001Good evening. Tonight we're joined by a very special Northside ISD Police Department Honor Guard who will assist us in the posting of our colors and will be followed by Trustee Salcido who will lead us in the invocation and pledges of allegiance. Please stand if you're able to. Almighty and merciful God, we ask your guidance and blessings upon this board. students, parents, patrons, teachers, and administrators, as we are assembled here this evening in the common pursuit of this great nation's wealth, our children. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Thank you. Good evening
002and welcome to this regular meeting of the Northside Board of Trustees. Before we call our first agenda item, the board would like just to take a moment and review some of the rules for conducting our meeting. The order of business for this meeting is set out in our agenda. One item that you may notice on the agenda is the consent agenda, and this item includes items that are considered routine and are recurring of nature. All of the items listed under our consent agenda will be acted upon in one motion. And if there's a consent agenda item that anyone here would like to address, please sign up to speak to that item and we will pull it from the consent motion and discuss it separately. We're also required by law to allow for public participation regarding
003the 25 Texas Academic Performance Report, TAPR, and the House Bill 3 Annual Report. If you would like to speak to this item, please sign up to address the board by indicating your intent to speak to agenda item number two, and you will be allowed to do so following the administrative presentation. The purpose of this meeting is to conduct board business, and for that reason, it is held in public. It is not a public forum. However, we do provide the opportunity for audience participation. If there is anyone wishing to address the board regarding citizens to be heard agenda item, must complete a sign-up sheet prior to the start of the meeting. If there's anyone who would like to address the board during an agenda item, please complete a sign-up sheet and indicate the agenda item you
004would like to address. The sign-up sheets are located at the entrance to this room. So we do not overlook anyone who would like to speak to the board. We will review the rules for addressing the board later in the evening. But is there anyone here who would like to sign up? For an agenda item or the citizens to be heard and has not already done. So We have one more. Okay Sheriff. Oh Hey Okay, so we do have one more that's coming here. So we'll make sure you we add to our list. Okay. Thank you We're gonna go ahead and move to our very first agenda item recognitions Yes, Madam President, members of the board, members of our community, welcome. Good evening. It's not every board meeting. We have our very own Northside ISD Honor
005Guard present the colors. So thank you to our Honor Guard. It's a very nice touch that we've just recently added. So this evening, we have a special opportunity to swear in, Madam President, our very own new police chief, Chief Richard Palomo. You have the oath. If you'd like to step up. in front of the dice to administer and like I say this is not only a tremendous recognition but as chief was saying this is the probably the safest venue in San Antonio this evening so we're so happy for you chief and all those here to support you all the Northside Independent School District peace officers shall upon commissioning and before performance of assigned duties take the following oath Please repeat after me. I, Richard Palomo, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the duties
006of peace officer for the Northside Independent School District as authorized under the Education Code of the State of Texas. I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States and of this state. So help me God. Furthermore, I solemnly swear that I have not directly... or indirectly paid, offered, or promised to pay, contributed, nor promised to contribute any money or valuable thing or promised any public office or employment as a reward to secure my appointment for the confirmation. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. I don't need the mic. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. So, you know, I owe all the glory to God for putting me here, right? I've been serving in public service for over 35 years. I've been blessed for working for many great
007school districts. I started as a chief at Southside ISD. And then from there, I went to Laredo and I landed at Southwest. And this is my last stop, folks. So this is very special to me. This is my last oath. But I couldn't do it without Dr. Kraft's support and leadership, also our school board. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to serve. Like I said, this is special for me because this is the last one, folks. After 35 years of public service, after this, I'm going to ride off into the sunset. All right. So I don't know how many years I got left, but I'm going to give you my best over the next several years. This district has been very opening to me, and they've been great. They've been very welcoming. I love
008that. I've been busy. It's been like nonstop for the last two months. Visited a lot of campuses, visited a lot of administrators. Seems like everybody wants to meet, which is not a bad thing, right? But, you know, I'm grateful to be here. And I couldn't do it without the support of my family, right? Family is always important. Family has always been with me. They also wear this badge. They also wear this badge. All those days that I worked those long nights, overnight shift for about five years, and you guys have been law enforcement, you know nobody likes overnight. That's a terrible shift. It disrupts your sleeping patterns. But that's what we do. This is a very noble profession. You're not going to get rich being a police officer, but you can make a comfortable living.
009And I've been blessed with a lot of great people and a lot of great colleagues in my profession. Like I said, my family, I'm indebted to you for always being there for me. My wife's the one that held the family together when it was falling apart. She's put several kids through college. I'm very blessed. I have three successful kids that are all professionals. One's an administrator, two are police officers, and I got some awesome grandkids that are going to do some great things. So I'm truly blessed, truly blessed, and I'm humbled to be your chief here at Northside. I look forward to working with all our community stakeholders, and my philosophy has always been based on relational policing. Right. And community engagement. So that's where you're going to see me at these different community events.
010Matter of fact, just yesterday, I was at Special Olympics, had to say some grand, got an opportunity to say some grand remark, opening remarks. So thank you for inviting me out. You're going to see a lot of that. But, you know, leadership is not about position or authority. It's about having an impact on the people that you serve. Right. And I've been blessed with serving with my blue family. They always been there. They've been my mentors, Roger Reyes. He's retired SAPD. We served in the military together. I've been on him for over 20 years, and he's always been a confidant and gave me some advice sometimes that I didn't want to hear, but he kept me going in the right direction. And Ray Zartucci back there in the back, Chief Zartucci has always been there
011for me. These two guys are like my extended brothers. We spend a lot of time together, probably more than we did with our families. So I appreciate that, Ray. Roger, thanks for being there. Bobby, for being a great friend. I don't want to prolong this, but I can tell you some stories about Bobby. We actually applied for the same chief's job and none of us got it. We didn't get it. So here we are. We became best friends. I want to say, Sheriff, you back there? I see Sheriff Salazar back there. Thanks, Sheriff, for showing up. Sheriff has always been a great supporter. This is the Blue family. Northside is in good hands, folks. We got a lot of extended. friends here at Northside, and I'm blessed for having those relationships. Like I said, I'm
012big on relationships, and I'm here to support kids and help them stay out of the criminal justice system. And we have a unique position. We're in a unique position to do that, to disrupt that prison-to-school pipeline. We're in a unique position to do that, and we're going to do that by coming up with some very creative and innovative programs, all right? So God bless you, school board. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to serving with you, all right? Thank you. Congratulations to you. Yeah, be careful what you pick up on this dice, Chief. Something might bite you. Bunch of bills, sir, bunch of bills. Well, Chief, thanks in advance to you and all your officers for all that you do to... not only protect and keep our students, our staff, our
013community safe, but taking a real proactive approach and allowing the students really to get to know you as an individual and letting them know that you're there for their well-being, their safety, and more importantly, for their overall success. So thank you. Thank you again. You're more than welcome to stay. We've got a few agenda items this evening. So this evening, we also have the opportunity to recognize another one of our outstanding employees. Sherry Morellas is the principal at Rawlinson Middle School. Sherry, you don't have to come up yet because I've got a little bit. She's in her 21st year in education, 17 of those right here in Northside ISD. Tonight, we are recognizing her for being named to the Rosine Fleming Campus or as the Rosine Camp. Fleming Campus Administrator of the Year by the
014Texas School Counselor Association. The Rosin Family, the Rosin Fleming Campus Administrator, that is a lot to say. We need an acronym. Administrator of the Year Award recognizes principals or administrators who actively support and champion comprehensive school counseling programs. This award highlights leaders who create a thriving environment for our counselors and students. Rosene Dubose Fleming, a dedicated Texas counselor. Sherry served as the principal at Rawlinson Middle School for the past eight years. Gosh, it's been eight years. It goes by quick, doesn't it? In the nomination that was submitted by our head counselor, Edna Dominguez, she said, Principal Morellas. leads with integrity, empathy, and a clear vision for student-centered collaboration. Her genuine respect for the counseling profession has created an environment where counselors feel supported, valued, and empowered to do the work that students need. So it
015is without further ado, in my distinct pleasure to recognize Cher Morellas. I will tell you, if you haven't had the opportunity to visit Rawlins Middle School, you feel everything that I just described articulated all throughout the entire campus. with students and staff and great job congratulations and we are so thankful that you're here in Northside ISD and serving Rawlinson Middle School congratulations Sherry if the board will please join me in front of the diet And Sherry, I know that members of your staff are here, your family members. Would you like to introduce those that are here to support you real quickly? Well, again, congratulations, Sherry. Keep up the great work. We know that you have a busy day ahead of you tomorrow, so you're more than welcome to stay. Your staff, your daughter's more than
016welcome to stay, but we also understand. So, again, congratulations. That concludes this evening's. honors and recognitions. Awesome. Our item number two is our public hearing. And this one is for taper and our house bill three. Yes, ma'am. So as you guys are aware, the Texas academic performance report or taper. It is required to be presented annually and it's also required to be posted to the district's website. It contains information for every district around discipline, criminal incidents, budget, academic achievement, higher ed, attendance, etc. It's important to remember that the majority of this data is from last school year. Some is even the previous year from last school year. So in addition to the taper being presented and posted, it's also required that annually we review the House Bill 3 required goals, which we know districts must
017have one for grade 3 math, grade 3 reading, and CCMR indicators. So we presented this at academics, and so we're bringing this to you tonight. And Dr. Cleveland, our Executive Director of Continuous Improvement, will present. It's like a press reunion. Was that the same one Chief was using? It is. I know I'm really going to go get something to drink. This just creates suspense. Part two, try again. Take two. So good evening. Each year we bring to you the annual report that includes taper and House Bill 3 goals. This year we also include the 2930, setting our goals for the 2930 school year, which is our five-year trend that we usually set it for. That's according to statute. In addition to the public hearing, districts publish the report under the required postings on the website.
018The following items are required to be available as part of the annual report. As Dr. Jordan mentioned, the TAFER report, district accreditation, campus performance objectives, violent criminal incidents, student performance in post-secondary institution, financial standard report, and progress on House Bill 3. Accreditation is based on student performance, financial integrity, and compliance with statutory requirements. The most recent status deemed Northside as accredited. Distinction designations acknowledge districts and campuses outstanding achievement in certain performance indicators relative to others. We had 79 distinctions earned by 38 campuses. Lastly, in the results driven accountability RDA report, TEA makes determinations of performance levels that are either meets requirements, needs assistance, needs intervention, or needs substantial intervention. The 2025 report showed our special education as meeting requirements. Campuses also develop and implement performance plans each year to ensure a focus on continuous improvement.
019The performance objectives based on the previous year's outcomes are set before the new school year begins. As you recall, during the fall semester, we approved the 25-26 campus improvement plans. These objectives are monitored through the year for progress. An additional requirement of the annual report is to provide information regarding violent and criminal incidents. I'm sure you notice a high number of felony controlled substance violations. This includes incidences of vaping, which has increased exponentially across the nation over the last few years. To respond to this need and reduce these incidences in Northside, we promote safe and drug-free school environments in which we educate staff, students, and families about prevention and early intervention, make the school environment safer by promoting norms to decrease the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, We build capacity of substance abuse
020prevention programs and services across all grade levels, and we reduce risk factors and increase protective factors among our students and families. Lastly, we have data provided by the Higher Education Coordinating Board that reports on previous year's graduates in their first year of college. This slide shows that out of 7,000 graduates in 2023, 54% attended and completed their first year of college the year following graduation. This data also shows the general GPAs that students earned during their first year. And as you can see, it's relatively evenly distributed. The financial actual reports are available for review on the TEA website linked here for districts and campuses. The financial report at the district level includes revenues, expenditures, disbursements, and tax rates, while the campuses includes expenditures. Now we move into the House Bill 3 annual report. House Bill
0213 was passed in 2019 and requires districts to adopt five-year goals with annual targets in three key areas. early childhood literacy, early childhood math, as well as college, career, and military readiness. These goals are developed by reviewing multiple years of data to determine trends, planning for continued improvement at an incremental pace, and designing annual targets with a 1% increase at the meets level each year. For third grade reading our goal is 57% of students at meets by the end of the 2029-2030 school year. At 51% in 24-25 we were one percentage point below our 24-25 goal of 52%. However, with a gain of six percentage points compared to 23-24, we are still on track to reach our 57% by the end of the 29-30 school year. As part of this annual performance report, we also
022share progress of our goals by student groups, and those are linked at the bottom of the slide. Our current goal for third grade math is 53% achieving meets by the end of 2930. Our actual meets rate for the 24-25 school year was 46%, which is slightly lower than our goal at 48%. but still an increase of seven percentage points compared to 23-24 leaves us on track to reach our five-year goal at 53%. The CCMR goal is to reach 70% of students being college, career, and military readiness by the end of the 29-30 school year. CCMR has shown incremental progress towards the goal over the last few years. At 58% in 2024-25, we are slightly below our 60% goal. You saw in the previous Star Meets Goals, we aimed to increase 1% point per year. Here,
023our goal is 2 percentage points each year, which means we need to gain 6 points over the next two years to meet our goal. These are our proposed five-year House Bill 3 goals laid out on the previous slides, which continue to plan for incremental growth towards our 2930 goals of 57% meets a third grade star reading, 53% meets at third grade star math, and 70% of students achieving CCMR. Finally, our district and campus level TAPER report are available through our website as well as on the TEA TAPER website linked below. The TAPER glossary is also linked for more information on any metrics shown in the report if needed. This will conclude the 2025 Texas Academic Performance Report, House Bill 3 Annual Report, and Goals. Questions? Dr. Harl? Go ahead. Go for it. Go. Thank you
024for presenting this. This was presented in academics with a little more detail. We have a lot of community members here, and there were a lot of stats in here. And the board sets, and tonight we're going to approve our future HB3 goals, as you presented here, or we have the opportunity to do so. Dr. Kraft, I had talked with you. Can you briefly, this board just does not set. these goals arbitrarily. We don't pick a number out of the air. And the board sets the goals, and it's up to staff to get us to where we want to go. Staff has been focusing greatly on improvement and achievement, not just to meet STAR, but to help our kids. So, Dr. Kraft, can you briefly explain what we've been doing to meet these goals? Yeah, absolutely.
025I think that we can talk about our work with the MAP assessment, which is the Measure of Academic Progress. This is an area that we've really concentrated, particularly with our turnaround campuses, and we feel like that we're making some pretty significant gains, particularly at those campuses. I think that in alone, those efforts are going to really, really promote academic achievement this year in particular. I think also one of the things that... we've taken a concerted effort from a leadership standpoint because the campus leadership does matter. There is a high correlation along with teacher efficacy in regards to improving student achievement. And we've taken the time, Dr. Fay. Dr. Jordan in spending time really ensuring that our principals understand this very complex accountability system. And I think that they have demonstrated not only appreciation, but they've
026become pretty astute in knowing what to look for, particularly with special populations in trying to close those gaps before we get to the star assessment, which by the way is. right just in front of us. I mean, it's coming very, very quickly. I'll let Dr. Jordan speak to a lot of the curriculum support because I know that we've got a lot of work, particularly in and around STEM scopes and a new curriculum that we've been working. And again, a lot of progress, very intentional progress monitoring. One of the things that I'll just mention as well that I think is demonstrating particularly as a result of the middle of the year map assessment particularly at Meade is we've deployed a lot of our curriculum and instructional specialist coaches that typically would be working upstairs, but also
027out on campuses and concentrating those efforts and resources on a few particular campuses that we feel like, yeah, we've got to provide some additional support. So, Dr. Jordan, I'll let you speak to that. Yes. So what I would add to that is in addition to the really in-depth additional support to those campuses who need it the most. across the board there's been a concerted effort to focus on what we call hot spot teaks that's texas essential knowledge and skills those are our standards because you you can look and see themes over grade levels and content areas where students perhaps struggle And so what that tells us is that we need to do a better job providing our teachers resources and professional learning and the tools so that they can ensure their students are successful. In
028addition, we're really emphasizing the priority standards. So teachers have a whole host of standards to teach. They have a lot of them. So we really want to emphasize these standards that carry the most weight. the ones that are vertically spiraled from one grade level to another, the ones that are tested the most often. So the approach is really multi-pronged. What are we doing for everyone at every campus, which are many things that the district has been doing, but we just have some more intensity. And then where are we going deeply at our campuses where we have children with some gaps? that they simply need additional support. We've brought to you guys, I think two times. some data from our measure of academic progress which is our map data and that is actually performance of students
029this school year so you were able to see happily that the needle is moving for for all of our students especially our students who had some deficits one of the things I'll highlight as well A lot of work, obviously, at the elementary, middle school, but at the high school level, CCMR, I just. I think that the work that's being done in particular and just recognizing that there are some, what I'll argue, maybe some low-hanging fruit with students attaining industry-level certifications through coherent sequencing, but some of the other measures that would, in essence, allow students to attain their CCMR certifications, validations. I'm pretty excited about the work. I know that several of our high school principals are having actually inter-district competitions right now, which is fine. And, of course, this is lagging data, so it will
030take a year before we see those immediate results. But I do think that we're making some pretty tremendous gains in CCMR as well. And, Dr. Fay, I don't know if you want to add anything. I always want to add things. I would just like to say thank you to the administration team, Jessica and her staff with elementary, Valerie with middle school, and Kara, along with the staff from curriculum and instruction. I think it's been a really good unified effort to support and change trajectory of how we look at accountability in our system. And so I'm really excited. I know I get to visit campuses often now with my team and get to monitor kind of like how are we supporting principals. I've been super encouraged with how our principals are responding to kind of some
031new things that are coming and just being really curious. I think it's been a big thing is being really curious about how do we just make our system better. And so a big shout out to my team because they are really working really, really hard in support of the work of curriculum and instruction and along with Susan Cleveland and turnaround work. And so the data we're getting back is just really excellent. compared to kind of a stagnant over the past couple of years. So I'm excited to see where we're going to be in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Dr. Hall? Thank you. Great question, Karen. And thank you, Susan, and your team and Janice, and everyone's working hard. I think one of the things, too, that came out of hearing the taper report
032is we were, the trustees that were there were concerned about the increase in the disciplinary data that Also was coupled with we heard a report a university health report about the increase in mental health I'll just call experiences in several zip codes in Bexar County and Not not drawing a conclusion, but definitely looking at any kind of relationship between the affective Support for our kids in addition to the academic and you know what? if these disciplinary behaviors keep increasing and the numbers of vaping incidences, the kind of behaviors that students exhibit that are different than MAP scores, I'm trying to think of another way to say it. So if there's another way of looking at how our kids are doing affectively, we also... thought it would be nice to have data on a more frequent
033basis and so access to a dashboard and we have one and we're going to approve goals for campuses, but yet Watching out and see how those campuses are doing instead of just the four or five that we're really focusing on We've asked for for that to be something that our board has access to so we can do our due diligence In that area and then other programs that might help our kids like Hope Squad came up as part of a discussion I went to, Cass Teach was doing their PBL presentations the other day, and there were a group of 10th graders. They were kind of mad that they did not know about CCMR, so they found everything they could about CCMR and are going to create CCMR ambassadors for Stevens and Cass Teach so that
034every 9th and 10th grader knows about CCMR. And I mean, I was kind of going, when did you hear about CCMR? And really, they know the language. And once a student knows the language of any kind of accountability or the language of the TEKS or the language of any kind of test, they'll do better. They can advocate for themselves. They can stand up a little more in a conversation about how best to meet their needs. So, Scott, University Health. Oh, University Health. they would do quarterly reports so we can follow how the suicide ideations are playing out within our zip codes and some other information about mental health that I think would be important information to look at when we also are looking at our academics. So I'm trying to think, was there anything else
035at the academics? Bobby, you were there. Sonia, anything else for the good of the group? It's a great meeting. Thanks. I want to thank everyone that's working really hard for these. Since 2021, we've incrementally increased all of those areas. And the biggest growth I saw was in math. So we went up 25 points. Let's give yourselves a round of applause for that, please, because that's a lot, a big gain. And I know that it's also what you've shared with us in academics is that you share best practices with each other. So when a school is doing well, you share what's going well. And when a school is not doing well, everyone's coming in to support each other. And so I really want to thank you all for the work because it's not a 9-to-5 teaching.
