Belton ISD Board Meeting May 13, 2024

001Community engagement for Belton ISD. Our meeting is going to begin about 6.15. I know we still have some folks waiting to get inside. This is a packed house. We have 375 recognitions this evening. Before we begin, we are going to be treated to some jazz music through our showcase, which is the Belton Middle School Jazz Band. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening and your interest in Belton ISD. I hope you've enjoyed our student showcase tonight by the Belton Middle School Jazz Band. Mr. Pooley, was that an old Chicago tune I heard? Wow, it sounded great. Yeah. These kids don't sound like middle schoolers. We've got some talent right here, don't we? Let's give them a round of applause, folks. The time is 620 and the Belton Inventive School

002District Board of Trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting on May 13, 2024 in the Pittenger Fine Arts Center located at 400 North Wall in Belton, Texas. A quorum of board members is present. This meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. I want to welcome the members of our audience and our live stream viewers to this meeting. As the Belton ISD 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, however, to make day-to-day operational decisions. The management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent. We

003have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues. This is a meeting of the Board of Trustees held in public, but it is not a public meeting. Prior to this meeting, Board members received information related to items on tonight's agenda. Agenda items may not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice. This meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed. These proceedings are being live streamed on the district's YouTube channel and a recording of the meeting will be available on the district's website in the days following tonight's meeting. For the video to adequately reflect proceedings, I respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that the cell phones are turned off or in the silent mode. Let's pause for a

004moment of silent prayer or meditation. Please remain standing as our students from the Belton Early Childhoods lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and Honors. Please stand. Good evening, board. Tonight we have with us Zai Machette. He's a student at Beck's, and he's going to lead us in both pledges. I pledge allegiance. Flag 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. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the success of one state under God and an end of the world. That was so awesome. The first item on the agenda this evening is administering the oath of office to our elected trustees. Becca will be joining us at the podium to administer the oath. Raise your right hand.

005When I say my name, you'll repeat yours. I am Becca Alamati. I solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the duties of the office of Belton ISD trustee of the state of Texas and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this state. So help me God. Congratulations. Recognitions is the next item on the agenda. We're going to turn it over to our communications team to start us off. That's right board and let me begin by telling our honorees as I said we have a lot of y'all and that just speaks to the caliber of programs we've got athletes here fine arts SkillsUSA we are we've got a full house and it's incredible so students y'all are going to be called up

006in groups you're going to come here and stand on these risers next to a couple of board members get your picture taken then please go back to your seat and we ask that you stay here until we've completed all of our recognitions and you are dismissed by the board. So this evening, first, I want to begin by telling you a little bit about Azai. Azai, can you come stand by me real fast? How old are you? Five. Oh, he's five. Are you going into kindergarten next year? Yes. Well, you did amazing. So Azai, he loves math and sports. He plays flag football, and his friends say that he is funny and caring, and he did an awesome job. Come over here and get your picture taken with the board. Our next recognition is the middle

007school band. You guys did an awesome job. Y'all come up here and take a picture with the board. They are under the direction of Mr. Chris Pulley. And 10 of these students actually made the TMEA All-Region Jazz Band. So they are fantastic, winning big awards. And we are incredibly proud of them. And y'all, it was a great way to kick off our meeting today. Thank you. Look at Marty right there in the middle, waving his arm. Awesome. Great job. Tonight we are also thrilled to honor some of our state recognized artists. We have students that advanced all the way to VASE, which is the visual art scholastic event. You guys are VASE students. Y'all come up here. That's right. We had two students get a gold seal, Diana Williams and Leah McCullough. That's a first

008for Lake Belton High School. And we are going to honor their teachers, Janet Allerton, Macon Tolleson, Madison Ward, Emily Simeroth. And congratulations, guys. We are so proud of you. Our next recognition, let's give it up for Avery Abrams. They earned third place in the Division I Texas Association of Pupil Transportation School Bus Safety Poster Contest. The teachers are Stacy Bostick and Jessica Piccarazzi. Congratulations. Our next recognition this evening, we are celebrating the state championship eSport finalists from Lake Belton High School. The eSports sponsor is Christy Shepard. We have two teams. We have Apex Legends and the Super Mario Bros. Super Smash Bros. Solos. Congratulations, guys. In the house with us tonight, we have Daphne Ortiz, a student at Belton High School. She was recognized as one out of 250 dancers in the state. She represented

009Belton High School at the Texas Dance Educators Association Convention in January. Her coaches are Rachel Hill and Emma Marsland. Congratulations, Daphne. Our next group is a massive group. So we're going to do this picture or do this recognition in three different pictures. First, we're going to have the solo and ensemblist from Belton High School who advanced to state. We had 23. 23. They are demonstrating their outstanding musical talents and bringing a lot of recognition to BISD. They're directed by Kevin Kwaku, Chris Crager, Matthew Voughty, and Ian Smith. Congratulations. Our next picture is going to be just the soloists from Lake Belton High School that advanced to the state solo and ensemble. Just the soloists. If y'all could step forward and come on the risers. All right. All right, y'all look at Marty and say cheese.

010Congratulations. Okay, now if we could have about half of our ensemblist from Lake Belton High School come up. There are 50 students from Lake Belton High School that made it to state solo and ensemble. All right. All right. Their directors are Bobby Yerrigan, Craig George, Jacob Guerrero, and Grant Shane. Now if we can have the rest of the ensemblist. There we go. Great job. Y'all look at Marty. Awesome. Thank you so much. Our next recognition, we are very proud to have students that advanced to state solo and ensemble in orchestra. They are under the direction of Preston Patterson. They all attend Belton High School. Thank you so much. We had five students advance to UIL theatrical design, the state. We had Yasmin Zayed, Brennan Nguyen, our students at Belton High School, and they're instructed by

011Marie Phillips. Liam McCullough won first at State. Giselle Lemus won second. And Nola Farrell also attended, and they go to Lake Belton High School, and they are taught by Ty Carter and Shelby Cozart. Congratulations. Belton High School also sent a team to the State Color Guard competition. So let's have our Color Guard. participants come forward they are coached by Brianna Merritt and we are really proud of them that it takes a lot of work congratulations y'all all right congratulations our next few recognitions are students that are athletes and they are being recognized as being academic all-state first up we have student students for cheer they attend Lake Belton High School they're coached by Laura Bowles Next we have Academic All-State Boys and Girls Soccer for Belton High School. Their coaches are Carlo Mostia and Oscar

012Bersosa. And now we have Boys and Girls Soccer from Lake Belton High School, Academic All-State. They are coached by Andrew Kirshner and Jamie Tibbetts. Congratulations. We have Academic All-State Tennis from both Belton High School and Lake Belton High School. If y'all could come up here. Congratulations. Our coaches are James Stinson and Nikki Morgan. Congratulations, guys. And we have Swimmers from Lake Belton High School, Academic All-State. Congratulations. We are now going to recognize students that went to the SkillsUSA State Competition from Belton High School, if you guys could come forward. We had teams that placed at State, an EMT team, and we have a team going to Nationals, Maselle Cuevas, Oscar Flores, Evan Hall, and Kyler Quinn for Teamworks. And there is a... Gina Montague with Morton Building is here, and she has offered every single

013member of this SkillsUSA team for TeamWorks, offered them career opportunities, and she flew in to be here tonight. So congratulations, guys. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Our next recognition is the SkillsUSA team from Lake Belton High School. We had a student placed third in plumbing and another student placed in pin design. Their teachers are Brittany Truitt, Rodney Johnson, and Brent Sharp. Belton ISD sent students to state for HOSA future health professionals. This is students that are interested in pursuing a career in health. And Zoe Ray placed fifth for her research poster. We have teachers Stephanie Yerrigan, Brandy Frieden, and Mary Keaton. We also sent students to the Technology Student Association State Competition, students from Lake Belton High School and Belton High School. Our teachers are Pietro Gristino and Jessica Persilver. Congratulations, guys. Congratulations. We

014had three students advance to the state competition for the Texas Association of Future Educators. Their teachers, Kimberly Williams, and I do believe they're advancing to nationals. Congratulations. We have 12 BIS students who advanced to state in FCCLA, which is Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America. Students from Belton High School and Lake Belton High School, if they could come forward. Abram Guajardo from Lake Belton High School, I believe placed second at state. Our teachers are Stacy Scott, Nicholas Warren, and Melinda Hodge. Congratulations. We had students from all three high schools, Belton High School, Belton New Tech at Wasco, and Lake Belton High School advance to the state FFA convention. This group of students competed in nursery landscape, vet science, wildlife, horses, environmental, natural resources. Congratulations, Guy. And now we have students representing wool team, cotton,

015meats, and milk quality who competed at state FFA. If you guys could come forward. The teachers for our Belton FFA program, we have Lindsey Chapman, Brad, and Lori Hobbs. Congratulations, guys. Our next recognition is we are celebrating 16 Belton New Tech students who competed at the YMCA State Judicial Competition. They competed in categories including mock trial and appellate court. And all of our court attorneys placed in the top 10. One team placed first at district and qualified for state. And two student justices placed first and third at district and also qualified for state. And their teacher is Neil Plemons. Our next recognition. is Phoenix Carlisle from Lake Belton High School, and she's not able to be here, but she won the Barbara Jordan UIL essay competition. And our next one is also not able to

016be here, Shrey Gupta, who's a National Merit finalist. He is here? Oh. I'm so glad you're here. Congratulations. This is one of the highest honors a high school student can achieve, and we are really proud to have one right here in Belton ISD. Next, we are going to celebrate all of our teachers. It's not only their first year teaching, but it's their first year teaching in Belton ISD. We had 89 new-to-profession teachers in Belton. We are so glad that y'all have chosen Belton ISD to be your professional home. Now we're moving along to our Temple Rotary Educator of the Month. Miss Lindsay Neese is also not able to be here, but she was a Rotary Educator of the Month for April. So we'll move along to May. For May, it's Bree Strenod. She is being

017recognized. She serves as a special education teacher and cheer coach at North Belton Middle School. This is her eighth year in education and second in Belton ISD. And her colleagues say that they're so lucky to have her that she has this positive attitude and our students are positively impacted by her every day. So congratulations. Our department showcase for this month is our health services team, which includes all of our campus nurses. They saw over 79,000 individual office visits this year. They are critical to Belton ISD, and we are so appreciative of y'all. Congratulations. Our next recognition is my play department during his time. He has earned his bachelor's degree from Southwest Texas, a master's degree from Concordia, and he is very close to finishing his doctorate from Texas Tech. Congratulations, Mike. And our last but

