Pearland ISD Board Meeting - February 8, 2022

001yes ready to roll i see tony got the memo about gray thanks to me becky's gonna be late but i won't all right i call this meeting of the pearland independent school district of trustees to order on february 8 2022 at 5 p.m let the record show that a quorum of board members is present that this meeting is duly called and noticed has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings acts texas government code 551 Let the record show that Trustees Botkin, Murphy, Berry, Carter, and Scheffler are present, with Trustees Carbone and Decker on the way. At this time, we are going to go straight into, I guess we'll do opening remarks with the pledge and Jeff, and then we'll go into board recognition. Yes, Jeff. Okay, let's stand for the pledge and prayer,

002please. If you don't mind, just real quick, I want to say just a quick opening prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this gathering of trustees and people, parents, students for our district. I appreciate all the hard work that everybody's put into, all the accomplishments that we're going to acknowledge tonight, and all the future learning that is to be done. Please bless our first responders in all their endeavors in protecting our country. In Jesus' name I pray. So in lieu of lengthy remarks, I'll get you guys in and out of here. And thank you guys for all coming. I greatly appreciate it. I see some of my fellow Lions out here. Thanks for all the services you guys provide for our community. I'll turn it over to you, Mr. President. All right, Kim. If we're

003ready, we've got a lot of parents here tonight, so we'll just go ahead and move right into board recognition. Good evening. There we go. Thank you all for being here. Pearland ISD is home to some of the most talented students in the state of Texas and now comes the time that we love recognizing our students and staff for their achievements along with our community partners for their generosity. At this time I'd like to begin recognition with a Pearland ISD staple in our community, an icon, a pioneer. This individual has led the Pearland Oilers to the state playoffs 22 of the 27 years that he's been coaching with us. If you don't know, that is Pearland High School's Coach Steve Buckaloo. Come on up here, Coach Buck. Come on up here. With his winning history, this

004is why we're recognizing him today. On Friday, November 26th, Coach Bucklew earned his 800th win, and we are honored that he was at the helm of the Oiler team. It speaks volumes to the quality and success of the programs under his leadership, and a milestone of such is no easy feat. Coach Bucklew, congratulations on this monumental win, and thank you for all you do for our district. Thank you so much, Coach. Next up, we are honored to have a group with us this evening, the Pearland Lions Club. The Pearland Lions Club is a big supporter of our school district. One way they do that is by contributing over $50,000 in scholarships to our high school students for college. But another way that the Lions Club always helps us is through the Pearland ISD Angel Tree

005Project, which began in 2013 as a way for the community to provide Christmas gifts for our students in need. This year, due to the extreme generosity of our community, 698 students from our district and their siblings were able to have a Christmas they may not otherwise have had. At this time, we are so proud to recognize... Also answer the call and they help shop for the students that they are supporting, which is always a fun day over here at Walmart. Thank you again for the continued support of Parallel ISD and our Angel Tree program. Lions Club, come on up. Thanks. This keeps going in and out. This keeps going in and out. All right, guys. We'll get you guys together. Come this way. Come this way, Dallas. Doing good. Right here. There we go. so

006do i use this Good evening, folks. I have the privilege of honoring one of our own here. In fact, it's the person that usually does all this and just finished doing it, I guess, for the last time, or almost the last time. We still have students to go, but this is our Executive Director of Communications, Kim Hokut. Kim has had a 28-year career in education, of which 14 of those years were spent here, and 10 of them as the person in charge or the Executive Director of our Communications Department. So probably you have heard from her more than any other single person in your life if you keep up with Skyward and all that other stuff. Just by way of telling you. 14 years as a teacher in journalism. She is also here in this

007district, helped establish the foundation, the United for Kids organization, the Angel Tree Project, which helped over 5,000 kids since 2013, and the Rise Mentoring Program. I could go on and on with the Hurricane Harvey gift card where she raised, let's see, over $90,000, helped with the passage of the bond elections. and many other things. And one other accomplishment, she is also within the whole greater area the vice president of the Texas School Public Relations Association and has won numerous PR awards for all of that. So without further ado, we want to recognize her first with this plaque that, come here Kim, that says This is presented to Kim Hokut, Executive Director of Communications, for exemplary 14 years of service to the students, parents, staff, and trustees. She has gone above and beyond and has often

008served as the face of the district during both triumphs and, shall we call them challenges. And we finish this by saying, well done, good and faithful servant. Y'all give a hand to Ms. Kim Hokut. There we go. All right. Dr. Kelly asked me to recognize my team if I could have my team kind of come up here because I don't do this alone I will say that I have a amazing team that is the backbone of the communications of this district and so I have my executive assistant Tamara Hansen our district receptionist Cindy Brown and Martha Stanley our communications clerk Christy Merritt communication specialist Aliana Peska Sisa Madero, Communications Specialist, our Webmaster Vic Bushfield, and our Rise Mentoring Specialist Mandy Benedict. So they are the reason I'm able to do what I do. Also, I

009would not be here without my family. My mom and my brother are out there somewhere in the crowd of you all. There they are. And then also my best friend of over 30 years who herself is an administrator in Spring Branch ISD. So thank you for your support. And then I just want to say real quick, thank you so much to Dr. Kelly, Cabinet, the board, and all of my colleagues. It has been an amazing 14 years here. I will miss you all. I will always, always be the biggest cheerleader. On behalf of the board, I'd like to present you lifetime passes to all our events because you're always a part of us. Thank you, Kim, for your service. There we go. All right. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it. Oh there

010we go that could do that too. So this is honestly my favorite part is recognizing your students and I know it's the board's favorite part too so thank you for allowing me that time to recognize Coach Buck, the Lions Club and then myself which is weird. So parents, as your students come across, please feel free to come up and take photos. The photos that our photographer's taking will be on our Flickr page tomorrow or the next day, so please feel free to grab those off the Parallel Nasty Flickr and download them for your pleasure. So we're going to get as many as we can. So tonight we are very pleased to recognize Paralympic ISD's talented musicians and vocalists who earned seats in junior high region choir and band. First up we have Berry Miller Junior

011High choir director Adriana Martindale Campo who will introduce the Berry Miller Junior High region choir students. Garrison Thurston. Introduced by director Chris Bennett. Lydia Abraham. Nathan Benjamin. You get to make the rounds. Matthew Cripps. Ashon Edward, Gabriella Gibran, Laniage Young, Kennedy Martin, Joseph Menard, Max Pham, Devin Salyut, Dylan Wagner, Caroline Cummings, Luke Laird, Michael Powers. Next up we have Pearland Junior High East choir director Avery Rabin who will now introduce Junior High East region choir students. Madeline Bradshaw. Andrew Brown, Armando Cabrera-Ontiveros, Olivia Kirtley, Anna Keurig, Estela Salinas, Camilla Tucker, Chris Villanueva, and Lori Vo. All right next up to introduce Pearland Junior High East Region Band is director Jason Hargrave. My wife didn't even cheer for me like that. All right. Carter Caballero. Leslie DeChico. Noah Dietrich. Logan Espinoza. Julia Frerking. Kai Garcia. Allison Galstad.

012Samuel Hancock. Bryce Hanico. Aiden Hughes. Keaton Jones. Samantha Macias. Next up we have Pearland Junior High South Choir Director Rosetta Ames who will introduce the South students who made Region Choir. Carolyn Almaguer. Blaise Marua. From Pearland Junior High South, Band Director Brandon Linder will now introduce the region band students. Keith Mortenson and Sophia Nguyen. Introducing the Pearland Junior High West students who made region choir is Director Austin Rabin. Tanisha Anbu. Larissa Garcia. Riley Johnson. Dionna Jom. Jeremiah Keaton. Adan Kumbatu, Allison Lee, Sophia Muller, Meredith Russell, and Ava Sherrill. Finally this evening, to introduce the Pearland Junior High West Region Band students is Director Meredith Bishop. Eric Castillo, Morgan Chan, Stefan Chang, Leetan Chen, Adan Contreras, Tristan Coronado, Fernanda Carabob Rubius, Bruno Diaz Reyes, Andres Garza, Steven Gobin, Alex Gu, Daniela Haskins, Ethan He, Ethan Hibbler,

013Momo Wong, Aaron Ireland, Serena Kelly, Shlomo Kamar-Bloom, Braden LaCour, Daniel Lee, Kara Lee, Viviana Luna, Miranda Montenegro, Zachary Pear, Leah Phan, Emma Porter, Jennifer Ross, Hannah Siggins, Constantine Sinek, Stanley Sun, Sophia Tafoya, David Torres, Ryan Tran Roy Wang Braden Wilhelm Alan Yao Amy Zhang Efren Zhao Aris Zhou and Derek Xu This concludes our board recognition for this evening. Congratulations again to all of our students and staff. She doesn't practice. Good job. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. We're sad to see her go. the Board of Trustees of the Pearland Independent School District will now convene into a closed meeting to discuss the following items posted on our agenda this evening as allowed by Title 5 Chapter 551 Texas Government Code. The superintendent will present for the board's consideration and or discussion the following matters 071,

014072, 074, and 076 and 082. No voting will take place in the closed meeting. Any action the board wishes to take as a result of discussion in closed session will take place after the board reconvenes in the open meeting. It is now 535, and we will reconvene into closed session at 1 p.m. No action was taken in closed session. I have the motion for the personnel. I move that we accept and approve the superintendent's recommendation for employment of personnel as presented. Second. All right, we have a motion by Trustee Carter and a second by Trustee Berry. Hearing any further discussion? All right, hearing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries, 7-2-0. All right, so that takes care of the closed session. We'll now move into the public comment

015portion of the meeting. This is the portion of the board meeting where the board receives input from patrons. Each person who addresses the board will have three minutes to speak on his or her issue. In accordance with the new state law, the board must prioritize the comments of those patrons who are addressing specific items on tonight's agenda. Such that input is received before the board's decisions are made tonight Therefore is important that each person who signs up to speak clearly indicates the agenda item of which he or she will comment Patrons addressing the items not listed on tonight's agenda will be heard provided that the total time allotted for public comment does not exceed 30 minutes Because of the topic posting requirements on the open meetings act board members will not ask questions of the

016patron will not answer any questions posed to the board by the patron no action can be taken on any issue presented during the patron comment segment of the board meeting patrons adjusting the board will be notified when they are approaching the last 30 seconds of their allotted time to speak all right and i believe first we have ashley morellis beerless are you here ashley if you pull that microphone down pull it you can pull it towards you there you go I'm here talking about the rezoning issue and I'm bringing up the issue of I am zoned to Magnolia which is going to Massey both of my older two boys are in dual language they are taking my boys from Massey to Charleston but the issue that's not been addressed and I had asked this in

017the prior meeting was what happens to my non school-aged child he's now zoned to a non dual language school so when he comes of age he loses the opportunity of being in dual language The other issue is I asked, are dual language allowed to transfer? Again, I was denied, no, dual language is not allowed to transfer because of ratio issues. You're already messing with ratios by taking them out of their school where they are in a confined ratio and putting them in a new school. So you're already taking ratios and adding to a school. So what difference does it make if I take my son from Charleston to go to Cockrell or Longhorn? You're still messing ratios up. The point of dual language was that your child will stay at that school even if you

018move to a different campus. Part of the dual language program was your child will stay at Magnolia if you can provide transportation. I am providing transportation to Magnolia, and I said, well, if I can go to Cockrell or Longhorn, if I provide transportation, can I do? No, dual language cannot transfer. If all of the other students affected by this can put in transfers, Why is dual language being restricted? And what happens to non-school-age children? I purchased my house so my kids could go to Magnolia. Why does my youngest son get penalized for zoning issues? Because ultimately that's what's happening, is my youngest son that is one years old will never have the opportunity to go to dual language. I understand y'all can say, we're going to make an exception for your son. What about the

019other children? And what happens when all of y'all leave? Who's gonna honor that when someone tells me, yes, your son will have the opportunity. And I'm not saying to put him in. He doesn't even have the opportunity to test. So I don't think that this has been evaluated and a full scale. Yeah, we're gonna put these kids here. We're gonna put these kids here. But let's go down into the like, okay, what are we doing to raise you as a teacher? No matter how good of a teacher you are, the bigger that classroom is, the harder management it is, the less one-on-one time the students get. the less you're able to identify issues. I have a student that needs me. I'm seeing an issue. I have 30 kids. I can't identify each individual child. And

020that's my concern is y'all are pushing all the kids to one school. Y'all are not open to dual language, being able to move or working with the parents. Y'all are forcing our hand here and y'all are not giving all the kids a fair chance. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Melissa Kuro. Are you here? Hi. Hello, good evening. I'm Melissa Caron from the Ashton Park subdivision. And just start off that I've already had three children that has gone into Magnolia Elementary and they're currently in different schools now. And we have one, our daughter will be joining in the kindergarten in the fall. When we first moved to our home, we picked our home because of the school that was shown. that was available for us. And since then, our other children have excelled in

021their classes. And we just want to give our child that same moment for her to experience what they experience. And where she's at now, she's excelling as a pre-K student in her daycare. And my fear is that if she goes to Carlston, she will get a setback on her learning. And from there, we're afraid that we might have to look for a new home. so that we can attend Magnolia just because we know how the curriculum is. And then also talked about going to a charter school, which we don't want to have to do that just because we love the school, our community, and how the school district has been. So just wanting to take in consideration that the... choice that's being reviewed could affect us, but also our neighborhood, just for the fact that

022a lot of our families in the neighborhood pick the homes based on the school that was available. So we just wanted to express that as well as many other neighbors wanting to move so they can be able to attend a Magnolia, which we feel that might lower our housing. And we don't want to see that depreciating. As well as I know I'm going to have two students that are going to be graduating. And I know during that time frame, she'll be attending elementary. And we just want her to get that moment where she can watch them when they come back to walk with their cap and gown that she can share with her teacher and her other fellow students. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kelsey. Arden, Ardorn, saying that correctly? Yes. How are you

023all? Good. So we bought our house about three years ago, and we specifically bought it based on some walkability factors. We have some big gaps in kids, and so we bought it as walkable to the movies. I'm in Ashton Park here about the zoning, of course. Walkable to the Centennial Park, walkable to the junior high, the elementary, like it was actually a safe. sidewalks that you could walk there I challenge you to drive your car go to go to my neighborhood I challenge you to drive from Ashton Park to Carlson Elementary and imagine walking your kindergartner there you cannot you would be in a ditch there's very short sidewalks it's not safe I mean, I have good memories. It's a treat for my now third grader to, you know, on a Friday morning or something

024when the weather is nice and I had time to do it, I have walked, biked, strolled to school, to and from school on some days. That's not an option. So what you, you may not realize just the specifics of what that choice might mean for parents. One of the biggest parts of this is that our neighborhood, like my house, was built in 2002. The people who live there, by and large, don't have young children. If you look at the numbers of kids, you have some fourth graders, third graders, second graders, first graders, and it kind of keeps on going. I've talked to the collection of neighbors that we have here, and we know our neighbors pretty well because it's only like about five different streets. I only know of, I have one toddler, and I

025know of... four other people who have babies and preschool-aged children. So this decision to rezone our neighborhood to Carlson would have a high impact on people who specifically moved here to go to that school and should go there, except that there's a huge neighborhood that's built further away from it that wasn't really planned for, and so it's impacting me. So it's not fair that it's impacting me. and it's going to have a low impact on the overall overcrowding. It's not going to make, I mean, five babies, and we're thinking, like, my husband literally is talking about moving, and I'm like, I want this to be our forever house. 30 seconds. I don't, when Mr. Berger gave a presentation, they talked about doing, like, actually pulling statistics. I don't think any statistics were pulled. I'd like

026to actually see the numbers on how much difference it would really make. And Carlson is the only school, from what I've heard, that is performing below average for the state. That is not what I came here for. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Stephanie Anderson. Hi, thank you. I'm also here about the Ashton Park rezoning to Carlston. I just wanted to touch on some numbers that was given to me by Larry Berger, Mr. Berger, which I thank him very much for, and to touch on my neighbor's point. Our neighborhood, the enrollment is planned down for next year for Magnolia to 41, which was in his presentation that he would have presented to you. Of that, 29% are fourth graders that are eligible to be grandfathered in. There are only four kindergartners and three

027first graders. We are an aging neighborhood of just longevity. I've been there for over 10 years. I'm sitting with my neighbors that I've known over 10 years. One here is her forever home. So we're naturally aging out. And the students you're talking about that aren't grandfathered in is only 29 students. We are a small neighborhood. And our POA president gave me this information, and any realtor can check. Last year, only two homes in our neighborhood sold. So our neighborhood isn't turning a lot of homes a year. So the number breakout, kinder first through fourth, It's unlikely, unless something changes, that you'll see an increase in younger kids in our neighborhood. So it is my assumption, with how the data is going, that we naturally are aging out. My youngest is currently enrolled. Her sister is

028at South. Same with our neighbors. Our youngest are the ones going through the program now. So I just want to thank you for your time. And when you make your decision, please look at the breakout by grade. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next speaker will be Ms. Emily Lumpkin. Good evening. I'm Emily Lumpkin. I am a kindergartner and a second grader at Magnolia Elementary. And I'm here tonight to ask the board to vote against the rezoning proposal for Magnolia unless it allows all current students the option to stay via the transfer process. I know that Magnolia is overcrowded, and I don't disagree that something needs to be done. I don't even necessarily disagree with our area south of Bailey Road being rezoned. I know a lot of thought went into that decision. However,

029what I disagree with is the implementation. The overcrowding at Magnolia is not a new problem, nor would it have been an unforeseen one. A rezoning plan could have and should have been considered years ago before Magnolia reached its breaking point. It should have been announced with much more notice, allowing families to have time to plan accordingly. They could have made better relocation decisions. Current students could have gone ahead and finished up at Magnolia, and incoming students could have started at their new school instead of having to change. Instead, we're just piling more on these poor kids that have already had to deal with so much due to COVID by asking them to change schools. And more specific to our family, we're going to be leaving a great network of families that we know. In the

030south of Bailey Road area, I don't actually know any families with kids in our immediate area that go to Magnolia, but we know tons of families that live in neighborhoods like Cabot Cove and Canterbury Park. That's our community. Those are our neighbors. And we're being asked to move to Massey Ranch with a bunch of kids that we don't know. We're losing a support system and a great network of families. That's all gone. So I ask. Allow our students to stay at Magnolia as transfer students. Yes, it means a couple extra years of dealing with an overpopulation, but that burden will be reduced with each passing year as the current fourth graders move on. I'd argue that instead of punishing our kids and forcing our families to make a change, the district should figure out a

031better way to deal with the consequences of poor planning. Our kids should be able to finish elementary at the school they love. Thank you. Thank you our last speaker The net Windsor are you here? Was there a did that Windsor? President going once twice No, miss Windsor All right. Well that will conclude the public comment portion Again, I know that during the public comment we can't respond to questions, but we will have an agenda item We will have an agenda item later in the agenda that discusses the rezoning. So, all right. With that said, let's go ahead and move into the consent portion of the meeting. Again, I'll accept the motion. Are there any questions regarding the consent agenda? I'd like to pull item six from the consent agenda. Anybody else? Can I get a

032motion for the remaining items one through seven without six? I have a motion for items one through seven with polling six, Trustee Decker, and then a second by Trustee Botkin. So hearing any further discussion? Okay, we'll go ahead and call for the vote. All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. All right. Dr. Kelly? Sorry, Trustee Scheffler? I just have some question on the funding and the financing of the expenses listed in item 6. I don't know if it's Georgianni or you, but let me pitch it. So first of all, funding source is 224. Can you explain what 224 is? Yes, those are our IDEA funds, which are federal funds to support our special education programs. Okay, so those funds would normally be used to pay the teachers. Well, first of all, agenda item

033six is about using contractors instead of teachers to supply certain educational needs. Yes, and this is focused solely on speech services. So it's speech evaluations and speech services. And so one of the things with our federal IDEA funds is that we are required to set aside a certain amount of those federal funds that we receive to provide services for students that are in private school or homeschool. And so we use contracted staff. to provide those services because our speech numbers are growing. And so we want our district employees to focus on our students that we serve here in the district. And then we use contracted staff to support our private school homeschool to meet our proportionate share obligation for those funds. Okay. So to reiterate, what you're saying is these are students that are not

034attending our district. Right. But we do have a home share obligation and it's a service we offer to kids that are homeschooled or whatnot that need those special accommodations. Yes. And we our district chooses to provide speech services. Other districts may provide other special education services. Ours focuses on speech services. And it's a requirement. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. So my question becomes. When I look at the numbers in the breakdown of the fiscal year 20 through 21 versus 21 through 22 We have over a three times expenditure and a delta of about $200,000 of additional expenses that were not budgeted expenses What's the financial impact to our 224 funds? Would we have spent that money on teachers or is this a much higher cost because we don't have these services in-house? There's a couple of

035things that have contributed to this. One, the increase in evaluations that we've had to do for speech therapy. So of course we have a child find obligation. So we publicize our pediatricians do a really good job of letting parents know about our services, especially with related to speech therapy because that articulation is easy for a parent to hear that there's something that their child's struggling with. So we've had an increased number of request for evaluation so our contracted staff also provides some of that those funds go to staff to do those evaluations because our our speech pathologists are also providing services in addition to doing evaluations and so what's increased are our evaluations the number of students that we're serving in speech and on top of that we're supporting our our obligation which we had

036budgeted for for the proportionate share for our out-of-school students. But what was the amount that we're talking about now? Was that the budget amount? Because the budget amount, I was thinking, was closer to what was from last year. Well, and what we did last year is we were able to pull some from our current staff. What's happened is we've kind of reached capacity. Like last year, we were... just barely staying above water meeting deadlines. We're at a point now where we've got so many students that in that evaluation process that it's requiring additional staff. So we don't have the funds to necessarily hire staff like on a permanent basis. So what we've done is to help support us in this kind of a time that's increased significantly that we couldn't have anticipated. to use that

037contracted staff so that when our numbers kind of level out again we don't have staff that that we've hired that are now a permanent and so we utilize contract staff to help support us in times where there's a increase in the need it is more expensive than than hiring a person but when we make a commitment to a speech pathologist that's a long-term commitment and that's not something that our budget could support i can do it in the short term and we can you know we haven't had as many face-to-face professional developments so that i can reallocate idea funds that might have been spent on training to support our efforts in speech right now because that's the area that's most significantly needed at this time All right, so this is a reallocation of funds purposed

038for other, same general group. It's still IDEA. It's still supporting our special education program. It's just instead of. you know, that set amount that we might have done some significant professional development. The need right now is evaluation, both on the speech side as well as our LSPS diagnosticians. But that's kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul a little bit this year. We set our priorities, right. And so that is the priority right now because our fundamental obligation is child find. Well, and what I'm interested in, I mean, this is an expense that right now it seems like. is kind of a have to like this is this is reactionary so for planning purposes my question becomes is this um is this an indicator that we're going to have to have these higher expenses with contract

039labor every year because we then still need to fund our professional development for our in-house staff right we can't continue to rob them of that budget so is this going to be an added added expense every year or do we need to be looking at long-term hires for to fulfill this need because it's not a need it sounds like it's a requirement It's not a need we can vacate. So if we're required to do it and we have funds that we have to allocate to it, I need to know if this is going to be something that we're going to see every year or if we need to reevaluate in the budget for next year to account for this. Well, and that's what's really difficult to predict because you'll you know, you've heard from Dr.