036It's not in your jobs. all day long so we want to thank you for all of the efforts to get us where we need to be and to move the needle for our students you're it's it's acknowledged and we're very blessed to have you all working so hard for our students thank you and i don't believe we have anyone signed up to speak to this particular uh item if there is i've missed you i was just looking through the sign up sheets um i think this concludes the um public hearing portion we can close the public hearing and like I say I also want to just extend my appreciation to the tremendous work that's been done all year long both the fall semester and I guess almost halfway through the spring semester already so pretty
037tremendous teamwork and again appreciate all of our administrators particularly campus administrators and staff that's working so hard Thank you, sir. And next we have our superintendent's report. Yes, ma'am. Well, as you know, there are a few things going on right now in and about Northside ISD. Great celebration at John Marshall High School. They celebrated their 75th anniversary. Thank you for those that were able to celebrate with the campus and the staff. I know that the building, like I say, is under a little bit of construction right now, but it was really cool to see just the amazing traditions and culture and what has been established as really the first and, I guess, the flagship. I don't know if I can say that. I've got to be impartial. High school in Northside. So kudos to, like
038I say, John Marshall. And we're really excited about the progress that's being made with that facility. Had the opportunity to spend a day at Strauss or a morning at Strauss with Career Day. Wendy Peralta and her staff just do a phenomenal job. It's always a pleasure. really entertain the students' questions, particularly seventh and eighth graders. It just never ceases to amaze me what kind of what is going through and on their minds. But it was a lot of fun. I'm always amazed at the number of community members and the different professions that show up to support our career days. And Strauss was... No exception at all. We had another great Walter Gerlach show, livestock show. They raised right at about $1.4 million in benefiting student scholarships. I know that Melissa and Steve Chumley poured their
039hearts into it, along with our ASTA and our agricultural science teachers. Students are amazing. And, of course, we couldn't do it without our community support, raising those kind of funds. In fact, I was at the rodeo last night. We were discussing just the San Antonio Livestock Show and how much they generate. But then we have our own livestock show that is pretty phenomenal. We had a great School Connect Summit on the 3rd. We had about 350 that participated at the Northside Sports Gym. This was our second annual School Connect Summit to be held at the Sports Gym. These are, like I say, pastors, community members, individuals that are PTA members that are supportive. come together, engage in dialogue, and really work to develop a framework plan in how can they become more involved and garner
040even greater participation in the wider community. So again, thanks to all of the campuses that participated and of course our community that supported the event by being engaged. Northside Education Foundation had a pretty tremendous clay shoot on the 4th. Again, set a record for the amount of funds raised with the clay shoot, but also cornhole. I think we had actually one of our own trustees that tried her luck or skill, demonstrated her skill in the clay shoot. So hit the pigeons. Almost all of the pigeons is my understanding. Great, great event. Again, couldn't do it without our sponsors and those that support. Congratulations again to our PTA, our Council of PTA. The Founders Day at Soto-Minowar High School was just a... Talk about setting the bar really high, and I believe we may have some
041of our PTA Council members here. So congratulations again. It was a pretty tremendous celebration. I already told Barry and our staff, we're going to have to up our game with convocations. You guys are showing us up. But again, thanks to all of our PTA members and those that really made the event such a special celebration. kind of a unique event. I had the opportunity to go to Collison a couple of weeks ago for Disability Awareness Day and I didn't, in full disclosure, know exactly what I was about to witness or engage in, but Billy Navin and his staff had a way of found a way to demonstrate what it's like to live with a physical or mental disability in ways that I just thought were so intriguing. So, for example, he had wounded warriors in
042one of the gymnasiums, adaptive PE activities going on. And the students were, I mean, they were. completely engulfed in these activities. So again, kudos to Callison. It was a pretty tremendous learning opportunity that you don't always see, especially embedded in. the TEKS and probably not tested on a STAR assessment. So pretty awesome to see. CAST-TEACH had a really special event on February 6th. Erica Olivares and Dr. Pierce with St. Mary's, they were able to award 25 future educators, CAST-TEACH educators. In fact, of those 25, 11 juniors. $25,000 scholarships to be able to follow them into their program and their studies at St. Mary's. These are renewable scholarships. And so $2 million alone in this endeavor. And it was really cool from my perspective to see the families and the parents so excited. It was exciting
043to me to watch that excitement because I'm sitting here thinking to myself. This is the future of education. These are our future teachers. And just a really, really neat event. Again, thanks to St. Mary's and, like I say, Cast Teach. Gene Russell, really phenomenal, phenomenal work. Anecdotally, this is the first graduating class of Cast Teach. So we're looking forward to that here in just a few minutes. Can I get to hug them all? Right, everybody? I can hug them all? Sure. I'm just saying it out loud now. I'm just planning on there's going to be a contract just inside their diploma cover. So congratulations to Nicole Franco, Adrian Gutierrez, Matthew Wood, and so many others that really worked hard over the last two years. Our teacher incentive allotment model has been validated, which is a
044it's a big deal. And the reason that it's a big deal and I'm really not. diminishing the work because of the scale associated. So just to kind of put this in perspective, we're going to have actually over 1,300 teachers that are going to be receiving payouts come this June. And I know that the popularity of the TIA model is still... questionable, myself included, but we've done just kind of some rough math and we anticipate this to be somewhere in the ballpark of about 30 million dollars that our teachers are going to receive that otherwise would not have. So we'll have to validate again each year going forward, but again, thanking Nicole for spearheading that effort and great job. I want to congratulate our state swimming qualifiers. We had 18 individuals and seven relay teams that
045just recently competed in the state swimming. Tonight, we actually have our boys in six. excuse me, five different competitions, six bi-district competitions will be represented in our three UIL districts. And so there's some great competitive play taking place. I also want to congratulate and wish our Brennan Lady Bears. In fact, they are 15 minutes into their game against Buda Johnson for the regional semifinals. Wish our lady bearers the best of luck. Something tells me they're going to fare okay tonight. I also want to just congratulate our visual arts students. We recently had... the competition at Brandeis, there were over 1,700, in fact, 1,771 entries. And of those, 573 attained the highest rating, a rating four, and 50 are moving on and advancing to the state competition here in just a few weeks. So pretty tremendous
046artist. throughout the school district. So I know I didn't cover them all, even though it probably sounded like I did. There are so many things going on and so many celebrations to be very, very proud of. This evening, we have a video moment, and this is a pretty special video moment. So I know that you're probably aware. David Norris, who is in our communications department, he does a story where, in essence, each episode is predetermined by he spins the wheel. And the way this works is each month we have the opportunity to meet with our entire leadership team, so principals, directors, cabinet, et cetera. The wheel is spun. That determines where David is going to take off to. next. And so it's really a neat program. It also allows us to highlight some of the,
047like I say, tremendous work that's being done. So this last spin, he spun and it took us to Jordan Magnet Program. And so These can also be found on our district webpage. This is really a special program. As you're aware, one of our newest middle school magnet programs highlighting multimedia. If you ever have the opportunity to go out and see this magnet, and particularly the academic programming and action, I would encourage you to do so because it's pretty amazing. In fact, it's pretty eye-opening, really what some of our middle school students are able to create. So without further ado, I'd like to direct your attention to the screens before you as we highlight Jordan Middle School Magnet. Hey guys, welcome back to Stories of Norrstedt. Today I'm at Jordan Middle School, in case you couldn't
048tell. That's where the wheel landed last time I gave it a spin. So when I called them up, they said, you know, we have this really cool magnet school with a lot of neat stuff going on that people should know about. So let's go check it out together. Thanks to recent voter-approved bond offers, Jordan Middle School has seen a lot of changes lately, including the new Jordan Multimedia and Design Magnet School. Good morning Jordan Jaguars. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. As another day begins at Jordan, things over at the magnet school are anything but normal. Starting over at Career Investigations, where students here are working on stop motion animation projects. They're creating sets and clay figures, paper cutouts, and they're going to take pictures and move each object so that they can create
049their own stop motion animation. Students are required to take at least 150 photos to create a roughly 15 second animation. It takes a lot of time and attention to detail. The animation is very time consuming. It requires patience, but they're having a lot of fun. I can see it, I can smell it, I can taste it. I want to feel it. Now we head over to the common space area where the ELA students are creating their own poetry, one verse at a time, in a coffee shop style environment complete with soothing music. The idea is that poetry is not as scary as they think it is, so they're writing pieces about themselves, their childhood memories, their favorite activities, hobbies. They'll read those poems on their very own poetry podcast. I'm writing about my most favorite
050or birthday. What I'm doing is my 11th birthday. I took a pretty good... Developing skills they'll need in the real world, no matter the field they choose. They're learning different ways of expressing themselves. Ways to include imagery and specific choice words that will help make what they're trying to say stand out. Now, let's take a trip to the library. Alright, raise your hand if you're planning on performing today. For a poetry slam, where kids get the chance to read their works in front of the class. Alright, this one's called B. Where instead of clapping, the kids snap their approval. It looks so fun, you know I just had to try it myself. Okay, I'm David Norris, and that's my chorus, bringing you stories of Northside. Together, we glide. I'm here at Jordan Magnet. When it
051comes to talent, believe me, these kids have it. Okay, so I'm not the best. I'm just kind enough to give you a snap or two. Trust me, they make it look easy. Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day. Performing, or any time you're doing something social, when you're expressing yourself. and you're in front of people, kind of forced to be on. With everything from graphic design and video production to digital art and fashion design, there's plenty more to talk about at the New Jordan Magnet School. But probably the best way to describe what the school is is to tell you what it's not. I don't want this to feel like school. Magnet School Director Jessica Marches says it best. I talk to my students all the time about how important it is that we
052create an experience for these students. Coming to school should not, at least coming to this program shouldn't be coming to school. We want them to enjoy their day, be engaged, be excited, and ready to come back day after day. Oh, sorry, I was just adding that to the list of things I wish they had when I was a kid. I know. This is getting pretty long. But let's give this wheel a spin to find out where Stories of Northside is going next. Looks like you guys are next. Okay. I didn't know. Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations to Jordan. Thanks again to the board support. Would have been possible to bring this magnet online. Consequently, each year when we open the application, the number of applicants is just... absolutely mind-boggling. In fact, I think that we could probably
053work to expand and potentially bring on a second academy. It's kind of a preview of things to come. So with that, that concludes my report. Depending on any questions the board may have. Thank you, sir. All right, and now we have board members' reports. We had Dr. Misopata. Did you press the button for this? Yeah, she's first. First. All right. Just a couple of things. I know so much has happened since the last time, right? So Ralph's principal, Mr. Faustino Ortega has, I believe he retired, right? So it's sad to see him go, but he's been so instrumental in our district. And so I know he had a retirement celebration. I want to thank Sotomayor for hosting the school board dinner. We had so much going on that week and I, you know, for Sotomayor
054to do that. And I think they also did the founders as well. So they. Phenomenal from the chef that made the food to the kids serving, decorating. It was just, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful event. And so I thank Principal Boykin for hosting us. Oak Hill Terrace, I got to go out to movie night with PTA. And so I got to meet Principal Wynton out there. And Oak Hill Terrace is in my area. And I didn't realize. It has a phenomenal view. So I got to go like right at dusk time and it's just, it's beautiful. And, you know, anybody gets a chance to go out there. I was blown away. And I live in the area and that was the first time that I was actually on campus and just to stand
055there and just kind of watch the sun go down. It was just a really beautiful, just a spot where it's at and the beautiful trees that are there on campus. So it was just really nice to go out there and I really enjoyed that. Also, Clark High School, want to thank them for inviting us out to see Freaky Friday, which was phenomenal because it had an orchestra. They had a theater. I mean, they had everything out there. You know, it's entertainment at its best. So that's one of the things that I know working with talking to Ms. Sanchez is how do we get. the community to go it was it was very entertaining you know um so uh just kind of working on getting the word out because i i know people will go out
056there and enjoy it and i'm just not sure if they know those those things are going on in the community so um and then uh chief palomo he went he started he started right out of the blocks with his um rodeo cook or his rodeo uh Yeah, cowboy breakfast. So I want to thank him for that. I'm so happy for him. And I know he's he's up and running. He's not joking when he's he says that he's excited about being here and all the great things that he wants to do. So I'm really excited about that and his energy. And I believe that's that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Salcido. Yeah. I also want to give a shout out to Elizabeth Sanchez Lopez. Freaky Friday, awesome. Every year, I don't know, it
057seems to get better. I was kind of, I saw the invitation to Freaky Friday, I've never heard of it. My daughter said, that's a Disney movie. I'm like, okay, I guess. It was awesome. I love the orchestrating. you know, live music. Can't beat that. Also today I had to attend the open ceremonies for Special Olympics that's being held all this week up at Gus Stadium. And just seeing those kids running around that track and light that torch, oh, that was awesome. That was just something that I've attended in the last three years. So I also... It was given by Ms. Shawn Settles. I guess she's a coach of Fiesta Metal. It was designed by one of the Clark students. I was trying to get the name of it. It's real little. I can't read it.
058I'm trying to give her a little plug. But it has her motto on the back. Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. Northside ID 2026. So they're selling them at the stadium all this week. So if you want to stop by and get one, I believe they're $12. That's all of these. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Hassell? Hi, I think everyone's mentioned like all the events over the past couple of months. I'll kind of cover on some others. I do want to just give thanks to Councilman Galvan who did a Platico for Education. It was not that greatly attended, but we're giving up. We're going to try to see what other the biggest thing is being there for the community. Whoever has questions or concerns about education,
059like we will continue having events. We're just going to find a better time. I feel like timing was not the best, but we will definitely keep trying. And I do want to give out a shout out to Elizabeth Sanchez Lopez. She had mentioned, well, I had mentioned to her I was going to HOA meetings and like, what could I do to kind of get them connected? And she was like, just connect me with them. And I was like, you got it. So I have two more HOAs I'm going to connect her with. I think I've already connected her with three. And it's just an opportunity during the HOA meetings that I let them know, one, about the gold card, because a lot of residents don't know about it and that it's a free card for
060them to come to events and be able to go to fine arts events and also regular season games. and just really inviting the community to the amazing things that Northside is doing. And so she's been great. As soon as I connect her with the individuals from the HOA, she goes out and sends them the calendar so they know what events are open, and then they're adding that to their newsletter. So that way our communities are really involved. And I do just want to mention this Saturday we have Librarypalooza. I have not been to a Librarypalooza. This will be my first one. But it is at Brenham High School from 10 a.m. to 4.30. Brandeis. Brandeis. Oh, thank you. Brandeis. See, you can't read your own handwriting. But it is from 10 a.m. to 4.30 is
061the time that I have. The very first Library Palooza, so excited about that. I'm assuming I wear my shirt. Is that the? Okay. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. It's ready. That's all I have. Thank you. Dr. Harl. Thanks a lot. I guess I'm going to start with the John Marshall 75th. There were so many wonderful moments after this ceremony. The kids were phenomenal. The administrators and the teachers that were there were exceptional. There were five former principals. Where's Susan? Five former principals. So we brought up, yeah. they kind of had made their way through John Marshall. And so then there were former teachers like Johnny Bordano. Oh, Johnny had been a principal at John Marshall. He was also my teacher. So it's hard to see him shift into that role. But anyway, it
062was great. What I liked afterwards, I wish I would have done, I could not find the exact history of of how it became John Marshall and how we started out with the Chief Justices. It was still in the storytelling and Mr. Rawlinson didn't know. So I didn't go into the history because I couldn't find the written word of the history. But what was exceptional was The original landowners that had donated a lot of the land that Marshall was on still had some of the land, and they had attended the 75th and came and talked to me about that, and I wish I would have had them come up and talk about it, but they had donated some of the land, and also the students weren't happy. They did not want to be the John Marshall
063Huskies. Originally, it was going to be the Holmes Huskies, and they didn't like it. Huskies and homes, but I never found the written word of that. So I'm just telling you what was told to me But that that family Donated a goat that they had goats and one of them kind of looked like a ram and they said that's how it started out as they wanted the Rams because there was actually This goat that looked like a ram I don't know but she would have been neat Storytelling it because that that would have been more true than what I would have said There was just so much pride. The artwork was phenomenal. The music was exceptional and the food was terrific. Couldn't have been a better evening. And then again, we've heard Freaky Friday, but
064what I liked the most was the commercial that, well, not the most. I love the kids the most. But Elizabeth Sanchez Lopez did a great commercial for the power of fine arts in students' lives. And I love that. And then I love the whole history of Freaky Friday. And there were like four Freaky Fridays. So we had to go that next weekend and all the grandkids had to watch Freaky Friday number one, Freaky Friday number two. It was neat. So it was the gift that kept on giving. Then I got to be a mentor at the SA Smart. It's a challenge where student teams in grades 6 through 12 research a specific San Antonio smart problem that has to do with homelessness, all kinds of things, mental health, everything. But what I liked the best
065was that John J. S. E. A. was there. And John J. S. E. A. is like the king. They walk around. They've placed all the time. They were like old hats at this. But their proposals were really talked about, really good stuff. So we'll keep them. Our fingers crossed that they go all the way. When is the championship, so to speak? Yeah, it's a poorly timed challenge, but therein lies the word challenge, right? They'll rise above it, and maybe they'll get pizza delivered on time this time. But I was really proud of y'all. They did. They did. And I don't think the kids mind because they liked being with each other. It was hundreds of kids from all over the city competing in this challenge. So very proud of John JSEA. I did not know
066this, but there's a Texas law that requires public schools to have a Holocaust Remembrance Week. And so I know we were invited to Clark and the granddaughter, her name was Eleanor Gossen, G-O-S-S-E-N. was a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and she talked about her grandmother's life and how the trauma of that experience has kind of gone through the generations and it was a really powerful story but Senator Menendez was there. It was he he was one of the the senators responsible for having Public Schools to observe Holocaust Remembrance Week and I'm not sure if we did but I'll make sure next week next year that we're really looking at what can we do because it was really powerful for the students and and again Lucy Podmore was the librarian who hosted it and she will
067be at the Library Palooza on on Saturday shining because that's her that was her pet Bob Lewis, one of our premier band directors and fine arts directors, passed away. And I just wanted to say he impacted my life, my family's life, a lot of former couple board members' lives, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids and their families through the years. But the really neat story at the... viewing that they told is that when he went to hospice from being hospitalized, he asked for his trumpet. He was a trumpet player. And he played Amazing Grace and passed away soon after that. And that was kind of Bob Lewis. He was like that. He was just one of the most influential. educators in my own life and my brothers and sisters and I stayed up all
068night talking about him. The other thing and I thought that Sonia had a really good idea as we look forward to all the challenges in Northside. One of the things I took her up on is calling our city councilmen that represent the areas where we are trustees. and asking them to invite us to different things they go to so we can start spreading the word about the gold cards with the fine arts productions. Or, you know, if we do decide when and where we go out for a bond or a vater or anything like that, starting to tag along with them and informing them and partnering up with some of the things that citywide could help us. as we move forward with either our challenges or our celebrations so thank you for that idea it's
069a great a great one to do and other than that library palooza oh our kids that are at the stock show they're doing phenomenal they're doing phenomenal they've had the best weather ever i haven't worried about them bathing pigs when it's been 30 degrees they are just like delighting in it so we're in good hands we're in good hands thank you dr hall mrs freeman Thank you, Dr. Duran. Also, please keep the Green family in your prayers. We lost a volunteer, strong supporter of Northside about a couple of weeks ago. And I first met Andy Green back in 1995. working on the 95 bond election. And we were on the Citizens Bond Advisory Committee at the time. And that was when we were passing bonds every three years. And he worked every single bond election
070back from at least 95. And not only was he part of the Citizens Bond Advisory Committee, he chaired the committee. He also In more recent times, he was part of the business side of our PAC. So he had an office. You could see him nailing stakes to signs and putting up signs and being in charge of events that the PAC had or just... everything that goes along with the business side of trying to pass a bond. We were band officers together. He was at Taft, and my kids were at O'Connor. And we would share stories, good stories. We also talked smack, of course, too, because the kids do compete on the field. But had a really heart for kids. He was a CPA, and at the time, you know what happens with CPAs, especially in
