March 23, 2026 – Board Meeting

001The meeting of the GCCISD Board of Trustees to order. The date is March 23rd. The time is 6.04 p.m. Mrs. Guy, was this meeting properly posted? Yes, it was. And do we have a quorum? We do. Thank you very much. At this time, we'll turn it over to Mr. Flood, who is at the opposite side of the room tonight. We're going to try something different so we're not hidden behind a wall for opening exercises. All right, good evening. President Campisi, school board members, Dr. Rodriguez. The opening exercise for the March 23rd Board of Trustees meeting will be provided by the students of Austin Elementary. Adrienne, Fabian, and Emadeli Dominguez will be presenting the pledges. We'll begin the opening ceremonies with the prayer led by Ms. Brock Thames. Everyone, please rise for the prayer and remain

002standing for the pledges. Thank you. Mr. Flood, could you all join me and bow your heads, please? Heavenly Father, as we begin this meeting, we ask for your wisdom, love, and the guidance, presence of your spirit. Help us to learn one another and guide our discussions to reflect your grace. May our decisions serve the best interests of our students and our community. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. The choir students from Austin Elementary will be singing a couple of songs. I'm not even going to try to pronounce them. I'll let you introduce them. So the students are under the direction of Ms. Verdun and Principal Alathon. And so at this point, I'm going to turn it over to you guys. Thank you. What a great performance by Stephen at

003Austin Elementary School. Are there any parents of these students in the audience tonight? If so, please stand to be recognized. Thank you all so much for coming tonight. Wonderful performance. Let's give them one more round of applause as they exit the meeting. That concludes opening exercises. We'll move on to item number three, citizens' participation. Ms. Garcia has advised there are three speakers registered to vote for the meeting. Is that correct? Very well. Citizens' participation. It is the time that the board will hear public concerns or public comments from those who have properly signed up to address the board. At regular board meetings, the board shall permit public comment regardless of whether the topic is an item on the agenda posted with notice of the meeting. General public comment is limited to no more than 30

004minutes per meeting. At all other board meetings, public comment shall be limited to open session items on the agenda posted with notice of the meeting. A speaker is reminded that he or she is limited in his or her presentation to a maximum of three minutes, which can be further limited or reduced by the presiding officer, and that he or she should respect confidentiality concerns and refrain from attacking the personal character of any individual student, staff member, or board member in addressing concerns or comments. Pursuant to state law and board policy, be illegal. The board cannot consider or take action on or... cannot consider or take action on concerns at this meeting unless they pertain to an item on the posted agenda for this meeting. Any deliberation or decision on an item that is not posted

005for consideration at this meeting shall be limited to a proposal to place the subject on the agenda of a future meeting. With that being said, our first speaker is Mr. Nicholas Rice. If you'll please approach the podium on the opposite side of the room today, you'll be given three minutes. Our secretary, Mrs. Guy, will... Keep time. She'll alert when you're down to one minute. Please state your name and the topic you're speaking on. You can begin at any time. All right. Good evening, Board of Trustees and Superintendent Rodriguez. I know most of you know me, but to introduce myself, I'm Nick Rice, and I'm the Secretary for Citizens for Strong Education. And I'm actually here tonight on behalf of our President, Jessie Hardin. She couldn't make it tonight due to a scheduling conflict, but she

006asked me to speak in her place. I just wanted to share that our next meeting is going to be on April 21st. at Luby's on West Baker Road here in Baytown at 6 o'clock p.m. Just a little bit about Citizens for a Strong Education. We're focused on supporting transparency, honesty, and integrity when it comes to public education in our community. We're really a problem-solving group, and we want to bring people together, hear different perspectives, and work towards solutions that benefit our school district. We've had a couple meetings this year. They've been really good, really, really productive, and we invite anyone who's interested to come share their thoughts and learn more about what we're doing. I'll be around after this if anyone has any questions or wants more information, but you can also reach us via

007email, and that is info. at citizens4se.com. That's info at citizens4se.com. And we also have a Facebook page, Citizens for a Strong Education, on Facebook. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rice. Our second speaker is Amelia McClure. Did I pronounce that right? Please come to the podium. You have three minutes. If you would introduce yourself, the subject you're speaking on. You may begin when you're ready. My name is Amelia McClure, and tonight I want to talk about March 6th. Good evening, GCCISD board. March 6th. I'd like to address the elephant in the room on that day. On March 6th, a large number of students decided to honor the birthday of their friend, Andrew Meismer. Up to this point, nothing had been done by the district to honor Andrew's life. Many students agreed celebrating Andrew's

008birthday would be nice. Andrew was known in part for occasionally wearing silly clown makeup or clowns' clothes to school at times, so the idea seemed great to them in doing this also. The idea was big enough, apparently, that even Sterling's staff got wind of what the students were planning. Announcements and emails were sent out stating no extras on March 6th. Students were frustrated that the celebration that they had been planning was being shot down. At the end of it all on March 6th, a large number of students still decided to add makeup and small adjustments to their clothing pertaining to a clown theme in honor of their friend. Some were sent to ISS and made to remove everything. Others were told they would have to go home. The students were frustrated, very crushed. What was

009meant to be sincere and heartfelt was totally taken away from them. My son was one of the students that went home. I asked him a very rational question. What could Sterling High or this district do that would satisfy you students? His answer was quick and to the point. Honor Andrew. He was murdered in Sterling, and we have done nothing to honor him. No memorials, no decorated walls, no balloon releases, no trees planted in his honor, just nothing. The school acts like they just want to forget, and they expect us to forget too. The only thing that we ever have left is Andrew's name written on a bathroom wall. This happened at our school, and we haven't done anything to honor him, and his life mattered to us. These are the feelings of my son and

010many of Andrew Meismar's friends and classmates. How can we say that we care about our students when such a violent tragedy happens that we don't try to let them express their love and emotions, and instead we punish them by sending them to ISS or home? GCCISD board, we need to do better. We need to be better. Our kids need to know that their words and their feelings matter also. And in the words of Andrew, today is a chance for us to be better. Thank you, Ms. McClure. Our third speaker is Kim Kostick. Ms. Kostick, you know the rules. Three minutes. Introduce yourself and what you're speaking on, please. Good evening, members of the board. Dr. Rodriguez, I am Kim Kostek. There's two topics that I just want to address tonight. Do we think I can

011do two in less than three minutes? Maybe. So the first is the what appears to be what is good for me is not good for the concept of prayer and gatherings in our schools. It's a little disappointed. It's unfortunate that I wasn't able to make that meeting. But I was really sad to see the stance that there was. As I always enjoy, as I was talking to a friend earlier, I said I hope that Trustee Rahat Tims opens it in prayer because I love the respect that she always gives in asking. And there are those in the room that don't necessarily stand and bow their head and they do other things during that because they may not participate. And that's fine because we live in a country and that doesn't necessarily mean that you have

012to have. Christian beliefs during those times, although that may be the... And so I would really like y'all to reconsider some of that because prayer really truly does. It centers you. I know it centers me in moments. I always pray not just with y'all in this, but before I come up. And I pray for each of y'all and for our community. And it is a good opportunity just within gathering in that. And then the other thing that I do want to speak with my time at. Am I good? One and a half. Oh, cool. I'm rocking. Okay, so it is in your consent agenda and it's the library books. I've got some little bit of concerns within some of those library books because I took the time to review some of them and some of

013the proposed titles, including If It Had Been With Me or Nothing Like the Movies or Andre and Bash are Just Friends. When you look in the middle sections of these books where the relationships develop, you'll find clear progression from emotional attachment into physical intimacy. And it really normalizes some of the stuff that some I know that I'm trying not to promote within my home. And it's in messaging. The stories are consistently tied to emotional connections, physical intimacy that are expected for teen behavior. And although I'm not... living under a rock, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to have it open within unless you like to add to the library collection the 66 books of the Bible. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Gostek. That concludes citizens' participation. We'll move on to item number four, recognitions

014and acknowledgments. Mr. Flood, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. At this time, I'll turn it over to Ms. Ferris and Ms. Ritter for our first set of acknowledgments. Good evening members of the school board, President Campisi and Dr. Rodriguez. I'm excited to introduce Amanda Berria, the Unified Champion School Specialist with Special Olympics. She's here tonight to recognize our partnership and celebrate our continued commitment, support, and involvement in this incredible program. I'm going to hand it over to Ms. Berria at this time to come up. Good evening. On behalf of Special Olympics Texas, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to Goose Creek CISD for your continued partnership and support for Special Olympics Texas. Your commitment to hosting events... provides our athletes with meaningful opportunities to compete, grow, and be recognized for

015their abilities, not just around this area, but all over Houston. We are also deeply grateful for the many Goose Creek ISD or CISD volunteers whose time and dedication make these events possible. Your support plays a vital role in creating a positive and inclusive experience for all involved. Thank you for the ongoing commitment to our athletes and fostering a more inclusive community. And I came with a certificate of appreciation as well to present to the board. All right. Good evening, President Campisi, Dr. Rodriguez, board members. We're now going to recognize our Pathways Academy. This is an academy led by our area executive directors in collaboration with our curriculum and instruction directors. It's a leadership development program designed for educators who hold a master's degree and aspire to serve an administrative role. Participants were selected through an

016application process that included submission of their resume, written responses to short essay questions, evaluated with a district developer work, and a favorable recommendation from their campus principal. Throughout the academy, participants engaged in focused learning experience centered around strong leadership and planning, strategic staffing, positive school culture, high-quality instruction, and observation and feedback. Each participant also participated in three field experiences where they shadowed current assistant principals throughout the district. Finally, each completed a mock interview where they received immediate, targeted feedback to support the continued growth. We're very proud of their commitment to leadership development, and we look forward to the meaningful impact that they continue to provide our campuses across the district. We have 26 members in our Pathways Academy, and we have 17 that are here tonight to celebrate. Our first one is Allison Alvarez, Noah

017Patel, Risma Cisneros, Ricardo Cruz, Karita Curry, Angela Fackler, Sarah Finehar, Litanza Haggerty-Allen, Christian Hassell, Avril Damieland, Lingua, Moze Bianca Pasuere, Robert Richard, Samantha Vizer, Lanika Walker-Eagans, and Miriam Williams-Augustine. This concludes our recognitions and acknowledgments at this time. I'll turn it back over to Dr. Rodriguez and the Board of Trustees. Thank you, Mr. Flood. Dr. Rodriguez, I'll turn it over to you for item number five, public hearing. Yes, thank you, Mr. President. 25, Texas Academic Performance has a taper and we have a... and while they're getting set up let me remind everyone this is a public hearing so at the end of the presentation we will accept questions and comments if uh you have any questions or comments only near the end if you'll address or work your way to the podium then we'll address those

018comments at that time Good evening Board President Campisi, Dr. Rodriguez, Board members, and community members in the audience. Tonight we will be discussing our public hearing on the 2425 Texas Academic Performance Report or TAPER. So the TAPER is compiled for every district and campus and they use the PEMS data submission as well as Assumption Assessment data. It is published as a taper and in your packet you have the entirety of the taper. It includes extensive information on the school and district staff, programs, and student demographics as well as student assessment. The 24-25 taper will be uploaded in its full report to the district website and paper copies will be provided to the public upon request. So the taper starts off with a cover page and it lists the district accountability. So for 24-25, the district

019received a seat. And then this is also reported for each district and each campus. This is, again, this is data from 24-25. This is data that has already been reported to the board. But as you can see, for third through fifth grade overall, it lists the district, the region, and the state. for all of our assessments for 24-25 as well as 23-24. So that is our data for our third through fifth grade overall. That's your reading, your math, and your science. It also listed for all of our sixth through eighth grade overall, which is your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade RLA, your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math. as well as your 8th grade science and your 8th grade social studies. Again, it listed for the district, the region, and the state for 24-25 as

020well as 23-24. And again, this is data that we presented to the board in July when it first came out. For all of our ELCs, it has it listed. That is your English 1, your English 2, your Algebra 1, your Biology, and your U.S. History. Again, it has the approaches, the meets, and the masters for the district, region, and state for 24-25, as well as 23-24. The next thing that the taper includes is the percentage of students with star progress. And what they do is that they look at, for example, this slide is fourth and fifth grade overall star progress. They take the math and reading, and they did those students who make one year's worth of growth, and it listed for the district the percentage of students that made that star progress for the

021district, for the region, and then for the state also. And this is the same data for 6th through 8th grade math and RLA, the percentage of students that made start progress, one year's worth of growth. And then it listed for English 1, English 2, and Algebra 1. Again, it lists the district, region, and state, the percentage of students that met start progress. It lists our CCMR, and again, I probably should have put it at the bottom, but CCMR stands for College and Career Military Readiness. This is an area within our district that seems to outperform the region and the state every year. As you can see, we're at 93.8% for 23-24. It's always a year in the rear. It's always a year behind. And you'll see that we outperformed this region and state in 23-24

022as well as in 22-23. It lists our college-rated graduates. So in 23-24, 89.8% of our students were deemed college ready. You'll see that that is higher than the region and also the state. There are some other post-secondary readiness indicators. For example, dual credit course completion in any subject. 36% of our students completed a dual credit course. You'll see that is above the district and, I mean, the region and the state average. TSIA, criteria of both subjects, reading and math, you see that we are above, again, the region and the state in that, and associate's degrees, we are above the region and the state at 4.6 of our students receiving associate degrees. It lists our attendance, graduation, and dropout rates. You'll see that our attendance is a little below the region and the state, but our

023graduation rate for your graduation rate is higher than the region and the state, as well as our dropout rate is lower than the state average and the region average. TA requires us to make sure that there is a taper glossary there that explains the entire taper, so there's a PDF link for that. There is other data that is found in the taper that departments are required to present annually. For example, the PEIMS financial standards report, that has already been presented by Ms. Clark and Ms. Price during the December of the 15th board meeting, but it has to be reported annually. Special education determination status was provided by the special education department during the superintendent's report during the November of the 10th board meeting. And then staffing updates are always provided by Human Resources regularly during

024the board meetings in the form of a superintendent's report. And at this time, I will take any questions you may have. So at this time, if anyone has any questions from the public or from the board, please approach the podium at this time. Mr. Flood, would you present the microphone, please, sir? Thank you. By way of introduction, my name is Jeff Minson. In looking at the numbers, and again, this has been reviewed over the past six months with the board, I noticed a change in the board presentations from dog and pony to very focused approach on deep problem solving. What this presents, as we see the final report tonight, is that our school district is in very poor shape. And a step change is needed. What I saw is we are below the region and

