to school four days um but as we learn more if data supports it and it is a cost savings I think it it is something that we would talk about but not something that we're talking about right now okay thank you for the question else yes sirk Mark and I'm speaking on my not not on behalf of my wife people know s on the board a number
041You' hit on that twice 56 something per economically disadvantage community and as you said you look around the community think yeah the problem is they will be the ones that will be most impacted by a bond because listen my house prices go up and my taxes go up most of us can handle that but that 56 economically disadvantaged people it impacts them the most and some of them won't be able to buy a house if prices keep going up so and I know we have a surplus $24 million or so like that I would just ask before this board starts to think about when they think about the future think about how we can manage that Surplus because I think we're the only ones that have that level uh or at least certainly one of
042the few and how we can manage the district expenses so that we don't impact on that 56% because honestly that's who it's going to hurt the worst unless I'm miscalculating something on bonds that's what is going to hurt to most prices go up even if the tax rate don't their price of home goes up and they have to pay more taxes that's what it's going to impact I'm encouraged you being here seek your own path because I think the path we've been on has not been the best path to last by education and management of budget thank thank you for that um and I do think that's important for us to Think Through going forward is is to think about all our families and how decisions impact all families so that's a um definitely something
043that we need to think through um if we decide that we are going to go back for a bond of any kind as consider all of our families I think that's a fair statement thank you for that yes this is a perfect opportunity to to express some of the confusion on how School Finance works I I noticed Mr L said a a surplus my understanding is that's not really a surplus that's a fund balance because of the way the revenue comes in from the state is delayed and so that's not really a surplus that we can just like get to manage however it's it's used to pay for the expenses before the revenue comes in from the is that is that so I'm going to let our res explain so the fund balance and I
044think is what you're asking is how we use a fund balance and you're right that the the state is is lagging in some of those things do you want to explain about the fund balance and is that is that what what what Surplus I think that's what you're referring to is the fund the4 we've had this discussion before but at the end of the day that money is coming unless we had a catastrophic event in the United States in the state of Texas we're going to get that money so it's money that we have and maybe it pays bills to the end of year but we're going to get that money at the end of the tax year sometime that money's coming it's coming I just want to I just want to make sure I
045understand exactly what the wording yeah I Ed the wrong fund balance versus Surplus but right and how it has to be and and I don't know that there are laws that are that limit the way that has to be used just I don't know I think this is a perfect opportunity to make sure that we all understand yeah it sounds like a great thing that we can clear get some some clarity and maybe some some images that 100% enough enough to be able to know exctly I think that's very fair so we definitely want to make sure that we're clear about that so means this is discussion so if we were to tap into that $24 million to fix a plumbing issue or a roof or what have you does is does that money then
046put us in a deficit or is that $24 million something we can use to fix something we need knowing that it's going to come to us event I don't understand right and and then to to further expand on that is the money that comes in is that is are there limitations on that like like repairs and buildings is that money just for salaries or or insurance or things like that so that's that's where I'm that's where I think we would all benefit I think yes let's let's get that together a little bit and maybe even at the next board meeting just a little snapshot unless you wanted to step in and say something about the fund balance and about how we use that or do we want to prepare something so so I what she's
047saying is correct is that uh we get all of our Revenue in December January and February of of the year so we have to live on that through the rest of the year um board policy says that I have to have 20% um tea in the past said St there 20% in 20% of operating okay in Bal in fund balance okay so that part is in policy 20% of operating expenditures in fund balance at all times at all times okay um and then um in the past tea has said 25% of course they don't have a mandated amount any longer but but they say anything that's 25 to 30% is a healthy fund balance we run about 28 29% um yes we could use those funds to fix the roof and we could use them
048to fix uh Plumbing issues but once you use them they're gone they don't come back to you so when you start dwindling when you start dwindling your fund balance down and you keep doing that you keep doing that once you get to a point where you don't have 30 days cash on on hand that's when they call you a ctd that's that's circling that means you're you're about to go under and that's not where you want to be you don't want to be in a place where you're below that 20 25% because if you do that then you have to go borrow money to make payroll the last three months a year so yeah but the only only the way I look at this we took 1.2 million out fix as off the fund balance
