Belton ISD Board Meeting February 20, 2023

001The group is called Somos Cultura. It started actually during Hispanic Heritage Month of 2021. It was actually something that started with student interest, speaking to teachers, having the support in the school as well from the principal. And it grew from six students to about 15. We may not have everybody here tonight, but we definitely appreciate all the efforts these young students have made so far. Tonight we're doing a little bit of a what you would call like a potpourri with different dances So the first dance is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which is on the western coast from a region that's more lively with banda music so Feel free to move a little bit in your seat The next song is also from a well-loved movie. And then we're going to close with something

002more modern to help represent all of Latin American countries. So again, we are and we are ready to dance for our special session for tonight. We're going to be adding some more dances later on from the . Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us. I hope that you've enjoyed our student showcase tonight by the South Pelton Middle School I'm gonna mess this one up. Focal Rico? Focal Rico. I was close. I was close. Thank y'all. That was wonderful. The time is 621 and the Belton Independent School District Board of Trustees are now convened in a regular meeting on Monday, February 20th, 2023 in the Pittenger Fine Arts Center located at 400 North Wall Street, Belton, Texas. A quorum of board members is present. Meeting has been duly called. Notice of the meeting has been

003posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code, Chapter 551. I want to welcome 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 to make day-to-day operational decisions. The management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent. We have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues. This is a meeting of the Board of Trustees held in public. This is not a public meeting. Prior to this meeting, the Board members received information related to items on the tonight's agenda. Agenda items may not necessarily be handled

004in 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 BSD's YouTube channel, and a recording of the meeting will be available on the district's website following tonight's meeting. For the video to adequately reflect proceedings, respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and the cell phones are turned off or in silent mode. Thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and for your interest in Belton ISD. Please rise for a moment of silent prayer or meditation. Okay, thank you. Please remain standing for our communications team to introduce students from Purtle Elementary that will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and Honors to the Texas flag. Yes, if I can

005have Dylan DeLue and Mackenzie Goodall come up here and join me. Kicking us off will be Dylan. He'll do the Pledge of the U.S. flag. I pledge allegiance to the 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. Here's Mackenzie. On I have the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas and the United States, under God, and one and indivisible. I want to tell you just a little bit about these two students. Ms. Vaughn just informed me that these two students take care of the flags at Purtle every morning and every afternoon. So they are. very big on their civic duty. So Dylan is a fifth grader. His favorite subjects are PE and reading, and outside of

006school, he likes to play soccer. His friends describe him as a great leader, a kind friend, and funny. He has a passion for reading, and can always be found with a book in his hand, and his favorite genre is fantasy. Mackenzie's also a fifth grader. Her favorite subject is science, and outside of school, she loves to cook. Her friends would also describe her as funny. Thank you guys so much. Okay, board, we're all going to go down. We're going to kick off our recognitions this evening. And, yes, thank you, board, for all coming down to the floor. And, students, I ask that you stay until we've concluded all of the recognitions so that you can be here and cheer on your peers and our staff members. Our first recognition, I don't believe, is here this

007evening, but his name is Kevin Thomas, and he's a student at Belton New Tech. He's actually a senior, and he has been honored as a 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholar, and he received this recognition for his accomplishments in academics, leadership, and service. So congratulations to Kevin wherever he is. Ms. Bailey, before you proceed real quickly, I just want to point out our South Belton Middle School Ballet Folklorico again. For all of you in the audience who have been through a technical difficulty, you know that's an awkward situation. I thought they were phenomenal tonight, and I would ask you to have them stand up, and let's give them one more round of applause. Y'all were fantastic, and thank you for being our guests here tonight. Thank you. Our next recognition is also a student from Belton New

008Tech at Wasco. Nathaniel Neisser received the Indigenous Recognition Award from the College Board, and this is a huge accomplishment for him. The other board members, y'all want to jump in the picture too? Y'all can all be in it together. Or just doing one. Okay, never mind. I'm sorry, it was just one board member. My apologies. Our next recognition, we are honoring four Allstate Choir students from Lake Belton High School. We have Aaron Hankins from Belton High School, Jezebel Vasquez Miranda from LBHS, Pate Palomino, and from BHS, Gavin Young. They've been named to the Allstate Choir. Congratulations, guys. Also, speaking to the caliber of fine arts programs we have here in Belton ISD, we are recognizing two All-State dancers. We have seniors Kaylee Rivera from Lake Belton High School and Reagan Martin from Belton High School.

009They were named All-State dancers by the Texas Dance Educators Association. Congratulations. Now we have two huge groups, so we're going to do these in two different pictures. The first one is going to be the Belton High School cheerleaders. They placed 17th out of 20 at the UIL 5A D2 state finals. This is tremendous. We're so proud of our girls. That's a big group. Congratulations. Next up, as you can see, we have now the Lake Belton High School cheerleaders. They placed 12th out of 20 in the UIL 5A D1 competition at state. Congratulations. So during their competition, both squads did a band chant. They did crowd-leading cheers, fight songs. I believe they even had a surprise call from the judges where they had to respond to something as if it were in a real game. That's

010pretty challenging. Good job. Our next recognition, we are really proud to share with our audience tonight that the Lake Belton High School Bronco team is a 5A winner for the 22-23 National Football Foundation High School Academic Excellence Award. That means the team maintained a 3.0 grade point average during their regular football season. The Broncos were also finalists last year. And this really distinguishes our football team from... many other teams across the state. We're really proud of these guys. Good job. So tonight we are recognizing our nutrition services department. They received the Best of the Bunch Award. This is the highest tier available for school districts, and they received this award for using locally sourced produce. So we're really proud of our nutrition services. Good job, guys. And now we have our Temple Rotary Educator of

011the Month. Nikki Cottrell is being recognized by the Temple Rotary Club for the month of January for her outstanding service to Belton ISD. She's a fourth grade teacher at Sparta Elementary. This is her 14th year in education and her 10th in Belton ISD. for our Belton Rotary education educator of the quarter Rachel Hill is being recognized by the Belton Rotary Club for her outstanding service to Belton ISD she's a dance teacher at Belton High School this is her 15th year in education 14 of which are in Belton And finally, for our department showcase, you can see we've got quite a few people here. We have 40 counselors representing our 19 schools. In February, it's now Counselor Appreciation Week. It's recognized, I believe, all over the nation because counselors play a vital role in providing social

012and emotional lessons in our classrooms. And at the secondary level, they offer guidance and career planning for post-secondary education. They are truly dedicated to student success. and they provide an unbelievable resource to our schools, and we are so proud that they are part of the Belton ISD family. A big shout-out to our counseling staff. Real quickly, while they're walking back, just a thank you to our Rotary educators that were recognized for the Temple Rotary, the Belton Rotary, and also to our counselors. Your impact on students creates the experiences that we're recognizing students for here tonight. Thank you, thank you, thank you for what you do for our kids. Well, that was wonderful, and that is the reason we do what we do. Now, we have a fascinating meeting that is about to start, but for

013those of you who do not wish to sit through the board meeting, I will give you all a few minutes to go ahead and leave. Well, look at that. All right, well, that pretty much emptied the house. All right. Public comments are next. We don't have any public comments on agenda items. Well, we have one public comment, which is on a non-agenda item, which will be covered at the conclusion of this meeting. So... The next item on the agenda is Journey of a Graduate. Dr. Smith. Board, our Journey of a Graduate competency that we're discussing this month is perseverance. As you all know how this was developed with a committee of over 100 staff, or excuse me, 100 community members in Belton ISD that said these competencies are important for us to develop in our

014students as they go through their educational experience. Perseverance says a BISD learner embraces the failure that is part of the learning process and continues to work towards goals despite difficulty and or opposition. Tonight I saw our ballet folklorico from South Belton Middle School. have some curveballs thrown at them and still performed extremely well. That notion of not giving up despite challenges that you're faced with is one that we want to build in every one of our students. If you would just if you would weigh in on perseverance and why you think that is important or how you've seen it in our system, I would greatly appreciate it tonight. So I think that what we saw tonight with the 95 students that we honored for all of their accomplishments, this is a fine example of how