025the state in a school district that is very well funded versus others. Now, my question is, based upon the last presentation we had from the administration, where they presented some very forward-thinking ideas, One question I had with the CCMR was, looking at the presentation that we see tonight, our elementary, our junior highs were well below average. And yet suddenly, our high schools were above average, basically because of CCMR. With CCMR going away, as I understand, our high schools will most likely drop from A's and B's to C's and D's. So my question is, what is the plan that we have with our CCMR and the way that we have positioned ourselves as a district to highlight that, to elevate our score now that that is going away? So first let me address CCMR. It's not

026going away completely. There are components of it that are going away. College Prep Math and College Prep English are not going to be able to attain our CCMR point for that because our local college has not accepted I'm trying to think of a wording for it. They're not accepted to be able to administer that, but that's where it meets qualifications from the state to get the CCMR point. There are multiple other ways for them to get their CCMR point, and that is what the district is looking at. The main thing is we're focusing on increasing our TSIA scores because that is one area that they can get to to get to their CCMR point. So that's our focus is knowing that CPE and CPE on this college prep English and college prep math may not

027be a way that our students can get it within our district. We are looking forward thinking to see what changes can we make to make sure that more students are getting it through our TSIA and those other avenues. Thank you. Second question. As I look at the superintendent and his announcement of coming to the district, he announced that there needs to be better communication between the district and the parents. One of the things that I'm concerned about is that for many parents, this was a surprise. We had been going along very well until, again, the game changed as far as the state was concerned. And we went from a very high to not so well. What can we do to help parents understand where their students are in relation to the score? Specifically, what are

028we doing with the primary messaging we're doing to parents, which is the report card? Does Do Our Report Cards actually help parents understand how well their students are doing? in relation to how well the district is doing on these scores. So I guess to address that, one of the things I would say is that we are being more intentional about our communication and transparency. You have noticed that over the last several months, every month there is a data presentation to the board and to the community to show where we are at. I want to remind you that this is 24-25 data, which is last year's. Our current students, we are... projecting to be you you see you'll see a little later during our during our data update to the board we are we are showing

029some trends of increased data now as far as communication um i believe that that through um We are being more intentional about what we're sending out through ParentSquare, things like that. The school report card, you are correct, that is provided by the state report card and the federal report card that is also sent to the parents. And there's also information that goes along with that that kind of explains where our school is at and where our district is at with that. Let me back up on my question. Yes, sir. Okay. The report card for most parents is the only thing they see and the only thing they care about, to be very honest. Are you talking about the student report card? The report card. Okay. I thought you were talking about the answer. I'm sorry.

030So if I look at the student report card and I see my student and it says, oh, you're doing very well, and then they get to the test and they fail it, what is the correlation on how well we are grading our students, messaging the parents on how well their students are doing? and that correlates with actual results on the STAR test. That would be an analysis I would be very, very interested in, because that is the primary way we're going to get the backing of the parents to make the changes we need to get the students to do what they're supposed to do. In fact, I would encourage the district to look very carefully at the inflation we've had on grades over the last years. Because if the parents don't think there's a problem,

031we can't get them behind us to actually make the changes that the board is recommending. Finally, there seems to be a data anomaly. I can't believe that we have a 0.0 dropout rate. That is statistically impossible. I am very, very good at analytics. And a 0.0 is a huge red flag. that our data gathering or something is off. We have failures in this and dropouts in Goose Creek. So I don't know what's going on, but I would question that number deeply. And when I question that number, I question the other numbers. How well are we gathering and looking at the data before we present it to make sure that we're telling the right story to the board and to the public? Yes, sir. So this data came directly from the TEPR report. So I understand

032what you're saying, a zero percent causes you to think deeply about it. Again, I've just printed off the information from the taper. Now, yes, we do go back and we do verify data before it's submitted through PEMS because that's where our graduation rates come from. But as far as what's listed on the taper and what was reported, it is at 0%. Which is statistically impossible. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Madison. Welcome back, Ms. Kostick. Hi. He took a lot of awards right now. And I'm sitting behind him. You can read my shoulder. So, yeah, my first red flag was the verbal consent. Right. That's not. And then listening to you say that, you know, it goes off of our teams. That really makes me actually a little bit more skeptical. Do you scrape

033then? What does it get encoded as when they're dropping out? Can you answer that? Because they are dropping out. As far as the coding, did anyone speak to that? When they, like, disappear and are not coming back. No? We just graduate them? Okay. All right. Crickets. I will look into that, Ms. Kopsik, and I will get back with you. I think you should get back with the community. I know what you meant. I will look into it. I didn't mean any disrespect for that. All right. And then I also want to say I agree with Jeff completely with the reports, the transparency, the clear, the conciseness. I noticed that the first meeting and the ones that I go back and watch on YouTube. on it, okay? And that is great and beautiful and I appreciate

034it. Even with the taper, the most clear taper I've ever seen. But the only, I want to follow up kind of with what Jeff was saying also when it comes to student report cards is essentially yes with the grading and the gratings that we're doing and the passing students and and what have you is there a I guess can we identify the disconnect right of we're passing students we were advancing students every year But we're not doing well. Like, should we be passing as many students as what we are, I guess is my question. We are looking into that. Okay, great. And I'm glad to hear they are going to be working on that. Oh, and so in protecting, you did make a comment that we're protecting, you know, for next year. So I guess

035the question is, did we project this for this year? Project. That we were going to be doing, like, last year? Did we project that we were going to be doing so terrible this year? So one of the things we did last year, what did we look at? We looked at and we realized that we had a, well, there was a gap in our. I guess our Tier 1 instruction. And so you know that we went to Blue Bonnet curriculum this year to try to address that. So that's one of the areas that when we looked at it and we saw that there was an issue and an opportunity because, again, if the state is pushing the Blue Bonnet curriculum, they're the ones writing the star assessment, things like that. So, yes, we did look into

036that and we did kind of. go that direction. But yes, whenever we look and we see that there is an area of concern, we are always trying to problem solve to see what we can do to increase our scores. Right. And I really, again, appreciate everything and the efforts that are being made, and I'm very hopeful. for the future of the district. So I thank you. But yeah, let's try to avoid statistical anomalies. Stood behind this podium before I talked about them. Let's just, you know, thank you. Right. So the zero, I guess, how do we end up? Excuse me. Ms. Smith, would you come to the microphone and repeat that, please? I guess, so how did the, where did the disconnect? Because I know we've dealt with. Yes. There are teams coding weird things

037the way that we do it, and it doesn't necessarily fall within that. Is that one of those? No, we specifically target our dropout students, and we research, and we do have them. I've got three, four years' worth of data that we can certainly, and I'll be happy to present at the next meeting if y'all need me to, but I can present those numbers. This last year, I believe, our number, I know. year before this year was 50 for the district um and this year i know it was below 50. um i can't name the number right off my head but no we did we do have dropouts that's not this is zero uh it's not zero so then i guess is there an to your knowledge could there be an explanation of how the disconnect

038goes from 50 to 0 unless it's just less than one percent and so it ends up in a zero percent I think I'd like to task administration in coming up with an answer on that, if you could research that and report back to the board, and we'll publicly announce that somehow. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kostick. I will say, I want to say to answer a question, yes, this last year was .016% when we did the math, when you factored the number of students we have and the number. So it was .0 point something. We have rounded it down. Because we did percentages, the actual percentage, so if it was .5 around, it did up zero. But it's a ninth to twelfth grade. It's what it says. If it says zero percent, it's what

039the status is, 1.8 percent and 1.8 percent for the region. But it says 0.0 percent for the type where he just showed me. Okay, thank you. Next comment. I just wanted to say that as a previous parent, I definitely put more weight in all of the other achievements above the state testing scores just because I never had a whole lot of, you know, I didn't really like the state testings in the first place, but also because I saw how much stress that it put on the kids. I was always on the PTO boards, and I saw what they went through when going through those. So that alone puts them... in a mode where it's going to make it hard for them to take those tests. So that probably has a lot to do with some

040of those scores that they're getting because they put so much stress on themselves right before they go to take the test. So if we could come up with something even like... I don't know. I had kids. I had five kids. I had some that were really strong testers and struggled in the daily school, but they could go take a test and pass it with no problem. And then I had some that struggled taking a test, but they were really good on the day-to-day. So maybe if we could come up with some way to make the kids more comfortable with taking the test or training them on testing, not how to pass this test, which is what a lot of parents were concerned about over the years, is are we just teaching our kids how to

041pass this test and we aren't teaching them anything else, but maybe come up with a way on how to train the kids on how to test in general. And maybe they'd be more comfortable when they go in to take this test, which will in turn give us better scores. Maybe, just an idea. Thank you. Are there any more public comments? I'll open it up to the trustees at this time. Okay. Dr. Rodriguez? It's a good concept that has been graduated. Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez. Mr. Husband, before you run away, real quick. If you could circle back with that actual dropout rate number, it does appear that it is a rounding issue, but if we could asterisk that with the actual number that presents the realistic number there. And with that, we will go ahead and

042close the hearing for the 2024-2025 Texas Academic Performance Report. Thank you, Mr. Husband. We'll move on to approval of minutes. Prior to this board meeting, February 23rd, 26th, regular board meetings were. minutes were presented to the board for review. At this time, I'll entertain the pleasure of the board. Before we move on, I'd just like to say thanks for not letting us comment or asking any questions. I did. I opened it up to the trustees. You did? I did. Okay, I apologize. Is there something present? I did, I guess, have a statement, you know, that I... I heard what the superintendent said and I have a patience. But I understand the community's concern also because we've been dealing with this for a long time. And, you know, as they come present to us, you know,

043and tell us that we're doing good when actually we're not, it's a big wake-up call when they see the results of these tests. The taper, if you will. And I appreciate Jeff Minson's comments that he made about and the observations that he made. I wish that all community members would come up and make those kinds of comments and observations. We need them. And I just appreciate that and enjoyed that testimony from Kim and also the other person that made her comments also. And I hope that we listen and that we move forward like the superintendent said. He has our support. That's why we hired him. But, yeah, I think we're in a pickle right now as a school district. As Jeff Minson stated, we're in a poor state. We're in a bad state. We're not

044in a good state. And I just wanted to echo that, you know. We need to do better. As someone I say, we need to do better. Thank you for that, Mr. Andrea. And I do echo your comments that we do appreciate and value our input. I'll move on to item number six, approval of minutes before the February 23rd, 2026 regular board meeting. Regular board meeting minutes. What is the pleasure of the board? Move to approve. I'll second. I have a motion to approve by Ms. Barat-Tims and a second by Mrs. Guy for the February 23rd, 2026 minutes. Any discussion on this item? Were we all here? We were all here. Okay. Just making sure. Hearing no further discussion, all in favor of approval, please signify by raising your hand. Seeing 6-4-0 against, motion passes. Move

045on to item number 7, discussion item, superintendent reports. Dr. Rodriguez, I'll turn it back to you. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, President Campisi, Dr. Rodriguez, and school board members. Ms. Smith and I are up here to discuss the possibility of amending our FBA local policy on inter-district transfers to moving to open enrollment. I want to start off by saying Ms. Smith is going to talk to you about some local districts, but I want to say that we want to put Goose Creek students as a priority. By no means are we saying that we would allow someone that lives within our boundaries to not have first party anything. So I want to start by saying that. So what is it? We're asking the board to consider allowing families outside the traditional attendance zone to enroll in the

046district. Of course, we are going to discuss parameters centered around student discipline, student behavior, student academics as a cornerstone of allowing those students to come in because we would want the best of the best to come into Goose Creek. Why would we do this? Maybe we think that it would help offset our declining enrollment trends, increases in our ADA, which would result in additional funding from the state. Also, we feel like we do CTE academies, advanced academics really well. That's an area that we excel in. So this would give us a way to enhance and grow and fill programs such as our CTE academies, our pathways, and our early college programs. For example, if a student outside of the boundary applied for the Health Science Academy, they would not, unless we expanded the program, there's

047not any room for those students. However, we have a teacher shortage and we do have seats available in our future teacher academy. So we would want to really advertise to fill the seats of those specialized academies where we have spaces. Our dual credit partnerships could be expanded, Vance Academics and our STEM program. We struggle filling some of our STEM programs at Lee High School as well. This would be a chance for us to really advertise the good things that Goose Creek does. And then it would also give us an opportunity to really target and expand virtual academies. If you are going through town, you're seeing billboards up in Clear Creek and in Galena Park where they are advertising, come to our school, come to our virtual academy. So we already have it. It would be

048a way to expand and get more students in those seats. And then also our early learning academies. We see a decline in certain populations in our early learning academies, so it would be a chance for us to really expand and prioritize filling those seats at our early learning academies. So as Dr. Jackson stated, the surrounding districts that are currently doing open enrollment, and I'll also say open limited enrollment, meaning that obviously our students take priority. So if that campus is... doesn't have capacity, then that's not an option for that parent to enroll their child. But the surrounding districts, Clear Creek, Deer Park, Dickinson, Fort Bend, Galena Park, HISD, Humboldt, Klein, LaPorte, Pasadena, Santa Fe, Sheldon, Stafford, and Texas City, all currently have open or limited open enrollment. Again, it would not take seats away from

049our students, but it would give an opportunity. Every year I have parents call our office asking if they could possibly enroll their child in Goose Creek. They possibly work here. They live in a neighboring district, but due to, you know. situations in the home, it would be easier if their child was here in Goose Creek. They could drop them off on their way to work, pick them up in the afternoon after, whereas unfortunately they'd be left unsupervised in their home where they live because of bus transportation where they live. So we have many employees around various workplaces here that would definitely, I think, partake in this. So if the board decided this is something that you wanted us to look into, I want to talk about next steps. So the way the law reads now

050is you have the decision to open the enrollment, but it's for one year at a time. So we would want to amend the language in our DOI plan that states that the superintendent or designee at any time can revoke that enrollment. So if a child came in in August and we realized, hey, this is not a good fit, we can then say in October, I'm sorry, this isn't working out. You need to go back to your home campus. And so we would want to do that in order to. actually bring that policy forward, we would need to take action and amend the DOI to give us that. Otherwise, we would be stuck for one year at a time. And then with that, even if we do this, the student would have to reapply every year