040Dahlkamp and from George Annie Carter about the number of students district wide. Our overall population is decreasing in the special ed world. we're increasing so right now it's a little bit difficult to predict and so what we're you know we'll be watching that we'll be watching it each year we know that through the time of covid when people weren't here some students weren't enrolled when we once we started coming back to school all the districts, it's really not just us, saw a significant increase in initial evaluations for special education services. And so we're experiencing a time where our system's close to being overwhelmed. And so in order to... to prevent that from happening and to be able to meet our timelines and provide those services to students, we're using that contracted staff to do that

041evaluation component. And so we're investing, like our big part of our budget is to those contracted services until we can come in and hopefully they will level off and so that the staffing that we have will adequately meet those needs going forward. But I think our district's not experiencing anything that our surrounding districts aren't. It's just a kind of, I guess, probably a result of COVID and having that time when we didn't get to do evaluations and everybody's still kind of playing catch up. What I'm hearing is you don't have any indicators at this point that it's going to level off or reduce in the very near future, as far as we can tell. No. I mean, I wish I could tell you yes, but I can't. You know, our ultimate... you know, requirement is

042to meet the needs of our students and and to meet that child find obligation. That's fundamental to special education. And so I wish I could say, well, it looks like it's going to go down. I can't promise that right now. You know, we're trying to be as efficient as we can with staffing, with evaluations. But we also want to make sure that we do what's right for the students and we make sure that those evaluations are thoughtful and they're done well and the services are provided. Well, in full disclosure. I don't want anyone to have the perception that I'm arguing against funding this or that we need to do it. My family has personally benefited from these specific services that we're discussing. So I know the need exists. I've witnessed the improvements that can happen.

043I'm not arguing against it. I think that this piece, though, it's these kind of little things with the budgetary. considerations that we have to consider right now. The $200,000 in the grand scheme of our budget isn't a huge amount, but it's all those little things that are just going to sink us in the long run if we can't account for them. So I think in our budgeting process, we need to return to this and evaluate that expensive contract labor versus the long-term commitment of hiring an in-house pathologist. What are the cost benefits there? Right. And sometimes, too, with our federal funds, they're not ever guaranteed. And so, I mean, I know that I can't imagine that the federal government would stop funding special education, but it's not guaranteed. And so, you know, you have to

044be very careful. I've learned from Dr. Dahlkamp and from George Annie to use federal funds to support positions because in the event that those were suspended or were gone. then that's going to have a huge impact on our local funds. And so by using the contracted staff and we interview them, we fully vet them. So we feel confident in the staff that we are bringing in, but it is more expensive to contract. then it would be too hard may i ask dr nixon do you have a feel for how many staff would be required to cover the evaluations i assume re-evaluations as well i assume that this is not just initials right but re-evals over the course of the child's participation in our district right um do you have a feel for how many positions

045that would be required to cover these evaluations right now I would say approximately three. What's one advantage of contracted staff is that we have multiple people, so they can be a little bit more flexible in terms of where they are throughout the district. But probably at this point with what we're using them for, we're looking at probably three additional speech pathologists. So it's also my understanding and talking to some friends in the district that do this kind of work that they're seeing exponential increases in their caseload that they've never seen in the history of being in our district before yes like one of the cases was talking about they used to have you know seven at one campus and 19 at another and now they're doing a hundred and something cases so it feels like

046if that's accurate that the stress load on those that are in-house is high is that an accurate assessment I think a lot of our staff, not just special ed staff, are feeling overwhelmed. There are some areas that are larger than others, and that's the reason for our contracted staff. And so when we identify those that have a larger caseload, that's the reason that you're seeing larger numbers in what we've had to contract because we try to provide that contract person as let that person do the evaluations. Right, to take care of that paperwork and all of those things. Pull all of that off, yes, and then be able to provide. the students, the direct service. Now, we do have some speech pathologists that really want to do the evaluation because it makes you better at

047providing services. And so we do some extra duty pay if they work on some things outside of their of their work day, because we want to honor their time. You know, we don't want them to, you know, work work for free outside of their work day. So do you have an idea of what the pivot point would be about needing that and staffing and like what would be the time in which you would say these evaluations aren't stopping. We're seeing more and more need and we need to have staff to cover that versus contracted work. Well, and two, in the business office is also helping me look at what we've spent historically on the contracted staff so we can start looking at some of those trends. It's still, you know, knowing that we have the

048federal funds and that was their purpose, even though we may be allocating a little bit more than we have in the past, you know, adding additional staff, we have to be careful if we're looking at those federal funds. And so just because we have to make sure our staff that that are paid with federal funds, they have to sign off acknowledging that they know that those are funds that could at some point be discontinued. We can't imagine that it would, but You know, that's so that's kind of the fine line that we're working on. I can tell you, Dr. Dahlkamp knows I come to her and visit, you know, OK, here's the data. Here's what I have. You know, help me look at it differently. Is there any other way? So we're in really close

049communication with Sunday, with George Annie, with Mr. Moody, you know, looking at where we are, what our staff is experiencing, what I can support through contracted staff. And then, you know, if we need to to add more and we make that request. Thank you. Any other questions? I make a motion that we approve agenda item six. So, second. All right. I have a motion by Trustee Scheffler and a second by Trustee Carbone. Hearing any further discussion, we'll call for the vote. All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries, 7-0. All right, Dr. Kelly, that will move us into the regular agenda. Yes, sir. Mr. President, members of the board, consider to approve administration recommendations for rezoning, the topic that we had speakers for today. I'd like to invite Mr. Berger, if he'd come forward. He

050has a PowerPoint that was linked to in the board agenda packet, and I think he'll go from there and be ready to answer any questions that you might have. Larry, thank you for all your hard work on this. It's been multi, multi months and meetings and all that kind of thing. So thank you and ready to go. Just loading it up. All right, this is in your board agenda packet and has been posted. Versions of this have been posted to the website as well. We made a rezoning landing page on the website. I have to say that in the presentations that I've made, there have been some corrections because numbers are not stagnant. Kids come in, kids leave, and we look at the rezoning numbers. And Ms. Anderson thanked me for the data, but I

051have to thank Ms. Anderson because we communicated multiple times through emails, and we helped each other, or she helped me, I should say, going through the data. And I just appreciate the community involvement and care. I presented this four times, this presentation to each neighborhood area that we looked at rezoning or proposed to rezone. I told every neighborhood that this is a proposal. We've looked at the data. I'm going to bring it to the board, and we're going to try to make a decision that helps support Magnolia because Magnolia is overcrowded, and it has been a problem for Magnolia. I made sure that every person that came to the meeting understood that this is not an easy decision. I understand that I am looking at numbers holistically, but you care about your kid, and so

052do we. And this impacts the individual kid, and so I do not take it lightly. None of the directors, assistants, superintendents, or people that I worked with took it lightly, and I know you will not either. So going through this. I'm going to walk you through it. This is exactly what I presented. It's changed a little bit. I've added some things, but it's always been posted. Magnolia has been above 95% capacity for several years and is currently above 100% and is projected to be above 100% the coming school year. Carlston is currently at 70% capacity and Massey Ranch is at 76% capacity. This allows for absorption of Magnolia students if we do decide to rezone. Another portion of this is there are apartments, the St. Andrews Apartments and the Southwind Apartments, that are currently zoned

053to Massey Ranch. But they are all the way in the district to the Silver Lake side. When this was originally done, it was done for a reason, but that reason is no longer in existence. And it would make sense to rezone those apartments to the schools that they are close to in the neighborhood. So I'll explain that as we go through. As we go along, if you don't mind, are those the ones that are 90? County Road 90 area-ish? Yes, sir. Okay. They are literally 1.6 miles away from Silver Lake. Okay. And we zoned them to Massey. So this is the proposed impact, the elementary zones. This is as it is now. There is one error on this map. It's the bottom portion of Massey, that little junk that comes out. We no longer have

054that. That belongs to Alvin. So the coloration is a little difficult to see on the screen, but you have the Magnolia Zone, the Massey Zone, and the Carlston Zone, Silver Lake and Silver Crest, and I'll go through and highlight the areas that we are talking about of the proposed rezoning. I'm going to use a term called alternate neighborhood. There are two neighborhoods in play that we could use for a rezoning proposal. One is Ashton Park and the other is Park Village Estates. So the proposed Magnolia to Massey Ranch is south of Bailey Road, is the area in yellow. The area in red is Park Village Estates. If we include Park Village Estates in the proposal, that will happen in 22-23. Park Village Estates has 70 students zoned to Magnolia. And so it would be included

055with the south area, and they would be zoned to Massey Ranch if the proposal is approved. The other neighborhood is up above the Magnolia Zone, which is closest to Carlson. The reason we logistically picked both of these areas is the proximity both to Massey Ranch and to Carlson. We did not want to split neighborhoods. We did not want to jump neighborhoods. We tried to make it logistically, logically make sense to where it is because in the future, if we do a larger rezoning... district wide, we don't want to have to go back and fix a problem that we weren't forecasting in the future. So this is the other neighborhood area. This is where Ashton Park is in the red. It is included in the rezoning to Carlston. As was mentioned, this will happen again in

05622-23. There are 41 students zoned to Ashton Park, in Ashton Park that are zoned to Magnolia that will be moved. So we looked at all the numbers. including Massey Ranch. These are the Silver Lake and St. Andrews, and you can see where they are located and where the Massey Ranch zone is. It was just kind of cut out way back in the future, in the past, and so we want to change that for the future. The other thing this is due, it will change the feeder pattern for these schools. They will go from Jamison South, Dawson, to Rogers, Berry Miller, Dawson, which will help also. They will be with their cohort. They will be with their friends, the people they go to school with, and it will also help with the overcrowding issue we currently

057have at South. And that's specifically to the St. Andrews Southwind apartment? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so that's supposed to alleviate some of the issues at South? Yes, ma'am. Okay. It is an unintended benefit of the magnolia rezoning and something that we looked at to say if we're moving kids to Massey, we can move these away from Massey and make more sense holistically in the district. Mr. Berger, what is, do we have like Park Village Estates? How many, you said how many kids are at Park Village Estates? There are. 70 okay and of those kids do we know I have a I have a slide coming that breaks down both their grades yes sir what grades are you at? the the slide I have is not the grades but I do have that information for you So

058in looking at these two area neighborhoods, the ones moving from Magnolia to Massey Ranch and the ones proposed to go from Magnolia to Carlston, I pointed out to the communities that came to listen to me is that what about the other neighborhoods? Why are you looking at us? Like was mentioned, we're an older neighborhood. You had newer neighborhoods that were built. Why are we being pushed out by newer neighborhoods? Well, Canterbury Park is a newer neighborhood. It's a very large neighborhood. There's 150 students in Canterbury Park. If we were to rezone Canterbury Park, we wouldn't jump over all the other neighborhoods and send them to Massey Ranch or Carlston. That doesn't make sense. We'd have to go the other direction, which would be Rustic Oak, Shadycrest, C.J. Harris possibly. With future developments that are happening...

059One, none of those campuses can absorb 150 students. So we would have to divide Canterbury Park and send them to different elementaries. Well, we've seen the repercussions of that in previous decisions to rezone, and we don't want to do that. We cannot overcrowd Rustic Oak because if we moved Canterbury Park there, it would be at 103 capacity, and Shadycrest would be at 95% capacity, and there's possible new developments in the area that would send Shadycrest even further over capacity in the future. The other areas we looked at were Pearland Farms, Cabot Cove, Magnolia Oaks, Creek Bend, which is a brand new one. Again, there are proposed residential housings on Pearland Parkway and Old Town Center at the intersection of Bailey and Highway 35, and other possible fill-in housing that would cause, again, future rezoning issues.

060Like was mentioned here, they talked about poor planning. We don't want to do poor planning again. If we know that future housing is coming, we don't want to rezone now, not looking at future housing, and then we'll be standing here again going, hey, we made a mistake. We weren't looking to the future. So we have looked at these neighborhoods. We looked at transportation routes and distance. We didn't want any crossover or hopping of neighborhoods. And again, we are waiting for a demographic study for possible future rezonings. So we don't want to make moves now that penalize in the future if we want to do things again. So this is Ashton Park. If everyone is rezoned, 154 students will be moved out of Magnolia. So that is taking all of the Carlston with Ashton Park and

061all of south below Bailey, not including Park Village Estates. 103 of those students will go to Carlston. 51 of them will go to Massey. When we rezone the apartments, 74 students will leave Massey and go to Silver Lake. Mr. Berger. Yes, sir. The yellow portion of your map, what's that yellow portion? That's the neighborhood, sir. But not to the right to the right of Magnolia. Where do they go? The light yellow. Well, I'm sorry. The light yellow and the red would go to Carlston. No, to the right. Like you have Carlston, Magnolia, CJ Harris would be next. Cut off. What page are you referring to? Right there. Yeah, where the circle is. Go to Park Village Estates. Yes, sir. Go up the where it says Park Village Estates. Yes, sir. Right there. It just says

062Magnolia. What's to the right right here? Magnolia that's a different school zone yeah which school that is C.J. Harris okay okay so I'm gonna go forward to that where we were you were on the page or 150 yes ma'am I'm just hitting too many buttons. So going through this again, and then if you go to the next slide, this is the breakdown of the capacity versus projected enrollment. So what we have now is the capacity of each school, the projected enrollment of each school, and the projected capacity of each school. And then if we move those numbers, we have the rezoned enrollment and then the rezoned capacity. So the one thing I want to point out here is Massey Ranch, we actually, in this proposal, there are more kids being rezoned away from Massey Ranch

063than being... rezone to Massey Ranch because the apartments have 74, which is more than what is being rezoned south of Bailey. Then if you take the Park Village, there are 183 students. This is not including Ashton Park. There are 183 students that would be rezoned away from Magnolia. Carlson would get 71. Massey would get 112 with still 74 rezoned away from Massey to Silver Lake. So immediately look at this and say, well, if we want to rezone and we want kids out of Magnolia, 183 is more than 154. Why don't we go with Park Village Estates? Very similar to what the one parent came up here and stated was, we need to look at more than just moving a bunch of kids. You need to look down at the programs and individually, and so we've

064done that as well. And again, these are the percentages. You can see the percentages rise for Massey Ranch because more kids are Zone 2 than away. And so this is kind of a breakdown of Ashton Park because that's really what the proposal is. It's which neighborhood, which tell of neighborhoods. So for Ashton Park, we rezone over 100 students away from Magnolia. It increases the academic and economic diversity of Carlston, which I believe is a plus. Negatively, it is not the maximum number of students that we could rezone. If we went with Park Village Estates, we would rezone more students away from Magnolia. But the problem also is Massey has more students rezoned away than two. For Park Village Estates, the number more, if all of them go, not counting fourth graders, 29 more students would

065be rezoned away. So we're talking about an increase of 29 more students if we take Park Village Estates over Ashton Park. It balances Massey's overall enrollment number. The negatives are the programs. The more students that we send over there and the population of Park Village Estates would make special education increase at Massey Ranch, which what we just talked about could be an issue. The low socioeconomic numbers would increase for Massey Ranch, which impact our Title I funding. And then also it increases a negatively increased impact on dual language for Magnolia. Massey Ranch does not have dual language as was discussed. All students at Massey Ranch, at Silver Crest, and Silver Lake, if they are dual language, go to Carlston currently. They feed Carlston's dual language program. So what would happen here, any dual language student

066zoned to Massey Ranch from Magnolia would attend Carlston. Do you have a number, how many kids that is? Dual language? Yeah. 50 to 54. So if you had to reschedule, or if you wanted your child to go to a dual language school, could that child actually go and enroll through that school? Or do they have to enroll based on the actual zoning for their home? Currently, the way it is set up in dual language, you have the Spanish-speaking side and you have the English-speaking side. We have to serve the Spanish-speaking side, so wherever they are zoned, if they happen to not be in the Carlston zone or Magnolia zone, but in the others, they are serviced because we have to service them. The English portion do not fall under that. For an English... side dual

067language, you have to be zoned to that school. So you have to be zoned to Magnolia, or to Carlston, or to Lawn, or any of the other campuses that we have. We only transport or travel the Spanish side. We only currently have four elementaries that are zoned dual language right now. Correct. Yes, ma'am. So can they not transfer? The English, no. Currently they cannot. Why? Well that's a good conversation. In this process I have spoken with Dr. Franco and once if a proposal is accepted or if no proposal is accepted we have talked about re-looking at this. Dr. Franco believes maybe it's time that we get with Dr. Waters and the elementary schools and Dr. Watson and discuss is this still the best practice because honestly what we have at some of the campus talking

068to the principals is We have a large portion of Spanish speakers at some campuses, and we have a large portion of English speakers at other campuses, so we don't have the true 11 to 11 in a class. We might have a large portion of Spanish and a small portion of English or vice versa. The term I used was a draft. So let's look at everybody that wants to be in dual language. Let's put them in a pool. Let's look at where they are and where they need to go and see if elementary schools can draft and say, I need 11 of these and 11 of those and let's pull them and let's make sense and maximize the program. So, I mean, you know, I've always been a fan of expanding dual language to all of

069our elementary schools, right, if we could possibly do it. But I think it's wrong that we, you know, say, well, you know what, you're English speaking and you want to be in a dual language program. We're not going to take you because it's not your first spoken language, right? Is that what the criteria is? No, sir. Well, then why are we characterizing? For example, they don't have it at Rustic Oak. So for like the children that are at Rustico because they want to be in their English speaking and they want to be in a dual language, they don't have that option. Right. If you are not zoned to one of the campuses, you cannot participate if you're English speaking. But it's the same thing you're saying. You don't have the choice. You don't have the

070choice. So why can't they be just like any other student and say? you know what, you're under 92% capacity, I want to transfer into that program. From what I'm hearing from you is that there's a ratio that we have to maintain, or we have 11 to 11, right? It's best practice for the program. Yes, sir. 11 to 11, but we could go 12 to 12, 13 to 13 if we so choose to, right? Well, there is, just like our ratios in class where it's 1 to 23 or 1 to 24 in dual language, they would like to keep it at a class ratio of 22 students with 11 Spanish speakers and 11 English speakers. That's the best practice. Do we have that on every dual language campus currently? No. Well, I mean, I think we're