049two years ago I think we bought some other things in my opinion air conditioner being fixed or pling a little bit more than as Turf now listen I get it the as turf was dangerous I used to play on it um so it is confusing to to the 24 million this this P year we did put2 million but if you go look at our the number that she put up there a while ago was our adopted our adopted right now our amended budget is $96 million because we have amended into fund balance we pay for a million do worth of buses and we amended it to for about 1.25 for a we're going to do some of those amended budgets are from because we knew we put that $2 million in last year we're going
050to spend it this year now will We Will We recognize that whole loss probably not because we're going to we're going to manage the budget and take and make Cuts where we can so but I think it's a great thing for to follow up it's make sure that we all understand how this is we want Clarity transparency we want to make sure that you guys know how we're spending the money and so we've been talking about that daily and about how we can make sure that we're providing better information not better information just information a little more clearly and regularly and maybe some some opportunities to come and have some conversations regularly um so and he started the coffee with the CFO remind us when the next one is March 25th March 25th at 9:00
051a.m. in this room so that's a great time for you if you can make it and we'll be talking just about finances and what's going probably what's going on legislation too again March 25th March 25th 9: a. did you have something else yes those l so if we if we're able to to spend some of the fund balance knowing it's coming when when the revenue is is comes in from property taxes what happens are there are there contingencies is there a safeguard in place like if a wildfire was break out or if we have a tornado come and just decimate a huge portion of our property tax base we're not going to be collecting that same level of tax revenue that we anticipated because of this natural disaster does the state have some sort of
052Safeguard in place that would would help mitigate that well there the state would you know if they declared a state of emergency there would be some some funding out there um it would you know all school districts are insured so those those funds would we would take care of our own buildings through Insurance course our deductible is 1% 1% so depending on which building we're replacing we have to come up with that money now will that affect our Revenue generation probably our saf guard is the policy yeah our safe guard is the 20% of policy that's our safe card we can't go below that can't go back okay great question we really appreciate it I think we know that this is something that we need to just have more information out there so I think
053there's a lot of ideas in our community and a lot of a lot of people very smart if we all understood exactly how it works and and how the legislation makes us F into agre certain rules I think really make some progress yeah I agree with that to know um are you mandated to report suspected abuse and neglect between a teacher and a student to law enforcement and it looks like it's outlined in Texas Cod section 211 and if you are mandated how much time do you have and it will not recording suspected sexual misconduct with students can you help us understand why because we've had it recently the district and the police there's no police report people have been checking to find out if a teer is send pictures of to a student even
054it's supect that is by law required to be recorded within I think it's 4 hours so can you address that for us so that's a lot of question right there um the I don't know that specific example that you're giving but yes we have laws that we follow about reporting um and so if there is any kind of indication of that we report it it happens frequently and so um we do report it to CPS and or the police depending on or both um so I don't know exactly what's your time frame for rep's we should do within the day what is it48 48 I read justy this is for yeah we're mandatory reporters for any type of abuse or negle yes all of us all of us even us even this yes we are
055yes we don't make the decision about whether the abuse is going on we report it um and generally that happens right when a person figures it out or suspects it doesn't figure it out bad choice to work um suspected thank you I guess just to address the elephant in the room it sounds like we came right up to it is there anything any statement on the resignation of the previous B director that is that what you're referring to I'm just referring to the policy like how long do you have I have heard that same circumstance and I am curious about it a lot of people curious about it yeah we can't talk about Personnel things that's and I wanted to touch on one thing that she mentioned about the open record request because a lot
056of times in a school district it involves minors you're not going to find that information in the public because of the it's for two reasons because if a minor is involved and or it's an open pending investigation so sometimes those open records requests aren't as readily available as they would otherwise be thank you for that yes and board whenever y'all want to pop in with information I do appreciate it but just so we're clear though does that mean that there is an ongoing investigation into I think her name was we do not do any of those kinds of Investigations like like once it's turned over to the police that's a police investigation but it has been turned over yeah oh yeah absolutely yes we report everything that is suspected I don't think anybody in this