051no matter what. And the revision to our local policy FDA would include, as Dr. Jackson said, approving those transfers or revoking or even denying based on availability, instructional staff, financial cost safety issues, their academic performance, looking at reviewing grades, their discipline behavior history, along with their attendance and tardies. Like Dr. Jackson said, we want the best of the best to come to Deuce Creek. Any questions you have for us? I've got a comment. I like it. I think that, you know, it gives people an opportunity, especially in step with the state legislature, giving school choice and vouchers and some of our kids leaving to some other schools. It would help us, I think, in the long run. So just an opportunity. And with all the schools already, around us doing it. We got to stay

052in the competition there. So I like it. I have a question. Is there like a, and some of these other districts haven't looked into it, but anyway, is there like an application window and then an application deadline just to help with staffing and that type of thing? Or do we accept people all year? No, when Carrie and I looked at this, or when I looked at this, most of the application ends the first semester for the next year. So you have the second full semester to work on staffing. And a lot of districts around us, they cut it off no later than January, the end of January. Okay. Can we give free schooling to all the athletes in the Houston area to come over here? And yes, there would be an application. It would be

053similar to the one we already have in place for inter-district transfers and employee transfers that we offer. So if we, like if this is what we want to do, we get it in the DOI, like is it something that... could be in place for next year? And if so, what would that look like as far as, because we'd kind of be off on an application process for next year. We talked about that. We brainstormed, talked to several research, several other districts. And for the first year, we think we could get the DOI amended and this policy done by early May is what we're thinking. so that we could advertise, but we would try to cut it off really quick, like a very short window, and not look at the potential of adding any positions. But

054we already know in our academies exactly how many we have that have applied already. So we have a good, okay, we can take 24 kids in this academy, or we have eight spots in this academy. And our transfer window actually opens next Monday, March 30th through April 24th for our in-district. So if that was the case, we could open it up in May once it was approved. And I could extend it in, too, because I would have already taken care of our employees and other situations that we need to. And as Dr. Jackson said, we would know our numbers ahead of time. So I would be able to say, yes, this is a possibility or unfortunately no, it's not. Okay, I have a quick question. If we're looking at on the first statement that says

055allow families outside of the traditional attendance zone to enroll, do we have specific districts we're going to look at? that we would have listed or that we would not accept or would accept, especially if they're a district. We surely want those students. But are we going to look into, like, what are those zones? Any consideration on zones or just open? No, we're saying anybody outside Goose Creek's attendance zone. So if you are part of, you know, I don't want to say a name, but if you're a neighboring district, you know, Crosby or Galena Park or anywhere. So those kids that may want to come here right now, we feel like with everyone around us, they can take our great students with their criteria, but we're not allowed to take their students. Got you. Thanks. Thank

056you. And again, a lot of those parents call. just because they work in our community. Well, if you have a small district down the road, they probably don't have the academies in the specialized programs that we do, and it would be opportunities for kids that don't have those opportunities in their maybe smaller rural districts. And do we have openings in these academies currently? So like I said, an example is we cannot get any extra seats in health science. That is a popular academy. But we need future teachers, and we have great pathways and great partnerships, but we could take 15 more students in that academy. So we want about 100 a year. Help me understand why we're declining our early learning academy. So what's going on there? So we have not declined with our gen

057ed population, our special ed, but our bilingual classrooms have really shrunk. You know, there's a lot of reasons you can think about that, but that is where our areas have shifted. Thank you. Any more questions from the board on this? And this is not on the agenda for a vote tonight. This is for informational purposes, and you may be bringing it back for future action. Is that correct? Keep talking about it. I like it. Yeah, I like it, too. We agree on something. I don't want to make an assumption. I'm assuming we are not going to drive a bus to Hardin-Jefferson to pick up a kid. Correct. They will be required to provide their own transportation to and from school. Yes, sir. Unless you're offering. Did you want to offer to drop the bus, Mr.

058Gwinn? You know, y'all were laughing about the athletic comment I made, but I'm being serious. If we can bring some athletes over here, I mean, not the way I say it, but, you know, if it encourages them, we can really get that help, and we need that help in our athletic programs. I mean, I feel the way our athletic program goes, our academic program goes with it. So if we go good with athletics, we'll go good with our academics. And Lord knows we need better academics here. We just discussed that, but it's been serious about that. Any way that we can improve and help our school district all the way around would be good. Dr. Jackson, Ms. Smith, thank you so much for looking into this opportunity. Okay. Good evening, Board of Trustees, Dr. Rodriguez.

059We're here to present our annual HR updates. So, once again, I'm Matt Bollinger, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, and I have Monica Juarez, who's our Human Resources Director for Elementary, and then Dr. Lisa Still, who's our Human Resources Director for Secondary. So, we'll be providing the presentation tonight. Here's our agenda. Primarily, as Mr. Hesman alluded to earlier, we are going to cover some of the staffing portions of the table report in our presentation, and then we'll go through our goals and the strategic plan. And then last, we have an update on transition with contracts and how we structure our contracts. So starting off, this is just an overview of our key responsibilities that our team does each and every day. On that first slide, we've got our entire team. Just to show you that one

060more time. So we have staff who work very hard to make sure that the district operates at a high level in these areas, such as staffing, recruitment, certification, compliance, and so forth. We want to start off by sharing some data from the TAPER report. So first of all, for staff and class sizes, overall, we're in a good spot here. We are below the state average, which in this case, that's a good thing. Below the state average in class size in almost every single area. Again, this is from 24-25, so this is a year back. Below the state average in every grade level and subject except for kindergarten, we're a little bit above. We're 0.5. students above in kindergarten, so that's not even one student. And also we're heavy in four languages, but every other grade

061level and subject were below the state average in class size. So that's a positive statistic. The table report shares demographics, of course, they just show 24-25, but we're just showing the last three years. And so if you look at the chart here, the blue line at the top is 24-25, and then when you go down to the green, it's 2023-24, and then 22-23 for the gray line. So overall, there's no major shifts in teacher demographics. This is statistics it shared. If anything, we have slightly more Hispanic teachers. this year than we have in the past two years. Then we have slightly less white teachers, but overall it's within 1% or less, maybe a little bit more than 1%. So no major movement in demographics. The next slide is the same format where 24-25 is in

062the dark blue. This is teacher years of experience and it's broken it down into different categories beginning with our beginning teachers and then it breaks it into two years of experience. And so you can see just where we've gone up or where we've gone down again There's not any major revolution here. Our group, 11 to 20 years, for example, has gone up a few percentage points over the last two years. Overall, if you look all the way to the left on that bullet point, overall our average years of experience has gone up a little bit over the last two years from 9.6 to 10.3. So a slight increase in years of experience with the teachers that we're hiring. Okay, going on to teacher retention, I would say this is our biggest area of challenge. This

063is our biggest area of concern right now. Really in the presentation, this data slide is where we've spent a lot of time and attention. Our teacher retention over the last few years has been flat. And so you can see that from 22-23 to 23-24 to 24-25, we've had very little movement with teacher retention. And so right now we're almost 3% below the state average. Of course, we want to be above the state average in this area. So later in the presentation, we're going to talk about strategies that we've been honing in on for teacher retention. We're going to talk about a survey that we put out with some of our veteran teachers as well as our beginning teachers on getting feedback to make sure that we're doing all we can. Okay, when it comes to

064salary, this is sort of a double-edged sword here. On the one hand, we are quite a bit above the state average, and we're proud of that when it comes to how we pay our teachers. Again, this is only teacher pay. And so when you look at, again, 24-25, our starting pay was $63,500 for first-year teachers. So that was our beginning pay. However, if you were an uncertified adjunct teacher, they're paid at a lower rate. Most districts do this to encourage. getting certification, getting certified. And so when you see that beginning teacher pay rate at $60,939, it's below our starting pay for that reason because we have several uncertified teachers paid lower. So when you average it together. But if you just go through each category, we are about 5,000 or 6,000 above the state average

065in almost every single category. So that's a celebration. But I did say it was a double-edged sword. And so on the other side, The challenge is we're in a region, and we talk about this every year, we're in a region of Houston where districts around us are highly competitive in pay. So we're around some high-paying districts, and that makes it challenging, and so we're constantly competing with districts nearby to make sure that we can attract and retain highly qualified teachers, and pay is a huge part of that. And so, again, here in a little bit, we'll talk about our teacher incentive allotment. and some other options to increase pay. But overall, we pay very well as a district, but we know that in our region, it continues to be a challenge. Okay, so those are

066our main statistics we wanted to share from the table report. Now what we're going to do is we're going to jump into our three goals in the strategic plan, which deal with recruitment, retention, and then leadership development. And so I'm going to turn it over to Monica Juarez, and she's going to start us off with recruitment. Okay, so goal number one is teacher recruitment. So we want to highlight some of the strategies that we use to recruit teachers in Goose Creek. So one of the first ones is our Grow Your Own Clinical Teacher Internship. So this is our student teachers. As you can see, in 24-25, we had 35 student teachers. We were able to hire nine of them for the spring semester. We hired five additional for the 25-26 school year, so that's a

067total of 14. In 25-26, we have 60 interns or student teachers. Twelve of them we were able to hire for this spring semester. and we have 33 that will be graduating. Of those 33, 19 are our teacher residents. And so there is a difference between our traditional student teachers and our teacher residents. Our traditional student teachers are interning for one semester before graduating, but our teacher residents have a full year of student teaching. So they get to see what that looks like from day one in the classroom until the last day of school. So they're ready, you know, classroom ready when next school year starts, and we're able to hire them here at Goose Creek. We also had a teacher certification open house this year, and what that was was we had an event where

068we had almost 100 attendees that came out and were able to network with different universities and ACP programs so that we could help them get on the right pathway to become teachers here in Goose Creek. So that was a very successful event, and we were able to provide some information to our employees. Also, we have our regular university job fairs, and we have partnerships with different HCP programs. We currently have three partnerships where they provide discounted rates for our employees to start their certification programs. Alright, so for our teacher certification status, we currently have 92% of our teachers that are fully certified. We have 7% that are our District of Innovation or DOI teachers that are uncertified. And we have that broken down for you. We have 59 in elementary and 49 in secondary. And

069then we have about 1% of our teachers that are not certified in non-core content areas. We also provide a year-long new teacher induction program for our new teachers. We have mentors that are assigned to our brand new teachers, and then we have a buddy, our lead mentor, that is assigned to our teachers new to the district. So they have one or more years of experience, but it's their first year in Goose Creek, so we provide them with a lead mentor to check in on them. Our campus lead mentors also have monthly meetings with all new teachers, and they also do a book study on classroom management with those teachers. We currently have four retired Goose Creek principals that provide monthly check-ins to our new teachers. And then we were just awarded the prep allotment, so

070we will get some additional funding to help support our mentorship programs to help our teachers be more successful in the classroom and hopefully retain them. This year we did send out a survey to our first year teachers. So every first year teacher received a survey about their experience here in Goose Creek. It was anonymous. And overall we had some really good feedback and we are able to tell that our first year teachers have had a positive experience this first year. Some of the things that we want to highlight on this slide is a lot of the feedback was positive when it came to our mentorship and campus support. Many of the surveys came back feeling like they're very supported. We even had a teacher that stated that they've had a blessing in having a great

071mentor teacher their first year of teaching and it's helped them grow into the educator that they are today. So a lot of positive feedback on that. Some of the challenges... are classroom management, which is typical for your first year of teaching, workload balance and finding that, technology use, and then things like learning IEPs instead of accommodations for students. Also, if you look at the very last bullet, you're able to tell that 96% of our first year teachers would recommend Goose Creek. So we're excited about that. And before we get to our second goal, I want to make sure I announce Brooke Bingham is our HR coordinator, and she leads almost all the initiatives that we just shared with recruitment and with mentorship. And so she's in the crowd, Brooke, if you'll wave your hand. But

072she does a great job of leading that component. And then also Kevin Robleski is our Associate Director of Compensation, and you're about to hear some items for Teacher Incentive Allotment. He's done a wonderful job in getting us on track with TIA, and so he's also in the crowd. So I wanted to make sure I introduced them. Okay, I'll turn it over to Dr. Stilff for goal number two. Okay, so goal number two is to increase teacher retention and employee job satisfaction. This is something that we discuss often. We have committees that talk about it. We have the survey that we put out this year, but we also do a lot of research and compare our district to other districts. But one of the things that we were looking into, but then the state helped us

073out, was longevity pay. So we were coming to you last year. with some ideas for that, but the state beat us to it, so we let them go ahead and give us the money for that. And then we always bring, we try to bring a competitive package when it comes to pay. We are in, like Dr. Bolander said, a very niche community where we're super, it's super competitive on the east side. So we're close, but we have been falling a little bit behind with our neighboring districts. So we looked at bringing the teacher incentive allotment to the district and so that has been successful. I'll talk about that a little bit more, but that is a compensation incentive on top of their salary that is funded by the state. We have, according to our academic

074calendar, some strategic breaks that our teachers and administrators are... they like and is part of the reason why they like to be here in Goose Creek, as well as the wellness clinic, professional learning that we provide across the board to various all employees, and then just the technology integration that we have here in the district. So as far as the teacher incentive allotment, this has been several years in growing and developing and adapting. In the 2022-23, that was our first cohort that we brought forth. We were awarded. We were very excited that 161 teachers were designated at either the recognized exemplary or master's level. That year, the district brought in $1.7 million that they were able to compensate our top teachers. teachers in the district. Last year we were denied, we were not approved, our

075system was not approved. The state is constantly changing the benchmarks for districts and we fell short of that benchmark but we've made adjustments and so this year on the next slide you can see that we got to announce right before spring break, going campus to campus, 147 teachers that were designated in the three areas. Although we don't have the actual payouts yet, it will be coming at the end of April, we are estimating it to be around $2.7 million. So overall in the district, we currently have 275 teachers that are designated in these three categories, which is amazing and we want to continue to grow that group of teachers. So we did conduct a survey this year really targeting that 11 to 10-year veteran teacher to get their perspective on two main things, what we

076call stay interviews. Why do you stay and what would possibly, if you were considering leaving, would you leave the district? So we just broke it down into the two reasons that we felt kept coming up over and over again. One being the reason that they want to stay is the growth opportunities that's provided. As you can see earlier in the early celebrations, we have pipelines from... Teachers wanted to be administrators. APs wanted to be principals. We have the Grow Your Own, different opportunities to grow in the district. And one of the participants that was named today was actually several years ago a Grow Your Own long, I think she was a substitute. in the room and she became a teacher and now she's an aspiring administrator so that is something that we're very proud of