015this is something we definitely teach and promote within our district is that you just keep going. And when it's hard, you keep going and you keep going. And we honor that and we value that. And that's what we did tonight. See that in lots of different areas of our school district. I won't have any other opportunities to say this, but I've mentioned my hero in education was a gentleman named Mr. Watley, who was my principal at Scott School when I was a kid. Anybody that knew me from kindergarten through third grade, the years that I was at Scott, would have never guessed. that I would have ever made it to a school board anywhere or done anything that I've done, you know, good dad, good husband, business owner, things like that. It was the perseverance

016of Mr. Whatley and those people that I had in that school that stuck by me and always told me that I was special and that I was a good kid, even though I wasn't given a lot of examples at that time. It was the perseverance of those people, the staff, and the people at Scott School that I think made the biggest difference in my life. And I just wanted, you know, I can't highlight that enough. That's what this means to me in this process. I think what came to my mind about perseverance is not just that what it is. I think we all understand what perseverance is. And while we're putting a spotlight on it, I think teachers and coaches have been working on that with students forever. But something that I have learned about

017perseverance for myself, and I think that it happens in our schools, is what comes after perseverance. Because we don't just struggle one time. There's going to be a time where we're going to struggle again. And the thing that I've noticed with perseverance, it also produces endurance. and character because when you if you can get through something it may not have looked pretty on the outside but when you get to another circumstance in your life and you have to go through something hard again I think there's that there's an endurance and a character building that comes with perseverance that just is really important to me and I think and I think that that's happening in our schools is the character and the endurance. Last thing I'll say on this one is that we know that true

018learning comes from trying something, having to make tweaks to it because it hasn't quite worked right, trying something again and keep trying over and over and over again. We try and talk about that with our staff. Today was a great example of our recharge conference where we're talking about learning from each other and continuously improving. Perseverance is sticking with it no matter what. constantly working to improve so thank you to our staff who models that well thank you to our board who models this well and uh thank you to our students who modeled this well for us tonight okay thank you next item on the agenda is a public hearing regarding the acceleration instruction report dr smith Ms. Holly Moore is on her way up to the podium tonight and we annually present to you

019a report on accelerated instruction and have a public hearing on this. Holly will walk us through just as a reminder what all this means and then we'll open up for a public hearing after. Good evening, honored Board of Trustees. So today we will be discussing our students that retest in high school for the STAR End-of-Course Exam and assessing how our interventions are supporting these students. As a reminder, our students must take and pass five STAR End-of-Course Exams for graduation. These are test scores from 2022 first-time testers. And as you can see, we are at or above the state and region. However, this is not who we compare ourselves to. And ultimately, we would like to have 100% passing the first time they take the test. From there, students that do not pass the first time

020must attend interventions and retest. Here are the retesting scores from December. These are our students that struggle the most, and as you can see, we would like these scores even higher. So our coordinators are meeting with campuses specifically teachers to review student data work on lesson design and create intervention plans We are also currently analyzing our curriculum to support revisions that will strengthen student success They skip one. I think yes. There we go In addition to looking at passing rate, we also need to look at growth. Even if a student does not pass yet, they should always show growth. Growth tells us if our interventions are supporting students. For instance, in Algebra 1, we have a 37% passing rate and a 76% growth rate. This data chart highlights areas of targeted need because we need

021100% of our students growing. So, we need to analyze our interventions. We have three intervention pairings that we tracked this school year. We were more strategic with advisory and classroom interventions by targeting specific skills and small group learning. Also, if classroom intervention with small group was not enough, then students attended additional period of intervention during advisory. What you'll also see on this chart is advisory with small group. A student that may not have passed biology their freshman year does not take biology again, so we need to create an intervention for them. And those are the students that would go into just advisory and not into classroom interventions. From there, we assess what intervention pairings are receiving the highest pass and growth rates. This is interesting because this data shows us that students that receive targeted

022instruction in the form of small group in their classrooms are having the highest amount of success. However, this also shows us that when small group is a focus during any intervention, student performance grows. We need to continue to strengthen these interventions and target instruction for each student so we see higher growth and higher passing rates. Holly if I may add one thing on this really quickly just to go back one slide I just want to be clear on this when we say pass rate does that percentage of pass so for a classroom and small group on that 29 that is of the students who did not pass the star test correct I want to be really clear about that that is not an overall passing rate in any way shape or yes this is a

023smaller group of students so these are students who did not initially pass and are retesting last We talked about our interventions for students to be successful But the state also provides us with a last resort intervention for seniors that did not pass at least two and of course exams That is through the individual graduation committee also known as the IGC Seniors that still have two end of course exams to pass must work on a cumulative project Then they must present that project to a committee and the committee approves the project for passing we graduated 46 graduates or seniors last year on an igc for the 21-22 school year at this time does the board have any questions for me Yeah, just a couple of observations. Thank you for that clarification because, yeah, that's a really

024important clarification. So I remember this presentation from last year, right? And we were talking about this last year. There were probably five or six different interventions, right? You're correct. And I think we really focused in on, you know, of that group, like what was it that was really cutting the mustard? And it's great to see that that's the group that we really focused on, and that's the universe of interventions that we're really focused on this year. And it looks like... Again, if I recall that data from last year, we're also getting better results from those. So this is a great example of sort of, you know, taking some research, right, really digging into the numbers, really trying to understand what's going on, figure out what the best strategies are. Let's implement it and double down

025on it, you know, and measure it again, right? And I think we're seeing some good results here. No question, but thank you very much. I appreciate you pointing that out because the campuses have been working very hard on being strategic, and we do see the best results with small group, and so they've been working very diligently with Fidelity to do small group with their students. Anything else? Yeah, Holly, of the 46 graduates at IGC, is that like... 46 out of 50 or that's 46 out of the whole entire graduating class. I see. Okay. Mm-hmm So 46 still had two EOCs and of course exams to pass So we have projects that are district created that they start working on in January just in case in May They still do not pass. So it gives them

026the reassurance that if they do this project based on a rubric and present it that they can still walk and graduate with their diploma. I see. Can you go back to that growth rate? I remember you talking about it last year, but explain that a little bit more to me. Yeah, so what we do is we look at a student's test score when they first took it, so their test scores last year, and then we compare it to their test scores this year. And any student that shows an improvement on the number, so the score that they received, we use that to calculate the growth rate. So however many students that took the test, how many of those did grow? And so you can only do this for kids that have two or more tests,

027but these are all retester kids. So that's why you can get great data on growth. So you take the total that grew and divide it by all the kids that tested. And then you do the same thing for the interventions as well, too. Thank you. Understood. Okay. Well, thank you very much. At this time, Connie, do we have anybody signed up to speak about this? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have action items. First action item is to consider, discuss, take appropriate action regarding guaranteed maximum price for Hubbard Branch Elementary School. Mr. Michael Morgan is going to join us up there. We are thankful for American Constructors in Huckabee who are leading this project for us at Hubbard Branch, and we have some information to share with you tonight on final costs.

028Mr. President, Board, it's my pleasure to be here tonight to take another important step in the process to build our newest elementary school, that being Hubbard Branch. So I do ask tonight that you take appropriate action regarding this guaranteed maximum price. In July of 2022, the Board approved American Constructors as the construction manager at risk for the project. Since that time, our construction manager, our architect, American Huckabee, and our district team have been working diligently for it to complete the design of the project. and to complete the construction documents, which were developed and delivered. Public bidding for the project was conducted in January of 2023 with a submittal date of January 25th. All bids were assessed, and we're happy to bring a guaranteed maximum price to you tonight. Indications were that we had a very

029strong turnout from subcontractors. There were a lot of people that were interested in our project, and ultimately that helped us get a favorable GMP. work that was done and some of the early design estimates had us in a substantially higher rate but our team and American and Huckabee did a really good job of getting us in this position so tonight I ask you to approve the GMP of 37 million seven hundred and four thousand four hundred and seventy nine as proposed for the Hubbard Branch Elementary School I would take any questions that you have Do we have a motion to approve the guaranteed maximum price of $37,704,479 submitted by American Constructors for Hubbard Branch Elementary School as presented? Mr. Taggart? Do we have a second? Ms. Lee? Okay. All those in favor? Okay. Any opposed?