018not least, our final recognition board is a couple of months ago I shared with y'all about Education Connection and the impact that this program was having on Belton ISD. We want to celebrate tonight Education Connection and also representatives from the faith-based organizations that have adopted Belton ISD schools. If you don't know, this... organization partners with local faith-based organizations and communities all across Central Texas. They get volunteers to come inside our schools and just read with students for 15 minutes one-on-one and it's all about improving reading skills and because of them our students got 3,000 extra minutes of reading every week. It's a powerful partnership. So thank you all so much. That concludes our recognitions. Okay, as our students are exiting, will you give them one last round of applause? They are amazing and they deserve

019that. I'm too close. He told me don't get so close. Mr. Fuller, I believe you wanted to make a couple comments about the recognitions. Yeah, it's unfortunate everybody's already left, but I think something really special just happened there. There were 26 groups of people recognized there, and 21 groups of those people were kids. Right and when I look back at this group and I look back at years past. Oh my gosh Okay, what just happened there like you saw at the state level Serious competition, right? We are locally Competing and knocking the socks off the district national also, right? Yeah, we are competing regionally and knocking their socks off and we are going to the state and we are not just going but replacing Right and we're moving on to nationals like great things are

020happening and and I have not seen in my time on the board This number of recognitions at this level Something great is happening, right? It's it's amazing what these kids are accomplishing anyone else All right. Next on the agenda are public comments. In accordance with policy BED local, we will take public comments regarding items on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting, and comments regarding non-agenda items will be heard at the end of the meeting to allow the board to conduct business of the district. I have been handed a couple of folks that have signed up for public comments. Now let me read this into the record. In accordance with district policy BED local, any person wishing to address the Board of Trustees during public comments shall sign up before the meeting. As I

021said, I've got two of those. In order to comply with the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Board may not respond to comments or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted on the meeting agenda. Of course, that doesn't mean we're not interested in the public comments. That's just something that we have to not be able to do is to be able to interact with the person that's making the comments to us. Participants will be allotted three minutes for public comments regarding items on the agenda. We have a timer on the screen that shows you your allotted time and a sound will occur at the conclusion. The board shall not tolerate disruption of the meeting by members of the public. When I call your name, please join us and state your name and

022city of residence for the record. The first person is Janet Brown and on deck is Keith Gilbertson. Ms. Brown? Good evening. I'm speaking on item 5a. I'm Jana Brown and I am a resident of Morgan's Point Resort Words have a tendency to change meaning by Dr. Minston Marshall It seems just yesterday at a particular August 2022 policy committee meeting, I observed a discussion about the groups of people who could participate in the book review process. I listened to Trustee Janet Lee's comments, Chris Flohr's concurrence, and Manuel Alcocer's agreement. The discussion centered around district taxpayers or residents or community members being removed from the class of people eligible to challenge or initiate a book review and sit on a library or instructional book review committee. It was with disbelief that I heard this even being entertained.

023Still, maybe this will be something for legal folks to decide, as I'm not a lawyer and do indeed fall into the class of people referred to as community members, the group, and resident taxpayers. But I'm here this evening to state that informal inquiries or reporting about obscene and sexually explicit reading material within the Belton ISD system can be effective. It's important to recognize that informal queries or reports about inappropriate reading materials in the Belton ISD library can be a productive way to address concerns without escalating the issue. Effective communication and adherence to legislation such as HB 900 are key in this process. Just two weeks ago, I reached out to Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Gabby Nino to reference a past challenge on the book. What Girls Are Made Of because the GoFolid online

024system, which the district uses, reflected this book on the Lake Belton High School shelves with a book and audio version. Gabby Nino contacted me twice. The first time, she was physically checking the libraries and would follow up with findings. On May 10th was our second phone conversation, confirming that the book, What Girls Are Made Of, is not on the shelf. Excuse me is not on the shelves nor in the Belton ISD library system and the online catalog system has been updated. It is concerning to see a draft policy that could potentially hinder this type of informal query in action, particularly the wording that could exclude a group of people who, like me, fall into the category of community members or resident taxpayers. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Next is Mr. Keith Gilbertson. I am

025Keith Gilbertson. I am a Belton resident. On this issue, I'm not deeply informed or well informed on it, but on a couple of issues on books. One was a book that absolutely blew my mind. Deviant sexual conduct was put forth as normalized. And our taxpayers and parents absolutely need the ability to establish their standards and their more community standards and mores. Now, I know you guys are busy. You've got your hands full. But what about appointing a special committee of recognized... individuals, leaders within the community. I'm talking a couple of preachers, a doctor, maybe even a lawyer, and somebody in civic leadership that if a book comes up that's questionable they might provide recommendations to you that this is something where we meld our materials, our books, and our curriculum to our community standards. Now,

026I don't think the standard here for Bell County and for Belton is the same as New York City or Los Angeles or Austin even. We're a bit more conservative, and our curriculum and our books need to reflect that, community standards. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right, we're going to move down to Item 5, Action Items. Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action regarding the adoption of board policy EFB local and EFB exhibit instructional resources library materials. Dr. Golden? Yes. So Gabby Nino, our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, is at the podium. So Gabby is here this evening to provide you with information on a newly drafted EFB local and EFB exhibit. This policy has been developed in alignment with Texas State Library and Archives Commission standards and State Board of Education for collection, development,

027selection, and evaluation of library materials. Gabby? Good evening, Board. Thank you for having me for this conversation this evening. As Dr. Golden mentioned, we want to consider and take action. take appropriate action on the recommended policy this evening for EFB Local and the exhibit that accompanies it. I want to talk just a bit before I go too far in about the House Bill 900 that informed the recommendations for revisions to our policy. The House Bill 900, also known as the Reader Act, is intended to protect our children from exposure to explicit or harmful materials in our public libraries. There's three core components of it that I really want to highlight tonight that are reflected in our revisions. And the first one is library collection standards that have been set forth by TSLAC, which is an

028organization to support libraries and library archive materials. The second piece of that is just as reference protection from inappropriate materials that's highlighted in House Bill 900 but also in the Belton ISD policy. And then I'll highlight in this conversation what those changes actually look like for us. I want to be very clear about what the intention of this policy is. It's intended to support our library instructional resources in particular. The purpose of the policy is to support first and foremost student achievement, to ensure that there is a wide range of text available to support students regardless of their performance level academically, but also with the content that they interact with in the classroom. We want to make sure that our library materials have a diverse perspectives represented in the library and our book collection should

029represent a wide range of views and perspectives. The policy also is going to set forth what the standards are for us that will guide our collection and our maintenance and our review of our library materials as well. One of the key highlights of our policy is that we are placing value on parents as our partners in the education of their children. You'll see highlighted in our policy that we prioritize that partnership and we elevate that parents are the primary decision makers for not only what their children have access to, but the material that they engage in. In our policy, you'll see highlighted encouragement for parents to partner with our librarians and they have full access to view what the library materials are available to their student. If there's any material that's of concern of them,

030we want them partnering and working alongside our library and digital information specialists as well as their teachers in conversations about those materials. If for some reason a family feels like a book is not appropriate for their child, we want to encourage and our policy encourages the informal conversation with the librarian where you are able to hear the community member, the parent, will be able to hear about the why of a text being in the library, but can also work together to identify an alternative material for the individual child, as well as put restrictions on access to books for a child. It is our goal in Belton ISD, not only in our policy but in our practices, to maximize transparency in our partnerships with our families, with guardians, and with our community and residents of the

031district. It's because we value that transparency that you will see that our library collection is posted publicly online. Any individual who is interested in browsing our catalog of books has that availability to them. It can be accessed on our district website under our library services page. In our policy recommendations, that has been a practice for us, but we have made revisions to our policy to make sure that that stays in place, that community access online to our catalog. Additional organization of the policy will help guide our librarians and digital information specialists in the selection and the evaluation of materials. Just a couple of years ago, we did not have guidelines in place to articulate what our procedures and practices are for the ongoing review of materials in libraries. This policy sets forth direction for that

032and will help in the ongoing review of materials that we have to ensure that the books that are in our libraries enrich the teaks that our students are exposed to and are required to master in instruction. We want to make sure that our library collections give students the opportunity to engage with factual knowledge as well as diverse perspectives in the library resources that are available to them. We want to encourage the enjoyment of reading and high-level critical thinking. I want to celebrate, I'm going to connect real quick to the celebration we had in acknowledgement with our reading partners. Our libraries are places to grow a level of literacy and engage with text. We know that the more our students have those opportunities with high interest text, they're going to think at different levels and they're

033going to grow in their academic skills to engage with content in the classroom. Again, I'm going to repeat that our library should respect a diverse and present a diverse choice and selection for our students to have access that will represent their families in the library, that will represent our communities in the library, and that's prioritized in our policy. There are recommendations for students, parents, teachers and district community members in our policy. I just heard a desire to make sure that we maintain that respect for our community partners and want you to know that that is absolutely important to us. And you will see in our policy that we have added not only the open catalog access, but also called out specifically that our district residents may engage in conversations with the district, both at the

034formal and informal level about texts that may be concerning to them. have called out professional consultation in our policy. So in the event we are trying to make decisions about a book and whether it is appropriate for us to keep on our shelves, we put practices in place not only for our campus librarians and digital information specialists to consult with each other, but also practices called out to consult with professional reviews and partners in peer districts who also may have tech. in their libraries. And so you'll see professional consultation called out as well as those extensive reviews. And finally, just want to really illustrate that we want to have a wide range of coverage of topics and authors and different genres in our libraries for students to interact with content, again, to reinforce the standards

035that we want them to master in the classroom and beyond. Some adjustments that have been made to our practices that are also highlighted in the policy before you is a regular evaluation of our collections and that that would be updated on a regular basis based on age, relevance, and diversity. I referenced it briefly, but we have a professional community of learners and our librarians that now have guidelines in place for them that articulate how they will call their resources, what are the standards that they will look to, and what regular processes will look like in order to pull books from our library if necessary, if they don't align to our standards, but also in the selection of books. Because of what we've articulated in our policy, our librarians are going to be growing their collections

036every year. We are going to be looking for new texts that are relevant to our students and to our teachers and instruction. And they will use these standards to help them and to guide them in the selection of resources in the library. We'll apply these standards when we are removing books from the library. We've also put practices in place for if they were removed, what does that look like to make sure that they are collected in a centralized location and removed from our campuses. We also will apply these policies to gifts and donations. We encourage our community, we encourage our families to be partners in the library. And sometimes what happens as a result of that is we have families or community members that want to make donations to us. For example, we have a