077we also have a lot of teachers say that there is a supportive leadership that their administration the campus administration district administration listens to them provide support gives them a variety of opportunities and then the two reasons that they talked a little bit about challenges that they would consider is a need for autonomy in the curriculum. I know this is a new curriculum. So although we had brand new teachers excited to have something that they could deliver and that was available to them, our more seasoned teachers found it a little bit challenging. And so we'll share that data and get feedback, you know, anytime you implement a new curriculum. And then the workload, talking about also pay and work-life balance, a challenge. It's in our profession. We work nonstop. And so those were some of the

078reasons that they considered. But at the end, the overall sentiment was, even though these are challenges, I love the district, I want to stay in the district, and I'll continue to be in the district. And so that was very positive for us. Goal number three, develop highly qualified leaders who make a significant impact. Based on this, we know the need for our leaders to be strategic, to be supportive, to understand all the things that they need to have those leadership qualities. And so we take it upon ourselves as a department to share with them. different opportunities as it relates to human resources, one being all the changes in the laws, making sure that they're aware of their ethical and legal obligations, as well as providing them tools, templates, verbiage to help them in their investigations

079and in their documentation because we want them to be fair, we want them to lead with integrity, and we want to promote fairness when they are making sometimes difficult decisions. We provide that ongoing training in the summer. We do it during principals' trainings that are happening monthly, and then we have on PLC opportunities sometimes with our auxiliary district leaders and other supervisors across the board, not just at the campus. Awesome. And before we leave this topic, I do want to compliment our area executive directors. They lead our pathway program and our lead program. And last week, I think it's the first time we've done this, or at least since I've been in the district, where we did mock interviews with those individuals. And so we were putting partners, and then they came in, and we

080did an interview like we were interviewing them for an assistant principal position or a principal position. That lasted 20 minutes, and then we asked them to step outside, and we talked with groups, and then we brought them back in and gave them very honest, transparent feedback on what they did well and what they need to work on. And that experience was, to me, very – I've never received that type of feedback. Most of us haven't, and so it was just very eye-opening to deliver that information, and they were very appreciative of it. And that was just part of the program that they did this year, so they revamped our leadership. development and we feel like that's moving in a very strong direction. The last piece we have, we have two slides left, is with board

081support, we are recommending a transition with our contracts for teachers and administrators moving forward. And so right now, after the probationary period, our administrators and our teachers who are not on continuing contract are on a two-year term contract. We're recommending that we transition to a one-year term contract. The reason for this is, there's two reasons for this. One, It provides the district with greater flexibility, whether it be with performance concerns or if there's enrollment changes or campus needs. The term contract still provides the same protection for the teacher and the administrator. It's just not extended over two years. And that leads to the second reason, is that with the two-year contract, many districts, in fact, in our regional meeting that we had a few months ago, this was a topic that we discussed as regional

082HR. leaders. Many districts have made this move or they're discussing this move just like we're discussing it tonight. The second is just it reduces risk and so it limits multi-year obligations when there are personnel or employee concerns. And for example, if there's a performance concern or misconduct that happens in the fall semester, sometimes that contract can create restraints. over the next two years and in legal matters and financial matters and employment action matters. And what that does is that makes it more difficult to address. So that's the reason why we're putting that out there. First of all, that last bullet is if teachers are on a continuing contract, our recommendation is we don't change that. They were grandfathered in the last time. It went from three years to two years for administrators several years ago.

083But we do want to share a proposed timeline if we were to move forward with this direction. And the timeline would be on this slide. First of all, for administrators who are on a two-year term contract, that would be us at the table included, that no action would be taken by the board and our two-year contract would continue until the end of next year, which is 26-27. And then at that point, we would bring one-year term contracts to the board for approval. And then so administrators would go first, and then the phase-in would be that teachers would follow the following year, where starting in 26-27, no action would be taken on the two-year term contracts. Those would expire in 27-28, and then we would bring one-year term contracts. I also want to say that if

084we were to move in this direction, we're also recommending that we have teachers and administrators on probationary contracts right now, and our recommendation is instead of offering a two-year term, which they haven't had, give them a one-year term for next year. And so something to consider that there's not board action on that piece. However, we would want board feedback on that because it's which contract we bring to the board in future board meetings. Okay? So that is all of our information regarding our HR updates at this time. If there are any questions, we'd be glad to work on answering those. I have a couple questions. And it's really just for clarification for everybody. So will you explain a little bit about the, you said we have 1% of our teachers are uncertified in non-content areas.

085So can you give me an example of that? So if you had a PE teacher that was uncertified, that would be a non-core content area. Or like foreign language, an elective teacher. Okay. I know I think sometimes I see it a lot in your CTE classes. Maybe they have the industry experience, but maybe not a certified teacher yet. So that would be like a plumber. Well, Dean, they would never obtain teacher certification, so the state allows us to provide a local permit. Okay. And so those teachers are also included in that 1%? Okay. Another thing back on slide four where we're talking about class sizes. So I know if there are any teachers that are going to watch this, they're going to be like, well, I wish my secondary ELA class was at 14 students,

086right? And so does this include... Like our in-class support teachers and our resource teachers and our ABLE teachers, those teachers that maybe either may not have, may not be teacher of record for anybody, or if they are, maybe they have. six to ten kids in our classroom at a time. Yeah, it would include all of those parameters. And so I agree with you that if you go into, you know, the extremes, bring that up or down. But I'll also tell you statewide, they're probably not at 16.4 either. And I think that, you know, when you look at resource classes and little population classes, it does give sort of a false sense of that number. Perfect. And that may be why our foreign language classes seem bigger because they don't have resource. Because they're isolated, so

087they're looking truly at those. Yes, they have everybody in there. Well, but they don't statewide either, so it is apples to apples. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. Okay. My last thing is that the teacher certification open house that you all put on, I've heard, was very valuable to the people that attended. So good job on that, and I hope you keep that going. Yeah, Brooke Bingham brought that idea, and she implemented that event, and it was very well attended. It was at the Professional Development Center. It was not a good night, meaning it was rainy. I remember we were worried about it, and we had, I believe, over 100 participants show up asking questions, and we had several vendors there, and it was a great event where we would talk to them. and see what

088their status was, how much education they had, and then we would route them to the person that would be the best program for them. So it was the first time we've done it, and we'll do it again. Can I ask some contract questions, please? Sure. And if you need to get this information forwarded to us, that's fine. But first, how many people do you estimate, how many do we still have on continuing contracts? Yeah, I'll have to get that exact number for you. It has to be a small number. It's bigger than anything. It's bigger than you think. It's not necessarily bad. Yeah. That means they've been here a long time. Right. And we did pull that number. I just don't have it on the top of my head, but I remember seeing it, and

089it was. 400 and 500. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm surprised. Anyway, concerning the two-year term to one-year term. Let's make sure we're looking at our micro-competitive market over here because a two-year term may be a benefit that we can sell instead of monetary. At least you got a job for two years in Goose Creek. So let's not cut our nose off, spite our face. Now, if everybody in our micro-market over here is doing a one-year term, then that's a non-sale. But let's check into that as well. We can do that. Yeah, thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Andrea, would you turn your microphone on, please, sir? I talk loud enough. You all hear me. I just figured I'd turn the music off. Compensation for teachers. See what I mean? Compensation for teachers that qualify for TIA.

090How are you all rectifying that situation? Some of them weren't awarded. Correct. So as a district, we have decided to go ahead and pay out what they would have earned. There was a handful of teachers that the data submission, they were missed on the final submission. And so our associate director of compensation met with each individual to explain the error and that the district would honor the amount of money that they earned. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you all for that report. And while we're transitioning to the next one, we're going to take a five to ten minute recess. The time is now 7.46 p.m. The time is now 7.56 p.m. We are reconvened. Dr. Rodriguez will continue with superintendent reports. Yes, we have the... Okay, good evening again. I have brought my team,

091three of our amazing principals, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Munoz and Ms. Burt are here with Karen and Kevin and I. So we want to update first on the continuation. We've added spring benchmarks. And again, this is Tier 1 instruction, Domain 1, does not include growth or CCMR. So I wanted to kind of let you follow what's going on. We are crossing our fingers. We're seeing a possibility of a C for Asheville. So we're hoping with that growth component, we'll hit that. But we're trying to just look at worst case scenario. Carver is looking to be a C. And so we're really hopeful for that, which would take both of those campuses out of targeted status. DZ, you can see where we're trending there. Harlem trending a little up there. Highlands L, that one's got me

092a little worried. It tends to jump between a 69-70 there. Punt Free has made great growth, and I feel like you're going to see a big improvement there, especially with the growth at that campus. Baytown Junior is steadily trending up. Ms. McKeon is working really hard at that campus. CBJ, we are constantly in conversations with him and making sure we're monitoring that instruction as well. Of course, man's trending up a little bit, but we are definitely hoping for a C at that campus. And then if you can see a huge increase with the virtual academy, we put in some different processes and procedures in that 90. In reality, I'm going to be really, really excited with an A. I want to be literal, but right now even without CCMR and Gradway, she's trending at a

09390. So that's exciting news on that list of 10. Then currently the three we want to showcase and bring to you, three new campuses. I'll start from the bottom up since I've got Mr. Brooks right here and I'll turn it over to Mr. Brooks for you. Good evening, Mr. President, board members, and Dr. Rodriguez. I'm here on behalf of Robert E. Lee to speak on our progress throughout the school year. Although that 75, including the spring benchmark, does not make me all warm and fuzzy on the inside, I will tell you it is growth from last year. During the start time, we were at 72%, you see there. So without CCMR, we were already three points ahead of where we were. Last year, we credited that to our PLC process, ensuring we are making sure

094we understand the curriculum to be facilitated to students. It's also an opportunity for our teachers to learn and grow from each other, those teacher moves that make impact for student progress and student growth. Our ESOL program, I want to celebrate them. We've restructured that. that classroom setting with staffing and our students who are learning English as a second language or other than English language other than English are making progress. So much so we're looking at possibly adding an ESLOL3 next year for an elective to ensure that progress continues with that student group that historically has hit us negatively when it comes to accountability. Our U.S. history, our biology continue to set the standard for us with those high-level numbers of meets and masters on CUA's benchmarks and the upcoming star. We're going to project that

095and claim it now. English 1 has been revamped, so I look forward to the progress being shown there. Areas of opportunity for growth for us will continue to be our Algebra 1 team. With the new curriculum, our team has championed. being uncomfortable, learning how to empower students to grapple without overly helping them throughout the process. Our rare days help us spiral back information so that we can address misconceptions in real time. I'd be remiss without saying my responsibility in this progress is to continue to grow as a leader, make sure I'm abreast of the current effective teacher trends, teacher moves to move the pedagogy or move the needle the right way for Robert E. Lee and our students. And that's without our CCMR. And that's our celebrations and areas of growth. Okay, Luis. Good evening,

096everyone. For us, we see that we began the year with a 69. Beginning of the year last year, as far as he's been, we ended with a 69. When we took the assessments for beginning of the year this year, NWE maps, CUAs, we dropped down to a 60. Now we did take our last benchmark in the month of spring and what we saw is a jump from 60 to 67. And why is it that that occurred? When I looked at the assessments that we took, we took reading, math, science, and social studies, and what we see is that in all the assessments that we took, five out of the eight were above district average. Now, we are nowhere where we want to be. We're not aiming for district average, but that's the first step. We're

097moving in the right direction. We want to be at the state level. And so one of the reasons I ask myself, why is this happening? Why is it that we're getting those gains when it comes to reading, sixth grade reading, seventh grade, mathematics, sixth grade, mathematics, eighth grade, and science? And it's because of the work that we're doing in POCs. And it is being uncomfortable with the conversations that we're having. So we ask ourselves tough questions. We begin with a process of, okay, what is it that we want to get us to walk away from today's content? And we move forward Monday through Friday. Do we always walk away happy in our PLCs? No. Sometimes we will walk away with some discomfort, but that's okay because that's what's going to move the needle. and it

098has been moving to New York school. One of the last pieces to our PLC process was beginning small groups to instruction. And we've done that consistently over the last six, seven weeks in language arts. Coming from elementary, small groups is something that you do on a daily basis. When it comes to junior high, That's an area that we need growth and we're seeing it at this time. We have small groups, we also began implementing small groups of mathematics and teachers are seeing the gains. As a matter of fact, one of the teachers said to me, I don't know why we didn't start this sooner. I see the impact it's making on students outcomes. So one celebration for us as a campus would be that we're moving the needle. Five out of the eight assessments we're

099above district average, not where we want to be. We want to be at the state level because our kids deserve that. And two is the fact that teachers are embracing small groups. Language Arts, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, our goal is to do and practice is to do them on Fridays. We look at Tier 1 instruction Monday through Thursday, and on Friday we look at Tier 2 instruction when it comes to small groups. Are we where we need to be, even in small groups? No. There's the pedagogy that we need to work with, the practices of the systems, but we're slowly moving that needle in that direction. One of the areas that I see lots of need for improvement would be social studies. When we looked at the assessment that we just took, the benchmark,

100we were at the bottom. And so one of the questions we asked, well, why are we there? And we do, I mean, I can tell you that I have some new teachers, one brand new teacher. I can tell you that I have a teacher who has been there for three years. But the reality is we're still there. And so we've been working with them in PLCs to, number one, increase their content knowledge and to the pedagogy. And slowly but surely we will get the outcomes that we need and that our kids deserve. Good evening, Board. My name is Paige Berg, Principal at Victoria Walker Elementary. Last year, you can see on our STAR Domain 1, we were a 72C. When we started the fall, it included our fall benchmark CUA and middle of the year,

101we also were a 72C. And now, including our spring benchmark, you can see that we did go up to a 74C. Whenever you're looking at this data, it is contributed to our targeted small groups in the sense of being strategic by selecting certain students. Whenever we have our data conversations, it is very specific. We want to know where this student is. How many more questions does that student need to be able to reach approaches, meets, and masters? And we've been putting a lot of emphasis on meets and masters, as you can see, according to our data. We even held goal conversations last week, and this week we're still finishing some, where they are meeting with us as administrators and TLCs. And, you know, we're not telling the students, okay, you need 20 more percent because

102what does that look like? But I'm also talking to them about how many more questions you need because that's more realistic. If you can tell me I need to get two more questions correctly, what does that sound like? So those are the goal conversations that we have with each of our students. They're also walking away with a student action plan that they're creating. And those are for our third, fourth, and fifth grade students right now. In addition to that, we're utilizing student work samples, which are those artifact-based things from Bluebonnet that we're discussing in those PLCs to determine any misconceptions. We understand that right now that this resource, there may be some misconceptions with our students. So how are we going to close those gaps? That's what we're focusing on in those small groups so