071taking a situation. because our city's grown in certain areas, and we're applying logic and numbers to actual maps and schools and things of that sort. But I think we also need to apply a little logic when it comes to some of the special programs we offer, too. I think it's of huge value to all these students. I know in my business, it's very beneficial for me if I could speak Spanish, right? And I would want anybody to be able to benefit for that. I have a hard time with that. And as I stated, through these conversations and learning more about dual language and talking to Dr. Franco, she also believes that way. So as a district, once we make a proposal for rezoning, and even if it's not accepted, Dr. Franco would like to re-look

072at how we do dual language and how kids are assigned. So that is a conversation, whether this is accepted or not, that's going to happen because speaking to her, she believes that we do need to make some changes to allow for more students to have accessibility to the program. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I don't disagree, but what's the cost of the dual language program at the elementary campus? And how is it funded? Is it funded through? No, it's funded through our normal instructional, with some exceptions, but You know, it's at, it's expensive partly because we try to keep the class ratios down to 22 students, 11 and 11. And when we've tried to, a few years ago when we tried to look at expanding beyond four schools, it just was not affordable with the additional

073personnel. Now, Dr. Dahlkamp would be better than me at talking numbers on personnel, but. And expansion right now wasn't necessarily what Dr. Franco was thinking of. It was more of maximizing the students that are applying and filling in the possible gaps that we have in our current program. Well, and outcomes. I mean, we haven't talked specific outcomes for the dual language programs in quite a while either. I'm not sure where you're... How the students are doing that are going through the dual language program. I mean, we have no star test for ESL campuses, but we don't necessarily delineate English speakers that are learning Spanish and the comparison for that. So it'd be nice to have that information as we progress into that conversation. You know, the origin of it, which is in the second year

074it's here, is... picking out basically the four schools with the highest number of socioeconomic non-english speaking children but it was a it was a handful to even do those four I'd love to have it at all 11 just we just haven't been able to to come close to affording that. And as Larry pointed out earlier, there's some campuses where you'd really have trouble getting a sufficient number of Spanish-speaking children for that purpose. But, Sundy, you may have more concrete on numbers and people? Sorry, Larry's way taller than I am. A bilingual teacher is going to cost you approximately $3,400 more than an average teacher. That's not including the extra training, the extra certifications that we need to help them keep up with. Additionally, your dual language program is going to require usually some type of

075paraprofessional support that your gen ed classrooms don't necessarily require. And so this is going to be based on the number of paraprofessionals each campus needs. It's going to be roughly $30,000 per person, depending on how many or what person was the definition of person. a paraprofessional the other difficulty that we've experienced over the last few years and i think you you all can recall this from executive sessions is the turnover of dual language teachers is very high because it's extremely demanding job and as we moved into over the years into the middle school and then junior high it was even tougher to come up with qualified people and and have them Stay in the program. Recruiting a bilingual teacher past grade six is probably one of the hardest things that we have ever had to

076do. Because to be able to find someone that can teach a true content area and do it not only speaking in Spanish, but they have to have the bilingual certification on top of the content. So to give you an example, at the junior highs, the content of choice is social studies. I need to find or assist the principal in finding a social studies certified teacher that is also certified in Spanish. That, we call it in HR, a unicorn. We literally are looking for something that may or may not exist. Grades EC through six, we have a little bit easier time. Obviously at the elementary grades, that's our easiest, and I'm going to use the term easy in a relative sense. I can't think of a school year that I've started since the inception of the

077dual language program that we haven't been at least one dual language teacher short when the doors opened because it is very difficult to attract and retain dual language teachers, and it's not because we're not one of the highest paying dual language districts in the area because we are. yeah the other problem is you know my first superintendency was in pearsall 60 miles south of san antonio we had entire grade levels where everybody was bilingual certified because it met the population in that area much more difficult here to get highly qualified good strong bilingual certified teachers it sounds like the attainability of adding a dual language program at massey is limited at best Yes, that discussion did happen. There are other programs at Massey that would put a strain on Massey if you put dual language

078there as well. So are you basically committing to the idea that dual language enrollment in the way that that process works is going to change for next year regardless of this situation? I can commit that dual language enrollment the way it is is going to be discussed with the powers that be that are over that, and recommendations will be made. Do you know, okay, back to the question that you answered, 50 to 54, what neighborhood was that you said were dual language students that are being rezoned? There are dual language students in all of the neighborhoods that are proposed to be resolved. But you don't have a specific breakdown? You said 50 to 54? If you're looking at the two in question, Ashton Park and Park Village Estates. Is that where that number came from?

079No, sir. The 50 to 54 is all of them in Massey Ranch, all of that south of Bailey Road, plus if you add Park Village Estates. Well, and these dual-language kids, I've got four kids in dual-language, okay, and it's a blessing. And I learned Spanish. I'm a fluent Spanish speaker. I learned it in Pearland. I learned it in Pearland High School. And it's been a gift my entire life. So it brings me great joy to see them. We were zoned to Magnolia. We lived in Ryan Anchors. And when we moved, we moved to Lawhon, and there was the question, and there's always been the question, we have a new kid growing up. Are they going to get into the program? Are they going to be able to learn with their brothers and their sisters that

080went through it before them? Because they bounce things off each other. Like there's a synergism that they help each other along in it. And it's that sibling competitiveness. And so hearing some of the questions that some of the people have about, you know, I'm worried not just that I bought a house, planning to go to a certain school, and now that's kind of being changed, but also. My kid you know these kids you're talking about classes of 22 students and they're usually in teams of two classrooms So 44 students in a grade level That's a small cohort and they go kindergarten first grade second grade all together so you're talking about taking these kids from the cohort that they've been learning with for those years and Now just out of necessity we have to move

081them So I think part of the discussion even if we're not able to say, you know what the request I don't know if the ask of all kids owned to Magnolia can be left at Magnolia That sounds from what I'm hearing like overcapacity is a problem. That's a big problem But even if the ask could be all kids engaged in those special programs Being allowed to stay there or or any alternative thereof like has that been discussed? Yes, sir, it has. And if we start... for lack of a more appropriate word, cherry-picking programs we're going to keep or cherry-picking students that are going to stay, the rezoning process becomes very difficult. The busing process becomes very difficult. I do see dual language as different because it's not a program we offer at every campus. Correct,

082sir. And that's why dual language will be looked at on a programmatic level to support that. For students, like for the parent that came up here and said, you're going to rezone me to Massey. My older one can stay in the program and go to Carlston, but my younger one doesn't have a chance because they're zoned to Massey. Well, when we relook at the... the way we do dual language, that can change for that student and they can still get the opportunity. But when you talk about dual language cohorts, any student at Magnolia can say that even if they're not in dual language. I've been with this cohort since kindergarten and now I'm going into third grade and you're moving me. So every child that we rezone is facing that. I am leaving my campus

083and going to a new campus. Whether I'm in special programs or dual language or I'm just an average everyday kid, we are taking them out of their cohort and what they know and moving them. I'll grant that point, right? Like that affects everybody, but the idea not only of that, but you're going to go, you have the potential to go to a campus where the program that you've been in, the way you learn. Some people might not understand that dual language, these kids learn subject matter half the day in a language they don't speak. Yes, sir. And it's immersion, right? Yes, sir. So going to another campus where all of a sudden that's not the norm because maybe they choose to say. Carlston, sadly, is a lower achieving school. I'm not willing to send my

084student there. I have to send them somewhere else. And they're choosing out of the program. I get it. It's personal choice. But that's a hard decision to face as a parent. Yes, sir. Rezoning in general is a hard decision for us and for them. And if the student, let's say, for example, we proposed they're in the Magnolia zone and we're sending them to Massey. And they say, look, I don't want to go to Carlston because of what you just said. I want to not be in the dual language. they will still go to Massey. They will not go back to Magnolia. Understood. I think the, you know, kind of what the emphasis of what the board is asking or saying around dual language is, again, kind of what someone spoke about earlier tonight when they

085purchase a home with the intent that that school specific offers that program. And so they move there so their kid can go through that dual language as, you know, Chris talked about. But I would be... I'm curious again on the drill down of the number, you know, if we're looking at neighborhood of neighborhood, the two tails that you have here, of the students specifically affected in those, you know, two neighborhoods. The other question that I had. And please know it's not just the two neighborhoods. The two neighborhoods are what I'm offering as an alternate. There are other neighborhoods that are in the proposal. Correct. You listed the Ashen Park and Park Village estates. Demographically, mileage-wise, the difference of the distance between... From Carlston to Magnolia, it's minimal. It's a point of a mile. But I

086will, just like the last slide shows, the parents' concerns that were brought up. On Fight Road, there are no sidewalks. There's not. You drive it, there are no sidewalks. And so the walking and riding the bike that they do to Magnolia currently would not be able to happen in the current situation of Fight Road or any of the other roads from that neighborhood to Carlston. And that's specific to Ashton Park, which is also specific to Parks Village Estates. Along Bailey, there is a sidewalk that goes all the way down Bailey, but it stops at 1128. So once they get to 1128, there's no sidewalk to get to Massey Ranch. prior to crossing 1128 or after crossing prior okay so leading up to 11 28 yeah okay and i guess have i didn't see anything in

087here in regards to you know just the recommendation on um what someone else spoke about earlier which was if you grandfather i think in a prior years ago when we did some spot rezoning grandfathering certain fourth graders, rising fourth graders coming in versus sending all the new incoming elementary kindergarteners or whatnot from these neighborhoods to Carlson, what the numbers look like. It would be minimal impact if we only send incoming kindergartners because as it's been proposed before, the district in the lower levels is shrinking. We do not have the growth in the lower levels that we currently have in the upper levels. So it would be a minimal impact for Magnolia. You would not see a decrease in Magnolia for probably four to five years comparable to rezoning for next year. Larry, I don't know

088the answer to this, but... If, if we did, as one speaker suggested, allow grandfathering of people that are already in the, in the school as they continue to, to finish through the school. But all of those people now have to bring their own kid to school as opposed to bus. Does that make a difference in terms of, of people saying, well, yeah, I'd like to stay, but if I have to provide transportation, I'm more likely to. It would be a conjecture on my part. I don't know what their proclivity would be, but I would say that their desire to stay at Magnolia, they would find a way to carpool to get to Magnolia. I mean, transportation, it is truly a capacity issue. If we say, okay, we only want to take the incoming kids so

089they're not impacted, then what's the point of rezoning? Well, how does it affect transportation and busing? It allows for some better routes for transportation and busing. There's still a dual language capacity, which impacts because you're taking them from whatever zone in Massey that you rezone to Carlston. So those routes are there. I mean, just an overall, the overall proposal. or the two options you gave, you know, examples, how does it affect transportation? Whether you choose Ashton Park or Park Village Estates? Yeah, I mean, do we have the capacity, the buses? Yes, sir. I know we're having a hard time with bus drivers and things of that sort, right? Well, correct. The current... Lack of bus drivers, capacity is an issue everywhere for getting kids to school on a bus. But Keith Kopp was involved in

090this process. Transportation leads this because we use geocoding to get all the data as well as Skyward data and projections. And so he has looked at it, and with either proposal, he is able to fulfill transportation needs and routes. So do we have more kids on the bus now? That will be hard to tell because it depends on how many kids do the less than two miles and pay. So it's hard to project if we will have more. And for clarity, so you're talking Ashton Park, Park Village Estates, but all the neighborhoods and the kids that are south of Bailey, that big yellow area on one of the maps, that's included in both proposals, right? Yes, sir. Mr. Berger, if we, and I think Dr. Kelly alluded to it, what if we did not rezone,

091what would be the ramifications? Magnolia is projected to be at 105% capacity next year. So what does that look like? Is that more kids per class? What does that look like? It's not necessarily more kids per class because HR and the campus work on the ratios to make sure that, you know, you may not have the 23 to 1 and you may have 24. You may have a couple more in the classroom. If you go by Magnolia, we have no more places to put a portal. So if more kids show up, there's going to be more kids in classrooms. The hallways, the restroom situation, the attention, just like one parent said, if you have 30 to 1, well, Magnolia has 900 kids. The other elementaries have about 650. So there's a monitoring issue. Lunches start

092way earlier and go all day long. So you're saying if we didn't rezone, but you made a statement earlier that for three years we would not see relief for three years? If we did the grandfathering or if we only allowed the incoming to come in. If we allowed the current rising fourth graders, third graders, and second graders, and first graders to stay, there is a larger portion of students in that fourth, third, and second grade group. So if we wait for them to get out, we would not see relief at Magnolia for three years. And Larry, is it still true that we've got more portables over there than just about anywhere else in the district? the west on the east side probably because they could walk to the they walked and ride their bikes to

093school i've always been jealous of that of what a magnolia yeah able to walk at their kids and drive their bike to school none of my kids can do that projections for magnolia for next year in every grade level from kindergarten to fourth grade they are the highest across the district yeah we've looked at expanding that campus grandfather if let me talk you said about grandfather and then but we rezoned so the kindergarten kids coming in next year would go to their rezone school either Carsten and I see or Silver Lake how's I gonna look for the next two years they'll be still beat 104 percent capacity no sir as a like Magnolia here if you if you were to use Park Village Estates they would go to from 104 to 83 point four or

094five percent and then if you use Ashton Park, they go to 86.83%. No, I think what he's asking is if you only did kindergartners, new incoming kindergartners. Correct. They would be at the above capacity number. They would still maintain above capacity. For three to four years, yes, sir. Do you have the breakdown, Larry? Do you have the breakdown of the kids that are, what grades they're in? Yes, sir. And from one of the public speakers said that majority of those are at the fourth grade level? Not the majority. They were talking about the individual neighborhood that they have. Ashton Park, there are the same number of fourth graders as there are second graders in the division we have. They are all in the double digits, but they are correct. In Ashton Park, when you fall

095off to first in kindergarten, it drops dramatically. they are in single digits. And that's across the board district-wide. I mean, we have more in the upper grade levels than we do in the lower grade levels. When the fourth graders progress next year, you'll see a significant decrease in this capacity. Correct. For example, this percentage is based if all the kids move. Let's say every fourth grader decides to grandfather and stay, they're going to be a little higher. They're going to stay at 104? No, sir. If all the fourth graders stay... If all the fourth graders stay in the Ashton Park proposal, Magnolia will be at 91, and we close the campus at 92. Well, they'll be closed anyway because we won't allow transfers. And if we take the Park Village Estates, if all the fourth

096graders stay, they will be at 86%. But if we waited two years and just did the kindergarten and then first grade, like over two years, those fourth graders will move out to fifth grade. Correct. You will have attrition, basically. But then you have Magnolia continuing to deal with the overcrowding for those years. But you also probably have some people that are electing to go to the schools they've been rezoned to due to transportation needs because we're not going to transport those kids. Like there would probably be some additional kids that would fall off just because we're not going to send those for them. I mean, if you have a younger sibling, they're going to go to Massey or Carlston. It's going to be difficult for you to go to two different elementary schools. And we

097can't guess at that. Like we have no idea. No, but I do, I recall when we had an issue like this at Massey when my kids were there, because it was an opt-in situation when it first opened, and they said you will be allowed to send your. kids siblings you will be allowed to transfer in and then they changed their minds and they said no you can't well that threw a whole bunch of parents into a tizzy so um because that's sending your kid to two different schools nobody wants to do that uh so yeah i think that that's going to be a problem with you know basically somebody's going to be unhappy every no matter when it happens is what i'm saying right because if you have a kindergartner and you're asking them to

098move Like there's no real good stop point to say because the kindergartner likely has a second grader or a fourth grader that's a sibling. That's an older sibling. Then you're going to be divided. Correct. Yeah. Make a choice. So let me get this straight. I'm trying to wrap my head around something. Me too. I saw a. I was looking through the budget earlier today, and I saw the graph and all this stuff that, you know, Georgianni always says, oh, we have so few kindergartners come in, you know, way less than. Compared to those that are graduating. Compared to those that are graduating. So is it that three-year number that we're talking about that we would have to endure at Magnolia in order to see that bubble move through the campus to where we get under

099the 100% capacity? The difficulty of that is Magnolia is projected next year to have 146 kindergartners. And through first grade, second grade, third grade, that number normally increases because you don't always send all your kids to kindergarten. So they may not come to first grade. So that number will increase so it can stay at 155, 160, and it continues to grow. Will it be at 185 that the fourth grade is projected next year? Probably not. You're saying the total count from the potential rezone neighborhood? No, this has nothing to do with the rezone. We do nothing. Total kindergarten count for next year projected is 146. And where has it been in the past? That or higher. And how many first graders? 155. OK. Second graders? 172. And third graders? 181 and 185. So there is

100as quiet as 40 students that are. differential of 40 students between fourth grade and kindergarten. Right, but remember after kindergarten we add at first grade so it could go up 10, could stay the same. But I'm just letting you know that we looked at rezoning two years ago before COVID started. And COVID hit, and we were like, we can't rezone during this time. And if we choose not to rezone, just realize Magnolia will still have the overcrowding issue. Well, we've also lost 700 students during that time period also. But apparently not at Magnolia. Not at Magnolia. Not at Magnolia. That's my point. And understand also that the students that we may have lost are coming back. We are having students re-enroll. because COVID is subsiding, and frankly, some people have fatigue with it. I hadn't

101really seen that from the numbers that we got, but I'm sure they'll come back. We'll have people moving here. And also realize that the transfer window is currently open right now, and we have transfers coming in for these campuses as well, not necessarily Magnolia, but we have students that were not attending. You can't transfer in anyways. Right, but you can transfer into Massey and Carlston or the other campuses. That's what I'm saying. Our population is increasing. What was your? If you're taking an estimate on that 146, is it 20 to 30 students of those neighborhoods that would be? For the kindergarten? Yeah. I believe it's 20. Probably 20. Yes, sir. What other temporary options did y'all consider for Magnolia? Temporary options? I mean, we just talked about the portables. I mean, we have a bunch

102of portables there. But it sounds like if we can get through three years, we're done, right? If we get through three years and we don't continue to add students in the Magnolia zone, you could potentially be done. Or we could be kicking the can down the road three years and we're still going to be standing at 100% capacity at Magnolia. Good. You've obviously done the most work on this of anyone in this room. I agree. Right? So what is... I mean, we all agree rezoning sucks. Nobody wants to do it. Yes, sir. I mean, you can get the temperature of the board. Like, it's not a fun conversation. Get the temperature of the public comment. Nobody wants it. It's scary. It's the unknown. Blah, blah, blah. So what are you? You've got two different plans

103here. You haven't endorsed one or the other. I see one that in my mind seems to make more sense. But if you were going to come to the board today and make a specific recommendation that encompasses the discussion we've had about, you know, is there a way that we could kind of layer this in? Is there a specific neighborhood that you would suggest? Is there a way to address the special program, specifically dual language? What is Larry Berger's recommendation? Well, that's what I put this slide up here for you. Because like I said, if you just look at holistically, just look at numbers. Park Village Estates is the better choice. But when you drill down and look at programs, the impact of these programs on SPED, socioeconomic, and dual language is more negative impact. And

104so Ashton Park... is the better choice based on the individual needs of students in the programs. Now, the people standing behind me will tell you, no, because it's hurting my kids. It's hurting my individual student. I don't necessarily care about that number on the negative side for Park Village Estates. So if you're asking me what I would propose to you, I would propose to you the Ashton Park to Carlston as opposed to the Park Village Estates. Now the SES. I hear you. I'm wondering though, the SES increase to Massey, I mean SES students typically bring more funding. So those resources get reallocated to Massey. How does that count as negative? But it's very, you have to hit a certain percentage. And if we move more away from Magnolia, which is currently Title I, and move

105them to Massey and neither one of them hit that percentage, then we don't get that funding. Gotcha. I don't know it for a fact. Donna Tate deals with the Title I, and she projects it out, and she said it's a strong possibility if we move too many away from Magnolia to Massey that we could lose the Title I funding for Magnolia and not gain it for Massey. Say it again. What's the impact? If we increase the number of students that are low SES, moving them away from Magnolia to Massey. Massey's number will increase, but it may not hit the percentage threshold we need to reach the Title I funding. And then by taking those students away from Magnolia, Magnolia could lose that Title I funding. So we'd lose the financial support and staffing for those

106schools that those students need. Wait, but I want to know specifics. Like, what's the implication of what you're saying? Assume I know nothing about what those dollars and those positions students will suffer no no I get that but give me dollar figures and positions like what what is the title one funding do for that campus specifically? Here you come We have extra teachers that are paid by those funds we have paraprofessionals We buy resources and materials for those kids that are funded from those dollars So right now we're serving those needs based on number of population at the campuses. To qualify for full Title I, you have to be at 40% low SES. So we're right on the bubble at Magnolia. If we decrease the Magnolia numbers and increase the Massey, neither one may be

107eligible for being served. What percentage is Massey at? Close to about 38. So they're toeing the line. They're on the line. And Magnolia is a little above it. And then Massey, if you pull out St. Andrews and Southwind Apartments, those are going to be more Title I funded areas. And so that's going to decrease the opportunity at Massey, even if we put in more from Magnolia. Typically so. Which I do have a question about apartments too. So put a little pin in your head and we'll talk about that later. I think that was a hair joke. I didn't mean it that way. It's not the first one I've heard. Dr. Kelly, I got a question. Yes, sir. Okay, Mr. Berger said that we've been studying this pre-COVID, right? How long before that did we know

108this was going to happen and why? Is it all because – tell me what's happened. Well, I can't give the specific number of years, but this has been on my mind and on everybody else's mind for probably four or five years in terms of being way up there in capacity. As I think Larry alluded to with COVID, that became off the table because there's enough stress and so on associated with that. And what has happened is you've had infield neighborhoods. You had Canterbury Park built. You had Pearland Farms built. Canterbury Park. Canterbury Park is 15 years. But then they've just added on the second section of Canterbury Park. And they added on the new neighborhood that's right behind the trailer park area. But Lance, think about from March 2020 when COVID hit. We had zero

109kids in class the remainder of that year. And then as we started the year in 2021, we had only 50% of the student population in our schools. So we didn't need to rezone in the midst of COVID. I understand the COVID, but. Preliminary discussions of COVID hit. Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember how long. I'd have to look back at the last four years. Okay. Yeah, we've definitely had the preliminary discussion. It's one of those, it's like the speakers said today, it's very difficult to do this and you want to avoid it, but then there comes the inevitability. There's not a changing pattern here. So as Larry has said, it'll still be here three years from now. Maybe. Well, we don't know, right? I mean, the whole point is that we see a declining student population.