071April. There was one year where several of our schools, our booster organizations had to have a 501C3 certificate. And he helped many of our booster organizations, band boosters, athletic boosters, obtain their 501C3. We're going to miss him for a lot of reasons across the district, but please keep his family in your prayers. You heard about the FFA. Gerlach show extremely successful 1.4 million dollars to be used as scholarships there are 500 kids that participated they did a great job as many of you may know Asta they've opened up a store adjacent working with their meat processing area. And so they sell, not only do they sell meat, they sell chicken eggs and they have some other kind of quail, I think quail eggs. So the store is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4.30 to
0726.00 and on Saturdays from 8.00 to 12.00. And if you go there on Saturday, you might want to call that school office. I don't have that phone number, but sometimes they run out of product. I didn't see cheese. Ooh, even better. They did some special things at Valentine's Day, too. The floral department had some things in the store. There was one student this year that actually, he and his family, they raised a hog. It is a family affair if you've ever raised an animal. So not only did they, they bought the hog, he took care of it, fed it, showed it at Gerlach, sold it in the auction, had it processed, and he brought it back. He brought it to the meat. their meat processing area. So they processed the meat and then gave it
073to the buyer that bought the product. So I've been told that we are the only Texas ag program that has that opportunity for our kids. So we can be very proud of that. I know there's some people here from Colonies North, but Colonies North had a huge open house for their new, all the new renovations there. A lot of people, it's a very supportive, it's always been a very supportive area in our district. And it's all about our community schools and our neighborhood schools. And we have a lot of those types of various communities across the district. And that's something I think that sets us apart from some of our charter schools, private schools and such. John Marshall, absolutely wonderful. Dr. Harl, if there is ever another time to get some of those people back
074together, I think there's some stories that need to be written. I think about all of the history that was there that night and there wasn't. opportunity to just gather that and and write it up but if there's ever that opportunity it'd be great I know you were part of that reunion so I think that would that would be great academic decathlon So we had academic decathlon I'm gonna lose my voice right after our last our last board meeting want to congratulate in their regions Warren first place John Marshall second place O'Connor third in their region They will be going on to state in San Antonio. I believe is that correct? So Frisco. Clark is going to Frisco. And then Health Careers High School had the highest score in their region. They're going to be going
075to Corpus. John Marshall High School also placed third in their region. So congratulations to all those schools and to the coaches. A lot of work that goes into that, and our kids do phenomenally well. Something that Holotis Elementary hosted, and I... I had a family event and was not able to go. I know, Dr. Fay, you had gone. There might have been somebody else that had gone to that event from central office. What they did, they had a panel of parents that had kids at charter schools. It was an opportunity for some people in the community and their school advisory team to ask questions. And they shared their experiences and they told why they went to a charter school from an ISD and then why they came back. And I think there's a lot to
076be learned from that. Hoping that, like to be, perhaps we can be briefed on that sometime. It might be very helpful. I think that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Blunt. All right. Let's see if I can do this quickly. Let me give you all the theme of what I want to say first, and then I'll go from there, okay? So my theme is there can't just be expectations of Northside being the best in the nation. We have to be. And I would tell you, some of the things I experienced this last month really shows that we really need to be the very best in the nation in all we do and keep that sort of attitude. You know, it starts out, I was at Ott for their STEM event, and they had,
077for those that know, Dinosaur George was there. And he put me aside to talk to me. And what he stated for Ott, he said, you know, these kids are the best behaved. And I thought he was just saying that. I said, oh, yeah, okay. He said, no, no, no, no, you don't have to say it. How much trouble I have in some places? He said, I am fascinated. by how well behaved the community within Ott is, et cetera. Went to Brennan's Prep Rally, and that was definitely a fine example. You talked about the basketball, how well they're doing at night, they're swimming and diving, and then having, the significant one I want to bring up from a national sense is, you know, Bella being one of the top 24 basketball players, not in Texas, but
078in the nation, the McDonald's All-American is pretty significant. But if you think about it, we actually have two. of the best athletes in the nation, you know, between track and basketball. And I don't know, the odds of that are, I don't know, 0.0001% more than likely. So again, that theme of being the best. Thank our science department. They ran our National Science Bowl competition, and that is one of the toughest competitions in the nation. Some people watch our regional and they think that's tough. No, no, no. You got to go to nationals. And for us to run it, and it's a public-private charter type event, DOE, Department of Energy, is very pleased with how we run ours and some other activities, too. So, again, that thought of being national. I do want to thank Bernal
079PTA as well as the Learning Tree Advisory Council for inviting me out. Definitely both enjoyable events. Thanks, Zinnia, one more time for our Titans 25. Again, example of trying to be the best in the nation. We can talk all we want about everything. I think we know the key for our demographics here is reading. If we can get everybody the highest level of reading, everything else sort of falls in place. And by running that competition outside of San Antonio, San Antonio, and wide, it's really great. The Great Ace of Reading Challenge. And the last one, board members, don't forget our scholarships. Hopefully you saw the results. Remember, that's run by officially the Northside Education Foundation, assisted by the grants officer. Take a look at the email she sent out, and hopefully everybody sort of agrees
080with that. Last one that gave me a good example of how impactful we can be is when I got my recognition at the Spurs. I couldn't believe how many Northside people I actually ran into throughout that whole process. It was definitely a first-class event. I mean, from the person, and they didn't know, that actually presented me my Spurs jersey, was actually a Warren graduate. The person that filmed me talking, I can't say too much, was actually a Northside employee running a camera. A police officer in the back and some others was actually at Northside. So everywhere I was going, it's a man. How many, is Northside the whole city here? And I just sort of said, yeah, it is. But anyway, so that was just amazing to see. So thank you. Congratulations, sir. Thank you.
081All right. I'm going to say a few things here. I wanted to congratulate Dr. Harl for leading the John Marshall High School anniversary event because she and all her besties were there. And she brought these really cool vintage Letterman jackets that folks had given her. Only young people say vintage. They were just like, you said that word. And so it was really neat to see her and her element with all of those legacies that we call folks that are still very proud to be John Marshall graduates that showed up. It was a full house. And given the construction that was happening, it was a really very well attended event. So congratulations. I wanted to also congratulate all the winter graduation graduates. We had that happening this month. That was a lot of fun. And in
082fact, I think we had the largest turnout for a winter graduation of graduates and early graduates. So that was really awesome. We were able to support the Northside Educational Foundation clay shoot. I shot six clays. I'm not the proudest, but I don't shoot anything. So that was really interesting. I did have a little soreness like two days later here. But you only had 50. So six out of 50 is better than six out of 50. Oh, out of 50. Yeah. Clarify. Some people got zero. So I just wanted to shout out to myself. The PTA, you guys did an amazing job at Founders Day and those student performances. I really, it makes me want to cry at how impressive our Fine Arts team department is really in those performances with the students. And that whole
083setup was like Alice in Wonderland. It was just amazing. And so shout out to... Mrs. Balkan, the principal of Sotomayor for hosting that event and everything else they've been doing over there. It's really a lot of work. So we really want to thank you for that. I was able to join our ambassadors this past Saturday, along with Drs. Faye Woods, Ridgely, Carol Trevino, and then Diane Ely and Ben Muir and Chief. Palomo, on a leadership panel, I heard that the students were really impressed and learned a lot about you sharing your leadership experience. And it's really neat to see. our future leaders, right? Because that's what you are, the creme de la creme of Northside there and just spending your Saturday with us also. And in addition to everything that you do, we're really proud
084of you and thank you for being here tonight. I do want to thank the Cub Scout troop at Lock Hill Elementary. They invited me to talk about what it is to run for office. That was so sweet. And they're so little. It was really nice. It was a Saturday. I was able to go out there to... It was the building next to Locke Elementary. I wanted to give a shout out to Chief Palomo again for their cowboy breakfast, but also for hosting the very first promotion and serving in ceremony for new officers. And that was an inaugural event for our current folks that were promoted and then our new hires to be sworn in as an official oath of office. And that's very important for folks that are. taking care of us here in the
085community. So congratulations to all that received a promotion and then welcome to all of our new police officers. Chief Justice Sotomayor visited us again at Tomlinson Elementary to promote and to read her book, Just Shine. And Just Shine is about her mom. And so it was really a tribute to her mom. And it was really nice to hear her read that book. It does come in English and Spanish and you can order it on Amazon. I've done that. And I'm going to be gifting that book moving forward because I would love to honor my mom in that way one day also, because she just sees her shining no matter what's happening in your life and doing the best with what you have. And so that was very nice to hear her. And she plans on
086coming back. every few years, so that was good to hear also. So other schools can hopefully get to see her and experience that. I was able to join. Dr. Hasso, Mr. Salcido, and Dr. Fay at the Colonies North PTA meeting and gave some remarks on behalf of the board, but seeing that the work that the bond has produced in that beautiful building, because they had a lot of hiccups along the way for that reconstruction. It was a lot of money. Construction costs went up, and so that happens in construction. So having served on many bonds for many school districts. things happen but at the end you can like kind of enjoy right the the long work um that everyone has done to make that campus even better so we're able to experience that beautiful campus
087and i do want to um extend my condolences to a lot of folks that we've lost in our community um students staff and community members um you know we're such a large community But we do want to, Dr. Harl and I were talking about, acknowledge that we know there are mental health opportunities for anyone that needs those. I personally attended the Texas School Safety Center's training, virtual training that they offer for free. If any of you are interested in doing that, they have training such as mental health crisis intervention, de-escalation techniques. They have mental and behavioral health needs. of children with disabilities or special needs, and they have positive behavior intervention systems, conflict resolution, and restorative justice techniques. And those are all, in those trainings, it was a lot of campus police and school leaders,
088but any one of us can benefit from that training. And I go just because sometimes when we're dealing with folks dealing in mental health crisis, we don't know what to do with that. And if you're not aware that that could be a potential situation, we could escalate things without intentionally meaning to, right? So I recommend anybody that has the time. It is a two-day commitment. And if that's not your occupation, they won't give you CE credits, but you just get the benefit of listening to a lot of stories and experience from folks that are in that field. And I love that our officers... that attended our learning because that's not what they're trained to do. This is something new for everyone that we, I know because I serve on a lot of boards here in
089San Antonio, in criminal justice, there's just not enough time. But that's what we need to focus on a little bit more right now. I believe in my personal experience in hearing about all these cases in Bexar County and beyond. So I just wanted to extend our condolences on behalf of the board. I know it's been hard for us to hear about a lot of the different situations that are happening. there is help and if you need help we can try to find those resources for you so thank you and dr. Hall had wanted in on a good note well no I forgot to acknowledge Bobby and Karen and Sonia had made it to the we had a region 20 grassroots for meeting to set legislative priorities early and And so there were school district trustees
090that came as far away as Cotulla and we had Bernie and Curville. Anyway, we had a good assortment, almost 60 trustees came. So I'll put it, I'll send it to Monica to put in. Doc's just sent it and it's kind of been typed up what the region 20. legislative priorities were and then also today I went and presented at a conference and I was asking my fellow trustees maybe if I didn't get to talk to you did you know that region 20 sponsored a school board summit at Tapatio Springs well it's outside Bernie I know I know and there were lots of school districts there but not Northside and I'm not sure Jeff Goldhorn was there and I asked him I said Well, I just presented because they asked me, and I wasn't paying attention
091exactly that it was for school board trustees, but I brought it up, and it's Region 20 School Board Summit. They give credit for it. This is their inaugural year, he said, and they cannot host school board things at Region 20 any longer. Hence, we had our grassroots was held at Northside Activity Center because it was a directive from Commissioner Morath, which is another. mosquito in my ear. So we got to figure that out. But this summit was really nice. It was beautiful. Well, I just presented and went and I had to go back to work. So anyway, and it's it's today, tomorrow. It's it. Well, it ends today. It's been going on for three days. Yeah. So I don't know why. And maybe, Dr. Kraft, we could find out something about it. There's no there's
092no secret. It's. It's held each year, and it's an opportunity for really the smaller school districts to get all of their continuing education credits because they don't prefer going to TASP-ESL. Really? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Good to know. I think that concludes all of our board members' reports. Thank you all. Next, we have Citizens to be Heard. I just want to make sure that I'm not misspeaking. I've disaggregated three that would like to speak to item 10B, which I believe is pertaining to the naming of colonies north. That would be Kathy Mochel, Danley Bowers, and Jamie, is it Linthicum? Okay, so you would you'd like you would prefer to be included in the citizens be heard portion. Okay. Okay Kathy Danley would yeah, I'm sorry Would y'all like to wait until the item comes up or
093to be included in this portion of citizens to be heard? Okay. Okay Thank you Same. Okay. Thank you. We believe citizens to be heard is important and meaningful, and we will listen to what you have to say. We value your opinions. Although we are restrained by law from taking any action, please address your remarks to the board, confine your remarks to a Northside policy or practice, and limit your remarks to three minutes. At three minutes, you're going to be asked to wrap up your remarks, and please try not to make any personal attacks on individuals. Thank you. Okay. The first individual signed up this evening is Terry Zablocki. Good evening. Student achievement is the heart of Northside, and right now that heart is beating strong. I speak this evening as a community member, but knowing
094Northside, I know to get to the data and do it quickly. So, in the Great San Antonio Reading Challenge, third graders across 105 schools... 452 classes and 9,303 students are competing and Northside is well represented among the top schools and students. Since October 20th, students have read over 6.7 million words toward a goal of 25 million and the total keeps going. Seven Northside students are dominating the top 10 overall. As of February 20th, the Titan 25 has been announced and Northside holds 13 of those 25 schools. The next round is the Sweet 16. What happens between now and March 20th determines who will advance to this and this matters. This matters because the Northside third graders who protest participated in this challenge both this year and last year show a documented positive difference in student
095performance. Burke Elementary took the title last year and this year's official winners will be announced April 20th at the Northside Sports Gym and we'll all be there together. Staff doesn't do it alone. The board is a volunteer group but community needs to be there because this is what Northside does. We support the whole child, every student, every family, every part of their lives. And that commitment reaches beyond our campuses, across our community, through the Bexar County Public Schools Coalition, including surrounding counties. When I spoke to Bobby and Karen about volunteering, both commented on reading a specific book, If I Built a School with Students, and how meaningful it was for them to hear what the students had to say. In Northside, You listen, we listen at every level. Student achievement is why our schools exist.
096So staff, students, ambassadors, and community members, here's how to help. Go to the greatessayreadingchallenge.com or bit.ly great essay reading. Go find it. We need volunteers from the community. You have three actions to take. Number one, activate your network. Number two, share the link. And number three, when it comes to the most important thing, on March 3rd, when we talk literally about March Madness, go to the polls and vote in the primary for those who you believe will keep student achievement at the heart of Northside and support the resources that make it possible. Thank you all. Thanks, Terry. Chris Rios. Chris, do you want to wait? Okay. I'm sorry, Riojas. Edward Perez. Edward Perez. Mary D'Souza. Hello President Carla Duran and Dr. Kraft and all of our Board of Trustees. My name is Mary D'Souza. I'm
097here to speak to you about our amazing instructional assistants or as we commonly call them IAs. I've been subbing at Northside since the 23-24 school year and as I've been seeing many of the amazing schools and staff I know I love subbing early childhood all the way to high school even our Reddix program and in going and subbing in number in many of our numerous schools over these many years, I've developed a true love of our special education programs and all that are involved. I now primarily sub in special education. I have a background and a temperament to be very good and a helpful substitute in that area. As I now primarily sub in special education, I see our... our instructional assistants, our IAs as we call them, and I see them in a completely
098new light. Their love and dedication to these students is remarkable. I wish you could hear why all these lovely people come to support our special education students. It is heartwarming. It's reaffirming to meet so many remarkable people truly doing God's work. But we cannot just appreciate these people. We need to make sure that we are paying them what they need as well. When I look and see the average rent in San Antonio being about $1,200 a month, our insurance, food, utilities, all going up. I see a tough financial burden on our IAs when many after taxes, insurance, and other items are not bringing enough home to cover basic costs. I hear many of our IAs talking about not being able to afford to stay and may not be able to return. And it breaks my
099heart. I know that NIC is doing miracles. You really are. You have limited funds. You have so many hurdles. And I know every year as we increase, I appreciate all that you do, but we need to look and see if it is enough to keep these vital positions filled. I know that in this past year we did increase and I appreciate that. I know and see all the pressure that you guys are under, but I would like to at least advocate for better pay or other possible support for our IAs. That way we see every position filled and retained. Our IAs are the heart and backbone of our special education department, and I would love to lend my voice and support to them in any way possible, but especially in support of a livable wage
100for these miracle workers. Again, thank you so much for your time and all that you do for our community. Jonah Perez. Jonah Perez. Hannah Braswell. So I was, it's the Colonies North Elementary. Did you want to speak now or did you want to? Yeah, if I could, please. Good evening. My name is Hannah Braswell. I am a former student of Colonies North Elementary. And this is where my little sister went. Why change the name of a school that has so much meaning to the students, parents, and faculty that went to work and even dropped off their children at Colonies North? The name change will roughly take $37,000. That money could be used for something more important than a name change. For example, more supplies for all the different departments in the school. It has changed
101from when I went there as they added STEM. This money could be used for... Extracurricular activities. I have so many good memories from Collings North Elementary. When I was in fourth grade, I had a brain abscess and all my classmates wrote me letters telling me to get well. And in fifth grade, I remember when we had a graduation for all the fifth graders. Miss Garcia taught us the song, As Our Lives Change Come Whatever. I still remember it to this day. Every year on Veterans Day, my dad would come and take off work just to be there as a retired Army colonel for the Veterans Day program. Another fond memory is when my little sister finally could walk to Colonies North Elementary and I would walk up and drop her off at the front door
102with our dog. My little sister and my sister loved this. So why change the Colonies North Elementary school name? that has been there for everyone present and former students, faculty and parents, why change the presence of the name, Colleys North Elementary School to someone's name who wasn't a parent, teacher or faculty member there? Thank you. Roy Mendoza. Hi, my name is Roy Mendoza and I am a 36 year vintage taxpayer in this district. Speaking to you because I was First of all, let me qualify myself. My dad was a retired high school principal in the San Antonio Independent School District. So he was principal at Lanier High School for over 25 years. Wow. So, and then my sister is also a teacher at SAISD. She just recently retired, but is now teaching in a very
103prestigious private school here in the area. I say this because... I'm not qualified maybe to speak here, but I am qualified as an observer of good education. And I'm here to speak about the ICE protests that happened at John Marshall High School. I was appalled as a vintage taxpayer to see the open indoctrination of children. And it's funny that today we swore in a new district chief. And it was funny that he had to pledge his oath to defend. and abide by the Constitution. Well, that is exactly what these ICE agents are doing. They're upholding the law of the Constitution. And I was appalled because my children graduated from Marshall High School and were very, very successful. Now, was it because of the teachers? Was it because of the parents? Was it because of the
104school board? I would say it was because of all of us, unified, to make sure that they had an education and not an indoctrination. I was appalled to see that these children were literally not only protesting ICE, but they have been taught to hate me, my security, and my nation. This is not what I pay taxes for. This is not why we send our kids to these schools. My son is a criminal justice professional, and that's all I'm going to say about that. My daughter went on also to become a very successful individual. She's a doctor. but a graduate of John Marshall High School as my son is. So I think that together we know what it takes to become successful as parents, as educators, and as stewards of our nation. But what happened with
105the ICE protest was appalling. And I want accountability. I want to know who allowed it and why was it allowed. I know for a fact that some teachers were not for that and told their students, do not go out there. However, it looks like many of them just went ahead and said, open the doors and go. This is a nation of laws. This is what makes us different from all of the other countries in this world. And to teach children to go out there and protest against law enforcement as children, what do you think you've already put in their heads? Again, my name is Roy Mendoza and I am a vintage taxpayer and I want accountability for what happened at John Marshall High School, the school of my children and I hope my grandchildren someday.