030No? Let the record state that we had five board members in favor and two that have abstained. Next item, consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding the budget assumptions for the fiscal year 2023-2024. Ms. Melissa Lafferty, who I know you've never heard from before, is going to talk to you a little bit about budget assumptions. Thank you again, trustees, for engaging fully in that workshop earlier tonight on some of these things that she's going to present to us. All right. Good evening. So tonight we're here to discuss and get your approval on the already 2023-24 preliminary budget assumptions. This is basically our starting point to begin building next year's budget. That generally starts around February-March time frame, and then by August we're adopting a budget. As you all know, there are a lot of unknowns

031at this point. And so these are basically the parameters that we will use to start running scenarios and building a budget and are based on information that we know at this time. These, of course, we also know that they're subject to change as more information becomes available. And since the legislature is in session, these assumptions will definitely change throughout the budget process. So this slide right here is basically some historical comparisons to kind of show you what happens during a budget process. And it goes back to 2021. And you can see that we start with these initial assumptions based on what we know now. And then as we progress throughout the budget process, those assumptions will change over time. One thing I want you to note on this comparison, especially on the initial assumptions, is

032the salary increase raises and you can see there over historically we usually start with a 2% pay increase. All right? That's the starting point. As we go into the recommended assumptions, we're going to continue to use that 2%, but that will not be our pay increase that we will be recommending when it's all said and done. That just gives us a starting point to start taking our revenue projections, comparing that to our staffing budget, and we start building from there. So tonight, we are recommending the budgeted assumptions of... increase of student enrollment to 13,994 students and decreasing that average daily attendance rate to around 92% so basically a 1% drop in our attendance rate and then a 9% property value growth. Again that staff pay increase is a starting point that is not the compensation

033increase that we are recommending it just gives us the ability to go in and compare our staffing to our revenues. With the opening of Burrell Elementary School in next spring, or the spring, what would that be, spring of 24, we will need probably around a million in positions, and that's a lot of the administrative staff to staff Burrell Elementary School. And we need to do some market adjustments on our auxiliary and paraprofessional pay of $350,000. We're going to try our best to budget 1% of expenditures of capital improvements, and those are going to be facility improvements outside of our bond program just for the day-to-day renovations to our buildings. And, of course, we will still have the new programs and the campus instructional improvement grants that the campuses can apply for. So that $200,000 is

034still going to be in next year's budget. We're going to leave right now the employee benefit contribution at $400 per month. We will be waiting to see what those rates are from TRS Active Care in the next couple of months to see what we do with that. And right now, based on that 9% property value growth, We're seeing an M&O tax rate of 92.85 cents. That will definitely change, so do not lock into that tax rate as we go into the session. And, of course, leaving our INS tax rate flat at 39.42 cents. Are there any questions for me? I'm assuming we all got our questions in during the workshop. Thank you all very much for all the hard work on this. Do we have a motion to approve the budget assumptions for the fiscal

035year 2023 and 2024 as presented? Ms. McDonald? Do we have a second? Ms. Bass? All those in favor? All right, that passes unanimously. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, next item. Consider or discuss, take appropriate action regarding the adoption of the 2023-2024 district goals. Dr. Smith. Dr. Golden's going to come up and present to you tonight. As you all know, you adopted goals for us annually, and we're bringing them to you a little bit earlier this year, and I'll let Melinda take it from there. Yes, thank you. And just as you heard from Melissa and you just approved budget assumptions that... budget process begins and one of the things we're wanting to do is also begin the development of our district and campus improvement plans earlier. That's going to do a couple of

036things and one that starts with the adoption of our district goals. By adopting them earlier that allows us to begin the planning right now, better lets us align our budget to the needs of our campus and district improvement plan, allows us to better even align those plans to the strategies outlined in our district strategic plan so that we go into the summer, summer professional learning, our summer retreats with our leadership teams and our August professional. learning with very intentional plans aligned to our improvement efforts. And so we are wanting to shift the timeline of talking to you about goals to better support that planning process. And so we are also this evening recommending that we maintain our district goals. We know that the our five goals are very interconnected and supporting each other. They're very

037big, broad, lofty goals that we want to continue to pursue, and that allows for continuity. in our system and in our planning. We will at a later date though come to you with key progress measures underneath each of those goals because those key progress measures do change each year and we'll be developing those throughout this spring and we'll bring those to you again for your consideration and possible approval. Do we have any questions from the board? No? Okay. Then do we have a motion to approve the adoption of the 2023-2024 district goals as presented? Ms. Bass, do we have a second? Oh, Mr. Alkozner, looky there, spreading it around. All right, all those in favor? All right, that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Awesome, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Golden. Next, we'll move on

038to reports. The first report is Campus Improvement Funds Mid-Year Update. I'm excited to welcome Gabby Nino to the podium tonight. As you know, that Ms. Lafferty just mentioned, we have a dollar item that is in our budget annually over the last couple of years that allows us to have opportunities for campuses to seek out additional money for specific improvements. Gabby's going to go over that with you tonight. Good evening board. I am thrilled to share with you tonight a mid-year update of the use of our campus improvement funds. Last year we provide well actually in the fall we provided a record or report of how the funds were spent previously and we're working to improve and keep you updated along the way of our campus improvement efforts and so this report tonight will share with

039you a little bit about the selection process the projects that were selected and how we're implementing them Here's why I'm so thrilled. It's not often that you get to see live the impact of your efforts and your support for our campuses and our ballet folklorico students who perform tonight are a direct outcome from the use of campus improvement funds. Our South Belton Middle School team really wanted to look for opportunities to increase enrichment for their students on their campus to ensure that each and every student saw themselves represented at school. And they worked really hard alongside Keith Zilkey in Fine Arts and have just been really talking about how we can increase access to the arts and in particular to represent opportunities for students to see themselves in the learning. This is also a beautiful

040example of our value of community. This project came to life because of a lady named Anna Pineda who approached us and said, I teach ballet folklorico and I see so many of your students who would. really enjoy this learning and this opportunity and so the South Belton team was able to grow this partnership with her. What you saw was the performing arts here. What you didn't see was the study of the rich history that results in this performance and dance that each of our students got to learn about their own history and see themselves represented through the art of dance and Ballet Folklorico. So super excited that you all got to see that tonight. This is a direct result of this investment that you all have made. Not only is South Belton Middle School working

041on this project, but so is Southwest Elementary. And so we'll be growing the arts from Southwest Elementary into South Belton Middle School, and they'll be doing some performances together. So the timing was just great tonight for you all to hear this report out. Just a reminder of the why that these funds are available is to support our campuses in their improvement efforts and to encourage innovation. We want to invest in a culture of continuous improvement. This is innovation and thinking forward about the arts as well for each and every student. So just another great representation. Let me tell you a bit about how the process works as our campus is engaged in the campus improvement planning process They will get through that work and then we roll out the improvement funds to say How can

042we support you in seeding any additional efforts that you have on your campus beyond your initial allotment? And so our campuses get a proposal, an application that they write, and those applications are brought to a committee that represents multiple departments. And so our departments come together, including our technology team, including our finance office, including professional learning, teaching and learning, special education, and we review these applications. and determine which projects will be funded for this school year. Then those funds are allocated, and what you are seeing right now is the implementation of those funds and studying the impact. At the end of this school year, each of our campuses who engaged will come back to the committee and share their progress with the effort that they rolled out on their campus. Last year I shared with