110My point is this. I'm perfectly fine with putting, you know, if we're going to project five years and if we can interpolate our numbers, you know, without any additional major master plan communities, which you don't have any room for, I'm perfectly fine with pacifying this deal with portables for three years and get rid of them. But the problem is there's no room. We cannot add any more portables to Magnolia. OK, so that's what I was getting at earlier. So there's literally no footprint there to put them on. No, sir. Even though there's a lot of land around Magnolia, it's all retention and detention pond. We can't build there. That's why they do not have a playground. During Hurricane Harvey, we got that less than front and center because the entire front of that campus became

111a lake. Yep. And we cannot. we cannot put a sidewalk in there or a parking lot or anything we'd love to take all that traffic off of uh magnolia people are staying in that line longer than anywhere else but there's nowhere to put them on the site well that just kind of makes up my mind though let me add one thing dr pelly at magnolia we have one full-time teacher for intervention and a paraprofessional paid for from title one sunday just verified that number okay very good so two employees two two employees And so that's why I bring this for you as a proposal. If you want to punt and see what happens with the enrollment. Do you realize Magnolia will be overcrowded? But possibly a simpler discussion. We can come back to this because

112it is affecting kids now. Another part of this proposal is we have a new subdivision being built off of Pearland Parkway. There are currently no homes in this residential area. There are 57 homes proposed to be built out here. And what we are proposing is to rezone that area because it's currently zoned to Cockrell. And with the proposal of 57 homes and projecting out, once they are all built, it will cause an overcrowding issue for Cockrell. So we would like to rezone this area to C.J. Harris. to allow for one, a feeder pattern change for middle school and junior high, but also prevent future overcrowding for Barbara Cockrell if we get full capacity in those homes. And the nice thing here, through Larry's thinking there, is that it happens before people move in, so there's

113not an expectation for a particular elementary school. So it's trying to follow the logical thinking that was presented by the parents that currently live there is, well, why didn't you do this with Magnolia? So let's think forward and go, this is being built. Let's adjust it before it becomes a problem. Not always possible, but in this case it is. But this doesn't solve Magnolia. Not at all. But this is part of the proposal. So I just wanted to say that this is on here and not to forget it. But this is the hard decision. Okay, so is this? I'm trying to find the cross street here coming up, parallel parkway to McHart. Is this part of Highland Glen, or is this located near? No, sir. Stonebridge. There's nothing there. There's no residential at all. Behind

114Stadia? Yes, sir. A little bit closer down, but yes, sir. That area. Okay. I didn't realize that had been. It's been approved. I believe they break ground a couple months. Okay. Coming up that parallel parkway area. Yes, sir. Okay. Which that's actually, isn't that distance-wise closer to CJ if you go right up? Berry Rose, probably. Comparable, yes, sir. Comparable, okay. So part of the proposal, Dr. Kelly, I guess you could, depending upon if the board decides that they want to punt on the Magnolia for now or if they want to make a decision tonight, is this a separate? Yes, sir. One does not impact the other. I just wanted to clarify that for the board in case that impacts. And would you say the same thing pretty much true with the move to Silver Lake?

115Correct. When are we getting the study back? We literally hot off the presses. We got a preliminary kind of matrices, but we will not probably get something until April. So, I mean, even when McCard hits 35? That's gonna go all the way to 88. I mean it's gonna they're buying up pieces of property now Yes, and there's gonna be neighborhoods over there Yes, sir. I mean that there's no doubt that even with the reduction in Population that we may be predicting we will have to come back and look at a district-wide rezoning to possibly. Yes, sir without a doubt But it's still it's still about three years out before they're built But it has no impact on Magnolia. I understand that. Yeah, the other thing, Lance, if you're speaking about McCartan, its extension from Micawa

116westward, what the city told me was that that is not likely to produce a great number of residential space. I don't know if you've heard that, Crystal, or not. Well, I mean, right now it's zoned a certain way, but that doesn't mean there's so much rezoning happening at the city right now. They could change it. That could definitely change it. They could divide up lots of people's places. okay but i think refocusing back on magnolia i think that i think there's several issues at hand and maybe the demographic study produces more information about what we foresee happening in those neighborhoods that are causing the Because it doesn't sound like this particular subdivision is going to be a long-term play as its aging population, that it's going to fix a problem right now, but there's still

117somewhere in that area that's feeding student growth. Well, what's feeding student growth is the new build-outs. But what you have, if you look at the Magnolia map, the zone map, Even the demographic study is not going to come in here and logistically pull out half neighborhoods to go to Rustic Oak or to Shady Crest or to C.J. Harris because, one, they don't have the capacity, and, two, we don't want to divide neighborhoods. We're also not going to take a Canterbury Park or a Pearland Farms and jump over everyone and go to Carlston or Massey Ranch. So if you look at the map logistically, logically, where are you going to rezone neighborhoods to those areas? other than south of Bailey and the top portion of Carlston. But you're saying on the Park Village Estates, just to

118clarify, you're saying of those 100 plus students that are in that neighborhood, they all go to Massey? The neighborhood stays together and goes to Massey? Park Village Estates, it's 70, yes, sir. They don't go to Carlston? They would go to Massey. They all go to Massey? Yes, sir. They would join south of Bailey and go to Massey, except for the dual language students would be rerouted to Carlston. And then what would be the feeder pattern beyond? Same feeder pattern. They would follow the same Jamison South Paralympic High School. But where are they zoned now? Jamison South Paralympic High School. So the only thing that changes for? Is the elementary. Is the elementary. Yes, sir. And then Ashton Park would all go to Carlston? Yes. No Massey. No. The only part of Massey would be the

119part south of Bailey. Yes, ma'am. The yellow and possibly the red, which is. Park State Estates and can you go back and clarify because there was under your one of your bullet points so based on the Park Village you said that if someone choose chose to be in the dual language program that lived in Park Village I guess it's two separate questions I have if they're currently in the program what happens to them and for those folks that said I moved to this neighborhood because it was zoned if they're currently in the program they will go to Carlston okay If they're not currently in the program and they are Spanish speakers and they qualify for the program, they can still go to Carlston in dual language. They will get the service. If they are English

120speakers that are not currently in the program or at Magnolia, like they're coming into kindergarten. Correct. As it stands now, they would not have the opportunity to be in dual language. But as we discussed, we would like to re-look at that procedure and policy to see if we can increase the availability of those students to attend dual language. But is Carlston an open campus that a park village could transfer into for dual language and provide their own transportation? But English speakers can transfer, but they can't transfer to be in the dual language program currently as it stands. So that's what we were talking about in this discussion. but they're going to that's bad we need to fix that in my opinion yes sir well he just said that we're going to look at it again

121yeah that's a possible fix that's it's a little bit of asking us to bet on the come you know like it's we don't know what that solution looks like yet and so it's hard for us to speculate what you're going to present to us later on if it solves if it answers the questions of the problems yes if if in a neighborhood that For instance, this one that's zoned to Massey in their existing in dual language program. You're saying they could go to dual language at Carlston, but are they provided transportation or they have to provide their own? Dual language will be provided transportation, yes, sir. We currently provide. No, as of right now. Yes, we currently provide transportation for all Spanish-speaking dual language. So the ones that right now, if you're a Spanish-speaking dual

122language and you go to Silver Lake, you are provided transportation to Carlston. Okay. But if you're English speaking to dual language, you're saying that it's not provided currently? It's currently provided if you are within the normal transportation boundaries or you pay for ridership. Correct. Because you only can attend dual language at your zone school. Okay. So that's where we have to relook at the possibility of if at Park Village Estates there are English speakers in the dual language program, we have to look at, one, possibly changing the transportation for those students, or, two, changing the way that we accept students if they're not currently in school or in the program. And see, maybe the confusion is this. Spanish-speaking kids are entitled by law to bilingual services. English-speaking kids are not entitled by law to Spanish

123or bilingual services. Correct. Okay. So when dual-language kids that want to go into dual-language, is it a program that a certain number of students are accepted? Currently, yes. Currently. And there is a criteria for being accepted. So I kind of circled back to ask, if you're going to do this, are the people that were rezoned a certain number of years receive priority? I mean, then you get into a whole, you know, since they were rezoned out of Magnolia, which they bought a house and you. Rezone them, they go to a dual language school, do they receive priority entry into the duals? And that is, Dr. Franco has had that discussion of once whatever is accepted, or if nothing is accepted, but once whatever is accepted, that's when we'll have to look at those individual students

124and make individual decisions for those families that are logical and support. Even though I bought a house to go to Magnolia for dual language, they still want to go to Magnolia, and if we are rezoning them, we're taking them out of Magnolia, but what can we do to still preserve their service in dual language? So they would be looked at. Those families would be looked at. So I guess what I would say to the board in this decision tonight, again, is we could look at this as a whole. item and how you want to rezone you can break this up i think as dr kelly admitted we can we can break it up to two or three separate motions um if if that's the direction obviously um i think as dr kelly and mr berger

125alluded to the the most obvious decisions that can be made are the rezoning to silver lake with the two apartments that are actually geographically closer Correct? Yes, sir. Can I ask a question about that? Go ahead. And then the undeveloped neighborhood that's been rezoned by the city, that there's no houses. Cockerell. Correct. Correct. That would alleviate the foresight of Cockerell. Trustee Carbone. Do you have any indication of how many families would have a waiver for transportation that live in the St. Andrew and Southwind apartment complex? waiver for transportation? Oh, like a waiver for cost based on socioeconomic status? Well, if they get rezoned to Silver Lake, they're within the two miles, so transportation would not be a problem. There's a sidewalk that goes all the way from their apartments to Silver Lake, and it's a

126mile. In theory, that's accurate, but if they were going to pay for transportation, they would be free. They're currently free transportation to Massey Ranch for families who are working families, but then we're moving them to an area where now they would be required to pay. Well, currently they're provided transportation. Nobody has to pay because of the distance from their apartments to Massey. That's what I was trying to articulate. Yes, ma'am. But we would be moving them from a place that transportation is free to now transportation would require cost within the two-mile frame. It's my understanding that the families that live in this area would be eligible for a waiver on those fees based on their socioeconomic status. Do you have a percentage of how many families in that area? It's right around 30%. For 70%

127of these families being moved, there will now be a cost for transportation if they choose to bus their children to the new zoned area. Yes, ma'am. And if, you know, just projecting out, if future ways, if transportation goes away from the paid ridership and we move to a hazardous route ridership, that will change for many people. And from those apartments to Silver Lake, it's not a hazardous route. There are sidewalks all the way. Well, but you still have to pass Cullen. On fight? No. No, ma'am. They're just around the corner from Silver Lake. You're talking about County Road 90. Oh, yeah, you're right. On fight versus Silver Lake. I mean, it's just around the corner. And I don't know if it's a CVS or a Walgreens that's on the corner. Yeah, okay. I've got my

128geographic area messed up. Okay. Mr. Berger, on slide four. Thank you. On slide four, it says Magnolia Rezone to Massey Ranch. That whole section down there? Yes, sir. Can you expand on that? How many kids or families? Those are just county roads, right? That is without the alternate of Park Village Estates. Just the yellow part. Right. Yeah, just the yellow part. I'm just talking about the yellow part. 92 students. 92 students are in that yellow highlighted area. 92 students live and go to Magnolia currently, right? Yes, sir, in that yellow highlighted area. So to clarify, hold on. So is that considered? That's considered part of the proposal with Park Village estate. Yes, sir. That's all the yellow stays the only thing that would alternate are the Park Village and the Ashton so all the yellow

129would go the confusion is in the second map I don't think that yellow is highlighted like as you highlight Ashton Park that bottom section the highlighting drops off But that's still included because this is what goes to Carlston not to Massey, right? So but that bottom part still goes to me. Yes, sir, right Wait, go to slide five, I think, with Park Village. Hold on. This one? To where the circle is. The yellow circle is Park Village. But you're saying south of that yellow circle. That pink area. That pink area. We'll go to Massey. The yellow. We'll go to Massey. Five. Go to the next slide. Right there. That area right there, Sean. We'll go to Massey. Regardless. Regardless. Both proposals. All proposals. And the yellow area that's associated with Ashton would go to Carlston.

130So if that red area that we're talking about, I'm sorry, Lance, if that area without including, because the one down there is the village, right, Park Village Estates, if that rectangle was not excluded, if that's the given, does that still jeopardize our Title I funding? No, sir, that's what I'm saying. If we do not include Park Village Estates, then we don't have the increase of the low socioeconomic. If you go with the Ashton Park, that's what I'm saying. Larry. So it's that yellow section right there. Yes, sir. Nothing else. If that goes to Massey Rain. Yes, sir. 92 kids. Yes, sir. What does that do to our numbers as far as Magnolia goes? It's a lot. Then you're only moving 92 kids minus any fourth graders that stay. Which is at what percentage? What I

131have to work, I couldn't read that on my math. There are currently 11. There are currently 24th graders in that yellow block. So if that stays, that's only 72 students that would move. And so... What does that do to the percentage? I would need Dr. Nixon to walk up here and do the math for me that quick. Hold on. I was a good steward of the school board and left my phone over there. Well, it would definitely put you under the 100 because we're at 104. So if you subtract 899 and 72... And then divide that by 858. That'll give you your percentage. Doctor, next one you got. Oh. 899 minus 72. 899 minus 72. Divided by. Divided by 858. That's 96. 96%. Gets you under the 100. Gets you under the 100 to account

132for. Under the 100? Under the 100. Under 100%. And then account for the bubble in three years. So if both those neighborhoods were excluded and all you get is that rezoning of that big yellow square, what are the impediments to that? The impediments to that are that you have 96% capacity at Magnolia, as opposed to similar to other campuses that have 70 to 74. But if you start grandfathering. Yeah, what if we grandfather and do the yellow? Like you get the yellow today, but then we pick one of the neighborhoods to say, okay, well, over the period of five years, those kids are through attrition. So if you're saying if you do the yellow square, they move to Massey, and then take Park Village. If you just focus down here on the bottom, if you

133take Park Village and say, do you say only incoming kindergartners? What if I have a sibling that goes to Magnolia? Choose. Okay. So you cut off Park Village Estates for any incoming students. So if you have a kid right now that's going to start kindergarten next year, they go to Massing. I mean, that's what I'm asking. Yeah. Okay. And then that whole year of the function. rides and stuff. I mean you start thinking about all that. If you have two children, one going to, they're going to two different schools. No, it's not two different. You have to choose. Well, if we already have one at one school and then you have another one. You're saying they would be grandfathered, they could still go to Magnolia and the other would have to go to Massey. If

134you wanted to drive your kids to two different schools, you could have them at two different schools. You either choose difficult or you choose easy is what it comes down to. Right. I mean, it's ultimately the same proposal that we have now. And if you're a grandfathered fourth grader and you have a second grader, you either go to two schools or you take your fourth grader to your new school. Right. So just to be clear, the area that they're talking about, which is that's south is south of Bailey, correct? Yes, sir. So it's not a this is the area Miss Lumpkin addressed, I believe. Yeah, the it's the area. It's the area south, which is. You're saying do you know the number of students that impacts? 92. There are currently 92 students that are zoned

135there and of those 92, 20 of them are fourth graders. And how much potential development do we see in Nat Square? You can't. I mean, it's ETJ. It's ETJ. Well, we still service those kids. Yeah. Right? Like, do we know of anything on the radar? I mean, there's no projected community development in that area. It's all the bigger lots that is undeveloped with, like. Well, it is. It's like larger areas in rural type development. But if you all recall, a couple of years ago, we gave that piece of property that goes straight down to Alvin for a development, for a home development. Massey Oaks, I believe, is what it's called. When the money makes sense, the developers look at it and say, yes, please, I don't have to tear down that many houses and I

136can put 40 here. So I didn't know. Is there anything on the radar in that area we're aware of? Currently, no, sir. And then of that 92, how many are in dual language? Do we know that? 32. And those 32 would go to Carlston? Yeah. So now you're down to 40. You're still moving the 92 minus 20 if all the fourth graders stay out of Magnolia. They would be divided between? Minus 32 for? Massey. But they would go to Carlson. They wouldn't stay at Massey. They wouldn't stay at Magnolia. Correct. And how many, we don't know projection of how many kindergartners would be considered also from all those areas. I do not know. We don't know kindergarten enrollment until we... If a parent... is going to provide transportation to their child and they do fall

137into that category of I've got a sibling that's going to be grandfathered to stay at Magnolia, a fourth grader or whatever, and now my other kid's been to Resonda Massey, is there the capacity for that parent to choose to transport the younger child and keep them in Magnolia? I expect the impact would be minimal. It's not going to be most of the families. But if they're providing transportation, because I said choose, but I mean it could... I'd love to see them stay in the school they're in if that's where they want to stay. But at the same time, I understand there's logistical concerns where that's just not possible. But if the parent's doing transportation, that's the biggest hurdle. Well, if we're cutting down the numbers and the percentage of grandfathering in, of the 24th graders,

138if you say 50% of them have a sibling that are currently going to Magnolia, so then you have 30 that are going to stay at Magnolia. So then you take that 92 to 62. Yeah, so I mean you just keep you just keep increasing the percentage of what stays at Magnolia. Yeah granted in Those fourth graders are gone next year. I got you. But the strain of the campus is still the strain of the campus. Exactly. And what I hear the board saying is how do we balance the strain of the campus with the strain on the parents? And I understand that. And that's what I've tried to look at throughout this. So if you were saying, okay, so let's cut out that yellow part below south of Bailey and let's move that now and

139grandfather the rest of them, we can go back and make that work. there will still be a strain on the campus. Correct, because Magnolia will be at 96% or greater capacity. You're not rid of any? But we have the bubble, too. That's 96 with if only those 92 move, but you're also decreasing by the incoming kindergartners. So there's also an unknown decrease. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. The bubble effect is coming through, right? Historically, we've had a lower enrollment recently. Currently, right now, in the red zone of Park Village Estates for next year, I'm sorry, right now, there are projected four kindergartners. So you may be moving additional. Plus that yellow area. Right, right. But I'm saying if you grandfather in just the red zone, you may only be moving another four kids. if they

140match the same projected number. But in the red zone alone, what about in the yellow zone? Well, you're moving them anyway. That's the 92. No, but the yellow for incoming kindergartners. Well, the yellow's moving. It wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter. They're rezoned to Massey. Yeah, just trying to figure out how to eat the whale, right? Gotcha. Yes, sir. And I'm here to eat it with you. You don't even eat meat. Now you're eating whales? Yes, sir. I'm about, you know, just given the situation that we've discussed this for two years, three years, I don't know how long it's been, that, you know, Georgiani and Dr. Kelly have been saying. We have lower enrollment. We have more 12th graders graduating than we have kindergartners come in. We have a wave within our current enrollment. I am

141perfectly fine with going to 96% of Magnolia and taking a chance instead of, you know. And in fact, we have a proposal or at least an indication that we're going to have to do more of a wholesale rezoning anyway. So why not ease the burden as much as we possibly can with this particular proposal with the yellow and going to 96% and assume that this wave is going to come in because that's our best data, right? Our projected data is what, you know, from history and go from there. With the understanding that we may be standing back here based on the demographic study and growth in the Magnolia zone, that they go back above 96%. Quite frankly, the last demographic study we got was useless. I don't disagree. We paid a lot of money for