103that we can make sure that we're targeting them. We're also utilizing the lead forward document to look at the TEKS. What takes are going to give us the biggest bang for our buck right now? And then we're utilizing that to be specific with those particular students. If you were to drive by Victoria Walker on Saturday, you would have seen us there. You know, we invited students up there. My TLC was present with me and we were targeting those specific students who we need to show the growth in addition to reaching out to the community. Hey, bring your kids to me on Saturday. You know, they want to see that. Also, one thing that I want to talk about is our key focus that I feel like we do need. Currently, we need to strengthen our

104kinder through second instruction. That is the foundation. If our kids don't have the foundation, we're going to continue to see these gaps in third through fifth. We are seeing the deeper internalization needs. that need to be done when it comes to Bluebonnet and the time limits that we have with those constraints. So one of the things that the district did provide us during our last principal meeting is the possibility of going to departmentalized with kindergarten through second grade in order for those teachers to really key in on their content knowledge expertise and really focus on one subject at that time. And I feel that that's going to be a great benefit and I appreciate the district allowing us that autonomy. with that particular time change. Okay. Are there any questions for our principals or any

105of us? Friendly. Working hard. That's a big step. I just have a question, though. How do you all feel with the presentation that was made on the teacher contract? Just a quick question. I know I'm not putting you on the spot, but it was presented. I know. I support the organization. Good answer. The rest of y'all, he's done. He did it for y'all. But do you have any, you did? You like, on the presentation of teacher contracts in one year, you know, we have long-term contracts with teachers, and sometimes, you know, would it be beneficial to look at that or unbeneficial? That's all you have to say. I'm just asking a simple question that's not simple. Yes, ma'am. I would love for us to look at those continuing contracts because we may or may not

106have teachers and classrooms on continuing contracts that require us a lot of documentation, and we're still not where we need to be in regards to that. And I have 20 kids in a classroom who are now struggling. So I would love to look at those continuing contracts. Thank you. Honest answer. She's supporting our organization, too. Go ahead, sir. Any more comments or questions? He's going to answer me. I think when it comes to, we should all be judged by the work that we do on the campus because our students deserve that. And so we need to make sure that we have the best teachers on our campuses. And to say that if the outcomes that I'm producing for a school are not what they need to, then I shouldn't be, and I hate to use

107the word, please forgive me, protected under the umbrella of a continuous contract. And that goes for everyone in the organization, including myself. Thank you. Thank you for being honest. Mr. Sampson? You know, I was wondering, I mean, you got your first team students. You know who's going to be a good student and all of this. But then you got your backups. What are we doing to try to make the backups be? more competitive with the first-team students? I mean, what are we doing as administrators, you know, teachers, the whole bit, in order to bring them up to that same level? That's a daily challenge. I believe that our goal at Robbie Lee, I'm sure I speak for my colleagues right here as well, all 1,800 of our students need to go out there in that

108world and be competitive. Greetings, speaking, critical thinking. We challenge them all. We show them the opportunities they have in front of them and trust their trust in the process that we're doing it for their best interest. But that's the goal for every one of them. I don't want any of them to be backup players. They ought to go out there and compete for a job. We push them all and try to eliminate the opportunities for them to do opposite of what we're trying to get them to do. Mischief, all that good stuff. Speak positively in them. Hold them to a standard of excellence. And be relentless in it every day. Do all administrators, teachers, and everything, is there a line where you say, this kid really don't want to listen, don't want to do, and

109you kind of put them in a compartment and say, I'm not going to worry about that, particularly kids. I'm going to worry about these kids who really want to be here and want to learn and want to achieve. Do you think we have administrators, teachers, whatever, that are... On that scale that they put in one group here and you got another group over here, that's why, you know, I kind of analyze things like, you know, I'm sorry, sports, but you got your first team and you got your second team. But how can you motivate the people on the second team to want to be first team? I don't think we can afford to say this kid, we're going to put him in the second category. We're going to compartmentalize him and probably not worry about

110him because any student on our campus has played a role. And so if we allow, for example, some behaviors to go unchecked with students. That's going to start trickling down to other students. So we have to make sure that we address those behaviors with students, even academics. In an ecosystem where every student is touching it, where every student is connected to other students, we cannot afford to say, we're not looking at you. And so for me, coming in from elementary, one thing that has been helpful is to build relationships with students. I remember walking into the cafeteria the first few days, and I used to tell them, hey, and they used to sit up straight. They would look at me kind of like crazy, like, who are you? But once they start seeing that you

111care for them, you start seeing the need to change. And so we see that with our teachers, too, that the first aspects of building a successful school is building relationships with students. And then we look at the pedagogy. Then we look at the content. In my opinion, the first key ingredient is to build relationships with kids. But don't get me wrong. I don't think anyone is doing this, but I'm just. making the scenario like, hey, you got this group of kids that are doing here and you got this group of kids here. You know, you raise your child to be exceptional and basically 1,800 students are all your children. So you have to, if you look at one in the class, you got to look at, Number 1800, you know, because I sit up on

112the stage of graduation and I see the top 10, top 20, and they come across that stage and they are, you know, like Superman. But then later as they get in the walk across the stage, you know, they look like Tiny Tim, you know, because they're not, they don't know where I'm going. I mean, it's like, You know, God, what am I going to do now? I don't have no place to go. You know, so when I look at the grades and I'm going, if I had D's all the way through high school, and then I'm figuring, now I can't get a job, I can't do this. So I'm just wondering the motivation you as administrators. have to put on your teachers to try to help bring these individuals up so they can feel like

113that number one kid that graduated. And I'm not saying you're not doing that, but I'm just, you know, I know I see them when they come across the stage graduating. You know, it's like deer in the headlights. You know, it's like they're afraid of what I'm going to do next. You know, so, yeah, but it's a pretty big life out in the world. You know, when you get out in the real world, I mean, we have to look at it from that aspect. You know, the only thing I'm looking at is, you know, what's on the board. Mr. Simpson, I want to commend our administrators in our district. I primarily work with elementary, but I know at least four elementary campuses who provided Saturday tutorials. Right. And for our most needy students. And in addition,

114the administrators at all four of those campuses took small groups of kids and worked with them. I think that we have a lot of people in this district who are really working to help those kids you're talking about. Yeah, I'm not saying they're not. I'm just, what's the plan? That's all I'm asking. You know, it's like, what's the plan? You know, I'm not going to walk out there and feel like I'm, you know, baby Ruth and hit the first ball like a seed across the fence because I don't know. But I'm just, you know, it's got to be a plan to everything. I would love for you to come visit Victoria Walker Elementary as you walk down our halls. You're going to see what's called graffiti walls. And we have students who get to go

115out into the hallway and sign their name with the pretty markers and they think it's the best thing ever. just for showing growth. That includes some of our low-achieving students who may have made a 10% on the last test, but now they're at a 14. That growth to them is intrinsic motivation to where they can come out and they can actually sign that graffiti wall. So it's just little things like that that I think are helping the motivation. But I would love for you to come and you can do a walk. And you can even walk down some of our 1st and 5th grade classrooms and ask them what their goal is. They better be able to tell you. I need four more questions or three more, whatever it may be. I feel you. They

116may let you sign it. Yes. I feel you. I really do. I understand that. I'm just, you know, asking the question, you know. And I'm not saying you're not doing what you're supposed to do. I'm just wondering, hey, you know. You're here, you're there, you know, you wouldn't be in the position you're in if you wasn't doing that particular job of motivating kids to be the best they can be. So that's all I wanted to hear from your standpoint. I want you to, you know, defend yourself and say, what is he talking about? He's acting like I'm not doing my job. But I want you to defend yourself and say, hey, I do my job. My teachers do their job. My administrators I have do theirs. We do our job. And that's all I was

117looking for. You know, I just wanted you to, you know, make sure the hair grew up on you. You know, that's all I wanted. Any more comments? Ms. Burke, I may take you up here. I haven't been to Victoria Walker to walk the campus yet. I've been to a couple events, but not that. So I'll probably take you up on that. We'll both come. It's a date. Mr. Sampson and I are coming. No further questions. Dr. Jackson, thank you to you and your team. Thank you. We appreciate you. We appreciate really sharing this information with the community. It was pointed out by one of our speakers that we're not afraid to put the information out. When it's out, we can talk about it. We're a team that we all have the same common goal, and

118that's student success and achievement in our district. We're going to get there. This is one good step in that direction. We're going to talk about it and make it happen, so thank you. Dr. Rodriguez, we'll turn it over for questions. Your next superintendent report. Yes, next week. All right. Good evening, Mr. President and Dr. Rodriguez and trustees. Tonight we are presenting a combined report like Dr. Rodriguez mentioned. This format is a little bit different. We're having the financial update and the budget update just in the interest of time and having so many reports to make it more streamlined. And so we'll first do the financial update, then the budget update, and we'll talk about the next steps and the calendar. All right, and we'll start off with the financial update in this press. Good afternoon,

119President Campisi, Board of Trustees, Dr. Rodriguez, and guests. Overall, I'm going to present the monthly financial report ending February 28, 2026. Brief executive summary. Overall, the district continues to demonstrate strong financial health. Revenues are performing well while expenditures are remaining aligned with our fiscal timeline. Across all funds, we maintain a healthy fund balance and we're meeting our obligations, and we continue to invest in key priorities as instruction, safety, and infrastructure. This is information on our, just a summary of our capital improvement and bond funds, and we'll go into detail on those financials later in the presentation. For our general fund, total revenues are projected at approximately $267.6 million, which is slightly above the budget due to our local tax collections being higher. State revenues are currently below projections, primarily due to the client ADA and

120the higher tax collections. We receive a little less from the state. 66% of our annual budget has been spent, which is on track with this time in the fiscal year. instruction remains the largest category function that we are seeing our expenditures in followed by maintenance administration and transportation the district is projected to in the year with a fund balance of approximately 107.5 million which is a stable fund balance our debt service fund revenues are projected at 105.5 million Our expenditures are $103.9 million and our projected ending fund balance is $43.4 million, which has the capacity to meet our future bond payments. On our food service fund, we're looking at $15.6 million in revenues, slightly above what we have budgeted. Our expenditures are returning about $24.8 million, primarily supporting the mill operations, food service costs, and

121staffing. And the fund is projected to end the year with an estimated $5.6 million fund balance, maintaining the required reserve level and stability of the ongoing nutrition services. Here is a snapshot of our capital improvement fund projects. You can see revenues have come in for the year for my Chapter 313 and FTZ funds. They were higher than what we projected at the beginning of the year because we don't know those until the funds come in. And so we're looking at an unallocated, once we highlight those projects in the 25-26 year, once we fund those projects, we're looking at an allocated amount of $7.6 million that we can utilize for future safety and security, facilities condition improvements on our campuses, or whatever may be needed. And on our 2019 bond fund, We had a voter-approved bond

122program of $335.7 million to fund district facilities and infrastructure projects. The program is approximately 96% complete, with most of the construction and facility projects finalized. Total investment earnings generated over the life of the bond are approximately $11.3 million. And the bond is currently having an unallocated savings of $356,000. That is all I have for the financial update. Questions on the financial piece? Basically what I heard is we're on track, everything's as scheduled, and we're looking good at this point, correct? Correct. That is correct. Thank you for that concise report. Did you say that we had more money come from Chapter 13? That unexpected? We got some FTZ dollars that we don't ever know until December 31st, what our inventory is, and that's how it's calculated. So the last couple of years, we've gotten a pretty

123hefty amount from FTZ, fortunately, so that's really helped us out. So how much is that that we got extra the last couple of years? I think this year it was like $3.5 million, $3.3. So both years, $3.5 million? I think last year it was like $3. Last year it was $4 million. Was it $4? Okay. Yeah, so in the last couple of years, we've done great with that. But in years past, historically, it's usually been around $800,000, $500,000 to $800,000. So we've really gotten a lot of extra revenue with that. It's important to note that that is not guaranteed. It is not guaranteed, no. You cannot guarantee it because it's based on 1231 inventory. All right, let's move on to budget update. Okay, we'll transition to the budget update, and I will turn it over

124to Dr. Bollinger to discuss the committee work. Okay, once again, good evening. And so we've shared this several times to the board of trustees, but just to make sure, you know, we did have a budget reduction committee. We met three times to discuss various items. Our last meeting was on February 25th. You can go to the next slide. So just in summary, our committee talked about program evaluation. We looked at several key programs throughout the district. We looked at just the status of our district and the progress we've made over the last three or four years. since we began reducing the budget. It's been a multi-year process and we've made some strides and we've made some gains in getting where we need to be. We also looked at a summarized version of the TASB study,

125which provided recommendations and insights on how we staff a Goose Creek versus 12 districts like us, just to give us some comparisons and ideas on further reducing staffing if needed. Here's a snapshot of some of those recommendations or even just considerations. One is to review non-benchmark positions and staffing anomalies. And what that means is that in Goose Creek, in every district, we have certain positions that we've created over the years or whether unique or customized to our district, but they necessarily don't apply. You don't see them in other districts. And other districts have unique positions that maybe we don't have. But what that can do is that can create a situation where, one, we're overstaffed in certain areas, and then two, whenever we do ask for a study or report, it's not a clean report.