037dental partner in the district that wrote a children's book. and would like for that to be a part of our library. What a way to celebrate a partnership, to have authors in our community that our students can learn from. That's an example of a gift or donation, and we will apply our policies and guidelines to that as well to make sure any materials that we put in are aligned to the standards set forth. The final addition that I'd like to call your attention to is that we will now review this policy at a minimum every three years. We will... revise as needed. We will make updates as needed, but at a minimum, we'll review this policy every three years. At this time, I would like to answer any questions that you all have for me

038related to the implementation of EFB. Trustees, any questions? I have a comment and a few questions, Gabby. First of all, thank you for the work you put into this policy revision. You know, like everyone on the board here, I'm a parent. I have two here at Belton Middle School, and I deeply care about what my kids have access to to read on a regular basis. And I'm glad you said the values of our community should be represented because that's a value that I have here for every single student in our district. First question is librarians working at the campus level to align available materials based on the interest and maturity level of the students. Is that right? Yes, sir. Can you expound just a little bit on that? Sure. So if you think about our

039system, a pre-Ker who led the Pledge of Allegiance today has a very different maturity level than one of our high school students who might be engaging in, let's say, HOSA. right they have health interest so those are two extremes of the continuum but the reason I use those is to say that our librarians regardless of the student level and our libraries regardless of student level are looking to ensure that the collections are aligned to what's developmentally appropriate for that age group sometimes there's overlap and this is where the professional consultation is important for us a book may be recommended to be a seventh grade through twelfth grade. So we need our librarians working together to review that resource and make sure that we hold the text to our standards and place it at the appropriate

040level that is age appropriate based on our decisions within our system and recommendations. Thank you. Can you explain a little bit more about the access for someone in the community? And I think you said earlier, too, this is not just for parents and guardians. This is anyone in the community, right? Absolutely. Thank you. Can you explain about the process, how someone would go on our district website, where they would find that information to find a book, and if they needed help? Yes. So if any individual, whether it was a parent, whether it was a resident of our community, they can just go to our Belton ISD website to library services. And on that website, we have a link to our library catalog that will take them to every campus individually. And so I can peruse

041the catalog for any one of our campuses individually. And so that's just linked on our district site. We also have a link for directions on how to do that that has some visuals included to walk a person through the process. Okay, thank you. The last question, I promise. What would you recommend to parents who want to be a part of the process? How could they partner with us? Yeah, so, I mean, one of the... biggest recommendations I will always make is to partner with your school. Our libraries are, like I said, a place where the love of literacy is grown. And so I would encourage any of our families to volunteer in the library. You can imagine on, let's just say Chisholm Trail. We have a large number of kids who are coming in and

042out of the library every day for library lessons to check out books to support their learning in the classroom and to check out books just because they're interested in them. So that constant circulation is an opportunity for families to volunteer and be a part of that. I also would encourage you just to ask the questions. Meet your library staff, meet your campus staff, and they will be able to walk you through the processes that they use. Anyone else? Ms. Lee? Thank you, Gabby, for the work that you've done. I also just want to say, you know, as you said several years ago, there was no policy across the state of Texas for this kind of thing. There were no guidelines. So when this came about for us to begin the work to try to craft

043a policy, it was a very difficult and long process. A lot of it was laid in the laps of volunteer board members trying to figure out how to navigate that with the values of their community. and be fair to all students and all families and all points of view in life. And while our policy has gone through several iterations, it has been our desire from the get-go to make sure that kids have access to varied reading material and that they are protected at the same time because we are all parents and some of us are grandparents. This is an important thing to us. For me personally, I'm a person of faith, and I want people to know that our children and our grandchildren are going to be protected from anything that would be harmful to

044them. And that has been our deepest desire all along. Thank you, Ms. Lee. Ms. Fuller? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Ms. Bass. Go ahead. Thank you, Gabby. I just shared the sentiment with all the work. All policy is important, but this one has certainly just risen to the top of priority and getting it right because it has been a long road to get here. And it may not still be perfect. We may have to do some revisions and updates, but I think we're getting there, and so I'm thankful for the work that you all have done. You made a comment earlier about who can get involved. Specifically, you said district residents can be involved at the formal and informal level. Can you just... Just talk more about that, be a little bit more specific on

045that. Absolutely. So, and I'll use the online catalog being public, for example. So if a community member had a concern about a book that they saw in our catalog, they could reach out to the school and engage in a conversation with campus staff. It could be the librarian, digital information specialist, campus leadership. and informally express their concerns about the book. We want to encourage the partnership and the relationship that can happen through that conversation. If there was a concern about a book and that was a parent, right, then the parent at that point could put a restriction on access to a book if the book aligned to our standards. and we were okay with that book staying on the shelf but it was not something that they wanted their child to have access to then

046we could restrict that the access to that book for their child because that aligns to their their values and beliefs if it was a community member Engaging in that conversation will allow them the opportunity to understand why we have that text on the shelf, give us the opportunity to walk through our standards and help understand. I will tell you that there have been, there has been a book that was concern expressed by a community member and by looking at it aligned to our standards, we were able to pull that book without having to go through the full formal. reconsideration process. This is new to our district. This is new across the state. Our librarians are working very, very hard in reviewing our books right now. There may be an occasion where we identify a book

047that doesn't align to our standards and we will pull it. Having that partnership with community might help us in doing that. So that was a long answer to your question, but there's so many different ways that it's helpful. And bottom line, we want to have good partnerships with our community. I just want to I do want to thank the librarians because they have really worked hard on this and and what's been so cool is finally crafting a policy that they understand how to get behind and we can support each other through it so that has just really been a great partnership I really want to shout out to them because they they have done a great job really helping us thank you Janet they really have Yeah, maybe I'll start out by echoing that. I

048mean one of the things I did, I don't know if it feels like forever ago at this point, was actually sit down with several of our librarians and really talk through What does what does this look like right and had a great conversation? You know with them I think to address one of our public comments, you know out of that conversation You know, I asked that we add additional parent representation to the committee's and so the what you have in front of you actually Increases the number of parent participants on the review committee So one maybe recognition that there is a review committee right and then in two that it actually does have parents on it And what we have in front of us actually increases the parent involvement in that committee. And so it

049was at least two parents, and now it's at least three parents. And I say at least because I don't know that it necessarily prevents us from having more. So I think that's an important point to put out there. I think generally from a policy development standpoint, we also need to recognize that part of doing policy development means you have to look at an issue from all angles. So you have to look at who's got standing, who potentially has standing for a particular policy. And what does that group of people look like? Is it the widest possible group of people that could have standing? So with our entire community, you also have to ask the question, is there a smaller group of people that should have standing in this particular policy? And so in creating this

050particular policy, we asked ourselves that question. And we looked at it from all angles across multiple meetings. And so we looked at, you know, should all community members have the ability to, you know, to challenge a material? And on the far side of that spectrum, we also asked ourselves a question, you know, what if we limited, you know, that policy to only parents and guardians? We asked ourselves both of those questions because as a developing policy, you have to ask yourself those questions. Right? And where we landed was the entire community should have the ability to have access to challenging material. And, you know, I think our commitment to transparency, you know, is really demonstrated by the fact that the catalog is available to everybody. You can go out to the district website, you can

051see the catalog. I hope I don't take any hits from some of our neighboring districts, but go out to some of our neighboring districts and take a look at their catalogs, and you cannot get into those catalogs. So the level of transparency around our catalog is unlike a lot of our neighbors. And so our commitment is to the transparency and is to our entire community as part of this process. wanted to get those things out there and then I do have one question so as part of the lessons learned right for this you know can you talk to us a little bit about you know as we created the Burrell collection Brad Burrell Elementary and as we create the collection at Hubbard Branch, right? So how are we applying the lessons learned from sort of

052recent collection issues, right, to those two campuses? Absolutely. So there are several things that I'm very proud of Belton ISD doing and prioritizing over the last couple years. First, when we opened Lake Belton High School, we did not have a lead librarian in our district. And so we have a certified lead librarian that now really oversees that collection development. and work side by side with the campus librarian or digital information specialist as well as the vendors who we receive texts from. And so that is one step that we've taken that I think is really helping with that. Melinda Lanham, who is our lead librarian, has walked through our standards with vendors. And so we're not just saying, we'll take the books. She is making sure in her conversations and her work with the vendors that

053they understand our standards and that they are being used to help with the building and implementation of those library collections at our newest campuses. One in particular thing that she is pretty firm about is that there must be for every book at least two positive professional reviews. And so that's something she's pretty insistent on with the vendors and I'm proud of her for that. One other step I've I've referenced the fact that we have a professional community of learners in the librarians' roles now and digital information specialists. They are implementing the collection in partnership. So as those books are installed at our new libraries, they are working that process together as a community of librarians that allows them to look at every single book and have those books in their hands as well. And the

054final thing that I would say is that we actually have guidelines. So there's policy and then there's our practices and guidelines that we've put in place and those have been fully developed out. And so for our library team to have those in their hands is extremely helpful to them. Thank you. Anyone else? Ms. Nino, thank you for your work on this. I know how difficult it is because just as Ms. Lee said about... When we had the policy committee, we started working on that. This is a very tough issue to navigate through. The Texas legislature, when House Bill 900 became law, it has been with challenges. It's been challenged through the court system. The fact that that's happened tells you how difficult this issue is. Even through the wisdom of the legislature and the governor

055signing it into law, it still is challenging the courts. When I look at this policy, in my view, I think we have to understand that we have to look at the due process element. We have to make sure that our procedure is sound and we'll survive some sort of legal challenge. We don't want the district in some sort of protracted litigation that could end up costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. I appreciate the work that's been done here. Let's see who mentioned it, not Rucker. Standing, you mentioned standing. Yeah. Standing meaning who can file a formal reconsideration. And now, as it reads now, any resident of the district. It doesn't have to be just a parent or guardian. It could be any resident to come in here and challenge a book, correct? Yes, sir.