057room has a good answer to this okay how do we get people from social media and warfare talking about all kinds of stuff who knows what's true and what's not true all it does is damage our community and and it's adults I don't read social media unfortunately I hear because of what's going on but how do we how does the school district address this stuff and how does a community come to their senses equip with this social media Warfare accusing things and saying things that 90% I would say or 80% is not even true it's hard um in fact the situation you mentioned a parents of the student responded on social media today um and so um you know it is a lot of people talking about things they understand or know and that's unfortunate
058we always say there's two sides to every story I'll tell you I think it's my job to build trust with you to know that when you see these things going on number one you can tell us it's happening if I don't know and I have wonderful board members that send me things that say hey do you know this um and so you know we want to know if things are out there we want to be able to respond we can't respond on most of them because a lot of times they're either involving students or they're involving personnel and we absolutely can't go on social media and talk about about that um so it's really my job to make sure that you understand that there's a process going on behind the scenes and so when you
059see big blowups usually they're skewed to an emotional person that's behind that so it might be a parent that's directly involved what's hard to explain to people is that to get a fair you know a fair response from people in the community or if it comes to a grievance and we've all seen it on social media it's hard to get a fair response and so really we'd like to work we want to build trust we want you to to feel like there's something going on and if there's not you know um chances are they're letting me know and I'm asking questions and saying what's going on um but there should be it doesn't mean that we're always perfect because our business is people and so people um do things really well and then sometimes we
060make mistakes and so um definitely we know that people in our district make mistakes and we want to we want to make sure that we are responding to those and that's really our job at Administration is to to look at people who make mistakes and solve those problems for them but thank you it is a hard problem to solve and especially when things take off and keep rolling and but I think you hit right on top of it if as you build trust within this community and you've heard me say this I'm very encouraged from what I've seen as you build trust in this community there going to be less of this questioning and storytone and circumstan as you build trust that's going to spread not only through the school district but throughout the community
061and I think some of this some of this and it'll take time because you guys don't know me um and they're getting to know me the staff um but it'll take time but I think it does take a response excuse me I think it's important is it turned on put your hand I think it's important for the people in this room to to be um be really aware and maybe the the ones who actually begin to to just say look look we're not going to solve this problem on social media and um if you looked at it today I I mean I I saw two or three posts and then I just had to go off of it because the more posts that were made the more emotional it became and the more irrational it
062became and it was just not productive at all it helped no one and if we want to solve problems we cannot solve it on social media if we really want to solve an issue we will go directly to the people who can solve those problems let's do that together yeah that's great thank you for that two more I have about I think about 50% of the people in this room did not know about this incident and now we all know and we're going to go home and tell our neighbors and tell our spouses and I wish it was never brought up at a meeting like this app I'm sorry to part community that wants to talk and they want to know did this get report to police and that there is a side that says
063suppos to report something suspected 4 hours we had a librarian leave here after 18 years of sexually abusing the children here sebr so that is deeply Disturbed what's happened and that's the past though I know we're going into the fut well and I think I just C that that's not an accurate statement so let's be clear that's not accurate St is there anybody else that has a question I'd love there's some people that signed up okay so we got one more I don't want to limit you I could say all night so but I do know there's some people that signed up to actually ask a question but yes I know in the past couple of years the cell phone policy at like middle school for example um all the teachers were on the same
064page having the kids put their cell phones away at the beginning and it was it was really really um I I think there was a lot of progress for the kids actually socializing they weren't allowed to to get on their phones at lunch I thought it was it was great um I asked my eth grader now hey how is that cell phone policy well it's it's it's Laing a little bit but I just wanted to encourage you guys that that was a really good implementation the kids were unbothered by not having access to the cell phone and I think it would be perfect to roll into high school and they just access their phones as needed for whatever Educational Tools that they can and that may spill over into helping with the social media bullying
065or the social media I appreciate that feedback because I do think dur instruction and gives us a little reminder making sure that we're we're reinforcing that because it's only as good as every teacher feels confident en forcing their classroom and so if not everybody's doing it and kids come in say well in this class I get to keep my phone out you know so that's where it a struggle soal streng numbers everybody streng numbers is a great way to say that you I just want to tag on to that parent of a fifth grader yes I can't believe the stuff I'm seeing even as fourth fifth graders the cell phones in elementary schools yeah you know are are more prevalent these days and the things I know with a bunch of the moms and the