126It's very difficult for a report to come back with these positions that aren't measured, so they're just not considered. And so that was one recommendation is to consider veering away from non-benchmark positions. Also looking at anomalies. If we're over in certain areas, then we're looking at reducing. In our budget reduction committee and in our conversations district-wide, we know we're down some students. We know that we're down about 800 students, about 3%. And so we want to make sure we staff accordingly moving forward so that we can afford the staff that we have. And so we are having to make some of those tough decisions. And depending on... The finalization of the master schedule for secondary, that's going to give us more or less flexibility. And so we know that our number is around reducing by

12750 positions district-wide is our target. So that's just so you kind of have a ballpark of what we're looking at is about 50 positions probably puts us in place for where we need to be. There were some comments on on being a little heavy in central office and instructional support. So we're looking at possible reductions there if needed also Some recommendations on our clerical staffing at the campus level and also non non-campus excuse me so as we review just district-wide staffing as a reminder we Reduce positions through attrition. So so if we close out positions we reassign to vacancies as they come available. And so a lot of times this is a two-year runway or a one-year runway as we have positions opened up. But we've met with Dr. Rodriguez and coming up with a

128master plan so that it's done in a systematic manner. The last challenge here is, you know, at the next board meeting, most likely, we'll be sharing some compensation data. So TASB runs compensation formulas, and they show us what is a 2% raise cost, you know, and what is a 3% raise cost, and that creates some heartburn as far as adding to the budget. But I'll tell you that we believe it's important to staff tight so that we have Meat on the bone for compensation so often when districts or companies are are stacked loosely It gives no flexibility when it comes to compensation and so with the hard work of getting staffed in a very efficient manner What will help us long term on the compensation side? And so we keep that in mind as we

129as we go through and make recommendations All right, let's get into the numbers. So looking at revenues here, what we're projecting for the next budget year, you can see everything in red is going to add to the deficit, right? Everything in black is going to reduce the deficit. So local and state funding are looking, you know, like they should. But like Dr. Bollinger mentioned, we're now trending at over 800 loss in enrollment. ADA is a percentage and a function of enrollment. So when you have a decrease in enrollment, you're going to have a decrease in ADA and therefore a decrease in revenue, right? So I factored in, because we built the budget on 21,535 ADA and we're showing now 21,242. And so that is going to hit us at about 1.8 million bucks to adjust

130the revenue down from the state level. Also, we don't have a base year yet for vouchers. This is going to be the first year upcoming in 26-27 for the vouchers to come into play, right? So we know we have 499 applications, but all those applications probably will not be accepted. But we're trying to put some kind of number in there, so we're reducing our revenue by about $1.2 million. Again, we don't have a baseline. This could be overstated as far as, you know, taking more revenue away than what we maybe need to. Maybe very conservative, but I like to go conservative. Now, if it comes in over that, I don't think it will when you take the combination of decrease in enrollment already and then the potential loss to vouchers. I think we're going to

131be somewhere in that range. But it is going to hit us, and, you know, we don't know. if and when we're going to get new charter schools in our boundaries. And we know that Bob Hope, their expansion is not going to happen until the 27-28 school year. They're supposed to expand their middle school in August of 2027. So we know that's going to be coming in the next budget year, and we'll have to account for that. But right now, this is a pretty good estimate, I think. And then that gives us total revenue of $274,000. And then unadjusted baseline expenses of $269,000, which puts us in a position of a surplus with revenue right now. But then you go to the next page, and we carry it over to the next page. So the unadjusted

132surplus is $5 million. And then you look at the adjustments. Luckily for us and all of the hard work that everyone across the district has done in the last few years, it's been very difficult and, you know, constant, you know, year after year reductions. But because we've done that hard work up front, we're in pretty good shape for this coming year. Now, we did, we are wrapping up 2019 bonds, so we did close down that office essentially. You know, it's still operational, you know. to a degree, but we didn't need all the full-time employees and the folks, the contractors and so forth. So we did save $640,000 there. We're going to make some reductions to tutoring in summer school, $500,000. Supplies, $300,000. various program reductions, small reductions here and there, about $400,000. And then this

133item here in the middle is one I want to discuss with the board and get your direction on. We want to... of course, keep the health care premiums down, and we didn't want to pass those on to our employees for next year, but we know we're going to have to pay those expenses from now until we go back on TRS care, which is September 1. But we've got this summer, and then we've also had to buy some stop-loss insurance to also further protect our fund balance, which was suggested by the consultants. But nonetheless, we have, as Ms. Price said earlier, $7 million in capital improvement projects, right? And we know that money is not every year guaranteed, but we know we have it this year. And we know we're going to have to pay these

134healthcare contribution amounts at about $5.3 million. So that's one-time cost, right? And it's one-time money. So my suggestion... The recommendation is to use that capital improvement project when fall to cover those health care contribution costs because they're both one time and we won't have to make that up again next year. So that's my suggestion on that with the board's guidance. We also have the red items you see here are going to add to the deficit, of course, the behavior coordinators that we're adding. That's six of them. There is a 5.5 master schedule cost here included. It has the potential to be reduced if we decided to have a pilot for that program and not go full scale for the first year. But we'll also need guidance on that. We have to add some special ed

135positions. There's no way around that. We've got an expanding special ed population, and they need those services, and there's just statutorily and everything else, we really need to add those positions. So that's hitting us about $1.5 million. We're adding some stipends for our campuses that need extra support to get them out of the danger zone with repeated D's are lower. So we've got that factored in there. We're showing a slight increase in overall insurance. Our property insurance actually went down, but our automobile and student and some of the other insurances went up. So it's not a lot, but across the board, it's about $155,000 so far. This is just an estimate on the additional funding requests that we'll receive from departments. Those are due on March 31st, so we should have a firmer number once

136we get those in and compile all that data. We did factor in a 2% pay increase, which is about $4.3 million. And you see that puts us at a deficit of just about $2.8 million or about 50 positions, give or take it, $55,000 being the average salary across the district. So remember that number because it's going to carry over here as well. So this is just some illustrations and scenarios. You can see here this very first scenario. This is without a raise. So you could see here if we took the revenues and expenditures and the one-time capital improvements transfer in and the health care insurance coverage, $5.3 million, that would actually give us, without a raise, just all things equal, we would actually add to the fund balance just slightly by about $1.5 million. and

137that would increase our fund balance to 109, and you see we're well within the three months required reserves, three months operating expenses. That would be 68 million, just over 68 million for that. Scenario two are all the same criteria other than the general pay increase would be 1%, estimated at about 2.5 million, maybe 2.6, something like that, just an estimate. And that would put us in the red by just over a million dollars. And at $55,000 per position, that would equate to a reduction of about 20 positions on that scenario. And it would give us a balanced budget. There would be no overage or under. So we'd remain at the $107.6 million fund balance. Scenario three is what we are recommending, which is the 2% raise, which is $4.3 million, which, as you saw on

138the previous slide, would be a deficit of about $2.8 million. We'd have to reduce about 51 positions through attrition across the district, and that would put us at a balanced budget. And again, at the $107.6 million fund balance estimated at the end of 2027. Plenty of reserves. We're in a great position, much better than we have been in years past. Haven't had to make those deep cuts this year, thankfully. So, next steps is going to be incorporate any feedback you all give us tonight on what your thoughts are, and then we'll plan on approving that budget reduction plan at the 4-6 meeting. There's one thing that did change on the calendar from last time because we changed top 10 to March 30th. And so what we can do because of the back-to-back nature of the

139next board meeting being on April 6th, the only way to do it with posting guidelines and those shortened timelines on the posting requirements would be to add it to the special or, excuse me, the top 10 night. If we needed to, both. I'm not sure that we do unless the board requests it for additional information for the reduction plan. Given it's pretty cut and dry this year with the reduction plan, we don't have anything major, controversial that we're reducing this year, thankfully. But at the board's pleasure, we'll certainly provide more information on the 30th and add it to that top ten if we need to, if you all would like more information. But with that, I will open it up for questions. Anyone, go. Go ahead. I'll tell you. So what I am seeing is

140that we're going to spend $2.25 million on a 5x5 schedule, which comes pretty close to the amount that we're going to make short. You're correct. Yes. So for me, that's just another reason that we don't need to do that this year. So with that being said, because we don't know what direction we're going, do we leave it in there or do we not? If we're piloting it, that number would be greatly reduced. And what I hear, Ms. Clark, is that you've presented a very conservative trying to take into account everything so there's no surprises. So I guess what it comes down to, the temperature of the board doesn't sound like we want to go a full-scale 5x5. I still have a lot of questions before we implement an EVAL in school. So let's set that

141aside and let's look at the budget portion of it. And are we comfortable moving forward to approve a budget reduction on the 6th, or do we need to meet again for more information? Just kind of keep that in the back of your mind while we have more discussion about this budget reduction plan. Any other comments on budget reduction? The additional SPED positions, that's how many people? I can help answer that. Yeah, go ahead. Excuse me. It's off in my head. We're adding teachers and paraprofessionals to our SILP program. We have an increase in our students' commet from. a program called ECSE. I'm not the expert on this, by the way, but ECSE into SILC. And so when we're looking at that population growth at the elementary, we're adding four SILC teachers, and then each SILC

142classroom has to have two paraprofessionals. And so that's part of that. And then the other part of that is with a few other additions. And we've met several times with our special ed team to get where we need to be. We are low on the assessment side, so when we look at our diagnosticians, our LSPs, they are overworked because we're understaffed in that area, so we're looking to add that a little bit to help support that group. So that's where that number comes from. But we're understaffed because there are no people to hire. So it doesn't matter how much we budget. Where are we going to get the people? Yeah, well, I would say that that's partly why we're understaffed, but also we don't have enough. We need more positions. And so we need more

143positions in the diagnostician area and the LSSP area for the assessment. We're not filling the positions we have right now. To an extent, but we're also understaffed in those areas as well. We also have made adjustments to help attract more. We've gone to a one-day remote. schedule on that self to try more assessments because we contract it out when we don't have enough and so we're working at again increasing and attracting those in that field but you're right it's very competitive they'll offer district to district because they're in high demand I just think almost one and a half million dollars extra is really pushing the envelope we're not filling the positions we have now But with that amount, as he said, what is the number? Do we have a specific number that we're targeting? How

144many we're adding? It's ten paras and five teachers. Okay. That makes sense. That's what they're requesting. Yeah. And then the stipends are what we talked about for our low-performing schools. That's correct. Yes, sir. Because it was just... I'm going to be the devil's advocate on 5x5. I haven't said a whole lot yet, but I truly believe it's like we have to think about it the way we thought about bringing in Lyles and early learning academies. And my comment at that time was if we continue to do the same thing we do every year, we're never going to get better at teaching pre-K. So we made an exceptional philosophy change. And the same thing in high school and junior high. If we keep just plugging away, doing the same old thing we've always done, we're going

145to keep getting the same results. So I'm intrigued by the 5x5, and I think I support it. Like this guy, I need a little more convincing, but I'm pretty close to being convinced. With that said, I don't think you have board support for that. And I'm not the guy that's going to convince three others to do it because I don't have that capability right now. What even is a pilot program going to look like? And when the first of the month comes and I move from pilot program to regular high school, what happens? I believe there's an update tomorrow, so we should receive more information tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow from the state. So, Ms. Clark, what does that look like if we were to go with scenario three, which incorporates all the scenarios, including

146the five-by-five? What does that look like if we approve this? budget reduction plan, but then we don't go five by five, how would that look and what would happen next? That would just change the, we would not have to reduce by the 51 positions necessarily. I mean, maybe a couple here and there if we, just to be conservative, just to, you know, make sure we're being fiscally conservative. But it would basically balance our budget, essentially. I mean, we'd have a few hundred thousand dollars to work with, but. but it would essentially balance the budget, yes, without further position reductions of too many. So it's just taking that conservative approach. Right. Any comments from my right side? Oh, just, I mean, we need to wait for the information on that and then make an educated, you

147know, get an educated solution. So do I need to call a special meeting on the top ten night from one item board meeting to address this as a workshop? Yeah. All right, Ms. Clark, I'll call a special meeting. Do we want it before or after the top ten? Before we put us at – what time does top ten start? Six. So it will be after Top Ten. Thank you, Ms. David. Okay. I'll call the one-item special meeting to follow Top Ten on April 6th. Okay. We will be here until 12 at night. March 30th. March 30th. Yeah. Ms. Garcia, did you take that? Thank you. Yes, we're still talking about that. Let me ask this question. On this 5x5, is everyone in the loop? I mean, every department? Because it seems like the last time

148you presented that it was some people that, I don't know what they're talking about. You know, it's like they were in La La Land. So is everybody, athletics, band, all of these extra crits? I can't say curriculum activities are going to be in the loop about the five by five program. They recommended it, I assume. Yes, Mr. Sampson. And we had a little workshop where we invited fine arts and athletics to come and do a little workshop for a couple of the board members. And we're welcome to do that again for you all or do it in a workshop in a full group. But, yes, they are supportive. Both of them, those departments want it. And we've been in full contact with HR about this as well as all of CNI and the principals. So

149I don't know if there's anyone else I've missed, but yes. And Lee Martinez has spent a lot of time talking to other districts, and he's made a contact with United and Galena Park, and he's done some troubleshooting with them of the pros and the cons. Yeah, I was just curious about that because I know the last time when y'all presented, they were kind of, you know, they looked kind of lost. Well, we're in a good point now. We have a plan. And Monday we'll let y'all know how we're going to do that. Is there anything that this board wants Ms. Clark to address and prepare for our next meeting? Because that will be the final before we have to call for the vote, correct? Correct. Is there anything else we'd like her to address? We

150don't have enough money to address anything else. We're lucky to get this down at a 2%, if you will. Just to clarify, though, you want to go into detail on 5x5, and then I'll prepare scenarios with the 5x5, without the 5x5, and maybe something. Or maybe a pilot 5x5, and then you all can decide on which scenario you'd like to vote for. Is the board comfortable with that approach? Good. Thank you. Thank you so much. One more, Dr. Rodriguez. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. Good evening, President Campisi, Dr. Arby's, board members. Again, yes, this is going to be a board update on the turnaround plans for Asplos Smith and for Carver Elementary. The purpose of the update will be to provide an update on the district turnaround campuses, review the implementation of those plans,

151highlight monitoring systems, share the early progress indicators, and then also outline next steps. So for both of these plans, the original plan was approved by the board on November 10th, but was not accepted by TEA due to its lacking strategies for the 26, 27, and 27-28 school years. We need to add those additional use strategies and resubmit by March 24th. So you may be asking how come one plan was accepted and two plans were not accepted. And so after President Campisi and it also went to Dr. O'Brien in January, our rejection letters, it said because Aspel, Smith, and Clarkburg did not address the 26, 27, and 27, 28 school years. It only addressed one year. After that, we had a, Dr. Rodriguez came on board. We scheduled a TEA Webex call with our TEA rep.