142it. It came in. The data was completely wrong. But at the time, we were a very high-growth district, but we're not now, so it may be a little bit easier to get true information. It may be. And we also went with a different firm. We also went with a different company. I give you all those concessions. But my level of, the level at which I'm going to trust the data that I get, it's just pure supposition anyway, right? I mean, they're saying, well, you know, they're going to look at it, and just like Crystal said, a lot of that, a lot of the road or a lot of the property on McCart is owned either, you know, light industrial or some sort of commercial or something along those lines, ag, you know, that kind of

143stuff. And so. You know houses are going to go in there. And so the other proposed rezoning timeline you were talking about, I think is going to become more of an issue sooner than this. So I'm good with that. Well, just to, I know everybody's aware of this. I've got to point it out. We have people in the room, so Ms. Morales, Ms. Currow, who even with what we're proposing, their younger children will be specifically affected. I mean, they just can't send those kids to those campuses anymore. There's not been a proposal brought forth that I've heard in discussion that would satisfy what they're asking us to do. I think Jeff's saying not even do the grandfathering. If we get to 96%. And just leave it at that. And leave it at that. understand the

144tension is there but it's 96% it's not 100% ideally we don't shut a campus down until we get to 92% right yes for transfers yes mm-hmm so for fluctuations so just leave it at that just kind of get to the 96% and if our estimations are correct then we're gonna see that that that organic attrition through the student population over the next two or three years. And if we don't, then it looks like we're facing a much larger rezone issue anyway. Can I grab the low hanging fruit and make the motion for the new to be built houses to go ahead and let's just, can we agree that we rezone those per the recommendation? Not to speak for you, but can we include the apartments? Well, I was going to separate them, but just to

145make sure we got the vote clean. But the homes that have not yet been built that you're recommending be rezoned, I'm going to specifically make a motion that those be rezoned per your recommendation. Cockrell? Yes, Cockrell and Carlson. Cockrell to C.J. Harris plus a feeder pattern rezoned. So we're chucking up our motions, correct? That's what I'm doing. Correct. What are you doing? Just that one piece. That's what we're starting right now. That's my motion. All right. We've got a motion on the floor to rezone the. is a new built neighborhood that would rezone to cj harris and i have a second by trustee carter so do i have any further discussion on that motion to rezone to cj harris from carterville of the houses that are not built yet off of off of mccart correct

146yes sir the new subdivision of 57 proposed residential homes all right and they will go to TJ Harris. They're off Parallel Parkway. After you look at the map. They're located. Off Parallel Parkway. Yes, sir. We are talking about. We've got to make sure to hem you in on this one, Berger. Right there. Just those. The yellow area. There are no current residents that live there. And they're going to CJ, right? They will go to CJ, but also in this proposal, they will change feeder patterns to where they will go to Alexander and East, which will help with the overcrowding at Saab. Okay. Thank you. All right. Hearing no further discussion, we'll go ahead and call for the vote on this. All in favor? We have people in the audience in favor. Yes. Any opposed? All

147right. Motion carries 7-0. Mr. Scheffler, your second motion. So I will also make a motion that the two apartment complexes specifically named. Forgive me for not. And then Southwind? Scroll back to Southwind. What was the other one? St. Andrews. St. Andrews, right. So that those apartment complex be rezoned to Silver Lake as recommended? Silver Lake and Silvercrest, correct? Just Silver Lake. Silver Lake. They were originally in the original proposal going to be split, but Silvercrest has had a larger projected enrollment, so Silver Lake is better. All right. We have a motion on the floor. Do I have a second? Second. I have a second from Trustee Decker. Do we have any further discussion on this item or, excuse me, on this motion? All right. Hearing none, I'll go ahead and call for the vote. All

148those in favor? Decker? You're good. Okay. All right. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-2-0. Okay. Dr. Kelly, we'll take care of those two. Again, the third motion or recommendation, if we took it up tonight, someone wants to make a motion on this is how we would handle the rezone of Magnolia real quick mr. burger could you please clarify the Jeff's 96% where he's getting that number from yes sir where he's getting that number is when we looked at math on the fly yellow square right so the the area south of Bailey has a projected enrollment to Magnolia of 92 students what do we call on that South of Bailey. Grades of one through four? K through four. South of Bailey is what we're calling it? How many of those are fourth graders? 20. 20. So technically

149we're looking at 72. 72. So if you take the 72 and you subtracted it from? The 899. 899 projected and then divided it by the capacity of Magnolia, that's where you get the 96%. And that's assuming all fourth graders stay. Correct. And this also protects the Title I funding that we've discussed. No, not necessarily. No. No, that does. I think they were. Correct. It was part of the bubble. Right, but we would be on the bubble no matter what we do. But this does not increase. Park Village Estates kind of pushed us over the bubble. So that's why the yellow zone would have been included with Ashton Park. That's why it was not on the negative side of that. And you also have to realize if we're not moving the Carlston area, the Ashton Park

150and the other neighborhoods, then you are also keeping those low socioeconomic magnolia. That would have been part of the equation. So if we waited until the demographic study came out in April, you said? Well, I'm projecting. I don't have a deadline. And making a rezoning decision in June would be very difficult for everyone. And how accurate was that last rezoning? So for our school impact. for Massey Ranch, Magnolia, others. Making a decision tonight helps them out, Dr. Kelly, now as opposed to next month or in April. Yeah, and I have to put this... Staffing projections. Staffing projections and other things, but also from, you know, I think one speaker addressed it. If you don't make a decision quickly, then they don't have enough time to do something as drastic as choosing a house in another...

151Yeah. One more question. On slide number five, we're... I'm sorry, I don't have a number. Park Village Estates. Nope. Tag. The Ashton Village Red Square. Yes, ma'am. That one. Yes, ma'am. The area to the yellow area of that? Yes, ma'am. What if we just took that and left Ashton? There are... How many students live in that area? 31. And of that, three are fourth graders. And that would go to Carlston. So 28. And that would go to Carlston. And they would go to. So could we do both the yellow areas and not the red areas? Yes, ma'am. That's why this proposal. That's why I put all the data up there and we have this discussion. Now you're looking at 100 students. Yeah. What's that math on percentages? Well, I can tell you where I'm at.

152I want to move the south of yellow. OK. I'm sorry, south of Bailey. South of yellow, that's funny. My brain's fried. South of Bailey in the yellow section, the big, I don't know what the math petitions call that. What page are we talking about? Page four. Just the 93%. Yeah, so I propose that we send those to Massey Ranch. And then we still look at Park Village Estates at some point in the near future when we get the thing back. If we need to, we look at that in the future as an overall rezoning possibility to go to Massey. That's where my head's at. I like the idea of what Decker's saying of the south of Bailey and the west of Ashton. West of Ashton. That's 31. And there's only what? What did you say?

153It'd be 28, at least 28 that move. So basically all the yellow. Yeah. So that's 100 kids even. How many of those are it? I mean, is it going to affect RSS with that one? We had that one. It's all mobile. 799 divided by. Where's the west of? So the little yellow part west of Ashton, is it just county roads? Is that a subdivision? The war is always better. Not always. I just... Yeah, Centennial Village. What is it? Centennial Village. What is that? Centennial Village. Okay. Isn't that the one-streeter? Is that by Kelly's? It's the one-streeter. 858. but we're gonna read look at the qualifications for dueling no no word as a board to say that yeah we're revisiting that yeah this is a board discussion like I said move the yellow South of Bailey

154And that's all I'm willing to do. I think what you're saying, Sean, is that we're legally prohibited from engaging at this point, right? That's correct. We can't discuss it with everybody. First of all, I'm going to clarify if you're going to make a motion, and then we can go into further discussion. So what is your motion that you've made? Because you've already moved to. Yeah. My motion is that we. Make a motion that we move the area of the look look at Pentagon I guess if you will yellow south of Bailey from Magnolia to Massey Ranch Rezone that section right there for now not the Centennial Park part. I chunk it up I mean you got I'd second Lance's motion as as Stated we can still know that we have discussion yeah we got a

155second so we can have discussion yeah that's fine i just i'm just asking if you're wanting to just do that part just that part right there then the yellow right there but not the other yellow 92 nope just that part right there the 92 kids and the 20 kids that are fourth graders and i'll give my logic for that also is that i know 100 kids is better right like if we could move more kids we accomplish more but at the same time The converse argument is affect the fewest families possible. So I like the idea of chunking this. I would support that one because it accomplishes the goal of alleviating the 100% problem or excess capacity problem at Magnolia. Well, the other thing I'd like to add that may help Tony is that nothing

156prohibits you from a third motion thereafter to decide on that small. That's fine. I was just trying to clarify what Lance was asking about. Just that one pentagon or whatever. Mr. Berger. Yes, sir. I want a clarification. If we were to go to do this rezoning piece, we would no longer need the portables at Magnolia? No, you'll still need them. I don't remember that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So my point is this. My point is this. If we're talking about percentages of percentages of capacity and, you know, are we including portables? Because I don't include a portable as a – my goal would be to get rid of all portables. In the building capacity – We've even talked about that. In the building capacity number, portables are not included. In the overall capacity number of

157portables? The numbers that we use to determine occupancy at 92% portables are not included. What's the lifespan on a portable building that we use? In Pearland? Forever. They used to be called temporary buildings, and now we call them portables. Because we move them all the time. The problem, Jeff, with portables, too, is the higher percentage of economically disadvantaged kids, the more you're splitting up those kids for all kinds of special services, and you need additional rooms. And so Magnolia is constantly full. I think the last thing we added over there was a whole bathroom complex there because... those kids because of the capacity issue there's not enough restrooms capacity issues on top of we have to break up our classrooms and certain segments in order to facilitate the programs okay and also you know education

158abhors a vacuum if there's a room they're going to fill it that's true gotcha okay um can you clarify mr berger based on what lance's motion is what the difference in students are from the so-called octagon yellow versus the park polygon well i guess the the question the question concern would be again is you if you if you're at 96 or nine you're in the 90 range um there's nothing that stops people from moving into existing zone neighborhoods that would still push that capacity up correct correct so even though you're bringing the capacity to 96 if the current neighborhoods that are zoned with for magnolia add additional families then that number could push up and you can't control that correct correct okay so what is the difference between the the park village rezoning versus the

159octagon highlighted yellow rezoning number if you take that versus the octagon versus the Park Village alternate. The yellow area south of Bailey. No, the yellow area next to Ashton Park that Lance has put in his motion. Got you. I got you. I understand what you're saying, sir. There are... Not actually. 92 south of Baylor that we talked about. Take 20 out. That's 72 if they all stay. In the two yellow areas, and I will move to that slide if I'm following you correctly. I believe it's page six. Yes, sir. That yellow area there, in those two areas, there are 31 students, three of which are fourth grade. So that would be 29. What's two areas? Oh, the previous yellow. There's actually two zones, yes, sir. There's two zones. But the yellow area up there would

160be going to Carlston, right? Yes, sir. Yes. But it would only be 31 or 29 students going to Carlston. So you would have a total of 100 kids. If all the fourth graders stayed at Magnolia and you took both yellow zones, you would have a total of 100 kids that would be rezoned out of Magnolia. So 93%. We've brings it down to 92. I think it's 93 but okay But the nurse is the alternate of the Park Village going to Massey. Yeah, what is the if you if you Reverse the octagon versus the zoning Park Village to Massey. What is the number? The number of Park Village going to Massey Well, if you as opposed to the going to Carlston. Yes So then if you were to pull out Park Village and include it with

161south of Massey. That is 70 students, of which 12 are fourth graders. So you would have more, you would have over 100 students rezoned out of Magnolia. But that also creates unintended consequences by a SPED increase to Massey, SES increase to Massey. That's where you get to those same negatives. Yeah, that could truly be, that could affect our budget. A huge difference. There's negative unintended consequences. Of the thinking that the board is doing. But that would total 142 students, is my math correct? I believe your math is wrong. It's whatever he listed for Park Village because all the yellows are already accounted for in both the scenarios. Right. So if you include Park Village with south of Bailey, then you encounter all the negatives of moving Park Village. Correct. But your capacity rezoned is from

162your number on page 12 shows at 83% versus 96%, correct? If you take all of it, Carlston and Massey. Okay. Yes, sir. That's all of it. Versus 93. Okay. So basically Lance's motion is leaving out the alternates that you proposed. Lance's motion is leaving out Park Village as well as moving anything to Carlston. Right. That's correct. Lance's motion is only what South of Bailey. Correct. Yes. No. No, his motion is South of Bailey and then the yellow octagon. No, his motion was only with South of Bailey. No, just the South of Bailey. The 72. Lance's motion is only to rezone Magnolia to Massey. No rezone Magnolia to Carlson. No impact. But I propose the other part. Well, there's a motion. But that wasn't part of his motion. Correct. But you have to vote on the

163first one first. Okay. Okay. So there's that motion on the table. There's the motion. And I think Jeffler is second in the motion. Okay. Is there any further discussion on this? No. Okay. For clarity, Lance, will you restate your motion? Yes. My motion is to move the Pentagon, if I'm correct, Dr. Nixon, whatever that is, yellow portion only from Magnolia to Massey. Which is what Berger calls, a.k.a. South of Bailey, from Magnolia to Massey, only nothing moving from or to Carlston. Okay. We have a motion. Is that clear? Yes. Thank you. And we have a second by Trustee Scheffler. Do I have any other further discussion on this motion? All right. Then I will go ahead and call for the vote on this motion. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion carries six to

164one. I make a motion to add the section of yellow. I think you can make an added motion. I think you need to clarify that it's a motion. No, I'm making a motion. New motion. That area is Magnolia Zone A and Zone B. Okay. Magnolia Zone A, right? A and B? West is A. that's yellow yes yellow is magnolia zone a it's zone a and b because okay magnolia is okay okay magnolia zone a and b just magnolia zone a just a i think he's saying an a and b no he says a and b it's a and b because ashton park is c a and b will um will be zoned to carlston second Where's a or worthy point the yellow part? It's the yellow part sir. It's actually two Two transportation areas that

165we divide up its zone a and zone B the yellow area. You can't see an a and a B in there No, sir. You cannot I'm just telling you that's what it's known as. Okay All right So the point I made earlier I'll restate that I want to accomplish a couple of goals one is to alleviate overcrowding at Magnolia We've done that I want to affect the fewest families possible based on the decisions they've made of where to live. And I feel like we currently have that. Unless this motion passes, then we're affecting more families than we have to. And so I would... Be opposed to this motion just because purely if especially with Jeff's point we're looking at doing a Whole redistricting sometime in the near future Why bite off more than we have

166to right now Magnolia already performs exceptionally they have the capability to do it I don't I don't know that this answers any any problems Well, I think it goes back to saying when you're talking about affecting families, you're affecting families at an overcrowded campus when you're talking about student-teacher ratio. But it's not overcrowded anymore. You are affecting students that may be moving, but you're also affecting families that are there. It's, I mean, when you have, it's your opinion that 96% is problem solved and that there's no difference. between 96% and 92 or 93%, whatever it is, we've decided there is a, you know, there's, there's, there's a difference. And there's, you know, you have to account for a certain amount of fluctuation of people moving in and out of neighborhoods in the next year. At

167that point, we may end up right back up at 99 or 101 or something like that. And so, you know, it's it's I'm looking at it and I'll tell you, I'm a person who would be affected by this because this neighborhood looks exactly like mine, which is tiny. And we got rezoned so many times in the first 10 years that I was here. I mean, because we were just easy to pick up and move. This was before you were here, Dr. Kelly. It was very easy to pick up and move that neighborhood. Yeah, it's awful. I went through it multiple times with my kids and their their feeder patterns changed and I finally opted to send them to a school that was out of their district and drive them myself because I could afford to

168but You know unfortunately 90 92 percent or 93 percent to me sounds so much better when you think about the stress on the teachers that we have from overcrowding What what? I know a teacher that liked her anyway, the portables are not a permanent option And portables are not okay, but they're also not included in the calculations And if I could, in any future major rezoning, the proximity of that area to Carlston, that would be one that would be moved. You wouldn't come down further to an area that is not in that vicinity. That's what you would look at. You're saying it's a foregone conclusion. Nothing is a foregone conclusion as I stand before the board today. It's unlikely that they would move that zone to Massey is what he's saying. So, Larry, repeat that

169statement because I don't think people heard that. The zone A and B that I proposed to move to Carson, yes, sir, the yellow section, in any future rezoning, if we are going to come back, if we only do 96%. Magnolia increases when we come back that yellow zone will be looked at again because of its proximity to Carlston it only makes logical sense that you look at those neighborhoods that is what I said I would just come back and say that by definition exceeding 100% capacity is over capacity and that was that's what I stated was my goal was to get to we close the campus at 92% you close the campus for transfers All right. So in portable buildings, you had said are not included in your capacity calculations, right? Correct. Because we don't

170want to. Right. Granted. Okay. So we have a motion by Decker. We have a second by Trustee Carter. This is to approve the AB zone to Carlston Yellow. All right. So hearing no further discussion, I'll go ahead and call for the vote. I have one question. What has Magnolia been? What's their capacity the past two, three years? Capacity stays the same. What's their percentage capacity? They have been above 95% to 100%. The past two or three years? Yes, sir. 100% the past two or three years. I understand. One more thing. So 72 kids, whatever it was, 72, 92 kids is bringing it down. To 96%. Which is, I got you. Okay. So the eastern border of Magnolia, that Magnolia pink purple shaded area, what road is that? Is it a road? That is Veterans. Veterans?

171Yes, sir. All right. I'm going to go ahead and call for the vote now. So all those in favor to approve this motion to rezone to Carlston, raise your hand and approve. How many approved? 35. 35. Okay. Trustee Carbone, approve. Trustee Decker, Murphy, Berry, and Carter. So motion carries. All those opposed, same sign. Perfect. Okay. Motion carries, 5-2. And I believe I misstated. Mr. Berry, that is 35. That part over there on Magnolia. That was 35. Okay. All right. He said 31. Thank you, Mr. Berger. Thank you for being so much on top of all those numbers. That was amazing. So, and all your hard work. Thank you. And on your feet right there, Berger. Can I ask one last question? The motions have been closed. A statement that you made over and over again

172was that we want to keep neighborhoods together. Is that something that we're going to be looking forward to if we talk about any rezoning issues in the future? If I'm involved in rezoning, yes, ma'am. Okay. It's not a guarantee crystal, but it is something we would strongly consider. It's not always possible. I heard mr. Berger say he would include that in anything in the future If we can also acknowledge the community the community input that we received was very valuable and very helpful Even if it didn't work out well in everyone's favor It should be an example where you all gave proof of listening. The other thing I would add is we are, to the lady in the back, we will, as we said, speak about the dual language possibilities for portability. So I can't

173guarantee, but we will discuss it and see if we can move on that as well. Thank you, Mr. Lieutenant. All right, so we're going to move into the regular agenda item B2, which is a discussion of the 10-year capital renewal plan and improve priority of projects. Ms. Carter? Yeah, I was looking. Where were y'all going? No. Seriously? The other Ms. Carter. Wow. Y'all can stick around. You don't want to talk about rules? I'm putting a pot of coffee on. Let's roll. Okay. The record show, Lance soliciting bribes from the... I don't drink coffee, so they missed out on me. Again, Ms. Carter, I do apologize. Just in light of the long conversation, we're going to take a quick three minutes, if that's okay. Okay. You guys can use the restroom, get water, whatever you need.