043you the categories that the projects kind of fell into and those continue. They kind of have emerged in similar categories with an additional one this year. So we've got technology innovation, specifically Southwest Elementary has added some interactive panels on their campus and I'll highlight that project in just a minute. We have multiple campuses that have looked at space in their buildings and said, hey, we can use this space differently. So we'll transform the space to achieve something. Sparta and Miller Heights have both engaged in, Sparta's calling theirs their creation station, and at Miller Heights they are opening a STEM lab just right off their library. At Lakewood they are looking... their outdoor learning areas and gym to create some steam spaces for students to engage with instruction and at Beck's they are looking to expand

044the learning that happens inside the classroom their play based experiences outside of the classroom as well and so they're transforming an outdoor learning area In the areas of academic enhancement, both North Belton Middle School and Lakewood selected projects. At North Belton Middle School, they have invested in some math manipulatives to transform the math learning experience with their students as well as some professional learning. And at Lakewood, they have provided resources and tools for every classroom teacher that brings STEM integrated experiences into every single classroom. Enrichment experiences, you saw South Belton Middle School tonight. They chose a project introducing Ballet Folklorico to the community and at Belton New Tech, they have added an eSports team this year. And so they are in the process of building their computers. right now on their campus. And then the

045final area that we added this year is Tarver Elementary. They really listened to their staff and saw some of the experiences that students were having and they wanted to engage in some professional learning called Capturing Kids Hearts to strengthen the relationships between staff and students and really build a stronger culture at Tarver that not only will strengthen relationships but give teachers the tools to navigate some challenging situations in the classroom that students might have behavior. early as well. So we've added some professional learning experiences this year. I want to highlight one project in particular because I think it will show you the impact of this work, not only at the individual campus level, but how it can impact our system. I shared with you that Southwest Elementary was adding BenQ interactive panels this year. Their

046purpose for them is to really improve communication and give more opportunities for students to collaborate in interactive ways. They want to provide inspiring instructional experiences and increase engagement, and they're doing that through the use of technology. If you rewind to last year, we saw this interactive technology be introduced at BECCS, and Southwest also added a panel. So they've expanded the project this year, but not only have they... Now, SHAD has been able to bring in campus representatives from every single campus and department, and we had an interactive panel shootout because some demand was created across our system to increase access to interactive technology that would be engaging for students. So, we are talking about individual projects, but I just wanted you to hear a bit about the impact of these projects on our bigger system

047as well. So that's all the information I have to share with you. I want to answer any questions and also share with you that in your packet tonight, you have a little glimpse into each of the projects that will give you some more detail with a picture as well. Board real quickly just so you know we will bring final results back to you like we did at the end of last year But we were asked I think it was the left side of the dice can't remember who it was but we were asked to have a mid-year update and so this presentation was the mid-year update for you so and on the slide where the campuses are noted and obviously there's campuses that aren't up there are there campuses that do apply and don't receive

048it and if not What is there to support them? Because if they're wanting something to improve their campus, but they didn't get selected, what happens then? I guess I should just stop there. Absolutely. So this year, we actually had three campuses that did, and we never want to do an absolute no, right? But we want to make sure that these projects are really aligned to our vision, our values, and beliefs. particularly the three this year that were not awarded, it wasn't because the project wasn't important, but we may be able to support it aligned with other budget areas. So we may connect with our professional learning department and say this is something that could really be supported locally through professional. learning dollars or how about you have this campus dollar that's perfectly aligned to it

049and let's support through that. I will tell you that a couple of campuses historically and actually Julie shared with you all last year, we just go back to the coaching conversation around how we might improve the project proposal to ensure that there's really clear measurable outcomes outlined as a part of the project. So this year in particular we were able to connect with professional learning and our counseling department as well for campuses that didn't get funded through this fund source. Sorry that wasn't on. Our PTA and maybe BEEF another avenue for them to... Absolutely. So this fund source seeds some projects, but I can tell you as they go deeper in this process, they are thinking more about how to partner and strengthen our partnerships. with beef for example or with pta i can share

050with you that lakewood for example has done a really great job and i see mr floor not in his head of bringing the parents in their community along with them as they're learning about more integrated experiences in their classrooms specifically they're studying more stem practices and so they've brought their parents along for that journey and their pta is really supporting trying to enhance the learning there as well and i think it's a great example of over the years we have just gone to our PTAs often asking for funds and they are really working to ask for them in a very meaningful way to support their instructional purpose. Absolutely. The kids that perform tonight, I mean obviously that's an example of this project. What happens next year? Do they have to reapply? Or, I mean, let's

051say that the PTA is not able to fund them. I mean, obviously that was a success. So what happens to those kids and that whole project? Sure. So in this one particular, I'm glad I listened longer because I was going in another direction with response to what happens next. So with that project in particular. um we looked at what students needed right now and what south belton middle school would need to purchase in order to sustain for the future so what are some um Like if it's a sound system that needs to be sustained for the future and so can you purchase that right now? So it's there Whereas we might look to different funding sources to fund different pieces of it. So South Belton actually used multiple funding sources to bring this project to

052life and I also just want to write that it's to seed right like we're not going to Completely fund every project that our campuses want. We want to help them get started on it and then find additional ways to keep that rolling or to realign their local budget to what their campus priorities are. I'll use that one as an example too if we see great success at Southwest and at South Belton Middle School then we have to also take a look at our budget and find out if that's something that we need to plan for the future and sustain as well so these are the whole purpose of these improvement grants are to be able to seed money to get innovative new programs into our system which is directly aligned with the strategic plan that

053our community adopted and so the to be able to do that and get things moving, we're able to see what's worked, what's really stuck, and what might we need to do for the future to keep those things moving. And actually related to that one. one of the ways that we've improved this year is widening who we've partnered with in this work. So there were some misses for us last year. So Keith Zilke has been alongside this journey with this project in particular, and he has supported some of the funding. And we're also asking, what does this mean for our system? If we're growing this engagement opportunity for students, how do we sustain that? And how do we look around and say, are there more students who might really benefit from this opportunity? Yeah, I mean,

054I think the interactive displays idea is maybe a good example of this, right? So it sounds like it started last year, right? took off and now it's shining, it's meeting sort of the goals and now we're starting to grow that to other campuses and to grow it on the campus. So this is a great example of hey, let's spark an idea. Teacher or staff or however many have the idea, they ask the question, well what if? And they get it to go in, they put the submission in. they're able to see it come to fruition and hopefully it's successful right i think we will probably be more successful than we are less successful right when we look at it over the over the whole whole um history but like this is what we want right

055and some of these things are going to be duds right and that's okay right we talked about perseverance right it uh at the beginning um but it's all about how do we how do we take the idea spark that flame and get great stuff happening across all the campuses so um So this is a great example. I would love to come see an interactive display in action. I see this, I can't tell who this is, right? But I would love to see, particularly in a math class, I would love to see that come to life if I can get on the calendar somehow for that. Well, as you guys are getting on the calendar, we can talk more about that. Southwest and Beck's are not the only campuses using them now. So it really has

056put some really positive pressure on our system to grow. And so we can help identify places that you'd be able to see that. This isn't necessarily important, but it's weighing on my head to ask. Is this a common practice among other districts to put this in their budget? I mean, I think this is, I love that we get to do this for our campuses. Is this common? Do you see this around other districts? You know, Dr. Smith might be better to answer that question. I had an opportunity in one of my previous districts. It was more funneled to specific things that we could spend our funds on. So I don't know the level of common it is across systems. I think most districts you will see partnerships with their educational foundation for innovation grants, which

057our foundation does really well. this was more of a school-wide approach things that they wanted to get something off school-wide or that they they wanted as a whole school to start whereas our beef grants are typically classroom funded or team funded i don't think you see it in every district i know of a few but i definitely don't think it's a common practice other questions No, thank you very much. Thank you all very much for supporting the efforts Next item is a tea a accountability system proposed changes for 2023 district report trustees We mentioned this a little earlier tonight. We have some significant changes that are proposed for the accountability system coming up as Mentioned earlier. These are as per Commissioner directive not necessarily legislative directive So this is an important piece of the puzzle