152And I do want to preface these, these turnaround plans were not, this was the first time in three years they asked us, they asked anybody in the state to submit these. In doing so, they asked us to reach out to our Region 4 reps and our TEA reps for assistance in these plans, which I did a couple of times. The Region 4 rep looked at our plans. The TEA rep looked at our plans. And so when we had our WebEx call, that was a question that came up. You looked at the plans. How come one plan was accepted and the other two were not? One of the comments that were made was that 60% of the plans that were submitted through the state were rejected. And so that was one of the comments. The other

153comment was that, let's see what I wrote down here, I'm sorry. It was 60% of the plans were rejected. And then also, it was also stated that the requirements changed midstream. There were some additional things that the TA asked us to do in the middle of our submissions. And so for ASCO Smith and Carver, I had already met with Region 4, I had already met with the TA rep, they told me that those plans were good to go. The Virtual Academy was the other one that we had to submit. And the reason that one got accepted and the other two did not is because we had to do what was called a diagnostic because it hadn't had one in three years, the virtual academy. And so TEA was, well, Region 4 was delaying our results

154on that. So I reached out to TEA and said, hey, our deadline's coming up. What do we need to do to make sure that this plan gets submitted and it gets accepted? And so she walked me through the entire plan. But she incorporated the part that was added in the other two plans. We did not because we already talked to them about those and she said that those were good to go. And so they got kicked back. So we worked on those plans. I have worked with Region 4 again on those plans because we had to submit those by March 24th, which is tomorrow. But we wanted to talk to you guys before we submitted them. I've worked with Region IV, I've worked with TA again, and both of them have stated that according to

155the guidelines and the rubric that is outlined and based on the TA letter that we got back saying that we were missing one year, we meet the requirements now to make sure our plans get accepted. Now, they won't come out and say, yes, your plan will be accepted because she can't do that alone, but only the Commissioner of Education can accept the plan, but they said we meet the requirements. I will tell you that the downfall, if for some reason it does not get approved again, that's something we wanted to make sure the board was aware of. In that TA letter, it outlines that if the plan is not accepted the second go-around, that the commissioner has the authority to come in and remove the board and remove the superintendent. And so we wanted to

156make sure we were very diligent with this plan to make sure that it's going to get accepted. I'm meeting with Dr. Rodriguez tomorrow afternoon to make sure we're going through the plan one more time before it gets submitted. And so we're taking this very, very seriously. And so before I move on and share the plan with you, I want to ask, do you guys have any questions about what was talked about so far? I don't have a question, but this is kind of serious. It just takes a move. The board and the superintendent. So that's one of the options. Yes, sir. And so when we get in and look at our plan, there are certain areas we had to address. And the first one was we had to have a strategy focus. And our focus

157is we are focusing on intensive curriculum and instruction improvements. We're doing that district-wide, but specifically at these two campuses. We are focusing on the high-quality Tier 1 instruction. We have implemented the blue-bonded materials. The other thing is curriculum fidelity. At the NPSU campuses there are curriculum fidelity walks with campus and district leadership as well as with Region 4. There's data driven instruction monthly. The principals during their PLC, they look at their data to make sure that they're on track to hit their goals. We are looking at their PLC systems. And then leadership and coaching. Even the AEDs, the area executive directors, are receiving, Dr. Conklin and Ms. Thomas are receiving Region 4 support about coaching instructional leadership teams and things like that. The other area we had to address was our instructional systems. And so

158we had to look at our weekly PLC meetings. And so they meet one to two times a week. to focus on internalization, they look at student work analysis, they look at their data, and then they look at their coaching cycles. We had to look at curriculum implementation. One of the questions is what curriculum are we using? And we put down we're using Blue Bonner for reading language arts and mathematics. The master schedule was also aligned to meet those requirements of instructional minutes. So district-wide we did a master schedule. Monitoring. Monitoring happens through our weekly walkthroughs. Again, that we just talked about. There are monthly PLC data reviews. There are district support visits from Region 4. And then there's implementation fidelity checks. We had to address what are we using for assessments. And so we have

159our beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year screeners. This year we're using our MIRA and NWA map. We use district benchmarks. We use the blue-bonnet assessments. We use the fall and spring benchmarks through TFAR, which is the Texas Formative Assessment Resource, which is put out by TEA. Those questions are aligned to the STAR test. We use state assessments, and then that is reviewed during the PLC and leadership meetings. And so we had to address three years. In year one, they wanted us to focus primarily on implementation. And so year one, we're looking at establishing strong instructional systems, ensuring the curriculum is done with fidelity, provide teacher coaching, and then strengthening our POC structures. For year two, it's more of an instructional refinement that is strengthening data-driven instruction, improving instructional

160consistency, and then leadership ownership of those improvement systems, like transferring that over to the campuses. And then year three, we have to look at sustainability. We transfer the campus ownership of those systems. So it's more of a... but year one and two, us coaching the campus leadership, and then year three kind of turning it over to the campus, sustaining that instructional improvement, and then embedding monitoring and coaching. We had to put who would monitor. So the monitoring personnel would be the campus principals and their instructional team, principal supervisors, myself as the district school improvement leaders, the superintendent, region four support, and then we would have regular progress reviews and data meetings. And then board updates, we will update you on their student achievement growth, the instructional implementation fidelity, attendance and discipline trends, teacher retention, and

161assessment progress. And that's provided monthly in the form of superintendent reports. As far as next steps, we need to continue to implement our turnaround strategies, monitor the assessment data, provide the leadership coaching. report progress to the board regularly and then we have to resubmit our plan with the 26, 27, and 27, 28 school years added by the March 24th deadline. And at this point, if you have any questions. Who all was involved in writing these plans? Because obviously you're sent to the guillotine to present. So it was a collaboration and so The principals had input, and so we did talk about the plans with the principals. The 80s had input. But as far as writing the plan and submitting it, that was myself along with my support from Region 4 and TEA. Okay, thanks. In

162the assessment, I think you mentioned quite a few times the POC. I think that's going to be your most targeted. thing that's going to have to really make this mechanism work. Yes, ma'am. So one of the things they did is they have a PLC protocol and it's all evicted all their PLC protocols. Like what does a PLC look like? How is it ran? And so their protocols were reestablished. They do have what's called product advisors, but they come to some of the campuses and their PLCs from Region 4 because we are implementing Bluebonnet. So they're there to assist them with some of that PLCs. They actually also walk alongside them with the implementation walks to make sure that the teachers are using the curriculum with fidelity. When we spoke about Bullbonnet early on and a

163few board members prior to this, we were given the information that Bullbonnet was kind of changing and wasn't quite targeted what we had expected. Did I miss something on that? Maybe I heard that and didn't hear it. Are we on target with what our children are learning, what we had expected to receive from Blue Bonnet, but when it was presented to us initially, that the state is holding up with their end of it for Blue Bonnet, or we are being challenged with that? So what I would say is if you walked into any classroom right now, but that usually will be a blue-bonnet curriculum, you will see Tier 1 instruction at the level it needs to be at. The student talk. But we're seeing the classroom, the students grappling with that curriculum. The curriculum's hard.

164And it's at a higher rigor. And so we are seeing progress with that. We are seeing... You walk into every third grade classroom, if you go from one to the next one to the next one, they're all teaching the same stuff. They're all at the same part and this and the other. So that part, the consistency, I believe is a huge advantage of what we've gotten from the Blue Bottom. And again, the students are writing more, they're reading more. The sufficient in those classrooms is that the instruction is... is headed in the right direction. That's what I'm seeing. Okay. Thank you. Well, you're honest, so thank you for saying that. That's what I wanted to hear. And we're seeing it, and it is making a difference. Yes, ma'am. And we're not just spinning our wheels

165on something that we've bought into for the whole body. Yes, ma'am. So thank you. Now, this is year one of implementation, so there are some growing pains with it, but our teachers have been... The list internalization is tough, but they're getting through it. And so we're seeing them progress. Any other questions? And the deadline to turn this in is tomorrow. It's tomorrow at 5 p.m. Okay. And then, Mr. Husband, for the benefit of the board, when will we hear back from TEA that our plan was accepted? We ought to hear back in two weeks is what it says from our submission date. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Mr. Hudson. All right. That concludes superintendent's reports. We'll move on to item number eight, action items. 8A, consideration of consent agenda. Dr. Rodriguez? Yes, thank

166you, Mr. President. I'm going to go ahead and service manage this. Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez. Are there any items that any board member would like to pull for discussion or separate consideration from consent agenda? Yes, number one. Number one, we'll pull for separate. I would like a little more information on. 8.8.2, clarification. All right. Any others? Hearing none, we are looking for a motion to approve consent agenda items 8.8.3 through 6. What is the pleasure of the board? I'll motion approve. Second. I have a motion by Mrs. Guy and a second by Mrs. Brott-Tims to approve consent agenda items 8.8.3, 4, 5, and 6. Any discussion on these items? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by a show of hands. Four. I'm sorry. I couldn't see your hand. Okay, let's do a vote again.

167All four, please signify by raising your hand. Seeing six, four, zero against, motion passes. We'll now entertain consent agenda item 8A1, library materials book list. Do you need a motion? Yes. I move to approve. a motion by mr clint one second and a second by mrs guy to bring item 8a1 library materials book list to the table now it's open for discussion miss brah temps the floor is yours oh i'm sorry mr lindoria i'm just curious as to why we're adopting books that are sexual in nature for our kids So our library materials book list was created by our librarians in following our library compliance policy. I have not read the books in question this evening. The list of books was posted for 30 days, and we did not receive public comment on any of

168those books. I do have here the title. Yes, I have those titles here with me and if the board would like us to remove those titles from the list, we can have the librarians review those to determine if we would add them or leave them on the list or remove them permanently. I do want to mention to the board that, as I shared with you back in September when I had the opportunity to address you, that we do have Insignia as our library management system. And through our library management system, parents have the ability to view their student's account in real time, and they can restrict titles for their specific student. So if a parent wanted to restrict these titles for their student, they do have the ability to do so. They should have that

169entitlement anyway. But my point is, you know, I don't agree with accepting any books. And I don't understand why, before we even brought them, that they weren't checked out before. It had to be brought to our attention that these books are in there. that are sexual in nature, there's no reason for these books to be in the library. So I will have to review these books myself to determine their sexual nature. I heard you the first time, but that's why I pulled this is because I don't agree with that at all. I understand. Talk a little bit more about the process that this was posted for 30 days. Okay, so our policy following the state's rules that came down to us over the summer was that our librarians would compile a list. That list is

170divided elementary, middle, and high school. We then post that list on our library services webpage, and it is open for public comment for 30 days, and there is a form that is shared. in the district where parents can express concerns about any title on that list. That form is also shared through ParentSquare. And if we receive any comments on those books, they are then reviewed by the librarian team. So they were, just to be clear, they were posted on our library for 30 days on our list? Yes. And to follow up on that, there was no feedback whatsoever on that? We did not receive any form of submissions. Well, they wouldn't know. How would they know? I mean, look at us. We're trustees, and we didn't know. Did you know? Yeah. You read them books?

171Well, then you didn't know. She did say it went out through Parent Square. Say again? She said it went out through Parent Square to parents. That's how they would have known. I'm not familiar with none of that, yeah. I'm a parent, but I don't know. My kids are grown, you know. But I do depend on people like him that came up today, you know, and spoke publicly and said, hey, look, if we're not going to put the Bible in there, why are we going to put these books in there that talk sexual nature to our kids? That's my deal. I absolutely understand, and we know our policy is about... Goose Creek is better than that, if you ask me. Goose Creek is way... That ain't even a question. This shouldn't even be a conversation in

172this room tonight. That's where I stand with that. Have you read the books? No, I haven't. That's what I'm taking one citizen's... Well, don't let him complain. There's smoke, there's life, bro. Just for fun, give me a title. The titles that were provided to me are... Just what? If it had been with me. It has been with me. You can't read that book right now. But I will tell you this. I wouldn't pull them. I would not dare put them on that list. I'd pull them. And I won't be voting for this. I can tell you that right now. So, you know, we're just in a period in time. in life where people sneak these books into our libraries and try to pervert our children. And they're, you know, just things like that are happening

173every day. And it's up to us as adults to make sure that we're protecting our children. That's our job as trustees right here, right now. You know, and Ricky said something. We don't always agree. He mentioned it earlier. But I'm going to tell you right now, if there's even a thought that that... A book is nasty or not good for our children. I ain't even going to second guess. I'm not second guessing. It's coming off. That's just the way it is. Yeah, I agree. What I hope comes from this is that we do make this a public process and that we need to be more vigilant moving forward. Mr. Clem, I think you were going to say a few words. Maybe to end the discussion, I would like us to vote down my motion. That's

174the best thing you said all night. Based upon the AI overview of if he had been with me. mild to moderate sexual content described as having some spice, but not graphic, according to Goodreads user. The book focuses on intense emotional romance with scenes involving intimate kissing, fondling, and consensual, yet sometimes risky, sexual activity. Okay, I think we got the idea. Are y'all ready to vote? Any further discussion? Okay, so the motion on the table is to approve the book list as presented. Hearing no further discussion, all in favor, please signify by raising your hand. 04, any against, please signify by raising your hand. Seeing 04, 6 against, we are not passing that item and sending it back to administration for further review. Thank you so much. as the board president or administratively or should we

175make that in the form of a motion well we voted it down do we need to well are there other motions oh yes are there any other motions on this item thank you mr flynn yeah and then if there are none not till we read okay here are no other motions this item is now Push down the road, as Mr. Knoll said. Push down the door. Sounds better. So we'll move on to consent agenda item 882, resolution to declare a good cause exception for House Bill 3, armed security officer requirement. Coming to the table is Chief Stuart Russell. I forgot what I wanted to ask you, Chief. That's great. What can I tell you? Wait a little, Howard. I mean, that's Howard. I'm sorry. I just did this spicy. Go ahead, Ms. Brunton. Okay. Chief,

176how are you tonight? I'm doing great. How are you? Great. Thank you for this detailed, well, whoever did this, it was very detailed on the goodwill cause. I just want a little bit more clarification that we're still struggling to hire staffing for your department. Could you give me a little bit on, and please don't tell me it's money. But anyway, I know that's what you had to tell me, so give me a little bit of brief, brief, very brief, on issues that we're having still where we can't fill these positions and meet the state mandate. I feel... Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's right. My time here has been a battle with our past reputation of this department. I feel like we've made great steps in our standing here. We have improved the relationship of our

177surrounding agencies, which can incredibly help us or incredibly hurt us in the recruiting process. We're making great strides there. We have a fabulous relationship with the city of Baytown. We have a fabulous relationship with Precinct 3. Our best recruiting efforts have been through word of mouth, through people that know the officers that we have here, that know the people that are in this department and the reputation of the people that are here, and people that have been willing to take a chance on this department and take a chance on coming in here and not having their reputation tarnished. We've made some good success there. I think that we've made some positive changes in the department. I think that our, I know our reputation in the area has improved. I think that expectations of what is

178required of our officers have been risen, have been raised. And I think our other agencies see that we're trying to hire a higher quality of personnel than what was hired in the past for whatever reasons. I can't deny that because of the pay raises of our neighboring agencies, specifically school districts, that we are at a, we're on the downside there. There is a lot of wonderful things about this department. We have a lot of good things that we push and we market. We have given some people some second and third chances to come to work for us, and it's turned out really well. There are some people that don't meet our qualifications that we have said no to. If it was mandated that this department was filled and just hire anybody, we could probably fill

179the gap. But by raising the quality of people that we trust to take care of our students and our staff, we're doing everything we can. I appreciate that. Amen. Thank you. I think with so many of our neighboring districts, they use other agencies. I don't want to compare us to that because we'll never meet those standards because we won't have the money to even meet some of those folks or what they're given. But I think that the quality that you're providing is very upstanding, in my opinion. So thank you for that, and I appreciate your honesty. When we look at just school districts, though, we're not in the middle. Exactly. We're not in the middle. That's all. I just wanted to hear that and we're on that one. But we appreciate what you're doing. I

180do. Well, I put the cart before the horse again. I started with the discussion before the motion. Oh. I caught it myself this time. Progress. I'm closing my own gap here. What is the pleasure of the board on this item 8A2 resolution to declare a good cause exception for House Bill 3, armed security officer requirement? Move to approve. Second. I have a motion by Ms. Brontins and a second by Mr. Renteria. Now, is there any further discussion? Yes. I just want to say the police department that we have hired that is here now compared to the last one we had is awesome. They are doing a great job. I have not heard one complaint, if not one from unprofessional, anything about our police officers now or security. And I know they're doing a great job.