174905, Gina. Yeah, no, I... You guys, there's pages that you need to sign. PC, EP, ET. I'm always jealous of those. I'd like to recognize the student in the audience, Brandon Floyd, who's wanting to be on the school board one day. Yeah, but he doesn't even go to our district anymore. Hey, he went to our district for a long time. And he's here learning. All right, I call this meeting of the Pearland Independent School District reconvening at 9.15 p.m. Gina. Different company. was a different time georgianny turn it over to you ma'am thank you good afternoon evening night night good night buenos tardes all right so um this is the 10 year this is the third year of the of the 10-year capital renewal plan We met as a committee since early January and we're

175bringing forth, you should have seen the link that is included in the agenda that it has the full 10 year capital renewal plan. We have looked at our funding availability and prioritized the project needs and we're bringing forth about 5.2 million in new projects for this, for this. New Year of which we'll be using 2.9 for facility related needs PA systems at Dawson and Barry Miller Junior High two roofs one at Silver Crest and Silver Lake Havoc and at Pace we're doing an AVIDEC athletics has a turf replacement for Dawson High School For maintenance and operations, about $120,000 worth of equipment, including one truck. Eight buses for transportation, which, by the way, just today, Keith Cobb let me know that there is a new grant as well going on through HCAC. So hopefully we'll have

176the same opportunity to split the funding with a grant if we get it awarded. and $306,000 worth of technology needs, including production servers, network updates, and boardroom upgrades, such as the microphones and all the other little issues that we've been experiencing here. CTE, about $246,000 worth of needs, which includes three computer labs, routers, an entire balancer and changer. about $118,000 worth of fine arts instruments and acoustic shells. So that's your total of $5.2 million. From the prior year, we still have one project that has not been started. It got delayed, unfortunately, and that is the roof replacement at Carlston Elementary for the C-Wing. So that's still happening. That was approved last year, so we'll need to bid it out again. So all of these projects that we're requesting is basically we're requesting the blessing of

177proceeding with these projects. What we'll follow will be the procurement. So every single project will follow the procurement needs, at which time we'll bring to you for approval if it's over $75,000, which most of them are over $75,000. So, Georgiany, so the board can follow along, at least on my... in my book it's page 43 where you've outlined the items that you we are prioritizing for 2022. if we can yeah Starting on pages 43 is the items that I just mentioned. It provides you an update of the first year and the second year capital projects that you allowed us to proceed with. And most of them have been completed. There's a few that are still dangling near completion. And then it provides you the third year of needs for a total of $5.2 million. Right

178now, just so you're aware, we have about $1.7 million remaining in bond funds. And basically, that was generated through the interest from those bond issuances. And so we would be using the full amount left from the bonds, the $1.7 million. And the remaining $3.3 million would be from the capital projects fund. It will leave us at the end of this project with about $4.9 million estimated remaining in the capital projects fund. Now one thing that I do want to point out, because this is a 10-year capital renewal plan. And in the full report, you have it by section, all of the needs that are coming up next year and in the next nine years. And whether the projects have been escalated, perhaps we need to replace a roof a lot sooner than the life expectancy

179was, or whether we've delayed a lot of the replacements based on their useful life. And so if you look at the last page of that 10-year plan, It's a summary of the 10 years. So for next year, we have approximately $20 million worth of needs. And so perhaps it's something that we need to include in our next budget workshop because we only have $5 million after this year left of capital projects funds. All right, I'm going to jump right in. Can you just give a brief breakdown of what and why under boardroom technology the $76,000 will enhance and then why we didn't, since technology was a part of the bond, why we aren't covering that under bond versus capital? So each of the departments that have items here are here present to discuss their individual

180areas. I think his question is more why aren't we using bond funds? why aren't we using so we will you partially use bond funds because we have 1.7 million dollars left correct but i'm speaking specifically to page 44 under 2022 there's production servers network updates that are covered by bond money of uh 140 and 90 000. we picked and choose because we only have 1.7 million dollars left in bond funds so we picked and choose what to pay with the bond okay that's perfect and then what is the what what is kind of the brief overview of what we would be spending $76,000 on for this boardroom? Unfortunately, I don't have it committed to memory, but I know a combination of things, like we ran into the microphone problems tonight. It includes microphones that will

181cover the two different cabinet areas to the side, so when George Annie has to stand up and make comments. or anyone else, they're not running around. So the microphones to the side, it'll replace a lot of the handheld microphones, some of the cameras. A lot of it is the equipment in the back room where everything's feeding in. We're changing it from just old wiring, old technology. If you look back there now, there's three or four racks worth of old equipment, most of which isn't working, taking it down to one rack to a very minimal footprint and some redundancies so that if one thing goes down, we don't go... Wait, wait, we're not recording. I know it's minute, and I'm guessing, Dr. Kelly, that this is an item above the $75,000 we would come to us.

182Yes, if it's all bid together, but if it's in component parts, Georgiana, would this come in one? So if this boardroom was under $75,000, no, I would not need to bring it to you to the board. So each project is individual, okay? So the procurement is by project. And these are just estimates? What we found is that sometimes the ballpark figure is a little bit higher than what it actually is. So we typically see costs coming down a little bit. So what issues are we having as it relates to this project? Besides this microphone, that's probably... It's just a lot of old equipment that... If you want to show up next month, we can walk you through some of it. I'm the one who runs it, so I can't go into every single detail. But

183there's a lot of times where just getting the video and the sound to sync up. Microphones are a big piece of that. The cameras are old. Their resolution is not great. There's a TriCaster. It's a piece of equipment that we actually have borrowed from another department that is running all the video streaming out to YouTube so we can live stream the stuff at night. We actually need one for here. the board actually has their own equipment so that the other one becomes the fallback in case something's not working so we can carry it there was one talk about the board workshop and moving it to different rooms around the building something smaller we need to be able to carry that equipment make it portable so we can do live streaming if the board has any

184need for workshops and other other parts of the building or off-site the current one is portable that we have it's one we use to take for trainings in different parts of the district. But again, it is the only one, and it technically should be somewhere else, but it's here. OK, I see your point. But I personally classify that as nice to have, because it's not mission critical for us to teach our students. That's kind of my mindset right now. Sitting through six years of budget workshops and discussions about you know, budgets and things of that sort, we've got to relinquish our control or our thought process on these nice-to-haves. And I would like in future budgets to see a kind of, you know, a category of nice-to-have. Because as a, you know, as a business,

185you need to, you guys need to categorize things like that. Is it mission critical for us to teach our students or get our students to school? Educate and train our teachers, yes or no? If it's a no, it's a nice to have. Yeah. And this definitely has quite a few line items in that 76,000. That was the very first quote we got in. It will probably come in lower than that, according to the rep. I was pushing her for a number to get it. um in for the meeting um for this so we're parking a little bit lower than that but we can line item it what i don't know is how much of that is the nice to haves obviously the microphones hanging over the two sides those definitely count as more of a

186nice to have but are we talking five thousand six thousand dollars nice to have and seventy thousand need or is it half fifty fifty that part i just do not know right now my other question and this goes back to georgiany thank you for that so when we When it comes out of the capital improvement, which is a separate fund, do we approve only items out of the capital fund or items over $75,000, since it's not out of the general fund? Board policy is individual purchases aggregating $75,000 or more. Okay. So anything that would come from the capital, I guess, given this example, if you really wanted this bad enough and you wanted to take it out of the capital account or plan, If it came in at 65, we would never even see it.

187Well, that's why we're asking. This is the opportunity to tell us, yes, we agree with this project, or we don't want to go through with this particular item's A, B, and C. So we would not go proceed with A, B, and C. So I guess I see this is like what Jeff was saying. as a staff priority list and we're basically from the 10-year plan approving that list but majority of these items based on their value would come back to us anyway for yes our approval especially the bigger ticket items and then To to Barry's point the balance remaining four point nine as he talked about a ongoing capital improvement that doesn't get replenished unless we replenish it out of exactly excess funds from Operating or interest earned or anything else? Correct and based on

188how the budget looks I don't see correct adding any funds in the anytime soon Correct. Okay. So just to be clear to the board As we look at spending five point plus the bonds, the remaining balance will be 4.9. That's sitting in our account should a need arise or a chiller go out or something of that nature. But that fund will only deplete until we get into a positive budget situation, correct? All right. That's all I have. Go ahead, Crystal. I have two items to talk about on page 20. The video board for the rig. I wasn't here in the previous times where Memorial Hermann was a partner that helped offset some of those costs. Is that an opportunity that we can continue to take advantage of in the future, or what's that relationship? So

189I'll tell you an example. There was a couple of, not this type of video board, some scoreboards that were brought up during the capital renewal plan, and that is the thing that we discussed. Can we not go knock on? people's doors and see if they can sponsor by putting the ad of their business or such. Now, Georgina, we have Ben here. Ben was the author or the guy that produced the $650,000. $680,000. $680,000 rig score totally paid for by Memorial Hermann. And it was. The video board was a $405,000 cost, and $405,000 of that $680,000 was used to purchase the video board. We're in agreement with Moore-Hurman for, it was a 10-year video board agreement, and we're coming to the closure of that in the next two years, I believe. And so is there an

190opportunity to go back and revisit with them when that time comes to have to look at a new video board? I'm a guy that tries to squeeze every penny out of every dollar, and so that's what I do. And so we'll stay with that video board until there is no replacement for it in terms of parts. Up to this point, it's been working. We've upgraded it a little bit with a bond. We bought some cameras and things that were compatible with the video board, and so we'll stay with it. But we are coming to a close with the Memorial Hermann Agreement, and we'll, like I said, revisit that with them. Go ahead. Just while you're here, can you speak to that agreement, meaning if someone else wanted to come in and put a scoreboard on

191the baseball field, are you still saying Memorial Hermann has exclusivity? For 10 years there was an exclusivity. Yes, sir. Basically what you just said in terms of the agreement, in terms of being able to put anything on at facilities, athletic facilities, was exclusive to Memorial Hermann. And so when we get through the 10-year agreement, that pretty much goes away. And would there be opportunities to go seek other potential partnerships? The answer to that would be yes. The way I would approach that potentially is I would first visit with Memorial Hermann and see where they are and what they would like to do to continue, and or do we need to go. Because a couple years ago, actually, we did meet with Houston Methodist because there was a big interest with Houston Methodist. But at that

192point, we really couldn't proceed because. We even went to Memorial Hermann to see what potentially we could do to coexist together to really include Methodist. But there was no there was no traction with that. And so we have to basically just bite the bullet and just wait till this all plays out. But there will be some interest. We've also had from, I think, other medical institutions, H. I don't know what the name is. Yeah, they they showed some interest as well. And so we're just going to have to wait and see what that's going to look like come to the end of the agreement. Is there any sort of like a right of first refusal clause or something like that with Memorial Hermann? There was. There is a first right of refusal clause for them.

193And so we basically, anytime something comes to us, we actually give them the opportunity to do whatever it is. And so most of the time, they're very helpful. I guess the biggest one was we were trying to. Do a baseball scoreboard. I think Houston Methodist. I can't remember. It was another medical entity. We went, Dr. Kelly and I actually went and visited with them to see what we potentially could get accomplished. But in the agreement, we were not able to proceed with any additional funds because of the first right of refusal piece of it. And that expires at the 10-year mark? It expires at the 10-year mark, yes, sir. So we're close to be able to maybe go look. And that video board, I mean, I don't know what the life of a video board

194is. I guess it's like a TV. You know, some last forever. I mean, I know some video boards are five years, 10 years, 15 years. You know, we're approaching 10 years. It seems to still be doing what it needs to do on every Friday night. It's a lot more hectic on Friday night than the first year or second year because there seems to be every issue on Wednesday or Thursday of making sure that thing is working. But, you know, Spectrum comes out, and we've got a great relationship with Spectrum, and they're there to keep it working. So I think we'll be able to get significant time with the board in terms of, you know. We're going on 10 years. Can we get 11 years, 12 years? So it's on the capital improvement plan because I

195know it's going to be something that we're going to have to look at. I can't tell you that it's going to be necessarily in a year or two. Okay. But we're keeping options open. It seems like almost anything on the athletic side has the opportunity to be leveraged from external costs. Yeah, I mean I think the school boards is is for sure I know we had some other school boards that we actually were talking about like there Jenny had mentioned We have two two boards at the junior highs that are a lot lower cost That we were using actually temporary boards because they just went out there aren't any replacement parts for those so we've been we've we've been real creative in terms of how to replace those boards at a lower cost and we

196just did it at parallel softball, you know, it was a The replacement cost at Pearland Softball was going to be about $31,000, $32,000, and we were able to actually get the full replacement for 18 or 19 because we used some parts from the old board that really weren't part of the mechanical pieces of it. And so we were kind of piecing it together, but at the end of the day, it was all about saving a dollar and getting a good product on the field. And so it worked. It looks really nice, and they're excited about it. But we saved about $10,000, $12,000 doing it that way instead of just... starting over and getting a new scoreboard out there so it's about repurposing parts that will allow us to lower the cost okay great thank you

197sir great um i think that's all i have for athletics thank you mr pardo um the other one that i noticed was on page 24 oh maybe i don't know who this is going to be but safety and security about the iron fencing around the stadium can you tell me about that maybe this is mr parto too yes well Probably related also to, oh, here comes Matt. He'll talk about both. So, for example, this past weekend there was an unsponsored event at the rig. The community decided to have a game. It could go on for several Sundays. Yeah, it happens regularly. About 500 people out there on Sunday. The north end of the football field of the rig is not enclosed by fencing. So people jump the fence, the short fence, or they come around

198and come in. And so my staff has to go out Monday mornings and make repairs to goals and that kind of thing, as well as pick up all of their trash. So fencing in that part of it. There's no bathrooms open, so figure that one out. Yeah, it's nasty. So it would alleviate some of that. People are still going to jump the fences and that kind of thing. But with a fortified fence, we can have the police enforce the non-trespass or the trespassing. Got it. So can you talk about the north fence at the ESC? There is a concern by staff that was brought up on a need for a fence on the north end just to keep riffraff from coming up. Well, I can speak to that a little bit, Crystal. The north fence

199tractor supply is going to provide from the corner of their property. no they they said they've changed their mind changed the city is not enforcing that because there is no detention pond I see that's new to me but the idea was I had people here in the ESC particularly women saying that it was not safe the lack of protection from the north side with tractor supply the new business going in and that we ought to put a fence through that north area Also, at the end of that north area is a open thing between tractor supply and us, meaning an absence of security. We've talked about a rolling gate as part of that fence for that last part. So since they've been there about a year, maybe two years now, have we had any incidents

200or issues? No, not even that I know remotely, no. I feel like that might be a nicety that would be. So those two are not in what we're asking for you to approve. Okay. They're in other. Okay. They're other, but they're not here. I can add them if that's what you desire, but they're not part of the total funds that I'm requesting. I see. Okay. I had a question for CTE. Just to be clear, when I was in high school here, we played on the... Old Presner Field, the juniors versus the seniors, by the way. It wasn't turf then either. It wasn't turf, no. All right, so go on record, big fan of CTE. These programs produce kids with skill sets that are marketable right out of high school. I see tire balancer and tire

201changer, and it's only $54,000, which again, grand scheme of things, not huge. But those type items, are those things that we've gone to our community support partners like NBCEA or Foundation or other entities and said, does one of our contacts have old equipment that we might be able to repurpose? To answer that question, no. For the... Same reason we're asking to replace it. Business and industry is not going to replace those particular lunates tiller at end of age or end of service. So the ones that they would want to donate to us would be of the same age and flavor that we currently have. So do you think that this is worth asking? Because I could see an advantage for an entity that has to buy a new piece of capital equipment and depreciate it

202off their books and get that advanced depreciation, Section 179, and then also getting the benefit of making an in-kind donation to the school district. In my mind as a business owner, I could craft a narrative that says I might replace my equipment a little early, ahead of its full lifespan, because there's some advantages there. But we haven't explored any of that as an option at this point? No, sir, not that I'm aware of. It's certainly something we can do and present to our MBCA board. And three members are sitting here now. Yeah, but I wouldn't want to restrain us, you know, keeping this on if they can't execute that. No, I don't think it comes down to that. Pretty steep ask for those groups. I do like your logic. I'm a scrounger for anybody that

203knows me. Always looking for the deal. Well, and I want to see these kids have safe equipment that operates and they can learn the skill set to pass the exams and get the certifications they need and be marketable. I look at this list and there's so many of these things that we're going to have no say over. Honestly, they're just needs. And that's one of the things that jumped out at me is maybe there's a way. Maybe there's a partner out there that we could leverage. Typically, the newer replacements would come from dealers where they are mandated that you'll replace this equipment ever so often. It is something we could certainly look into. We have deferred this for multiple years. It's been at end of life for a long time. We have just continued to

204limp along. All right, every you'd like us to do I'm not I'm not gonna hamstring it in any way But I would love to see that explored and I know what I'm volunteering myself for sitting on the NBCA board like I get it but your mention of dealerships our contacts it at Big Star and South Fork and in Bayway, you know those places we have them so we'll make the ask see what happens. Do we have any George Annie? Thank you. Mr. Aiken Make a motion that the board approves a list of priority projects identified in the 2022 capital renewal plan. Second. So we have a motion and a second by Trustee Bakken. I'll hear any further discussion. Yes, Dr. Kelly. I just would say that we will bring back a list that's much more

205concrete on the boardroom tech and all that so that you're fully aware of what is and isn't needed. I'd probably shoot them an email and see what it is. Sure. All right. So I have a motion and a second on the floor. And hearing no further discussion, we'll go ahead and call for the vote. All those in favor? Bucking. Any against? Motion carries 7-0. Thank you, Ms. Carter, for that presentation. All right. We are now moving into the administrative reports, 11A, which is the implementation and update of the Character Strong Education Program. Ms. Nixon. and ms schindemore how are you this evening very good we appreciate the opportunity to share this information with you at 9 42 i don't know how many questions you may have but we're ready it's been a great experience to

206put this together and i appreciate all the work that dr moore has done working with not only our campus counselors but our campus teams so what we wanted to do is just take a little bit of time to give you an overview of character strong implementation that we started this year and then answer any questions that you may have so first when we talk about why these are kind of the three key pieces we'll discuss why do we need a character education curriculum what is character strong and how is it used and of course to begin we always go back to our district goals and our district goal number two is to make sure that we support the physical and mental health of our students Also, when we talked about, you know, returning after COVID,

207we have our proceeding with purpose document and our goal or our target strategy number three also addresses the the support for our students and staff. So that's kind of our our beginning of why we're doing what we're doing. little vertically challenged so thank you so our why as dr. Nixon said we want to ensure that our students feel emotionally and physically safe including arts our staff as well and so Many of our students are coming into our classrooms without a place of emotional safety and we want them to have the positive experiences. We want them to be able to have this expression through free play. We want them to have meaningful relationships that will help them process the world that they're in, whether it's in the classroom or anywhere that they are. And so we

208needed a systems approach whereby all adults in the building are showing deep kindness to each other and to students and of course students to each other as well. And so our focus has been the sense of having belonging, relationships, and routines. And we know that's important for our students and our staff. The other part of the why is the legal requirement. There was legislation passed so that at the beginning of this school year in August of 2021, districts are now required to provide education in the teaks, if you will, for positive character traits for students in kindergarten through grade 12. So this was the first year that that requirement has been in place. so the Texas Education Agency specifically lists these character traits as those that must be included of course we can include others

209but these are the ones that are required in the TEKS instruction And so the purpose of Character Strong is to help build campus culture with staff and students in addition to fulfilling the Texas Administrative Code requirements that went into effect August 1st, 2021. And so the curriculum aligns with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also known as CASEL. competencies and you can see the list here of the different CASEL competencies. And as Dr. Nixon said, we did begin full implementation this school year. However, though, we have had several, actually six school year, campuses who have implemented prior to this year. So Pearland Junior High East is going into their third year. Pearland Junior High South, Dawson, Pearland High School, the Pace Center, and Turner College Career High School, they're going into their second

210year. And so we didn't just choose this program because we just kind of nilly-willy choose it. We did get input from the staff and administrators who have been utilizing the resources. And so in terms of the curriculum and usage, there's digital and printable resources available. It's very easily accessible to our staff and the implementation team. So each campus, they all have an implementation team that includes an administrator, a counselor, teachers from different fields as well. And so it's lessons are plug and play and it's easy to access when the team shares that with their staff. Lessons are also vertically aligned. We wanted a consistent and coherent character development program that supports our students from kindergarten through 12th grade. And so with kinder through fifth grade, the focus are on these 10 character traits, as you

211can see, courage, respect, perseverance, gratitude, honesty, kindness, empathy, responsibility, cooperation, and creativity. campuses can select there's they cannot possibly cover all ten of these traits in one school year so based on the needs of their campus they can decide which trait they want to focus on each month so for grades 6 to 12 the focus of the the resource and curriculum is on belonging well-being and engagement and there are different activities for each grade level And so one of the things that's valuable that I want people to make sure you understand about Character Strong is that it is a resource. It's a tool for that campus team to pull from. It's not something that, you know, you start on page one and it's a... Almost like you would think of a book curriculum that you

212have to follow. So it provides that opportunities for campuses to meet the needs of the students on that campus and whatever that those needs might be. So for this first year of implementation, first of all, all of our campuses identified a team to participate in the trainings. Like Dr. Moore shared, there were some campuses that had implemented this on their own that had brought it to their campus before this year. But every campus has a team. meets to review what is it that they're going to focus on in terms of the character traits. Then each campus created an implementation plan and they shared that with Dr. Moore. The goal for this first year was for them to select five character traits if it's K-5 or the five activities. for grades six through 12 that they're

213going to focus on. And so the goal is to complete those two lessons or activities per month. And they, you know, beginning in January, some began earlier than that, but that was the target date to begin. And when we talk about implementing these lessons or activities, these could be the counselor providing morning announcements. This could be used during the advisory time. Some of our campuses have an advisory time built in. Barry Miller, for example, calls it Miller Moment. They could also be using these in... one but but that's in that general way it's not that all of the teachers are just said okay you need to teach a lesson on perseverance and they have to go on their own that it's very much organized from that team from their character strong team that looks at