056All right. So although you mentioned that we want... We want kids of a diverse group to have access to material At the same time though this policy does indicate that it doesn't the First Amendment does not does not protect obscene material, all right, which is something that we wanted in here and it's in this policy. I want to stress that to the public. The other thing I'd like to stress is although you mentioned a diverse group, this policy still prohibits any kind of materials in our system that include harmful material, correct? Yes, sir. All right. It also has a definition of sexually explicit material and talks about what that can mean, right? Yes, sir. So that's not something we, I know this sounds rhetorical, but we want to, I mean, I want to stress this

057to the public, that although we try to protect a diverse group, that doesn't mean that we're going to allow these kinds of things to enter our libraries, correct? Absolutely. So in terms of access, Any parent will have access to materials online, correct? Yes, sir. And any parent can actually, if they want to visit a library in person, all they have to do is call and they can come in and visit any library, correct? Yes. And that's what this policy provides, right? Yes. And it states to reach out to, if you want to access the materials in person, to put a written request in to the campus administration. I will also say we want to encourage that volunteerism and that partnership and that visibility in our campuses as well. I don't think I have any additional

058questions or comments. Anyone else? All right. Do we have a motion to adopt EFB local and EFB exhibit instructional resources as presented? Mr. Preston, do I have a second? Ms. Norwood? All in favor, please raise your hand. I'll pass a seven to zero. Board, I'd like to thank Gabby Nino and her leadership of this work and Melinda, our lead librarian, and our librarians across the district. This has been countless hours listening to lots of input from our community, from our board of trustees, and I'm just really proud of the work that's gone into this. And so I just wanted to say thank you to our team. Thank you, ma'am. That concludes our action items this evening. Next on the agenda is reports. Dr. Golan? Yes. So Ben Smith is coming to the podium. He has

059a presentation this evening on the change we are making to our high school bell schedule at our two comprehensive high schools. You see Claudia Knox and still are. While they're not presenting, they're here in case we have any questions. They're here for moral support of Ben. So we're glad y'all are here, and I'm going to turn it over to Ben. Yep, that's right. They're my backup. So as Dr. Golden said, the purpose is for us to provide an update on our comprehensive high school bell schedule tonight. And before I present what we're recommending to move forward, I want to take us quickly backwards. in time in the summer of 2020 when we were responding to COVID. We put a team together that summer to put together a bell schedule that met the requirements and guidelines

060from the state for safety parameters. And as we progressed through that, we really liked the schedule. And so we continued with that. And in the schedule that our current schedule has worked well, there are some really great things that have come from our schedule. But over time, we've had feedback from teachers and students about some concerns. This fall, in September, we put a team together to study our bell schedule and is it meeting the expectations of our community. And so the team that we put together included myself, our high school principals, Gabby, athletics coach Skidmore, fine arts, Zolke, and then our CTE director. And so what was interesting in that research and that study is what we found is that The research is clear and it says that there is no bell schedule that will

061alone impact student achievement. What the bell schedule should do is support your values and beliefs for your district. And so we really connected to that because when we think about our values and beliefs in Belton, we think about each and every. innovation, engaged workforce, inspiring instruction, just as examples. Those are important to us. They're important to our community. And if we want to empower each and every student to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities so that they leave us with our journey of a graduate competencies, our bell schedule should support that. So with that, we created in the late fall, November, we sent out a survey to our parents. our staff, our teachers, with questions about our current bell schedule. We wanted to know what they thought, and the questions were anchored into our

062values and beliefs. Then in the early spring, we had some focus groups with our teachers and students with the same questions, but we wanted to hear their voice in person about our bell schedule. And so... From that survey and those focus groups, these are some of the overarching themes that emerged. The pluses to our current bell schedule were that they liked the fewer classes each day, they liked that there's less transitions, they love the collegiate feel to the schedule, and then they have more class time. And I'll get to the bottom one last because that's an important one I really want to talk about for just a moment. Now, on the side that they didn't like about our current bell schedule is the lack of consistency, meaning that we have some classes that meet 50

063minutes and some that meet 100. The Tiger time and team time links were too long. They didn't like the 100 minutes. The absence impact. impact. What I mean by that, so if a student misses a day on an A day or a B day, they could possibly miss multiple days in a row by the time they come back to that schedule again. And then finally, the conference and planning time. That's a really big one for our teachers. And for example, if I'm a teacher at one of our comprehensive high schools and I have my conference period on an A day, for example, second period. I have my conference period on that day, but on B day, I don't have a conference period. I don't have a planning period. I don't have anything other than my

06430-minute lunch time from 8 o'clock to 4.30, and that's hard on our teachers. And we talk about inspiring instruction, engaged workforce. That matters because we know that we have to invest in our teachers so they can pour into our kids. And so that was something that we really wanted to consider. Now, I go to the bottom line because what emerged from our feedback from our... stakeholders was that they really did like the concept of a block schedule. Overwhelmingly they liked it. The the issue that we run into that is to get to a true clean a block AB block schedule. It's a process There's a there's a lot that goes into that we have to review our policy We have to look design of our current credit System that's in place currently. We're on a

065seven credit system We would have to consider moving to an eight credit system, and then there's staffing implementation that also goes along with that So, based off that feedback, we put together a schedule that tried to meet the criteria of most of the things that our stakeholders wanted. And so we put that out to early or late March, early April. We pushed it out to our parents and our staff and our students. And based off that, we set up some listening sessions. We wanted to hear from our parents and our kids. And each campus had three listening sessions for students and two listening sessions for parents. Now I'll say that we had a lot of turnout for our students. Our students had a lot to say about the bell schedule. They wanted their input, which

066we love. And we did have some parents that came, not as near as much as students. We did have some parents that emailed each of the principals that said they couldn't make it to either one of the sessions, but they gave them their input, which was really good. There was some good input, some feedback that we got from them. But what emerged from our listening sessions based off the proposed bell schedule that was pushed out in March and April was that, look, we get that if we're going to make a change, but we have to have challenging and engaging experiences in the classroom. And that came from our kids, too. our kids were very adamant. They want to be challenged. They want to grow. They want rigor. We heard that from our parents in the

067community. That's important to our community. It's important to us as we develop critical thinking skills for our kids, that they have opportunities to stay engaged, especially with when we talk about communicating ideas. We talk about challenging debating. We talk about reflections. We talk about creating. Those are all important that we want our kids to develop. And so, regardless of the bell schedule, that was something that we needed. to make sure we'd continue or to improve on. The second was homework. Homework was a big one. The kids were afraid. This one was specifically more from the kids, that homework, their concern was that with going to classes every day, seven periods every day, that their homework level would increase. And so that was really good for us to consider and think about, and I'll get to

068that in a minute, how we respond to that one. Major grades was another big one. Having opportunities to really dive into projects and also with tests. Like the concern was I've got four, my teachers have scheduled four big tests on the same day. And that can be difficult. We don't want to pile that up on our kids and our students. And then Tiger and Team Time, the students were very adamant that they wanted this every day. Every day, they wanted this time. Because they wanted time to be able to do homework. They wanted to have time to go to their clubs and activities, to go to tutorials, for our students that are looking to... strengthen their skill in SAT, ACT. They wanted opportunities to go to classes or breakout rooms that offered that. So that

069was a piece. And then finally, transitions, making sure that we have safety and precautions in place during the passing periods because we are, with the proposed schedule, we would be increasing the passing periods from five to eight. And so, with all that feedback and input from our stakeholders, we are proposing for our comprehensive high schools a seven period, 50 minute schedule that would also include a team and tiger time of 35 to 40 minutes. And that would be every day. So the same classes every day. And so what that would allow for us, it would allow us to, one, hit that team and tiger time daily, which the kids ask for. It would provide an opportunity for teachers to have face-to-face with their students each and every day. Daily conference and planning times for our

070teachers, which is a big... big help for them as again as they're trying to build quality lesson plans and quality instruction and delivering that in the classroom for our kids and then finally consistency in the class times meaning that the classes are the same time every day you're not jumping from a first period 50 minute to a hundred minute class and then going back to a 50 minute later on of the day the classes are the same every day so our next steps. This is really important to us and Claudia and Steele and I have really talked about as we lead this change, this is important. This is a big change for our community and our kids and we have to get this right. And I've emphasized that to them many times. And so when

071we think about that, we have to make sure that we're communicating well with our community. We're going to continue to get input from them. And if you skipped October, January, and April, on the timeline we're going to collect feedback from our stakeholders throughout this school upcoming school year because i want to hear we want to hear how are we doing is the is the bell schedule meeting our standards where are we missing what do we need to improve on another piece to that communication is our professional learning we're going to invest in our teachers we're going to really talk about what high quality instruction means in 15 minutes so that we meet that challenging engaging standard that our community wants And so that communication will go out here soon before school's out. And then in

072June next month, we're going to start studying an AB true AB block schedule. And there's a lot of we know, again, it's a process and there's a lot of work that's going to go into that. But we're going to study it because we want to do make sure that we're putting in the right work and we're doing it well. And so that's going to take time to go through that process. And then I want to touch base on July because this one is I said this earlier, but to design professional learning plan around this is very crucial. And I loved in the workshop, we were talking about onboarding, but then the conversation kind of transgressed to all teachers. And I think it's important because as we think about our new teachers in the world today,

073Jeff asked about, do we still do the student teaching thing? And although we do have... teachers that go through the traditional route, we have a lot more teachers that are coming straight from the workforce or doing alternative certification. And so they don't have that experience. And so it's super important that we provide them the resources to instruct you to help them be successful in the classroom, which is why super excited about the work that Gabby and her team are doing with the curriculum. documents that we talked about in the workshop as well. And they really lay out not only what the chunking of a class period should look like, but it's pacing and suggestion time too. And so that's really going to help navigate through that work with our teachers as we develop really high

074quality lesson plans for our high school students. And so again, the feedback last piece is a huge piece and we're going to make sure that we're watching that and making adjustments that we need to throughout the school year to ensure that we're meeting the standards of our community around what teaching and learning should look like in our high schools classrooms. That's all I got. Questions for Mr. Smith? So thank you for putting in the work and the time and the collaboration on this. I think it's great. And I want teachers and staff to have a voice in how this proceeds. And also, I want you all to be able to have the time to study block schedule correctly and really get it done, because I know it's supposed to be the best way. This schedule

075is the way I grew up, seven periods a day. So I know that that's a little... you know, do we want to go back in time, that kind of thing. And I do remember as a student thinking to myself exactly what your kids are worried about. This teacher thinks that this is the only class I have. And I'd go home with seven things of homework every day. So how will you address this with teachers? What will be the instruction or the collaboration for them to not overload students every single day with all of this work? Because it's way more work than what I grew up with. I know that. It is, and I'm so glad you asked that. Part of our plan, and I should have shared this earlier and I left it out, but