106Thank you. Jamie Linthicum. Good afternoon, guys. I apologize for not giving eye contact. I'm going to read this so I get it right. So, good afternoon. My name is Jamie Linthicum and I have been an interpreter here at Northside for 25 years and I am now at John Marshall High School, also alumni from there. Love Northside. I am here today to ask the board to consider a revision of the title Northside interpreters are classified in. When we apply our title as educational interpreter for the deaf and hard of hearing students, which is the title listed on the job posting Unfortunately the moment a certified interpreter begins to work at Northside. They are no longer an interpreter They are classified as a special education collaborative assistant The title that took them three to four years in
107college to achieve The tested BEI Texas State Board certification required to perform the job, the annual dues, and the rigorous 100 hours of CEUs needed to uphold this certification every five years is stripped from us. Let me provide just a brief comparison between the job qualities of assistants and interpreters. Assistants require a high school diploma and they have to have some experience working with kids. Their job duties include assisting students with work, behavior, personal needs, supervision, assisting the teacher with instructional materials, and they're phenomenal, just like she said. We love them. They're wonderful. But as an interpreter, We have different qualifications. We do also have to have a nice high school diploma. But in addition to that, we must complete a college degree training program and we must pass a Texas State Board BEI or
108a national RID certification for interpreters. We do not receive that college degree until we pass that test. Once we pass the first two tests, there are two more that we strive to achieve to become masters in our profession. And our job duties are They demand proficiency in interpreting and transliterating and to facilitate communication. That's it. There's no assisting in our job. These two titles have nothing in common, but they are still classified as so, and they sit in the same pay grade. After dedicating 25 years to this district and being one of the only two advanced interpreters that we have, I'm about to hit the maximum pay for assistance. So where do I go from there? Do we continue to bring in agencies which cost our district over $800,000 to a million dollars a year
109and to continue to use them as subs for our babies that aren't getting consistency in their education? Can we please look into this matter for the only 12 interpreters that we have here in this district? The only 12 that are left, unfortunately. We have lost so many amazing interpreters because of this pay scale limitation, and it's affecting our students' access to high-quality education. But it's not just an adult issue anymore. It's now becoming a student equity issue as well. I ask you to please celebrate our achievements as we have when we receive this highly qualified professional title. Allow us to carry the title that we worked really hard to achieve. And lastly, to be able to say we are proudly Northside interpreters and we do love our job and we don't want to go anywhere.
110We want to be here. Thank you, guys. Madam President, I believe that is all we have signed up for citizens to be heard, and then we will pick back up with agenda item, I believe it is 10B, momentarily. Okay. Our next agenda item is our consent agenda. Do we have any motions to approve the consent agenda, Mrs. Freeman? I would move approval of the consent agenda. Do we have any other motions? Anyone second? Mr. Blunt seconds that. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay. The motion carries and our consent agenda is passed. Thank you. Our next items we have. Okay, I'm going to PQR at 7. 7 is business and finance. Yes, Madam President. As you are aware, even though it's... A balmy 84 degrees, I believe, today and
111maybe 90 tomorrow. We did have a bad weather closure day on the 26th. We did so out of an abundance of caution. We were concerned about particularly the northwest portion of our district with ice and roads. We were equally as concerned and as important maintaining power at all of our campuses from a pretty good scope. cold spell. So, as a result... This resolution is really before you to ensure that all of our hourly waged employees are kept whole, their pay is kept whole. We have this ability to bring this resolution through board policy for employee welfare and morale. And so the resolution that you have before you and for your consideration tonight, like I say, is really an acknowledgement. appreciation of our hourly waged employees that really don't have any choice when we have a
112bad weather closure day within a pay period to recuperate or make up that lost time. Megan, I don't know if you want to add anything. I believe you've covered it, sir. We did discuss it with the Finance Committee. Done this a few times. Yes, so we did discuss it with the Finance Committee. And again, it would be considered paid leave for that day if the board approves this resolution. Because they had no control to not be at work. Right. And we don't want them to risk. We did not want them traveling. It was a safety call, exactly. All right. Do we have any motions to approve this resolution? Dr. Hossel? I move to approve the resolution regarding the weather-related closure to make sure our part-time employees that are covered in here are taken care of.
113Thank you. And Mr. Santillo, second set. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? The motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Next item we have is fiscal year budget 2026. Otherwise, obviously known as this fiscal year budget amendment number one. Yes, sir. Jake Smiley is going to come up and we discuss this budget amendment. Briefly, we did go into this item in detail at the Finance Committee, but we didn't want to just put it on the consent agenda. We did want to bring it up so that he could cover some of the items. This is the first budget amendment of the year. There will be several. And so this is kind of a minor cleanup type item. But I'll let Jake go through that. Thank you. Good evening. Before
114we get started, I will clarify that this is just going to amend the general fund, the debt service and then the. Child Nutrition Fund are included, but there's no changes in those. So to get started on the second page of y'all's attachment, you can see the general fund budget. And just real quickly, the major change that we see here is a decrease to our revenue in $696,000. And so this is made up of a reduction in tax collections from the homestead exemption changes and the over 65 exemption changes for our property values, as well as an increase in the state revenue. piece that kind of helps us hold our tier one entitlement whole. So, you know, we have our set amount based on our ADA. And whenever our collections went down, that offset with some
115of the state revenue to make sure we still get our whole entitlement. So as I speak about ADA, we talked a little bit at the finance committee about. budgeted ADA so we adopted the budget based on a 91,500 student ADA at this point or at least as of the third six weeks what we're looking at now is 90,824 so we've got a reduction there but you don't really see that in the budget amendment and that's because we're making up for it with our special program allotments those particularly in this case would be CTE early education and special education. So the weighted funding that we get there is offsetting our regular program allotment that went down based on our ADA. I'll jump into the expenditures and then that's really the amendment in a nutshell. But this
116is the cleanup piece that Ms. Bradley was talking about. And so here we're really just setting a functional alignment. There's no change up or down to the expenditure budget. And this is going to align where we think the payroll will end by the end of the year. So this looks kind of busy, but we don't expect to see something like this again in our future amendments. That's the amendment in a nutshell. We are watching a couple other factors that we want to make note of. Some of those are ADA and the program allocations that I already talked about, as well as the maintenance and operating hold harmless changes that have happened, and then property value audit, payment timing, and investment interest. So just watching the rates and where we have our investment budgeted. So you
117all have any questions at this point? Thank you. So I had a conversation with Ms. Bradley after I had spoken with Dave Gannon, who sits on the board of directors at Bexar County Appraisal District. And I've heard of something, a new interpretation of our reimbursement rate regarding some of our hold harmless line items. And I guess we could thank Mr. Morath for this as well. Did his name come up, Ms. Bradley? I have. I'm in conversation with several people about this. So we're, we are. Well, Megan, I think we need to, let's describe so that the board understands, let's articulate what is the concern, particularly with the hold harmless as it pertains to the 65 and older exemption. And then we'll kind of back into what is happening with two agencies in particular. So in
118school finance and our summary of finance, and anyone can go out to the TA website and see our different runs for our summary of finance. The state has run for us. Now, Jake runs it for us on a regular basis based on our real data. TEA has some data that is not actual at the time they're running it. They are slower to adapt than what Jake can. So just for you to know that. But what's on the Summary of Finance website for TEA. I'm going to say three runs ago, and you can go see it. We had a hold harmless related to the changes in the exemptions for over 65 disabled and homestead exemptions, that those exemptions went up this year. We all knew that was going to happen. We expected our hold harmless to
119cover that decrease in local revenue that we would receive for the taxes not coming in as high. And we had seen that until three runs ago of the summary of finance. And all of a sudden, that whole harmless amount went down tremendously. $15 million, roughly. And that's what's mentioned on this front page. We have not adjusted it in our budget amendment at this time because we are talking to several agencies about it. I don't believe it's correct. Many people around the state do not believe that is correct, but we have to work through the process to discuss that with the various entities, those entities being Texas Education Agency and the state comptroller. I've also been talking to Julie Grisard. Jake and I actually had a phone call with her about two hours ago. And so
120we're talking again to multiple agencies and groups that are working this. We are not the only ones seeing this. All Bexar County school districts are seeing it from my understanding. And many in Harris County and the DFW area also are seeing this. What we understand is that the. County appraisal districts have been told to change the way they're reporting the frozen levies. And it's actually taking away specific taxpayers. If they reach a number, it's actually, when I've seen the file, that it actually changes the do you count this or do you not from a Y to an N. And it just takes that person's data off. But it does not appear to be consistent. And so we have groups that are, again, working with that. There was a meeting with TEA late last week about
121this, where they received several of the files showing those individual. inconsistencies and they did not make any promises they did not agree or disagree but they do have the data now to look into it and research it so that is where we stand right now but we because we don't have a definitive answer we're watching it but did not want to put it in a budget amendment unless we find out that it would actually hold out to be true So this is, I don't want to say it's commonplace, but anytime we have new legislation that goes through interpretation and then goes through the formula of fundings and the summary of finance, there's... It never fails. There's always some glitches. I think that's safe to say. So we'll be in continuous contact with the Texas Education
122Agency. Of course, we're being assisted by Region 20 and those conversations. The Comptroller's Office and then potentially our legislators, particularly those sitting on Ways and Means Committee in the future if we feel it necessary. Megan and I are optimistic, probably cautiously optimistic, hopefully not overly cautiously optimistic, that this will probably be resolved. It's not unique to Northside as articulated. There's also some questions in and around a software that's being used for property tax calculations. So long story short. We're on it. And Jake has been corresponding. He sent in an appeal to the county appraisal district first and then contacted TEA to give them our specific complaints, if you will, so that they are documented and recorded with them so they understand. It's hard to look at it this way, but I'm going to challenge you
123to look at it as we're fortunate that we're not a June 30th year end. For our friends in the area that are a June 30th year end, this is a, it's an immediate. concerned for them. Mr. Blount. So this is what y'all described it. So I guess it's rumorville, this collection versus appraised value. That's not what we're talking about, right? No. It's altogether different. Okay. Altogether. So you have your levy that is calculated on all properties in the area and then you start taking off the exemptions. It's when you start taking off those exemptions that the way TEA is calculating it is different than it has been. Two months ago. I mean, so again, we start getting the summary of finance runs for this year in September and it just changed in the last two
124months. Dr. Howell. It was. Oh, sorry. It was a flat $10 million, or was it $10,987,000? Jake probably has that exact number, but it's around $15 million. Okay. I guess $15.8. Was there any commonality with the other districts you talked to? Like, was it a percentage of, you know? It all depends on the qualifications with the exemptions and those that are paying taxes, obviously, that reside within Northside ISD. It varies across every school district percentage, but also aggregate amount. It's that frozen value. It's what they call it. That's the issue if you want to speak to it. It's the frozen values. And so we just don't have enough information right now to even think of taking a legal approach or... So the conversation that we had with Ms. Griswold this afternoon was to try to
125determine who actually gave... the direction to change the methodology because no one has been yet able to say, was it the controller? Was it TEA? Who actually said change the way this is being calculated? So that's our next approach is to see if we can get to that. What was the direction and where did it come from? It may be hard to drill into a defensible answer for a couple of weeks. But I want you to know that we're watching it and we're talking to everyone and we will let you know as soon as we know something. Thank you. And on a good note, that aside, six months into our budget year here, we have very small changes. So we've got accurate projections and we're on track to do what we said we were going
126to do. So I'm happy about that. And that's not just our department. That's everybody doing what they said they'd do and living within our new means. Thank you. This would require approval. Okay. Do you have any motions? Mrs. Freeman? I would move approval. Second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, Jake. All right. We are now on item number eight. So that brings us to human resources. Mr. Muir. Good evening. And speaking of approval, that's why I'm here tonight. For those of you that were here last week for academics, you were able to kind of preview this. This is based on House Bill 2 that came out of the last legislative session, which has now told school districts you can no longer hire uncertified
127teachers in the core area. So reading, math, science, and social studies. Phased-in approach starting next year in elementary, following year into secondary. So I bring forth to you Northside's plan to delay this, based on our District of Innovation plan that we currently have, to delay this to the 29-30 school year. kind of moving forward and one one other thing that I shared with the group this new house bill is really is for public schools and not for charter schools so just kind of keep that in mind they don't have the same expectations for they do not not when it comes to this to the software to certified teachers right I can't say it's not the same certification requirements no not even actually close It never has been, but I just thought it was interesting that
128that was in the language. So we have two sets of accountability in regards to public education. Yes, when it comes to certification. Or none. So just so you know, as we go through this, I just want you to just kind of browse through. So right now, currently we have 34 uncertified teachers that sit in the core area, two at elementary and 32 at secondary, middle school and high school. All 34 of these uncertified teachers that we currently have are in an alt cert program. And as a board, and I continue to commend you for the expectations that you had when we became a district of innovation, that your expectation is that we would not hire anybody that was not already in a program. So before we hire anybody, they have to have proof of enrollment
129in a program. So that is something that we do and something we will continue to do. This past year, we have hired 473 teachers and of the 473, 34 were uncertified. So that goes to about 7%. And I think the reason. The big reason that I'm asking for a delay is kind of the unknown, right? The unknown between now and 2930. Are we going to be able to staff every single classroom, especially in core with a certified teacher? Our goal is yes. The reality is, and as you can see now, is no. So this gives us some time. We have phased in approach. Currently, our current workforce, they must enroll in a program. Prior to the start of their second year with us, they would have had an intern certification. Then they have that year,
130and then by year three, they've got their standard. We'll continue working with each program that we currently partner with and expect that these... teachers get to where they need to be fully certified. We will continue to work with the teacher that we hire. We'll continue to work with the principal because every correspondence that we have with the teacher, we make sure we include the administrator. Sometimes they're able to kind of push them along a little bit quicker. And then of course we're involved all along the way. As you can see the future of our uncertified hiring, Really no method to my madness on this. How we get to where we're at now to where we get to 2930 where none of our core areas will have uncertified teachers. And that's the goal. And we intend
131to comply with House Bill 2, but we'd like to delay it until 2930. And just for the community to understand, like, not certified does not mean low standards. It means they've been in the industry serving in other areas, like in the business world, and now they want to, they've retired and they want to come back and teach or work in the military. They want to be JROTC instructors. A lot of those folks have been working in industry and just. changing are changing careers yes absolutely i mean exactly they're degreed in many cases they may have a master's degree they just haven't taken the certification exam and they haven't gone the traditional education route right and so having to work through that alternative certification program and in most cases attain that certification pass the test this
132this year of for lack of better terms, grace, that they're being provided. And, of course, we're working to assist. So what this does, in essence, House Bill 2, if we don't submit this, in essence, it forces us to only hire individuals with those certifications. And our concern is while... We're hoping that not only through alternative certification programs, but particularly institutions of higher education are regenerating future teachers, i.e. cast teach. By attaining 100% by next school year, that may be a tall task. And so we just want to give ourselves the opportunity to continue to help individuals, again, that are professionals, have had a career change to attain the certifications, in the meantime, are able. And they're working full-time and going to school full-time, creating a portfolio of their work, of their learning, and then they
133submit this to get the certification to take the test and take more tests to get hired where they want to be. So it's like a whole process. Sure. They may not be going to school. They're under the program. Yeah, program. Program, you know, and it's a lot. They will be degreed. They're degreed. Yeah, they have a degree. They have a degree for sure. Dr. Hall? No, Dr. Kraft covered some of the rationale. And I was curious, I forgot to ask this before, who are some of our partners that are helping us with this? So we work with iTeach. We work with Teachworthy. We work with Teachers of Tomorrow, Region 20, 240. There's, I mean, the amount of programs that have kind of evolved over the last few years has grown. Right. And so the other
134question I forgot to ask, too, is what about the students that, the future teachers that go the traditional route but don't do well on their testing? Has there been any movement in that area where we could still hire them, help them with their tests, and maybe by year two or three? Because I have a lot who don't do well the first time, and I'm not sure why. And they all know they can go teach at a private or a charter. Sure. And there's a lot of grace and leniency for this program. I'm just wondering about that. And that could be a discussion for another time. Well, just... The quick answer to that is, so our ones that come out of the traditional education program that have not either taken a test or passed a test,
135we can hire them on a non-renewable permit for one year. For one year. So they're good for one year. The DOI, because of our DOI, we are allowed to continue employment with them if they... after that year because you can't do another permit. So we're able to hire them through DOI until through their university they're able to take and pass their tests. That's why we have two elementary people on this list. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I'm going to get test anxiety, Dr. Hall. It's the real thing. And just one other thing, timeline. Application is due to the commissioner March the 2nd. If approved, I'll complete the application by the end of this week and should hear by the end of March whether we're approved or not. So that's the timeline. Okay. Do
136we have any motions? We need the motion. We have to be approved tonight, please. Dr. Hall? I move. I move that we approve the plan for delay in teacher, it cut off the word, teacher. Certification. Certification. Thank you. Any seconds? Mrs. Zapata seconds that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The motion passes. Thank you. And next we have administration. Dr. Fay, I'll let you start working through the policies that were discussed at our last policy meeting. Obviously, update 126. Dr. Fay, are you with us? I'm with you. And then CHCV and... EIF. So we, I wish I had a quorum at the committee so we would not have to go through this again. My hope is that we don't go through it in its entirety. So you've had the documents in your
137hand. Ultimately, it was a very lengthy process. And you have the complete local packet by TASB that was included in your packet. Those are actually the recommendations on legal and local policy changes by TASB. And then there's some explanatory notes in there as well. And so I guess I'll take some guidance from you on how thorough you want me to go through this presentation. Okay, because it took us about an hour and a half. You've seen them. Yeah. Do you have any questions? Do you have any questions for me? Cause I can go all night about policy. I love it. It's exciting. So yes. So I think the one where we did make changes, and that is on the grievance policy changes, I think that one's of interest because we did not take the TASB
138recommendations. If you go to the last slide, it's the DGBA. It's actually the last slide, Monica. It's on DGBA, FNG, and GF. Those are all three of our local grievance policies. And there was a current policy that we shared in our committee meeting back in October. you I believe it was October, we had some recommendations come forward in that policy committee. And so what we did was we did some background work in the Bexar County area and we made some decisions and made a recommendation to align our practice and grievances on both D on all three DGBA, GF and FNG with kind of the norm in Bexar County. And so if you look at the slide, what you'll see is basically we've. Nothing has changed with the filing of agreements, but when you get to
139the scheduling of hearings and our timeline for response, those things have changed. And I think those are credible changes that need to be made so that we can get to the issues and hear the concerns and get to things in a timely manner. And then as you go through the levels, both Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4, all of those things have changed with respect to the hearing timeline. and then our response timeline, in addition to if they're not happy with their response from a level one, two, or three, their window for filing the next grievance has expanded by about five days. And so ultimately, that is the major change that we made that was not with TASB. But I do think those are credible changes that will help our district hear the grievances
140in a more efficient manner. Other questions? And again, this update, in large part, is really a result of the, like I say, the 89th legislative session. Dr. Fay's done a really good job of condensing this down to being consumable, really, because the TASB update, if you recall, I think was 1,500 pages. This is the largest policy update. I just have a question on that particular page. In that chart on our end, for file level two within X number of days for level one response, is that a 10 or an 11? It is a 10. I try to keep things in 10s, 5s, 10s, and 15s. And this has one of those Greek symbols, so we just need to correct that. I'm seeing that. Is that on your copy? I'll look at that. It's like a,
141you know how you put the cursor over something? It looks like that. Like it was captured with the cursor over that zero. Well, we'll correct that. Okay. And this is the first reading. So if y'all have questions between now and the next meeting where we would take action, please don't hesitate to reach out and call. Just ask questions. I'd be more than happy to talk to you about. Okay. Mrs. Freeman. Yeah. That has been adjusted as well. Oh, thank you. The start time. Thank you. I will. look over this when I can't find it right now in my piece. I know in the past we've looked at this particular policy and looked at the time frame. And I know we've talked about regarding the time frame about when it moves on, when the grievance moves
142on. I know what we've talked about is what's best for the person that's bringing the grievance. So if we take more time, then it's possible that we could... settle things or we have more time to settle. Is this a compromise to any of that that you can see or? Not necessarily. I mean, I've obviously I've worked in some different systems and kind of the recommendation is aligned to that work. We had a window of five days between which. To me, you know, that's a little bit short of time for them to really consider do they want to move things to the next level or not. And that worked well for us, not necessarily for the people that were having issues. And so I think it's a fair assessment of timelines that we should be following
143so that we can try to resolve issues as quickly as we can. The longer they go on, the more frustrated people get with our system. Sure. Yeah. And just a technicality bit. In the business world, it's 10 business days or 10 days? This is 10 days. We went with calendar days. It's actually in the grievance. Yes. Okay. It's actually in the policy is defined early on in that policy. And that's all three policies. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. This is the first reading, so we have time to kind of dissect it a little more. All right. Thank you. Okay. We will make that adjustment and redo that. I took a joke. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. It's good. It's not on mine. If there are any other questions or concerns, let us know.