066conversations we're having of what's on social media with fourth and graders I mean we got to a point over the course of the winter break and we had to block hundreds of numbers because of what was being sent through his film in particular and he's like I don't know I have no idea you know I don't know what's going on so it's a great reminder and that's what these times are good for to hear from he and you'll notice that was one of the things should we focus on cell phones because I do that that conversation is not going away and I'll put this plug in if you haven't read the anxious Generation by Jonathan hate as a parent especially of the age child you have it's really interesting the way that um they kind
067of focus on this over protection in real life and this under protection online and so um it's a really interesting read and and if I had kids I I might do things differently I me I do have kids but they're I've already no not really they're doing great but um I might do things differently with the phone so we are thinking about that do and I think it's great to hear the feedback from people sitting in the seat with parents uh students in our schools today thank you for sharing you might you might consider a canned response I hate that all seen it a canned response things are start to Flo around from your death saying we've heard or we've seen there's a process underway yeah that's a good idea to let people know we're
068hearing was my idea well I did get feedb during my superintendent report um you know at the board meetings kind of giving you an update about things that we're hearing and you know putting in place so I think that's really important for me to hear too okay all right let's go all right okay so we'll go into public comments we had we had two people speak up or can y'all hear me we got two people sign up to speak we'll start with Monica Brown she signed up to speak on curriculum scores and resources and this will be the same format as before you get how long it's three minutes and then if I have clarifying questions or answer any of your questions and then a little bit of conversation okay super so um I would
069love to talk are y'all hearing Meer sorry we have a timer is this on can you'all tell I can't I can't hear I can hear you but I can't hear it from there Mike can you keep the time phone who's our sorry I'm not familiar oh see good give us a few seconds very easy okay thank you and you will have to hold it pretty close to mouth for every okay how's that everybody okay so um my timer you you ready M I'm ready okay I don't know if you can make it where I can see it but anyway I you four seconds okay that's fine I I just wanted to come to something I went to a micro school conference recently and this is for all students it's not just for homeschoolers micros schoolers
070schooling I know reading is a big deal and I just wanted to make the point that classical education is hands down Superior so if you were to venture into going to Mike morath and finding out about the new free classical education all you have to do is ask him he said he would send samples it doesn't mean you have to do it yet but it is something to look at I brought and I have in my car bnch I didn't bring them all in this is called My Father's World it's classical it's a classical education catalog now I know if you're in public school you may never use this but if you have grandchildren or children that are struggling in reading or math they have something called Singapore Math if you study math the people
071who score the highest in the world are from Singapore and people who use Singapore math and in this catalog there are first of all on their website you can test your child at home find out which book they need buy it and work with them so you could do weekends and evening if you're scared that your child I know someone who does can Con Academy on the regular to be certain that the child is getting the five children are getting an education at the school and at home he's afraid they won't get the full deal since math scores and reading scores have been down so I'm just letting you know these are resources this is tried and true written by a school teacher and her husband who have just done this forever they've got a
072lot of parent feedback another thing classical education has is readers they're fabulous readers they're turned on readers they're inspired so they also recommend reading list that you don't have to buy you can check it out from your library and these are called living books in The Homeschool world it's called living books and it's like charlott web it's a book a child doesn't want to put down it's a delight it's an interest it's not the term that was used years ago I don't I we I'm out on time was called twaddle it's a funny word but it's like useless there is literature that's useless or or fluff whatever we need some of that all of us need fiction we all need you know whatever it is that's fun and interesting but they're really good books there's
073a lot of them they're classical so classical educ takes a almost any child and makes them a fabulous reader it also the uh Singapore Math called Dimensions math is the one I'm using it creates the way it goes about it is fabulous so I implore you to look into it and search it out and take granberry across the board to high scores in math and in reading and so that's what I wanted to share with you tonight I have the free catalogs I've got hundreds of them in my car for anybody who wants them and I'm bringing the curriculum in for the homeschool community and parents in general just to see it and use it so they don't have have to feel like um they're completely dependent on what a teacher can do in a