214what character traits are we as a campus going to focus on this school year, what activities specifically are we going to use, and then the students across the campus have that same experience. So that we build that sense of community, that everybody's using a common language, a common focus, so that the students have an opportunity to hopefully really develop and learn more about those skills. So we wanted to share some sample activities that some of the campuses are using. As Dr. Nixon said, they do have a lot of leeway in terms of what activities they want to use, what character traits they want to focus on on their campus. So at the elementary and middle school level, gratitude is an example. So on the right, a gratitude that sticks. A campus, this would be a

215staff teacher's focus. Each staff member would receive ten sticky notes. And during that month of gratitude, they would just write a thank you note, give it to a student, give it to a staff member as an encouragement. So that that's an example at elementary, middle and then Miss Van Lonen at Silver Lake Elementary. She was here earlier. She went above and beyond. She started in November. For her campus, gratitude was for the month of November. And so she created this gratitude bingo challenge for her staff. One to build relationship with her staff and they got to send pictures. It was a fun activity to build that connection for the staff. And of course the staff is being an example for our students with this fun activity in terms of them building this relationship. So our

216junior high, here's an example of a student character dare that the campus can share, focusing on selflessness. Of course, this is something we just share. We don't necessarily say, hey, go do this. But this is a way for students to really think about, hey, I may have some extra things at home that's just collecting dust. I may want to donate this and share to someone in need. So live and let go is an example. For high school, as you know, the last couple years has been a lot of anxiety and stress. And so one of the activities that the campus can choose is give teachers this prompt focusing on stress and coping. So the goal is to discuss what we can control versus what we cannot control during stressful times and what it means to

217manage that stress. So a teacher can share an example of what it is that they choose to participate in to cope. in stressful times. And so these are some other examples you can certainly peruse later on that focuses on the different character traits in terms of character dares that campuses can use. Again, lots of resources, lots of options that campuses can select from. So our next step is to continue to work with our campus teams to continue that implementation of that character strong, providing any additional training as needed. The other component of that will be to develop a system for campuses to document their character education because as we said in the beginning, there are now TEKS for the character traits that have to be taught. And so they're kind of grouped in grade bands,

218K2, 35 and so we want to make sure that all of those required traits are covered in that in that grade band so we will this year kind of gives us a good idea of what that documentation needs to look like what's beneficial to campuses while also giving us that information that we need to track our progress on those positive character traits Dr. Kelly So, you know, I think part of the reason this came up, just looking back over the last maybe six months, is that I guess there were websites that basically tried to tie this particular product to... critical race theory. Critical race theory being something that the Texas legislature says thou shalt not teach from this point on. But our point, our partial point in making this presentation is that We're not getting

219into anything like that. We're teaching these character traits that they just went through Which has been done pretty much since the start of the American Republic and is not involved with critical race theory or those Controversial elements now some people that are on these websites. They've taken material that we're not using that are parts that we didn't buy into or judge one way or the other that were focused on equity and other things. Now, I don't want to get into an argument over equity because if you ask five people now in our polarized society, you get five different definitions of equity. But we're not going there. We're going with the, you know. the idea that there ought to be something found wrong with teaching kindness humility honesty selflessness respect forgiveness patience and commitment seems beyond

220the pale i think kids need that more than ever to emphasize what the parents are teaching at home i'll jump out there I appreciate y'all doing all the hard work on this. I'm one of the big proponents of teaching anything to do with character. I taught it for seven years of team leadership, the hardest to reach and the hardest to teach kids. And I don't care who says what, kids haven't changed in 40 years. the parents have changed and the teachers have changed and we as adults have changed right the the kids still need the structure they still need Maslow's hierarchy of needs period and so I think this is a great program and I'm massively in favor of it as long as we stay with within our TEKS guidelines The state tells us we

221have to, right? We don't vary off of that. I just wish we had done it a little sooner, but we have to start somewhere, right? The thing is with kids is they're going to do what you ask of them, right? And if you teach a kid how to shake a hand, have eye contact, how to argue appropriately. With an adult. That's what I used to teach. I mean, that does all part of these, uh, those characters strong. Cause I've, I've researched it. The thing is, is, is we can't stop parents from letting their kids look at an iPad while they're watching, while they're eating dinner at Gringo's. What are they teaching them? That's not my job, right? But when they get to the school, as a school board member, our job is to teach them

222the best possible thing we know how. And sometimes it's got to be their aunt, their uncle, or the person that shows them the right way to do things, and that's our job. It works. I'll tell you that. It works. And if 10 kids gravitate and change their mind on something, then it's worth it, anything. One other thing I'll tell you about kids is I always call it marinated learning. And so they'll take some of these character-strong things, and they won't say a word about it. And they'll say, oh, it's so dorky, blah, blah. And then two days later, they may mention something that they learned, you know. My kids do it to me all the time. They're repeating words or phrases that I say, you know. And so they may think I'm a dork, but

223then they're telling their friends about things that I did. So kids learn it. They just don't always. Say it at that moment. It may be a couple of days. Maybe a week. Maybe a month later, you know, but I appreciate this program a lot So I wanted to thank personally and I can't speak for you at all Jeff on just dr. Nixon's effort All right, so I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Nixon on this particular subject because it is a concern, and we're seeing concern in certain populations grow over SEL, and is it indoctrination? Is it bringing in questionable materials that people might object to? And there is that question of what is the job of a school district? Is it to provide an education? Is it to impart? some form of morality

224is it to have a basic code of conduct or is it to grow great humans you know like i think everybody might define that just a little bit differently and and each one of those things comes with a cost and an effort but i have to thank you spent two hours on what i'm sure was a busy day sitting there and going through these materials not only that you promised to answer some questions that you didn't have the answers for um and then also got us access the entire board who were all represented elected representatives of the people of the community with very different prerogatives we don't agree on a lot of stuff right so it I think having that access is I was able to sit down I spent basically my entire morning going

225through the curricula and I appreciate you getting that for us I am very, I'm one of those people you would say is hypersensitive to kids being indoctrinated in one way or another. And it does cut both ways. Like you wouldn't want someone out there proselytizing, as I told Dr. Kelly earlier, like being Baptist or Mormon or whatever else, just as you would not want someone indoctrinating your kid to a philosophy that your family finds objectionable. I didn't find that in the materials. I really didn't. There are some things where you could read it into it if you really squinted your eyes and tried. Okay. And I say that as someone who's very sensitive to those needs. I do still have an unanswered question, and I know that this might pre-exist your tenure in dealing with

226this, but how was this particular vendor and program selected in the first place? From what I understand and Dr. Moore can correct me, originally we had campuses that through conferences, whether it was the counselor, assistant principal, had seen Character Strong, had opportunities to participate in trainings and brought it to their campus and were able to implement some of it to see how the students reacted, how did the staff react, was that a good fit? And that happened even before we knew there was going to be a move by the Texas Education Agency to require the TEKS for the positive character traits. So before that, and really before this discussion, I think before that Texas Education Agency implemented those TEKS, a lot of our campuses were kind of on their own to develop their character program

227for their campus. Wild West of SEL. That's correct. Well, and it was. And so one of the concerns was that, like Dr. Moore shared, we wanted something that was a coherent, consistent, sorry, it has passed my bedtime. so that we used a common language. You know, that the middle school would know, okay, these, you know, we covered these basic traits in elementary, now we can build on them. When we had campuses all doing something different, you didn't necessarily know, like as a principal at Sablatura, I didn't know what Lon Cockrell and C.J. Harris did. They could have all been different students coming to us with different experiences. So that was one advantage to going to one program. The other kind of bonus was, that our campuses embraced it. They felt like it was something that

228met their needs on multiple levels, kind of like we talked about. There's that relationship piece, not just with teachers to students, but with the staff itself to build that culture, as well as bringing in those character traits. And so that's how it kind of evolved. Dr. Moore had an opportunity to share some of this with our School Health Advisory Committee, our SHAC committee last November because some of our campuses had begun implementing that. And so we did a presentation on our school guidance program and so was able to speak. Here's what elementary is doing middle school junior high. And so they they got a little bit of a taste of it. Now, it wasn't as extensive as what we've provided you all. You know, they didn't have logins, but that's definitely something we can do

229moving forward. You know, we have a meeting in April. We could you know, if the board would like for us to share more information with parents, that's a good group to do that because we have not only parent representatives, but community. IN DISTRICT. WELL, AND THE GREAT THING ABOUT HAVING A CURATED SET OF RESOURCES, THAT'S WHAT WE'RE BUYING IS RESOURCES, RIGHT? YES, RESOURCES. INSTEAD OF ASKING TEACHERS OR THESE COMMITTEES TO COME UP WITH THEIR OWN THING, WE NOW HAVE ACCESS TO WHAT THEY'RE ALLOWED TO DISSEMINATE. AND WE CAN CURATE THAT LIST AND SAY THESE ARE ALLOWED AND THESE ARE NOT, WHICH WE'VE ALREADY DONE BY PURCHASING CERTAIN ASPECTS AND EXCLUDING OTHERS THAT PEOPLE MIGHT FIND ON THE INTERNET AND OBJECT TO, RIGHT? YES. AND YOU CAN FIND THEM AT THE CASTLE SITE FOR THE FRAMEWORK

230OR YOU CAN FIND THEM AT THE CHARACTER STRONG SITE. THEY DO EXIST. but I didn't find them in what we are offering. That is an excellent synopsis right there. Yes, that's 100%. But I want to point out something that I'm not a lawyer, and it's just my job to ask the hard questions. So in the state statutes that mandate that we provide SEL, one of the statutes, 29.906, it says that Each school district and open enrollment charter school must adopt a character education program that includes the positive character traits listed in subsection B. In development or selecting a character education program under this section, a school district shall consult with a committee selected by the district that consists of parents of district students, educators, and members of the community, including community leaders. That's the piece

231I feel like is missing. THE LEGAL REQUIREMENTS THERE, BUT EVEN MORE THAN THAT, IF WE'RE GOING TO SEE BLOWBACK FROM SECTIONS OF THE COMMUNITY, THIS IS WHY. BECAUSE WE CAN'T GIVE EVERY COMMUNITY MEMBER ACCESS LIKE THE WAY WE HAD. IT'S NOT TENIBLE. BUT WE COULD MAYBE CROWD SOURCE THAT TO TEACHERS TO FLAG THINGS THAT THEY SAY, YOU KNOW, PEOPLE FROM MY WALK OF LIFE MIGHT OBJECT TO THIS LESSON AND IT SHOULD BE REVIEWED. And I do think that we need to go back to SHAC. That's a great, you described that to us. That's community members, that's parents, that's educators. That would be a great vehicle to get an actual stamp of approval that this is the materials we're going to use. And we can absolutely do that in April, especially with this kind of being,

232even though we say it's year one implementation, it's just try some. Because the expectation is that they do two activities a month from January to May. So it's just that kind of. start looking at it, how you know, how can we use that? What's working best? So we could absolutely at this point, because like I said, we have a meeting in April and I can share information prior to that. So the parents will have a chance to look at it before we meet. And so we could work with our shack not only in April to plan for how we're going to start next school year, but that could be kind of part of that committee's kind of ongoing review. If there's something that's questionable. That's another committee that we could it meets four times a

233year be able to share You know updates share lessons share kind of our scope and sequence. Here's what we'd like to do Because materials change if you stamp at one time you're not done. Well and the needs change, you know There may be something that you know, we can't even predict that's going to happen Let's just say, you know, there's bullying becomes an issue at a particular grade level and the parents want more information There's things for example in character strong that can go home for parents. So we could you know, encourage our campuses to share those. You know, so there's things that we can do in response to issues that campuses may be having. I'll share my last point. I'll share the subsection right after that quote that I gave. Okay. Section D. This

234section does not require nor authorize proselytizing or indoctrinating concerning any specific religious or political belief. And we're adhering to that from what I've seen. So kudos. I do like the program. I do think kids can't learn if they can't engage in a classroom environment, right? This is an actual educational need. This isn't just fluff that we're throwing in there. It's also a state requirement. So I appreciate that y'all found this and brought it to us. I just want to kind of check the boxes that we haven't checked yet. Absolutely. Dr. Nixon, can... And I, you know, to the fault of mine, I haven't gotten on T.A.'s website, but oftentimes they give you a list of vetted materials that districts can choose from. Have they done that for S.E.L. yet? Well, they they had some information

235about that, but then we talked to Barney Fudge. We contacted him. And because I know with T.A., I like his name, Barney Fudge. I email him a lot. But because the state is not allocating any resources. to this requirement, they're not going to put out that list. So they're just saying, you guys go ahead. We want you to do this. You're required to do this. We're not going to give you any money. And so typically they put out those lists when they provide money. So like our IMA, when we're looking at textbooks, the state provides funds. So they will say these are approved because this is an unfunded mandate. There's no, they won't create that list. Good to know. Yeah, I want to kind of get back on what Chris was saying. I do appreciate

236the time you took, and you got hopped right on that right away, and I do appreciate it because it does take time. And, you know, I can only imagine two trustees walking in, and you're sitting there thinking, oh, my God, what are these guys coming over here to quiz me about, you know? But you were very gracious and spent a lot of time and very informative as well. You know, I think we talked about it a little bit during our conversation. we can do a lot of different things through communication when we're working with students. So can you tell me again how these, I mean, you mentioned through announcements and stuff, are there certain times during the day within a classroom that a teacher goes through certain sections of this? Well, they'll pick act like

237I said that each campus picks activities that the campus is going to implement So if they're one of the ones that we kind of talked about there was a character dare to learn people's names So part of respect is knowing people's names So one of the character dares was to learn the names of the ladies and gentlemen in the front office You know that students may not interact with it challenges students to learn names or to learn the names of the custodians So what would happen is that could be? kind of introduced and discussed in morning announcements and and that's all it's just the morning announcements there's some campuses that have an advisory time built in and so each teacher may have kind of a little card and so that conversation is happening at the

238classroom level where there can be a little bit more discussion is that like a five minute it's five yes it's all of them are very short I mean, you could do up to a 30 minute lesson because it but we wouldn't, you know, like the the other day we watched that that short video, you know, with the camera and being grateful. And, you know, that was a minute and a half, two minutes, two minutes. And then there's like another question that, you know, the teacher kind of gets the class talking about. And so you're looking at about a five, 10 minute at most discussion. Also in faculty meetings, that's the one I forgot. Building culture is about the staff. building those relationships and the kids watch that. You know, if you go and ask kids,

239do your teachers like each other? They'll tell you what they think, right? Based on those interactions. So if teachers have positive interactions with each other, the kids are watching. And so in faculty meetings, that's also a good time. It's stressful right now. So if we can go do something fun. I mean, I know Mr. Moody sent me a card the other day and it, you know, it made my day. And so to, when we talk about those 10 post-its, I know Mr. Pardo, he's gone too, but he encouraged his coaches to do that. You know, it makes people feel better just to say, hey, I appreciate you. And so those are just those little moments in time. It's not anything that takes a lot of time out because Dr. Watson would be very upset if

240we ate into her instructional time. But we also have to balance that need for building those relationships with kids so they're ready to learn. Yeah, so the last thing I'm going to say is, you know, I guess a lot of it has to do with the way that we communicate some of these ideas and the way we feel like people ought to be treated, right? In many cases, I think, and you cleared me up on this the other day, is we start talking about SEL, and the first thing everybody's mind goes to is the worst possible case, right? And so I started doing a little bit of research on the Cassell Group and so on and so forth, and they do have a section that they get very controversial with, you know, in this transformative

241SEL-type environment, which is not something that we're doing. So I just wanted to make that clear. So if that's where people are going, that's not the case in our situation. And Jeff, just to add to that, people are kidnapping normal, everyday words and now using those to incorporate all kinds of things that are highly controversial. We're avoiding that. But SEL is an example. Now, SEL is labeled as a bad thing. Social-emotional learning? Yeah, without defining what they mean by that. Yes, there are people that kidnap SEL and used it for things that are highly controversial subjects and so on. But in our world-class goals of the last 11 years, it says the Paralympic ISD will support the physical and mental health of all students and staff. otherwise could be called sel so yeah trustee carbone

242okay all right well thank you for taking the time out with these two and meeting with them for two hours i appreciate that and again thank you for the presentation and and making sure that we're in in compliance getting us hooked up so that we can get into the yeah strong too good anything else for the good perfect all right And the last report, I think, Dr. Kelly, you're going to give a quick update on COVID? Yes. It's not going to be anything controversial. It's on COVID. Thank God we waited until 1015 at night. Well, good news. If you've been following the dashboard, I think it was at 190. I can't read my own writing. 194, 191 today, which is a significant decrease from 340 on Friday. You're down to 176 today. 176, okay. That

243must be the 4 o'clock posting. But as Mr. Berger has pointed out, sometimes there's a lag between the weekend and when we begin to get. reports in so we may see that number jump somewhat I already mentioned we have mentioned to you nothing new we have a critical shortage of bus drivers that continues we did get some help from the state about the CDL licensing procedure allowing bus driving to not have to concentrate on non bus driving activities to pass that we have had some I won't go into detail on this but we've had up and down ability to garner sufficient tests of different kinds. There's been like a supply chain issue with that. But we have lots of home kits now available and some of the other things. In a couple of times we've

244had to, instead of having the testing service on every single campus, say well you may have to go to the district location for your test and some other things. But I think we've covered that pretty doggone comprehensively as well as, you know, as much as. the testing supplies allows. I won't go into this, but there's one testing company that we're using that is so bureaucratic that we use it as a last resort. So we have like three or four different methods of getting tests. Probably the thing that I know Dr. Scheffler wants to talk about is the quarantining period and without going into great detail CDC came and basically reduced the the isolation or quarantining time from ten to five days but then the state acts upon that knowledge in two ways what TA says

245and what the Texas Department of Health and Safety I think is the right TDHS and TDHS which dictates to us that for students, the quarantine period continues to be ten days. So there's a distinction between the staff at five days and the students at ten days. And that's where things sit right now. As Dr. Scheffler has pointed out to me, there are districts that when the CDC came out with the five day thing, they instantly applied it to everybody, students and staff. And then only to find out later that, no, that was just for the staff, and they have not changed from that position. And included among them are Alvin to our south and Pasadena to our east. So just as an opening to you, Dr. Scheffler, if you want to comment on that. I

246didn't expect. I appreciate that, the intro. I mean, I do. I have a lot of questions about policy. And having lived through them in my own family and our whole, I'm going to share personally, whole family had COVID several weeks ago now. All my kids are back in school, but we're still dealing with the ramifications from it. One of my kids missed instruction. He was then tested on that material. This is a kid who's been struggling academically, probably struggled more than any of my kids. And the test on, we've gotten his test scores up to where he's finally making A's on his test with all sorts of effort. We work with him every night. And then he makes a 60 because he's tested on material he never received. He didn't even understand the concept he

247was being tested on. I have a kid that runs track. And I've been informed by the school district that without a letter from a medical professional. stating that she can reenter athletics, that she won't be allowed to get back to track. Even though UIL updated those guidelines back on January 18th, the person communicating to us, who's not an employee of the district, this was a contract employee from a health care provider, was saying that no, UIL's rules mandate that you have to get a letter, whereas UIL actually strongly recommends one. and then said, well, actually, it's not UIL, it's TEA. Well, TEA has never had an opinion on that as far as I know. And so I believe that's being addressed. I believe it's being chased down. But it really drove home the fact I

248could not list for you every single COVID-specific policy that we currently have. We haven't had a COVID update since before November, and I don't know how policy has shifted. I don't know where we're applying what policies to what campus. I know I waited in the foyer after I've previously addressed our problem. We had a child evaluated for speech therapy, a young child in the foyer, in the airlock of one of these schools. We've previously addressed that. I know it was addressed with the campus, and I hate to reopen old wounds, but then my wife and I go back to have our, not the ARD, the IEP. meeting for another one of our kids and we literally stood in that airlock. There's no chairs. We stood in that airlock to the campus for over 20 minutes,

249probably approaching 30. And because the perception is we're not taking visitors. I feel like there are still, there's policies in place right now that don't make sense given the current environment, don't make sense given what we're learning about these new waves, you know, Omicron and whatever the next one's going to be. And, you know, they're all going to be slightly different. But what we do know is that our students and our families are experiencing a degradation of the educational experience. of the social learning and the isolation that they're experiencing. I've got kids, four of my kids are in the district. Only one of them tested normal. Everyone else was positive. That kid got to go back to class because he's previously had it. The other three had a headache for a day and a half,

250and then they stayed home for two weeks. Even though, again, coming back to the science of things, we feel like Omicron moves faster, replicates faster. Kids are shedding it before they're symptomatic, if they ever get symptomatic. And then you explain to me how a grown human is allowed to drive the bus or enter the classroom or administer a campus after five days of isolation. But yet we have to mandate for these kids who I would argue are more severely affected by the learning loss in the isolation and then their parents who have to miss work, especially single moms, especially people fighting and struggling on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. They're the ones falling off. It has a disproportionate impact, but it impacts everybody. I luckily have a homemaker for a wife who is