076part of our plan, our teachers are already thinking about that. And so, as a matter of fact, when we were at a, I was at Belton High School for a parent, one of the listening sessions, and some of the teachers were there, the AP teachers, and they said, you know what we can do, what we should do, because parents shared that, that were there, and they said what we can do is create a, they're going to create calendars. Both campuses, Steele and Claudia, have committed to this. Creating calendars that teachers will go into to put in when they have major projects and tests so that they're not overloading the kids. So they can see that day is, no, there's no more that can fit on that. We're going to look for a different date so

077that we're not overloading, overwhelming our kids. Another piece is the homework. We're going to, part of the professional learning is to talk about the purpose of homework. Homework has a purpose if it's done the right way. And so we want to make sure that we're hitting the mark on that. And so we're going to invest in ourselves and a lot of learning around what homework is instead of expectations for our campuses. So that if there is homework being asked for our kids, it's the right work and it's not overwhelming them as well. Sure. Janet, have my kids been talking to you? All right, I've got two at Lake Belton. And, man, have I heard about all sides of this. So, yeah, I mean, I think to tip my hand, right, I mean, I really like

078the longer-term AB block schedule, right, but you don't get there overnight, right? It's going to take some real intentionality around getting there to make sure that you do it and you do it well and you really get the benefits out of it. And so, you know, longer-term, you know, I mean, that's certainly a direction that. I know I would lean towards. I know this is not for board action, right? We can't do anything here. But I think it really is important that we recognize the teacher support component of this, right? I mean, we're... trying to empower dreams, right? And we really need to make sure that the teachers have the time that they need in order to design the lessons that are going to incorporate the journey of the graduate competencies and everything that they

079need to do to really design that for the benefit of every student. And if we have to make this change to get there, I think that's going to be a worthwhile change. You know, we should see that, you know, from a collaboration standpoint, right, as we were just talking about. We should see that hopefully from maybe a burnout or work-life balance kind of standpoint, right? We should see it show up there. We might see it in, you know, grades. being entered sooner, right? And having the opportunity to do that, right? And those are all things that, you know, I think are really important for the overall program. And if it takes us a year or two or three or however long to kind of make sure that we are on this journey and understand, you

080know, what that A-B schedule would look like, you know, I think it's important stuff to take to make the investment in our teachers to get there. My kids don't like it. But it sounds like what we're talking about, right? It does really try to address some of those student concerns. What do your kids say about it? Well, so I mean, if we get back to all the positives, right? So basically, I heard everything down the left-hand side, right, in that slide, right? So they enjoyed the fewer classes each day. They enjoyed the... fewer transitions, they enjoyed the fact that this is going to feel like a little bit more like college classes are going to feel, right? They enjoyed sort of the more class time to kind of dig a little bit deeper. I will

081say they had some choice things to say about team time along the way. But when you start to talk to them about, well, okay, here's why you might do something else. And actually they talked to some of their teachers about it. And they had some really good conversations with their teachers, which I never would have thought my kids would have that conversation. So I'm really proud of them that they had the conversation. I think they started to understand what that looks like. So I don't know. I mean, I think. you know i think this is the best next step to get to where we need to go but i think this is a step on where we need to go right yeah comment and question. First, I'm proud of you guys for recognizing that there

082was a concern, there was a problem, and you've had a thoughtful approach, because as campus principals, you have a lot on your plate, so I'm proud of you for taking the time to really think about what you need to do and just how you've gone about it. So I think Chris is right that this is the right next step to get to where you do want to go. I do have a question about, you had talked earlier that when you all first started having these conversations, you brought in athletics, fine arts, and CTE. So by going to the seven class period, what implications does it have on them? Positive, negative? Can you talk about them? Yeah, it actually helps them because it gives them more opportunities to spread out those classes throughout the day. Right

083now we have them pretty much at the beginning of the first. First period and eighth period and those two what we call skinny periods those 50-minute periods and it's not just athletics It's what it's also fine arts too because you also you've got gym usage and so you're very limited on when you can use the gyms, but when you start thinking about Equity for programs and you talk about our color guard you talk about dance you talk about cheer you talk about PE and partners PE There's a lot happening in our facilities that we have to consider too and we want to make sure that we have a bell schedule that supports that. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else? Okay. I just want to, one, thank our high school principals for... putting up with my, what

084I think was about 100,000 questions. We've spent a lot of time together really exploring this, really seeking to understand student impact and teacher impact. One of the things they didn't say that was of interest to me particularly is that this change to schedule actually increases overall the instructional minutes for our students in their classes. And I think instructional minutes matter and I think that was super important. also just the impact to our teachers of going all day you know all the experiences we recognize today were thanks to the teachers and coaches and staff who have artfully designed these experiences for our students and to not have the planning time in which to do that did not seem like reasonable for us moving forward. And so I just appreciate y'all's thoughtful approach, the questions that y'all

085pondered, and the patience with me as I sought to understand. and just the importance of us leading this work well. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and I just appreciate you all very much for hanging in there and bringing this to our attention. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, moving on to Item 6B, Academic Progress Report. Dr. Golden? Okay, Gabby Nino has joined us at the mic again. Thank you, Gabby. She's going to share an academic progress report, specifically looking at our college career military readiness data. So I'm going to jump in. Dr. Golden already told you our purpose. And I'm going to jump in with reminding what CCMR, or College Career Military Readiness, is within our accountability story and academic progress. Within the accountability system, just a quick reminder of

086the different categories that we have. First being student achievement. Second being student progress. CCMR is a part of both of these categories and we look to achieve the better. We would select one of those would rise up in the area that we had higher performance. The third category within our accountability system is closing the gaps and CCMR is also 30% of that. So the reason I started with this illustration is to just show you the importance of college and career military readiness, not only because we believe and getting students ready for college, career, military, but also because it's a big part of our accountability story. It can be confusing how you earn credit for CCMR. And so I'm going to show you the three categories and just remind that a student earns one point towards

087CCMR in order for us to get that indicator. That does not mean that we limit students in access to high quality experiences. But as it relates to college ready, these are the different categories that a student might achieve or earn an indicator. for CCMR readiness. These are more academically, more standardized assessments like ACT, SAT, TSIA, and the list goes on. They might earn a college dual credit. They may take part in AP exams or earn an associate's degree. So this list here is the different categories that are college ready indicators for us. For a student to be determined to be career ready, they need to earn an industry-based certificate aligned with a level two or higher course. You saw quite a few students this evening who were connected to some of our career ready experiences

088beyond the classroom. Many of those also were earning industry-based certificates and want to celebrate that like crazy. And so they could earn a level one or two certificate. And then the final category is military ready if a student enlists in the armed forces in the military. So these are the different areas that we earn. Oops, I'm getting a little clicker happy. I apologize for that. I want to talk to you a bit about not just the outcomes, but the work our teams put in place to ensure that students are CCMR ready. And I've broken it into categories with our team. Tier one would be the things that we are putting in place for all students. Tier 2 gets a little bit narrow, more narrow. We've identified specific students that we need to zero in on.

089And then Tier 3 is very tight on a smaller group of students. At the Tier 1 level, we have conferences with individual students and their counselors for academic advising. We also have tracking systems that our campuses, they have a massive spreadsheet with every student in it and every opportunity that they are pursuing to be CCMR ready. And a process we implemented this year is IBC progress monitoring. It's not something that we've done in our system before. And I'll talk a little bit more in depth about that as we progress. At Tier 2, our campus principals each have a leadership team, an instructional leadership team that they come together with where they're having senior meetings where they've gotten their group of students narrowed down to just our seniors and are asking, have our seniors met CCMR

090readiness? specific groups of students might be targeted during our advisory times during Tiger or Bronco time they will get pulled to small group to ensure that they are in pursuit of CCMR and that they have the right supports in place to help them achieve that there's a fewer group of students that we may have concerns about or they're not demonstrating that they are on track to CCMR and we put individual student plans in place to monitor and ensure there's aggressive support in place for them Now while I articulate that these are the planned systems, there are absolutely areas within these systems for growth and I will talk about that just a bit as we progress. So let me tell you about where we are right now. What you may not be aware of is that

091our students can start earning CCMR credit when they enter high school. And so what we have here visualized for you is the current sophomores. So they've gone through their ninth grade year. Their current sophomores are current juniors and current seniors. This just shows you a quick visual of how we progress over time. What I want to make really clear is that those numbers are pretty small in our sophomore and junior years. You can anticipate that it's going to be smaller than seniors clearly because they're getting through our system But what we want to do with that implementation of progress monitoring that I mentioned is start increasing this number at earlier ages We need to make sure that our students understand how they can access CCMR have intense Conversations with them and make sure that we're

092increasing opportunities for students at earlier ages I also want to call out that there is a gray bar and a red bar. The gray bar is our IBCs, and the red bar is CCMR, which is all of the indicators. The reason they're separate is because we do have our CCMR accountability system, but IBCs are a big part of CTE effectiveness. And so we do separate them so that we can monitor just CTE as well as CCMR as a whole. Okay, so really the intent here is for you all to see that we have a rapid growth in our seniors and we want to focus on increasing that over time. I will tell you as well that this data is evolving daily right now because we're in that final stretch and we have quite a few

093number of students who are taking IBCs because they're coming to the end of their coursework. If you remember, CCMR is based on lag data or last year data. You earn credit for CCMR a year behind when it is actually earned. And so what I want to show you is the current class of 2024 and where they are. But remember that we won't get this until 2025 in our accountability. The first column is IBCs. You see that is solid red with a goal line. This is the first time we've exceeded our goal in IBCs. Last year we celebrated that we doubled them. We have exceeded that goal and are very proud of that and the work is not done yet. Denise has done a phenomenal job working with our campuses, in particular our CTE teachers. When

094I talk about progress monitoring, they are now putting formative assessments in place throughout the year to say students may be readier earlier in the year. Many of our classrooms didn't even know that there was an opportunity to do a pre-assessment in their program of study. And so just a small tweak this year of monitoring where students are and giving them opportunities earlier has helped us exceed that goal. And so we want to intensify that as we move forward. You can see on the far right, this is CCMR, and we do still have some growth to achieve our 100% goal. We are at 85%. CCMR ready in our class of 2024 as of today. What I haven't shared with you all previously and is going to be very important for our team to be aware of

095as we move forward, that progress monitoring specific to IBCs is going to be crazy important because the requirements evolve and change every year. So what you can see here is from 2023 through 2027 there are slight nuances in the changes and requirements as it relates to ibcs and earning ccmr credit with those through 2027. um i said that right yes 2027 i thought i said 2007. so for example in 2024 our students in order to earn ibc the list will change and in the coming year they will have to have not only passing that IBC but must also have at least one course credit and completion and aligned program of study. The next year that is increased to earning concentrator credit, which means they had more than one course in an aligned program of study.