074classroom with 20 children so that's what I wanted to share tonight thank you thank you appreciate that I don't to make a loud sound here so any questions no I I think there's a lot of great resources out there for parents to use to supplement and do extra at home or to help out at home I know I do that with my own children so I appreciate you sharing that yeah and so if I could I just want to say what this one is called it's called My Father's World so you can search that online yourself and like I said they do have the reading list so if you're looking for good literature for your children your grandchildren you want to turn them on to good reading this is a great spot to start and
075hopefully our library here would even begin carrying a lot of those books anything else no thank you okay next speaker is David Rogers he's here to speak on the demographic report and bond thank you madam president and thank you honorable members of our trustees uh I want to talk for a minute about some of the uh statistics and numbers the xanden study uh did from 2023 to 2024 in the fall of 24 to 25 The District enrollment increased by approximately 30 students in that time frame the xanden study forecast was for a plus number of 151 students a total of 172 fewer students and all of of this was known in December of 2023 well before the May 2024 Bond the 2024 audit identified an increase of 30 but the sanded forecast was for an
076increase of 204 so another 174 fewer students one of my concerns is the working parents and the taxpayers of GISD were denied the right to a free and fair election in the May 2024 Bond but another concern I have is I was told by a candidate on the ballot in 2024 that it cost almost $50,000 to conduct and run that may that bond election in may now the hcad forensic audit was 60,000 numerous trustees on here voted against doing a forensic audit for hcad the hcad budget is over 1.6 million they have 17 they have 21 excuse me they have 21 full-time appraisers they have a chief Deputy appraiser and a chief appraiser next door in erra they have more than twice the land size of Hood County they have only 17 appraisers no Chief
077Deputy appraiser their budget's only 1 million so I don't understand the mismanagement when it comes to financial budgets how they'll they'll waste 50,000 almost on a bond election in May that the voters in a two-year time frame the voters voted against the bond three times yet trustees on this board were determined to push that through but they wouldn't do anything for transparency and accountability of hcad when no one has more influence on the hcad than the GISD Board of Trustees they appoint three of the five directors they might as well appoint the fourth one because it's weighted by the majority of the votes they hire the chief appraiser they set the policies and procedures for conducting the appraisals massive amount of Mis Mis Financial mismanagement waste and abuse I really don't understand the behavior of
078and the conduct of some of the trustees on this board how they can be so callous and if they're going to be so callous about handling things like the finances what are they doing with the hearts and minds of our children I I really don't understand the thinking and logic that went into many of these decisions so the the new demographic report we got was kind of an eye opener for us and it's good information and we aren't going out for a bond anytime soon um I can't say as a parent with children in the elementary and at the middle school it was it's still needed there's still repairs there's still things that this District needs that only a bond would be able to take care of um the in the growth and enrollment did
079plateau all that growth that we had previously had is still here though and it's still something we need to address where we decide to eventually put a new building that may change depending on some of the new information we got out of this most recent demographic report um and if you would like to be on the long range planning committee when that time comes we would love to have you join I think we need to have input from everyone in the community the more people we can get involved the better plan that we can come come up with something that the community is actually going to be able to accept and support and that that's the main goal doing what's best for kids and making sure that we're making the best decisions for everyone in
080our district um as far as hcat we we don't have any control over their budget we just we would vote to disapprove the budget is what we would do um that's the only vote that we have regarding their budget um we didn't vote against an audit I know that something that is happening hcat is doing an audit and we don't we don't vote on that they just vote to have that happen and it happens so we don't have a say over that process specifically I I don't know if I answered that question question thank you madam president I just want to have one question about that so the gist Board of Trustees could have voted to send the budget back to hcad for them to correct it but most of the trustees did not do
081that some of the trustees I believe it was a 3 to2 that night three of the trustees voted not to send the budget back to hcab which in essence was approving the budget because they refuse the S it back for right so it's an automatic whenever hcad makes a decision the board votes on something it's automatic approval the only way something gets disapproved is if the majority of the taxing entities call a special meeting to disapprove that action okay thank you madam president for clarifying that I think that answers my question but anyway thank you okay thanks and that concludes our meeting the time is now 6 4 did anybody have anything no the time is down 6:04 p.m thank you all we appreciate it