144We'll be bringing this back to March 24th meeting. Consent agenda for second reading. Yeah. In consideration. And thank the committee. They spent about an hour and a half going through it. So it's good. So the next one is actually related to a legal policy change. It is CH local. And this will be a first reading for that as well. And basically Senate Bill 1173 changes the competitive procurement thresholds for goods and services from 50,000 to 100,000. That's desert. Typically in your local policy, those thresholds are set by the superintendent. So what we did was we aligned our CH local, and then you'll see it again in CV local, to the competitive thresholds set forth by Senate Bill 1173. And so any questions about that one? Just for the community to understand. So before, if anything
145over $50,000, you had to get board approval. Now, based on the legislative recommendation, $100,000. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And that's related. CH is related to goods and services. And then if you go to CV, that's actually related to construction contracts. So we just use the same dollar amount for both policies. Thank you. Good deal. And then on the on letter D, we have the first reading of EIF. This is actually coming out of curriculum instruction, but I'll go ahead and cover it. And it is basically amending our local policy on students that are seeking early graduation and adding the criteria that students meet CCMR criteria to graduate early. And of course, any exceptions to that would be handled on an individual basis because we know that there are times when kids need to
146graduate early for many reasons. They may not be able to attain that. And so that is our first reading for EIF local coming out of curriculum and instruction. Questions? One of the things while we're talking about EIF local, the proposed changes, again, we are making preparations. Thomas Weary, school nutrition, our campus administration, our teachers. to close campuses next year with the exception of students that are on track to attain their CCMR accreditation, if you will. And so we felt like that this was important to bring to the board. There will be the ability to allow for an exception. But we feel like talking about an initiative to increase our CCMR results. This, I say, along with closing campuses, we're going to pay dividends. There's something to be said for incentivizing this. Please. Oh, I'm sorry.
147Well, I know. I went back to our accountability discussion. So, yeah. I just, I guess, stuck my foot right in my mouth. Surprise. Now, this is something we've been working on. Jerry Wood's been working on this. We can incentivize the attainment of CCMR. And again, there are many different tracks, paths, English for attainment, dual credit, AP. You've got, like I say, industry-based certifications. You've got coherent sequencing. There's, like I say, a lot of different... pathways that this certification can be attained. So if a student, a junior is on track to attain their CCMR and or has attained it, many of our juniors are able to attain it with parents permission. They'll have that opportunity to leave campus for lunch. Otherwise they'll be closed to all other students. This in conjunction with a graduation requirement, like
148I say, with the exception of there's a health related. Need I think really will pay dividends particularly for our high school CCMR Sorry, I was bouncing when closed for lunch and to leave campus Yeah, that has nothing to do with that policy. That has nothing to do with the policy? It's the overall approach. Yeah, and our student body this past weekend at the council, we had a lot of conversation about CCMR and readiness and how they think we need to communicate better, which was great feedback for us. And so we brought that back to our level, and we'll be working through that. But kids had a lot of opinions on that. I do have one more question and that this is in the case of we lose a senior that's supposed to graduate. Do we
149give that family their graduation certificate? Is that in policy anywhere? Is that just like a... I don't know about here. I know that most districts always work with families around that, especially if they've met graduation requirements, sometimes early on, depending on... So yeah, I'll have to research that. Okay, good. Yeah, okay good. Yeah, I like that mrs. Freeman I'll just wait till we get done with okay peace and then I just wanted to make a suggestion after we got to the superintendent Okay, number ten All right. Okay. So the next one we have is the designation of prayer time resolution And so all boards are required now by law to Number one, either designate a prayer time during schools or take action to adopt a resolution that we were not going to do that. And
150so our recommendation. Yeah, go ahead. I'll explain. There's really three different actions. Yeah. Consider, but go ahead. No, you can go ahead, sir. Well, so, yes, real quickly. Senate Bill 11 requires the board. by March 1st, I believe, to take a record vote to determine or decide whether you would like to have a designated standard prayer time across the school district or not. So the first decision really is seeing that, again, we're a very, very diverse school district. We have numerous religious affiliations, not to mention the logistics associated with setting up different prayer areas for different religious affiliations would be. challenging I'll just say it for a high school campus of 2,800 students that would be very very challenging so the recommendation is to not designate a prayer time during the course of the school
151day The three options, in essence, are yes, you can designate the prayer time. You can take a record action vote to not designate the prayer time, or you can adopt a resolution that really acknowledges, again, the diversity, a lot of the rationale, as you see in your board document, and reasoning for not designating a prayer time. Like I say, the administrative recommendation is to not designate a prayer time. The resolution reiterates that if you elect to adopt that resolution that's attached. But this is like say a record vote that is required. I really like the Bertilutions sentence that states Northside ISD board is committed to cultivating and maintaining a respectful school environment for students and teachers of any or no religious background and so I think that's a good summary Mrs. Freeman Yeah Clarification on
152SB 11 as well. Did that include also reading a passage out of? Out of the Bible? Is that part of SB 11? I don't recall a Bible passage being read as a mandate in SB 11. Yeah, and you might be thinking about part of what they're doing, is they're going to dictate readings at each grade level, and right now the list includes some Bible. I thought it was in SB 11. We can research. No, I don't think it's necessary. I don't remember that being a part of it. For clarification about what that actually entitled if we should go that route. Okay, we okay so we can follow up this was Senator Creighton's bill It's not necessary. We have any emotions to approve the resolution recommended Mr. Blanc. Yeah, I move we've discussed this before I
153think you just took the approach to request it in the path, but I'll move approval I'll second I never can I second I wanted to say good Am I allowed to say that? Yes, you have the ability to. All right. Thank you so much. Second the motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay. We passed the resolution. Good decision. Thank you. All right. Number 10 is superintendent's report. Since we're down to this and we've got some people, it's getting late. We've got some people here that want to speak to item number B. If it's okay with the board, we could switch. Flip-flop A and B. So they can go home at a decent time? Yes. All in favor? All in opposed? Yes. Okay, that sounds like a great idea. Thank
154you. Mrs. Freeman, again? No. Okay. No. All right. So we're going to go ahead and that's okay, sir. Would you like for us to discuss and then allow those that have signed up for this item to hear the conversation open, like I say, back up to the citizens to be heard? It's not a decision point tonight. And I can just briefly explain. You have the survey results. Well, let me back up even further. If you recall, we revisited our naming of facilities policy, which you have a copy of that policy in your board documents. If there is going to be board consideration, particularly to rename a campus, we are to first solicit feedback from the community that would be impacted, which is exactly what we have done. And if you have specific questions about the
155survey, Barry can answer those questions. As mentioned already, they hosted it in an open house. I had the opportunity to attend and just remind those that were in attendance to complete the survey. So again, as a result, and as you can see, 617 individuals. These are community members, teachers, students, former students. It was pretty well opened, but 617 completed. 512 indicated no, they would prefer the board not explore renaming, the renaming of Colonies North. 33 were undecided, and 72 were in favor of the board considering renaming. So, that being said, you've got that feedback. The survey, Barry, was open how long? I want to say it was about three weeks. So like I say, a lot of feedback. If you'd like to know the differentiation between the students and Barry, I know that you have
156that broken down, if you don't mind, just real quickly, because I think that's important. Like I say, we did have current students as well as former students complete the survey. So we gave the principal discretion as to whether or not she included current students, and Principal Farrell decided that she wanted fourth and fifth grade students to have an opportunity to complete the survey. If you remove the student votes from those numbers, then you get to 441 out of 504, 17 undecided, and 46 were yes. So the numbers change slightly. The percentages stay about the same, but the student votes are included in the totals that you see now. Mr. Sancido? Do we have a copy of the actual questions on the survey? I can get those for you. There were actually two questions that were
157provided on the survey, so it was a very short summary. The first one was, are you in favor of the board proceeding with the renaming process? The second question was, how important is it for you at this time for a name change from high importance to least important? I was kind of curious where that $37,000 price tag is coming from, from these kids that are... So we asked for input from facilities department. So Jacob and his staff took up some rough numbers, but we also reached out to the campus and asked them to tell us anything that was branded on the campus that would need to be changed. And so everything from, for example, she had just purchased new entry rugs that say Colonies North Elementary. So she included those. She included things like business
158cards for the front office staff. She included, there are some signage and name plates around the campus that still say the name. So we asked her to go through and very thoughtfully look around the campus to see what might need to be changed and what expenses might she incur if she wanted to do those. And then she provided us those numbers. So those two are from facilities, but also from the campus. My question is, we received several emails. Most of them were complaining about us spending $37,000 not to change it. How do they know? How does the community know that it's going to cost us $37,000? So that was included in the survey. At the very beginning of the survey, we gave about a page of information to the respondents. We gave them a history
159of the campus. We felt it was important that they know the campus was opened in this year. We gave them a breakdown of the demographic. We felt it was important that they understand this is the demographic of the campus. So we tried to give them as much information as we could before they answered the two questions. So there was an entry page on that survey. And again, I can definitely share that summary. or excuse me, the survey with you. Okay. Dr. Hassel? Mine's just like the survey. So if there were two questions, why do we only see like the response to one question or? So the response that you see are going to be the very first question. So we can compile the second one, which is kind of an order of importance. But the
160first question of do you approve of the board continuing with the process? That is that question. Yes. Yeah, because I was like, I don't know what the question is. OK, I mean, I. Like one, like obviously for transparency, this is something that has been requested like two years ago, like it's been a while. And so I feel like just as a community, like it's important to at least be able to review this and see and go through the process because like two years is a long time for individuals to kind of go through this. I, you know, I appreciate the process and I'm definitely taking in the responses that came in. But I mean, I'm hoping that in future, like we're able to really keep up and be able to like open, look at it
161and be responsive and be responsive to the community. So I do appreciate the survey. And I mean, I know it's been a while that we've looked at this process. And so I think it's an important process that we have because we have a policy. It is in place and it is important that if individuals do submit that we do go through the process. Well, and just a little bit of background. We had to completely rework that policy and then establish the process to be able to get to a survey. With newborn members. That was part of what took a little bit of time. Yeah. And one of the things I'd like to also suggest is if. let's say there is this kind of situation, and if they were not to proceed with the name change,
162what other options does a community have to honor the folks that they've wanted to honor, right? Like, can they be pillars, or is there a pivot we can offer for that noteworthy work and investment in the community that we can, you know, highlight these fine folks? Yeah, absolutely. You know, again, The naming of facilities, parts of facilities, is completely the board's purview. But we have, for example, the Plaza of Influence. It's associated with the sports gym, Ferris, athletic complex field. It's right in between, so just adjacent to the new golf practice facilities. I mean, there's those types of tributes that are... Yeah, I think that where we also have tied up not only clarifying policy in and around this particular Decision which I think is really important for the board to have the other the
163other piece though we've tightened up is Again you as trustees hold the naming rights, if you will, as a trustee. And so campuses don't have the flexibility or freedom to name portions of facilities, fields, libraries, without the board's very clear approval. And that was, like I say, something that we quickly realized needed to be tightened up soon. Asa I think I was gonna comment on the full disclosure regarding the survey it was posted on the on the campus website so we were able to look through it and as Mr. Paris said that our Barry had said that there's a there was a history at the front end of the survey and then the questions were were asked thank you yeah so today This one is just a discussion. Yeah, I think if it's okay, Madam
164President, would we like to hear from our citizens? Sign up to speak to this item. Chris Rios. Thank you all. Colonies North was named after a subdivision at the very beginning, over 50 years ago, I believe. I'm not trying to take away anyone's memories. I'm not trying to take away the past of Colonies North. I'm kind of looking towards the future. And y'all had mentioned the celebration of Sotomayor, the celebration of John Marshall, celebration of Colonies North. I mean, it's a subdivision. The school should be named after someone who can inspire the students, someone whose story that the students can look up to, someone who had a positive influence on the district. Yes, it's very personal to me. I went to Hobby and Clark and I've made my best friend. I have best friends that
165I met at Hobby that I saw today. You change Hobby's name to anything doesn't take away what I had at Hobby, what I learned at Hobby, what I experienced and, and the P the memories, they don't go away. The subdivision, I believe, was the only subdivision that went to Colonies North when it was built. There's over four, about four or five, I believe, subdivisions now that feed into Colonies North. There's numerous apartment complexes that feed into it. Naming it after a person gives it an identity, gives it a... Like I said, something for the kids to look to. The people who went there in the past, I understand their memories. I understand everything that I've read on Facebook. The survey, I mean, it's kind of a yes or no. And one thing I've learned online
166and throughout different ventures I've done is everyone can be a keyboard warrior. Everyone can press a button that says, no, I don't. but how many actually take the time to show up to the open house, to show up for the actual neighborhood. There's a neighborhood page. No one comments on it until this, until I put, you know, about changing the name. Nobody really likes change, but it's real easy to just hit a button. But why don't they come up here and talk to y'all? Why don't they come up here? Yes, I know there's a few people. I mean, would you say 500? You have 500 people who said no, and maybe there's seven or 10 here. If they're really invested in it, they would be here talking to you. And the last thing I'm going
167to say is I heard something at the open house that I attended. And a person said they were really, really, really sad when they saw the building being torn down. So they actually had tears in their eyes because Colonies North was being torn down. And that was her school. That was her family's school. But when it got rebuilt, they said they were very happy. And they understood that it didn't change the halls they went through. It didn't change the friendships they made. A name of a subdivision. And lastly, I mean, if tonight y'all said, let's change it, everything would still be the same tomorrow except the name. The memories would still be there. The friendships built, everything. So thank y'all very much for listening. Kathy Mochel. I'm Kathy Mochel. I am a member of the
168Colonies North community and I actually live in Hidden Creek, which is a side right next to Colonies North. But my children have. I've been the community first for 23 years. I first lived on Tioga and then I literally hopped over the school and moved to Hidden Creek. My husband and I have three sons, ages 12 to 20, and they all attended Colonies North under principals Chris Cotton and Norma Farrell. During the time that they were there, I served for many years on the PTA board. I also was the rooted rep. And as a community member, I served as a swim team manager for our colonies, dolphins, across the street at our community pool, which is called the Colonies House. My middle son will graduate from Clark High School this spring. Colonies North participates in the
169senior walk, so he'll be invited back to where it all started with his grad robes on and his Texas Tech. red Raider t-shirt underneath to show the Littles that college is possible. That he too sat in the halls of Colonies North Elementary because as we say, once a Cougar, always a Cougar. Colonies is iconic. 60 years strong and we're still making history even here tonight as we discuss the future of Colonies North. I was sitting here and I have this is my first board meeting meeting and I'm super glad that I got to come because I've learned so much. But I just want to note that 75 years at Marshall, I feel like we're knocking on that door. We're almost a legacy school. Like that's a lot of history to take from us. And I
170know it's just a name of a neighborhood, but it's so much more than that. And I wish I wish every one of you could feel what it feels like to live in our community. I have so many friends and experiences. that are tied to the people that I met dropping off my kids. I think I ended up in the pickup line and on the hill waiting for my kids for like 12 years at Colonies North. So that's a really long time and a lot of history there to develop relationships. And I'm super happy that we do live in the neighborhood of Colonies North. There are 83 little elementary school dots on the Northside district map. But we're more than just that little dot. We're the heart of Colonies North on Neighborhood. And I'm here on
171behalf of my family and many friends, neighbors, and past students that could not actually be here tonight, as we kind of found out short notice that this was happening, to ask you to please consider an alternative to renaming our school to which the proposed honoree is not directly connected. Let's put that $37,000 it would cost to change the name back into our Northside budget. where we can maybe boost the income of our IAs as discussed and our interpreters that are here tonight. Keep our history intact, and let's give our future graduating Cougars the ability to return home and walk the halls of Colonies North Elementary School. Thank you. Dan Lee Bowers? It's Dan C, but I need to- Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay, I'm used to it. I apologize. It is a C. I see
172it now. I might not have written it very legibly. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. I sent all of y'all an email yesterday, and I'm not sure if you all got it, but if you have a moment to go back and read it after tonight, it would mean a lot to me. And I did get the opportunity to see some of you when I spoke at the open house at Colonies of the World of the Country the other day, and I was the person that was talking about breaking down in tears when they tore down the school. I think the sentiment that Mr. Riojas tried to pass off as mine is not the same. That was not, I wasn't saying that it wouldn't matter. It does matter. I have lived in that neighborhood since 1977. My
173family moved there. I left to be a combat search and rescue swimmer in the Navy. And as soon as I got out, I moved right back because that is where I wanted to raise my kids. Both of my sons went to school there. I love that school and I love this neighborhood, but it is not just a neighborhood and it is not just a school. It is a community and each generation takes care of the older ones and the younger ones. We all raise each other. There have been so many times when. I've been going through hard times and people have dropped by to help me out. And I have extended that same courtesy to other people. They look after my sons. They look after me. We look after each other. So the, I'm sorry,
174I'm offended when I hear it just called a neighborhood because it's not. And like Kathy said, we're 60 years strong. We're a legacy. We had three principals have elementary schools named after them. You know, that is a legacy. Passmore, Mr. Carson, and Blattman, those were all principals from Colonies North Elementary. So they weren't just putting out something that wasn't that big of a deal. They were creating human beings that went on to make big changes. And so before I came tonight, I got on the computer and I researched every one of you. I know a lot about all of you already because I'm kind of a fangirl of the school board. I love you guys. and the one thing, two things that stood out. One. Every single one of you has multiple things that you
175do outside of caring for this district and all of our kids that are very important to you. You have passion and they have meaning because they shaped you in some way or another, all of you. And I loved that about you. It made me so happy to read that. And what I want you to know is my passion is Colonies North Elementary School and Colonies North, our community, not a neighborhood. And the second thing that all of you talked about on your platforms was the need to find fiscal responsibility walking into a year with a $38 million budget deficit. $37,000 to rename a school that does not want to be named. We do not give our consent. To me, it's irresponsible. And I also feel like if you rename our school for her, it'll never
176be hers. It'll never be hers. It'll always still be ours. And I don't think that's fair to her. If you really want to honor someone's legacy, give them something brand new, shiny, and beautiful in order for her to start her own community and her own legacy. But please don't take ours. And thank you so much for allowing me to be here tonight. That's all we have signed up. All right. Thank you. So now that one is just a discussion. Correct. Yeah, like I say, we wanted to take the first step of providing feedback. And then, like I say, you'll have the opportunity with other facilities in the future if you want to. Mr. Blunt. No, you just summarized it fairly well because it is a little bit more than a discussion, per se. Legally, it's
177a discussion, but it's also a, hey, do we stop trying to rename, stop the process tonight going forward in terms of renaming Colony of the North? I'll add this. I hate to do history, but I will. I've probably been a part of at least, I don't know, 75 to 80. different namings, whether it be new schools, whether it be facilities, whether it be whatever it may be, et cetera. And I can tell you for a fact, it is extremely personal. There's stories behind these schools being named. They just sort of build up over time. I mean, it is something that you just can't change per se. The other key thing I'll point out, I think it's very important that we listen to the community on any of these type of decisions. And if Colleen Norris
178says... the feedback we've gotten says we don't want it renamed i really suggest this board not go any further with it not only because and it's not any disrespect against any other names etc but there's other impacts that happen too there's other things we need to do in going forward in our community relations and saying we support our local areas is extremely important and if we change that on this decision it's it could have other ramifications thank you dr hall yeah i was just um playing with the next steps. And so just being very transparent. I mean, I grew up on Colony Drive, so I still get a lump in my throat when you say Colony's North. So I don't know if you can measure emotion around a name. And I never saw it as
179a neighborhood either. I saw it as a community that helped raise all of us. So I'm wondering what next steps are where we can go back to perhaps honoring individuals. And so I'm thinking, I know you said that. We collected information, but what could be some next steps that this board could consider to honor people who have given so much? Because we are going to look at closing schools, and there won't be opportunities to name. Possibly, possibly. Never mind. Well, it's come out in the paper, so I'm just going to say what was in the paper. We're not disgusted. According to the Express News, da-da-da. But I'll leave it like that. Anyway, I'm just wondering if there's other opportunities to look at that. And maybe that's in building committee or something else. So the pillars,
180I want to just go back to that. The pillars are for folks that are alive. Is that correct? Or is that even defined in the pillars? Yes, and they have to have graduated from a Northside school. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mrs. Freeman? Yeah, thank you. I think one of the hallmarks, I know one of the hallmarks of Northside is our community schools. And we always talk about the difference between ISDs and our charter schools and the fact that our schools belong to our community. Now, it may be that other people. in other neighborhoods might go to one school, but people identify that school as their school. Anytime when we were in a fast growth mode, we had to shift boundaries because we needed to put people in other schools because some of our schools
181had way over capacity and way over the core capacity. And it was very difficult for us to make that decision because it is a very emotional decision when people have their kids at a school and they give their all to that particular school. And we were talking about moving. moving students to another school. I'm getting off track, but when we looked at every time we made boundary changes, it's a twofold piece. It's a good thing that people want to stay at their school. They identify with their school. And whatever the name is, they've identified with the school. And I think Colonies North My mother-in-law lived in Colonies North for a while, and my sister-in-law had lived there for a bit. And I know the people in Colonies North have, generational people have been there. And