251happy to homeschool our kids. Not everyone is so blessed. I know TEA's recommendations or their guidelines, which do carry the force of law. I also know there are other communities that are doing what they believe is right for their kids and not strictly adhering to those recommendations. And so my request, and I do have some questions that I could ask. I prepped Mr. Berger. I said I'm going to. I'm going to pepper you a little bit because I do have some questions that I could demonstrate some of the absurdity of some of these things. But I do think this is an update. And so within the confines of that update, I would like to make a motion that we address or at least get a review as a regular agenda item at the next board

252meeting, all existing COVID policies for the entire district, either campus by campus or district wide or whatever it is, so that they're enumerated and we have an opportunity to discuss and address them. Okay. I can ask the president to put it on there, but if I have another board member that supports that, I think we can get it on the agenda. Okay, well, I guess my first thought is there's a huge wealth of that information on our website under the COVID. But there's also conflicting accounts there. Chris, I'm going to say this. I went through the same thing you did. I don't have the same thoughts you do. I do think it is conflicting, 10 and 5. I understand that. My daughter struggles in high school, and I get it. She's failing. She failed. She

253can't go because she missed 10 days of beginning of January. But she's got to work harder. You know what I'm saying? And so, but I do think, you know, I would like to revisit them too. But I'm not going to second it. I'm just going to ask. I don't want the day-to-day operation of the district, right? We can only do three things. But I can ask Dr. Kelly to revisit the policies and see if we can look at them. Are you saying you'd like to see it on the agenda? I'm not going to say that, no. I don't know specifically, I guess, to clarify, what specific policy are we putting on to, I guess, can we get clarification from Tanya? I asked you a bad time. Is that what you're saying, Tanya? And to clarify,

254what I'm asking is that we have the opportunity to discuss every policy that we're applying to kids and staff. We have shortages of staff, which means we can't deliver an education. If you don't want to just... Is it just one policy, Chris, of 10 to 5? No, I'd like to know what all of them are. I want to know what volunteers are being kept off campus. I want to know who has access, who doesn't. I want to know what data we're collecting. I want to know what we're doing with testing. Like, I really want to know a comprehensive review of everything COVID-related. not just a agenda update where we get bullet points. Like, what is being applied to our kids? Well, what are you going to do with that information? Discuss it. And then we

255have the ability as a board, there's seven of us, I'm one, we have an ability as a board to take action. Now, if you're worried that action would be taken that you disagree with, it takes at least four of us to do that. No, I'm not worried about that at all. But what I'm, I mean, are you getting into the weeds? I mean, we're oversight. Right. Right. We said, you know, I mean, I, I, I dare say that you are actually taking it. I mean, you're, you're in, in my opinion, you are taking your role as a board member and putting this, like, I feel like you're going to dictate to how each of these campuses run. And, and with, it's clear that on our, on our website, we do have these policies. And I

256think that you can ask for. I mean, I'm hearing that you're saying that there are some discrepancies and maybe that needs to be addressed, but that needs to be addressed by him, not us. That's not our role. So I... I think oversight does include asking for a review of all policies related to a subject. But our policies that we have are on our website. The policies that the board has control over, those kind of things that we've talked about. I don't think they're being applied uniformly. In fact, my interaction. That's an issue for administration, not us. But there are going to be policies that we as a board might say, this is antiquated. That's not our job. If I can interject one thing. First, I just want to make it very clear before we continue

257the discussion that when you refer to policies Board policy is what you guys adopt and we agree upon or you guys agree upon. It's delineated in TASB and our board policy, and you can go and access that. What you're really referring to is our procedures because we haven't adopted board policy that's specific to COVID. We may have laws that have been enacted that are referenced in legal, but you haven't taken a local action to make any absolute rule about COVID directly. therefore we don't have any policies specifically that you're asking what i think you're asking is you want to know what are we doing at all of our campuses and i think what he's asking administration i'm not speaking for you you can correct me is hey i want to know what we're doing and

258what's what's our processes as dr kelly i think mentioned or someone else may have set up here most of that is delineated on our covid page where we tell you here's what we're doing this is what we're going to do how we're going to do it i think he's saying he thinks that there may be some discrepancies and he just wants to know what's happening at each of the campuses you don't need a motion for it as dr kelly said you can tell us hey this is what i want and then you guys can discuss what gets on the agenda and the board adopted procedure for how you get things on the agenda if you want to put it on there between the president and and meeting with dr kelly when they set that agenda

259i think that it's clear what you're asking or i think it's clear enough of what you want and I think that we can be sure to go through and find out and see what Consistency is there and get back to you guys on that But I just want to make sure because I think what what miss Decker is saying is that? You're asking us about policies, not necessarily policies, just our procedures and our processes right now, and that that's what the administration sets, and we are telling you what we're doing, and the board just is overseeing and making oversight on it. I think that's where the discrepancy is. Would you say that oversight applies to when the board perceives that there's procedures that are being implemented that are counter to the will of the board?

260Does that fall under oversight? Let's say that the board... objected to the way a procedure was being applied district-wide, then is that part of the oversight role of the board? I think if the board perceives that the district does not implement, or not the board, that the administration is not implementing its policies the way that the policies state they have the right to direct, that we look at that, look into that, and correct that, absolutely. But they can change policy. procedures they can recommend to us to look into things and then come back with a recommendation for what we want to do. Agreed, but we can't really do that without having, as we discussed before, we're limited when it comes to an administrative update, right? If we want to have a discussion on something, we

261want to include the community. We want the community to know this is going to be discussed, and if you feel strongly about it, you have the opportunity to come weigh in. I feel strongly about it, and I would love to weigh in. There's not an agenda item where I can do that other than to voice my single opinion outside of the body corporate of the board. And so what I'm requesting is that COVID procedures be comprehensively reviewed so that the board can have an opportunity to weigh in on it and so that we can include the community who can also address those procedures and lodge their either support or objection or suggestions in accord with that. I don't fear the conversation. i don't think it's a matter of hearing the conversation i think it's a

262matter of micromanagement i mean it's very specific in everything that we've learned in our board training that we're not supposed to be going to campuses and you know and and confronting teachers or which i'm not suggesting no i know you're not suggesting that i'm saying we're not we're prohibited from we're not prohibited but our job isn't to micromanage every specific issue now if we get a I'm sorry? I was just saying, we don't run the day-to-day operations. Right. So if we get 10,000 calls from concerned parents about a specific issue, we forward that on to Dr. Kelly, and we say, you know, what's being done about this? And then if we're not happy with the response that we get, we may push it further. This isn't day-to-day operations anymore. This is COVID-19. We're in 2022.

263This is three-year operations. Correct. I think there's nothing wrong with Dr. Shuffler asking us or asking the administration to look at a review of what the procedures are, to review them and to bring it back to you guys so that you guys can. Do whatever you want with it. Trustee Scheffler, if he's specifically, he's the one that wants policy, maybe it's more beneficial that we sit down with Larry and Dr. Kelly and review those policies and that there's a specific change you want to bring an actionable item, then we put that on the agenda. Yes. On an item-by-item basis. Well, again, if there is a... Because that, to me, sounds more like you're kind of in the weeds, but... Well, again, having a discussion with the board, just an open discussion about policy and procedure

264when it's there, that it's available, again, When the board is not when you don't have the full board wanting to have that discussion when the policies are there when you specifically want to have it and if there's an actionable item that you want to take that you could put on the agenda otherwise it's just a to me a free-for-all you're putting on the agenda to go through everything that Larry and the rest of the staff is doing and the discuss each of each thing and then try to make a change as you see it which is is getting into the day-to-day can I ask Mr. Berger to address a question that I have for him I'm sorry if it's inconvenient, Lance. It's important to me. Thank you, Mr. Berger. I get it. So when I

265brought to you my concern recently about the UIL question, was that information you had? No, sir. Would you see any benefit to the discussion where everyone finally gets on the same page about what our expectations are and what our procedures are? When you say everyone. I mean, I want to know what they are. I would love for all of administration to know what they are. I would love for every campus principal to know what they are. And right now, I feel like we still have some. This was a major issue. This inconvenience to my family is making my daughter miss another day of school. It's putting all my kids going to the doctor again. And I don't know how many kids in the athletics program have been hit by that. So how many of those

266issues exist? What was brought forward was that UIL had it required before January the 18th. The trainers under advisement of their supervisors as well as their medical people that they speak with felt it was in the best interest to keep that requirement even though UIL made it highly recommended. So they made the choice for the health of the kids what they thought. When you brought it to my attention and we ran it down, brought it to Coach Pardo, brought it to Nurse Beck, realized that we may need to relook at this because it may not be in the best interest right now, and we have always followed TEA. Texas Administrative Code. UIL. Correct. All of that. So if they're going highly recommended and we want to get back to a more normal, why aren't we

267going that way? So yes, knowing that they had had that retained as required would have been good information to go, wait a minute, that might not be where the district is going. So if you were asking a review of all of our procedures, I don't know if that's something that I can just type up for you and go, this is what we're doing? Send it to you. Y'all can discuss it, look at it. If you have a concern, I'd be more than happy to sit down with you and go, what do you think is contradictory or broken? That's a great starting point. But I do still think the community right now is highly polarized. And people want to know what we're doing and how it's being applied. Is it being applied evenly? And maybe that

268falls under update. Maybe I'd much rather see it as an agenda item where we can actually take action if we see fit. And I'm not a micromanager, right? This is an issue that affects every single person in our community right now. And I know it's late and this is not an item, but very similar to the UIL. If there is something you see as contradictory, if anybody that sees in the community as contradictory, that you are saying A, but campus is doing B, let us know and we'll address it and fix it. It is being corrected. Coach Pardo talked to the head trainer that came up with that policy. The organization that they got the seven-day protocol from, the next day reduced it to a three-day protocol. So they are also lessening the return. So

269we are all moving in that direction. The world is moving in that direction. And I appreciate that. I'm not trying to throw you to the wolves here. No, no, I'm good. I'm just saying if there are issues that we have, we've been dealing with this dance for two years. And to be honest with you, I got the job and the next day was COVID. So I've been doing this dance and doing the best that I can to learn it, just like the rest of the world. But if there are issues in our procedures that have been not changed or not updated or a campus is not following it, we'll make sure and address it. So there's two things that I heard from you. One was you were concerned about the 10-day return, and one was

270the fact that parents are not allowed on campuses at the elementary schools. Those are two of the big ones. Those are the two that, from what you said and what I heard, you have the most heartburn about, aside from the UIL piece that's been remedied, then those are the two big... big pieces that I heard. But my problem is I can't limit it to that because I don't know all the policies because my family hasn't been affected by them. Those are the ones that have hit me. We don't have any COVID policies. I'm sorry, procedures. But the thing is, is that it's not the parents that are listening and those that are not. I have emails that I've emailed to the district left and right since this started about inconsistencies that I've seen. One of

271them I'll bring up in conjunction with one of the things. And I have lists every COVID update that I've brought up. Other than those two issues, I'm not hearing of others. And I think of the seven of us, we would be hearing about other inconsistencies as they arise. I'm not going to say it's not limited to those two. You might be completely right there. I don't know. Fair. But I'd like to focus on the two that are the big hot topics, and then we can gain consensus or not. It's not that we have to vote on it, but clearly if we're all on the same page about particular issues. It's not a votable. That is what I'm saying. We can't do it tonight. I'm not voting anything. I'm saying here's the opinions of the board

272members that are sitting up here. And I, my opinion on the 10 day versus the five day is that we hold held by law GA 38. So we should hold by law the same recommendation from TEA about the 10 days. However, there are issues with kids getting truancy letters now who have had COVID twice, who I feel like are being penalized for policies that we have in place. So there needs to be some procedures. No, at this point it's policies because they reach a certain level of absences and now they're having to do credit recovery because of a policy that we have in place that forces them to stay home for 10 days by law. So we shouldn't be penalizing them for that. So how do we get around that? Well, I didn't know about

273that until this second, but if you'll kind of give me the specific or point me in the right direction, I'll work with Susan Holloway and we'll see what's going on there. There's a... The law. There's an automatic letter that is generated, too. If you, at five days, I mean, it automatically just goes out. I mean, I got one for my kids, too. And it's because of athletics and stuff like that. So that kind of stuff needs to, you know. But not everybody knows that those. are just automatically generated. Absolutely, the campuses and the administration is working with all of the people who are going through this to make sure we have to comply with the law and send out the required postings or notices for the absence rule. As far as meeting the seat requirements

274and all those things that come up, there are ways that we can work with each individual person to make that up, and it's not resulting in... really harm to the student, does it require the student to learn the material and be exposed to the material? Absolutely, because that's what we're charged with doing. And I think I'm quite certain, and I think the executive directors can tell me if I'm incorrect, but I think that we're working through each of those on an individual basis and that no student should seriously be hindered or harmed or have to go through any hoops. helpful to know you formed it I thought I liked the way you did with clarity on the two big issues the ten day if I understood the second one was closed to visitors yeah the

275elementary school campus is closed to parents that is something that we have been hearing about so and let me just update you on that this is really me and my decision ultimately but as I've heard feedback from folks thought the thought that I've had is wait for the the Omicron to spike and start to go back down that has now happened within the last couple of weeks and so now I'm asking every week to the assistant superintendents over the schools and they in turn to the principals do you think it's primarily a problem at the elementary schools at the older schools are already doing UIL and they've got this and that going on but there is a some some people with fear and some people ready to open wide open and my own thought was

276as things peak and start to go down then people's anxieties are relieved and we can be a little bit more open and that's where I've left it for now Well, I just want to point out the kind of pieces of that, that we realize that each of these kids at the elementary school have siblings that are being exposed widely. And we realize that those parents are often being exposed widely and that those kids are bringing those same exposures into the classroom environment. So just because those people are not physically on campus doesn't mean that those exposures still aren't present, whether those people are there or not. So you're saying open the schools wide open? Well, I mean, I think the teachers need it. I think the teachers need volunteers back on campuses. I think the

277parents need to see an experience. I mean, this has been three years of a parent not being able to see some of their kindergarten in their natural environment. And I just don't see that that's. What I'm hearing is the cost and the benefit don't line up. Mr. Rudy is nodding in tremendous agreement. He's been telling me that we need to move faster on this for some time. So I think it's time to go. Like, I agree that there's always going to be risk, and there's going to be risk for students. And I'm not deaf to the idea that there's going to be students at a higher exposure rate and or individuals that work at these campuses that are going to have a higher exposure rate. But it's imperative that those parents and those teachers make

278decisions now to keep themselves as safe as possible given the scenario at hand. And I don't mean to make this in a callous way. And it's not that I'm not thinking of the least of these, but you're already exposing. You're already getting the exposure. No, you know what happened, Crystal, historically is in December. You know, we were moving towards when January opened up, all bets are off. Then Omicron hit, spiked, 400, 500 cases, and we stayed closed. Right. And that's where we're at right now, watching the peak go down. But I'll definitely, tomorrow, we'll look at relisting. And just let you know that our procedures that are posted in our matrices for the green, the orange, and the red support that. When a campus gets into the orange and the red, that's where we do

279heightened mitigation and we say, hey, no more visitors. But as long as they're in the green area, visitors are fine according to our matrices. It's just like we said, when we came back, we had 481 cases a week. Well, now we're down to 257. Not perfect, but getting better, and it's going to continue to go down. So if we follow our procedures, open up for visitors, when we hit the orange and the red, we have to say, wait a minute. We got spikes going on. We need visitors not coming. Well, and I've always said that we need an accordion response, right? There's going to be times where we don't know what the next variant is going to look like. Am I wearing a mask now? No. I'm not afraid of my level of exposure. And

280I'm not afraid that I'm going to get someone else sick. But the next variant, we don't know. I might be wearing a mask. And we have had an accordion process. I mean, for example, Challenger did hit the red number. But we looked at it logically and common sense and saw what was coming off and said, look, we're not going to close for two days. hurt students and not get a good reward from that. So we have adjusted our philosophy on what we're doing. And it's a case-by-case basis. Yes, ma'am. And we may not always know the details that play into meeting those cases, but when we ask, I get the answers. Yeah, I mean, the work that Christy Beck and Monica Reynolds do, watching all the cases, watching the dashboard, watching the clusters, talking to

281the nurses, and projecting what we need to do is... Amazing. And it sounds like a lot of effort. Christy is right behind you, and I think she's willing to say something if you'd give her a chance here. He just said it. But what I was thinking the whole time when you were saying inconsistencies is kind of more of our ability to pivot and recognize the clusters and then. have some intervention. So I think we have some temporary things in place that maybe we need to communicate better. Okay, it's time to pull back. And so when you said that, I thought, you know, we always send a letter out that says, okay, put these interventions in place, but we haven't done. I haven't done a good job of going back and saying, hey, your case numbers

282are down. Have you guys alleviated or gone back to the green level again? So it's a point well taken, but I think maybe some of the inconsistency might be with that, with cases going up and then cases dropping back down. Because what we're doing seems to be working. It seems to be, you know, once we get a cluster, we put these interventions in place, the cases go back down, and then things can kind of go back to normal again. And it is very generous of you to take that on, too. Right. But I do I want to know, like, what's your level of what's the demand that's been placed in your life and your staff life? Oh, it's high. It's high, right? It's high, but it's worth it. I mean, you know, I'm I see

283I see the full picture. Right. I see the full picture of this. I. Whenever I pick up the phone, I don't know which person I'm talking to, the person fearing for their and their children's life or the person that absolutely doesn't want masks or isolation or any of the things. But typically when we talk to them, both of them tend to come back to the middle and understand. But we have kids in the ICU. We have adults that have been in the ICU. We've had deaths of parents. We've had, you know, I mean, so. It does hit some people hard, and so it's hard to not pivot and be sensitive to all sides. And I do appreciate that. And I don't know, I mean, people are hearing me say this, if they've never heard me

284talk before, they're like, oh, who's this a-hole that's, you know, wants to just act like COVID doesn't exist. That's never been me, okay? I don't deny any of the science, any of the trending. I was an advocate for masking. I'm an advocate for getting vaccinated. I will advocate for people to protect yourself to the best reasonable extent you can, right? But at the same time, I tend to think that we're getting a dose of reality. And my point from the beginning has been we get a lot of benefit. I know the benefits that you're describing, and your staff is doing an amazing job. Berger is doing an amazing job. My question has always been, do we know what the cost is? And I don't mean dollars, because the longer that we focus on COVID-specific policy,

285the longer we're going to have a population of people that is extremely scared of COVID. And at this point with Omicron, What I'm seeing in the data is it is much more similar to other diseases we do. I had my son on my chest in the ICU for eight days on my chest, five of those days on oxygen. It was RSV. It was not COVID. It was pre-COVID. Well, all of medicine is risk versus benefit, so I totally know where you're coming. from with that, but also we're following the ex the true X and I get that if I could take us, we're kind of waiting for them to take all that on me. If I could take the legal liability on me, I would have violated that tomorrow or yesterday. Okay. But I can't

286ask you to do it. And, but I think that's the valuable discussion. I think it's less in my, in my mind, it's less of legal liability and more setting a precedent because the communicable disease chart that we follow that exclusion criteria covers all the communicable diseases, not just COVID. So if we, go backwards on this one then you're next year and the year after that if somebody can say well you changed it on covet why not this and so for me from my standpoint as a medical professional in the district and somebody who deals with this every year, not just COVID. I'm looking at that entire list of all the laws that they have created and calling them the experts and letting us know when they can reenter the school safely. And so I'm just...

287But COVID's not... You're saying COVID's not treated uniquely in that regard? Oh, no. Because I thought policy... I mean, the 10 days is unique. That's unique. And that's a long time. 10 days is a long time. But reentry criteria is very much not... It's differing. We're getting off. kind of getting off on a tangent. I have one quick question for Mr. Berger. So I've been hearing all these crazy rumors from all these parents about meetings they've heard of where we're going to shut down, we're going to stop tracking cases, we're going to shut down the dashboard, things like this, and I'm like, I don't think so. So, I mean, just really quickly. You can reassure me, we're staying the course with the stuff we've been doing so far with regard to tracking and reporting. One,

288we have to. We have to report all positive cases. And that's what Monica and Christy do daily. We have to keep up with the dashboard. We have to keep up with tracking the cases. We are keeping up with all of our mitigations and all of our testing. Maybe some of the conversations that they've heard or conversations that I've had with Christy and Monica and everybody is this conversation. I'm on the other side going, when do we get back to normal? When do I get back to exclusionary and it's fever free for 24 hours without medication and you come back to school? So those are just conversations that we have of when do we get there? No, I assumed. I'm just, I wanted it for the camera. But no, but every day we are working COVID.

289Every day we are working reporting. And I know that in the Facebook groups, they hold us accountable for some of the irregularities in the dashboard. that's sometimes human error. We forget to click an X or we forget to save or post wrong, but it's never malicious. We are transparent as we can be with what we have. That's what I assume. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Mr. Berger, for all you've done. All right. This meeting is adjourned at 1048.