096And then the next year that level of accountability for earning credit is raised again and students must get completer status in their program of study. So it cannot just be for that industry-based certificate. I wanted to share with you this because it's going to be really important that our team continues to put systems in place to monitor but also increase opportunities for students over time, which is what we want to do anyways. So a couple of things for me to call attention to. First of all, next steps is we need to celebrate. Tonight was a great example of that. I sat next to a family who said, I was here a few years ago and I didn't have any of these opportunities. My son's greatest problem is now he is in our skills trade with

097SkillsUSA. He's been offered a job. and has $30,000 in scholarships sitting there for him, and he's on our SkillsUSA team. And so Riley's biggest problem is making that decision. So we want to celebrate those things and the gains that we've made and then commit to continuous improvement of putting stronger systems in place. And I showed you a couple of areas, like increasing in our underclassmen. really need to emphasize some professional learning related to our CTE certifications. Denise and I and Tiffany have worked together closely with our counselors this year in making sure that the understanding of access to that credit is... more easy to understand, making the information accessible to them to support their advising for students. But we really want to get experiences across our system for teachers. Phenomenal things happen in our CTE

098classrooms that really exemplify our instructional vision. We want to enhance military connectedness. As you all are aware, we are talking about expansion of even our ROTC into our middle schools. We need to get our students connected more to service in our armed forces, not only because we believe in that, but because it also will help exemplify that they are military ready. Targeting specific areas like our AP advising. Enrollment and advanced coursework. We've got to work on removing some barriers for students in our system that might be preventing them from accessing some of our advanced coursework. And so we are actively working on that. And then that last one is fully implement a CTA assessment benchmark system. I alluded to it, but it has been pretty phenomenal to watch just eyes get opened by putting some

099formative assessments in place. We don't have to wait until the last nine weeks of school to make sure that our students are ready. We are making tremendous gains by doing that, but we know we can offer those opportunities earlier. Some big successes from some teachers who have reached out and said, hey, thanks for pushing me. I would have never thought that that was something my students should do, and we've made some big gains as a result of it. So just wanted to share that success with you all. And answer any questions that you have about our progress with CCMR and steps to strengthen. Any questions for Ms. Nino? Ms. Floor? All right. Can we get back, can you get back two slides for me? Yes. Yeah, so I just want to make sure I understand

100this. So if I look at the second row, right, so class of 2023, accountability year 2024, so you could get, we could get CCMR credit if a student had an industry-based certification. but didn't take a related course. Is that how I read that? Yes. Okay. And so now in the accountability year 2025. oh geez i don't know now i have lots of questions about that i won't ask those now so now in 20 in the accountability year 2025 in order they have to get the ibc and have at least one related course and so if i'm going to say floral design right so you've got to have the floral design course and take the floral design you know certification right in order to get that okay and in 2026 it's two courses in in 2027

101it's essentially three courses right you've got to complete the pathway All right, so there's some important things for us to think about here, right? You know, we've really got to look at what are the programs. We've got to track the changes in IBCs, right? So what are the IBCs that are out there, right? Because some new IBCs come in, IBCs come off the list, right? So we really need to make sure we're looking at what those IBCs are and also then aligning the curriculum and options to those IBCs so that we don't leave anybody behind. Okay, I actually didn't realize that you could earn the IBC without taking a related class and get credit for it. So that was, I mean, you learn something new every day. And then can we get back one more?

102Some great things are happening, right? I mean, take a look at the left-hand side there. That's huge, right? The highest we've ever been, you know, related to that. And if you look at the right-hand side, while we're not at the goal, Some amazing progress has happened here. So if you haven't tracked this number historically, you know, in the last six years, this number has grown by 65%. Okay? So we're not where we want to be. And we still got time for that. That bar is going to continue to go up. But we are absolutely on the path to fill that bar up as we go. And so I think it's important for us to all recognize that, right? Great things are happening, even though that bar isn't quite full, right? Some great things there. I

103don't know, maybe my question here is, do you need anything else from us? Right? So to help move this along, what can we do? Do you need us to do anything differently or to support a different way? I don't think differently, but being champions of what happened here this evening. You all hear the certifications that we'll get to call as our students cross the stage in the next couple of weeks and keep telling our story. One of our biggest goals, and I'm going to jump into CTE, is to increase our partnerships that give our students meaningful direction within our community when they leave our system as well. As you are in your every day, all day, make sure that you're helping us connect with those. I mean, I'm so taken aback by the conversation with

104this family that the greatest challenge for their son leaving our system is that he has to choose between his $30,000 scholarship or the career that was handed to him as well. And so being champions for that work and asking good questions, helping us articulate it better. Gabby, can you go back to the slide that showed that one right there? So that IBC bar, I believe, and I'm going to look at Denise, represents about 738 industry-based certifications that have been earned so far this year. Yes. That was as of last Wednesday. And every Sunday night, we roll and we get the report on Monday evening. And so I begged for it before I came up here. And I said, Gabby, we know you want it right now. You can't have it right now. $738,000. Yes. Awesome.

105And then just real quick, a reminder, if you were at State of the District. So I told a story of a young man in our system who absolutely is taking advantage of some rigorous academic. courses in, I think we talked about anatomy, physiology, chemistry, but also took advantage of some CTE courses and has an industry-based certification. He is not someone who has the ability for college to be paid for by his family. And so that IBC has allowed him to be career ready, is going to work part-time. He also qualified for nursing school, got into nursing school, is going to be able to go to nursing school and benefited from the generosity of scholarships from our community. And so I love his story, and it's the story of many of our students here tonight. It's

106not one or the other. It's the ability to do both CTE courses as well as advanced placement, on-ramp stool credit classes, all of those. And so just love the ability of our students to do both. Anyone else? Thank you, Ms. Dino. Okay, moving on to Item 6C, 2022 Bond Project Report. Dr. Goldin? Yes, Dr. Morgan is going to come up to the mic, soon to be Dr. Morgan. So he's going to share an update on our bond projects. He's got great pictures to give you some insight into the great work that's happening and percent of completion of these different projects. Thanks, Dr. Golden and Mr. President and Board. Very excited to do this report tonight. We are, as you're going to see in the timeline in a second, we're getting close on a lot of

107these projects, and we're really excited about that. Purpose has already been stated, but I did have a picture here. This is a group called BRICOM that we've partnered with on our access control, and this is them at the admin office doing the pathways and the wiring for the access control. And they've already hit many of our campuses, and they're on schedule to have that work completely finished for us to transition over the summer. We have updated our timeline, and this will be updated on the website as well for our community to see. It's nice to be able to start including some of these projects. in green that means they're complete or that we've reached the the milestone of substantial completion so for Burrell Elementary we we've reached that a few months ago and have had

108students there since January we've also recently reached the substantial completion of Hubbard Branch Elementary as well and in fact in the update I'll talk about where we are as far as like the the project itself goes but we had our incoming kindergartners there today and we're going to have some of our incoming students there on Wednesday to see that facility for the first time. So really excited about that. I can say some schedules are a little tighter than others, and I'll hit some of the highlights of that in the individual reports. But for the most part, we are still on schedule to complete these projects at the time of our contractual obligations with our partners. You can see that for the majority of these projects will all be in place and operational prior to the

109start of the 24-25 school year, with the exception of the Delta program. And we just had a pretty significant delay on getting the metal building, about 210 days to get the metal building in on that, and that pushed that project back to a few months. James L. Burrell Elementary. When we say completion percentage at the bottom, we go by billing completion on that. So there's still a little bit of outstanding billage on this one. And you'll see the same thing on Hubbard Branch Elementary. But really, as far as Burrell goes, students are in the building. We're working on as-built documents and financial closeout details. And then we're working on some warranty items that are in progress and doing some troubleshooting and problem solving. We have a humidity issue in a few areas of that school.

110and we've got the whole team from architect, design team, engineers, construction manager, commissioning agent, installers, manufacturer, and the controls company all kind of working, trying to get that problem worked out. But you can see there, and I'll give a brief description of the pictures. That's the library with all the furnishings and furniture and fixtures in. The picture on the right, I want to brag on that. that campus, I was over there with a community member from our bond oversight committee who wasn't able to make the tour, and I was showing him around the school. That's a picture I took of the maker space, and you can see students are heavily engaged, and there is a big mess in there, and Julie and I laughed about it. They are getting after it, and they're making some

111things. I will say, as we went through the instructional wings, there were some kids were out at recess, but every three out of three of the instructional wings that had students in it, there were kids in class. There were kids in the collaborative spaces, kids in the common spaces, and teachers were in and out and working with kids. And it was really exciting. And there was also a group of kids in the library right underneath the Burrell logo, some kindergarten students that were there working with the digital media specialists and doing some reading in the library as well. So that facility was definitely being maximized and utilized whenever we were over there. Hubbard Branch Elementary, you see a picture there from our tours that we took a week before last. You also, on the right,

112you can see furniture has been installed and delivered. There's only a few pieces that haven't been delivered at this point. And we will get our technologies up and running. And we have reached a substantial completion of that project. Furniture deliveries, like I said, are just about done. We're really looking forward to being able to start getting our community into that building over the next couple of months. And I hear rumor that we may even be able to have a board meeting there at some point. So that'll be exciting. Belton High School additions and renovations. The picture to the left is the band hall. I'm almost in the in the natatorium parking lot, kind of taking that back to the to the west. The picture on the right, I think, is really interesting. That is the

113the. existing CC building, Career and Technology Center. And so if you noticed, we've moved some, we've had to add some additional portables, temporary portables at the front of Belton High School. So those classrooms could come out and we could go ahead and start the renovations to make sure that that project's finished in time for school to start next year. So that is, that's looking from north, or from East to west, and so that you'd probably be standing, if you're familiar with that building, probably where Mr. Hobbs' classroom used to be. But all those walls are gone, and we're starting to frame in and starting to dry in the inside for the renovated projects. But Belton High School, the band hall addition's on track to reach substantial completion prior to the start for summer bands. So