182that's not the only community in Northside that we have that. But this board, there are, I don't know that we want to even count the number of people who are worthy of something that. of some type of recognition. We can have that discussion. I think the positive influence is really a good opportunity. But, I mean, that's where I am on this. I think we do need to listen to our community. And we need to make the decision right now if we go on with this renaming process, my thought. Or, no, we can't do that, can we? There's no... Yeah, I think, you know, again, it's a board. There's not a suspense date. That's kind of the beauty of the way the policy is designed. The board would like for us to seek feedback or input
183from a community again in the future if it pertains to renaming. But there are also going to be, as we'll discuss bond here momentarily, there are going to be renovations. There are going to be, you know, we just. finished and have started playing at the softball baseball cross country complex it's right now the north side athletic complex north side I'm going to get it right at some point north side sports complex so let's say there are opportunities and options for the board to consider in the future Ms. Tabata I just want to make sure that Not only are we transparent, and I know this has been going on for a while, and when I hear residents say they just heard about it, to me, it shows that we're not being transparent with the steps that
184we need to take. So I want to make sure that from here on out, whatever we put in our policy, we follow it because it seems like We're here, we're there, and it's not right for the, you know, for people who are submitting these correctly and not getting the feedback. I think we need to do a better job at that, not only for the process, but for the community. And apparently this has been... This has been asked for for a while, if I'm not mistaken, because I hear two years, but then I see somebody say no over there. And that's right. I don't like that we're not on the same page with this. So we got the feedback. Let's take it back. Let's do it right. Let's be transparent. Let's, I think. trustees, I'll say,
185though, we got that feedback, we'll take it back, because I also want to make the process right. I don't want to, you know, about the questioning about the numbers. I mean, it really shouldn't be questionable, I guess. And I don't feel like that's, we're not, we're not solid with the process. So let's be solid with the process is, is all I want us to do as a board. So to your point, Ms. Zapata, we have had a spreadsheet and submissions since David and I have joined in 2013. For a while, correct. And we have other requests like gyms and all kinds of things. So I do agree we need to finalize how the process is, and this is, I think, the first time. applying the new set of policies that we've developed together. So this
186is kind of like creating that process as we speak and it can still be absolutely refined. So I agree that this is still a working process. It is that, but it needs to be defined. Mr. Blanc? Yeah, I was going to say, no, I'm going to disagree a little bit with you. I agree. That's a good point. We have had a list for a while. I'm going to tell you a fact. The process we have, to me, isn't much different than when we were naming a lot and renaming the facilities. We just have different thoughts on how, who, who should be done, et cetera. Renaming one is a very unusual one, but we, like I said, we've done that before, per se, and it's following this one, too. It's ours from the community first, then
187the name sort of comes second, per se. But the two reasons I shake my head a little bit on the two years, you're right, two years, but not this specific one. The idea of Colonies North actually came a little bit later. The idea of naming it, yeah, it had occurred. It's just looking at different opportunities or where that may occur. Then the Colonies North linked into it. So that's why that one to me came a little bit later. But it's just because we have a lot. We have new staff. We have new board members. And we're just trying to figure out, okay, what's properly, what should we rename, et cetera. It's not just a policy issue. It's also a... When should we do this? How should we do that? And it's a it's a very
188difficult process because you're very sensitive to You don't want to come up with a name and throw it out there in the public and then next thing, you know Something doesn't happen. So it's not easy process to work through. Thank you. Mr. Salcido. Yeah, I just want to reiterate on that uh, I first brought that up two years ago in the building committee was getting a lot of feedback from stakeholders in my area where Westwood Terrace had just been, was, they put a new cafeteria right in front of the school and the whole area just changed. The whole landscape, the whole neighborhood there changed. And they were asking, oh, they're going to change the name, you know, and I said, well, wait. So I inquired about what was the policy as far as changing the
189schools. According to Dr. Kraft, we didn't. have a renaming policy. We were naming new schools at the time. We were naming, we had just named Melissa Chumlee. That was the last school that I was part of. So we decided to re-change all the wording on the policy. And then, of course, Colonies North came up because they also remodeled that school. So that was how all this first started. And I did some research. I know that Lackland City was changed to Allen Elementary. And I know that I did some more. Houseman was Shenandoah subdivision. So, I mean, we have changed schools that were already subdivisions. I know, according to Mr. Jacob, all the schools start off as where they're being designed, and then they get changed. Because Miss Chumlee was a subdivision too, wasn't it? I
190remember seeing the blueprints where it had the subdivision on it and then we went through the process of naming it. So like I said, it's not nothing that was intended to be a good thing because it was revitalizing the neighborhood and made it, I've had people that live in the colony stores contact me too and I further what I've said, hey, what's going on with colony stores? I see they tore it down and I told them that we were remodeling it because of some structure issues. And, you know, they were saying, you know, that it was nice, that it was revitalizing the neighborhood, making it look nice. I'm just trying to figure out where we go next from here. I mean, we brought this up like two years ago in the building committee. Thank you.
191Mrs. Freeman? Yeah, just further clarification on the, like when we... In the past, when we've talked about building a facility, there's been a placeholder just so that we can talk about it, about the school. And many times that placeholder had to do with... the area or the name of the street or whatever it was. It was just a placeholder until the board made the decision. And also, when people submit names, in the past, we've had several people that would submit names. This board does not necessarily need to take, it depends on the board. The board needs to make a decision whether they take action on it or not. When a name comes to us, we don't necessarily. We do not have to name anything after that particular nomination. We need to consider it, and that's
192why the list has been so long, because this board has not decided to go forward with anything. Like in the past, we don't take action on every nomination. So I think, just a suggestion, we should then... say that on the spreadsheet, no action taken, but have the discussion wherever that is, is in a policy building, and then say, we've discussed it, let's move on. Otherwise, it's just standing there like... there's nothing being stated that's been action taken, right? So we should finalize it and streamline that and look at each one and then see if we're going to move on or if we're just going to talk about it and consider or not, right? Because they're just sitting there on a spreadsheet to me with no action taken right now but this one. So maybe that
193helps us streamline our process. Dr. Harl? I still kind of want to know where we're going to go next. So number one, but number two, your idea, I mean, if people are submitting something, some sort of reply, I think is in order. So I think we could talk about what is an acceptable way to say whatever we need to say. And maybe it's something that the building committee could look at. and make some recommendations or it just goes to building committee and they look at some names but i think people take the time it takes a while to fill that out that a reply would be in order or maybe during one of our workshops or whatever we're calling them retreats that aren't retreats um where we talk about it and we we go through
194the list so we we're tilling the soil on those names um but with this particular with colonies worth what are their next steps or is it going to be back on the spreadsheet sheet and dangling is there going to be some sort of word from the board or it's because it's it's just hanging there so I don't know What do we need to put it on the agenda as an action item in particular or do we? Because right now there's no action associated on the agenda as part of their superintendent. I mean it's a under superintendent Yeah, I'm not we're just kicking the can one. I'm not Authorized to make a recommendation again from an administrative standpoint talking about the process We created the process through board policy to seek input and feedback from the
195community. That's what you have. Do you want me to make a recommendation? I just like, yeah, I think we're all just like, I feel like there needs to be a closure set up to this. But we can't vote. Well, not like today. No, no, no. I don't mean today. I mean, does that mean that we move to put it in the next month's agenda? Or we don't. Or an action. I feel like we've had a lot of discussion. I feel like I personally feel like there needs to be a vote because I feel like the other ones, yeah, like we need to go through them and say, like you just want to leave it. My personal thought is. any two people can put something on an agenda. So I think we've heard from the community.
196I think no action here means that we're not going to bring it back. Two people here can put it on the agenda again. But I think if we're all satisfied with what we've heard from the community, then we don't have to do anything. Zapata? I'm not... We heard from the community. I'm just not satisfied with the process, I guess, because people have put in a lot of time in here. And it was, you know, this wasn't just something that this started before I got on the boards. I just feel like let's do it right. It feels a little messy. And from here on out, you know, we follow the process. But I just feel like we haven't really given any feedback. especially to this because we've talked about it already. We've had people come and
197speak to us. And I think when the community comes and speaks with us, I think, you know, it's something that we should give some feedback on. I just, you know. That's how I feel. I feel like let's bring it back on agenda for the next school board meeting and make our final decision. And then I agree with Carol about putting something in there where there is a response that's given to people who... Submit. Submit. I think that needs to be also included in our policy. Just so we're transparent with what we're doing and people just aren't waiting. You know? Mr. Salcido? Yeah, because I believe that if we make a motion to move on, I think the next process would be the submission of names into a pool. And then I think that's how we
198did Chumlee. I'm still concerned about how the wording of the money was put on it because most of the feedback that I was getting today, for some reason we got them all today. $37,000 kept coming up that we shouldn't be spending this and we shouldn't be spending that. They don't know that. How much did Allen cost to change? Who paid for it? How did that come up? Who paid for Shenandoah to change it to Hausman? That's questions that we still have to answer to figure out where that money came from. Obviously, they spent the money to name a school. I was already at another name. I'd like to get more information as far as where the questions are. Most of the ones that were against it was because of the money, 37,000 that we shouldn't
199be spending. I agree. I don't think there should have been a price tag on it because, again, let's not forget the reason why this was brought up to our attention. This is because someone gave us their service and it was brought up to our attention as something that we can... you know, memorialize her with and what she's given to Northside. I don't want to forget about that. You know, she's she she was Northside. And so I just like again, I just think that that's where I feel like it's messy. And I think we need to do better and be transparent and put it on our policy. And, yeah, I do feel like we need to give feedback, but I don't. feel like there should have been a price tag on the survey on any on
200any renaming anything um from here on out i don't think that should be well that was one of the questions that we were charged with right we did that the board that was not a superintendent right but unless we're going to do it from here on out we're always going to put that price tag on it i just i just don't feel like that's Me personally. And I did get a lot of emails, too. I don't know if I was the only one that got a lot of emails. And it was really particular about the price. And I just I don't want us to forget about, you know, the person that was brought to our attention. You know, and I again, I think we just got to do better with this process. Mr. Blanc, Dr.
201Blanc. So thank you. A couple of things related. First of all. One of the challenges we have, we start growing the district again, we have new schools, it's a lot easier per se because you got a lot more to name per se. And the reason why I bring that up is because part of the policy deals with that one and that's where it requests names and they know that that's waiting for a new school. If we don't have a new school, it doesn't go forward. It sits in there per se. The part we're also talking about is when we have other namings, whether it be special facilities or requests like this, et cetera, and agree that. Yeah, we need to figure it out. And we've been talking about it for a while. We brought this
202up. How many times have we had this, that the names have come forward and we haven't moved forward with it or we don't know how to reply with it? So that's the other problem we have is the board's got to make a decision on these so that we can then reply itself. On this one, again, we've got to separate. The part that I thought we were talking about tonight is step one. It's not naming it after anybody because there could be other names submitted if you go forward with it. tonight's discussion is do we rename colonies north I know we want to bring in the other aspect agree but that's tonight with that step one and we if we're gonna follow a process we first guys just decide on step one do we rename colonies
203north well I and I know I don't think I don't even vote on I'm just saying yeah I really can't to your point Bobby would really tonight's conversation the intent was to provide you the survey information yeah okay I mean, we were charged with surveying the community, and that's what you have in front of you. Yeah, just for the record, too, I don't think that these people who spoke and the emails that I have, it wasn't just a price tag, and this wasn't about the price tag. The actual information that was provided before the survey, I wish everybody had seen it, it was on the... on the school website, it didn't say this is, that wasn't the main thing. It talked about the history of the school. And then it talked about the board wanting
204to rename it. And then it did talk about a price tag as we've talked about, but that wasn't, that wasn't the main jest of the, the piece, the, the three or four paragraphs that were presented before the survey. And I don't think these people that have emailed us or the people that have spoken, it's not about a price tag to them. It's about their school. And my thought is if we go forward, if we're looking at a particular name, maybe we need to look at something else. rather than a school. In the past, when we've had folks, when we've had school names, when we've asked our community for school names, there were times when we had 30 people or more. We had notebooks, notebooks that looked like this regarding school names. So there were several.
205Couldn't name the school after all those people. There's a lot of people worthy of... of some recognition. But let's be careful about talking about the price tag because I don't think that that's what I've read nor have heard. Dr. Hall, thank you. Dr. Hall? Now, the only thing, and it goes back to the transparent, I do think if something's going to cost $37,000, it needs to be said out loud somewhere. And I didn't look at it at the website, but we are in a different economic time than we were when it was Jerry Allen naming and Hausman. And we are in a budget deficit. And so every dollar matters. And so I never saw it like that. I heard about it. And I also think even if it hadn't been printed there, that community is
206so tight. The word would have gotten around, you know, just in discussion because people are so concerned and caring. But I also wonder, too, that this person is so incredible. She's part of an incredible list of people, though. And that spreadsheet, we've got to figure that piece out, too, because there's incredible people on there. This is making me rethink they're just names on a page versus, you know, she deserves to be honored. I don't know if this is the place, but, you know, it's going to take, I guess, me personally a while to think about what some next steps are that people are honored, whether it's, you know, whatever it was, John, that you were saying. The Plaza, yeah, and maybe they don't have to pay to have their name there or something. I don't
207know. I'm just going to rethink the way we honor. Yeah, another good example. We just created the Northside Athletic Hall of Fame, which we inducted our first cohort of six individuals, I believe. So there are other ways to. celebrate individuals, memorialize individual success. I mean, there could be a Northside ISD educator. We can put some thought to it. I'd like to consider that. And what I'm hearing then is that if we have two folks, I want to put this back on the agenda to talk about all of the naming, right, people, the requests, and go through that list and close them out and respond and give. Closer to that spreadsheet so we can move forward with all of the requests I think that's something that needs to be done in the future. That's what I'm
208hearing moving forward and this was a Great conversation and if somebody wants to put this on the colonies north on the agenda That would be a different request. So we have two requests that would need to be made from the board So I'm here to take care Citizens to be heard next time. We can follow up, though. Email. Email. You can email us. Now, the other thing is, now I just have the idea. We're going to put little free libraries, and there will be so many of them. How many elementaries do we have now, 85? 83. 83. 83, and that will take care of the spreadsheet. All those names will be a little free library. It will help out with third-grade reading. We'll kick it off with Read for America next week, and there we
209go. I would love a little free library. So do we have any motions from the board on putting on these in the agenda, any agenda requests? Yeah, I think we need to put this behind. Let's just make a motion to move forward to the next step. What's the next step? I make a motion that we continue the process of renaming the colonies north. Do we have any second? I second. I just want to clarify. So what I have is two trustees to place this back on the agenda on March 24th. This is not an action item this evening. Just a request. So I've got the two. So March 24th, we will have this and revisit this. And it's an action item. And then do we have any other motions to put the entire... Let's be
210careful. Not motions, excuse me. Any nominations to the agenda, to add to our agenda, the renaming of facilities review spreadsheet nominations? I'm sorry. Do we have any two requests to put our review of our renaming of facilities form submittals for a future agenda item? That's what we did. Dr. Harland, Mrs. Zapata, you want to put this on that agenda to review somewhere? Do we want to move this to policy? What do we want to do with the spreadsheet? I would like it to go to committee first. Let's go to committee. And really look at it and see what they're dealing with first before it comes to us. So can we do that? Should I make the request to move that spreadsheet review to building committee? Sure. Okay. And just to comment, we can certainly take
211it to building committee, but it's been to committee. This sheet has been to policy at least twice. I think we took it to, I've been on committees where this has come, and the committee can't make a decision. The committee always said the board is going to have to make this decision. So we can certainly discuss it at building. But that's what that's what's happened in the past Okay, mr. Blunt But I guess it gives Superintendent there dr. Kraft. He may have some ideals that may help New ideals, yeah Okay, mr. Hustle no, I agree it should go to building and from there we can move it forward to the regular I mean, I think it needs some sort of structure Put it back in the building. Yeah. And then we move forward and then our
212goal is to respond to all the recommendations and make decisions. To bring recommendations to the board as to what to do with the sheet. Yes. All right. So we'll move that to our building committee. All right. So now we have back to item A, Northside Bond Timeline. Yes. Jacob. Do you have our props? I think the graph is in your folder. Okay, it's in your folder. Okay. Okay, yeah. So I know there have been a lot of questions in and around the timing of a potential bond invader. And, again, I want to be real careful in the sense that we realize the board has not called for a record vote for a bond election. This is a rather... busy Gantt chart, obviously. And what we tried to do is we tried to capture kind of
213some major milestones just so that it answers a lot of questions as to the timing, but also talking about the process, what actions and what we just need to have on your radar. Okay. So let me start at the very bottom, because I think sometimes looking backwards, may be easier than trying to play every step going forward. And I'm going to hit just the highlights. And before I get there, if you'll look at the very top, you'll see that, for example, in month one, it's October slash April. So it really is contention upon whether it's a... spring or May election or a November election. For a vader, it has to be a November general election. So in essence, November 3rd. You don't have, as a government entity, the ability to raise the M&O tax rate
214in the spring or in a May election. It has to be, state law requires that it is a November 3rd or November general election. Thus, working backwards, really pay attention to really that second month. So if you go over to month 20, May slash November election day, again, you can just go ahead and pencil in if you would prefer, or we can write it in. It's November 3rd. We'll include the early voting dates because we already have those, and we'll start working backwards. You can see that in September, October, we've got a lot of community school meetings. Well, what that is, in essence, this is assuming you've already called for the order of election for the Vader and the Bond. That would be the education aspect. where we would be hitting campuses, service organizations, clubs,
215really educating the community, homeowners associations, educating the community as to what the bond in particular entails. Okay, I'm going to keep working backwards. So that's bond election prep. So a lot of print material. And again, I want to be real careful that this can only be education information. This in no shape, form or fashion can be electioneering. It has to be solely election. So what that entails is we will have our bond council review flyers, review any print material, mailers, anything that is going to come from the district. that it is not in any shape, form, or fashion, like I say, trying to be persuasive. It's just the facts. All right, so let me go back one more to board engagement. And this is kind of the middle of the page. So the order of
216election, we actually... looking at August, we would like to propose August 17th for your consideration to actually formally call the bond. And then what we would also do in that meeting is work to set the tax rate and approve fiscal year 27 budget of August. I'm sorry, did I say? No, I'm sorry. Okay. Prior to that, so prior to that, You'll see there'll be a superintendent to the board. This, in essence, will be the lead-in to the recommendation. So probably either a finance committee that is more or less a special called workshop. But like I say, we're going to have to have another meeting in order to advertise for the budget. And so this will be, like I say, a second meeting. And we were kind of looking at dates. We had August 11th in,
217penciled in. Yes, so we currently have on the calendar August 11th as a call meeting. We want to move that one. yeah yeah so that we're kind of working to kill two birds with one stone that fourth would suffice the two-week notification for the paper of the fiscal year 27 budget I said I was gonna try to make this simple and I'm interjecting fiscal year 27 okay leading into that This this August yes this this coming Yeah, so Fiscal year budget. We're just we're trying to line it up so that we don't have four or five board meetings in August Okay then Kind of, again, backing up, we've got a lot, I'd say we've got a lot of work to do. Now you're going to kind of see the work, true work that's ahead of
218us. So when we get into the summer months, and let me just kind of focus on really May, June, July. One of the things that will have to be conducted is an efficiency audit, which Megan is already working that aspect with bond council, reviewing other districts that have just recently gone through an efficiency audit. This is for the Vader. This is not for the bond election. In order for the board to be able to levy those three golden pennies, there has to be that efficiency audit. So more to come in that regard. What's going to be really important this spring, but also probably the month of June, early June, is conducting CBC meetings or citizen bond steering committee meetings. So that really leads us to where we are tonight in the sense of we need
219you to start thinking, if you will, please, community members, individuals that you would like to recommend to serve on these committees. And to be sure, the committee, this particular committee. is a committee that will discuss options and make recommendations to the board. That's correct. Because we want our community involvement and we want to hear what the community has to say. And more importantly, with this conversation, we're going to, as Jacob really already has, we'll refine the list of safety security needs, lifecycle replacements, and then two-point. $1 billion worth of other projects, and we'll have the committee go through a prioritization exercise. Now, we're going to explain that there could likely be some parameters, i.e., do we want to recommend keeping a flat tax rate with the Vader three golden pennies? Are you comfortable with a
220penny or two pennies increase on the M&O? So there are going to be those kind of conversations that ultimately will... lead up to a recommendation by this committee to make to the board prior to obviously calling for the order of election on August 17th. So I'm going to back up even a little bit more. We've already been in contact with Bass Lease in regards to conducting the surveys. Barry and I were just discussing it earlier this week. In regards to a two-survey approach, there are advantages. Seeking voter sentiment really kind of almost, I don't want to say blindly, but with a little bit of context, and then again leading into the election, i.e. the month of August, September, kind of as a benchmark of... how much more education work has to be conducted. Or there's
221sometimes just a real advantage to not confusing the matter, not concerned about survey fatigue, one survey really leading into the election. That doesn't have to be determined this evening, but just kind of be thinking about that as well. I won't, like I say, hit every... benchmark and there will be some that will be added for example we will have bond council provide an overview well before the order of election is considered as to the do's and don'ts and what you can what you can do as a trustee so that there's not any question again about electioneering or being proponents of purely education. So that, to be scheduled. But that's just an example of an activity that you don't see specifically outlined on this Gantt chart. What have I missed? This is it in a nutshell.