058for us coming up I also want to point out that while Deanna is going to talk to you about this with Holly's help, also please know that the STAR test itself, for which the majority of the accountability ratings happen, is changing this year as well. So not only do you have an accountability system change that they're proposing that they're going to talk to you about, but you have a change in the test itself. So there are many concerns that most public school educators have with changing one of those two things, let alone both of those things in the same year. Deanna, take it away. Absolutely. I was going to begin by highlighting that very thing, that yes, our assessment is changing. Also, hence the title, proposed changes. These are not final changes that we've been

059given from TEA. They are the best information that we know as of now. today. And so with that, I want to start just a little bit with a timeline of what's been happening. So between November and February, TEA released the initial proposed changes and they sought feedback on the new system. And I do want to let you know that we have provided feedback in any of the areas tonight that I talk about, specifically in reference to some CCMR proposed changes. So we certainly are keeping the state informed of how we see. potential impacts happening. Then between March and May, so the first piece you'll note is that our students start taking the new assessment. So making that connection for you, we do not know the accountability system will be held for as our students start

060a new assessment. What we do know and what we've been told is that we will be provided what-if analysis sometime during this period. if analysis is when the state will take our data from last year and say, well, if the proposed changes were in place, here's how this would impact you. However, It's a new test, and so they're using old data with new standards that we're not quite sure what they are to give us this what-if analysis. Based on some of the changes I'll tell you tonight, though, however, we do expect the what-if analysis to not be where we're at now, but to potentially be lower with the new changes. Then in May, our high school students will receive, we will receive results from our high school students, and this will be by May. 31

061this is important because we will not receive our elementary or middle school assessment data until our results until August 11 that's a big time, large time for parents to truly know how their child is done on these tests. It is important that we receive the high school data early because starting June 5th we will have our intervention summer programs for those students and remember our high school students are required to pass end of course assessments. for the school year. We do not have any summer testing for elementary or middle school. Not receiving the results, we do not anticipate to impact us at all with our summer programming. As we design summer programming for our elementary and middle school students, we often target for kids that are struggling and we have many pieces of data to

062support how we can identify students during that summer period. Then in August, we will receive sometime in August, the accountability, the final accountability rules, and then we'll receive the A through F ratings in September. Again, testing starts in March. Now I'm going to go into what are the proposed changes, again, as we understand them today. First I'll talk about our district rating, and then I'll talk about the three key areas that we're measured on. The first is our district methodology. So in the past, the district rating and district ratings across the state have pretty much mirrored high school ratings. That's because of the large percentage of inclusion with CCMR. However, the proposed change is that the district rating will be more a reflection of all schools that have tested grades and that the school's impact

063on the district rating will be in relation to the size of the campus. So smaller districts would contribute to the district rating at a smaller amount than the larger campuses. So again with that we do anticipate a change in our ratings. Domain one, remember there are three. Domain one is primarily around student achievement. We do not anticipate any changes for our elementary and middle school students. However, it's always important to note that the A-thrifts rating system for elementary and middle school is 100% reliant on a star assessment. on a single day at a single time. And so again, we measure and we've seen evidence tonight of many other things that we offer our students. For high schools, we currently have a system where it is 40% STAR, 40% college career military readiness, and 20% graduation

064rate. There are significant changes happening with CCMR. Right now our understanding is that they are going the state proposes to significantly change the percentage of students meeting CCMR in order to determine a letter grade for example on the previous accountability system, 60% of your students meeting CCMR earned a letter grade of A for that category. Under the proposed changes, 85% of students meeting CCMR will earn an A. And the range for B moves from 48% to 78%. The most challenging piece that we see in the CCMR criteria is that the change and percentage meeting the criteria will be based on last year's 2022 graduates. So we're getting a new change with students where their CCMR has already been completed and there's not a chance to go back and intervene. That being said, we continue to

065pursue that 100% of our students meet CCMR. This is just how the accountability system will change. The second piece is focusing on academic growth. There are two pieces to the academic growth portion. The first piece is considered Part A, and that is where you look at each student and their academic growth performance. The second part is Part B, which is where you look at relative performance, and that is where the state looks at schools similar in comparison to others. other schools that are like them throughout the state. The proposed system continues to say it will be the best of either of these two parts. Part two will now have a new data table. We don't know quite what all is going to be in that. However, we do believe that for the accountability system, we'll

066have more opportunity to count more students for their growth. That's a good thing. We always want to recognize when we're, as you saw on the report Holly gave earlier, we might not have students that are quite at. a place where they're mastering, but they are showing significant growth, and that's important. Also, we know that Part B, again, and you'll see this several times, will be including the new CCMR criteria, and for that, again, we are concerned that that's based on last year's data with the new accountability change. The final piece is by far the most challenging because it's where we have the absolute least amount of clarity not only in changes that the state's proposing but also in the impacts for our system. What we do know is that it will continue to be 30%

067of the overall rating. We know previously that the state, and this is where we just don't have information, the state had a growth where they would give certain points for students based on their growth and they're expanding that potentially from one point to four. However, we do not know any of the targets for growth. We don't know what they're looking at. And so we really can't give an accurate picture of what... how this would impact our system. Again, we will have CCMR in there with the new changes. They're also changing the group sizes and this can go either way in terms of impact, positive or negative. In the past, we had 14 subgroups of students and for that group to impact your accountability, you must have 25 students in the group. Now, they're going to

068change from 14 groups to between four and six groups, but they're also going to lower the size to where you have 10 students in that group. So smaller campuses where they never met a 25 student threshold may meet a 10 student threshold and may find a particular group counting. We also, it's a little fuzzy on the group combining, but if you think about in the past we had special education students, bilingual students, at risk students for mobility, they were all their own group. Now it appears that they may be subgrouped into one big group. It'll be easier to meet your 10 student criteria. The positives could be in this, well it depends on how a student performed. If a student was performing well and they are counting multiple times obviously that could impact your system

069same would be true if the student was not meeting the criteria this is challenging again because we just don't have enough information and we possibly won't have information until all of the testing is over and we're into the summer again we receive the final information final accountability system in August it's real easy to to just focus on this system and I hear many people talking about how things are calculated. It's important for us to know and understand how things are calculated, but we never want to lose sight of the fact that we're talking about children and what we focus on, what we continue to focus on and ask our administrators to focus on is each and every student. We want to see growth for students who are struggling. Sometimes that might need to be more

070than a year's growth. that challenge is there but we want to understand our system but truly focus on the kids in it and how they're learning and progressing. What we're doing is, what we are doing is Holly Moore, our Director of Accountability, she knows the system. She's reading up on every single change that happens. She has already met individually with each of our campus administration teams. She goes over the system, what it's doing, what it potentially can mean for them, and then ask any questions, follows up with them. As we get more information and more clarity, she will go out and meet again individually with any campus that has those impacts. I've gotten some feedback from those meetings. They've been going really well with principals. They have a lot on their plate and so Holly's

071able to sit down with them and just go through all the mechanics in this as well as impacts for them. So with that I'm happy to answer any questions or Holly will also join me in answering. Alright I'll start down this side. All right. Questions, comments? I don't know where to start here. But, I mean, to some extent, this is a game of whack-a-mole, right? So, I mean, this is a game that we have to play, right? This is, you know, from the accountability standpoint at the state level, right? I mean, we've got to figure out, you know, what this means for us. But what you said is exactly what I was going to say, right? At the end of the day, it's about our kids, right? And so us doing the right thing. for

072our kids in the classrooms and in the experience to continue the growth. Like that's really what it is. No matter what the game is on the side, right? Like every day we've got to be focused on the mission and the vision and doing the best thing for our kids and continuing down that path. So this system, right, does it just apply to public schools? Yes, this does only apply to public schools. Okay, so there might be a competing event that's going on right now that's talking about taking taxpayer funding away from public schools and putting it into entities that don't also have to follow the same accountability ratings. That's correct. Yeah, interesting. All right, I'll just leave it there. You may or may not be able to answer this, but why? Why is TEA, have