114the Marching 100 will be in their new band hall whenever summer band starts. The Blackbuck Renovations, which will be the existing band hall, will start as soon as that space is available. on the CTE edition. It's on track to be complete prior to the start of school. Right now they're doing the MEP rough-in. Interior finishes are in progress. And for the CC building, the renovation's well underway, as you can see by the picture here to the right. And then the contractors are also mobilized. There's extensive HVAC replacements going on at Belton High School, and those will start the first week in June. So we're really pleased. That was a very complicated project with a lot of moving pieces, and thankful for Claudia. and Jason Sansom and their team and their team of stakeholders not only

115for contributing in the design but also in being patient as to have a major construction going on in several areas of your campus in a school year can be a challenge. Lake Belton Middle School additions you can see to the left is the interior of the new band hall and you see the this individual spaces the rehearsal rooms the the library the director's office and to the right you see the entrance and to the athletic addition remember that addition is going to have a four-year for the first time with public restrooms concessions and then we'll loop around to some new locker rooms back behind as you enter the primary gym there at Lake Belton High School. or at Lake Belton Middle School, excuse me. Band Hall and Gym Editions on track to reach substantial completion

116in July. And there's going to be extensive summer HVAC work at Lake Belton Middle School as well, along with interior painting, new corridor flooring that will all start the first week of June and be completed prior to the start of school. I should have a picture of Southwest Elementary coming up. I'll go ahead and tell you a little bit about it as it loads. So Southwest Elementary, the gym is on track for substantial completion in June. The classroom edition, probably of our August deliverables, the classroom edition at Southwest is on the tightest schedule, but we do anticipate a finish in early August prior to the start of school. And also there's extensive HVAC work that will go on at Southwest Elementary as well that will start as soon as school's out. The picture to the

117left. is the picture of the masonry has gone on on the exterior of the two-story building and then the picture on the right that's the interior of the gym. It was recently painted and so they'll start some of the final finishes and then put in the flooring and those sorts of things in the gym as well. So really excited about that project. Ag facility and Delta, two of our smaller projects and two of the last ones that we got going. You can see there to the left in the Ag facility the concrete foundation is still in progress. They are We're ready to pour when we took this picture, but it has rained a lot in the last several days, so I don't know if they've actually poured the foundation yet or not, but they were

118very, very close to doing that last week when we took pictures. And the metal building is scheduled to arrive any day, so the ag barn will go vertical quickly, and then that project will wrap up very quickly after that point. Delta facility there on the right, you can see site work as site demolition is complete. The work is on underground utilities at this point, and then the building pad is about to begin. We don't anticipate that there will be any issues having that pad ready to go whenever the metal building arrives. Back to the safety and security items, as I mentioned, the things that are really going on right now, we are down to the last couple of vestibules on the Belton side, which is phase one of the safety vestibules. In June, they can

119work a little faster once school's out. So in June, we'll start on this phase two or the Temple side projects. And those are all scheduled to be finished by the end of July. So every campus and facility that has students will have a secure vestibule in place whenever students return. Keyless access to security camera upgrades. I showed you the picture at the beginning of the BrieCom staff here at the admin office, but they are on campuses right now. They've already updated some of the cameras that are included in the package, and we will have access control at every campus as well. Another thing on financials, last time I gave you a little more in-depth financial report kind of of where we were with budget-wise, initial budget, approved GMPs, and what kinds of savings, and we're

120starting to see some of those savings come back. So tonight in Consent Agenda, we do have some deductive change orders for GMP reductions. That's money that's coming back from these projects into the bond account. And so for Belton High School, Lake Belton Middle School, and Southwest, our three additions are renovated. projects and these are these are being realized because of some value engineering ideas that came up during the final stages of design some allowance savings some things that we allowed for that we didn't need the full amount to complete the scope of the project and then some partial buyout savings as well so as promised we will as we did get closer to closing these projects out we will be able to pull savings from the GMPs back into the bond budget and that will

121help with some of the overages that we saw so the smaller projects there towards the end and I went very quickly on that but there's a lot going on we always want to take time to thank you to thank the board for y'all support of the bond program our voters for approving it and all of the the architects the engine the architects the construction managers all the subcontractors all the people in the field and then all of our departments here at school that we meet multiple times a week and we really want to see these things through and have great opportunities for our kids whenever they come back Questions, comments? None. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Now we go to Item 6D, Superintendent's Report. Dr. Golden? Absolutely. As I've highlighted in

122the past few meetings, tonight's report is going to be rooted in our shared vision. I'm going to jump in just as a reminder, and I've heard it several times tonight, and I think you, again, saw examples of this on display, that we seek to, we aspire to empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities. So throughout this presentation, I'm just going to share some photos. I have the blessing of being in our schools and our district, so these are some highlights from the past month. Starting on the left-hand side, I'll just share, you saw actually many of these students at recognitions through the last month and this month. These are our Superintendent Student Advisory Council group. I keep bragging on them. We had our last meeting where they came together

123again to... share their voice on issues that impact them. This past time got some feedback on attendance procedures. As we know, we want to increase our attendance rate. And so hearing it from the perspective of students and the impact of students from our processes and systems was really enlightening and helpful as we go to improve those processes. I love the little middle picture. So these are students from Beck's. So they designed an experience where they are having to demonstrate the academic skills that they're expected to learn in pre-K and doing it through an experiential way. They actually created a, I think it was snacks and sips. experience for their teachers. And so they were learning some academic skills and knowledge, actually able to demonstrate their mastery of those while also supporting their amazing teachers. And

124then on the right, again, how we... help instill in our students the importance of enriching their communities when they leave us is we give them examples and we show them and this is just a quick example of our community giving back to our students. I bet there's some dreams being inspired in that picture for some future fire men and women and again as mentioned earlier in order to create those experiences, we have to have an incredible team of employees, a world-class team of employees to do this. And so these are just pictures and highlights from recently. We recognized our staff for their years of experience in Belton ISD and then also celebrated some individuals who have given their entire career to education and are retiring this year. So it was a great opportunity to celebrate

125them, and I'm so proud of them. And then this one put innovation very intentionally and I'll start actually, you're far right. So we have students, thanks to our technology department, they have created Techsperts. And these are students that are learning the skills to actually help support our technology across our campuses. And so recently they were taken. out of the area into Google in Austin. And so this picture that you see, one, they had an incredible day designed for them. But this is, they're in an auditorium at Google, and you can't really see, but they are grilling one of the leaders at Google. They came ready to go. Frank's shaking his head. They came with the most insightful questions, really kept Google leaders on their toes, and I think they were incredibly impressed by our students

126and their thoughtful approach to the questions they asked. And so really proud of the team for creating that experience for our students. And on the rest of the pictures, I put that under innovation because this is an example of, we used to call it pre-prom, was called Spring Fling this year. this year. We have students that being able to access an experience like prom is challenging. They have some sensory challenges and this was an incredible event designed by students and staff and our own students poured into making this experience possible. They provided the music, have a picture of the food, they created the food for this experience and really it's just to help support our students. It could have gone under each and every but I also felt like it's an innovative way in which

127our staff and our students are pouring into other students to give them an experience that many students can access, but these students need a little support in order to access. And then I've got two more slides real quickly on exceptional learning experiences. And there is so much on this slide. So one, I'm going to start at the bottom and just give a shout out to our Buckles and Beans at Lake Belton High School. You are seeing where they actually hosted our Beck students. They went over to Lake Belton High School for a field trip. They got to ask questions and really see what it looks like to be entrepreneurs. create their own organization where they are able to provide goods and services to a community. And so it was an incredible experience for our students.

128Of course, you see on the left-hand bottom side, I know, I think everybody attended. The Penguin Project, and that was an incredible production of Finding Nemo Jr. Beautiful example of our students being able to partner with students where our students who have special needs and abilities were the artists on stage and they were partnered with students. who did not, like you don't even see them in this picture. Our partner students did such a great job not to take the spotlight off of our artists. And so really proud of that. You see great artwork that's been on display at the Harris Center recently. And I have to say the middle one, our PE teachers, our coaches create amazing experiences for our students. That's Tarver Elementary School. Yes, they let me kick my heels off and play

129a game with them. They got great joy out of hitting me with beanbags, I will tell you. They loved that they were all able to tag me out and it was just so fun to get to experience that with our students. And this picture, again, I think I shared this at State of the District or actually on Twitter. I was looking out the window from a meeting, and our New Tech students actually created incredible experiences for our elementary school students across the district. They took field trips to New Tech. Our students were facilitating learning experiences outside around nature, science. They're creating slime. They had some little bit of... chemistry experiences and so our students were having such an incredible time and again that was designed by our students which was incredible and then the experiences

130you see on the right was a GT experience students from across the district to a part of our GT our gifted and talented program came together they were given very few resources a task to create a floatable boat that they had to actually get one occupant across the swim center in and so it was incredible i got to go see this and see their creativity they were super proud of themselves and i'm Super proud of them as well. And then finally, we just recently had our State of the District last week. And just a shout out to our barbecue team. As I said there, this is the first year for Belton High School barbecue team. The food they made was amazing. In the first year of implementation, they are going and advancing to nationals. Our

131culinary students created amazing meals, sides and desserts that went alongside that. And what you see are incredible students demonstrating They're learning. They brought a little window of a classroom to us. And you see Jeff sitting on the floor, and I'm on the other side with students that actually are learning to code in our elementary schools. And then they created tracks, and this little device that they coded was able to maneuver their different tracks. Each student group did a different one. And I shared this on Wednesday, and I'll share it again. I asked a student, like, was this hard? Do you like coding? And they were like, yeah. He said, I love coding. coding. I said, is it hard? He said, absolutely it's hard. And he said, and I had to really persevere. And I told

132everybody at State of the District, I looked around to see, did someone pay him to say that? Like, it's part of the vocabulary. It's becoming part of the vocabulary. And they did have to persevere. And I'm just super proud of our students. and the work that they're doing and so with that i just thank you for giving me the opportunity to see all of that every single week across our district and wanted to just open up to any questions you might have any questions dr golan comments okay uh we're moving on to item 6e board highlights this is our opportunity to share prominent highlights from last month anyone like to start us off i will This last month's been really busy. I think April and May is, there's a lot of events. I mean, we

133got the tour to Hover Branch. The Big Red Art Show at the Harris Center was amazing. You mentioned that we all went to the Penguin Project. I certainly had a tear in my eye. I think everyone in that room that evening did. And one thing that really caught me at the end, I wasn't planning on saying this, but one thing at the end of the Penguin Project. when the students were all dancing. Remember that? In my brain, I said, this is what heaven's like. It was so beautiful to see everyone accepted and living the way they were built. And it was just a beautiful moment. And I just thought it was lovely. Got to go to the Beef Scholarship Ceremony and see a couple of our trustees' kids get awards. Say their district was amazing.