222It's a lot of fun. No, he answered. Oh, okay. Thank you all for creating this for us. Yeah, and again, we'll clean it up. I wanted to create it really more or less for a May and or November election for just future utilization. We'll specify it to the November election. It'll have to be in November, like I say, not only with a vader, but obviously now that you kind of see all of the steps involved, we wouldn't be able to make May right now if we just absolutely had to. I'm not saying we can do anything. Like I say, we'll put specific start putting specific dates or penciling in specific dates going forward The other item that was included in this I know that there were questions about the projects on hold That we've placed
223on hold very intentionally Particularly as we're working through the school optimization exercise. I'm sorry, before we move on real quick, there's probably a silly question because I know it's late. But November 3rd, the vote is November 3rd, 2027. That's election day, 26. That's what I was asking earlier, and you said 2027. The budget that we're going to vote on August 4th. I was asking this. So I was confused in the matter with fiscal year. What we're trying to do the month of August is Vader bond, but then also knocking out fiscal year 27 budget items, which are somewhat going to be interrelated because of the tax rate that you're going to be recommended to propose. that is going to be supporting a deficit budget that backs into a three cent Vader. So right now we're
224in month five. Is that right? Uh, right now we are in, uh, month five, six. That's, that's, that's fair. Oh, I'm sorry. No. 10, 11. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, because it's the second month. Yeah, I'm sorry. This is a 20-month period. So why do we have to sleep here? Month 11, no? Yeah, we're month 11. Month 11. Because in the future, I mean, it's just a template. You'll want to start this process early, which we have. I mean, everything that we've got. This past year with that with the exception of the bond survey, which I would argue you don't bond you don't survey two years before you Hold an election We've been talking about we've got the list. We've got the estimated cost. We've got a survey lined up We've got efficiency audit. I mean,
225we're actually probably well ahead of schedule So we're in a good place. Okay, we're in a very good place Community members, when it'll be in? Do you need to commit? We need to bring this back March 24th. We'll talk about the process for submitting the names. If you'll just be thinking about and maybe start generating a list as to who you would like to nominate. How many do we need? Well, that can be a point of discussion. I think we probably need to be safe just with attendance between 250 and 300. Keep in mind, too, that these are going to be individuals that are going to be learning about the bond process as well as the Vader process because the district, I think there was a Vader 22, 24 years ago maybe, and it wasn't
226a Vader back then. It was a tax ratification election. And we have a bond committee member list still, right, already. Yes, and we can send that. We can provide that in Friday letter. But what I was getting at, I'm sorry, the committee members that you're going to be recommending are also going to be really champions, hopefully, in and about the community that are going to be helping to educate homeowners and speaking at homeowners association and trying to answer any questions in particular that they may have because they can be proponents. And just that I want to clarify, if you commit to being a member of the bond committee in other districts, that ties you to the project until they're completed. Is that the way it works here? Like you'll be invited to the... When it's
227the school is if it's like renovated you'll be invited to oh not that's not the way Northside does it So we have an advisory committee. We have a see back, but it's not 300 members It's a it's a cross-section of that Not interrelated. Okay, and that's that's a progress update All right Any other questions? All right, we're gonna move on then to I didn't let me so you know, there's another question. It's somewhat related Through our work with optimization, we did include also the 22 bond projects on hold and then the requested map as to the location of those campuses. I think, you know, I want to be real careful here in the sense of the district optimization, the objective, the goal is to really assess. the community desires optimization of facilities. Yes, of course,
228it's going to analyze demographics. It's going to analyze a lot of different data to include academic data input, but it's not, this is not an overall or overarching process to just try to get at closing campuses. In fact, just again, anecdotally speaking, there's one. notion or idea in regards to the campuses that we have on hold that I can see very, very clearly that is probably, well, it's not anything that is being discussed. So I think that to get out ahead and start talking about school closures and Any other really decision-making matrix, and I know we can talk about the community-based equity study here momentarily, I think we're getting out too soon. And it's going to really muddy up this process. Because this is something I've done. And you saw a tidbit of it tonight.
229We can get community startup really, really good. And it is really difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. And I won't be able to do it alone. It doesn't take long. As we found out before, I was around when the 92 bond failed. And it was about a community. It was about distrust in the board. It wasn't about the community not understanding what the bond was about. It was about the board had said they were going to do. There was reasons at the time. But it was about distrust in the board. And that's why that bond failed. I was there at the time. So when you do get a community stirred up, that's exactly what happens. Okay. So like I say, and we can revisit those projects, but the projects, we have the
230funding secured. We haven't sold the bonds yet, but we have the funding secured. I just think that we really need to be. We need to use a lot of foresight before we invest millions and millions of dollars in renovations, major renovations in campuses that we may want to reconfigure. We may want to create an early childhood center, but we've put toilet fixtures in bathrooms for 10, 11, 12-year-olds or go the opposite direction. We may want to look at maybe an intermediate school model. Again, we're not hiding the information. As I've said, I think these are the projects that we probably need to put on hold right now. It's not to say that they won't ever be completed or done. But you're seeing what has happened in a neighboring school district just to our north, an
231hour to our north, where over $100 million went into projects for campuses and facilities that they're closing next year. Just I think that we just need to be really diligent and patient Because while we're yes, we're we're seeing construction escalation even though in a conversation that I recently had I think that it's starting to Especially with major construction settle a little bit When you say We need to, you know, be careful about the nine schools. I understand about that or the schools that we haven't completed the construction. Is there new information that maybe we can get so we can maybe look at other options? Like, you know, that I hear what you're saying. And it makes sense. But do we have data? Do we have information? Do we have where we can make those decisions?
232Or because it came out of the 2022 bond, we have to move forward with what we put out there? There's two questions I'm going to ask just in response. And again, I'm not what any information that you need as trustees, we will provide. even if it has to be generated, because this is not like a public information request. If there's a report that you would like to see, we'll work to have it conducted. Along that same line, though, we just launched our community survey that we're seeking feedback from the community at large of, you know, as we're looking at efficiencies, what is your opinion about some of these? Initiatives what are what are your opinions about academic programming? What are some things that we can look at to move upon? Before we ever even get
233into Let's close this campus this campus this campus because that's where I think real mistakes are are made again having been there and done it because It's very, very easy to make the recommendation. You're seeing this play out. To make the recommendation for the board to vote, and then here come the ramifications. Because you are talking about, in many cases, creating community school deserts. In many cases, it is the community livelihood. I mean, I don't have to go through. You all know. And so, yes, any data that you need, we will work hard to provide. I think that, though, before we get... ahead of the work that we're doing, which is really strategic planning with CSG, I think that we would be remiss in trying to make predetermined decisions. And I'll just say this, a
234prime example. We've provided and we have created this list because it's been requested and it's not we want to be transparent But if I'm the campus principal or a staff member on one of these campuses right now I'm immediately putting my guard up because I'm on the list and In most cases you can see enrollment trends and in current enrollment. We're not at capacity So I just implore the board to really think about the next couple months, what we're trying to accomplish objectively. I do not foresee making a recommendation for any school closures, consolidations going into next fiscal year. And I'm glad you made that statement because based on false information out there that that was the insinuation that we were making and then that was not what we were saying at all because I
235think I'm speaking for myself. I don't want to see any school closures. We can prevent it, right? We're doing everything in our power and y'all are working really hard to make student enrollment. And I don't think we're going to have, you're going to have the data. This is a part of your point for us to be able to make that recommendation with without. How do I describe this? Just just shooting from the hip. Right. And hope it all works out. I agree. What is your, I guess, recommendation on a timeline for that? Is there is there is like a certain timeline that we probably need to meet? So this fall and again, not to confuse the bond invader, because, again, the bond, I just I really believe that the bond is going to be as
236you see the list. And we start looking at the tax structure in particular. We're not talking about. raising an entire high school and raising an entire high school building a new high school would be well over 200 million dollars there's half your bonding capacity right there you're going to see a lot of what i consider really boring projects like unless you just like hvac units on top of buildings and flooring and paint and i mean it just Now, I will say that security vestibules at those campuses that do not have them, I've already told Jacob, that needs to be a priority. We need to have security vestibules, especially in some of these large high schools like Brandeis and some of our others. Dr. Hustle? I have a couple of questions. So the first is, are
237these capacities correct? To my knowledge. Because they're different from the 2024-2025 data that I had. Okay. What we have done, and Jacob, Joanne, Megan, y'all correct me if I'm wrong, the capacity that you had with, what year was it? 24, 25. Like, was it enrollment and capacity? I believe those capacity numbers were with the inclusion of portable space. No, it was without portables. Without portable buildings. Okay, so this is the is this the data or is this the capacity with the inclusion of portable buildings? I don't think so because Valley High is at 230 and it's at 230 where the Charlie High is the only one that's the exact same number that was on the last report all the rest of them are either like brawn is decreased in how many seats that they have.
238Cable has increased in how many seats that they have. Glass has decreased. Like they all have different, except for Valley High. Valley High is the only one that's at 230 without portables and it's at 230. Let us get you a straight answer. Okay, yeah, because I'm like, my percentage is off. And then my next is like PAL. Like PAL is at 82%. Like I don't feel like they're in the same kind of like bucket as everybody else and then like Mary Hall's at 78 glasses at 77 and of course Valley High Valley High's its own right cuz like yeah, it's a hundred and thirty something but like There's two. Yeah, like, is there a way to, like, I just feel like this list is so big. Like, to go into a new bond and be
239like, this list is for me, like, big. So is there a way to review this and be like, hey, where are we at? But then, of course, get to, like, what is really the capacity of these buildings? Because it's easier to then figure out, like, where are they at? And I know, like, PAL, Valley High, and Braun Station both increased in enrollment. Like they those three schools out of all these has increased enrollment. The other ones have not. But those three are actively you can tell are doing something because they've increased enrollment from where they were at last year. And Valley High, I mean, who was already like who was already at capacity where they're at in their tiny school. is up in enrollment. And I feel like that has also a lot to do
240with that whole area of town is becoming a desert when it comes to education. And so I feel like a lot of individuals are looking to Valley High and many of our schools in the map. And the map itself says a lot too. I understand that enrollment is low in those starts of town, but that's also all the areas that our other partnering ISDs are also leaving. Okay. So let us get back to so let me let me this has also been a point of contention in the sense of there's capacity there's Enrollment and then there's something called building utilization and I for the life of me have not figured out What the definition Northside's definition of building utilization is? So let us let us get these numbers scrubbed and get you real, like, here
241is the capacity. And then here is how, here's what the capacity is as the building is being utilized. And it'll make a little bit more sense. Yeah. And that's kind of it. Like the more info that we get, the more informed, because when I look at the numbers, I'm like, well, why isn't, why aren't we starting on Powell tomorrow? Like, why aren't we starting on glass? Why aren't we starting on Glen Oaks? Like, why aren't we starting Mary Hawk? Cause in my eyes, I'm like, they're rated like, you know, this is, I think with Powell, one of the questions is, is a 434 student enrollment. And that's a moving target right now. And I think that's a great question. Like, what is the cost for an elementary school? And what is, you know, what is
242the ideal capacity of students to be able to fund that cost? And if we don't have those numbers as a district, then it makes it difficult to kind of make these. Yeah, I think that those are all of the exact correct questions. That will need to be answered forthcoming. This is this is the work even though it's not probably Really visible just yet. This is the work that we're currently is underway with CSG I mean, this is exactly the work. What is the ideal elementary school? Because I say this I Can argue that from an efficiency standpoint a building built or an elementary built for 230 students It's not going to be an efficient model. It just isn't. Now, I understand why it was built in the era, 55, 60 years ago. I mean, it
243served that neighborhood. But those are things that may have to be reassessed because, for example, Just looking at the numbers and these enrollment, again, this is not a recommendation. This is where I want to be really careful because I feel like I'm putting campuses on alert right now as I speak. But if you look at the map, in every situation with two campuses, you could consolidate to one. And I'll argue that if you take the aggregate of... The cost associated with renovations, you could almost build a brand new elementary campus. It's those kind of scenarios that we just got to think really long and hard about and through. And it's going to take some time. That's why I come back to I don't foresee a recommendation for closure, consolidation coming this 26-27 school year. Dr.
244Hall? I just don't think we'll be ready, which is okay. Yeah, well, and I don't know if it was taken out of context, but I mean, it was very clear in that article that it sounded almost like we are moving that direction. So I'm wondering if we have to be real careful about how we talk about things, too, because I've had other people say that to me, whether it came from that article or not. We're talking about it. We're saying tonight that we're not looking at it for next year. We're going to wait for the efficiency studies to come out. We're going to look at some things. I mean, I think we need to be clear about our language. So, number one. Number two is I'm wondering, so... Those campuses, those nine campuses are just
245at a state of like they don't know what's going to happen, right? We know they need repairs, but yet we're saying we're not looking at school closures for at least another year, but there are some major things that need to be fixed. Do we prioritize those with the money that we have that was part of a bond to go ahead and fix those? I guess I just need clarity around that because I thought there was going to be, and maybe in my mind there was a different timeline, so I'll blame it on that. But, you know, I guess it's just a lack of clarity on my part. Well, Jacob, I don't know each and every individual project. that has major faults. I mean, obviously, they're allocated bond projects for a very good reason. They need...