181I'm going to be voting for this. Thank you. I echo that comment, Mr. Renteria and Chief Russell. I think you deserve accolades for that. You're a true leader in that department. You turned that department around. We were already moving in the right direction, but you came over to our district and you really pushed it past there. We're next level, and I am very proud of our police department and our security officers that go along with it. I do have to say that I've been very impressed with the unarmed and unarmed security that we have. My expectations were very low, and I am very, very proud of those men and women that do that. They want to do more. They want to do a good job. They want to provide a service to the school, and

182I'm very proud. We're very fortunate to have them also. Well, Goose Creek Police Department is an organization to be proud of, and we are thankful for your leadership in that direction. Excellent job. And I hope I didn't jinx our release officer, but, you know, I just had to bring it out. Are there any more discussion items on the resolution to declare a good cause exception? Yes, I have one question. On the little bullet points on there, it talks about the things that we're doing. to help with the shortage and one of them is explore the possibility of implementing a guardian program I just want to make sure it literally just means we can have conversations about it it's not approving anything we talked about that in the agenda preparation it's only exploring it's not committal

183to that program whatsoever it's just another tool that Chief Russell is going to explore we are not approving a guardian program And that would also be under a separate action item. Yes, that would be an action item. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? A signified by a show of hands. Seeing 6, 4, and 0 against. Motion passes. We are now finally through the consent agenda. Moving on to 8B, future agenda items. Yes, thank you, Chief. Future board agenda items. Anyone? Less reported. We'll talk about that on number three. I'd like to see the audit that we were supposed to have, an internal audit on our budget that we agreed to the last time or that we mentioned the last time it hasn't been done. I'd like us to name it the Jeff Minson

184audit if we could. Okay. Just give it a name. Any other future board agenda items trustees would like to see? All right, hearing none, board training. We're going to use this opportunity to talk about board training that we actually attend. Trustees Clem, Samson, Red Drea, and myself all attended governance camp about two weekends ago down in Galveston, Texas. I'd like to go down the line. Mr. Clem, start with you. A quick 30-second to a minute share out of anything you want to talk about that happened at that training. The governance came down in Galveston. My favorite day is the Friday when it's student-led all day. And my favorite session was from Robstown ISD. And the kids gave, they taught a class. I mean, they did an introduction, a body, a lesson, and then checked for

185understanding at the end. It was awesome. They gave me a vocabulary to understand the difference between student engagement and student ownership. And when I first went in, I thought, that's the same thing. When I left, it's not the same thing at all. So we'll be talking about some of that along the way. Thank you. Mr. Sampson, anything you'd like to share? I went to a session and didn't know that. They were talking about starting a school store and they actually had items that they actually made for individuals and the money, the starter money came through the district and everything, but it was the store that students had on campus that they made. you know, different items for individuals, and they had the machines, you know, and everything there. But I was impressed with that because

186it was pretty organized in the sense you think it would be kind of Harry Carey, but it was real organized, and they actually did real well with this store. And I was saying to myself, I said, now I wonder if we had one in Goose Creek. what it would be like. But then I thought, no, I don't think everybody would be coming with an idea of a store. But this program, I really liked it because it was four individuals and they worked hand in hand and they did a lot of crafty things. And in fact, I bought one of their koozies. I don't drink anything, but... And they had letters that they put on either side of them that, you know, you could have an autograph any way you wanted to do it. But that

187was impressive to me. And that was tied to their business courses. Right. Yes. I'm sorry about that. The business course, it came through their business course. Thank you, Mr. Sampson. Mr. Echerea, any shareouts from Galveston? I went to a lot of classes. I guess the one that was best for me was the legislative updates that they brought forward, especially with SPED and some of the other things that they talked about in those. That was really interesting. But I really liked the breakfast. The breakfast was really good. Every morning they had some good breakfast. I missed Tiffany and Helen, my friends, and Jesse, but Howard and... And the president let me out. They were going to the same classes everywhere, yeah. They were acting like Helen and Timmy. Everywhere they went, they went together. I got

188two minds. But it was very educational. I'm current, normally, but it's all good. It was good. A governance camp is probably one of the best ones that I've ever attended that I like. Good. Thank you. I like San Antonio going over there, but it's not as good and formative as the governance camps. Good noise. One of the opportunities we have in my share out is these conferences and conventions. Allow trustees to get required training and elective training. The training that Mr. Renteria just spoke about was one of the required ones. I also did a required training down there. But the one that stood out for me was a three-hour course. Most of them are just one hour. one hour. And it was titled In Depth, Governing with Purpose, Mindset and Mission of Effective School Boards.

189Mr. Sampson and I did attend that one together, but we did not attend all sessions together. And we worked, it was a small group session that was actually put on almost like a team of eight, except we had about five school districts in there. And it really... Took a deep dive into the mindset behind how you govern a district, why we do the things we do, and how to come together and reach common goals. And that by far was probably my most beneficial training that I've ever been to since I've been here. Aside from, as Mr. Clem stated, is student voices on Friday. And that's just the best part of our Saturday. Friday. That's just the best part. When you hear students come and put on presentations, that's what it's all about. The best part

190was the end of the Corvette show. They had a big Corvette, and it was awesome. It was at our hotel, so it was at the convention. So I couldn't help but see it when I was going by there. So anyway, trustees, thanks for sharing your experience. Oftentimes we go to these. out of town, whether it be in Galveston, San Antonio, Dallas, or Houston. And we don't really bring it back to the community in a public forum, what we're talking about. So that's kind of my goal here, and that's what I want to do. So I appreciate y'all doing that. Now moving on to board meetings. Before we talk about law, I just want to say the future board meetings are April 6th, May 4th, June 1st, June 15th, July 13th. And also we have a

191special meeting called on March 30th. to be held right after top ten. But I'd like a quick discussion with the board. We are having very, very long meetings, and it's not by design, it's by necessity. And the question being is, do we want to look at to continue having board meetings that are long, or do we want to have two a month? Do we want to go to a workshop format, one meeting, then the next one have a board action? What's the feel of the board? Because these meetings are going deep into the night, and I don't think it's really the best. Well, if Helen and Howard quit asking questions, It doesn't matter. But I will say this. June the 15th and July 13th, I'm on nights. So I probably won't be here those two

192meetings unless we change it. I should have been here tonight. I took a day off to come in tonight. What's the temperature of the board on having these long meetings, or do we want to go to two a month? This board is taking a very proactive approach. I very much want to be here one. And that's his trouble. Oh, I thought you would ask him. Do we just keep going with the status quo? Yeah. Another option, let me jump in real quick, Mr. Sampson, before you go, is Dr. Rodriguez is very open to providing more in-depth information through board updates that could prepare us. For quicker meetings, I've actually worked with everyone that presented tonight and given them time limits before the meeting, and most of you all stuck to it pretty good. Thank you.

193But it's just a lot of information. This board's taking on a lot right now that we haven't done in the past. So it's how do we go about doing that. So some more information in the superintendent update. I can do two. I can go to two. I wouldn't be afraid of going to two if we need to. It's just something we have to do. I mean, getting information from him or us here is a lot better than sending me. I mean, I didn't get an email, you know, that kind of deal. But here, I think I can do two meetings if we have to. Mr. Clinton? I'm sorry, I heard you thinking out loud. I'm going to be perfectly honest. What did I agree to do March 30th? I'm that kid that's distracted by something

194that I don't know what's going on and I haven't heard another word y'all said. So March 30th is our top ten and we separated. I wrote that on my calendar. It's not on my Outlook calendar. It's not on my personal calendar. And it's not on this piece of paper. Are you referring to top ten? It's not on? Did I vote on that? Top 10 is an event. We scheduled a meeting that night after. Traditionally, we had a board meeting. We're going to do an agenda review, and then we're going to go somewhere and do a top 10, and then we're going to have a meeting all on March 30th. I forgot about the agenda review. Yes, I quit. Where is top 10? Well, that's a short drive from here. A special meeting. So in answer

195to your question, it's a special called meeting after top ten for the final budget reduction workshop report. Thank you, Mr. Yarrow. So we're still asking the question. Well, we're just gathering information, getting the temperature of the board. Unless we go through the agenda with purpose and say this is going to be on, let's say, early in the month, and that's going to be, you know, recognitions or it's going to be presentations, and then the next meeting is going to be everything else. We can't do recognitions at every meeting. We can't do, you know, we don't need. As good as the choir was, we don't need to be sung to every single meeting. I love that part. It's still stuff that fills in time. So we'll have to go through our existing agendas with purpose and

196divide it into equitable, equal parts. Otherwise, we're still going to stay late one night and then have another night that's 25 minutes. Yeah, correct. We have to prioritize what's most important. So if we can do it that way, you know, I can do that. I'm the one that made the comment about less reports. Sarcasm was intended. I have one quick thing on that topic as well. I think that if... We talked about with agenda and having things that may be on the superintendent report. I think that we really have to take a conscious effort, all board members, and really review the agenda prior to meeting. I think that will help us with time. Thank you, Ms. Barat-Thames, for that. One thing that I've done since I became president of this board is I've really held

197administration accountable to providing all information in a timely manner. So we are getting it in time now, I believe. But you're right, it's up to us to read it and prepare so we can just cruise through the meeting. Another thing, when Dr. Rodriguez sends out his board update, it's an invitation to ask individual questions without breaking quorum. So we can contact him. He'd want to hear from us if there are any questions on any item. He'll be happy to answer them. All right, well, thank you for that. Go ahead. One thing I was looking at, and I think you and I discussed it, is flipping the meeting. In other words, the items on the bottom, put them in the beginning after the whatever, you know, acknowledgement, put them on the bottom, and then the discussion

198items, put them on the bottom and give them a certain amount of time. There are a lot of options available to us. The only thing that we're held by statute to is having public comments at the beginning of the meeting. Some boards go into open session. They have public comments. They go into closed session, and then they handle business quickly after that. So we have a lot of different options. If this board's open to doing things different than we're used to, then I think at the next agenda review, maybe we'll see what we can do to speed things up a little bit. As trustees, And knowing the poor state of affairs that our district is in, that we've been informed of tonight and before, and constantly enlightened about, we're going to have to go to

199work. We're going to have to roll up our sleeves and go to work. And I'm not saying that we have to go to two or three meetings, but I think that we probably need to at least to start addressing some of these. items, issues that are coming up more frequently than we would if we're coming every month for one meeting. And a lot of this is things this board's asked for as well. In all fairness to Dr. Rodriguez and the administration, they're giving us what we asked for. And I think it's needed, it's necessary, but it's a time commitment. And unfortunately, I'm the president that keeps us here until 10, 11 o'clock at night. All right. It's part of the job. It is. I know administration don't like being here every night. I'd have to

200sit out here while we're talking. All right. Well, we will move into item 8C, closed meeting. The board will now recess in the closed session pursuant to one or more of the following sections of Texas Government Code. Sections 551.071, .072, .073, 074, 075, 076, 082, 083, 084, 087, and 089. No action will be taken while the board is in closed session. The time is now 944 p.m. The board will now reconvene in open session. The time is now 11.51 p.m. No action was taken while the board was in closed session. Resuming the agenda, we are on item 8E, consideration of personnel. Dr. Rodriguez? Yes, Mr. President. I have a motion by Mrs. Barat-Tims and seconded by Ms. Guy to approve teacher new hires. Any discussion on this item? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify

201by a show of hands. Did you vote? Okay. Seeing 6-4, zero against, motion passes. To approve. I'll second. I have a motion by Ms. Baroff-Thames and a second by Mrs. Guy to approve or to accept resignations and retirements as presented. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by a show of hands. Seeing 6-4, zero against, motion passes. What's the pleasure of the board? Approve. i'll second i have a motion by mr sampson a second by mrs guy uh any discussion hearing none all in favor please show hands seeing six four and zero against motion passes before i move on mr fleckton we have one more microphone i believe one's not working oh we'll get you one we have a deadline okay miss broadtons you're back in business now i see your light um

202that concludes consideration of personnel 8F, consider and take action, possible action concerning level 3 parent grievance appeal. What is the pleasure of the board? I move that the board deny the appeal and uphold the decision at level 2. I have a motion by Mrs. Guy to deny the appeal and uphold the administrative decision. Do I have a second? I have a second by Mr. Sampson to deny. The appeal and uphold the administrative decision. Is there any discussion on this item? Yes. Yes. I will be voting against this grievance for the reason that I feel like it's an injustice for one. And the second thing is this individual deserves a second chance. Thank you, Mr. Andrea. Any further discussion on this item? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by a show of hands. Seeing 5-4,

203any opposed? Seeing 5-4, and 1 opposed, motion passes. Dr. Rodriguez, item 8G. I have a motion by Ms. Renteria and a second by Ms. Brott-Tims to approve item 8G. Any discussion on this item? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by a show of hands. Seeing 6-4 and 0 against, motion passes. There being no further business before this board, this meeting is adjourned at 1156 p.m.