073they given reasoning for this? I think I could probably have more buy-in if we knew why. Because I'm confused if, you know, it seemed like a few months ago we were talking about the learning loss and how can we get our kids back to where they ought to be and then now we're going to change all of this. I'm just confused. Have they given any reasoning to why all of these changes? They continue to say that they want to have a system that more accurately reflects how students are performing and they continue to say that they want to modify it to have a better system than the previous system. That being said, I think as Chris, you were asking the question, I was thinking about Holly's last report where we had 46 students that ultimately

074graduated on an IC and she showed you the progress that was happening along the way for students that weren't successful on an EOC and continued to work to pass that. Our high school students are the only students in the system that are at the age level where they are able to continually pursue an assessment until they meet mastery. And they do, and many of them do. And sometimes it just takes more than that first year. And so I think, I do feel like in this system, there is a piece that will allow for that growth and student growth and recognizing that. But again, it's... It's not a perfect system to recognize and honor all the things that public schools offer their students. I just want to say a couple of quick things. First of all,

075thank you to Holly, who's been doing the majority of the tracking, but also Deanna for presenting tonight and talking to you a little bit about this. We do share many concerns on this. I can assure you that the commissioner has been given feedback that it is ludicrous to actually change a test and change an accountability system in the same year, especially when we're working through. as you mentioned impacts from previous years we are not scared of accountability nor are we scared of testing but we want to put it in its rightful place and its rightful place is not at the pinnacle of everything that we do it's the experiences that we have for kids the exceptional experiences that you have outlined in your values and beliefs that we want to see in our system i

076want to be really deliberately clear on this this will negatively impact belton isd There is no doubt in our minds based on the proposals that we've heard tonight that this will negatively impact Belton ISD and specifically those CCMR pieces. Remember, we have not had a graduating class of Lake Belton High School yet. So we're talking about Belton High School specifically that this is going to heavily impact in all of this. So to your legislative priorities, one of your legislative priorities talks about an accountability system that more accurately reflects the experiences that we want to see and our community wants to see for our students, I ask you to please make sure that your legislators hear that that is an important piece of the puzzle for us because we are defined more by the experiences we

077provide for kids than a star test score. And you see the heavy reliance on a star test score still in this system of accountability. So that we have a... We have an uphill battle against this coming here, and I encourage us all to make sure that our legislators know that our concerns about these changes that we see. Any other questions or concerns? No. Thank you very much. You know, this is not easy to deal with, not, you know, like holding water in your hands because it's changing. And I think we also know that this will be used to negatively impact public education across the state of Texas. There's very clear as to why it's being done. So there is a there's a battle that needs to be fought. Next item is Texas School Safety Center

078three-year audit cycle report. Mr. Michael Morgan is going to come on up. And as you know, we've been through this three-year audit process before, but there is always some confusion around this when we talk about the other audits that are going on that have been a result this year in our public schools. So Mike's going to talk to us a little bit about the three-year process coming up and maybe give us a little insight on the difference between the two. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Just to come up and give an overview, you'll be hearing more about this process in the coming months and some of the other updates I'm going to give tonight. But we are here to talk about the Texas School Safety Center three-year audit cycle report. And my purpose tonight is

079to update you on that process. I'm involved in this process, but we have heavy involvement from our safety team, from Pete Ramirez, our coordinator of emergency management, Doug Taylor, our coordinator of safety and security, and Dr. Cassandra Spearman, who works with both of those departments in her role as executive director of student services. This is part of the Texas Education Code. That every three years a school district is required to perform an audit. It's a safety security audit of all district facilities. So it's not just campuses. We'll be reaching out to our administration office, our support services, warehouse, all of the other district facilities that we have. And then we do have to follow, everyone has to follow the same template. So there is a safety and security audit procedure developed by Texas School Safety

080Center. Some of the rationale that goes along with this is that the audits are intended to be an ongoing process. It's for school districts to do a self audit to identify hazards, threats and vulnerabilities that might pose a danger to live property or interfere with safe and secure and healthy environment. We're encouraged to integrate ongoing safety and security assessments into our everyday activities. but this is kind of a three-year culmination of all of that. We will report back to our district safety committee, who we have a couple of board members that are active members of that committee, and we will report back to you guys prior to the conclusion and prior to submission to Texas School Safety Center. So part of the three-year audit, one of the things that we do, we do have local

081close partnerships with both Belton PD and Temple PD, one, due to the fact that they provide our school resource officers, and two, due to the fact that they are active partners with us. So when you talk about things like intruder assessments, we have our Belton-based schools. in our Temple side schools, we do local intruder assessments with Belton Police Department, Temple Police Department each year. In fact, those have already been going on. And those intruder assessments will become part of the three-year audit. TEA also started this year in conjunction with the Texas School Safety Center, a TEA intruder audit. And so we've had six of those so far. We had four of them in February. very glad to say that there were no findings. Our campuses did excellent jobs and the assessor that we've had, the

082inspector that we've had has been very complimentary of our teams and of our campuses and them being able to do those things. So whereas this three-year audit is a thoroughly comprehensive top to bottom, a self-assessment of all of our facilities, our practices, our EOPs, all of those things, the TEA intruder audit, is going to happen monthly, one or more campuses monthly, and we'll have to do immediate after actions and feedbacks on those if there are any findings. There are a few things that I would like to say about the process. I'm not going to go through these in detail. Like I said, you'll be getting a lot more information about this in the coming weeks and months. But one of the important things that we do is we establish our audit teams. And I've already

083spoken to you about kind of who our district leadership in the audit process is. But we have staff members at every campus and within every department that take the lead on safety on a day-to-day basis. So in most of our campuses, it's either an assistant principal or a principal who is the designated safety lead. for that campus. We also have worked with our district departments and support staff and have begun to establish safety teams. I know that just as recently as last week, Pete was meeting with some of our grounds and some of our facility staff and giving them some additional training on the use of Navigate 360 in emergency management and things of that nature. So we do have to prepare our audit teams for their responsibilities, and that's where we actually go through

084the process of what are we assessing. Some of the audit is done at the campus level with our campus safety teams. Some of it's done at the district level from our district safety staff. We'll schedule all of the different assessments that have to be done. We will conduct the on-site audits, and then that will all be completed, and I'll put a timeline in here that we'll briefly cover. But by about the end of March, most of the assessment will be done, and we will begin to prepare the district audit report. That will happen throughout the spring and by the end of school, we will be prepared to discuss it with our district safety committee, discuss it with our board of trustees, and not only review the plan, but also show you our findings and then

085anything that we intend to do to take action moving forward to improve the safety based on the findings of our audit. As the as the station school safety center states it is a continual process where you're constantly evaluating your processes and your Facilities and you're finding out ways that you can get better. So we do applaud though our campus safety teams We have we have monthly meetings with our campus safety leaders and each campus has a captain safety team and The campuses have also been rolling out their student safety teams or student safety committees as well Looking at the timeline, like I said, April 1st, we will have the majority of the audits completed. By the end of April, we'll have the audit report completed by our safety and security team. By May 1st, we'll

086have findings ready to be presented to the district safety committee. We'll also submit those findings to the superintendent of schools. And then at June 19th, we will present to the board of trustees an executive summary of the audit process and of the findings. And then we will have our audit submitted to the... Texas School Safety Center well in advance, but I did go ahead and put the drop-down date is August 31st. It's whenever that would have to be submitted. A few things going on right now. As you know, it is a legislative session. In addition to some of the other school-related topics, we do anticipate that school safety will be a heavy topic this year. There's already been some TEA training on some additional stadium standards and some facility standards that will be put into