246They need work. No question about it. Sure. In some cases, there are classroom replacements where we have the smaller classroom, 600, 700 square foot classrooms, where the standard now is 800 or bigger. Right. And so it's trying to get them in alignment with our newer campuses that we're building now. Some of them are kitchen cafeteria combos. So taking that old model of a separated cafeteria and gymnasium and bringing them together, which matches our new school model. It not in all cases are we in a situation where it's dire need it has to happen today Obviously when we made this decision to put these projects on hold dr Kraft asked us to make sure we were assessing those facilities and we weren't going to compromise Integrity of those buildings to make sure that we could put
247those on hold. So there's some roofing projects that are tied or some roofing tied to Powell and some of these other campuses, we had to go assess the roof with our consultants and make sure, hey, can we hold these off for a couple years and maintain the building envelope. So some of those assessments are happening behind the scene. And I know in building committee, when we brought these projects, we shared with Dr. Hasso and Mr. Salcido that. Even if you were to tell me to start today, we're not in a position to start these projects because we're going to miss this summer window. We still have to go design them. We've got to bid them, secure a contractor. They've got to order material. So we're not even set up for that until next summer. Which
248are resources that we would be spending on these projects, that these plans, these designs, they rack up quickly that we might just be shelving. Well, I guess what I'm still confused about is I understand efficiency. I do. I'm wondering if it's equitable that kids are maybe treated differently because the classroom size is not as large or they have to all cram into an auditorium. I mean, a cafeteria that's really not. For that reason to see something on a stage. That's not I mean I'm wondering if there's some equity and some maybe some effectiveness pieces that we're missing because we're talking efficiency So I'm just wondering that and I don't know that it'll show up on a capacity on any report I just want to know that the kids that are at those schools are treated
249as well as the kids at like Ellison or as far as do they have what they need is in the facilities to help support their learning? Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a fair question. And I know that's a topic of conversation and we can go ahead and we can really kind of combine agenda items because they are. overlapping I'll argue that the quality of the instruction the quality of the education the student receives is not a direct result of how new and shiny the classroom or building is as much as it is the quality of the instructor in the classroom now you know I know that there's going to be varying opinions but That's my answer now. Is it nice for all of our students to be in brand new buildings brand new
250facilities? Facilities like we're opening with the new baseball complex baseball softball cross-country complex sports gymnasiums gym sports complex number two Yeah, that's the desire but Dr. Harrell, I don't know of a single school district across the state of Texas that can achieve that goal unless there's truly one campus, pre-K through 12, and serves 98 students. I just want it part of the discussion. I remember writing the best several times with my Rayburn kids talking about how going to play at Stinson and how ghetto Rayburn was. And the quality of instruction was supreme. I will put those teachers up against anybody. And the leadership was outstanding. Rayburn was horrible. And it was it it poorly treated kids as a building, as a facility. And the asbestos removal that was like. five years too late. I mean,
251all of that. I don't want kids to go through that again. The kids will say that. They know a nice, beautiful building. Parents are choosing bright, shiny, penny buildings. They're not looking at the quality of instruction. But, I mean, I just want it. I want what's right for all our kids. That does bring up a really interesting question. Maybe needs to be a part of the conversation and start building committee if if that's the case and I hear you I completely I Wouldn't I would not I wouldn't I would completely change this entire approach of phasing in projects of I try to take out a wing or a piece of a building and then rebuild it. And then over the course of the next 16, 20 years in phases, come back and kind of patchwork
252it. And I, I would recommend let's get real. Let's start looking at, again, consolidation of two or three campuses, raise them, build a brand new. Oh, that's us. You know, and. suffer having to put in temporary portable buildings at various locations for two years, build a brand new facility, and then you have truly a brand new facility. So I agree. I think the discussion is around what's best for the kids and then the buildings. come next. Like if we consolidate three, because it's best for kids and it's going to be in this great new, you know, whatever, something like that, but it's about the kids. Um, I agree with you on that. It just, it's a, but understand that it's a very different approach and philosophy that has hasn't occurred. And I'm not, I'm not
253throwing stones here, but this, that's a, that's a completely different metanoia shift. I think it depends on the community. So I live not too far from a school that still has part of the buildings that were built in 1969, and those buildings are still standing. And I will tell you that those parents... And it's an older school. We've done some renovations, but it is an older school. There are some classrooms that have pillars in the middle of them. That's how old the school is. But you couldn't talk to any one of those parents and ask them to go anywhere else. They are there, and they're happy there. And so I don't think the bright and shiny is like that everywhere. I think it depends. I think it depends on the community. And then when we
254look at this discussion, I understand that these are 2022 bond projects, but we've got schools that I caution us going into the 2026 bond, schools on the other side, on various, all parts of this district that are at 40, 50% capacity that. I don't know what we're doing. Quite honestly, I didn't look at the news. That's precisely why we got to look at the average. The whole thing. We can't just, it's hard to look at just that. Transportation costs, which we just haven't at all. Ms. Zapata? I agree with Carol. And coming from a district where I've experienced it, and it's, kids do know. Kids do know when. Their building is not as nice as, you know, a sister school in their district. They do know, communities do know. I agree with you also too,
255Dr. Craft, that it's going to take time. And I don't want to put Band-Aids on anything because Band-Aids eventually just become more Band-Aids. And I feel like in order for us to do this right, I think that this just kind of, ended up catching up to us here. And so I think to do this right, we need to make sure that we get the feedback of not only the community, but we also do a community audit. Like we really need, we're going to do this right. And I like the idea of putting a brand new school, maybe consolidating some of these because kids do. deserve new and nice in all areas of Northside. And so I feel like it's important for us to get that information so we can make the best decision and use
256our money, use every single penny for our students, for our communities. And because I think with everything coming down the road, And I hear it. Other districts are hurting until people are looking at Northside. And so we got to continue to, like Carol said, I mean, they're, you know, if they're on the border of what is the Southwest and SAISD, and my kid has an opportunity to go to a brand new school. I think that is a big factor. So I really feel like it's also something that we need to do to, you know, and I know enrollment's going down, but I feel like we're also going to, especially with the virtual school coming out, we're probably going to see an uptick. And, you know, I feel like we need to. have a community audit.
257And I know I had mentioned, I sent you guys the information about Dr. Terrence Green, who works out of UT. And he can do that for us to give us that information that we need for our communities, for our families. just so we can make the best decision. He's familiar with San Antonio already because he already did an audit with SAISD. So I just, I feel like it's important that we include something like that along with the civic solutions to help us plan. And I'm not opposed to the community-based equity audit. Let me just say this though, with Senate Bill 12, which is, in essence, the complete outlawing of diversity, equity, inclusion to include the allocation of resources. If we want to pursue this or pursue a proposal, I'm advising that we get legal counsel
258to sign off on this. I just... part of my job is to ensure that we're following education code and of course, new legislation and Senate bill 12 is very clear and it's not, I mean, you don't have to look very far to see, uh, talk about stones being thrown, stones being thrown. Um, and, and I just, one thing that I think that we may have to ask the board, you may have to ask yourself is, okay, well, Getting in a rock fight with those that authored this legislation, worth the time, energy, effort, resources in defending, it's the juice worth the squeeze. I mean, that's just what we did. I feel it is worth it. And at the end of the day, it's our kids about our kids. So you want to throw rocks at us,
259throw them. But we're going to make the best decisions for our kids. And I know it's probably going to make people upset and people angry or whoever wrote the bills or whatnot. But at some point, we got to stand and we got to stand for our kids. We got to stand for our communities. And we need to. We need to stand up and we need to move forward. And I completely agree. Believe me, I'm not one afraid to put together a pretty good fight. I don't mind a good dust-up as long as, one, we put ourselves in a position that we're going to win, but, two, that it's not such a distraction that we're not able. to get to the real work of providing the very best and equitable environments for our students. That's kind
260of where I land. And, again, we can request a proposal. I do recommend that we put it through a legal review and just understand what are our associated risks. And if we decide that, okay, there are some, but it's worth it and we're going to go through with it, it's fine, too. I just want to put ourselves in the very best position that when we do get called, we're ready to fight and put ourselves in a position. 100%. When would be a good time frame? Because I know looking at the map that we have here, so like... to take it through legal. I just don't want it to drag out because, you know, I think time is of the essence to gather as much data as we can. So we need to get a, we
261need to get a proposal together first. Okay. We haven't reached out first. We need to talk about it as a board. If we even, if we have the support to go forward with it, that'd be a good start too. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, it's coming up. The next item will discuss this in particular. Yeah, so I've got the report from San Antonio that was conducted, I believe, in 23. Before we move on, though, Mr. Blunt and Dr. Hussle. Yeah, just a real quick question I had. Head Start programs, are they included when we show enrollment, or is that part of that building utilization possibly? Head Start, let me get back to you, Bobby. I don't remember, Joanne. Are they resource planning including Head Start numbers? I don't think so. I'm sorry. Some of the programs are
262embedded in the... school, others are not. So if they're not, they're not included. If they are, they are. That's what I was thinking about. That may be that building utilization because that would be the increase that we don't see. Well, that's exactly, that's a great point that we've allowed Head Start to utilize some of our building space if it was accessible. If we had the space. Whereas others have not. Dr. Hassell? I was just looking at the list and I'm a little concerned about Linton because theirs is like an air handler and a chilling replacement and it's getting hot. So like I'm concerned. Is that, are you concerned? Yeah, so we're keeping our eyes on it. Okay. Because I mean, I feel like are we spending more on maintenance than we are and just replacing
263it at this point? I don't believe so. There's been a conservative effort by our maintenance team to make sure that we're, like to Ms. Zapata's point, not putting band-aids. So we're doing more permanent repairs. Yes, they're more costly up front, but in the long haul, we're not hitting that campus on a... biannual or annual basis. We're hitting it once and hopefully sustaining that piece of equipment for years to come. And so that's what we're actively doing. And so Bronze Station and Linton are both on our radar because they're both HVAC related. Keep in mind that the systems are just older systems at those campuses. It's not necessarily because they're failing. But it's because they're not their standard HVAC system, which is a VAV system where we can control the spaces a little bit better rather
264than, hey, one thermostat is controlling six classrooms. And if you're hot, I'm sorry, because I'm cold. And my thermostat adjusts the whole wing kind of situation. So that's really what those projects are. That's why the dollar amount is so big because it's literally a gut and replace of that entire campus, phase by phase, sometimes three phases, sometimes four phases to bring those up to standard. And usually with that, you have to upsize the chillers because the capacity is increased. That's also addressing some ventilation and filtration because the systems just weren't set up for what we're trying to set as our standard. Everything you said scares me. Thank you. So to the point of planning, I'm just thinking like assistant principal calls from teachers. My room is cold. My room is hot. Can they strategically plan?
265if you like it called U6 go here. You know what I'm saying? Like, is that something that can be thought through carefully moving forward to the next year? Because those problems will occur and that takes a lot of our time out as administrators to go and help. It depends on who's asking for that request because the campuses are based by grade level. So you can't necessarily move a kinder teacher. to a warm or cold classroom at their request because that's other space. It's a first grade classroom doesn't accommodate kindergarteners and so forth. You do have to be somewhat strategic in that. If it's a multi-level campus, you don't want to put your younger kiddos on the second level. And so there's, there's definitely some work on the administration side to try and see if they
266can make that work based on the space and the grade level that's requesting that. Thank you. That same notion. I could say that Linton is barely. over 50 capacity there's probably plenty of empty classrooms to be able to reload i'm just thinking solutions thank you jacob yes mr blunt no i'm good you got me mrs freeman now that was oh i hit it again i'm sorry This is payment Okay, I think we've thoroughly discussed that section sir Well, I mean I so there's a lot, you know There's a lot at motion But again, and I'm not trying to confuse the matter with the Gantt chart But then also the work that is being conducted with optimization. I could say the equity Audit, I mean that's just a it's just something the board would like for
267us as an administration to pursue. Okay. Do you want to wait to talk about that at letter item D or do we? No, I think it might be more appropriate to discuss it at a building committee and then bring it back because I don't know enough about the work that Dr. Green, Terrence Green has done. I don't fully understand how the work was incorporated into the San Antonio ISD's right sizing plan. I think what they did was they looked at student groups, families, and communities and looked at that from a community standpoint. And then he's doing that with 10 other districts. But they're looking at the complex empirical findings of the actual district plants. And what they did for SAISD is... Kind of put it all in context based on this community this these needs
268historical information and then Answered the question that their board had So it's a little bit of all of that and I think the name is what maybe the trigger But I don't know that that needs to be used that the name of that that well, that's just it. I mean Community audit is what it is. It really that's it I think it's safe to say if it's providing equitable educational opportunities, I would agree. I don't think that that has any... Senate bill 12 violation we don't want to violent anything but I mean I think knowing that community and historical trends and I mean there's so much data right that that needs to be looked at growing population growth like all of that we've said in a nutshell but haven't put it in one place right
269and I think that's what he's doing so we I think we need you to your point we'll move it to the building committee to further inquire a cost of course is important what does that cause yeah we can get a proposal we couldn't get that without a proposal just to know to ask okay i know that again being in the district is that time is of the essence so i i would um I would just urge that we get that proposal so we can start and have enough time to get enough data. It's a lot of information that we're getting. I don't know if Northside has ever done anything like this. I don't know if we have a place where we know about our communities and the data. So it takes time. And so the
270sooner we can talk about it, discuss it, I don't know if we have to vote on it. I mean, I don't remember voting on the other one. the optimization one. But I think it's needed for our communities, for us to make the right decisions. And so for our community to know that there was no stone left unturned, you know, when we're making these decisions, because again, we have such diverse population. And so I think it's only fair that we make sure that we get all the data that we need. Okay. That was item D that we've covered already. Mr. Blahn. Yeah, I'm sorry, real quick, because I did read the whole report on the right-sizing equity, and that one would actually be specific. It wasn't a baseline from a start. It actually started from, hey,
271you closed these schools before. what happened, then they went to the other part. So that's a critical thing to sort of understand. It may be done differently in other ways, but that's how that one is done. I would also request, if you look at an building committee, that you also look at, if we did it ourselves, what would it take? Because my contention is going to be, you've got a lot of knowledgeable staff, administrators, principals that know these, from my talk, they know their communities backwards and forwards. So what's the possibility of pulling something together within Northside to get the equivalent, you know, as a comparison base, as opposed to going to an outsider? Dr. Harl? The other thing too is I know it's happening to us right now and it's really important, but it's
272already been happening throughout the state. I'm wondering if there's a similar, I know when I was judging the school board finalists for HEB, Garland. was one of the school districts that really kind of wrestled with this. And one of the things that stood out to me is they did look at the model where you closed like three schools, but created something even better. And it brought, it brought people together. I'm just wondering, we always say, do we learn from our ourselves, from our, um, within our district, from what's working at one school? Are we sharing that so it can be replicated at another? Is there some way to also get some other information from people who've really gone through this? Garland was the one that came to mind, but everyone's handling it differently. It's just
273that we're still sitting on 22 bond money, right? That's just sitting there. We really don't know where to go next. We've got a plan, but it's still going to take a couple years. I don't know. I guess I have an urgency around it. And then that 22 money, I thought when voters voted, so this is just me asking the question, when voters voted, it was for those specific projects. It wasn't for something else. So are we, is it okay? Is it legal that we are, number one, not using it, and number two, possibly using it for something else? Yeah, I think, one, In working with our bond council, the parameters are instructional facility improvements. So, yes. Again, I'll counter with I would rather answer the questions of, well, this took a year or two years
274longer in taking those arrows versus I'm glad you spent $120 million on upgrading facilities that you ended up turning over and selling to charter schools, which legally you'll have to offer or sell before you can offer it to the general public. So it's just food for thought. And again, we can go forward 100% with these projects. You know, we're going to be over. But we can, if the board would like to direct us, let me just say this. The easiest thing as your superintendent would be to hit go on every one of these projects and not even have broached this entire topic. And just, what are you talking about? We may be dealing with future efficiency conversations. So just 22 bond was approved. I don't understand it all, but pedal to the metal and let's
275go. But what I do appreciate, and to Mrs. Freeman's point that she made earlier, is that the community is looking at us and their trust in us. And I think that we are not making hasty decisions. We're asking all the right questions and we're all in this for the right reason, working together. We're not all best friends, but we do want the best for Northside. And the community needs to know that. Okay, you can trust us. I have a dual MBA. I've sat on several bond committees. I work with other school districts. I'm looking to see what everybody else is doing to Dr. Hall's point. And I'm very invested in this. So I want the community to know that the trust is here. It's just us trying to come to a good decision for us
276and being able to move forward. Mrs. Freeman. That's okay. I was going to comment on the equity piece, but we're going to bring it back to committee, so I'll save those questions at the time. But when you do bring it to building, please make the distinction about that particular type of audit and the difference between that and our optimization study that we're in the midst of and how that differs. Sure. Make sense. Okay. I'm sorry This is a reminder What the this board has stated every single bond package and then I'm a I'm a state and then I'm a back out of it Is that we will complete every single project that we identified on there just because we had a the fear of, you know, when that bond was lost back in 92. So
277what we would have to do as part of the conversation, I'm not saying, you know, change anything, but this board needs to really be up front in terms of if we do make those, be involved with the community and say, hey, here's why we had to do it this time, because we were very clear every single bond that we passed of stating that. Dr. Harl. And I was just going to add that that just for me, that would cause distrust. If we're talking about trust, you said you were going to do this for our community, our school, which are hard to separate in a lot of the neighborhoods that we're talking about. Our school is our community. You said you were going to do that. And now you're going to come back. And Bob, I
278mean, I'm just saying. Again, yeah. I think there's a lot of validity in what you're saying. And again, I am. We are going to save a whole lot of time, energy, effort. There are going to be more years on my life if we just complete these bond projects. I'm sincere. So does it become an agenda item? Because, you know, my signature says the child can't wait. So that tells you where my urgency is. So I'm ready to push the button. But at the same time, I do understand that we're waiting for some more information and data. Again, it could be my age, but it's almost like a promise to me in the bond. Here's also what happens in the bond that I understand your struggle in having observed this in other school districts. When we
279ask for this money, we ask it on today's cost. construction cost and so then we break promises when lumber costs five times more and we're not able to fulfill that need based on the increased cost of construction and we're gonna we have to break those promises because it's a not a smart business decision because the costs are astronomical so can we redesign this although we promised you this beautiful thing with this kind of material we're not having to redesign it into more affordable construction materials. So that happens all the time, Dr. Howell. So don't carry that too heavily on your conscience because they modify these bonds all the time because of just cost alone. And then no longer is affordable those promises that were made. And Dr. Howell, I appreciate exactly where your heart is.
280If you recall, we expanded Colonies North and that project. significantly, not just a little bit, but talking about putting a Band-Aid on, that project was maybe an ace Band-Aid. And so I appreciate everything that you've articulated. And I don't, I'm right there with you. I just. Yeah, I was going to say, when we look at bonds, this district has estimated. what it would cost at the time that we've planned to build it. What we couldn't predict the last time around was what happened after the pandemic and the inflationary costs. But because we have done that, that's why we've had bond savings from 2014, 2018, 2020. Well, I don't know where we are in 2022. We're not. finished with that yet, but we've had bond savings in the past because we've paid attention to what we're
281doing and optimized the timing. So that's not how this district has planned their bonds on today's cost. We don't do that. Mr. Salcido. Being a part of the building community, I don't think these... Schools, the bond was put on hold because of costs. I think they were put on hold because of the enrollment. There were a lot of factors. Yeah, it wasn't just, part of it was escalated costs. We're not going to reverse construction escalation. So I can't even really say it was cost as much as it was, yes, enrollment. looking at the demographics within the housing communities the number of pre-k kindergarten first grade students academic achievement there were several variables knowing that delaying it very likely was going to be more expensive that would be my recommendation That would be my recommendation. But
282again, if we need to proceed, because I do understand making the promise to the community and the voters, if we need to proceed forward with the projects, I'm ready. Your mic is off. We can tell the community that we also need to be fiscally responsible for the taxpayers' money. And so that goes hand in hand. That's where I think we are. Dr. Hall, just real quick. What happens to the bond money the 22 bond money it's we haven't sold them we haven't sold them. Okay, so I Don't know I was looking Laura has a great that great map where the those nine are It's like three together, three together, and the border. I mean, it's, and if you juxtapose that on where all the charters are, I'm almost wondering if it would pull from the
283charters and pull, because it's really clear. It could be something really neat. I don't know. We just need to keep a lot of options open. I don't get Brunt Station, though. It's kind of anomaly. I have to figure out that one. Okay. So any other points for this one? So we're going to move on to item number seven there. C. Cad notice a vacancy. Yes. You have your agenda packet. There was a vacancy. So if you would like to make a nomination, this would be your opportunity to do so. Mrs. Freeman? Yeah. This board, we supported Butch Gomm or Harold Gomm the last time, and he didn't make it in into the Bandera piece. So I propose that we nominate him. And if you all know, Butch or Harold Gomm used to be a trustee
284here in Northside. He's still very active in the FFA program, and his uncle is the namesake of Gomm Elementary. Do we have any second motion? Or do we have a motion? Yes. Second. Second. To continue with Mr. Gomes. I'll second. Mr. Blount seconds that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay. We nominated Mr. Gomes. Thank you. We'll get that submitted to Bandera Appraisal District. Our future agenda item, sir. Again, the 24th. We'd like to come back, talk about CBC membership. Again, the proposed project list. We'll have several other items, particularly on consent. We would like to also recognize our counseling, reinforcing excellence in students in Texas award recipients. We have quite a few, which is a great celebration. We're still, like I say, a ways away from the 24th. That's
285what I have. Okay. Thank you, sir. So it's 1030. At 1035, we're going to go into executive closed session. And so the board will now convene into closed session in accordance with the Texas government code section 551071 through 551084. No action will be taken in closed session and any decisions will be made when the board reconvenes into open session. And the board is reconvening into open session. No action was taken in closed session. Regarding any agenda items discussed in closed session, is there a motion to come before the board? Dr. Duran, I move that we approve the administrative appointments as discussed in executive session. Dr. Howell seconds that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, we approve. The item is discussed in closed session. Unless there are any objections, we're
286going to adjourn this meeting at 1245. Thank you for watching. Good night.