134We have all of our end-of-year events we're invited to go to. But I want to spend just a few minutes a day talking about Project Heartbeat and the mentoring program. They do amazing work. Did you know Project Heartbeat has served 370 kids in our district this year who are either homeless or facing homelessness already? And while our public school districts in the area all have students experiencing homelessness, and they all do a really good job, I don't think anyone does the work that BISD's Project Heartbeat does. Tiffany Summerfield, Christina Wilson, their entire team, they're recognized in our community for doing great, great work. And the mentoring program is somewhat new. I think it's only two years old at this point in time. There's a lot of people from our community who volunteer to be a

135mentor, and some of them are even our Belton ISC staff members. And a few weeks ago, I had a mom from one of our campuses come up to me, and she told me about one of the mentors, Mr. Keith Cook, our executive director for operations, and how that mother's child's life has been changed. She has some pretty happy tears, and she wrote down some remarks, and so I would love to read them. They're very brief, but she said, My heart is touched by Mr. Keith Cook. He's an incredible mentor to Belton ISD students and he spends time with my child on campus every Friday during lunch. He's even attended a field trip with my child when I couldn't go because I had work. I'm incredibly thankful for Project Heartbeat's mentor program and all the mentors

136in the district. I have a rather impressive colleague and wonderful friend named Kathy Southern. She taught me the importance of supporting kids, children who are homeless, in a way that they'll never know that they're homeless. And I think that what Project Heartbeat and the mentoring program does is exactly that. And they cannot be thanked enough. Thank you, sir. That was nice. Anyone else? Mr. Floor? All right, I'll be a lot shorter. I usually get long-winded here. I want to hit a couple things that we haven't hit already. I had the pleasure to go to Temple City Council with Dr. Golden to recognize the Temple Police Department and first responders to the team that responded to the potential threat at Lake Belton High School. And it was just such a great opportunity to publicly say thank

137you to that group of officers. We are blessed to be supported by both Temple PD and Belton PD. you know such you know our our sros that support us uh and then their surrounding departments just do such an amazing job connecting with our kids and and really um really taken seriously um you know what what it is we asked them to do um you know the the you know, the threat at Lake Bottom High School, you know, demonstrates the fact that all of the safety training, all of the preparation by all of the departments involved, it's really paid off, right? I mean, it's an example of how you would want a response to happen. Thankfully, there was, you know, it was a potential threat and not a real threat, right? But it's an example of

138how you want a response to happen. And it makes me feel great as a parent that... that that's the kind of support that the community has for the school system. So again, you know, we went to to thank Temple Police Department, but, you know, certainly thanks to, you know, both police departments for the for the way that they support us. And then the last piece I'll hit here is I just want to shout out Dr. Golden for the State of the District event. I think you absolutely knocked that out of the park from your remarks and your presentation. I know you don't get a we don't we don't shout you out a whole lot. But yes, I mean, I think that was a fantastic event and really appreciate the way you presented the district. Thank

139you, Chris. So yes, state district, awesome, love talking to all those kids. It's incredible what goes on in our schools. It just blows me away every single time. Penguin Project, fantastic. But I went to the art show a few weeks ago, and I was just incredibly astounded at not only that we're offering these opportunities to kids, but how talented they are. And then this past week, I went to, they had the Southwest Art Show. at Southwest Elementary and it was separate. They had a little piece over at the art show but then they had their own. I didn't make it out there Monday night but when I went to read there on Tuesday they said you have to come in to the glow in the dark under the sea room and y'all it took my

140breath away. It almost brought tears to my eyes. They had like these little streamers and you walk into this dark room and they had these glow in the dark fluorescent sea creatures from the ceiling all over the place. It was lovely. I had just, oh, I couldn't believe it. So that's all. Anyone else? Ms. McDonald? Thank you. I attended a lot of the events you all attended, but I do want to remark about a meeting that I attended. I initially was not going to go, and at the very last minute, I threw a skirt over a top pair of shorts and went to the Belton EDC meeting. I walked in, not having ever, ever, ever gone to anything like that. I walked in, I thought, I feel like a fish out of water right now.

141However... Marian Grayson, our former mayor, was there. She's like, girl, come on in. Have a seat. And it was so refreshing to look around that table and see some of the same faces I've seen other places. Our mayor was there, our city manager, all of these common. folks that I'm not calling them common. Please don't say that. I'm just saying that it's so nice to see as large as we are growing as a city, we are still small as a community. And it was nice seeing all those familiar faces around the table and just finding out some of the great work that they're doing with that particular agency. So glad I got to go. I want to just touch on just some of the amazing experiences that our middle schools are doing for our kids,

142and two specifically, just the band. The middle school band, and really, I got to attend South Belton's spring concert last week and got to see the beginning band in sixth grade. And you would, I mean, these kids just picked up an instrument six months ago. I mean, never read sheet music. I mean, most of them had really never even probably picked up an instrument. And to hear what they were able to produce was just, it's truly amazing. And then even their jazz band and their symphonic band. And then just watching tonight, I'm just blown away that those are middle school students. So just what our middle school band. Fine arts are doing for our kids is pretty amazing But then I also got to attend a track meet and I think this is kind of

143a tradition that built in middle and South built and do they bring the sixth graders in and they Provide them with a track meet just something to give them a taste of what track is like because they're heading into athletics next year And we were out there all day. We did have one little bit of a delay because of some lightning, but that was And Fridays are normally my day off, and so I thought, okay, I'm going to go to a track meet. And track meets are all day, right? And I thought, I have so much to do. It's my day off. I've got lots of laundry. But I'm so glad I went and I stayed the entire track meet. These, I mean, these little sixth graders, they're talented. And so I was just proud

144that they got to have that experience, and some of them had never done high jump. long jump, just some of those things that they're being exposed to and giving them an idea of what maybe they want to do when they get into athletics. Some of them may have had an idea that they're not going to do athletics, but because of that, they may actually participate. So I'm just proud of our middle schools and the things that they're providing for our kids as they're heading into high school. They're giving them a taste of, they are empowering them in pursuing some of their dreams that really could come true in high school and beyond so i'm just proud of our middle schools and what they're doing thank you anyone else okay um moving on to the consent

145agenda does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion okay do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented miss bass second mr narwood all of her please raise your hand that passes seven to zero All right, board members, at this time, are there any requests for new information or reports from the administrative team? None. Calendar of events? I think that's been provided to us, has it not? Okay. All right, moving on to public comments regarding non-agenda items. I believe we have one, is that right? Okay. Okay, in accordance with district policy BED local, any person wishing to address the board of trustees during public comments? Shall I sign up before the meeting in order to comply with the Texas Open Meetings Act? The board may not respond to comments or otherwise

146discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted on the meeting agenda. Participants will be allowed three minutes for public comments regarding items on the agenda. And I believe this is a non-agenda sign-up, right? Okay. Now, call your name. Please join us and state your name and city of residence for the record. Maddie Ward. hello you guys my name is maddie ward i'm a belton i currently work at belton high school i teach art one and partners art the reason for me speaking in front of you guys today is this morning i was informed that i have been added to the surplus pool to potentially be relocated within the district i have reviewed and been shared a part of the handbook policy of our employee handbook And my the reason for this is my

147position here is that it was due to experience in the district. I wanted to come and ask you guys if I could potentially interview for my position at my current location. I have done amazing things in the program this year, and I feel that my role will best be served at Belton High School. A little bit about me and then some of the things that I've done this year is I am a Belton High School graduate of 2017, so I have a long history in the district. My family does as well. Some of the things that I've done at the school just this past year is I have grown great partnerships with our functional academics and are life skills teachers and I work really well with them and I've grown and done great things to

148have an enriching classroom with my partner's classes. In my Art 1 classes I've done great to provide foundational skills. Some of the things that I've done is I have and arranged and we took over 30 high school students to a university to participate in a college experience where they got to use college facilities experience and have hands-on learning side by side with college professors and learn about their opportunities post high school. I had two students here tonight that were state medalists for bass, and I just feel that I've done a great job. I've had nothing but positive feedback from my peers, my superiors, and even from students. I have students coming to say that they're going to take class with me next year, so I'm going to be really sad if I can't do that

149with them. But I feel... that I deserve an opportunity to defend and have a chance to stay in my current position. One of the things that the handbook says in regards to reassignments and transfers is that they take in the academic needs of the receiving or sending campus to be considered. And I feel that my position can be done by several people, but I feel that I do it best and I feel that I serve our students best at Bolton High School. So thank you for listening to me today and I look forward to hearing back from you guys. Thank you, Ms. Ward. At this time, we'll move on to Item 11, Closed Session. The time is 8.48 p.m., and the Board will now go into Closed Session 4. Consultation with Attorney, Texas Government Code

150Section 551.071. Student and Disciplinary Matter, Texas Government Code Section 551.082. Personnel, Texas Government Code Section 551.074. Selection of Officers for Board of Trustees, Texas Government Code Section 551.074. Ready? All right. Time is 9.24 p.m. and the Board will now reconvene in open session. Moving on to item 12 on the agenda reconvene an open session and take action if any on items discussed in closed session none Except a consider discuss take appropriate action regarding reorganization of the Board of Trustees Have a motion to appoint president secretary and vice president I'd like to I'd move that we thought the board appoint manual as Ocosa as president of the Board of Trustees I Move that the board appoint Chris Flohr is Vice President of the Board of Trustees. And I move that the Board appoint Aaron Bass as

151the Secretary of the Board of Trustees. All right. Do I have a second? Ms. Norwood, all those in favor, raise your hand. And it passes 7-0. And for discussion, I just really want to thank this board. You know, I know I'm the oldest tenured member. I feel like the oldest living member as well. But I just really want to thank you guys for the partnerships that we've developed, the work that we've done. We've done some great work, and I look forward to working, continuing that work with all of you. I am so glad that we remain the same. Thank you, Suzanne. Appreciate that very much. I feel the same way. Any other comments? All right. Moving on to Item 3. Adjourned. All action items, reports, and consent items for this meeting have been addressed. There

152being no further business, this meeting is adjourned at 925 p.m.