087place, and we'll be getting... giving you more information on that in the coming weeks. We do anticipate getting much more feedback on audits than we have in the past. In the past, it was the three-year audit was kind of a self-assessment, send it in, TEA would review and file, and you didn't get a lot of active partnership. I fully anticipate that we're going to get active partnership from the Texas School Safety Center on improvements and following up on the findings of the self-audit, the improvements are actually taking place. We are getting pretty much assurance that the TEA and Schroeder audits will continue into the 23-24 school year. So we look forward to getting into year two of that process and continuing to work with our TEA safety auditor and making sure that we are not

088only understand the elements that TEA is looking for for the safe campus, but that we have diligent processes in place to make sure that we meet those standards. It's a pretty comprehensive process and the three-year audit is one part of that process but I do feel like that we have a team of people that take safety very seriously and I look forward to kind of seeing what we found out about ourselves over the next couple of months and and get our plan going. I would open up for discussion or any questions that you might have. I'll start on this end. Down here. No? All right. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much. All right. Next is a facilities committee report. Mr. Taggart will handle that. I will note that last month it was

089handled by Dr. Smith, and it was rather quick. Yeah, 12 minutes. 12 minutes. It was very quick. Oh, you mean your report last? Oh, yeah. Well, this will be quick, too, because the meeting was 12 minutes. So it's awesome. We talked about bond progress and we have some lies. We're gonna redraw soon. That's it I do have a question about that the the lines Are we doing the parent committees and stuff the way we have in the past and when will those meetings be? Where they come in and see the maps and I mean Mike can you come on up and tell them I'm not looking for a date I'm just I mean, but we are gonna do those again where the parents have the maps and can kind of house opportunities for any parents

090that want to come. It won't be a hand-picked group. So we're going to send out the first week of March, and we're going to have about almost a two-week window. a presentation with all of the information and a feedback tool to every parent and every staff member. So every parent in our district, every staff member in our district will have a chance to give us direct feedback. Then we're going to have two open house opportunities where we will have the different scenarios set up. We'll have staff there to answer questions where any parent that wants to come in, or staff member for that matter, can come in and wants to have a face-to-face conversation, ask questions, get more detail, those sorts of things. They'll have opportunities to do that. that we're going to try to

091have one in the morning and then one in the evening. That way, if we have parents or staff members that aren't available after school or in the evening hours, they can come in the morning prior to school and do that as well. And we hope to have all of that feedback wrapped up by spring break. That will give us the spring break week to work with our demographer to kind of fine tune based on feedback and then come back. And since the because of spring break, the March meeting is a little later than normal. I believe it's on the 27th. So we that will give us. That will give us plenty of time to fine tune and come back with some solid recommendations to the board. We hope one of the things is as we've

092worked with our team and we've worked with our advisors and we've worked with our demographer, a lot of districts have gone to this to. to try to spur more feedback from more stakeholders. We had a very positive response when we were discussing parameters, attendance boundary parameters back in the fall. Just after Thanksgiving, we opened up a thought exchange on attendance boundary parameters, and we had almost 1,000 parents weigh in on that conversation. So we're hoping that by doing it this way that we will get a massive response and we'll be able to get some feedback. on the scenarios that are proposed, what they like about them, but more importantly, what would you change about them to make them better? And that's kind of what we're hoping to gain from that process. Thank you. Thank you.

093Next report is Policy Committee Report. Well, our meeting was also fairly short. We looked at a batch of policies that is still part of the TASB audit that was done back in the spring. Dr. Smith, is this the last batch? Are there others still coming? I believe we have a couple more that would be the last section. Okay. All right. We actually did add one completely, the ad valorem economic development, which addresses the Chapter 313 agreements, and we added that because we didn't have one. And I don't think this district has ever had a Chapter 313 agreement. which has to deal with the tax abatements for entities that apply for that. BBD local, board members training and orientation, I think there was one word deleted from that. CCGB, that was the ad valorem tax situation.

094GBBA was deleted. GNC was deleted. G&E was deleted. And then GE local relations and parent organizations is dealing with fundraisers, which tells those folks that are fundraising who they have to coordinate that with as far as administrator or principal of that particular campus. And that's basically it. Thank you. Any questions? No? Okay. Then we will move on to the superintendent's report. I'm excited those reports were so short so I can take a little bit longer on this one tonight. I appreciate our board immensely and I do want to say a couple of thanks to you at the end of all this and I do want to point out that I have changed this a little bit. I've been reflecting a little bit on superintendent's report and what is important for me to be talking about

095and sometimes I may have come short in the past of Just giving you some administrative details and facts in this report. And I think it'd be beneficial for us to not only talk about what we do and the facts of things, but also what we're trying to create in the system. Because your goals, your vision, your values and beliefs in our strategic plan play an important role of what we do day in and day out to create the experiences we want for kids. And so I'm going to try and make sure I'm a little better talking about the future that we're trying to create as well. I'm going to start with the strategic plan development. That's a slide that you've all seen before. You know that it was way back and it seems like a

096long time ago, but it was 2020 when we started the process and started talking to our community about our journey of a graduate and our strategic plan. And we went through a process where we got to July of 2021. and the board adopted our strategic plan as it stood and we had some specific areas that we focused on now this plan was based on community member voice and what they wanted to see in their schools on a regular basis that we should be and could be producing for them Goal two is one that I really want to hone in on and this is part of our strategic plan. In this situation, we're talking about the experience that we want for every kid. So three years ago when I first started talking to y'all, we talked

097about a student that walks in when they're in kindergarten and the excitement that many of them have when they walk through the door. And what we want eventually... is to see that same excitement when they're in eighth grade and to see that same excitement when they're in high school. And while some people might say, oh, that's impossible, we know what it's like to be in middle school and high school, I think it behooves us to try on a regular basis to create experiences that make students feel that way, that make them passionate about their learning, that make them want to come back and learn more and more about the subject matters that matter to them, but also that matter to their future. I'm gonna focus in on number two, that foster a culture of learning

098that provides voice, choice, and ownership for students throughout their school day and beyond. These pictures that you see are examples that I saw in classrooms in Belton ISD of what we are trying to create every day for the students that we serve. On the left-hand side, you see students at Miller Heights Elementary School who are showing their learning in math. That means that they're up, they're talking about their learning, they're making sure that they are putting something in front of their their peers in the classroom and that they're explaining math and not just sitting there doing a worksheet and doing rote memorization. One of the things that we know based on the work that employers want to see in the workplace right now is it isn't just sitting alone at your desk completing a task

099anymore. The more we can teach students to collaborate, the more we can teach them to explain their thinking, it's going to benefit them for their future. We also know that we live in the information age. I spent days hearing about the impact of AI and what that will have on our society and on public schools. And think about this for a second. Right now, we can have a program that you can type in a command and it can write you an essay about any topic that you want in the world and it's a pretty good essay right now. Well, basically, that is going to evolve in the next two months and it'll be even better. And two months after that, it's going to evolve and it'll be even better. And so the skills that our

100students need to learn now... are different from what we may have experienced in the past. I think it's really important for us to focus in on that. That second picture that you see is a great example of that. That's at Lakewood Elementary School and this teacher was taking the time to make sure she was showing our students the impact of hurricanes on the different geographies. So each student in these student groups had these landscapes that they had developed and basically they had a big wind that hit them through fans and they were able to see what happened to the structures that they had created and what happened to the landscape that they had created based on what the teacher did. She was teaching them through experiences in the classroom but also supplementing that with books

101that they were reading on hurricanes and the impact of hurricanes on the earth. And then the last part is, of course, one of our favorite places on earth is Beck's. And those students are going through work-based learning, learning about different careers already as four-year-olds in the system, and learning to work together and talk about how to complete different tasks and how they need to rely on each other for completing those tasks. These are the experiences that we want to see in our system. These are the experiences that we want to flourish in our system. And it's important that we continue to do that because that phrase ownership for their own learning, ultimately what we want is each student to actually have a stake in their learning that it's not the teacher just saying you need

102to learn this because, it's them saying I want to learn this because. And I'm thankful for the work that all of these teachers do and many other teachers do to create those experiences for kids. We see a lot of it in our system every day, but what we want to see is daily in every classroom on every campus across our system. I also want to put in a highlight. I'm not going to talk a lot about this, but I thought it was important to make sure I stuck this slide in there. Goal three also in our strategic plan had us focus in on a world-class team of employees. And you can see that it said, number one, develop a system that ensures high-quality personalized learning for each and every employee that supports job-specific skill development

103and world-class employee competency growth. Today, we had nearly 2,000 employees at Belton High School. going through learning sessions tailored to job specific tasks that they have and threads or tracks that they have to help them become better at their roles. But it wasn't outside people that were doing all of those. It was the internal capacity that we had. It was learning from their colleagues and it was allowing them to share best practices, go to sessions and learn from each other so that they could continue to grow. Next month, I can't wait to bring back to you some of the... highlights from that. It was an outstanding experience and I thank our teaching and learning team for getting that rolling. Finally, the other highlights that I have that I think are important to note as well,

104our athletic signings, as you know, we have kids doing great things. The more we can have students involved in extracurricular activities like FFA, like athletics, like our fine arts programs, we know that they succeed better in school. We know that they want to come to school. We know that they feel a family when they're involved in those programs. The Bell County Youth Fair, again, was a resounding success. uh mr norwood and i didn't get to see each other at it this year and he didn't pick on me then for my lack of knowledge about the bell county youth fair but every year i learn more and more and i can tell you i still don't understand how they actually judge rabbits but i'm trying to learn that every year as well recharge conference i hit

105on a little bit i want to thank janet and aaron for joining me at the capital visit recently talking with our legislators about Those legislative priorities that you adopted as a board of trustees Your voice matters and I think both Janet and Aaron will attest to this we heard that loud and clear through every meeting that we had The voice of our trustees matters when it comes to these things at our capital. We heard that earlier tonight So thank you for dedicating that time We'll be down there more often because the voice of Bell County and the voice of Belton ISD matter for this legislative session And finally if you didn't forget We celebrated the 100th day of school in Belton ISD recently. I don't have a picture of it because I was slow on

106the uptake, but you can see a picture from another one of our campuses. I walked into one of our schools, and I was floored by some of the teacher outfits that were celebrating the 100th day of school, and we had one teacher who was pretending to be her mother. and dressed up and pretended like her mother. And the students in the class actually believed it, which was outstanding. She said she was substituting for them. But it was a wonderful celebration of fun and learning. We heard this today in one of our sessions. Learning for kids should be fun. They should enjoy their learning experiences because we know that they'll want to come back more and more. Thank you for allowing me to shift my superintendent's report a little bit. I want to add something. I

107want to add something near and dear to my heart real quickly. I appreciate our board because I was absent for a couple of days. I got to go see my grandmother. My grandmother passed yesterday at 101 years old. And what I wanted to share about that is that she had a strong belief in the power of public education. She had five kids, 15 grandkids, and 25 great-grandkids by the time she died. students, or excuse me, her kids and her grandkids, or everything from lawyers to college professors to college presidents to superintendents to business owners and to chief financial officers. And she came from a family that didn't have much and that believed in the power of public education. And every one of those kids went through the public schools and were able to achieve great

108things for their families. So I wanted to say thank you to our board. I will be absent this Friday heading to a funeral. But it meant a lot for me to be there before she passed, but also it meant a lot for me to reflect on the impact of public education and what it takes to do great things for the families that we serve. And she believed that wholeheartedly, so I wanted to reflect on that and thank her for that as well. Any questions for Dr. Smith? No? Well, Dr. Smith, thank you very much for that report, and thank you for the kind words of your grandma at the end. All right. The next item on the agenda is a consent agenda. Does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion? All right. Seeing no

109takers, do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Ms. Lee, do I have a second? Mr. Taggart, all in favor? All right. That passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. Board request for new information board members at this time are there any requests for new information or reports from the administrative team? I'll start down here on the right and none Okay, thank you very much as a reminder calendar events you have that in front of you and I would also just you know put it on record based on the conversation that we had earlier. Make sure that we're reaching out to our state representatives, making sure that our voice is being heard, that you're emailing them, and just as important, let them know that we support them when they stand up for

110public education, because there's a whole bunch out there that will not. So now we will proceed with public comments regarding non-agenda items. As we mentioned earlier, 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. Participants are allowed three minutes for public comments regarding non-agenda items. We have a timer on the screen that shows you a lot of time and a sound will concur at the conclusion. When I call your name, please come to the podium. State your name and city of residence for the record. The first person up is Laura Douglas. Hello, I'm Laura Douglas and I live in Bolton. I'm a Belton alumni, class of 08. Now I have a

111child, Parker Douglas, who goes to Lakewood Elementary. Sorry, my heart is racing. I'm here today just to let you guys know about something that you might not know about. It's somewhat related to the library book issue that has been discussed recently. My son let me know that on their in-school tablets, they have access to the Epic app. It's epic with an exclamation point. This is an app with a digital library of thousands of books for children. Apparently, in first grade, the students are allowed to read any book they want from that app during free time after finishing their work. I know the app well because as a speech therapist, I used to use it at work all the time. But I stopped using it for the reasons I'm about to tell you. I recently came

112across certain books on the app that seemed to be pushing a political agenda surrounding the issue of gender ideology. All of the books I'm about to give you as examples are picture books targeted towards children. The first one was a book entitled Hold That Thought, in which the main character used they-them pronouns. The book didn't go into detail about why the character used those pronouns, but the theme of the book was teaching closed-minded people about how to open their eyes to new ideas. Then I did a quick search on Epic to see if there were any other books in their library about gender ideology, and they do, in fact, have. many more books about it. One was entitled Jacob's Room to Choose, and it's about very young transgender children being able to choose which bathroom

113they would like to use at school. Another book was called Jack, Not Jackie, and it's about a toddler girl who shows signs of gender confusion and her parents affirm her as a boy and change her name. I understand that many families would be fine with their children reading books such as this, but I only want my seven-year-old to learn about these topics at home from myself. I reached out to Parker's awesome teacher, love her with these concerns, and she agreed to not allow him to use that app during free time anymore. This solved my problem, but unfortunately for Parker, he is limited to what he is allowed to do during the free time. He can just read books from his book box. I wish he could have access to an alternative app to Epic. There's

114one called Reading IQ. It similarly has thousands of books to choose from, categorizes them by reading level, and costs the same monthly as Epic. However, it doesn't appear to be pushing any political agenda or controversial ideologies. I wanted to bring this issue to your attention and ask a few questions like who decides which apps are allowed on the school tablets? Why aren't parents made aware of controversial material that their children might have access to? Is there a process to go through in which you might consider switching from Epic to a different app like ReadingIQ? Do you trust big companies in California to decide what is or isn't appropriate for our children? Or do you think... Do you think we should look into the content before giving kids free reign on these apps? I just wanted

115to make this issue known to other parents also who are listening tonight and might want to take a closer look at the Epic app. You've given us information about how to flag inappropriate library books and how to restrict our kids from those books through appropriate channels, but up until now there's been no transparency about the thousands of books available to them on their tablets. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. There you go. Thank you. All right. So the time is 8.01, and the board will now go into closed session for deliberations about real property, Texas Government Code Section 551. Excuse me, Mr. President. Before we go, you know, I just realized that we probably should have mentioned this earlier, that this is Connie's last board meeting, and I just want to take

116the opportunity to tell her I didn't talk to you earlier because I couldn't stomach just saying anything to you without crying about it, but I do want you to know how much I personally appreciate all the things that you've done since you've been here. Thank you so much. I just look forward to hearing all about your new chapter in life. Congratulations, Connie. Thank you, Suzanne. I think I already got through that one. Next is personnel, Texas Government Code Section 551.074, and consultation with attorney, Texas Government Code Section 551.071. All right. The time is 8.52. There being no further questions,